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On the following Saturday, the 27th of November, 1875, after only a single rehearsal, and wearing the borrowed costume of the manager's wife, who happened to be about the same size as herself, and without the slightest "make up," Mary Anderson appeared as one of Shakespeare's favorite heroines. She was announced in the playbills thus:
Thereupon, the mangers headed their advertisements in all the other New York papers with the line, 'This establishment does not advertise in the New York Herald, and for many months this announcement was kept at the top of every theatrical advertisement and on the posters and playbills.
No one has heard of any actor's or actress's appearance, even in the last century, as one of the personages in "Troilus and Cressida." Its name has not been upon the playbills for generations, although even "Love's Labor's Lost" has once in a while been performed.
I can scarcely read even now, an' what I have of it was got through spellin' out the playbills in the public-house windows. But what d'ye say, sir, now that we both seem inclined to turn over a new leaf, if you was to turn schoolmaster an' teach me to read and write a bit better than I can do at present? I'd promise to be a willin' scholar an' a good boy."
People looked at their playbills to see whether it was really Hilda Howe or some nautch-queen borrowed from a native theatre. By the time she sank before Pilate and placed his foot upon her head a new spirit had breathed upon the house.
The theatre, however, soon became my favorite place, but, as I could only very seldom go there, I acquired the friendship of the man who carried out the playbills, and he gave me one every day. With this I seated myself in a corner and imagined an entire play, according to the name of the piece and the characters in it. That was my first, unconscious poetising.
Baxter occupied two armchairs placed side by side in the very front row of spectators, and that the captain's opening speech was interrupted by a little giggle, as his eyes fell on the faces before him. The curtain, rose on a "glade in the forest primaeval," as was announced by the dozen playbills which did duty for the audience.
He went on, and presently found himself before the Theatre Royal, and when he glanced at the playbills, he saw that a Shakespearian Company were in possession of it. Romeo and Juliet had been performed on Saturday night, and he remembered the line that had sustained him after his love-making with Maggie Carmichael: If love be rough with you, be rough with love. "How can you?" he said aloud.
In our scrutiny of ways and means we were inevitably subject to the old convention of the synopsis, the syllabus, partly of course not to lose the advantage of his grand free hand in drawing up such things; but for myself I laughed at our playbills even while I stickled for them.
That article was an amplification of the stimulating matter contained in the playbills; and he persuaded Basque, who had relations in Nantes, to use all the influence he could command, and all the bribery they could afford, to get that article printed in the "Courrier Nantais" a couple of days before the arrival of the Binet Troupe.
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