"Then God help you," he groaned.
"On the contrary, Dame Quickly is none other than Mrs. John Drew herself," I reassured Crane.
"My boy, you won't have to do a thing but stand there," he exclaimed. "Let her do it."
It was true. Speaking those eight lines slowly, Mrs. Drew, with her changing facial expression and consummate art, drew me out of my sulks into a comical eagerness, without my doing anything beyond following the cues her face gave me.
Falstaff is a strenuous rôle apart from the make-up, and the make-up is the most harrowing in the theater. On a warm night it can be a torture. Crane built himself up to Sir John's bloated figure with heavy woolen leg pads, a false stomach of inflated rubber, a heavily padded coat and other stuffing that gave all the effects of the steam room of a Turkish bath. With my youth and physique, I found it an ordeal for one performance.
There was a supper at the Grand Union following the play, at which Mrs. Drew and I, among others, spoke.
"Mr. Hopper has said that this is his first time to play Falstaff," she said when she rose.
[126]
