They liked it, though. And as I shifted to get a better view, I saw that Hoad, in the person of Flute the bellows-mender, was doing a bit of scene-stealing. It was simple stuff, hand motions to match the words of the other actors, but he had finally found the funny bone of the locals. When Bottom was instructing the actor playing the Wall to hold his fingers ‘thus’, Hoad’s gesture was met by a gush of hilarity.
Bottom, meanwhile, had gone from the lifeless to the near-comatose. Mrs Tilman as Puck led him off stage, as per the script, but once in the wings, he sat down on a hard chair, shut his eyes and nodded off.
Back on stage, Flute had his first line. By happy chance it was, ‘Must I speak now?’
The advice from the audience was pretty varied. ‘If you think you still can’ and ‘You tell ’em, Les!’ being two of the more repeatable. Hoad was swaying on his feet as he launched into some lines about ‘brisky juvenal and eke most lovely Jew’. It may have been the fact that he clearly had no idea what he was talking about or it may have been the word ‘eke’ that touched the simple souls at the back, those who had known this Hoad as man and boy. They laughed, they roared, they stamped their feet: ‘Eke, Les, eke!’
I was so wrapped up in the performance that I barely heard Titania in a stage whisper say, ‘Quick, Bertie, wrap a sheet round you. You’ll have to play Bottom.’
It was the hand of an assiduous gentleman’s personal gentleman that effected the lightning-fast costume change and, with a murmured ‘Forgive me, sir’, lowered an ass’s head over the occiput. It was the gentle shove of Mrs Tilman’s Puck that ushered me on stage.
I have made a few entrances in my time, but I can honestly say that none of them has gone over as big as this one. It turned out that what the standees had been wanting all along was a man in a donkey’s head. The sun had come out in their world. The string quartet was forgiven, the Queen of Sheba forgotten; the Collector of Chanamasala was as dust beneath their chariot wheel.
Now all eyes were on Wooster, B. This was the part that for more than a dozen years I had been reciting blindfold in my sleep, yet when I asked myself for the line, it was like looking into a huge and awful void. I heard my cue, but no words came. This rude mechanical and I were utter strangers. From the wings came a respectful throat-clearing, followed by a prompt. ‘If I were, fair Thisby, I were only thine.’
It sounded familiar, so I said it. And I tried to give it a bit of weaver’s oomph. So we staggered through the next bit, with Jeeves prompting. The audience seemed to think this was all part of the show; and even if not, they couldn’t by now have cared less.
At last, Titania stirred. She spoke. ‘What angel wakes me from my flowery bed?’ There came a volley of whistles and catcalls as Georgiana unfolded the limbs and tiptoed over.
She came and stood by me with her hand lightly on my sleeve. As she gazed up at me in her fairy-queen rapture, an odd thing happened. The words of the part came back to me, and I let rip with the full Monty Beresford West Riding accent echoing through the ass’s head.
I thought Hoad’s line ‘Must I speak now?’ had got the biggest laugh of the night, but it was as nothing to Titania’s ‘Thou art as wise as thou art beautiful.’ The plaster was coming off the ceiling and the dust of decades was being beaten from the floorboards by the stamp of the standees’ boots.
Georgiana had wisely cut the end of the scene, where various fairies hop about, so we were now in the home straight. ‘And I do love thee: therefore go with me,’ she was saying, squeezing my arm with most realistic grip; and even through the ass’s headgear I was feeling the force of those brown, pleading eyes. ‘… And they shall fetch thee jewels from the deep …’
Then something about the warmth of her low and throbbing voice seemed to calm the yokels at the back. ‘And I will purge thy mortal grossness so That thou shalt like an airy spirit go,’ she ended, and took me by the arm as the curtain fell.
The first thing we saw in the wings was Lord Etringham, sitting up, drinking a glass of water, apparently restored.
‘Quick, Bertie,’ said Georgiana, ‘give him back the ass’s head. He must take the credit.’
It was a relief to get the wretched thing off. Lord Etringham was struggling to keep up with events, but no one minds going on stage to a hero’s welcome, which is what he got. They cheered, they whistled, they clapped, and no one seemed to mind that Bottom had shrunk by almost a foot.
They came off stage at last, but the audience wanted them back for a curtain call.
‘Come on, Bertie, you come this time, too,’ said Georgiana.