‘props’, among the trees, was violently sick.
Yorke, who was taken aback by the actor’s unscripted and unrehearsed exit, hastened after him. All questions were obviously unnecessary and Yorke asked only one. “I say,” he said, “what’s come over you?”
“Those damned mussels. I should never have eaten them.” Another indescribable upheaval followed and then Rinkley zigzagged blindly away and lay on a patch of grass shivering and sweating. Yorke went off to look for assistance.
“What is it?” asked Robina Lester, who was picking up her bits and pieces for the workmen’s play and had witnessed Rinkley’s unrehearsed exit.
“Food poisoning. Dr Jeanne-Marie is in the audience. I’ll stay with him if you’ll go and get her. Be as quick as you can.”
Deborah came up. Yorke said, “I don’t think he can go on again tonight. Go in front and beg the indulgence of the audience for a few minutes, would you, while we get the understudy changed and briefed?”
“Mussels?” said Dr Jeanne-Marie. “He had better go to hospital, although it seems there can be little left in his stomach. He may have an allergy to shellfish, but one thinks also of myelotoxin, so to get the stomach washed out is precautionary.” Some of the men carried the sweating, trembling, mottled Rinkley up the slope to the house, ready for the ambulance to pick him up, using the stretcher which was in readiness for carrying Pyramus off the stage in the workmen’s play. While, accompanied by Deborah, who was not needed again until the very end of the show, and Dr Jeanne-Marie who was to do the telephoning, the bearers carried the feebly protesting man up through the woods, Brian Yorke went to find Donald Bourton and urge him to change as quickly as he could from the Fairy King’s fantastic trappings into the tunic and armour of Pyramus.
He found his Oberon in a little clearing, but was perturbed to note a half-empty bottle of whisky at Bourton’s side and Bourton seated on the ground.
“Here!” he said urgently. “On your feet, Don, and make it slippy.”
“Ur?”
“Rinkley has passed out on us. Get into the Pyramus outfit. You’ll have to stand in.”
“Can’t. Got to go on again as Oberon.” He was slightly glassy-eyed, but his speech was clear and when he rose to his feet he was quite steady.
“Never mind about Oberon. Look, I’m cutting out the little scene where Bottom turns up again at Quince’s house and I’ve told the scene-shifters to put on the palace back-drop. We’ll go straight into the workmen’s play.”
As he talked he had Bourton by the arm and was urging him towards the table on which the armour, sword-belt and helmet were laid out. An anxious Marcus Lynn was standing there and received their advent with relief.
“Oh, good man, Donald!” he said. “Come on. I’ll help you.”
“And I’ll go in front again and hold the audience for another few minutes,” said Yorke.
To release the men who had carried Rinkley up to the house and who were needed in the next scene, Deborah remained with the patient until the ambulance came for him and so she missed the extraordinary conclusion of the third night of
With him in Rinkley’s part, the workmen’s scene went even better than it had done at the two previous performances, and he, whether influenced or not by the whisky, appeared to be enjoying himself. The interruptions, essays of wit, ripostes and responses from the court party, sparkled and crackled as they had never done before. Then came the point at which Pyramus, believing that the lion had killed Thisbe and carried her off, decides to commit suicide.
Pyramus usually stands up to make his farewell speech before stabbing himself and falling to the ground, and Rinkley had played it this way. He did a particularly good theatrical fall and liked to show it off to the audience. Bourton changed this. He lay down with great care and a meticulous arrangement of his tunic after Quince had helped him to get out of his body-armour, and then, having declaimed that he was dead, fled and that his soul was in the sky, he raised himself slightly on one elbow, gave an unexpected hiccup, raised the dagger and plunged it into his body. Picking up her cue, Susan Hythe, as Thisbe, capered on to the centre of the stage and gazed concernedly down on him.
“ ‘What, dead, my dove?’ ” she enquired, and continued: “ ‘O Pyramus, arise! Speak, speak. Quite dumb? Dead, dead? A tomb must cover thy sweet eyes.’ ”
This was almost the cue for Quince and Lion to come in with their stretcher (which had been returned) and convey Pyramus into the wings, but before this happened Thisbe was supposed to pull out the dagger so that at the end of her speech she could commit suicide with it.
This she failed to do because the dagger remained stuck fast. The audience thought that this was all part of the fun, but Susan signalled to the pall-bearers to come on, and the rigid body of Pyramus was carried off with the dagger still fixed in position. Susan turned her back on the audience and mouthed at Yorke, who was looking truly ducal as Theseus, “No dagger! It won’t come unstuck. What shall I do?”
“Drop dead,” he said, in a voice the audience could hear. There was a roar of appreciative laughter at this unscripted
“Oh, damn! We must play on, though. Do the dance,” said Yorke, “and we’ll finish.”
“Right,” said Marcus Lynn. “ ‘Will it please you to see the epilogue?’ ” he demanded loudly, “ ‘or to hear a burgomask dance between two of our company?’ ”
“ ‘No epilogue, but come, your burgomask,’ ” shouted Yorke, hoping that this truncated speech would indicate to the ladies of the orchestra that he had decided to cut the play short at this point. To make certain, however, that they would get the message, he murmured a word to Jonathan, who, as Demetrius, was standing behind him, and Jonathan slipped out. The orchestra produced some music from
