Identifier: theatricalcircus00je (find matches)
Title: Theatrical and circus life;
Year: 1893 (1890s)
Authors: Jennings, John Joseph, 1853-1909. (from old catalog)
Subjects: Theater Circus
Publisher: Chicago, Laird & Lee
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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Text Appearing Before Image:
After an English lady of rank returned from the
continent, she found her trunk robbed of its jewels.
Detectives traced the jewels to a London pawnshop,
where they had been sold for $5. The thieves were
arrested, and when one of them was asked why he had
been so foolish as to sell nearly one hundred thousand
dollars worth of diamonds for $5, he answered:
" Why, yer honor, we never thought for a minute as
how they were real jewels ; we just thought the lady
was some play-actor woman, and that the whole lot
wasn't worth but a few shillings."
The trinkets are no more deceptive than are many
other means employed to astonish and gladden the
public. The production of thunder, the simulation of
rain-fall, the fictitious roaring of winds, and the mul-
tiplication of suns, moons and stars are among the
numerous illusions that give to the theatre that mar-
vellous charm under whose spell thousands are nightly
placed and held. In the olden times these effects were
produced in a simple and by no means mystifying
manner, but late years have made them so perfect in

170 THE, ILLUSIONS OF THE TRADE.

their application that none but the initiated can even
begin to think out the solution of the wondrous effects
Text Appearing After Image:

JOSEPHINE D'ORME.

in which the stage now abounds. A new effect, such
as the enormous stretch of sea and sky to be fouud in

THE ILLUSIONS OF THE STAGE. 171

" The World," is something that dramatic authors and
stage mechanics are always seeking after and are glad
to find. The revolving tower in " The Shaughran "
was a puzzle to everybody. Now there are hundreds
of effects of this kind with folding and vanishing scenes
that are even more wonderful than Boucicault's tower.
Viewed from the wings the simplicity of the means
employed to produce these effects makes them abso-
lutely laughable. They shall be explained in this
chapter.
Thunder-storms are common efforts at realism, and
they are sometimes simulated in a way that makes
them appear to fall very little short of nature. The
earliest style of stage thunder was effected by vigor-
ously shaking a piece of sheet iron which made a rat-
tling and ear-disturbing noise. Even now when a
show is on the road and a hall without the usual
first-class accessories, must be used, the audience, and

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