In comic opera there are such constant changes, of dialogue, songs, and alterations, that the company have a general rehearsal at least once a fortnight on the average, right through the run of a piece, and there is always an entire understudying company ready to go on at any moment.
Why Women go on the Stage—How to prevent it—Miss Florence St. John—Provincial Company—Theatrical Basket—A Fit-up Tour—A Theatre Tour—Répertoire Tour—Strange Landladies—Bills—The Longed-for Joint—Second-hand Clothes—Buying a Part—Why Men Deteriorate—Oceans of Tea—E. S. Willard—Why he Prefers America—A Hunt for Rooms—A Kindly Clergyman—A Drunken Landlady—How the Dog Saved an Awkward Predicament.
It is continually being asked: Why do women crowd the stage?
The answer is a simple one—because men fail to provide for them. If every man, willing and able to maintain a wife, married, there would still be over a million women left. Many women besides these “superfluous” ones will never marry—many husbands will die, and leave their widows penniless, and therefore several millions of women in Great Britain must work to live. Their parents bring them into the world, but they do not always give them the means of livelihood.
Marriage with love is entering a heaven with one’s eyes shut, but marriage without love is entering hell with them open.
Women must work until men learn to protect and provide for, not only their wives, but their mothers, daughters, and sisters. All men should respect the woman toiler who prefers work to starvation, as all must deplore the necessity that forces her into such a position. Women of gentle blood are the greatest sufferers; brought up in luxury, they are often thrust on the world to starve through no fault of their own what ever. The middle-class father should also be obliged to make some provision by insurance for every baby girl, which will enable her to live, and give her at least the necessities of life, so that she may not be driven to sell herself to a husband, or die of starvation. The sons can work for themselves, and might have a less expensive up-bringing, so that the daughters may be provided for by insurance, if the tragedies of womanhood now enacted on every side are to cease.