The actors had reached the last act. The bed stood in the centre of a
shallow alcove, heavily curtained. These hangings were looped up at the
beginning of the act, and were supposed to fall to the floor, completely
concealing the bed and its occupant after the murder. The actor had
long before become again Shakespeare's Othello. We had seen him
tortured, racked, and played upon by the malignant Iago; seen him, while
perplexed in the extreme, irascible, choleric, sullen, morose; but now,
as with tense nerves we waited for the catastrophe, he was truly
formidable. The great tragedy moved on. Desdemona's piteous entreaties
had been choked in her slim throat, the smothering pillow held in place
with merciless strength. Then at Emilia's disconcerting knock and demand
for admission, Othello had let down and closely drawn the two curtains.
But alas and alack a day! though they were thick and rich and wide, they
failed to reach the floor by a good foot's breadth--a fact unnoticed by
the star. You may not be an actor; but really when you add to that
twelve or fourteen-inch space the steep incline of the stage--why, you
can readily understand how advisable it was for the dead Desdemona that
day to stay dead until the play was over.

Majestically Othello was striding down to the door, where Emilia was
knocking for admittance, when there came that long in-drawn breath--that
"a-a-h!" that from the auditorium always means mischief--and a sudden
bobbing of heads this way and that in the front seats. In an instant the
great actor felt the broken spell, knew he had lost his hold upon the
people--but why? He went on steadily, and then, just as you have seen a
field of wheat surged in one wave by the wind, I saw the closely packed
people in that wide parquet sway forward in a great gust of laughter.
With quick, experienced eye I scanned first Othello's garb from top to
toe, and finding no unseemly rent or flaw of any kind to provoke