If it had happened on the stage it would have taken us the whole play
to get out of it. Stage people are not allowed to put things right
when mistakes are made with their identity. If the light comedian is
expecting a plumber, the first man that comes into the drawing-room
has got to be a plumber. He is not allowed to point out that he
never was a plumber; that he doesn't look like a plumber; that no one
not an idiot would mistake him for a plumber. He has got to be shut
up in the bath-room and have water poured over him, just as if he
were a plumber--a stage plumber, that is. Not till right away at the
end of the last act is he permitted to remark that he happens to be
the new curate.

I sat out a play once at which most people laughed. It made me sad.
A dear old lady entered towards the end of the first act. We knew
she was the aunt. Nobody can possibly mistake the stage aunt--except
the people on the stage. They, of course, mistook her for a circus
rider, and shut her up in a cupboard. It is what cupboards seem to
be reserved for on the stage. Nothing is ever put in them excepting
the hero's relations. When she wasn't in the cupboard she was in a
clothes basket, or tied up in a curtain. All she need have done was
to hold on to something while remarking to the hero:

"If you'll stop shouting and jumping about for just ten seconds, and
give me a chance to observe that I am your maiden aunt from
Devonshire, all this tomfoolery can be avoided."

That would have ended it. As a matter of fact that did end it five
minutes past eleven. It hadn't occurred to her to say it before.

In real life I never knew but of one case where a man suffered in