The success of the performance was unquestionable, but the alarms of the authorities were not over.  Many of the players took upon themselves to restore passages in the comedy which had been effaced by the examiner; and, worse than this, Mr. Farren’s appearance did not correspond with the drawing sent to the Chamberlain’s office.  His wig was especially objectionable; it was an exact copy of the silvery silken tresses of Talleyrand, which had acquired a European celebrity.  It was plain that the actor had “made up” after the portrait of the statesman in the well-known engravings of the Congress of Vienna.  Mr. Bunn had again to meet the angry expostulations of the Chamberlain.  On the 14th of February he wrote to Lord Belfast:  “The passages bearing reference to the Queen Matilda in conjunction with Struensee having been entirely omitted, will, I trust, be satisfactory to your lordship.  Until the evening of performance I was not aware what style of wig Mr. Farren meant to adopt, such matters being entirely at the discretion of performers of his standard.  I have since mentioned to him the objections which have been pointed out to me, but he has sent me word that he cannot consent so to mutilate his appearance, adding that it is a wig he wore two years ago in a comedy called ’Lords and Commons.’” If this was true there can be little doubt that the wig had been dressed anew and curling-ironed into a Talleyrand form that had not originally pertained to it.  Meantime King William IV. had stirred in the matter, despatching his Chamberlain to the Lords Grey and Palmerston.  “They—­said to be exceedingly irate—­instantly attended the performance.  In the box exactly opposite to the one they occupied, sat, however, the gentleman himself, l’homme veritable, his Excellency Prince Talleyrand, in propria persona, and he laughed so heartily at the play, without once exhibiting any signs of annoyance at the appearance of his supposed prototype, that the whole affair wore a most absurd aspect; and thus terminated a singular specimen of ‘great cry and little wool.’”

A stage wig has hardly since this risen to the importance of a state affair.  Yet the Chamberlain has sometimes interfered to stay any direct stage portraiture of eminent characters.  Thus Mr. Buckstone was prohibited from appearing “made up” as Lord John Russell, and Mr. A. Wigan, when performing the part of a French naval officer some five-and-twenty years ago, was directed by the authorities to reform his aspect, which too much resembled, it was alleged, the portraits of the Prince de Joinville.  The actor effected a change in this instance which did not much mend the matter.  It was understood at the time indeed that he had simply made his costume more correct, and otherwise had rather heightened than diminished his resemblance to the son of Louis Philippe.  Other stage-wig questions have been of minor import—­relating chiefly to the appropriateness of the coiffures