The humours of the theatre afforded great diversion to the writers in “The Spectator,” and the storms of the stage are repeatedly referred to in their essays.  In 1771, Steele, discoursing about inanimate performers, published a fictitious letter from “the Salmoneus of Covent Garden,” demanding pity and favour on account of the unexpected vicissitudes of his fortune.  “I have for many years past,” he writes, “been thunderer to the playhouse; and have not only made as much noise out of the clouds as any predecessor of mine in the theatre that ever bore that character, but have also descended, and spoke on the stage as the Bold Thunderer in ‘The Rehearsal.’  When they got me down thus low, they thought fit to degrade me further, and make me a ghost.  I was contented with this for these last two winters; but they carry their tyranny still further, and not satisfied that I am banished from above ground, they have given me to understand that I am wholly to depart from their dominions, and taken from me even my subterraneous employment.”  He concludes with a petition that his services may be engaged for the performance of a new opera to be called “The Expedition of Alexander,” the scheme of which had been set forth in an earlier “Spectator,” and that if the author of that work “thinks fit to use firearms, as other authors have done, in the time of Alexander, I may be a cannon against Porus; or else provide for me in the burning of Persepolis, or what other method you shall think fit.”

In 1714, Addison wrote:  “I look upon the playhouse as a world within itself.  They have lately furnished the middle region of it with a new set of meteors in order to give the sublime to many modern tragedies.  I was there last winter at the first rehearsal of the new thunder, which is much more deep and sonorous than any hitherto made use of.  They have a Salmoneus behind the scenes, who plays it off with great success.  Their lightnings are made to flash more briskly than heretofore; their clouds are also better furbelowed and more voluminous; not to mention a violent storm locked up in a great chest that is designed for ‘The Tempest.’  They are also provided with a dozen showers of snow, which, as I am informed, are the plays of many unsuccessful poets, artificially cut and shredded for that vise.”  In an earlier “Spectator” he had written:  “I have often known a bell introduced into several tragedies with good effect, and have seen the whole assembly in a very great alarm all the while it has been ringing.”  Pope has his mention in “The Dunciad” of the same artifice: 

    With horns and trumpets now to madness swell. 
    Now sink in sorrow with a tolling bell;
    Such happy arts attention can command,
    When fancy flags and sense is at a stand.