The early days of George Frederick Cooke were passed at Berwick-upon-Tweed.  Left an orphan at a very tender age, he had been cared for and reared by two aunts, his mother’s sisters, who provided him with such education as he ever obtained.  There were no play-books in the library of these ladies, yet somehow the youth contrived to become acquainted with the British drama.  Strolling companies occasionally visited the town, and a certain passion for the theatre possessed the boys of Berwick, with Cooke, of course, among them.  They formed themselves into an amateur company, and represented, after a fashion, various plays, rather for their own entertainment, however, than the edification of their friends.  And they patronised, so far as they could, every dramatic troupe that appeared in the neighbourhood of Berwick.  But they had more goodwill than money to bestow upon the strollers, and were often driven to strange subterfuges in their anxiety to see the play, and in their inability to pay the price of admission to the theatre.  On one occasion Cooke and two or three friends secreted themselves beneath the stage, in the hope of stealing out during the performance and joining the audience by means of an opening in a dark passage leading to the pit.  Discovery and ignominious ejection followed upon this experiment.  Another essay led to a curious adventure.  Always on the alert to elude the vigilance of the doorkeeper, the boys again effected an entrance into the theatre.  The next consideration was how to bestow themselves in a place of concealment until the time for raising the curtain should arrive, when they might hope, in the confusion and bustle behind the scenes, to escape notice, and enjoy the marvels of the show.  “Cooke,” records his biographer, “espied a barrel, and congratulating himself on this safe and snug retreat, he crept in, like the hero of that immortal modern drama, ‘Tekeli.’” Unfortunately this hiding-place was one of considerable peril.  Cooke perceived that for companion tenants of his barrel he had two large cannon-balls—­twenty-four pounders; but being as yet but incompletely initiated into the mysteries of the scene, he did not suspect the theatrical use to which these implements of war were constantly applied.  He was in the thunder-barrel of the theatre!  The play was “Macbeth,” and the thunder was required in the first scene, to give due effect to the entrance of the witches.  “The Jupiter Tonans of the theatre, alias the property-man, approached and seized the barrel.  Judge the breathless fear of my hero—­it was too great for words, and he only shrunk closer to the bottom of his hiding-place.  His tormentor proceeded to cover the open end of the barrel with a piece of old carpet, and to tie it carefully, to prevent the thunder from being spilt.  Still George Frederick was most heroically silent; the machine was lifted by the Herculean property-man, and carried carefully to the side scene, lest in rolling the thunder