But if doubling was sometimes a matter of necessity, it has often been the result of choice.  Actors have been much inclined to undertake dual duty with a view of manifesting their versatility, or of surprising their admirers.  Benefit-nights have been especially the occasions of doubling of this kind.  Thus, at a provincial theatre, then under his management, Elliston once tried the strange experiment of sustaining the characters of both Richard and Richmond in the same drama.  The entrance of Richmond does not occur until the fifth act of the tragedy, when the scenes in which the king and the earl occupy the stage become alternate.  On making his exit as Richard, Elliston dropped his hump from his shoulder, as though it had been a knapsack, straightened his deformed limbs, slipped on certain pieces of pasteboard armour, and, adorned with fresh head-gear, duly presented himself as the Tudor prince.  The heroic lines of Richmond delivered, the actor hurried to the side-wings, to resume something of the misshapen aspect of Richard, and then re-enter as that character.  In this way the play went on until the last scene, when the combatants came face to face.  How was their fight to be presented to the spectators?  This omission of so popular an incident as a broadsword combat could not be thought of.  The armour of Richmond was forthwith shifted on to the shoulders of a supernumerary player, who was simply enjoined to “hold his tongue, and fight like the devil.”  Richard slain, Richmond departed.  The body of the dead king was borne from the stage, and Elliston was then enabled to reappear as Richmond, and speak the closing lines of the play.

Among more legitimate exploits in the way of doubling are to be accounted the late Mr. Charles Mathews’s assumption of the two characters of Puff and Sir Fretful Plagiary in “The Critic;” Miss Kate Terry’s performance both of Viola and Sebastian in “Twelfth Night;” Mr. Phelps’s appearance as James the First and Trapbois, in the play founded upon “The Fortunes of Nigel;” and the rendering by the same actor of the parts of the King and Justice Shallow in “The Second Part of Henry IV.”  The worst that can be said for these performances is that they incline the audience to pay less heed to the play than to the frequent changes of appearance entailed upon the players.  The business of the scene is apt to be overlooked, and regard wanders involuntarily to the transactions of the tiring-room and the side-wings.  Will the actor be recognisable? will he really have time to alter his costume? the spectators mechanically ask themselves, and meditation is occupied with such possibilities as a tangled string or an obstinate button hindering the performer.  All this is opposed to the real purpose of playing, and injurious to the actor’s art, to say nothing of the interests of the dramatist.  Illusion is the special object of the theatre, and this forfeits its magic when once inquiry is directed too curiously