tragedy was the most highly esteemed of theatrical entertainments, funeral processions, or biers bearing the corpses of departed heroes, were among the most usual of scenic exhibitions.  Plays closed with a surprising list of killed and wounded.  But four of the characters in Rowe’s “Fair Penitent” are left alive at the fall of the curtain, and among those survivors are included such subordinate persons as Rossano, the friend of Lothario, and Lucilla, the confidante of Calista, whom certainly it was worth no one’s while to put to death.  The haughty gallant, gay Lothario, is slain at the close of the fourth act, but his corpse figures prominently in the concluding scenes.  The stage direction runs at the opening of the fifth act:  “A room hung with black; on one side Lothario’s body on a bier; on the other a table with a skull and other bones, a book and a lamp on it.  Calista is discovered on a couch, in black; her hair hanging loose and disordered.  Soft music plays.”  In this, as in similar cases, it was clearly unnecessary that the personator of the live Lothario of the first four acts should remain upon the stage to represent his dead body in the fifth.  It was usual, therefore, to allow the actor’s dresser to perform this doleful duty, and the dressers of the time seem to have claimed occupation of this nature as a kind of privilege, probably obtaining in such wise some title to increase of salary.  The original Lothario—­the tragedy being first represented in 1703—­was George Powell, an esteemed actor who won applause from Addison and Steele, but who appears to have been somewhat of a toper, and was generally reputed to obscure his faculties by incessant indulgence in Nantes brandy.  The fourth act of the play over, the actor was impatient to be gone, and was heard behind the scenes angrily demanding the assistance of Warren, his dresser, entirely forgetful of the fact that his attendant was employed upon the stage in personating the corpse of Lothario.  Mr. Powell’s wrath grew more and more intense.  He threatened the absent Warren with the severest of punishments.  The unhappy dresser, reclining on Lothario’s bier, could not but overhear his raging master, yet for some time his fears were surmounted by his sense of dramatic propriety.  He lay and shivered, longing for the fall of the curtain.  At length his situation became quite unendurable.  Powell was threatening to break every bone in his skin.  In his dresser’s opinion the actor was a man likely to keep his word.  With a cry of “Here I am, master!” Warren sprang up, clothed in sable draperies which were fastened to the handles of his bier.  The house roared with surprise and laughter.  Encumbered by his charnel-house trappings, the dead Lothario precipitately fled from the stage.  The play, of course, ended abruptly.  For once the sombre tragedy of “The Fair Penitent” was permitted a mirthful conclusion.