THE HERO.
His name is George, generally speaking. "Call me George!" he says
to the heroine. She calls him George (in a very low voice, because she is
so young and timid). Then he is happy.
The stage hero never has any work to do. He is always hanging
about and getting into trouble. His chief aim in life is to be accused of
crimes he has never committed, and if he can muddle things up with a
corpse in some complicated way so as to get himself reasonably mistaken
for the murderer, he feels his day has not been wasted.
He has a wonderful gift of speech and a flow of language calculated to
strike terror to the bravest heart. It is a grand thing to hear him
bullyragging the villain.
The stage hero is always entitled to "estates," chiefly remarkable for
their high state of cultivation and for the eccentric ground plan of the
"manor house" upon them. The house is never more than one story high,
but it makes up in green stuff over the porch what it lacks in size and
convenience.
The chief drawback in connection with it, to our eyes, is that all the
inhabitants of the neighboring village appear to live in the front garden,
but the hero evidently thinks it rather nice of them, as it enables him to
make speeches to them from the front doorstep--his favorite recreation.
There is generally a public-house immediately opposite. This is
handy.
These "estates" are a great anxiety to the stage hero. He is not what
you would call a business man, as far as we can judge, and his attempts to
manage his own property invariably land him in ruin and distraction. His
"estates," however, always get taken away from him by the villain before
the first act is over, and this saves him all further trouble with regard to
them until the end of the play, when he gets saddled with them once more.