At length, if we may adopt Mrs.Bellamy's account of the proceeding, Mrs.
Woffington's rage was so kindled "that it nearly bordered on madness.
When, oh! dire to tell! she drove me off the carpet and gave me the _coup de grace_ almost behind the scenes.

The audience, who, I believe, preferred hearing my last dying speech to seeing her beauty and fine attitude, could not avoid perceiving her violence, and testified their displeasure at it." Possibly the scene excited mirth in an equal degree.

Foote forthwith prepared a burlesque, "The Green-room Squabble; or, A Battle Royal between the Queen of Babylon and the Daughter of Darius." The same tragedy, it may be noted, had at an earlier date been productive of discord in the theatre.

Mrs.Barry, as Roxana, had indeed stabbed her Statira, Mrs.Boutell, with such violence that the dagger, although the point was blunted, "made its way through Mrs.Boutell's stays and entered about a quarter of an inch into the flesh." It is not clear, however, that this contest, like the other, is to be attributed to antagonism in the matter of dress.
The characteristics of the "tiring-room" have always presented themselves in a ludicrous light to the ordinary observer.

There is always a jumble of incongruous articles, and a striking contrast between the ambitious pretensions of things and their real meanness--between the facts and fictions of theatrical life.