He held the audience spellbound.

Local actor Charles Pitt had expertly captivated King Lear’s descent into madness, a figure of desperate contrition and mental agony as he stumbled across the heath.

But then the action suddenly moved from the stage into the stalls.

Thomas Parker, a fireman with the sailing ship Tay, clambered into the pit to give his rendition of the part – a slurred and drunken performance!

The manager remonstrated with him but to no avail.

“I am in a public theatre and I can make as much noise as I please,” he contended.

Minutes later it was a question of exit, stage left at Southampton’s Theatre Royal as a hefty police constable dragged him away to the Bargate police station.

The following morning in 1853 a sober Parker played a different role – that of penitent defendant as he appeared before the town’s magistrates.

He was charged with being drunk and disorderly.

“This case has been properly brought here,” the prosecutor asserted.

“If persons were allowed to make such noise. it would be the end of the comfort for all others in the house.

"I can not think how he could have been so foolish..”

The magistrates said they were bound and determined to support the management by passing a fine of 5s with 6s 6d costs with three days in default of payment.

Extraordinarily, history repeated itself within a fortnight when an inebriate James Crop, described as a journeyman tailor, interrupted a romantic comedy by hurling items from the gallery into the pit.

When the manager told him to desist, Cropp’s immediate response was to hurl an orange which struck the orchestra leader on the head.

“It is with regret that I have brought the man here,” said the manager, explaining his need to bring a prosecution as was the custom in those days. “I leave the case to your discretion.

“If the man had been observed entering the house drunk, he would have been refused admittance but sometimes they manage to pass the pay-office.”

The Bench chairman asked if Cropp had come to the attention of the police before.

“No,” said Inspector Enright. “We do knot know anything about him except that he was very violent last night and we had to put a pair of handcuffs on him for hours.”

If Cropp, who admitted being drunk and disorderly, had anything to say in mitigation, it was not reported. The public were told he was severely reprimanded by the magistrates as he was fined 5s.