by Robert Laurence
History records several assassinations and assassination attempts of heads of state in theaters long before John Wilkes Booth killed Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theater. In 1807 for example, an unknown man tried to assassinate England's mad King George III during a performance of She Would and She Wouldn't at the Drury Theater in London. But the most famous of such acts was the killing of the tyrannical Roman emperor Caligula. The insane Caligula met his end in a Roman theater after watching a famed Greek actor Mnester play the role of an assassinated tyrant. Mnester was repeatedly stabbed to death in the play, blood from a bladder concealed under his robe drenching his costume. When the play ended Caligula tried to leave the theater but was set upon by assassins in a corridor and stabbed to death in exactly the same way. Calgula's feared mercenary bodyguards were ready to massacre all the audience in retaliation when Mnester took the stage again in the confusion and made a long eloquent speech convincing the guards that Caligula had miraculously been saved and was even now, making a speech to his subjects in the forum. While the dreaded mercenaries rushed out to check the story, the audience of hundreds escaped from the theater.