is nothing to laugh at, my angels," he was heard to say and if the juvenile critics laughed on, he less playfully bade them be silent -the "little dunces!"

The dramatists whom he "adapted," declined to be involved in his reverses. After his "Joanna," an adaptation from Kotzebue, had been damned, the German author took care to record in the public papers that the passages hissed by the English public were not his, but additions made by Cumberland. Sir Fretful found consolation. "If I did not succeed," says this frequently damned author, "in entertaining the audience, I continued to amuse myself. I never disgraced my colors by abandoning legitimate comedy, to whose service I am sworn, and in whose defence I have kept the field for nearly half a century-till at last I have survived all true national taste, and lived to see buffoonery, spectacle, and puerility so effectually triumph, that now to be repulsed from the stage is to be recommended to the closet; and to be applauded by the theatre is little less than a passport to the puppetshow." This spirit of self-satisfaction, and depreciation of the public taste, was nothing new. The author or adapter of "Richard II." (Nahum Tate), finding his piece prohibited by authority, published it with a self-congratulatory preface; but he had already done more in the epilogue; mindful of past reverses, and anticipatory of present condemnation, he made Mrs. Cook say:—

"And ere of you, my sparks, my leave I take,

For your unkindness past these prayers I make—
Into such dulness may your poets tire,

Till they shall write such plays as you admire!"

This was thoroughly in the old spirit of Flecknoe; but of samples of the spirit of "damn-ed authors," having given enough, let us pass among the audiences of the last half of the eighteenth century, whose "censure," in the old signification of the term, was challenged by the playwrights.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE AUDIENCES OF THE LAST HALF OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

In the first half of the above century, if a quiet man in the pit ventured on making a remark to his neighbor, who happened to be a "nose-puller," and who disagreed with the remark, the speaker's nose was sure to be painfully wrung by the "puller." In the same period, those very nose-pullers sat quietly, merely grimacing, when the great people in the boxes found it convenient to spit into the pit! But sometimes, the house, pit and all, was full of great people. Thus, on the night of the 7th March, 1751, Drury presented a strange appearance. The theatre had been hired by some noble amateurs, who acted the tragedy of "Othello," thus cast in the principal characters: Othello, Sir Francis Delaval; Iago, by John, subsequently (1786) Lord Delaval; Cassio, E. Delaval; Roderigo, Captain Stephens; Desdemona, Mrs. Quon (sister of Sir Francis, and later, the wife of Lord Mexborough); Emilia, Mrs. Stephens. Macklin superintended the rehearsals, and Walpole was present; for he says of the amateurs, in his characteristic way: "They really acted so well, that it is astonishing they should not have had sense enough not to act at all! . . . . . The chief were a family of Delavals, the eldest of which was married by one Foote, a player, to Lady Nassau Poulett, who had kept the latter. The rage was so great to see this performance, that the House of Commons adjourned at three o'clock on purpose. The footman's gallery was strung with blue ribbons. What a wise people! what an august senate! Yet my Lord Granville once told the prince, I forget on occasion of what folly: 'Sir, indeed your royal highness is in the wrong to act thus; the English are a grave nation.""

The prince, and other members of the royal family were present in the stage box on this occasion; and the presence of blue ribbons, in place of livery tags, in the footman's gallery, was owing to the circumstance that tickets were issued numerously enough to com

pletely fill the house, but without indicating to what part of the house the bearers would be admitted. The first who arrived took the best places; and tardy peers, knights of the garter, their wives and ladies, were content to occupy the gallery, for once, rather than have no place at all. Such an audience was never seen there before,

and has never been seen there since.

At this time swords were still worn, and evil results followed, to others, as well as to the wearers. On the night of Saturday, September 21, 1751, as the "Way of the World" was being played at Drury, a quarrel, and then a fight with swords took place, between two gallants in the box-lobby. From some cries which arose, the audience thought the house was on fire, and fearful confusion, with fierce struggling, and terrible injury, ensued. Many women attempted in their terror to drop from the gallery to the pit. This was not so frightful as it might at present seem, for in those day's the front of the lower gallery came down to the roof of the lower boxes. The occupants were a recognized power in the house, often appealed to, and were of very great intelligence and respectability, in one especially favorite locality, the Old Haymarket, as long as the house lasted. Professional men, and poets, and merchants and their wives, sat there to see, hear, and enjoy, whose grand-daughters now sail into stalls, unconscious that there is a gallery in the house, and ignorant that they are of a race who once condescended to sit in it.

In those days royalty's presence formed a great attraction at the theatre; and royalty enjoyed a "row" as heartily as the most riotous there.

When Garrick, in 1754, found that he could not fill Drury Lane, notwithstanding the ability of his company of actors, unless he played himself, and that his own strength was not equal to the task of playing without intermission, he brought forward a magnificent ballet-pantomime, called the "Chinese Festival." It was composed by Noverre,-who had treated of his art,—dancing, as a branch of philosophy! As many competent English dancers as could be found, were engaged: and there was a supplementary, but prominent and able body of foreign dancers. Little would have been thought of this, but for the circumstance, that when the gorgeous show was set before the public, in the autumn of 1754,

war had recently broken out between England and France. Thereupon, John Bull was aroused in a double sense,—his patriotism would not allow of his tolerating the enemy on the English stage; and his sense of religious propriety, not otherwise very remarkable at that time, was shocked at the idea of his condescending to be amused by Papists.

His offended sense was further irritated by the circumstance, that George II., by his presence on the first night, seemed to sanction favoritism of the enemy and the hostile church. Aggravated by that presence, which they did not at all respect, the pit heaved into a perfect storm, which raged the more as the old King sat and enjoyed,-nay, laughing at the tempest! The Brunswick dynasty was included within the aim of the hisses and execrations which prevailed. Had Garrick followed Lacy's counsel, he would have withdrawn the piece; but Davy was reluctant to lose his outlay, striving to save which, he lost hundreds more. As the "spectacle" was repeated, so was the insurrection against it; but the "quality" interfering, as they deemed it the ton to uphold what great Brunswick approved, a new element of bitterness was superadded. The boxes pronounced pit and galleries “vulgar;" and these powers waged war the more intensely, because of the arrogance of the boxes, whose occupants were assailed with epithets as unsavory as any flung at the dancers. Then ensued strange scenes and encounters. Gentlemen in the boxes drew their swords, leaped down into the pit, pricked about them in behalf of "gentility," and got terribly mauled for their pains. The galleries looked on, shouting approbation, and indiscriminately pelting both parties. Not so the fair, who occupied the boxes. They, on seeing the champions of propriety and of themselves, being menaced or overpowered in the pit, pointed the offenders out to the less eager beaux who tarried in their vicinity, and who, for their very honor's sake, felt themselves compelled to out with their bodkins, drop into the surging pit, and lay about them, stoutly or faintly, according to their constitutions. The stronger arms of the plebeians carried the day; and when these had smitten their aristocratic opponents, they celebrated their victory with the accustomed Vandalism. They broke up benches, tore down hangings, smashed mirrors, crashed the harpsichords

(always the first of the victims in the orchestra); and finally, charging on to the stage, cut and slashed the scenery in all directions. Some evidence of the improved civilization of the audiences of this half of the century is afforded by the circumstance, that no one suggested that the house should be set on fire. But the pious and patriotic rioters rushed out to Mr. Garrick's house in Southampton street (now Eastey's hotel), and broke every window they could reach with missile, from basement to garret. The hired soldiery could not protect him; nor on their bayonets could he prop up the "Chinese Festival," wooden shoes and popery. This affair cost him a sum of money, the loss of which made his heart ache for many a day.

On our side of the Channel, royal personages have been more amusingly rude than the inferior folk. A good instance of this presents itself to my memory, in the person of the young King of Denmark, who married the sister of George III., and who frequently visited the theatres in London, in 1768. At the play of the "Provoked Husband," it was observed that he applauded every passage in which matrimony was derided; which was commented on as an uncivil proceeding, as his wife was an English princess.

This wayward lad offended audience and actors on another occasion, in quite a different way. In October, he commanded the edifying tragedy of "Jane Shore," during the performance of which he fell fast asleep, and remained so, to the amusement of the audience and the annoyance of Mrs. Bellamy, who played Alicia. That haughty and hapless beauty was not likely to let the wearied King sleep on; and accordingly, having to pronounce the words, "Oh thou false lord!" she approached the royal box, and uttered them expressly in such a piercing tone, that the King awoke in sudden amazement, but with perception enough to enable him to protest, that he would not be married to a woman with such a voice though she had the whole world for a dowry. Two nights later he went to see 'Zara," Garrick being the Lusignan; and it is to his credit, that he sat through that soporific sadness without winking.

The greatest excitement prevailed among the audience when the King went to see Garrick act Ranger, in the "Suspicious Hus