The National Register. — London, England, 1808-03-13 00:00:00

174 THE NATIONAL REGISTER. eonsideration of the attraction which was likely to be acquired for their theatre, by the ualocky reports of which Mrs. John iton has been the subject. Now it ruay he very well worth the while of a milliner or a pastry-cook. to engage a girl who does net understand the rolling either of ribbauds or of paste, if her beauty he likely to bring custom to the shop ; hut surely the Proprietors of a London theatre ought not to obtrude a bad artreo on the public, merely hecau'e she happens to have a Eirtnnate Loci: and an unfortunate character. !Mrs. Ileary Johnston docs not act tarly Radaphe at all like an Earl's datti.iner. She swings her arms, and sharpens her •oice, in a style .alieh more nearly approaching to `he manner of a dairy-maid talking as she carries her pails, than to Oat of a well-hred woman. Nowe a lady who plays thus may he very like what some women of f.'-.inn are in real life ; hut will never he at all like what women of fashi , ln oitrht to be upon the stage. TIM DRAM 1TI( DLTECTOR. No. IV. as r g i ctim n?antic , eSt rum :Herelriribus."----tion 4 CG. " A man goes to the play, and finds himself among women of the Town." Having spoken iu our last Number of the indecencies which the proprietors of theatres tolerate upon the stage, we shall sow sav a word or two of the indecencies which they tolerate in the front of the house. These indecencies are now becoming every day more and more anturious and disgusting. All the refuse of this great town, the lowest of men, and the most abandoned of women, are admitted in the ;theatres to interrupt the performatiees, and annoy the eyes and ears of the revectable part of the audience. From the bottom to the top of the theatre, with the single exception of the lower circle of front and side boxes, drunken boys, half naked women, and the blustering bullies who attend them, riot in all the security of understood connivance. Formerly those females whom the -bills of the opera house so demurely denoted by the phrase " a d-scription more, easily understood than expressed, - even want to coufine themselves to the upper tiers, which were called the green boxes : there they remained, distinguishing themselves frou► modest women in place, as they were ::Iready distinguished in character. Then vice, to have been seen, must have been sought—now it obtrudes itself alike on the attention of those who like, and on the view of those who abhor it. _ _ The Proprietors, we are folly aware, would, according to their present system, be considerably itijnred in their profit. by any additional parity in their manners. But we shall never he tired of reminding them, that the Patent, which they have received from the Crown, is but an emanation from the people, by whom all power i , originally vested in the Crown itself, and for whose benefit alone the Crown has a right to exercise or to impart the power it has so received. Shall the Proprietors of a theatre then urge. in their defence, that they would lo'e s.► many t:ets of three s►iillings as would amount to a heavy deduction from their profits ? Their profits, like those of all other public officer;. ought to 11:- no more than a.reasonable compensation for their labour; except that they have a right to reap an additional emolument, a ri sin e 7 from the capital employed, Had forming the profits of their stoc B:It shall it he permitted to any man to make a profit by open debauchery, and unreservedly speculate in public vice ? Are the servants of the people de serving of their !tire, when they employ their influence for the people's injury, or are the holders of propert. which is all only the creature of society, entitled to use that rotten:: for purposes by which society must sutfer ? Let us not, then, he told of the patent that the Proprietors hold from the ('row n, or of the private capital which they'have embarked upon that patent : they haveduties to perform, both as public patentee: and private „ merchants, and the people have a right to detnand, that those tiqies shall be performed. If the Proprietors find, that without isfdrding conveniences for every denriptioa of people, their theatres cannot be conducted with profit upon the present terms. let them hohily make a further advance. ai they did a few year. • ago, in the prire of admission, and pay themselves for the pre servation of public morality by contribution from the public purse. Hut the fact that no such au Vance is at all necessary. A theatre, when properly conducts-A, is a most profitable con certi; and if good authors and good actor,: were fairly encouraged there would seldom he a dearth of respectable spectators. Under the present system of government, at both houses, and more particularly at Covent-Garden, m here authors have not fair en s it is quite out of the question to expect large au- mAnctr 13. Cences s without the encouragement of a thousand indecorums. But a fault behind the scenes is not to be urged as a plea for the continuance of a fault before the curtain._ The fast is, that the Proprietors of the London Theatres, that is to say, those who by the preponderance of their property in the theatre take the lead in all the councils of these concerns, are totally careless as to the mode in which they make their money. Same persons there are in the world, of not over-ni,e morality, who arc determined to get money at any rate, bat who w , uld rather get it honestly than unt. But the Loudon Proprietors disdain even the " Recto si peterix," antl without Writing to right or left, pursue the " quocunque mode retie"— Hence ie is, that the thratres have been converted into public rtheb : where every boy from the country, who knows a, Louses of assignation that are snore prisate, may repair m ith certakts , if gratifying his passions and ruining his constitution ; where tar vices of Britain are held up to the gaze of foreigner, in dose alliance with Britain's beauty : where four tiers of seats, independently of the pit and galleries, have not been considered sulkient for the reception of profligacy., without furnishing in addition a large lobby, which, at each theatre, bears the same analogy to the boxes, that an open market hears to a butcher's shop. It was not enough that there should he mire where hogs mignt wallow, but it was thought necessary to force this filth on every eye, and convert those abodes, which ought to have been the temples of public taste and morals, into styes of the lowest and most disgusting debauchery. So that now a thinking man, instead of repairing to these theatres, as the repositories of na tional taste and the mirrors of national virtue, visits them as an intellectual hospital, where he may dissect the sores of the mind, and analyse the corruptions of the heart. In the course of last season, during a representation ofShaker peare's Ceriettnus, a disturbance of more than ordinary gross ness was occasioned by a woman of the town among the upper boxes ; and when one of the audience, in a manly tone, remon strated against the encouragement of these nuisances, Mr. Kern ble stepped forward and promised to take some measures for the repression of every such grievance. But as no measures have yet been adopted to that effect, we can do no more than impar tially record our regret, that in so many instances which nearly concern the public good, Mr. Kemble, whose share in the The atre is comparatively small, coutinues to be restrained in his be neficial schemes by the evil advisers who surround Mr. Harris and his Son, the principal Proprietors of Covent-Garden Thea tre. At Drury-lane, where so many people are Proprietors, or ' authorised Counsellors to the Property, it is impossible to say who has the power of redressing these ills ; but some one or mole persons certainly have such a power, and it is high time that this power should be exercised. TILL PROMENADES. In the ever varying course of that old fellow Time, we have had the Ir o n—the (olden—the Brazen Agee, but thi, may lie called the Anticipating Age. Some people endeavour to A-4/ Ti',m some strive to du him up, by running against him, whiht others not only murder him, at the present moment, but evrit have a kind of post obit attack upon him by Anticipation. — Anticipation in, therefore, the Order of the I)ay ; and we (a. it is too old and unfashionable to :attend to what happened last Sunday) eau only, as a Morning Paper, anticipate what may happen, .'.•:ring the Morning rambles, this Evening on the Pro menades. _ _ Under such 7n auspicious Snn, as now flatters us w ith his guo4 company, a Peripatetic Philosopher may vary his studies ad infinitum ; I.linuld he direct his devious course to the Hampstead he may there see the jolly ihrre-pounder, in a smart trot up the II ill to the two o'clock Ordinary, and there too he might wow him, were it not perhap. more convenient to reline the tree: in the park ; should the ring attract his attention, he will he surprised to sec the fair dames inside their equipages, and no Inner on the Dickey! A Lawyer might lament this change, the Phit.sophor will rejoice in it. In his route from Hyde Park to St. James's, he may contem plate the various groupes hurrying to enjoyment—the spruce Sunday 'twenties', in boots and spurs, for a dash in the garden ; , tO talk of my hor,:e ;—Mrs. Tussock, and her fair fat family, who walk seven miles from Shadwell, for a little exercise, in the Park—with the whole train of blue satin indescribables, cagier understood than expressed. In his ramble up Constitution-hill. the philosopher may see—yes, he may see a bailiff or a dun. those deadly foes to Anticipation :—in that case, his gay Sunday ramble must cease, and lie must make way for those with lig:iter hearts. and heavier plisses., who are nu dashing ou to the guy promenade,