Year: 1873




neither actors nor managers and who are not
recognized as such in any honorable profess
sion. They are the common tricks of quacks
of the buchu drama, borrowed from the tradi-
tional dodge of the English swell-mob at the
Derby, who produce disturbance through a
bogus row in order the more easily to pick the
pockets of the bystanders. AS rule the
public may be sure that the sensations manu-
factured by these Cheap John showmon are
designed to rob them of their money for
worthless show. A well conducted theatre,
which deserves public patronage upon the
merits of its performances and performers.
requires neither to create sensations nor to fill
its seats with free passes for the purpose of
quilting the public. Indeed, our first class
theatres would do we'll to abolish free passes
altogether, as the HERALD has repeatedly ad-
vised. We have always condemned the free
pass system, whether in the case of journalists
or of others, and our attaches are under
instructions to receive no favors OF the
kind. If they depart from these instructions
they disregard their obligations to the estab-
lishment they serve. A HERALD employee.
whether as editor, critic, reporter or in any
other capacity, is expected to pay his way like
other individuals, and wherever this rule is
departed from the theatrical manager or who
ever else may be induced to grant him favors
without proper remuneration confers no obli-
gation on this Office. A person who seeks free
passes of any kind in the name of the HERALD
may be set down as an impostor. We have
repeatedly given this caution to the public
venturers who travel on railroads, live at
hotels and pass into places Of public amuse-
ment on the impudently false pretence that
they are attaches of the HERALD and as such
entitled to consideration. So far as the
theatres are concerned, we regard the free pass
public; for its effect, beyond question, has
tendency to obstruct or prevent honest and
Just criticism.


We make this explanation in justice to
those respectable journals which have allowed
themselves to be hoodwinked by the trick of a
mountebank and have lent their columns to
the justification of an insult to the press
which they would have been prompt to resent
had it been offered to themselves. At the same
time, we fancy that we detect the old familiar
presence of the talented Boucicault like the
trail of the serpent, fomenting journalistic
quarrels in New York, as at London, for the
sake of the notoriety which the dramatist may
manage to obtain for himself in the midst of
the disturbance. We would remind him, how
ever, that there is o monotony in these stale
expedients which makes them uninteresting
and Ineffective The most sensational drama
grows wearisome and stupid by constant
repetition. Boucicault has really established
his reputation as dramatist by the author
ship of some agreeable English comedies, and
by the adaptation of many still more agreeable
from the French, the true comedians Of the
world He need no longer continue the
mountebank games by which an almost un-
known but most industrious writer hastened q
notoriety he was certain sooner or later to
acquire, and remuneration he could not fail
to eventually secure. He can assume now, if
he will, the position of a genuine dramatist
Let him foster the ambition to write good
plays, whose merits will commend them to
the favor of intelligent men, and not seek to
manufacture notoriety for indifferent ones by
inspiring expedients to which only quacks
should resort and which no respectable man
ager would adopt.