484 Theatres, Major and Minor. QMAY, 



though at last hejinds it out, he comes till he does find it out ; and which 

 act of kindness is all that is required in a city whose population consists 

 of above a million and a half of capable customers. ' There don't you 

 call this management?' " 



Aye, and first-rate management too. With what delightful recol- 

 lections must the spirits of the " Rage" " Notoriety" " Who wants a 

 Guinea?" " The Dramatist" and some forty others, flutter over this 

 book, and rejoice in the memory of their maker ! 



Now that we are on the subject of the theatre, we may as well add a 

 word or two more. We dislike monopoly, as much as if we were the 

 proprietors of an omnibus, or the Surrey. But we have our misgivings 

 after all, on the enormous increase of the little theatres. It will scarcely 

 be believed that there are no less than twenty-eight, of one description or 

 other, now open in the metropolis and its environs, in addition to Covent- 

 garden, Drury-lane, and the King's Theatre. To these will soon be 

 added the Haymarket and the Olympic and the Lyceum and the 

 Knightsbridge now building. Here is at least a handsome provision for 

 John Bull's play-going propensities. But of what calibre will be the 

 performances at those places. We have no hesitation in saying that irr 

 nine instances out of ten, they are and will be the disgrace of the drama. 

 When do we see a single instance of any able production among them ? 

 Every year they grow worse and worse. Even the actors who pass from 

 the regular theatres to those places sink into miserable buffoons. And 

 what else can they become, with such pieces to act and such audiences 

 to act to ? The passion of the vulgar is for vulgarity, and the passion 

 of the actors and proprietors of those vile places is to make money by 

 the vulgar, and of course both the actors and their performances must 

 hourly degenerate into vileness. The Tom and Jerry school, which was 

 at first reprobated by the public, and frcm which actors of any de- 

 cency of character shrunk, is now the school, and the nearer the actor 

 and the piece approach this standard, the nearer they are to perfection. 



Then, too, let us consider the population of the lobbies. It is true in 

 this the winter-theatres have led the way, and it is one of the abomina- 

 tions which, we perfectly believe, has done them ten times as much in- 

 jury, as the money of the miserable creatures who go to exhibit their 

 nakedness there has ever done them good. Nay, we will say, that this 

 participation in the gains of a horrid and disgusting life of vice and misery 

 is one of the causes which seems to make theatrical prosperity a dream, 

 and brings a curse on the fortunes of theatres. But bad as all this is in 

 the great theatres, where there is still some attention to decorum, what 

 is it already in the wretched theatres planted in the midst of the most 

 pestiferous portion of our populace, and how much must the evil be ag- 

 gravated by tripling or quadrupling the number in those very places, 

 as we seem likely enough to do ! We shall have audiences composed of 

 nothing but these miserable creatures, and the pickpockets who are in 

 then* pay, or the fools who go to be duped and robbed by them. Let 

 the government look to this in time. 



