266 



THE DRAMATIC PATENTS EXAMINED. 



price of admission as much as they pleased. Blinded by avarice, as 

 its votaries usually are, they omitted to take into their consideration 

 all the circumstances of the case, and thought only of the vast heaps 

 of money the great houses would bring them. The barn in Drury- 

 lane was therefore pulled down ; Old Drury was demolished, and the 

 Apollo theatre was erected on its site. This house was larger than 

 either of the present houses, and cost an immense sum. When it was 

 burnt down in 1809, the claims of its creditors amounted to upwards 

 of 700,000/. 



The claims on Drury-lane house were compromised in 1811-12, by 

 payment of five shillings in the pound, from a fund raised by a joint- 

 stock company of proprietors who built the present house. The sum 

 raised for these purposes, and the interest which has accrued thereon, 

 with other outstanding claims, if valued at their cost, would probably 

 exceed 400,000/. Jt has been a losing concern ever since it was built. 

 At first it was managed by a committee of the subscribers, who, find- 

 ing the income unequal to the expenditure, let the house, on lease, to 

 Mr. Elliston, who altered it at the expense of 22,000/., and afterwards 

 became a bankrupt. It was then let to Mr. Price, who also became 

 a bankrupt. Messrs. Polhill and Lee then became lessees ; Mr. Lee 

 soon abandoned the concern, and Captain Polhill's losses are said to 

 exceed 30,000/. ; and thus the sums expended and lost, and the claims 

 on the property, cannot be less than half a million sterling. 



The causes of these enormous losses were the expense of building 

 and conducting places so out of proportion for the representation of 

 English plays. No other inference can thus be fairly drawn, but that, 

 while the size of the houses have ruined the proprietors and lessees, 

 and caused prodigious losses to those who have risked their property 

 in them, they have ruined the drama in every one of its departments. 



That one of the primitive causes of this ruin, and these losses to 

 individuals, the decay of dramatic writing, the inferiority of the per- 

 formers, the abandonment of the legitimate drama as a public enter- 

 tainment, is the size of the houses, shall now be shown by the oral 

 and written testimony of the interested parties. 



Mr. Charles Mathews, in his evidence before the Committee of the 

 House of Commons on Dramatic Literature, on the 2d of July, 1832, 

 relates the following anecdote : "Arid with respect to the size of the 

 theatres, if I may be allowed to quote an opinion, I will state the 

 opinion of John Kemble, which I think I can do in his own words. 

 I cannot repeat a conversation without I do it in the tone of the per- 

 son who gave it. Kemble said, 'it is a common complaint to speak 

 about the size of the theatres ; the public tell you they like small 

 theatres Sir, they LIE ; they like large theatres.' " And so, even now, 

 say the proprietors of both the patent theatres. Is this true, or do 

 they, in the language of John Kemble, LIE ? A little inquiry respect- 

 ing the theatre to which Mr. John Kemble more particularly alluded 

 to, and to which Mr. Charles Kemble's evidence before the House of 

 Commons' Committee was especially intended to apply, will perhaps 

 lead to the opposite conclusion. 



The present Covent-garden theatre was opened in 1809. Captain 

 Forbes, the most active of those who still call themselves proprietors 



