1626.] On the Decline of the BrUisli Drama. 47 



parison, exercised by more frequent representations of chaster produc- 

 tions. And tins monopoly is as mistaken as it is mischievous. The 

 two principal theatres, necessarily liolding out greater rewards of profit 

 and reputation, would always engross so much of existing talent, both 

 in writers and in performers, that they would afford far greater attrac- 

 tions than could be found elsewhere, and secure a constant, iair, and 

 rational preference. Nor is this all ; the scarcity ol' good performers is 

 beginning to be felt, by the managers as well as by the jjublic. The 

 number being small, and growing every day smaller : those who remain 

 are becoming, of course, enhanced in value, and set a price upon them- 

 selves so extravagant, that the utmost public patronage is said to pay 

 sometimes little more than the cost of their engagement. If the minor 

 theatres were allowed fair play, they would always furnish a selection 

 of performers, not, as at present, with their tastes corrupted, and their 

 habits of acting irretrievably depraved into rant and biiHoonery, but 

 improving, by repeated trials of their powers, in the good old sterling 

 comedies and tragedies of the British drama. Of all arts, that of an 

 actor requires, perhaps, the largest measure of gradual and patient pre- 

 paration. A debut at one of the two great houses is usually fatal to an 

 untutored adventurer. The provincial theatres used, therefore, to be the 

 schools of the art ; but now, as soon as a performer of tolerable merit 

 appears at any of these, he is at once bought up for the j)urpose of 

 being exhibited, as a first-rate, at one of the lesser houses of the me- 

 tropolis, at which he secmes better pajTnent for taking a lead in the 

 monstrous things enacted there, than he could obtain for more cre- 

 ditable performance in a secondary rank at the larger theatres. So that 

 before a provincial actor has time to force himself, by his own repu- 

 tation, upon the notice of the great ruling companies of the drama, he 

 is placed in a situation which, in a year or two, utterly unfits him for 

 farther elevation. The consequence of all this is, that not only the 

 sources are narrowed from which good actors can be supplied, ready 

 trained, to meet the public criticism, but they who still remain to us, 

 having fewer rivals, become more careless in their style of performance, 

 satisfied if they sufficiently please, for the hour, an audience not accus- 

 tomed to estimate their merits bj^ fair and ample comparison. It would 

 be easy to shew how this lias operated upon the most popular living 

 actors (especially in comedy) if space were left to us, or patience to our 

 readers. For the present we shall content ourselves with saying, that 

 much of the disinclination which exists among our best writers to cast 

 the desperate die, and seek to wrest the British drama from the shame 

 that is upon it, must be ascribed, partly to a fear of the perverted taste 

 engendered by those multitudes of monstrous productions which owe 

 their birth, in a great degree, to the sj'stem of monopoly, and partly to 

 the vicious change which has been perceptibly wrought in the acting of 

 almost all our second-rate, and not a few of our best performers. 



n. 



