1829. ] Zhe Theatres. 1cg8 
three inches before him, is separated by .a barrier, which distinguishes the 
gentleman from the xo gentleman, and that the whole house can discover at 
a glance, that he has come in for sixpence less than his fellow before him. 
But these tastes are not popular in our stubborn and old fashioned country. 
We love to see men take their fair chance of being mistaken for gentlemen, 
and the principle of equality left to thrive without the restriction of ten rows 
of high-backed chairs with locks to them. 
Let the nobility have their private boxes, since this has been the custom ; 
but let the gentry have their rights, since this has been the custom too. If 
no places can be kept in an English theatre after the first act, why should 
they be kept in the Opera pit? We hope the question will be tried in the 
plainest way, on the very first night of the season. 
But we turn to a more congenial subject ; those werks of genius, in which 
we defy competition ; those brilliant compounds of wit, scenery, magic, and 
jumping, which enchant all ages alike, which give the nursery the first taste 
of the raptures of life, the mature the full fruition, and the ancient the bright 
retrospect of the days when they were young, when the prospect of Christmas 
holidays brightened half the year; when the spirit of man was not. flattened 
between the pressure of the times, and the march of intellect; when Jack 
the Giant-killer was an original hero, and Mother Goose a greater wonder- 
worker than Pope Joan with her seventy cardinals at her back, and her 
sceptre in her hand. 
The pantomine at Drury Lang, is entitled “‘ The Queen Bee, or Harlequin 
and the Fairy Hive.’ The Honeycomb Palace is discovered with its swarms 
of Lady Bees, whose dances are interrupted by a complaint against a Drone 
for idleness and disorderly conduct. ‘The Drone is summoned before her 
stinging majesty and sentenced to be “ transported to roam the flowers of 
Botany.” No sooner is he drummed out in form, than “‘a golden radiance in 
the sky,” proclaims some celestial visitor; and Fortune, in her splendid 
temple, appears. She tells the queen she comes to complain of Harlequin, 
who has grown so fat from “drinking double X, to double ewcess,” that he 
is utterly incapable of his regular Christmas duty. The Queen says she 
knows the disgraceful cause; it is owing to his having been idle nearly a 
year; and she sends Rose Rifle, one of her attendaits, to “ lie ambush’d in 
some rose’s cup,” till summoned to execute her commands on the delinquent. 
The country house of old Harlequin is now displayed. He out-Falstaff’s 
_ Falstaff in obesity. He has a valet as monstrous as himself; and a son 
whom he discountenances from a double jealousy of his agility, and of the 
Fy interest taken in him by a young female, the village schoolmistress, to whose 
“hand the old gentleman, being a widower, aspires. She refuses.the lover, 
__ who is about to vent his rage on her, when the fairy, Rose Rifle, interposes. 
She bids her be of good cheer ; directs her to aid young Harlequin in getting 
possession of the charmed sword, which his father, out of malice and avarice 
detains from him, locked useless in a box. The youthful couple get into the 
amber of the “ ton of flesh,’ and obtain the box ; but the house is alarmed: 
when Fortune and the Queen Bee come in together, delegate the power to 
the son—to whom, of course, Margery is Columbine—and the pursuit begins. 
__ The rival wonder at Covent Garpen, is ‘‘ Little Red Riding Hood, or The 
_ Wizard and the Wolf.” ‘The story passes on the banks of the Seine, near 
Rouen. It begins with a tremendous Freischutz sort of scene, in which the 
_ Wizard of the Dell appears, awaiting the manufacture of a charmed girdle, 
Which is managed after the manner of the charmed balls of Caspar. Strange 
and reptiles caper about, and at length a gigantic spirit rises with the 
girdle completed, and gives it to the Wizard of the Dell, telling him three 
shall possess it, but it shall afterwards revert tohim. The Wizard is in great 
e at this, and splutters about the Fairy of the Rosy Bower, and intimates 
t he nows means to “‘ feed the ancient grudge he bears her.” The Wizard 
of the Dell has a son, who, by the power of the fairy, was deformed at his 
M.M. New Series —Vov. VII. No. 37. Z 
