50 The Theatre—Its Literature, and General Arrangement. [JuLy, 
Now, the “ half-price” is defended on account of its custom ; and the sta- 
tutable nuisance on the ground that it is impossible to get rid of it; and the ~ 
inconvenience of the accommodation (wittily) on the ground that if people sat at 
their ease, they would go to sleep altogether ; which is a pleasant justification, but 
not quite a maintainable one, because persons at a theatre should be kept awake 
by amusement and not by the torture. But, every possible precaution having 
thus been taken, as regards the matter of comfort, to make the theatre a place 
to which persons would choose to go as seldom as possible, the coup de grace in 
the way of enticement is given by the price. 
At five shillings the boxes, three the pit, and two shillings and one the 
galleries, any London theatre, if it had filled fairly, would have paid its highest 
charge twice over. But as people, it was found, did not come fast enough when 
the prices of boxes and pit were five shillings and three shillings, the managers 
resolved to try whether they would come any faster when they had to pay seven 
shillings and three and six-pence. It was not that five shillings did not pay, but 
that people did not pay the five shillings. At five-shilling prices, either of the 
two great theatres would contain £500, they now hold something more than 
£700. Two hundred and fifty pounds a-night would be a fortune in either 
theatre; therefore, for all purposes of success, the advance of price was per- 
fectly unnecessary. But the curiosity is that the speculators put on thisincrease 
of price, to the inevitable diminution of the quantity of admission that they 
would sell; knowing all the while that that mere diminution of sale would 
ruin them, let their price be what it might; and that the appearance of a 
lessening trade within either of their houses, would speedily put an end to the 
trade of it altogether. 
For it is an understood fact among all theatrical undertakers—a very absurd 
one apparently as far as the public is concerned—that a theatre, in the hottest 
evening of summer, when two feet of clear space on either side of one is worth 
at leasta thousand pounds, cannot exist unless the population in it are packed 
together, closer than slaves in the “ middle passage,” on board a contraband 
Guineaman! Therefore when they raised their prices, managers knew that they 
could not Jive (at any price) with a diminution of their consumption, They 
could not, like the Dutch merchants when they held the spice trade, sell a 
fourth of their produce at an immense rate, and burn or drown the rest ; but 
would be compelled, in case the demand fell off, to give away their commodity 
in whole packages with one hand while they demanded the advanced and exor- 
itant price for it with the other. And thus, therefore, to fill those same boxes 
out of which the high price demanded already keeps most people, a course is 
adopted perfectly well calculated, as regards the patronage of respectability, to 
keep out all people; “orders,” and that kind of admission which is calied 
“free privilege,” are given away to such an extent—and to such persons—for 
they will be accepted by no other persons—that, taken with reference to rank 
and character, two-thirds of the company which sits nightly in the boxes of 
the theatre is very much below the level of that which would be found in the 
two-shilling gallery ! 
If we are to talk of “ selectness,” the state of the houses would be a sufficient 
answer ; but nothing can be more gross trash, while money alone will purchase 
admission, than to imagine that a few shillings more of price will ensure decorum 
of conduct in any place of entertainment, or a few shillings less stand in the 
sway of it, The masquerade at the Argyll rooms, at a guinea, is an offence 
pretty nearly against common police ; and nobody ever, perhaps, with prices only 
of one and two shillings, saw any rudeness or impropriety of conduct at the 
Exhibition of the Royal Academy or at the Panorama. 
Then, the prices demanded, in themselves, are too high to incline persons of 
even liberal income, to make the theatre habitually a part of their diversion. 
The price of one box admission is seven shillings, which, if a gentleman 
chooses a decent seat, is increased to eight shillings, and, if he has a great-coat 
to hang up, to nine—about the whole amount for a captain of infantry, of his 
day’s pay! If ladies go to the theatre, extensive as the building is, there is 
