3g A PEW WORDS ON THE DRAMA. 



There are many persons of taste and education who would go to the 

 theatres for a refined and intellectual amusement, that are now driven 

 away by the managers so continually playing up to the galleries ; they 

 are disgusted with the nonsense and trash put forth on the stage, and 

 prefer remaining at home and perusing quietly a favourite author to the 

 trashy medley of our national theatres. 



That pieces devoid of real merit, spiritless in dialogue, and whose 

 strength lies alone in the disgusting horrors of their situations, may for 

 a time please the " multitude," we will not deny ; but they soon surfeit, 

 and even the very persons for whom they were designed feel no pleasure 

 in their repetition, or if they do look on them a second time, it is languidly 

 and without interest, and with feelings more, perhaps, of disgust than 

 pleasure, and they are glad when the performance is finished. They miss 

 the rich racy dialogue of the old comedies ; when they laughed they 

 scarce knew why, or felt themselves excited by the beautiful sentiments 

 and imao-ery of the sterling tragedies of the old English writers, and the 

 repetition of which they could bear without experiencing the same lan- 

 guor or ennui so generally caused by witnessing a second time the 

 dramas of the school of horrors. 



The managers never seem to lose an opportunity of courting their 

 friends the galleries, for even in the production of an opera, which has 

 been frequently played abroad and the su-ccess of which is almost certain, 

 they are not content until some fiddler in the orchestra whom nobody 

 scarce knows has thrust in a villanous composition of his own, calculated 

 for the galleries, and which perhaps are the only encores of the evening, 

 and therefore considered by the manager as suiting his purpose much 

 better than the works of Mozart, Beethoven, Meyerbeer, &c., whose 

 music is listened to quietly, and without that noisy approbation bestowed 

 upon the interpolaters. 



It will be in vain for managers to attempt, with any degree of success, 

 the performance of the legitimate drama for a few evenings with a badly 

 assorted company :— persons wholly incompetent are thrust into parts 

 they are incapable of understanding, or even properly reading, and it ia 

 but little amusement to a discriminating audience, to listen to the beau- 

 tiful passages of our old English Poets delivered by an actor who consi- 

 ders himself engaged in the operatic department ; and to whom, acting 

 and elocution are a very second-rate concern. In one company we must 

 have members for Tragedy, Comedy, Opera, Farce, Ballet, and Panto- 

 mime ; none complete in themselves ; each lending to the others, and 

 forming a discordant whole, that rarely insures success : — there is a 

 want of harmony consequent upon thus getting up performances that 

 makes them any thing but the source of amusement they ought to be. 

 Managers may well say " the public will not patronize the drama in its 

 highest range," for they will not listen with pleasure to the murdering 

 of their most cherished authors, delivered in a sing-song style, by an actor 

 who considers, either that it ought to be turned into music to suit him, 

 or into a ballet, in which he might attitudinize the principal character, 

 and who, perhaps, has grace enough to feel that he understands about 

 as much of his author as he does about Greek Apophthegms. 



Were & cotaif nny to be formed solely for the representation of tragedy* 

 comedy) and farc% J^aVing to the oth«r house _tbe getting up $f c^jperas/ 



