Edwards Henry Sutherland
Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, v. 1
Under the Revolution, precisely five years after the production of The Marriage of Figaro, the spirit and tone of which seemed to the king himself prophetic of the approaching catastrophe, the Comédie Française assumed the title of “Théâtre de la Nation, Comédiens ordinaires du Roi,” a compromise between loyalty to the old state of things and adhesion to the new of which the members of the company were afterwards bitterly to repent. Dissensions now sprang up between the different members of the company, some royalists, others republicans. On the whole, however, the actors and actresses showed a certain aptitude for placing themselves on good terms with the executive power of the moment. In 1792, on the eve of the Reign of Terror, the players were formally obliged to replace such words as “Seigneur” and “Monsieur” by “Citoyen,” even when the piece was written in verse. In the classical tragedies of Racine the word “Seigneur” constantly occurs, as, for instance, where Agamemnon addresses Achilles, or Achilles Agamemnon. The heroes of the Iliad and of the history of Rome had now to be “Citoyens;” which, apart from the intrinsic absurdity of the thing, could not but spoil the metre.
One effect of the Revolution was to deprive the Comédie Française of the privilege it had so long and so unjustly enjoyed of incorporating in its company any actor or actress whom it might choose to detach from some other troop, not only at Paris, but in any other part of France. It at the same time also lost its monopoly. A split having taken place in the company, a second Comédie Française was started in the Palais Royal with the celebrated Talma, and with Grandmesnil, Dugazon, and Mme. Vestris among its artists. Meanwhile, notwithstanding the loss of Talma, the Comédie Française kept up against all disadvantages. There was, however, too much sense of art, of dramatic propriety among the members to permit the replacement of the word “Seigneur” by “Citoyen,” and as a punishment for neglecting the Governmental order on the subject the whole of the company of the Comédie Française was arrested one night and thrown into prison, with the exception only of Molé, who was apparently looked upon as a good Republican, and some other actor who was away from the capital. The piece performed on the night of the arrest had been a dramatic version of Richardson’s Pamela, or, Virtue Rewarded, which, according to the judgment of the Republican Censors, was “full of reactionary feeling.” Possibly the nameless hero, Mr. B – , was addressed from time to time not as “Citoyen,” but as “Monsieur.”
As soon as she had regained her liberty, Mdlle. Raucourt tried to form a company for herself, and, succeeding, took a theatre, which was soon, however, closed by order of the Government, some allusion to its severity having been discovered in one of the pieces represented. Mdlle. Raucourt thenceforward made no secret of her hostility to the Directory, which, now that the Reign of Terror was at an end, could be attacked, indirectly at least, without too much danger. Fleury tells us that Mdlle. Raucourt’s costume was a constant protest against the existing order of things; which, from a feeling of gratitude towards the Royal Family, her constant patrons, and from painful feelings in connection with that guillotine beneath whose shadow she had passed, she could not but hate. “She wore on her spenser,” says Fleury, “eighteen buttons in allusion to Louis XVIII., while her fan was one of those weeping-willow fans, the folds of which formed the face of Marie Antoinette.” Fleury speaks, moreover, of a certain shawl worn by Mdlle. Raucourt, of which the pattern, once explained, traced to the eyes of the initiated the portraits of Louis, the Queen, and the Dauphin. One day he accompanied her to a fortune-teller who had been expected to predict the restoration of the monarchy, but who foretold instead the revival of the Comédie Française. “The woman,” says Fleury, “had read the cards aright, for in 1799 an order from the First Consul re-assembled in a new association the remains of the company dispersed at the time of the Revolution.” But now the theatre was burnt down; and though the Comédie Française existed as an institution, and received in 1802 a special subsidy of 100,000 francs, it was not until 1803 that, in conformity with an order from the First Consul, it took possession of the building in the Rue Richelieu, close to the Palais Royal, where it has ever since remained.
As under Louis XIV., so under Napoleon, the Comédie Française followed the sovereign to his palatial residence wherever it might be; to Saint-Cloud, to Fontainebleau, to Trianon, to Compiègne, to Malmaison, and even to Erfurt and Dresden, where Talma is known to have performed before a “pit of kings.” Nor did Napoleon forget the Comédie Française when he was at Moscow, during the temporary occupation and just before the fatal retreat; though it may well have been from a feeling of pride, and a desire to show how capable he was at such a critical moment of occupying himself with comparatively unimportant things, that he dated from the Kremlin his celebrated decree regulating the affairs of the principal theatre in France.
It has been the destiny of the Comédie Française during the past hundred years to salute a number of different governments and dynasties. That they conscientiously kicked against the Republic in its most aggravated form has already been shown. They had no reason for being dissatisfied with Napoleon; and after the destruction of the Imperial power it was perfectly natural that they should do homage to that house of Bourbon under which they had first been established, and which for so long a period had kept them beneath its peculiar patronage. They now resumed their ancient title of “Comédiens Ordinaires du Roi,” and the direction of the establishment was handed over to the Intendant of the Royal Theatres.
The Comédie Française has often been charged with too strict an adherence to classical ideas. Yet it was at this theatre that a dramatic work by Victor Hugo, round which rallied the whole of the so-called romantic school, was first placed before the public.
The two most interesting events in the history of the Comédie Française are the first production of The Marriage of Figaro in 1784, of which an account has already been given in connection with Beaumarchais and his residence on the boulevard bearing his name, and the first production of Hernani forty-six years afterwards.
Hernani was the third play that Victor Hugo had written, but the first that was represented. There seems never to have been any intention of bringing out Cromwell, published in 1827, and known to this day chiefly by its preface. Marion Delorme, Victor Hugo’s second dramatic work, was submitted to the Théâtre Français, but rejected, not by the management, but by the Censorship, and, indeed, by Charles X. himself, with whom Victor Hugo had a personal interview on the subject. “The picture of Louis XIII.’s reign,” says a writer on this subject, “was not agreeable to his descendant; and the last of the Bourbon kings is said to have been particularly annoyed at the omnipotent part assigned in Victor Hugo’s drama to the great Cardinal de Richelieu.”
But Victor Hugo had the persistency of genius, and though both his first efforts had miscarried, he was ready soon after the rejection of Marion Delorme with another piece – that spirited, poetical work Hernani, which is usually regarded as his finest dramatic effort. Hernani, like Marion Delorme, was condemned by the Censorship; being objected to not on political, but on literary, moral, and general grounds. The report of the Committee of Censorship, scarcely less ironical than severe, concluded in these remarkable terms: “However much we might extend our analysis, it could only give an imperfect idea of Hernani, of the eccentricity of its conception, and the faults of its execution. It seems to us a tissue of extravagances to which the author has vainly endeavoured to give a character of elevation, but which are always trivial and often vulgar. The piece abounds in unbecoming thoughts of every kind. The king expresses himself like a bandit; the bandit treats the king like a brigand. The daughter of a grandee of Spain is a shameless woman without dignity or modesty. Nevertheless, in spite of so many capital faults, we are of opinion that not only would there be nothing injudicious in authorising the representation of the piece, but that it would be wise policy not to cut out a single word. It is well that the public should see what point of wildness the human mind may reach when it is freed from all rules of propriety.”
When at last the play was produced there was such a scene in the Comédie Française as has never been witnessed before or since. At two o’clock, when the doors were opened, a band of romanticists entered the theatre and forthwith searched it in view of any hostile classicists who might be lying hid in dark corners, ready to rise and hiss as soon as the curtain should go up. No classicists, however, were discovered; the band of romanticists was under the direction of Gérard de Nerval, author of the delightful “Voyage en Orient,” translator of “Faust” in the early days when he called himself simply Gérard, and Heine’s collaborator in the French prose translation of the “Buch der Lieder.” On the eve of the battle, Gérard de Nerval, as Théophile Gautier has told us in one of many accounts he wrote of the famous representation, visited the officers who were to act under him; their number, according to one account, including Balzac, first of French novelists, if not first novelist of the world; that Wagner of the past, Hector Berlioz; Auguste Maquet, the dramatist; and Joseph Bouchardy, the melodramatist, together with Alexander Dumas, historian (in his “Memoirs”) of the rehearsals of Hernani, and Théophile Gautier, chronicler in more than one place of its first representation.
Victor Hugo had originally intended to call his play Three to One; which to the modern mind would have suggested a sporting drama. Castilian Honour– excellent title! – had also been suggested; but the general opinion of Victor Hugo’s friends was in favour of Hernani, the musical and sonorous name of the hero; and under that title the piece was produced.
It has been said that the supporters of Victor Hugo took possession of a certain portion of the theatre as early as two in the afternoon. They had brought with them hams, tongues, and bottles of wine; and they had what the Americans call a “good time” during the interval that passed before the public was admitted – eating, drinking, singing songs, and discussing the beauties of the piece they had come to applaud. “As soon as the doors of the theatre were opened the band of romanticists,” says Théophile Gautier, “turned their eyes towards the incomers, and if among them a pretty woman appeared her arrival was greeted with a burst of applause. These marks of approbation were not bestowed on rich toilettes and dazzling jewellery, they were reserved for beauty in its simplest manifestations. Thus no one was received with so much enthusiasm as Mdlle. Delphine Gay, afterwards Mme. de Girardin, who, in a white muslin dress relieved by a blue scarf, wore no ornaments whatever. Mdlle. Gay assured the Duke de Montmorency the morning after the representation, that she had not spent on her dress more than twenty-eight francs.”
The Hugoites did not form a compact body, but occupied different parts of the pit and stalls in groups. They are said to have been easily recognisable by their sometimes picturesque, sometimes grotesque costumes, and by their defiant air. The combatants on either side applauded and counter-applauded, cried “Bravo!” and hissed without much reference to the merits of the piece, and often in attack or defence of supposed words which the piece did not contain. Thus (to quote once more from Théophile Gautier) in the scene where Ruy Gomez, on the point of marrying Doña Sol, entrusts her to Don Carlos, Hernani exclaims to the former, “Vieillard stupide! il l’aime.” M. Parseval de Grandmaison, a rigid classicist, but rather hard of hearing, thought Hernani had said, “Vieil as de pique! il l’aime.” “This is too much,” groaned M. Parseval de Grandmaison. “What do you say?” replied Lassailly, who was sitting next him in the stalls, and who had only heard his neighbour’s interruption. “I say, sir, that it is not permissible to call a venerable old man like Ruy Gomez de Silva ‘old ace of spades.’” “He has a perfect right to do so,” replied Lassailly. “Cards were invented under Charles VI. Bravo for ‘Vieil as de pique!’ Bravo, Hugo!”
Théophile Gautier declares that Mdlle. Mars could only lend to the proud and passionate Doña Sol a “sober and refined talent,” as she was pre-occupied with considerations of propriety more suited to comedy than to drama. Victor Hugo himself was, on the other hand, delighted with the performance of the principal actress; and one cannot but accept him as the best judge in the case. It would be impossible, in Victor Hugo’s own words, without having seen her, to form an idea of the effect produced by the great actress in the part of Doña Sol, to which she gave “an immense development,” going in a few minutes through the whole gamut of her talent, from the graceful to the pathetic, and from the pathetic to the sublime.
The success of Hernani corresponded closely enough with the triumph of the Revolution of July, which brought Louis Philippe to the throne; and under the new and more liberal form of monarchy it seemed as though the rising poet and dramatist, who was soon to establish an undisputed supremacy, would have his own way at the Comédie Française as elsewhere. But his next work, Le Roi s’amuse, found no more favour in the eyes of M. Thiers than Marion Delorme had done in those of Charles X.’s ministers, and of Charles himself. Le Roi s’amuse (of which the subject is better known in England by Verdi’s opera of Rigoletto than by the drama on which Rigoletto is based) was played but once, and was not revived until some forty years afterwards, when it was produced under the Government of the Third Republic without much success. Victor Hugo’s dramas have not, except to the reading public, displaced the tragedies of Corneille and Racine. Rachel as Chimène, Sarah Bernhardt as Phèdre are to this day better remembered by the old habitués of the Comédie Française than any actors in any of Victor Hugo’s parts. That Victor Hugo is one of the greatest poets of the century can scarcely be denied; but his genius is more lyrical than dramatic.
To show by yet another example that the Comédie Française has not been so much opposed as is often asserted to novelty in the dramatic art, it may be mentioned that at this theatre the wildly melodramatic and strikingly original Antony of Alexander Dumas was first produced. This work, written, not, like Victor Hugo’s plays, in verse, but in vigorous prose, has been no more fortunate than other masterpieces of the romantic drama in keeping the stage. The great success it met with at the time of its first production was due in a great measure to the powerful acting of Mme. Dorval. The basis of Antony, and, as Alexander Dumas tells us himself in his “Memoirs,” its very germ, is a deeply compromising situation in which the hero finds himself with the heroine. They are on the point of being discovered when, to save the honour of his mistress, Antony (without consulting her on the subject) takes her life. Having stabbed her he exclaims to the persons who now enter the room, “That woman was resisting me; I have assassinated her.” This outrageous piece had the same fate as Victor Hugo’s admirably written and truly dramatic play, Le Roi s’amuse, in so far that it was, after a very few representations, forbidden by the Censorship.
In the year 1833 a private person was for the first time named Director of the Comédie Française. Jouslin de La Salle was his name, and he was succeeded, first by M. Vedel, in 1837, and afterwards by M. Buloz, Director of the Revue des Deux Mondes. In 1852 the affairs of the theatre were entrusted to a committee of six members of the Comédie Française under the direction of an “administrator”; the first administrator being M. Arsène Houssaye, the well-known author and journalist. M. Houssaye was replaced in 1856 by M. Empis, and M. Empis in 1860 by M. Édouard Thierry, a dramatist. The present director is M. Perrin. The subvention paid by the Government to the Comédie Française was fixed definitively in 1856 at 240,000 francs a year. Among the actors and actresses who have appeared at this famous establishment, often pleasantly described as La Maison de Molière (though Molière, as already seen, never set foot in it), may be mentioned Adrienne Lecouvreur, Mdlle. Mars, Mdlle. Clairon, Mdlle. Contat, Mdlle. Raucourt, Talma, Rachel, Sarah Bernhardt, not to name many excellent comedians who in the present day are almost as well known in London as in Paris.
In the immediate neighbourhood of the Comédie Française was born Adrienne Lecouvreur. Less perhaps from the influence of the genius loci than from a desire to imitate the actors and actresses whom, from day to day, she must have seen passing her door, little Adrienne accustomed herself at an early age to act plays and scenes from plays with her young companions. Adrienne’s talent was soon noticed by an inferior actor named Legrand, who, after teaching her some of the tricks of his trade, procured an engagement for her somewhere in Alsace. It was in the provinces that she formed her style; and for so long a time did she wander about from theatre to theatre that she was already twenty-seven years of age when an engagement was offered her at the Comédie Française. Here she was equally successful in tragedy and in comedy, though in the latter line her impersonations seem to have been chiefly confined to high comedy. Thus one of her best parts was that of Célimène in the Misanthrope. Adrienne was well acquainted with Voltaire when Count Maurice de Saxe, one of the innumerable natural children of Augustus II., King of Poland – Carlyle’s Augustus the Strong – came to try his fortune in Paris. This was in the year 1720. In the first instance he met with no luck; and he had to wait a considerable time before he could get a simple regiment together. “Although he was scarcely twenty-four years of age,” says a remarkable writer of the time, “Maurice had already made eleven campaigns and repudiated one wife. He joined,” continues this unconscious humourist, “to the strength of his father the uncultured youth and fiery disposition of a sort of nomad, somewhat like our Du Guesclin, whom ladies used to call the wild boar. Under the guise of a Sarmatian, Adrienne discovered the hero, and undertook to polish the soldier. She was then thirty years of age, and had gained the experience and the passion which render a woman alike skilful to please and prompt to love.”
Adrienne Lecouvreur was carried off, after a short and somewhat mysterious illness, on the 20th of March, 1730. So sudden was her death that the public, who adored her, would not believe that it arose from natural causes; and the Duchess de Bouillon, known to be her rival and her implacable enemy, was declared by everyone to be her murderess. According to the story current at the time she owed her death to a box of poisoned sweetmeats, treacherously presented to her, though Scribe and Legouvé, in their well-known play, make her die from the effect of a poisoned bouquet given to her by the duchess, in feigned admiration of her genius. All that is really known on the subject is to be found in the “Memoirs” of the Abbé Annillon, the “Letters” of Mdlle. Aïssé, and a note appended to one of these letters by Voltaire himself.
The popular version of the incidents of Adrienne’s death was as follows. One night, when she was playing the part of Phèdre, she saw in a box close to the stage the Duchess de Bouillon, who, she knew, was endeavouring to replace her in the affections of Count de Saxe; and the sight of this woman made her deliver with exceptional energy these indignant lines: —
“Je sais mes perfidies,
Œnone, et ne suis pas de ces femmes hardies
Qui, goûtant dans le crime une tranquille paix,
Ont su se faire un front qui ne rougit jamais.”
As the Duchess de Bouillon, according to Mdlle. Aïssé, was capricious, violent, impulsive, and much addicted to love affairs, she might well be considered one of those “brazen women who, finding an untroubled calm in crime, succeed in acquiring a brow that knows no blush.” It may readily be believed, too, that Adrienne made every point tell, so that the duchess, brazen-faced as she might be, would feel wounded to the quick. So appropriate were the verses and so clear was the intention of the much-loved actress in applying them, that the audience, in full sympathy with her, applauded to the point of wild enthusiasm.
Voltaire, on the other hand, wrote in a manuscript note appended to Mdlle. Aïssé’s narrative: “She died in my arms of inflammation of the bowels, and it was I who caused the body to be opened. All that Mdlle. Aïssé says on the subject is mere popular rumour without any foundation.”
If the French clergy objected usually to bury actors and actresses with religious rites, they were scarcely likely to make an exception in favour of an actress who had died in the arms of Voltaire. Her body, then, was thrown “à la voirie,” as the author of Candide puts it, or, to be exact, was buried somewhere on the banks of the Seine, in the neighbourhood of a wharf, the interment being made secretly and at midnight, as though poor Adrienne had been a criminal. The Abbé Languet, Curé of Saint-Sulpice, the parish to which Adrienne Lecouvreur belonged, after taking the orders of the Archbishop, had refused to admit her body to the cemetery, and all hope of a Christian burial was then abandoned. The intolerance of the archbishop and of the priest provoked from Voltaire some indignant verses, beginning as follows: —
“Ah, verrai-je toujours ma faible nation,
Incertaine en ses vœux, flétrir ce qu’elle admire;
Nos mœurs avec nos lois toujours se contredire;
Et le Français volage endormi sous l’empire
De la superstition?”4
Voltaire, in writing the poem from which the above stanza is quoted, had simply obeyed his own natural impulse. His verses were not intended for publication, for he knew that if they were seen by the clergy they might get him into trouble. He simply sent a copy of the poem to his friend Thiériot, and perhaps to others, with a strong recommendation to keep it secret. The first thing, however, that Thiériot seems to have done was to take Voltaire’s verses with him into society, where he was always received in the character of “Voltaire’s friend.” The poet had probably exaggerated the danger. The clergy could have no wish to re-awaken the scandal caused by the circumstances of Adrienne Lecouvreur’s burial, and though Voltaire left Paris when he found that his poem on the death of Adrienne was being circulated everywhere in manuscript, there does not seem to have been any necessity for this species of flight. The place of Adrienne’s burial, which long remained unknown, was discovered years afterwards, during some work of excavation and demolition. Voltaire and Maurice de Saxe were both dead; but an old friend of hers, named D’Argental, was still living, and he hastened to mark the spot by a tablet to her memory.
The Comédie Française, beneath whose shadow Adrienne Lecouvreur was brought up, is not the only theatre connected with the Palais Royal. The Théâtre du Palais Royal forms part of the spacious construction from which it derives its name, and is entered from the Palais Royal itself. Standing at the northern extremity of the Galerie de Beaujolais, it was constructed in 1783 by Louis, architect to the Duke of Orleans. Its original name was Théâtre Beaujolais, and its original occupant the manager of a company of marionettes. The marionettes were replaced by children playing exclusively in pantomimes. But in 1790 Mdlle. Montansier, who had formerly directed the Royal Theatre of Versailles, and who had followed the king and queen, took possession of the little theatre in the Palais Royal, and opened it under the title of Théâtre des Variétés. Every kind of play was presented, and it was here that the directress brought out as a child the afterwards famous Mdlle. Mars. In time, under the Empire, the company of the Palais Royal left it to take possession of the theatre on the Boulevard Montmartre, to which the name of Théâtre des Variétés was thereupon transferred. The Palais Royal Theatre now passed into the hands of a succession of managers, who relied, one on tight-rope dancers, another on marionettes, and a third on learned dogs. “These animals,” says Brazier in his “Petits Théâtres de Paris,” “played their parts with an intelligence not often met with among bipeds. The company was completed with its light and low comedian, its walking gentleman, its heavy father, its chambermaid, its leading actor and actress, and so on. For the four-footed artists was arranged a melodrama which was scarcely worse than many others I have seen. Many private persons took their dogs to this theatre to act as ‘supers.’ Nothing droller can be imagined than these performances.”
From 1814 to 1818 the theatre was changed into a café-concert, inappropriately entitled Café de la Paix. This establishment became famous during the Hundred Days. Men of different periods met there as on some appointed fighting-ground; and as a result of many violent scenes the house had to be closed.
After the Revolution of 1830 the theatre, still associated with the name of Mdlle. Montansier, was restored to its original purpose. Entirely reconstructed, it was opened to the public in June, 1831, under the title of Théâtre du Palais Royal. A company of excellent comedians had been engaged, many of whom, such as Alcide, Tousez, Achard, Levassor (who loved to impersonate eccentric Englishmen), Grassot, Ravel, and the fascinating Virginie Déjazet, were to attain European fame. Here were produced a number of highly diverting pieces, several of which have become known in translated or adapted form at our London theatres; for example, Indiana et Charlemagne (Antony and Cleopatra); Le Chapeau de Paille d’Italie (A Wedding March); La Chambre aux deux Lits (The Double-Bedded Room); Grassot embêté par Ravel (Seeing Wright); Un Garçon de chez Véry (Whitebait at Greenwich); with many others.
The liveliest and most risky pieces of the French stage have for the most part seen the light at the Palais Royal Theatre. These productions were, not without reason, considered in a general way unfit for the ears of young girls; and it became one of the recognised privileges of the married woman to be able in her new state to witness a Palais Royal farce. Even wives, however, in many cases thought it as well, while seeing, not to be seen at the Palais Royal; and for the benefit of such ladies were provided an extra number of loges grillées– those loges grillées, otherwise petites loges, one of which a certain abbé wished to have for the first performance of The Marriage of Figaro, when the author declined, declaring with indignant satire that he had “no sympathy with those who wished to unite the honours of virtue with the pleasures of vice.”
The petite loge of France, like the private box of England, is comparatively a modern invention. In neither country were such things known till the end of the last century; and it is probable that, like most other theatrical novelties, they were imported, not from England into France, but from France into England. Even thirty or forty years ago private boxes were much less numerous at our English theatres than they have since become. They have increased in proportion as the pit has diminished, and, in some theatres, entirely disappeared. On their first introduction they were unpopular in both countries.
“This is a modern refinement,” writes Mercier, just before the Revolution of 1789, “or rather a public and very indecent nuisance introduced to please the humour of a few hundreds of our women of fashion. These boxes are held by subscription from year to year; nay, from mother to daughter, as part of her inheritance. Nothing could ever be devised better calculated to favour the impertinent pride and idleness of a first-rate actor, who, being paid handsomely by his share of the subscription, even before the beginning of the season, takes no trouble about getting up new parts, but solicits, under some pretence or another, leave of absence, and receives annually some 18,000 livres from the inhabitants of the capital, whilst he is holding forth at Brussels. Another objection against these hired boxes is that the comedians have constantly refused to admit the authors of new plays to a share in the subscription money; and they are so sensible to this advantage that they are daily improving it by throwing part of the pit into this kind of boxes. Whilst the public complain loudly of such encroachments on the liberty of the playhouses, hear the apology set up by our belles: ‘What! will you, then, to oblige the canaille, compel me to hear out a whole play, when I am rich enough to see only the last scene? This is a downright tyranny! I protest! There is no police in France nowadays. Since I cannot have the comedians come to my own house, I will have the liberty to come in my plain deshabille, enjoy my arm-chair, receive the homage of my humble suitors, and leave the place before I am tired. It would be monstrous to deprive me of all these indulgences, and positively encroach upon the prerogatives of wealth and bon ton.’ A lady therefore, to be in fashion, must have her petite loge, her lap-dog, etc.; but above all, a man-puppy who stands, glass in hand, to tell her ladyship who comes in and goes out, name the actors and so forth, whilst the lady herself displays a fan, which, by a modern contrivance, answers all the purpose of an opera-glass, with this advantage, that she may see without being seen. Meanwhile the honest citizen, who, like a tasteless plebeian, imagines that play-houses are opened for entertainment, cannot get in for his money, because part of the house is let by the year, though empty for the best part of it, so that he is obliged to put up, instead of rational amusement, with the low, indecent farces acted on the booth of the boulevards.”
