Strutt, by teaching costume, by instructing
mankind in ancient customs and manners through
the medium of Shakespeare, the plays—ay, the
whole round of them one after another—would
still again, and once for all, go down the public
throat.

But now there are no more excuses left, and
so unless we can act those same dramas with a
company of Christy's Minstrels, or persuade
Lord Dundreary to take the part of Osric in
Hamlet—the rest of the play being cut down
to develop it—unless we can hit upon some
device of this sort, it is plain that the custom of
performing Shakespeare must be regarded as an
obsolete habit of certain ancient Britons, no
more to be revived than their stage-coaches, or
their night watchmen.

Time was, when there was an established
round of characters which every new actor who
came out was expected to appear in: Hamlet,
Othello, Macbeth, Richard—and, Shakespeare
disposed of—Sir Giles Overreach, Jaffier, the
Stranger. It was a curriculum which the man
must go through. The play-goer what play-
goers there were in those days! used to go and
see them all. He used to compare A.'s points
witli B.'s points, and used to pronounce that
So-and-So was better than What's-his-Name in
his manner of speaking such and such a
sentence. "Do you remember"—one of these
Drury Lane habitues would say—"how John
Kemble used to speak that line, 'Methinks I
see him now'—there's nothing so fine as that in
Kean's rendering of the part." Another would
prefer Young, and have ready a particular speech
of his, the delivery of which no mortal could
hear without emotion.

I am rather sorry—remembering myself the
fag-end of this state of theatrical affairs—
for the youth of the present day; being
convinced that they have no enjoyment, and
certainly no excitement equal to the joys of the
Legitimate Drama, as seen from the pit. A well-
conditioned boy living in the days of legitimacy,
and going early to the pit, was the boy for my
money, and could decline the verb "to enjoy"
in all its moods and tenses. You knew where
you were in those days, and what you had to
expect. As you sat and listened to the first
act, and took in the introductory dialogue
between 1st Gent, and 2nd Gent., what rapture
you got—independent of that which you derived
from the resemblance of the " Gents." in question
to the character-figures you had been
painting and spangling under the lid of your
desk at school—what a distinct rapture you got,
from the thought that every word of their
dialogue was bringing the moment nearer when
the hero of the night would appear, responsive
to the cue, " But who comes here?"

How you criticised—if admiring may be called
criticising—all the hero's appointments, and his
glorious stage costume. It was much more
exciting, that same costume, and certainly better
adapted to subsequent tinselling, than after it
became so confoundedly correct. To this day I
prefer a short cloak and stage boots to any other
dress, and would not give twopence for Richard
the Third without his ringlets. It is miserable
that these things are over, and sometimes one
gets quite indignant about it, and inclined to
cry out to this detestably enlightened age,
"Dost thou think that because thou art" well
informed " there shall be no more" tights and
spangles?

Oh, 1st and 2nd Gents.!—oh, 1st, 2nd, ay,
and even 3rd Murderers!—oh, Citzens of the
Forum, obtuse Countrymen, uncorrupted
Peasants, simple Shepherdesses!—I loved ye all.
Shall I see you then no more?

All these myrmidons contributed to that pit
enjoyment of which I delight to think, and so
did those profound critics of whom I have spoken
above, and to whose strictures one used to listen
over the back of the bench when the act-drop
was down. Poor old Drury! Going there, some
weeks since, with the view of chronicling any
small-beer that might turn up in that direction,
I found myself in an atmosphere of gunpowder
before I knew where I was, and presently a horse
came thundering over some sounding wooden
rocks, and over a wooden bridge, and—in short,
it was too small a tap for even my chronicling it.
But it was piteous to think of the Drury Lane
of the past and of the present. As to the future,
my chronicle does not extend to that.

But the Legitimate Drama, properly so called,
comprised other and lighter matter than the
plays of Shakespeare, Otway, Massinger, or
Kotzebue. It is not necessary—at least, not
indispensable—to wear buskin and toga, and to
perform the feat called "taking the stage," in
order to be in order. The five-act comedies of
Colman and of Sheridan, and even those of
Oliver Goldsmith, objected to as too farcical at
the time of their production, belong fairly to the
Legitimate Drama, and so do the Hunchback and
the Love Chase of more recent days. Is there
any company that could be got together now
which would act those plays as they were acted
in days gone by?

It is not simply praising what is past and
over for the sake of doing so, to say that those
plays could not be acted now as they were
formerly. In all the arts the power of each succeeding
age expresses itself in a different form to
that in which it was shown in the preceding era.
In all the arts there seems to be an epoch when
one particular phase is developed, cultivated,
brought to perfection, and abandoned; its
reaching perfection being the inevitable
prelude to its decline and abandonment. Our business
in this world, seems to be more to learn new
things than to practise what we have already
mastered.

The day of the Legitimate Drama has been
a long one. For more than a hundred years
it lived and prospered. From the days of
Garrick to the time when Farren left the stage,
what masters there were of theatrical art!
What perfection was attained in the period
between the appearance of the first-mentioned of
these heroes and the disappearance of the last.
It was enough. What more could be done?