share in all the plague and trouble of theatrical Dang. I am sure, Mrs Dangle, you are no loser by 60 Mrs Dang. Yes; but wasn't the farce damned, 70 Mr Dangle? And to be sure it is extremely pleasant to have one's house made the motley rendezvous of all the lackeys of literature; the very high 'Change of trading authors and jobbing critics?—Yes, my drawing-room is an absolute register office for candidate actors, and poets without character. Then to be continually alarmed with misses and maʼams piping hysteric changes on Juliets and Dorindas, Pollys, and Ophelias; and the very furniture 80 trembling at the probationary starts and un provoked rants of would-be Richards and Dang. Mercy! Mrs Dangle! an alarming crisis as this too-when, if you : 90 100 being at the head of a band of critics, who take upon them to decide for the whole town, whose opinion and patronage all writers solicit, and whose recommendation no manager dares 110 refuse. Mrs Dang. Ridiculous! Both managers and authors of the least merit laugh at your pretensions. The public is their critic-without whose fair approbation they know no play can rest on the stage, and with whose applause they welcome such attacks as yours, and laugh at the malice of them, where they can't at the wit. Dang. Very well, madam-very well! Enter Servant. Ser. Mr Sneer, sir, to wait on you. Dang. You are enough to provoke Enter Sneer. Ha! my dear Sneer, I am vastly glad to see 120 Mrs Dang. Good morning to you, sir. Dang. Mrs Dangle and I have been diverting 130 ourselves with the papers. Pray, Sneer, won't you go to Drury Lane Theatre the first night Sneer. Yes; but I suppose one shan't be able to get sequence. Dang. So now my plagues are beginning. Sneer. Ay, I am glad of it, for now you'll be happy. Why, my dear Dangle, it is a pleasure Dang. It's a great trouble-yet, egad, it's pleasant dozen people call on me at breakfast-time, whose faces I never saw before, nor ever desire 150 to see again. Sneer. That must be very pleasant indeed! Dang. And not a week but I receive fifty letters, and not a line in them about any business of my own. Sneer. An amusing correspondence! Dang. [Reading.] Bursts into tears, and exit.- Sneer. No, that's a genteel comedy, not a translation -only taken from the French: it is written in 160 Mrs Dang. Well, if they had kept to that, I should there was some edification to be got from those Sneer. I am quite of your opinion, Mrs Dangle: the Mrs Dang. It would have been more to the credit Sneer. Undoubtedly, madam; and hereafter perhaps to have had it recorded, that in the midst of a luxurious and dissipated age, they preserved two |