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share in all the plague and trouble of theatrical
property, without the profit, or even the credit
of the abuse that attends it.

Dang. I am sure, Mrs Dangle, you are no loser by 60
it, however; you have all the advantages of it.
Mightn't you, last winter, have had the reading
of the new pantomime a fortnight previous to its
performance? And doesn't Mr Fosbrook let
you take places for a play before it is advertised,
and set you down for a box for every new
piece through the season? And didn't my
friend, Mr Smatter, dedicate his last farce to
you at my particular request, Mrs Dangle?

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
Hamlets!-And what is worse than all, now
that the manager has monopolized the Opera
House, haven't we the signors and signoras
calling here, sliding their smooth semibreves,
and gargling glib divisions in their outlandish
throats-with foreign emissaries and French
spies, for aught I know, disguised like fiddlers
and figure-dancers ?

Dang. Mercy! Mrs Dangle!
Mrs Dang. And to employ yourself so idly at such

an alarming crisis as this too-when, if you
had the least spirit, you would have been at the
head of one of the Westminster associations-
or trailing a volunteer pike in the Artillery
Ground! But you-o' my conscience, I be-
lieve, if the French were landed to-morrow,
your first inquiry would be, whether they
had brought a theatrical troop with them.
Dang. Mrs Dangle, it does not signify-I say the
stage is the Mirror of Nature, and the actors
are the abstract and brief chronicles of the
time and pray what can a man of sense study
better?-Besides, you will not easily persuade
me that there is no credit or importance in

:

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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. Oh, show Mr Sneer up.-[Exit Servant.]
Plague on 't, now we must appear loving and
affectionate, or Sneer will hitch us into a story.
Mrs Dang. With all my heart; you can't be more
ridiculous than you are.

Dang. You are enough to provoke

Enter Sneer.

Ha! my dear Sneer, I am vastly glad to see
you. My dear, here's Mr Sneer.

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
of Puff's tragedy?

Sneer. Yes; but I suppose one shan't be able to get
in, for on the first night of a new piece they
always fill the house with orders to support it.
But here, Dangle, I have brought you two
pieces, one of which you must exert yourself
to make the managers accept, I can tell you
that; for 'tis written by a person of con- 140

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
to see how you enjoy your volunteer fatigue,
and your solicited solicitations.

Dang. It's a great trouble-yet, egad, it's pleasant
too. Why, sometimes of a morning I have a

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.-
What, is this a tragedy?

Sneer. No, that's a genteel comedy, not a translation

-only taken from the French: it is written in 160
a style which they have lately tried to run down ;
the true sentimental, and nothing ridiculous in
it from the beginning to the end.

Mrs Dang. Well, if they had kept to that, I should
not have been such an enemy to the stage;

there was some edification to be got from those
pieces, Mr Sneer!

Sneer. I am quite of your opinion, Mrs Dangle: the
theatre, in proper hands, might certainly be
made the school of morality; but now, I am 170
sorry to say it, people seem to go there
principally for their entertainment!

Mrs Dang. It would have been more to the credit
of the managers to have kept it in the other
line.

Sneer. Undoubtedly, madam; and hereafter perhaps to have had it recorded, that in the midst of a luxurious and dissipated age, they preserved two

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