CHAPTER V.

THE OLD RÉGIME AND THE NEW.

OW do you employ your time now?" a lady of quality is asked in the early days of the eighteenth century.

"I lie in bed, " she says, "till noon, dress all the afternoon, dine in the evening, and play at cards till midnight."

How do you spend the Sabbath?”

"In chit-chat.".

"What do you talk of?"

"New fashions and new plays."

"How often do you go to Church?"

"Twice a year or oftener, according as my husband gives me new clothes."

"Why do you go to church when you have new clothes?"

To see other people's finery, and to show my own, and to laugh at those scurvy, out-of-fashion creatures that come there for devotion."

Pray, Madam, what books do you read?"

"I read lew'd plays and winning romances." *

*From the English Lady's Catechism, first published in 1703.

T

This very truthful lady whose frankness gives a fairly correct idea of the daily habits of contemporary women of fashion, might have added that she went to the theatre, presumably Drury Lane or Lincoln's Inn Fields, on the two or three evenings in the week when performances were given, and that when she saw a "lew'd play" she was better pleased than if the bill were Shakespearian. In all probability she belonged to the bevy of coquettish damsels whom Addison has immortalized in one of his brightest essays.

"Some years ago," he relates in the Spectator,* “I was at the tragedy of Macbeth, and unfortunately placed myself under a woman of quality that is since dead, who, as I found by the noise she made, was newly returned from France.† A little before the rising of the curtain, she broke out into a loud soliloquy, 'When will the dear witches enter?' and immediately upon their first appearance, asked a lady that sat three boxes from her on her right hand, if those witches were not charming creatures. A little after, as Betterton was in one of the finest speeches of the play, she shook her fan at another lady who sat as far on the left hand, and told her with a whisper that might be heard all over the pit, we must not expect to see Balloon to-night.' Not long after, calling out to a young baronet by his name, who sat three seats before me, she asked him

* No. 45, April 21, 1711.

† A trip to France was considered very comme il faut in Addison's day.

whether Macbeth's wife was still alive; and before he could give an answer, fell a talking of the ghost of Banquo. She had by this time formed a little audience to herself, and fixed the attention of all about her. But as I had a mind to hear the play, I got out of the sphere of her impertinence, and planted myself in one of the most remotest corners of the pit."

Addison was not the only unfortunate who had experiences of this sort-for the matter of that, the gentle art of talking, in and out of the boxes, and drawing attention from the stage, is still cultivated in some quarters—and it must have been a hard thing in those days to keep the uninterrupted run of a performance. There seems to have been a charming absence of selfrestraint among the patrons of the drama, between the disturbances so often created in the upper gallery by the servants of the aristocratic visitors, and the talking, walking about the theatre, and general want of consideration among the "quality" themselves. The

plain people" in the middle class of life, who were given to neither coquetry, gallantry, nor good clothes, and their quiet, studious superiors who went to the play for the play's sake, must have launched many a secret, but nevertheless fervent anathema against the frivolous disturbers of their peace. But democracy was not as potent a factor in the theatre as out of it, and the noisy airs and graces of the women, the staring, the drivelling gossip and impertinences of the men,

THE OLD RÉGIME AND THE NEW.

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the flirting with the pretty orange girls,* and the general arrogance of upper-tendom, went on unchecked.

But the greatest confusion came from a custom which Anne, who was no enthusiastic admirer of the theatre, but who had a keen sense of decorum and decency, tried hard to correct. This was in allowing members of the audience to sit on the stage during a performance, mingle with the actors, stroll behind the scenes, and even penetrate into the dressing-rooms of the actresses. It is hard to picture such a helter-skelter state of affairs in the nineteenth century, when even the meanest theatre has stringent regulations as to the admission of outsiders into the quarters of the performers. Imagine Mr. Irving acting Hamlet with some of his audience nonchalantly reclining on chairs or sofas placed near the wings; or worse still, think of emptyheaded specimens of the jeuness dorée calmly walking around the players and almost jostling them, while the latter were speaking their lines; then stumbling out among the scene-shifters, and finally ending by superintending the toilets and make-up of the feminine members of the company. Yet an anomaly like this was patiently endured when Anne came to the throne, probably because the public was hardened to the whole wretched business. But the incongruity of it gradually dawned upon the theatre-goers, and the

* The ostensible duty of the orange girls was to serve refreshments between the acts.

Queen herself undertook to institute a much-needed reform in this direction.

Whatever may have been the virtues of the sovereign she had no very clear perception of the artistic, and it is evident that her action came from a desire to prevent immorality rather than from any hope to preserve harmony and realism on the stage. That the abuse referred to was calculated to foster a looseness and want of decency in the relation between the actresses and the gentlemen who haunted their apartments is a fact that requires no elaboration. Fully conscious of this, Anne issued a proclamation setting forth that "no person of what quality soever" should presume to go behind the stage, either before, or during the acting of any play." It was further ordered "that no woman be allowed or presume to wear a vizard mask in either of the theatres. And that no person come into either house without paying the prices established for their respective places."

The beaux who thought half the fun of going to the theatre consisted in ogling the actresses behind the scenes or boldly surveying the audience in front, were loth to obey the royal commands. They died hard, as it were, and it was not until about 1712, after another proclamation had been issued, that the practice was discontinued. The brilliant "Dick" Steele must have been delighted when the end came, for he has something to say in a number of the Spectator about the unsolicited performance of a young person who assisted