to find with the costumes of any of the
dramatic company. Neither was there
anything in the proceedings of the clowns
calling for extraordinary remark.

Your Commissioner deems it needless to
multiply examples of his experience. In
Hoxton, he found another great Theatre,
admirably designed, built, and managed.
Several pantomimes are on his list; but
one was so like another, that his Shoreditch
report may stand for all. They were
inoffensive, decorous, and carefully done.

REPORT THE SIXTH.

YOUR Commissioner's researches in the
region of burlesque remain. He is unable
to approach this portion of his subject
with any great degree of satisfaction.
Your Commissioner, yielding to pressure
from hungry boxkeepers, became the
purchaser of several "books of the burlesque."
Bitterly does he regret the shillings thus
expended: tearfully does he caution the
public against so fatal an error. He offers
the solemn warning from the depths of his
dismal experience: Listen, but do not read.
As burlesque was a dozen years ago, so is
it now. The same jokes, the same situations,
the same business, occasionally the
same stories. With each successive repetition
the thing appears to have become
weaker, until a point has been reached
beyond which Your Commissioner trusts
that the force of feebleness can no further
go. As the burlesque writers have, in most
cases, gone to the Music Hall for their
music, so occasionally they appear to have
adopted the style of the gentlemen who
provide words for the " comiques." Your
Commissioner, but for his regard for your
Lordship's feelings, could quote from his
collection of books of burlesques, effusions
here and there, in comparison with which
even the ditty of Tommy Dodd, or Up in
a Balloon, can claim a sort of literary merit.
This deplorable state of things appears to
be, in some way, the Nemesis inseparable
from burlesque, and not the result of
incompetence in the authors, inasmuch as
many of those gentlemen have done, and
still do, real good work in other departments
of art, dramatic and otherwise.

Burlesques undoubtedly rely largely on
the introduction, by the lady members of
the company, of very vigorous dancing;
the flourishing of green satin boots is a
most important element in their success.
But the "break- down" and the "walk
round", though almost always slangy and
occasionally disagreeable, cannot with any
fairness or reason be called indecent. There
are very many more of such dances than
was once the case; and many charming
young ladies figure in tights and little
boots, who have nothing whatever to do
with the subject matter of the burlesque,
until the particular scene occurs in which
their dancing powers are called into action.
They are engaged, in fact, to dance and to
look well. At the New Goahead Theatre
this matter particularly impressed Your
Commissioner, and it became distinctly
clear to him that the burlesque at this
house is a " leg piece." But leg pieces are
not the invention of the present epoch, and
Your Commissioner has faint remembrance
of an Opera House near the Haymarket, in
which, and an Omnibus-Box from which,
such things have been seen ere now by
some of your Lordship's friends. However
glad he would be to have a little more
humour and good acting, and a little less
reliance on bold dancing and costume, he
does not think the present state of things
justificatory of any special hysterical
outbreak in behalf of the public morals.

That the true spirit of burlesque is
extinct, and that the theatre possesses no
artists capable of presenting a burlesque
picture, carefully and humorously touched,
Your Commissioner denies. The performance
of a travesty of one of the masterpieces
of German romanticism, some few
months back, was marked by an
extraordinary whimsicality and drollery on the
part of the gentleman principally concerned,
and by a refined humour and most
captivating grace and elegance on that of
the lady, that would alone have been
sufficient refutation of any such statement.
Neither has the excellent fooling attending
the adventures of one Captain Crosstree
escaped Your Commissioner's grateful notice.
Some of our best comedians occasionally
play in burlesque, and, though frequently
placed in circumstances unworthy of their
powers, they have the Art to bring out
good results from unpromising materials.
And it is a noteworthy fact that of the
early members of the excellent company
which made the Feathers Theatre the
resort of lovers of comedy, two at least began
their London stage career in burlesque,
and for some time were not suspected by
their audiences to possess any higher order
of talent. Again, Your Commissioner is
of opinion that the public quickly find out
what is good, and that, irrespective of the
number of legs on view, they will go and
see it.

Your Commissioner, to sum up, begs to
state that he has observed the skirts of