opening, he was seen walking like a Cæsar down
Bow-street, on his way to the newspaper
offices with paragraphs and letters to influence
and direct the public mind in the way it should
go, and to assure theatre-goers that it was not
by any means the engagement of Madame Catalani
that had induced the obnoxious alteration.

It was Monday, the 18th of September, 1809.
The new theatre, which had been built in nine
months, opened with Macbeth—not one of
Kemble's finest performances— and the musical farce
of the Quaker. The house was crowded, and a
great and suspiciously expectant crowd
collected also round the street doors. The people
in the pit shook down into their places, but
were wrangling, argumentative, jostling, and
restless. The pretty but rather high-coloured
faces in the obnoxious upper tiers looked down
anxious and alarmed; and among the
rustling silks and glossy satins there were rough
angry-looking men, determinately buttoned-up
in great uncouth box-coats. Still, quite
unconscious of their doom, the little victims played.
The apparitions behind the curtain took their
pot of beer cheerfully with the army in Macduff.
Every one in the pit seemed to carry
bludgeons, and the turbulent democracy in the
galleries complained bitterly that the "rake " of
their seats was so steep that of the actors at the
back of the stage they could see only the legs.
Meanwhile, the court physician and the two
murderers sat at the banquet-table discussing a
refreshing quart of half-and-half. Liston joked;
Munden twisted his mouth in extravagant
drollery; and "black Jack," as the greatest
Roman of them all was irreverently called in
the green-room, remained imperturbable, statuesque,
and imperial.

The bell rang—"Hear it not, Duncan, for it
is a knell."—The musicians advanced to the
attack in their unmoved mechanical way, and
the music began. The flute warbled, the drum
vibrated, the trombone was projected into space,
the violins cut capers, the horns blared. The
audience rose and took off their hats, as the whole
vocal power of the house appeared and sang
"God save the King." All went well. Kernble
was right—there was nothing in it after all.

The music ceased, and Mr. Kemble, with
his fine heroic face, strode forward in that
strange Macbeth attire of his to speak the
poetical address for the re-opening. Then
broke forth the storm—chaos had come
again, chaos and old night. It was like Prospero's
island, when Ariel's pack came hurrying
to chase, in their wild hunt, Trinculo,
Caliban, and Stephano. It was like the House
of Commons when it wants to divide, and will
not be bored any more. The men in the drab
coats turned their broad backs to the stage,
or jammed on their hats and leaped upon
seats. They barked like dogs at the full of the
moon; they groaned, they shouted, they screeched
through excruciating cat-calls; they roared,
"Off, off—old prices." They yelled execrations:
they foamed like the people of Ephesus when
the worship of Diana, that brought them all their
money, was denounced by St. Paul. They showed
in fact, violently and loudly, what absence
from the theatre would better have shown,
their dislike to the new prices and the new
constitution of the house. There is no gratitude
in the populace. The public has many pockets,
but no heart.

Those strong black brows of Kemble's
compressed, those dark luminous eyes clouded; but
the proud actor, valuing the "sweet voices"
no more than the "reek of the fen," went on
reciting, in his thoughtful deliberate way, a
prosaic address that claimed the credit of illustrating
Shakespeare better than of old, by finer scenery:

Thus Shakespeare's fire burns brighter than of yore,
And may the stage that boasts him burn no more!

The dull and lifeless verses ended by allusions to
the solidity and expense of the new theatre;
expressing a hope that the attempt to raise
national taste would be repaid by national
liberality.

The play went on in dumb show; the witches'
thunder was drowned by John Bull's. But
whether Macbeth planned Banquo's murder,
presided at the banquet, listened to the knocking
at the south entry, put harness on his back,
slashed desperately at the pertinacious
Macduff, or fell dead on his face, no one listened,
no one cared. When Mrs. Siddons exulted
cruelly in the proposed murder of the royal
guest, or glided on in her ghastly sleep-walk,
the malcontents hooted and clamoured louder
than before; nothing could pacify them.

In vain, too, Munden distorted his irresistible
face in the afterpiece; the cat-calls grew
shriller, the yells for old prices still fiercer.
When the dark curtain fell, two magistrates
from Bow-street came forward to the footlights
as if they had been engaged for a lecture, and
tried to catch the ear of the house. One of them
drew out a paper supposed to be the Riot Act;
but retired before the threatening hisses of the
enraged hydra. Once or twice the police made
raids into the upper gallery, and took up
outrageous democrats, who were held to bail for
appearance at the next sessions. Hours after
the curtain fell, the rioters continued in the
house, calling in vain on the obdurate manager
to return to old prices. In vain fifty soldiers,
on duty at the doors or in the lobby, stormed
violently into the upper gallery to capture the
humbler and more demonstrative rioters; but
the "gods" foiled Mars by clambering down
into the lower gallery, where they were cordially
received by friends mad as bulls at the sight of
the scarlet cloth.

The Times, the next morning, was patriotic
and indignant. "It was a noble sight," it said,
"to see so much just indignation in the public
mind," and it derided the idea that prices were
to be raised to swell the vanity of Mrs. Siddons
and John Kemble, who must, forsooth, swagger
and strut on the boards "with clothes on their
backs worth five hundred pounds." The club
critics, the men about town, the idle
quidnuncs of all ranks, followed suit. Cruel