And, indeed, the author demands all our
sympathy, with whatever delicacy we may
intimate to him that his genius does not lie
in the direction of the stage, or however
tenderly we may refer him back to his desk,
and recommend him to try his fortune a
second time. He has bestowed nights of
most anxious thought upon, he has undergone
days of labour in, the composition of his
work. He will be paid for his labour; but
only if he can delight an audience, or, at any
rate, please them. He hopes to do so. Call
this not an author's vanity; for most men, of
all professions, are ill judges of what has cost
them much time and great pains to accomplish.
If a dramatist got his plot by inspiration,
and could stamp his characters and evolve his
plot instantaneously, he would the better
discern his chances of success. Well, then,
imagine the play accepted; the actors pleased
with their parts; the curtain up; the curtain
down. See the pallid poet in that side-box.
Be sure the ebbs and flows of his drama,
during the performance, have had their
copies in the advances and recessions of his
heart. And now he casts a hurried and wild
glance at the audience,

"Expecting
Their universal shout and high applause
To fill his ear; when, contrary, he hears
On all sides, from innumerable tongues,
A dismal universal hiss, the sign
Of public scorn."

It is this—this "sign of public scorn"—
which we must at once away with. Let it be
a matter of common consent that such
degrading marks of public displeasure shall be
reserved for exhibitions of gross immorality
or licentiousness, to which they are alone
applicable, and for the condemnation of
which a deaf and uninitiated spectator, on
the first night of a bad play, would naturally
suppose them to be designed.

"If I have unearned luck
To escape the serpent's tongue,"

says Shakespeare, "I will do better another
time." This he adds in effect, and this was
pleaded by Puck to the audience of the
Midsummer Night's Dream! And Prospero beseeches
the groundlings to be merciful to The
Tempest!

When I read that some of Jonson's and
Beaumont and Fletcher's plays were condemned
on a first hearing, I cannot but
acknowledge that I feel a particular concern,
especially for the former. While I admit
that some of his later plays are deficient in
that interest which an audience has, perhaps,
a right to expect, still Old Ben's age, his
misery, his poverty, his renown as a scholar
and the author of four comedies—in their
way incomparable—should have protected
him against the "serpent's tongue." The
commendatory verses prefixed to his printed
plays, from the pens of his brother dramatists,
must have afforded a sorry consolation
to the outraged poet. It gives me a twinge
to read the following:—"Dryden, who was
present on the first night of Cowley's Cutler
of Coleman Street, related to Dennis, the
critic, that when they told him how little
favour had been shown him, he received the
news of his ill success not with so much
firmness as might have been expected from so
great a man." If being told of the condemnation
of his amusing comedy so affected the
melancholy Cowley, what would have been
his feelings had he seen and heard the operation
as it was practised by the fathers of the
Molochs of the next age. As it was, he
never again tried the stage; neither did Congreve,
after the condemnation of his Way of
the World. There is a story that the author,
hearing behind the scenes the hideous marks
of disapproval, snatched the copy from the
prompter's hand, rushed upon the stage,
and forbade the actors to proceed, adding
that the public was not worthy of such a
play. The tale has been doubted, but it is
probable. The hard-hearted licentiousness
of this comedy was no cause of its ill reception;
and Congreve might well have
thought, with Dryden—

"Sure there's a fate in plays, and 'tis in vain
To write while these malignant planets reign:
Some very foolish infuence rules the pit,
Not always kind to sense, or just to wit."

The Way of the World contains more wit,
perhaps, than any comedy in the English
language.

If anybody wishes to know how a sensitive
man of genius can be touched by hisses, cat-calls,
and other discordant exponents of
summary criticism, let him turn to Mr. Forster's
Life of Oliver Goldsmith, where he will see
such a laceration of the poet's feelings, on the
disapproval of some scenes in his comedy of
The Good-natured Man, as will, I am sure,
effectually deter him from ever again
sibilating, off-off-ing, and roaring down any play
whose only fault, however grievous it may
be, is dulness.

Charles Lamb, in a letter to a friend, has
recorded the fate—and the manner of it—of
his farce of Mr. H—. It will be seen that
he would fain make light of it, but his
pleasantry is somewhat hysterical. "Hang 'em,
how they hissed! It was not a hiss neither,
but a sort of a frantic yell, like a congregation
of mad geese, with roaring sometimes,
like bears; mops and mows like apes;
sometimes snakes, that hissed me into madness . .
. . . . Mercy on us, that God should give his
favourite children—men—mouths to speak
with, to discourse rationally, to promise
smoothly, to encourage warmly, to counsel
wisely; to sing with, to drink with, and to
kiss with, and that they should turn them
into the mouths of adders, bears, wolves,
hyænas, and whistle like tempests, and emit
breath through them like distillations of
aspic poison; to asperse and vilify the innocent