Fontainbleau; a comic opera. In three acts

M RS CASEY—HERE YOUR HONOR HERE'S YOUR HONOR'S BILL. ACT III SCENE I PUBLISHD BY LONGMAN & CO.
WILLIAM SAVAGE, PRINTER, LONDON.
The title of this play gives a sensation of both pain and pleasure.—Fontainbleau was a favourite residence of a number of the French kings, and the spot where the princes of the blood resorted, with all the nobility of the land, when the sports of the field, or the course, were the particular objects of their pastime. Pastime is a word no longer used in the vocabulary of the court of France—Every moment has now its impending cares, and teems with the fate of empires!
At the time this opera was written, (in 1784) the late Duke of Orleans frequently visited England, and was remarkable for his passionate attachment to British modes and manners. The character of Colonel Epaulette, in this drama, was supposed to be founded on this, his highness's extravagant partiality. There is that trait, indeed, of the duke's propensity, in Epaulette; but in all other respects, the colonel neither soars, nor grovels, with his royal archetype, in any one action of notoriety.
The author would not take the liberty to characterise a foreigner, without dealing, at the same time, equally free with one of his own countrymen. The part of Lackland was taken more exactly from life, than that of Epaulette, from a gentleman well known abroad by every English traveller; and whose real name is so very like the fictitious one here adopted, that a single letter removed, would make the spelling just the same.
The reader will observe in this Lackland, so much of debased nature, and of whimsical art; so much of what he has probably met with upon journeys, or amongst common intruders at home, that he will regret, that the author, in his delineation, swerves now and then from that standard of truth, to which he, possibly, at first meant to adhere; and for the sake of dramatic effect, has made this hero, in effrontery, proceed somewhat too far beyond its usual limits.