[ON THE CUSTOM OF HISSING AT THE THEATRES, WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF A CLUB OF DAMNED AUTHORS]
(1811)
Mr. Reflector, I am one of those persons whom the world has thought proper to designate by the title of Damned Authors. In that memorable season of dramatic failures, 1806-7, in which no fewer, I think, than two tragedies, four comedies, one opera, and three farces, suffered at Drury-lane theatre, I was found guilty of constructing an afterpiece, and was damned.
Against the decision of the public in such instances there can be no appeal. The Clerk of Chatham might as well have protested against the decision of Cade and his followers, who were then the public. Like him I was condemned, because I could write.
Not but it did appear to some of us, that the measures of the popular tribunal at that period savoured a little of harshness and of the summum jus. The public mouth was early in the season fleshed upon the Vindictive Man, and some pieces of that nature, and it retained through the remainder of it a relish of blood. As Dr. Johnson would have said; sir, there was a habit of sibilation in the house.
Still less am I disposed to inquire into the reason of the comparative lenity, on the other hand, with which some pieces were treated, which, to indifferent judges, seemed at least as much deserving of condemnation as some of those which met with it. I am willing to put a favourable construction upon the votes that were given against us; I believe that there was no bribery or designed partiality in the case;—only "our nonsense did not happen to suit their nonsense;" that was all.
But against the manner in which the public on these occasions think fit to deliver their disapprobation, I must and ever will protest.
Sir, imagine——but you have been present at the damning of a piece——those who never had that felicity, I beg them to imagine—a vast theatre, like that which Drury-lane was, before it was a heap of dust and ashes (I insult not over its fallen greatness, let it recover itself when it can for me, let it lift up its towering head once more, and take in poor authors to write for it, hic cœstus artemque repono)—a theatre like that, filled with all sorts of disgusting sounds,—shrieks, groans, hisses, but chiefly the last, like the noise of many waters, or that which Don Quixote heard from the fulling mills, or that wilder combination of devilish sounds which St. Anthony listened to in the wilderness.
O, Mr. Reflector, is it not a pity, that the sweet human voice, which was given man to speak with, to sing with, to whisper tones of love in, to express compliance, to convey a favour, or to grant a suit—that voice, which in a Siddons, or a Braham, rouses us, in a Syren Catalani charms and captivates us,—that the musical, expressive human voice should be converted into a rival of the noises of silly geese, and irrational venomous snakes!
I shall never forget the sounds on my night; I never before that time fully felt the reception which the Author of All Ill in the Paradise Lost meets with from the critics in the pit, at the final close of his Tragedy upon the Human Race—though that, alas! met with too much success—