Cibber contrasts French and English audiences to the disadvantage of the latter; but I think he is wrong in his conclusions. "At the tragedy of 'Zaire,'" he says, "while the celebrated Mdlle. Gossin was delivering a soliloquy, a gentleman was seized with a sudden fit of coughing, which gave the actress some surprise and interruption, and, his fit increasing, she was forced to stand silent so long that it drew the eyes of the uneasy audience upon him; when a French gentleman, leaning forward to him, asked him if this actress had given him any particular offence, that he took so public an occasion to resent it? The English gentleman, in the utmost surprise, assured him, so far from it, that he was a particular admirer of her performance; that his malady was his real misfortune, and that if he apprehended any return of it, he would rather quit his seat than disoblige either the actor or the audience." Colley adds, that he had seen this "publick decency" of the French theatre carried so far "that a gentleman in their Second Loge, or Middle Gallery, being observed to sit forward himself, while a lady sat behind him, a loud number of voices called out to him from the pit—Place à la Dame! Place à la Dame! when the person so offending, either not apprehending the meaning of the clamour, or possibly being some John Trot, who feared no man alive, the noise was continued for several minutes; nor were the actors, though ready on the stage, suffered to begin the play till this unbred person was laughed out of his seat, and had placed the lady before him."
This, however, was but the mere arrogance of the pit, towards which, had the lady stood for a moment, with her back turned, the polite gentlemen there would have roared lustily, as under similar circumstances they do at the present time, "Face au parterre!" And as for the tenderness of the old French audiences for their actors, I have already given some taste of its quality, and have only to add here, that the French magistrates were once compelled to issue a decree wherein "Every person is prohibited from doing any violence in the Theatre de Bourgogne, in Paris, during the time any piece is performing, as likewise from throwing stones, dust, or anything which may put the audience into an uproar, or create any tumult."
The decree of 1704 for keeping the stage clear does not appear to have been universally observed, for, on the opening of the first theatre in Covent Garden, in December 1732, I find it announced that, on account of the great demand for places, the pit and boxes were laid together at 5s., the galleries at 2s. and 1s., and to prevent the stage from being crowded, admission thereto was raised to half a guinea. In the former year, to appear at the theatre in a red coat and a laced hat, indicated a rural beau who was behind his time, and had not yet laid aside a fashion as old as the days of Great Nassau. Dress, however, was indispensable. Swift writes to Stella, on the 31st of August 1711, "Dilly and I walked to Kensington, to Lady Mountjoy, who invited us to dinner. He returned soon to go to the play, it being the last that will be acted for some time. He dresses himself like a beau, and no doubt makes a fine figure." No doubt that Dillon Ashe was dressed in his best that night, on which he went to Drury, and saw "Love's a Jest," with Pack in Sam Gaymood, and Mrs. Porter as Lady Single.
As the government procured the passing of the Licensing Act less for the sake of morality than to save administration from the shafts of satire, so the public took it unkindly of them, but unreasonably revenged themselves on innocent authors. No secret was made of the determination of playgoers to damn the first piece that should be stigmatised with the license of the Lord Chamberlain. That piece happened to be the "Nest of Plays," by Hildebrand Jacob, represented at Covent Garden, in January 1738, which was damned accordingly. But the public sense of wrong was not yet appeased. The "Parricide" subsequently was condemned, solely because it was a licensed piece. "That my enemies," says William Shirley, the author, "came resolved to execute before trial, may be gathered from their behaviour ere the play began, for at five o'clock they engaged and overthrew the candles in the music-room, and called a council of war, whether they should attack the harpsichord or not; but to your good fortune," he adds, addressing Rich, "it was carried in the negative. Their expelling ladies from the pit, and sending for wine to drink, were likewise strong indications of their arbitrary and violent dispositions." It is to be observed, however, of a few condemned pieces of this period, that the authors rather abused their opportunity of ascribing their ill fortune solely to the unpopularity of the Licensing Act.
The ushering of ladies out of the pit was one of the formal indications that serious mischief was afoot. This was the first ceremony observed at Drury Lane in January 1740, when the riot took place consequent on the non-appearance of a French dancer, Madame Chateauneuf. When the ladies had been sent home, a noble marquis suggested, and warmly recommended, that it would be well and proper to set fire to the house! This atrocious proposal was considered but not adopted. The aristocratic rioters contented themselves with destroying the musical instruments, fittings, and costly adornments, sweeping down the panel partitions of the boxes, and finally pulling down the royal arms. The offence, however, was condoned, on the most noble marquis sending £100 to the manager, who submitted to defray the remainder of the cost of reparation rather than further provoke his excellent patrons.
The mixture of ferocity and gallantry in the audiences of these times was remarkable. When Miller, most unlucky of clergymen, produced his farce of the "Coffee-House," he caused the Temple to heave with indignation. Under the temple gate there was a coffee-house, kept by Mrs. Yarrow and her daughter, and as there was not only a similar pair in Miller's piece, but a woodcut on the title-page of the printed copy, which bore some likeness to the snug little place where Templars loved to congregate, those gentlemen took offence as at an insult levelled at their fair hostesses, and went down in a body to the theatre, whence they procured the expulsion of the piece. Nor did they ever suffer a subsequent play of Miller's to succeed. The Templars never forgave him his unintentional caricature of the buxom hostess, and Hebe her daughter, who presided over the aromatic cups dispensed by them beneath the Temple gates. In contests like these, where opposition was expected, it was no unusual thing for one or both parties to hire a body of professional "bruisers." The side which possessed the greatest number of these Bashi-Bazouks generally carried the day. When the town took sides, in 1743, in the quarrel between Garrick and Macklin, where the right was altogether with the former, Dr. Barrowby headed a phalanx of sturdy Macklinites; but Garrick, or Garrick's friends, sent against them a formidable band of thirty boxers, who went in, cracked skulls, cleared the pit, and established tranquillity!
It is curious to mark, at a time when audiences bore with gross wit, and were accustomed, on slight provocation, to resort to acts of violence, how sensitive they were on other points. Poor Hughes, who died on the first night of the representation of his "Siege of Damascus," in 1720, was compelled to remodel the character of Phocyas, a Christian who turns Moslem, as the managers considered that the audience would not tolerate the sight of him after his apostasy. So Charles Killigrew, Master of the Revels, cut out the whole of the first act from Cibber's adaptation of "Richard III." on the ground that the Jacobite portion of the audience, in the distress of King Henry, would be painfully or angrily reminded of the sorrows of King James. After all, susceptible as audiences occasionally were, the sensibilities of the gallery remained untouched, or evidence of the fact was offered in an exaggerated form. When Dryden's Cleomenes, or Rowe's Jane Shore, used to complain of the hunger under which they suffered, it was the humour of the "gods" to fling bread down upon the stage by way of showing their sympathy, or their want of it.
"All the parts will be played to the best advantage, the whole of the company being now in town," was no unusual bait thrown out to win an audience. Sometimes the house would fill to see, on great occasions, the foremost folk in the land, fops and fine ladies occupying the amphitheatre erected on the stage, and the players acting between a double audience. What should we think now of an author taking a benefit, obtaining at it the presence of the heir to the throne, and delivering an oration on the condition and merits of the royal family and the state of the nation as regarded foreign and domestic relations? Yet this is what Durfey did, to the delight and edification of his hearers, at Drury Lane, in 1715.
On other occasions plays were given "for the entertainment of the new Toasts and several Ladies of Quality," whereat crowds flocked to behold the pretty nymphs whose names consecrated the flowing bumpers of the beaux, and the married ladies who had enjoyed that honour in their earlier days.