[135] Madame Celesia's play of Almida, acted at Drury Lane.
[136] The Ridotto al fresco was introduced at Vauxhall in 1732. The word is said to be derived from the Latin reductus, and to mean "music reduced to a full score." It came to mean an entertainment of music and dancing, and was used as a synonym for masquerades. Bramston, in The Man of Taste, speaks of the way in which the use of a foreign word sanctioned things which in plain English would have seemed objectionable—
"In Lent, if masquerades displease the town,
Call 'em ridottos, and they still go down."
The word survived in the Redoutensaal of Vienna and the Redoutentänze of famous composers. Other authorities derive the use of the word from the sense in which it is employed by Dante, i.e. a "shelter," or "place of refuge." Hence it came to mean a "place of convivial meeting." In Udino's Italian-French-German Dictionary (Frankfurt, 1674) the German equivalent is given as Spielhaus. The transition from this to "ball-room" is not difficult. Byron in Beppo correctly defines the popular meanings of the word—
"They went to the Ridotto—'tis a hall
Where people dance and sup, and dance again;
Its proper name, perhaps, were a masked ball,
But that's of no importance to my strain."
[137] Ralph Verney, Viscount Fermanagh, and second Earl Verney in the Peerage of Ireland, formerly M.P. for Carmarthen, was at this time M.P. for Buckinghamshire. At his death, in 1791, the title became extinct.