The visitor is sometimes surprised that the New Theatre contains no boxes; the reason was supplied, in my day, by a famous living actor, who explained that he and his friends had attended a melodrama in the old theatre and had taken an uncontrollable dislike for the villain's trousers. As Æschylus undertook to finish any prologue of Euripides with the words "ληκύθιον ἀπώλεσεν," so this undergraduate party qualified the villain's every boast and confession with the words: "Not in those trousers."
The dialogue ran roughly thus:
Villain. I will carry the girl off and make her my wife——
Interrupters.———————Not in those trousers.
Villain. I will be revenged——
Interrupters.———————Not in those trousers.
Villain. I will stick at nothing——
Interrupters.———————Not in those trousers.
As the curtain fell on the first act, the interrupters leapt from their box on the stage and pursued the villain down the Corn and the High until they captured him on Magdalen Bridge. They then returned to the theatre with the offending trousers but without the villain.
Jowett, as vice-chancellor, decreed that in the new theatre no boxes should be built.