SECRETARY OF THE MANAGING COMMITTEE
OF DRURY-LANE PLAYHOUSE.
Sir,
To the gewgaw fetters of rhyme (invented by the monks to enslave the people) I have a rooted objection. I have therefore written an address for your theatre in plain, homespun, yeoman's prose; in the doing whereof hope I am swayed by nothing but an independent wish to open the eyes of this gulled people, to prevent a repetition of the dramatic bamboozling they have hitherto laboured under. If you like what I have done, and mean to make use of it, I don't want any such aristocratic reward as a piece of plate with two griffins sprawling upon it, or a dog and a jackass fighting for a ha'p'worth of gilt gingerbread, or any such Bartholomew-fair nonsense. All I ask is, that the door-keepers of your playhouse may take all the sets of my Register now on hand, and force every body who enters your doors to buy one, giving afterwards a debtor and creditor account of what they have received, post-paid, and in due course remitting me the money and unsold Registers, carriage-paid.
I am, &c.
W. C.[13]
IN THE CHARACTER OF
A HAMPSHIRE FARMER.
——Rabidâ qui concitus irâ
Implevit pariter ternis latratibus auras,
Et sparsit virides spumis albentibus agros.