We have dar’d to damn a pantomime upon a boxing night.
“’Twas a horrid ‘Introduction,’ as you all, my brethren, know,
And the pantomimic business only made the thing more slow.
“All the tricks were void of humour; all the songs were sorry rhyme,
Sum up all, we never witness’d such a wretched pantomime.
“Though the audience bore it calmly, yet they knew as well as we,
That so dreadful a concoction they had never met to see.
“But they dar’d not speak their minds out—they believed it was a crime,
A most horrid profanation to condemn a pantomime.
“Five-act plays without a scruple they have driven from the stage,