Jn. B Buckstone
-JOHN BALDWIN BUCKSTONE-
Besides, there are so many more distractions; a more widely spread habit of reading, more music, more art, more society, a fuller life. The theatre was formerly—it is still to many—the only school of conversation, wit, manners, and sentiment, the chief excitement which took them out of their daily lives, the most delightful, the most entrancing manner of spending the evening. If the theatre were the same to the people of London as it used to be, the average attendance, counting the visitors, would be not 20,000 but 120,000.
The reason why some of the houses were open for six months only was that the Lord Chancellor granted a licence for that period only, except to the patent houses. The Haymarket was a summer house, from April to October; the Adelphi a winter house, from October to April.
The most fashionable of the houses was Her Majesty’s, where only Italian Opera was performed. Everybody in society was obliged to have a box for the season, for which sums were paid varying with the place in the house and the rank and wealth of the tenant. Thus the old Duke of Gloucester used to pay three hundred guineas for the season. On levée days and drawing-rooms the fashionable world went to the Opera in their Court dresses, feathers, and diamonds, and all—a very moving spectacle. Those who only took a box in order to keep up appearances, and because it was necessary for one in society to have a box, used to sell seats—commonly called bones, because a round numbered bone was the ticket of admission—to their friends; sometimes they let their box for a single night, a month, or the whole season, by means of the agents, so that, except for the honour of it, as the man said when the bottom of his sedan-chair fell out, one might as well have had none at all.
The prices of admission to the theatres were very much less than obtain at the present day. At Drury Lane the boxes and stalls, of which there were two or three rows only, were 7s. each; the pit was 3s. 6d., the upper boxes 2s., and the gallery 1s. At Covent Garden, where they were great at spectacle, with performing animals, the great Bunn being lessee, the prices were lower, the boxes being 4s., the pit 2s., the upper boxes 1s. 6d., and gallery 1s. At the Haymarket the boxes were 5s., the pit 3s., and the gallery 1s. 6d.
LISTON AS ‘PAUL PRY’
(From a Drawing by George Cruikshank)