"Garrick repose à côté de leur rois!"


Yet, notwithstanding all this clamour of popularity--all this
infatuation--there is no branch of the arts so grossly neglected in
England as the drama. It is no longer the fashion in London to attend the
theatres. Owing partly to the increase of private amusements, and partly
to the late hours gradually adopted during the reign of George the Fourth,
the custom of play-going has declined among the higher classes, and
naturally produces the reaction of bad pieces and indifferent performers.
Even a clever actor, when satisfied that he is to receive judgment from an
unrefined and uneducated audience, will degenerate and grow slovenly; and
from what I have observed of the London stage, I see it is the custom to
daub for the galleries, or to creep through the business under cover of a
cold, tame mediocrity. Without the slightest patronage from the court or
substantial encouragement from the fosterers of literary merit, these
luckless personages are expected to attempt the same exertions and intense
study, which is rewarded, in foreign countries, by the most flattering and
judicious attention; as well as by a pension, to cheer the infirmities of
old age. Although tolerably well paid by his manager, the English actor
has the mortification of being tyrannized and insulted by the gallery, and
overlooked by the higher classes. A few persons of rank and fortune are
provided with private boxes at the national theatres; but these are
usually let by the night to plebeian tenants. It is rare indeed to observe
a family of distinction in the dress circle of either Drury Lane or Covent
Garden; while the French play is never deficient in a fashionable audience.

The Opera, too, is nightly becoming more crowded; while at the two patent
theatres "a beggarly account of empty boxes," and an equally beggarly