[Footnote A:  One of Cibber’s earlier plays.]

[Footnote B:  Quoted in “Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne.”]

To the fin de siecle playgoer the idea of beginning a performance at so strange an hour seems nothing short of startling, until it be remembered that people of quality were then wont to dine between three and four o’clock of the afternoon.  How they spent the earlier portion of the day is not hard to relate.  The men of fashion rose tardily, feeling none the better, as a rule, for a night at club or tavern, and then lounged about as best they could, visiting, sauntering in the Mall,[A] or otherwise trying to pass the time until dinner.  This solid meal over they were ready for the theatre, where they occasionally arrived in a state of unpleasant exhilaration, damning the play, ogling the women and making themselves as obnoxious as possible to the unfortunates who cared more for the stage than the commonplace audience.

[Footnote A:  “It seem’d to me as if the World was turn’d top-side turvy; for the ladies look’d like undaunted heroes, fit for government or battle, and the gentlemen like a parcel of fawning, flattering fops, that could bear cuckoldom with patience, make a jest of an affront, and swear themselves very faithful and humble servants to the petticoat; creeping and cringing in dishonor to themselves, to what was decreed by Heaven their inferiours; as if their education had been amongst monkeys, who (as it is said) in all cases give the preeminence to their females.”—­“The Mall as described by Ned Ward.”]

And the women:  what of them?  They played cards, often for highly respectable(?) stakes, or went to the theatre when there was nothing better to do, and frittered away the greater number of the twenty-four hours in a mode that the fashionable woman of 1898 would consider positively scandalous.  Sometimes the dear creatures went for a stroll in the Mall, there to meet the English coxcombs with French manners, or else they paid a few visits.

“Thus they take a sip of tea, then for a draught or two of scandal to digest it, next let it be ratafia, or any other favourite liquor, scandal must be the after draught to make it sit easy on their stomach, till the half hour’s past, and they have disburthen’d themselves of their secrets, and take coach for some other place to collect new matter for defamation."[A]

[Footnote A:  Thomas Brown.]

Drury Lane must have presented an animated but none the less disorderly scene any evening during the season when a popular play was to be given.  Women in the boxes talking away for dear life, beaux walking about the house, chattering, ogling and laughing, or even sitting on the stage while the performance was in progress,[A] and the orange girls running around to sell their wares and, not infrequently, their own souls as well.

[Footnote A:  Owing in great part to the efforts of Queen Anne, this wretched custom of allowing a few spectators to sit on the stage was practically abolished before the close of the reign.]