There is a stage-book to be seen in “The School for Scandal.”  Joseph Surface affects to pore over its pages immediately after he has secreted Lady Teazle behind the screen, and while Sir Peter is on the stairs.  “Ever improving himself,” notes Sir Peter, and then taps the reader on the shoulder.  Joseph starts.  “I have been dozing over a stupid book,” he says; and the stage direction bids him “gape, and throw down the book.”  And many volumes are needed in “The Rivals.”  Miss Languish’s maid Lucy returns after having traversed half the town, and visited all the circulating libraries in Bath.  She has failed to obtain “The Reward of Constancy;” “The Fatal Connexion;” “The Mistakes of the Heart;” “The Delicate Mistress, or the Memoirs of Lady Woodford.”  But she has secured, as she says, “taking the books from under her cloak, and from her pockets, ‘The Gordian Knot’ and ‘Peregrine Pickle.’  Here are ‘The Tears of Sensibility’ and ’Humphry Clinker.’  This, ‘The Memoirs of a Lady of Quality,’ written by herself; and here the second volume of ‘The Sentimental Journey.’”

     LYDIA.  Heigh-ho!  What are those books by the glass?

     LUCY.  The great one is only “The Whole Duty of Man,” where I
     press a few blonds, ma’am.

     LYDIA.  Very well; give me the sal volatile.

     LUCY.  Is it in a blue cover, ma’am?

     LYDIA.  My smelling-bottle, you simpleton!

     LUCY.  Oh, the drops!  Here, ma’am.

Presently the approach of Mrs. Malaprop and Sir Anthony Absolute is announced.  Cries Lydia:  “Here, my dear Lucy, hide these books.  Quick, quick.  Fling ‘Peregrine Pickle’ under the toilet; throw ’Roderick Random’ into the closet; put ‘The Innocent Adultery’ into ’The Whole Duty of Man;’ thrust ‘Lord Aimworth’ under the sofa; cram ‘Ovid’ behind the bolster; there, put ‘The Man of Feeling’ into your pocket—­so, so—­now lay ‘Mrs. Chapone’ in sight, and leave ’Fordyce’s Sermons’ open on the table.”

     LUCY.  O, burn it, ma’am.  The hairdresser has torn away as far as
     “Proper Pride.”

     LYDIA.  Never mind; open at “Sobriety.”  Fling me “Lord
     Chesterfield’s Letters.”  Now for ’em!

It will be perceived that the property-master of the theatre is here required to produce quite a library of stage-books.  Does he buy them by the dozen, from the nearest book-stall—­out of that trunk full of miscellaneous volumes, boldly labelled, “All these at fourpence”?  And does he then recover them with the bright blue or scarlet that is so dear to him, daubing them here and there with his indispensable Dutch metal?  Of course their contents can matter little.  Like all the other things of the theatre, they are not what they pretend to be, nor what they would have the audience think them.  The “book of the play” is something of a mystery.  Let us take for granted, however, that it is rarely interesting to the reader, that it is not one of those volumes which, when once