“MY DEAR TOM,—­This will be your first five-act production, and don’t be offended if an old practitioner ventures to offer (from the respect he bears you) the fruits of his long experience.  Half-price is a very proper privilege for those whose time or pockets do not afford them an opportunity of visiting the theatre earlier; but it is often the bane of an author on the first night of a five-act play.  The new-comers know nothing of the foregone part of the drama; and having no context with which to connect allusions in the fourth and fifth acts, are apt to damn without consideration that which they are no judges of—­

    And what they cannot comprehend deny.

“To be fore-armed against this contingency, contrive to make some character (either in the heat of passion, or in any way you please) briefly run over all the foregoing parts of the story, so as to put everyone in possession of what they otherwise would have lost by absence; and, take my word, you will reap the benefit of it.”

Mr. Dibdin expresses so much gratitude for Mr. Lewis’s counsel, and recommends it so earnestly to the consideration of all young dramatists, that we cannot doubt that some effect upon subsequent writings for the stage must in this indirect way have resulted from the half-price system, and in avoidance of its disadvantages, as set forth by the stage-manager of Covent Garden Theatre.

CHAPTER XXI.

THE DRAMA UNDER DIFFICULTIES.

For such a triumph as fanaticism enjoyed over the fine arts in England during and for some time after the great Civil War, no parallel can be found in the history of any other nation.  And it was not, be it remembered, the work of a capricious and cruel despot; it was the tyranny of a solemn legislative assembly.  Hypocrisy had some share in the proceeding, very likely; but in the main the Puritanism of the time was sincere even to its frenzies of intolerance.  Good men and true held that they were doing only what was sound, and wise, and right, when they made ruthless war upon poetry, and painting, and all the refinements and graces of life, denouncing them as scandals and sins, ungodly devices, pernicious wiles of the author of all evil; when they peremptorily closed the doors of the theatres, and dismissed actors, authors, managers, and all concerned, to absolute starvation.

In the England of that time, no doubt, Puritanism obtained supporters out of respect for superior power; just as in France, at a later date, Republicanism gained converts by means of terror.  The prudent, when conflict and tumult are at hand, will usually side with the stronger combatant.  Thus it was with little resistance that there passed through both Houses of Parliament, in 1647, the ordinance by virtue of which the theatres were to be dismantled and suppressed; all actors of plays to be publicly whipped; and all spectators and playgoers, for every offence, condemned