us think how we once used to read a playbill, not as now, peradventure singling out a favourite performer and casting a negligent eye over the rest; but spelling out every name down to the very mutes and servants of the scene; when it was a matter of no small moment to us whether Whitfield or Packer took the part of Fabian; when Benson, and Burton, and Phillimore—­names of small account—­had an importance beyond what we can be content to attribute now to the time’s best actors.”  The fond industry with which a youthful devotee of the theatre studies the playbills could hardly be more happily indicated than in this extract.

Mention of Old Drury Lane and its burning bring us naturally to the admirable “story of the flying playbill,” contained in the parody of Crabbe, perhaps the most perfect specimen in that unique collection of parodies, “Rejected Addresses.”  The verses by the pseudo-Crabbe include the following lines: 

    Perchance while pit and gallery cry “Hats off!”
    And awed consumption checks his chided cough,
    Some giggling daughter of the Queen of Love
    Drops, reft of pin, her playbill from above;
    Like Icarus, while laughing galleries clap,
    Soars, ducks, and dives in air the printed scrap;
    But, wiser far than he, combustion fears;
    And, as it flies, eludes the chandeliers;
    Till, sinking gradual, with repeated twirl,
    It settles, curling, on a fiddler’s curl,
    Who from his powdered pate the intruder strikes,
    And, for mere malice, sticks it on the spikes.

“The story of the flying playbill,” says the mock-preface, “is calculated to expose a practice, much too common, of pinning playbills to the cushions insecurely, and frequently, I fear, not pinning them at all.  If these lines save one playbill only from the fate I have recorded, I shall not deem my labour ill employed.”

Modern playbills may be described as of two classes, indoor and out-of-door.  The latter are known also as “posters,” and may thus manifest their connection with the early method of “setting up playbills upon posts.”  Shakespeare’s audiences were not supplied with handbills as our present playgoers are; such of them as could read were probably content to derive all the information they needed from the notices affixed to the doors of the theatre, or otherwise publicly exhibited.  Of late years the vendors of playbills, who were wont urgently to pursue every vehicle that seemed to them bound to the theatre, in the hope of disposing of their wares, have greatly diminished in numbers, if they have not wholly disappeared.  Many managers have forbidden altogether the sale of bills outside the doors of their establishments.  The indoor programmes are again divided into two kinds.  To the lower-priced portions of the house an inferior bill is devoted; a folio sheet of thin paper, heavily laden and strongly odorous with printers’ ink.  Visitors to the more expensive seats are now supplied