They had all taken the precaution to send some male
relative, on the first night of a new play, to report whether it was fit
for persons of “honour and reputation” to appear at; but in spite of
this precaution, at certain passages (which occurred about every second
sentence) they were compelled to spread out their fans, or play with the
still cherished love-lock, which Prynne himself had not been able to
write down. The men in the boxes were composed of two distinct classes, the “men of
wit and pleasure about town,” distinguished by their Flanders lace
cravats, soiled with snuff, their diamond rings, the pretended gift of a
royal mistress, (_n’importe_ whether the Duchess of Portsmouth or Nell
Gwynne); their uncombed wigs, whose curls descended to their waists, and
the loud and careless tone in which they abused Dryden, Lee, and Otway,
and quoted Sedley and Rochester;--the other class were the lovers, the
gentle “squires of dames,” equally conspicuous for their white fringed
gloves, their obsequious bows, and their commencing every sentence
addressed to a lady, with the profane exclamation of (2) “Oh Jesu!” or
the softer, but equally unmeaning one of “I beseech you, Madam,” or,
“Madam, I burn(3).” One circumstance sufficiently extraordinary marked
the manners of the day; females had not then found their proper level in
life; they were alternately adored as goddesses, and assailed as
prostitutes; and the man who, this moment, addressed his mistress in
language borrowed from Orondates worshipping Cassandra, in the next
accosted her with ribaldry that might put to the blush the piazzas of
Covent Garden(4). (2) Vide Pope, (copying from Donne). “Peace, fools, or Gonson will for Papists seize you,
       If once he catch you at your Jesu, Jesu.”

  (3) Vide the Old Bachelor, whose Araminta, wearied by the repetition
  of these phrases, forbids her lover to address her in any sentence
  commencing with them. (4) Vide any old play you may have the patience to peruse; or, _instar
  omnium_, read the courtly loves of Rodolphil and Melantha, Palamede
  and Doratice, in Dryden’s Marriage a la Mode. The pit presented a more various spectacle. There were the critics armed
cap-a-pee from Aristotle and Bossu; these men dined at twelve, dictated
at a coffee-house till four, then called to the boy to brush their
shoes, and strode to the theatre, where, till the curtain rose, they sat
hushed in grim repose, and expecting their evening prey. There were the
templars, spruce, pert, and loquacious; and here and there a sober
citizen, doffing his steeple-crowned hat, and hiding his little band
under the folds of his huge puritanic cloke, while his eyes, declined
with an expression half leering, half ejaculatory, towards a masked
female, muffled in a hood and scarf, testified what had seduced him into
these “tents of Kedar.” There were females, too, but all in vizard
masks, which, though worn as well as aunt Dinah’s in Tristram Shandy,
served to conceal them from the “young bubbles” they were in quest of,
and from all but the orange-women, who hailed them loudly as they passed
the doors(5). In the galleries were the happy souls who waited for the
fulfilment of Dryden’s promise in one of his prologues(6); no matter to
them whether it were the ghost of Almanzor’s mother in her dripping
shroud, or that of Laius, who, according to the stage directions, rises
in his chariot, armed with the ghosts of his three murdered attendants
behind him;--a joke that did not escape l’Abbe le Blanc(7), in his
recipe for writing an English tragedy. Some, indeed, from time to time
called out for the “burning of the Pope;” but though

    “Space was obedient to the boundless piece,
     Which oped in Mexico and closed in Greece,”

it was not always possible to indulge them in this laudable amusement,
as the scene of the popular plays was generally laid in Africa or Spain;
Sir Robert Howard, Elkanah Settle, and John Dryden, all agreeing in
their choice of Spanish and Moorish subjects for their principal plays. Among this joyous groupe were seated several women of fashion masked,
enjoying in secrecy the licentiousness which they dared not openly
patronise, and verifying Gay’s characteristic description, though it was
written many years later,

    “Mobbed in the gallery Laura sits secure,
     And laughs at jests that turn the box demure.”

Stanton gazed on all this with the look of one who “could not be moved
to smile at any thing.” He turned to the stage, the play was Alexander,
then acted as written by Lee, and the principal character was performed
by Hart, whose god-like ardour in making love, is said almost to have
compelled the audience to believe that they beheld the “son of Ammon.”

  (5) Vide Southern’s Oroonoko,--I mean the comic part. (6) “A charm, a song, a murder, and a ghost.”

      _Prologue to Œdipus._

  (7) Vide Le Blanc’s Letters. There were absurdities enough to offend a classical, or even a rational
spectator. There were Grecian heroes with roses in their shoes, feathers
in their hats, and wigs down to their waists; and Persian princesses in
stiff stays and powdered hair. But the illusion of the scene was well
sustained, for the heroines were rivals in real as well as theatrical
life. It was that memorable night, when, according to the history of the
veteran Betterton(8), Mrs Barry, who personated Roxana, had a green-room
squabble with Mrs Bowtell, the representative of Statira, about a veil,
which the partiality of the property-man adjudged to the latter. Roxana
suppressed her rage till the fifth act, when, stabbing Statira, she
aimed the blow with such force as to pierce through her stays, and
inflict a severe though not dangerous wound. Mrs Bowtell fainted, the
performance was suspended, and, in the commotion which this incident
caused in the house, many of the audience rose, and Stanton among them. It was at this moment that, in a seat opposite to him, he discovered the
object of his search for four years,--the Englishman whom he had met in
the plains of Valentia, and whom he believed the same with the subject
of the extraordinary narrative he had heard there. (8) Vide Betterton’s History of the Stage. He was standing up. There was nothing particular or remarkable in his
appearance, but the expression of his eyes could never be mistaken or
forgotten. The heart of Stanton palpitated with violence,--a mist
overspread his eyes,--a nameless and deadly sickness, accompanied with a
creeping sensation in every pore, from which cold drops were gushing,
announced the * * * * * * * * * * Before he had well recovered, a strain
of music, soft, solemn, and delicious, breathed round him, audibly
ascending from the ground, and increasing in sweetness and power till it
seemed to fill the whole building. Under the sudden impulse of amazement
and pleasure, he inquired of some around him from whence those exquisite
sounds arose.