gent pit is your friend. You hurry behind the scenes to congratulate and be congratulated, to compliment and be complimented, to shake the leading actors warmly by the hand, and gratefully salute the cheek of the heroine -if she will let you. With generous, effusive insincerity you find yourself complimenting the very actors whose stupidity but a little while since evoked curses not loud but deep. One or two well-known dramatists and critics are on the stage, and perhaps a nobleman of theatrical tastes; to these you are presented, and by these you are congratulated. It is a wild, delirious moment. But the stage has to be cleared for the after-piece. You make an appointment to be at the theatre to-morrow at eleven," to go over the piece;" and either, if you are wise, return to your home to gladden your wife with the news; or, if you are otherwise, join a few friends at supper.

"The supper after the play" might form a chapter by itself. Sometimes the author, confident of success, invites his guests beforehand, and if the success has been equivocal, this makes it rather awkward for the friends. Sometimes the manager provides supper. I remember one, given by a manager now dead, who was more hospitable than literate, and who had invited the chief actors, two dramatic critics (whom I saw writing their columns in corners of his private room), and some "literary friends," myself included, to rejoice over the successes of a drama called the Broken Heart. A jovial and joyous supper it was. At an early period the enthusiastic impresario rose, and lifting his champagne glass in the air, said, in a voice tremulous with nervousness (or drink), "Ladies and gentlemen, It is with feelings of very particular pleasure, and I may say gratification, that I rise to propose a toast, which I am sure you will all agree with me is well deserved, and I am sure you will drink with all the honours: Here's to the Broken 'Art, and the 'And which guided it.'"

Of what followed, I have only a dim recollection of much noise, extravagant eulogies, a gradually increasing introduction of the name of Shakspeare, which at first was mentioned with timidity, and a sort of vinous conviction that the 'And had inaugurated a new era of dramatic art. I hope, for his own sake, that the author was sufficiently wise to accept all this eulogy with the necessary "discount," or sufficiently heated with wine not to have understood it; otherwise he must have tumbled into bed that morning with an inflated sense of his greatness, and must have waked up with considerable astonishment to read in the morning papers that he was, after all, not a 'hakspeare.

I shall not touch upon the dramatist in relation to the critics, because whatever he may have to endure on that score is not peculiar to him. There is, however, a source of vexation after the triumph which may be mentioned. I have said that the first-night audience is always goodnatured; it is more, it is intelligent. The number of critics, old playgoers, and (if the author has a name in the world) of literary men present on a first night, leaven the audience in a surprising manner. But if this

has its advantages, it has also its drawbacks. Many a passage which went brilliantly at first, passes unnoticed ever afterwards; and the disappointed author notices it with disgust. It was remarked that Douglas Jerrold's plays were always triumphant on the first night. The audience appreciated his wit; the laughter was incessant. Afterwards, the unadulterated public listened with stolid faces to those flashing repartees; for it is unhappily the fact that our audiences seldom laugh at any but the oldest jokes the family Joe Millers-the Wandering Jews d'esprit-and you offer them wit at all, it must be wit they already know.

if

On the supposition, then, that your comedy has really been witty and successful, there are great chances against its taking hold of the public unless it have other theatrical qualities. The same may be said of your tragedy: a first-night audience may applaud speeches which will afterwards be listened to with impatience. Hence it is that many a man has flattered himself that he has achieved a great dramatic success, and has perhaps incurred expenses on the strength of it, when, after a few nights' run, the work is withdrawn because the public would not come to see it. At one of those suppers just mentioned, a play was freely spoken of as destined "to live in the literature of our country." It was performed four nights.

Thus, if the applause received by the dramatist be more concentrated and intoxicating than the applause received by the novelist or poet, it is purchased by a far greater amount of vexation, and the failure is proportionately emphatic. Moreover, if, in rare exceptional cases, his work has the immense benefit of being presented to the public through the medium of fine acting, which of course intensifies its effect; on the other hand, this strong light can only be shed on one or two parts-bad acting will as much distort his work in the other parts. True it undoubtedly is that a fine actor will sometimes raise an insignificant part into one of surprising effect; but much oftener the actors rob their parts of all significance. Now, the dramatist is far less grateful to the fine actor for his aid (because not so conscious of it) than he is wrath with the bad actor for his failures. What is the most cherished hope of every author? That he may be understood; that his work may be fairly brought before the public. What, then, must be the misery of the dramatic author who has to see his work mutilated to fit it for the stage, and mangled when produced?

THE

CORNHILL MAGAZINE.

NOVEMBER, 1863.

The Small House at Allington.

CHAPTER XLIII.

FIE, FIE!

W

ILL any reader remember the loves, no, not the loves; that word is so decidedly ill applied as to be incapable of awakening the remembrance of any reader; but the flirtations

-of Lady Dumbello and Mr. Plantagenet Palliser? Those flirtations, as they had been carried on at Courcy Castle, were laid bare in all their enormities to the eye of the public, and it must be confessed that if the eye of the public was shocked, that eye must be shocked very easily.

But the eye of the public was shocked, and people who were particular as

to their morals said very strange things. Lady De Courcy herself said very strange things indeed, shaking her head, and dropping mysterious

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