"
And this seems, indeed, to have been the case. The Abbe Le Blanc, who
was present on the occasion, writes: "The best play in the world would
not have succeeded that night. There was a disposition to damn
whatever might appear. The farce in question was damned, indeed,
without the least compassion. Nor was that all, for the actors were
driven off the stage, and happy was it for the author that he did not
fall into the hands of this furious assembly." And the Abbe proceeds
to explain that the originators of this disturbance were not
"schoolboys, apprentices, clerks, or mechanics," but lawyers, "a body
of gentlemen perhaps less honoured, but certainly more feared here
than they are in France," who, "from living in colleges (Inns of
Court), and from conversing always with one another, mutually preserve
a spirit of independency through the body, and with great ease form
cabals.... At Paris the cabals of the pit are only among young
fellows, whose years may excuse their folly, or persons of the meanest
education and stamp; here they are the fruit of deliberation in a very
grave body of people, who are not less formidable to the minister in
place than to the theatrical writers.
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