dBooks desire

" But the Abbe relates that on a
subsequent occasion, when another new play having been announced, he
had looked for further disturbance, the judicious dramatist of the
night succeeded in calming the pit by administering in his prologue a
double dose of incense to their vanity. "Half-an-hour before the play
was to begin the spectators gave notice of their dispositions by
frightful hisses and outcries, equal, perhaps, to what were ever heard
at a Roman amphitheatre." The author, however, having in part tamed
this wild audience by his flattery, secured ultimately its absolute
favour by humouring its prejudices after the grossest fashion. He
brought upon the stage a figure "with black eyebrows, a ribbon of an
ell long under his chin, a bag-peruke immoderately powdered, and his
nose all bedaubed with snuff. What Englishman could not know a
Frenchman by this ridiculous figure?" The Frenchman was presently
shown to be, for all the lace down every seam of his coat, nothing but
a cook, and then followed severe satire and criticism upon the manners
and customs of France.


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