" 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.
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