If these lines save one playbill only from the fate I have
recorded, I shall not deem my labour ill employed."
Modern playbills may be described as of two classes, indoor and
out-of-door. The latter are known also as "posters," and may thus
manifest their connection with the early method of "setting up
playbills upon posts." Shakespeare's audiences were not supplied with
handbills as our present playgoers are; such of them as could read
were probably content to derive all the information they needed from
the notices affixed to the doors of the theatre, or otherwise publicly
exhibited. Of late years the vendors of playbills, who were wont
urgently to pursue every vehicle that seemed to them bound to the
theatre, in the hope of disposing of their wares, have greatly
diminished in numbers, if they have not wholly disappeared. Many
managers have forbidden altogether the sale of bills outside the doors
of their establishments. The indoor programmes are again divided into
two kinds. To the lower-priced portions of the house an inferior bill
is devoted; a folio sheet of thin paper, heavily laden and strongly
odorous with printers' ink.
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