They are but playgoers on
compulsion. They even seem sometimes, when they retain their seats, to
prefer gazing at the audience, rather than at the actors, and thus to
advertise their apathy in the matter. And I have not heard that the
parsimonious manager, who proposed to reduce the salaries of his
musicians on the ground that they every night enjoyed admission to the
best seats, for which they paid nothing, "even when stars were
performing," ever succeeded in convincing his band of the justice of
his arguments.
The juvenile patron of the drama will, of course, in due time become
less absorbed in his own view of the situation, and learn that just as
one man's meat is another man's poison, so the pleasures of some are
the pains of others. He will cease to search the faces of the
orchestra for any evidence of "pride of place," or enjoyment of
performances they witness, not as volunteers, but as pressed men. He
will understand that they are at work, and are influenced by a natural
anxiety to escape from work as soon as may be. So, the overture ended,
they vanish, and leave the actors to do their best or their worst, as
the case may be.
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