* * * * *
But it was mighty pleasant to behold
When the damnation of the farce was sure,
How all those friends who had begun the claps
With greatest vigour strove who first should hiss
And show disapprobation.
Surely no dramatist ever jested more over his own discomfiture. In
publishing "Eurydice" he described it as "a farce, as it was d--d at
the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane." This was a following of Ben Jonson's
example, who, publishing his "New Inn," makes mention of it as a
comedy "never acted, but most negligently played by some of the king's
servants, and more squeamishly beheld and censured by others the
king's subjects, 1629; and now, at last, set at liberty to the
readers, his majesty's servants and subjects, to be judged of, 1631."
There is something pathetic in the way Southerne, the veteran
dramatist, in 1726, bore the condemnation of his comedy of "Money the
Mistress," at the Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre. The audience hissed
unmercifully. Rich, the manager, asked the old man, as he stood in the
wings, "if he heard what they were doing?" "No, sir," said Southerne
calmly, "I'm very deaf.
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