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Dicky sat in the dress-circle, wrapped in blankets, and laughed himself nearly into convulsions over Touchstone's jokes, and the stage business of the Banished Duke; for it is unnecessary to state that Jack was not strictly Shakespearean in his treatment of the part.
I know that it is nearly useless to advise people to read First Principles. They are intimidated by the sound of it; and it costs as much as a dress-circle seat at the theatre. But if they would, what brilliant stocktakings there might be in a few years! In any case, the lack of some such disciplinary, co-ordinating measure will amply explain many disastrous stocktakings.
In a box to the left of the dress-circle sat, "laughing all hyaenally", the following distinguished visitors: Mr Mulholland of No. 7 College Buildings. Mr Raynes of No. 4 ditto, and Mr Kay. Fenn drew back like a flash, knocking his chair over as he did so. "Giddy, sir?" said a stage hand, pleasantly. "Bless you, lots of gents is like that when they comes up here.
Beyond was "the world," passive, to be acted upon; the parquet, ranged seats of young men with the flash-stamp on them from their thick noses to the broad-checked trousers; the dress-circle, young girls with their eyes and brains full-facing their attendant sweethearts, and a side-giggle for the stage; crude faces in the gallery, tamed faces lower down; gray and red and black and tow-colored heads full of myriad teeming thoughts of business, work, pleasure, outside of this: treble and tenor notes wandering through them, dying almost ere born; touching what soul behind the dress and brain-work? and touching it how?
It was a tawdry affair, all Cupids and cornucopias, like a third-rate wedding cake. The gallery and pit were fairy full, but the two rows of dingy stalls were quite empty, and there was hardly a person in what I suppose they called the dress-circle. Women went about with oranges and ginger-beer, and there was a terrible consumption of nuts going on."
As a matter of fact, theatre-auditoriums and baseball grand-stands are seldom crowded; the rule is, not all first-class seats occupied, but many vacant. Surely as simple as moving from seat to seat a make-shift screen in a street-car, would it be to set apart a certain number of seats in the dress-circle of every theatre, and in the grand-stand of every baseball park, for Negro patrons.
These minor skills and accomplishments for example, dancing are tickets of admission to the dress-circle of mankind, and the being master of them enables the youth to judge intelligently of much on which otherwise he would give a pedantic squint. Landor said, "I have suffered more from my bad dancing than from all the misfortunes and miseries of my life put together."
The pit which recognizes Snooks in his tin breastplate and helmet laughs at him, and Snooks himself feels like a sheep; and when the great tragedian comes on, shining in mail, dragging a two-handed sword, and mouths the grandiloquence which poets have put into the speech of heroes, the dress-circle requires all its good-breeding and its feigned love of the traditionary drama not to titter.
Prices of admission are very moderate; I have been told that during Ristori's and De Murska's visits, as much as ten shillings was charged for a dress-circle seat, but six shillings is the highest charge that has been made since 1876. In any theatre six shillings is the usual amount for the better performances, the worst only asking four, and at some theatres coming down as low as 3 shillings.
It was nearly a quarter to eight. The orchestra had taken their places, and almost every seat was full. In one of the dress-circle boxes sat three people who had arrived early, and had for some time employed themselves in making a study of the incoming stream through their opera-glasses. They were Eustace Kendal, his sister, Madame de Châteauvieux, and her husband.
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