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We have decided to give every man, woman and child in this vast audience a first-night present of Two Silver Dollars!" Bob could feel an electric thrill run through the crowd, and every one sat up a little straighter in his chair. "Let me see," the orator went on, running his eye over the audience. He had resumed his quieter manner. "There are perhaps seven hundred people present.
The sum would have been higher, but he was calculating as rent of the theatre only the ground-rent plus six per cent on the total price of the building. What disgusted him was the duplicity of the first-night audience, and he said to himself violently, "I was right all the time, and I knew I was right! Idiots! Chumps! Of course I was right!"
Barbara sat forward, bowing to friends in the familiar, first-night gathering; but he preferred to stand at her side, hidden by a curtain, while she called back the names of the new arrivals.
To sum up this branch of the argument: however oft-repeated and much-discussed a play may be, the playwright must assume that in every audience there will be an appreciable number of persons who know practically nothing about it, and whose enjoyment will depend, like that of the first-night audience, on the skill with which he develops his story.
Most of the critics form non-conductors to the passage of what has been regarded as analogous to an electrical current, and their non-conductivity is very little greater than that of many of the people who receive complimentary tickets or have the honour of being on the first-night list.
"Yep, I'm still rehearsing with 'The Mangled Doughnut, and the author of the book told me yesterday, in the strictest confidence, that it will be the best first-night performance Hartford ever saw. "He says he expects to stay up all that night rewriting the book, but he is willing to sacrifice a few hours' sleep in the interest of Art.
Stancy, a man of large resounding presence, suggestive of convivial occasions and of a chivalry finding expression in "first-night" boxes and thousand dollar bonbonnieres, who had transplanted Mrs. Hatch from the scene of her first development to the higher stage of hotel life in the metropolis.
He did get a card to the Peace Waters Country Club and take Ruth to a dance there. She seemed to know every other member, and danced eloquently. He took her to the Josiah Bagbys' for dinner; to the first-night of a summer musical comedy. But he was still the stranger in New York, and "parties" are not to be had by tipping waiters and buying tickets.
Business had been bad in Atlantic City and no better in Baltimore, and a meager first-night house at Rochester had given the piece a cold reception, which had put the finishing touches to the depression of the company in spite of the fact that the Rochester critics, like those of Baltimore, had written kindly of the play.
Of the theatre-going London public there was also a fair muster, more particularly centred in the less expensive parts of the house, while in boxes, stalls and circles a sprinkling of military uniforms gave an unfamiliar tone to the scene in the eyes of those who had not previously witnessed a first-night performance under the new conditions.
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