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If it wasn't for the first-night business, though, all would be plain sailing." "Then why don't you begin it the second night?" drawled Ward. "How the deuce could you?" put in Carlyle. "A most extraordinary proposition," sneered Johnson. "Yes," said Ward; "but wait a week you'll see the point then."
He began to be lax about that morning ride which he had once regarded as being absolutely necessary to the preservation of health in London. He had been impassioned with the theatre, and had become a diligent attendant at first-night performances.
The usual heterogeneous first-night elements filled the boxes journalists and their mistresses, lorettes and their lovers, a sprinkling of the determined playgoers who never miss a first night if they can help it, and a very few people of fashion who care for this sort of sensation.
Moreover, it is to be noted that the public has come to doubt the value of the first-night receptions which we record, the fact being incontestable that a good deal of the applause is quite unreal.
"Several races were represented," said Cicely; "a function of that sort, celebrating a dramatic first-night, was bound to be cosmopolitan. In fact, blending of races and nationalities is the tendency of the age we live in."
Nevertheless, we must come back to the point that there is always the ordeal of the first night to be faced, and that the plays are comparatively few which have lived-down a bad first-night.
Comus read and re-read those few lines of advertisement, just as he treasured a much-crumpled programme of a first-night performance at the Straw Exchange Theatre; they seemed to make a little more real the past that was already so shadowy and so utterly remote.
"All I know," said Tommy Burt, "is that every Monday, which is his day off, he dines at Sherry's, and goes in lonely glory to a first-night, if there is one, afterward. It must have been costing him half of his week's salary." "Swelled head, sure," diagnosed Decker, the financial reporter of The Ledger.
"Don't be too sure, Drexley," Douglas said, smiling. "The public must decide, you know. They may not like it as you do. A first-night audience takes strange whims sometimes." Drexley shook his head. "Disappointed playwrights may tell you so, but don't believe it," he answered. "A London audience as a rule is absolutely infallible. But then such a play as this lays itself open to no two opinions.
It reminded me of a playhouse upon a first-night of importance, but, alas! the actors here play in a tragedy more dreadful in its cumulative effect than any that was ever put upon the stage. This Shelter is wonderfully equipped and organized.
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