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Fifteen hundred heads are swarming beneath the great central chandelier, erect bent forward turning round questioning amid a great play of shadows and reflections; some massed in the obscure corners of the floor, others in a bright light reflected through the open doors of the boxes from the white walls of the corridor; the first-night public which is always the same, that brigand-like tout Paris which goes everywhere, carrying those envied places by storm when a favour or a claim by right of some official position fails to secure them.
I will not trouble the reader with my thoughts about the first-night audience, strange assembly as it is, those I reserve for my Memoirs, nor the humiliating story of how I got lost during the entr'acte in a lot of red plush passages, and saw the third act from the gallery. The only point upon which I wish to lay stress was the remarkable effect of the acting upon me.
A first-night audience is anomalous, in that it is composed largely of individuals opposed to self-surrender; and for this reason, a first-night judgment of the merits of a play is rarely final. The dramatist has written for a crowd, and he is judged by individuals.
Upstairs, de Courcy Smyth spent and stupefied by the writing of a would- be smart critique on the first-night performance of a screaming farce, for one of to-morrow's evening papers had stumbled, upsetting the fire- irons, as he slouched across his room to bed.
It is true that specifically first-night merit is a trivial matter compared with what may be called thousandth-performance merit; but it is equally true that there is no inconsistency between the two orders of merit, and that a play will never be less esteemed on its thousandth performance for having achieved a conspicuous first-night success.
The rehearsal passed off without event. It lasted until six o'clock, when Jill, the Cherub, and two or three of the other girls went to snatch a hasty dinner before returning to the theatre to make up. It was not a cheerful meal. Reaction had set in after the overexertion of the previous night, and it was too early for first-night excitement to take its place.
He was in the torture chair of the dentist, who was talking of the theatres, ignorant of the fact that his victim was a dramatic critic such is fame and he spoke about the difficulty of getting tickets for a first-night, and said that most of the seats are given to the press and the only way is to go to the box office on the evening of the first night, since some tickets are generally sold back to the management by the poor hacks anxious to earn a dishonest penny.
His speech after the hostile reception of "Twelfth Night" was the only mistake that I ever knew him make. He was furious, and showed it. Instead of accepting the verdict, he trounced the first-night audience for giving it. He simply could not understand it!
In The Benefit of the Doubt, by Sir Arthur Pinero, we have a crisply dramatic opening of the very best type. A few words from a contemporary criticism may serve to indicate the effect it produced on a first-night audience
Hearing that Ronald was going to a fashionable first-night with the Bankshires, Mr. Grew had for once overcome his repugnance to following his son's movements, and had secured for himself, under the shadow of the balcony, a stall whence he could observe the Bankshire box without fear of detection. Ronald had never known of his father's presence at the play; and for three blessed hours Mr.
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