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Updated: June 17, 2025
Silently the brown spectators slip away like shadows from the dim and dewy garden, for the simple and untaught Malay, though eagerly welcoming the privileges permitted to him, never encroaches upon them, and the conduct of these Eastern playgoers affords an example of order and sobriety which shames many an audience of higher education and social superiority in distant Europe.
The Ichimura dance represents the seven gods of wealth; and the Morita dance represents a large ape, and is emblematical of drinking wine. As soon as the sun begins to rise in the heaven, sign-boards all glistening with paintings and gold are displayed, and the playgoers flock in crowds to the theatre.
Pinero, who was no longer a member of the Lyceum company when "Much Ado" was produced, wrote to Henry after the first night that it was "as perfect a representation of a Shakespearean play as I conceive to be possible. I think," he added, "that the work at your theater does so much to create new playgoers which is what we want, far more I fancy than we want new theaters and perhaps new plays."
Sometimes none of the pieces mentioned is played, whilst to alter the order is quite a common matter. No doubt this gives some uncharitable amusement to people who overhear the conversation of ignorant playgoers misled by the programme.
No doubt the famous George Barnwell has gone out of date, and the Dick Turpin and Jack Sheppard plays, which did a great deal of harm, are not presented often in our days. Nevertheless there are so many pieces still produced which in one way or another are injurious to playgoers as to render it fairly arguable that the effect of the stage as a whole is bad.
It is an age of mutual improvement societies a delightful idea, everybody's business being to improve everybody else; of amateur parliaments, of literary councils, of playgoers' clubs. First Night criticism seems to have died out of late, the Student of the Drama having come to the conclusion, possibly, that plays are not worth criticizing. But in my young days we were very earnest at this work.
It is hard, if not impossible, to estimate the value of any form of art-work in the lifetime of the worker, and it may well be that of the thousands who applauded Shakespeare's plays there were very few who saw them as we do to-day. The mere fact that they were for the most part new versions of works that were then quite familiar to playgoers would have told against them.
It is highly probable that the actors also acquired most of the popular renown, for, even now, playgoers have much to say about the players in a piece, while they seldom know the name of the playwright. Women fall in love with the actors, not with the authors; but with "those puppets," as Greene says, "that speake from our mouths, these anticks, garnished in our colours."
In 1855, Charles Kean revived the play with his accustomed care and sumptuousness. In this famous revival Mrs. Kean appeared as "Queen Katharine." Irving's Production Sir Henry Irving's magnificent production will still be fresh in the memory of many playgoers.
There is something to be said on both sides. No doubt the lovers of the severer form of drama, the worshippers of Shaw, the playgoers who supported the societies of which the Independent Theatre was the first and regarded the Court Theatre for a while as a kind of Mecca, are not always judicious when talking about musical comedy and comic opera, and some of them have been very narrow-minded.
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