hear, and breathe. As I said years ago in the Athenæum (the journal, not the club): I have been there and still would go, The pit-visitors enjoyed this place for fifty years at a too moderate price, while their wretched superiors were ricking their necks in the dress circle, or cramping their legs in the private boxes. Now the turn of the superiors has come; but who has any right to grumble? No doubt the stage-loafers in Shakespeare's time, who lined the wings on each side, who smoked and spat upon the stage, and interrupted the performers, were much hurt when their room was wanted by Davenant and others for scenic display, and they were sent into the front of the house to find their level. Their position, however, was different from that of the pit-claimants at the Haymarket. When they were turned out-or, rather, moved to another place-no doubt the move was general, but the abolition of the pit at the Haymarket is only an experiment on the part of one manager out of fifty. The days of theatrical monopoly are over. Anyone can get a theatrical license by applying at St. James's Palace, paying the necessary fees, and getting the usual two householders to become nominal securities. Any music-hall defying or offending the magistrates, can become a theatre; and the peculiarity of this license is that it gives an equal privilege to every speculator and every building. The man who spends a fortune in constructing a splendid theatre, is in no better position than the man who runs up a shed in which the sanitary and dressing arrangements may violate every rule of health and decency. This fact appears to be so little known, that the philosophical and usually well-informed Spectator appears to side with the pit-claimants in Mr. Bancroft's case, and talks about lessees being in the enjoyment of a protected monopoly and valuable privileges. The only privilege a lessee possesses is the privilege of paying heavy rates and taxes, and of paying fees to the licenser of plays for reading pieces which may not be licensed. Mr. Bancroft, in some quarters, has been accused of flunkyism, for turning the pit into stalls; but those who accused him could not have known that he is the first manager of the Haymarket Theatre who has had the courage to ask the proper market-price for the royal box-a box which, though nominally royal, is generally used by the royal household. AUTHORS AND MANAGERS. N author (we may take it) is a person who writes and sells 'pieces,' and a manager is a person who buys and sells pieces. They stand precisely in the same relation to each other as the potato producer and the potato salesmen. The commodity they make, sell, buy, and sell is one much in demand. Fifty theatres, more or less; fifty managers, less or more; and four millions of people, in round numbers, in London alone are consumers of this commodity. The 'provinces' (in which of fensive term the whole of Ireland and Scotland is included), with twenty-eight more millions of people, are also consumers of this commodity. Surveyors are now measuring the ground, architects are preparing the plans, and capitalists are finding the money (so I am told) for more theatres, but no one is building a new author. The small and devoted band of six dramatic authors (more or less) has been recently diminished by one who has taken one of the fifty London theatres, and has turned manager; while another, and the most fruitful and original of our authors, has again taken to the stage, and so diminished the hours during which he can cultivate the dramatic potato. 'Revivals,' however good and carefully done, cannot go on for ever. The playgoer will not always be fed upon hashed mutton. It requires a superhuman faith in the great law of supply and demand to go to sleep calmly in the face of such a prospect. I am not taking up my rusty pen, and dipping into my cobwebbed inkstand, to frighten my unknown friends, the untried authors; my purpose is rather to encourage these much-enduring, and sometimes much |