UP IN THE GALLERY AT A PLAYHOUSE.

Dunstan Times, Issue 583, 20 June 1873, Page 3

UP IN THE GALLERY AT A PLAYHOUSE.

— o — you ever beea in the gallery of a London theatre ; If not, go. For once in your life mount the stairs and be rewarded. You will find, if the performance be an attractive one and there has been a long wait and a struggle to gel in, that before tbe curtain rises some of your neighbors are hungry, and they already eat; others thirsty, and they already drink. About this time also, jokes and nuts arc freely cracked. There is a notice at a transpontine theatre, by which “ladies and gentleman are requested to abstain from cracking nuts during the performance, as it disturbs the actors.” You will soon sec the inevitable fight. Somebody has put himself in some other body’s place, and the ordeal of battle is to decide “ who is who.” “Turn ’im out;” “throw him over” “I’d give you something if I’d got you outside “Go home to your mother, and ask her to wash your face !” “Where did yer git that’at?” “You should go into the dress circle with that clean shirt, you should. ” And so on until the play begins, and the noise is no more, unless it happens that the bigness of the bulb behind some girl’s head provokes the anger of a good woman, middle-aged, who sarcastically remarks upon “ some people’s shignoons.” Not being noticed, she calls aloud to her enemy in front, “Can’t you take off that shignoon? I want to see as well as you do !” “S-sshh\” “ ’Old yer row ?” “ Turn [her out!” In the drama of Put Yourself in Jus Place, there is a sledge hammer in the secret smithy in the church. “ Now what’s 'e want with a sledge, I should like to know ?” asks a critical gentleman; “ when he a’int got no mate to use; can he ’old the iron with one ’and virile he uses the sledge with the other?” Again to show his skill, and the positiveness of the whole business, the persecuted mechanic t forges a knife, and there and then taking it straight from the anvil, carves a chicken with it for his lady love. This is exceedingly gallant, but, we are informed, is a grossjanachronism. A gentleman near is busily whispering to an approving circle that “he ’ain’t ’ardened it, ’aiut ground it, and ’aiut tempered it ; and as for a chicken— clever as he is—he couldn’t cut a saveloy with it like that.” A titter, too, runs through the gallery, when the heroine, with a natural feeling of awe and admiration for the prowess of her beloved, cries, “Heavens! how hard he strikes !” As the actor really does seem to bo doing his best, wo consider this unkind, and ask for an explanation. “Ah,” we are told, “ he may seem to you to be doing’ it all right, but he woulden’t bo worth a boh a day down at our place. Look at him now, why he’s ticklinit.” To do the worthy spectators justice, however, they showed a most laudable appreciation of virtue and respect for good breeding. If any one of them had the weakness to beat his wife with a real poker he par tly atoned for it by the vehemence of his applause when the wicked gentleman was unmasked. The marrying clergyman turned out to be nothing but a lay swindler ; while the young mechanic was proved to have been a real gentleman all the time. Certainly one wanted to know how it was that the young lady, so willing as she was, a real clergyman could not be got to tie a real knot, but it was very properly reproved by another, who said “Don’t be so jolly hungry ; you wouldn’t have everything real, would you?” Taking the “gods” all round, they are a decidedly respectable-looking set. The free and easy habits of sitting in shirt sleeves and inccsssantly eating and drinking apart, the great majority conduct them selves just as people in the other parts of the house appear to be doing. There are a few expletives now and then, but these few are almost without exception protested against by the more decent deities.