Mr. Woide lives at a place called Lisson Street, not far
from Paddington; a very village-looking little town, at the west end
of London.
It is quite a rural and pleasant situation; for here I
either do, or fancy I do, already breathe a purer and freer air than
in the midst of the town. Of his great abilities, and particularly
in oriental literature, I need not inform you; but it will give you
pleasure to hear that he is actually meditating a fac-simile edition
of the Alexandrian MS. I have already mentioned the infinite
obligations I lie under to this excellent man for his extraordinary
courtesy and kindness.
The Theatre in the Haymarket.
Last week I went twice to an English play-house. The first time
"The Nabob" was represented, of which the late Mr. Foote was the
author, and for the entertainment, a very pleasing and laughable
musical farce, called "The Agreeable Surprise." The second time I
saw "The English Merchant:" which piece has been translated into
German, and is known among us by the title of "The Scotchwoman," or
"The Coffee-house." I have not yet seen the theatres of Covent
Garden and Drury Lane, because they are not open in summer. The
best actors also usually spend May and October in the country, and
only perform in winter.
A very few excepted, the comedians whom I saw were certainly nothing
extraordinary. For a seat in the boxes you pay five shillings, in
the pit three, in the first gallery two, and in the second or upper
gallery, one shilling. And it is the tenants in this upper gallery
who, for their shilling, make all that noise and uproar for which
the English play-houses are so famous. I was in the pit, which
gradually rises, amphitheatre-wise, from the orchestra, and is
furnished with benches, one above another, from the top to the
bottom. Often and often, whilst I sat there, did a rotten orange,
or pieces of the peel of an orange, fly past me, or past some of my
neighbours, and once one of them actually hit my hat, without my
daring to look round, for fear another might then hit me on my face.
All over London as one walks, one everywhere, in the season, sees
oranges to sell; and they are in general sold tolerably cheap, one
and even sometimes two for a halfpenny; or, in our money,
threepence. At the play-house, however, they charged me sixpence
for one orange, and that noways remarkably good.
Besides this perpetual pelting from the gallery, which renders an
English play-house so uncomfortable, there is no end to their
calling out and knocking with their sticks till the curtain is drawn
up. I saw a miller's, or a baker's boy, thus, like a huge booby,
leaning over the rails and knocking again and again on the outside,
with all his might, so that he was seen by everybody, without being
in the least ashamed or abashed.
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