File:Shakspere to Sheridan; a book about the theatre of yesterday and to-day (1922) (14596693179).jpg

Identifier: shaksperetosheri00thal (find matches)
Title: Shakspere to Sheridan; a book about the theatre of yesterday and to-day
Year: 1922 (1920s)
Authors: Thaler, Alwin, 1891-
Subjects: Theater -- England History English drama -- History and criticism Actors and actresses -- England Theaters -- England London
Publisher: Cambridge : Harvard University Press (etc., etc.)
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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onetime believed that she was not being paid enough, and soshe straightway wrote a pamphlet calling upon the publicto right her wrongs. When Mrs. Bellamy and Mrs.Yates — or any other pair of actresses — could not agreeas to who should play which part, they immediatelymemorialized the public and called for a decision, — andso, on other occasions, did Colman and his partners, andother proprietors or managers, each one protesting thatthe public alone could decide the issue.^ No wonder thepublic took them at their word — and bettered the in-struction when it desired to make some point of its own!At all events, there was many an outbreak, and no finedistinctions were made. Whether it was an unpopularlicense law such as that of 1737, or an advance of rates of 1 Apology, I, 244-250. * Apology for the Life oj Mr. T . . . C . . ., 1740, pp. 62-64.3 Fitzgerald, I, 178-179. * Cf. above, p. 118. Many such cases are recorded: see Fitzgerald, II,224-227; Oulton, II, 19-30, 103-106, 204-209.
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THE MANAGERS 147 admission (such as that which led to the destructiveOld Price riots so late as 1809), the liberty-loving pub-lic was ready at any and all times to express its views,and that emphatically. The poor managers had to make the most of this badbusiness, besides bearing up as cheerfully as they couldunder other burdens. There was, for instance, the oldprohibition of playing on Church holidays, — kept upfrom Elizabethan times (when many company licensesspecifically forbade acting on such days) until well into thenineteenth century. The Co vent Garden actors of 1799complained bitterly of the hardship of enforced idlenessand no pay on Whitsun and Christmas Eves, on RoyalMartyrs Day, during all of Passion Week, and on otheroccasions when by Act of Parliament or at the request ofthe bishops the theatres were required to keep their doorsshut.^ Genest, writing well after the turn of the century,pointed out that these restrictions did not then hold inIreland, and protested that no

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