late Mr. Edwin's style, and was acting-manager under Placide. Jones was succeeded in his management by Mr. Villiers, a young man of superior address and education, who, from his own account, left a very genteel family and good connections, to become a player in America. His real name was not Villiers, and from the same motives which probably influenced him to conceal that of his family, I decline making the discovery. He was a good low comic actor, studying nature in all he attempted; and he was a great favourite. In the summer of 1805, he came as far as New York on the business of his theatre, and was proceeding up the Hudson River to Albany, where the old American company were performing, when he was suddenly seized with sickness, and landed at a small town called Esopus, where he died with the most violent symptoms of the yellow fever, imbibed during his short stay at New York, From this mortality the American stage is at present somewhat depreciated, and it is not to be expected that England can spare a supply of such performers as have been last named, with the celerity with which a Carolina climate may carry them off. At New York, Cooper has lately been invested with the theatrical command, having rented the theatre of the proprietors; from his taste in selection, added to his abilities in performance, much is expected, The death of Wignal has thrown the direction of the Philadelphia company into the hands of Warren, who is well qualified for the arduous undertaking. Wignal was also cut off suddenly. He had recently married Mrs. Merry, and in a very few months she was left in a state of second widowhood. * The performers brought forward last season at_Philadelphia were Mr. and Mrs. Woodham, and Mr. Bray, late of the York theatre. The lady possesses a fine figure, and is easy in genteel comedy. Mr. Woodham is a good singer, and a musician. Bray is one of the laughter-loving sons of Momus, and manages his business in the manner of Emery, and with considerable effect; his figure and *Mrs. Merry has lately entered a third time into the matri, monial state, with Mr. Warren.-ED. phiz being well calculated to pourtray the Yorkshire clown. † In their private capacity, the performers are treated by the Americans with an assumed contempt. They will neither associate with, nor notice them off the stage. Mr. Harper, whose company I always found interesting, one day amused me with an account of a journey of the old American company, some years before, to Richmond in Virginia. He said the people were assembled when the performers arrived; at first they were stared at as though they were so many wild beasts; but at length the gaping crowd discovered them "to be men and women, formed and dressed like other folks!" The above account of the American theatres, is inserted, not merely for the information it affords, but in the hope that it may deter our speculating English actors from quitting the substance, in search of what appears to be a shadow, and prevent many a stage-struck hero from being deluded over to this "Land of Promise,” by the splendid but fallacious representations of theatrical kidnappers. ON AUTHORS' BENEFITS. By Edmond Malone, Esq. It is uncertain at what time the usage of giving authors a benefit on the third day of the exhibition of their piece, commenced. Mr. Oldys, in one of his manuscripts, intimates that dramatic poets had anciently their benefit on the first day that a new play was represented; a regulation which would have been very fayourable to some of the ephemeral productions of modern times. I have found no authority which proves this to have been the case in the time of Shakspeare: †The public prints have just announced that Mr. Hallam, who is mentioned in the beginning of this article, after having been fifty-four years a faithful dramatic servant to the public, at Philadelphia, is dismissed the theatre, and obliged to sell his property in it for bread. but at the beginning of the present century [the last] it appears to have been customary in Lent for the players of the theatre in Drury Lane to divide the profits of the first representation of a new play among them.* From D'Avenant, indeed, we learn, that in the latter part of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, the poet had his benefit on the second day. † As it was a general practice, in the time of Shakspeare, to sell the copy of the play to the theatre, I imagine, in such cases, an author derived no other advantage from his piece, than what arose from the sale of it. Sometimes, however, he found it more beneficial to retain the copy-right in his own hands; and when he did so, I suppose he had a benefit. It is certain that the giving authors the profits of the third exhibition of their play, which seems to have been the usual mode during a great part of the last century, was an established custom in the year 1712; for Decker, in the prologue to one of his comedies, printed in that year, speaks of the poet's third day. § * Gildon's Comparison between the Stages, 1702. p. 9. + See The Play-house to be Let : "Players. -There is an old tradition, "This shall be ours, sir, and to-morrow yours. "It is not praise is sought for now, but pence, “A cram'd third day, what filth drops from his brains!" Prologue to If this be not a good Play, the Devil's in't 1612. Yet the following passages intimate, that the poet, at a subsequent period, had some interest in the second day's exhibition: "Whether their sold scenes be dislik'd or hit, "Are cares for them who eat by the stage and wit; "An empty second day, or a thin share.” Prologue to The City Match, a comedy, by J. M'ayne, acted at Blackfriars in 1639. So, in the prologue to The Sophy, by Sir John Denham, at Blackfriars in 1642: The unfortunate Otway had no more than one benefit on the production of a new play; and this too, it seems, he was sometimes forced to mortgage, before the piece was acted t. Southerne was the first dramatic writer who obtained the emoluments arising from two representations; and to Farquhar, in the year 1700, the benefit of a third was granted **; but this appears to have a particular favour to that gentleman; for, for several years afterwards, dramatic poets had only the benefit of the third and sixth performance. The profit of three representations did not become the established right of authors 'till after the year 1720. To the honour of Mr. Addison, it should be remembered, that he first discontinued the ancient, but humiliating, practice of distributing tickets, and soliciting company to attend at the theatre, on the poet's nights.tt Gentlemen, if you dislike the play, "Pray make no words on't 'till the second day "Or third be past; for we would have you know it, "For he writes not for money. In other cases, then, it may be presumed, the loss, either of the second or third day, did affect the author. Since the above was written, I have learned from Sir Henry Herbert's office-book, that between the year 1625 and 1641, benefits were on the second day of representation. "But which amongst you is there to be found, Epilogue to Caius Marcius, 1680. "I must make my boast, though with the most acknowledging respect, of the favours of the fair sex-in so visibly promoting my interest on those days chiefly, (the third and the sixth,) when I had the tenderest relation to the welfare of my play." Southerne's dedication to Sir Antony Love, a comedy, 1691. Hence Pope: "May Tom, whom heaven sent down to raise "The price of prologues, and of plays," &c. It should seem, however, to have been some time before this custom was uniformly established; for the author of the Treacherous Brothers, acted in 1696, had only one benefit : "See't but three days, and fill the house, the last, "He shall not trouble you again in haste." Epilogue. **On the representation of the Constant Couple, which was performed fifty three times in the year 1700. Farquhar, on account of the extraordinary success of that play, is said, by one of his biographers, to have been allowed by the managers the profits of four representations. †† Southerne, by this practice, is said to have gained seven hundred pounds by one play, THEATRICAL MISERIES. original and selected, BY LACHRYMAL GLUM. THE gallery at the Opera-House restricting you, not merely to a bird's-eye view of the dancers, but to a bird's-ear sound of the singers.-Item, The loss of your delight in looking at the faces of the female performers, after the enchantment has been dissolved by a closer inspection behind the scenes. On the first and last appearance of some theatrical meteor, when every seat in every box has been eagerly caught up months ago-venturing for the pit amidst a shoal of plebeians, completely soldered into one masswith the varied accompaniments of heat, delay, fatigue, crushings, treadings, quarrellings, and total loss of purse, peace, and-shoes. When you are at length borne along to the paying-place, the new struggle and difficulty of ransoming your right arm from its close captivity, for the purpose of diving into your pockets, to find. ..... nothing there. After thus involuntarily bilking the treasury, you continue to be swayed along into the house, there to be rewarded, at last, for all your patience (if you have had any) by finding" a little standing room!" Boring a friend to death, who has pronounced Kemble his aversion, to go and see him in a favourite character, and finding that it is one of the nights in which he has made up his mind to-walk over the course. Having your ears annoyed by "a bill of the play" under the piazza, and "want any oranges, want any beer or cyder" when you have struggled, through a phalanx of impediments, into the house. A modern prologue to a modern play. Shirking a pleasant party to get early to Drury-lane to see the new comedy of a popular writer, and, when the curtain draws up, learning from your next neighbour that on account of the indisposition of a principal performer, the managers have been under the necessity of substituting the Bold Stroke for a Wife, or She stoops to Conquer.-N. B. No money to be returned! A Ticket night at Covent Garden on the thirtieth June! LACHRYMAL GLUM. of |