hose she minds, the cunning belle
Has other fish to fry, and other fruit to sell;
See! how she whispers yonder youthful peer,
See! how he smiles and lends a greedy ear.
At length 'tis done, the note o'er orange wrapt
Has reach'd the box, and lays in lady's lap."

These lines by Nicholas Rowe form a graphic but unsavoury picture
of the demoralisation to be found in an early eighteenth century
audience. Affairs were much better than they used to be in the
_laissez-faire_ Restoration period, but, as may be imagined, there
was still room for improvement. The rake, the cynic and the
loosely-moraled women were still abroad in the land (have we quite
done with them even yet?), and many a hard struggle would take place
before the artificial restraint and decorum of the Georgian era would
triumph over the mocking spirit of Charles Stuart and his professional
idlers. In the meantime, as Shadwell relates, the rakes "live as much
by their wits as ever; and to avoid the clinking dun of a boxkeeper,
at the end of one act they sneak to the opposite side 'till the end
of another; then call the boxkeeper saucy rascal, ridicule the poet,
laugh at the actors, march to the opera, and spunge away the rest of
the evening." And he goes on to say that "the women of the town take
their places in the pit with their wonted assurance. The middle
gallery is fill'd with the middle part of the city, and your high
exalted galleries are grac'd with handsome footmen, that wear their
master's linen."[A]

[Footnote A: The footmen were sometimes sent, early in the afternoon,
to keep places in the theatre until their masters or mistresses should
arrive. They created so much disturbance, however, that a stop had to
be put to the practice, and the servants were relegated to the upper
gallery. To this they were given free admission.]

And now for a few pages about Drury Lane's rival, the theatre within
the walls of the old tennis court in Lincoln's Inn Fields. It was
the home of the company headed by the noble Betterton, the "English
Roscius," who had, in 1695, headed the revolt against the management
of the other house. At that time the tide of popular success at Drury
Lane had reached a rather low ebb, a painful circumstance due, no
doubt, to the fickleness of a public that was beginning to tire of
the favourite players and to betray a fondness for operatic and
spectacular productions rather than the "legitimate." Christopher
Rich, the man