asure has since visited me but in
dreams." Returning to the theatre after an interval of some years, he
vainly looked for the same feelings to recur with the same occasion.
He was disappointed. "At the first period I knew nothing, understood
nothing, discriminated nothing. I felt all, loved all, wondered
all--'was nourished I could not tell how.' I had left the temple a
devotee, and was returned a rationalist. The same things were there
materially; but the emblem, the reference was gone! The green curtain
was no longer a veil drawn between two worlds, the unfolding of which
was to bring back past ages, to present a 'royal ghost'--but a certain
quantity of green baize, which was to separate the audience for a
given time from certain of their fellow-men who were to come forward
and pretend those parts. The lights--the orchestra lights--came up a
clumsy machinery. The first ring, and the second ring, was now but a
trick of the prompter's bell--which had been, like the note of the
cuckoo, a phantom of a voice; no hand seen or guessed at which
ministered to its warning. The actors were men and women painted. I
thought the fault was in them; but it was in myself, and the
alteration which those many centuries--of six short twelvemonths--had
wrought in me." Presently, however, Lamb recovered tone, so to speak,
as a playgoer. Comparison and retrospection soon yielded to the
present attraction of the scene, and the theatre became to him, "upon
a new stock, the most delightful of recreations."

Audiences have always been miscellaneous. Among them not only youth
and age, but rich and poor, wise and ignorant, good and bad, virtuous
and vicious, have alike found representation. The gallery and the
groundlings have been catered for not less than the spectators of the
boxes and private rooms; yet, upon the whole, the stage, from its
earliest period, has always provided entertainment of a reputable and
wholesome kind. Even in its least commendable condition--and this, so
far as England is concerned, we may judge to have been during the
reign of King Charles II.--it yet possessed redeeming elements. It was
never wholly bad, though it might now and then come very near to
seeming so. And what it was, the audience had made it. It reflected
their sentiments and opinions; it accorded with their moods and
humours; it was their creature; its performers were their most
faithful and zealous servants.

Playgoers, it appears, were not wont to rid