re happily indicated
than in this extract.

Mention of Old Drury Lane and its burning bring us naturally to the
admirable "story of the flying playbill," contained in the parody of
Crabbe, perhaps the most perfect specimen in that unique collection of
parodies, "Rejected Addresses." The verses by the pseudo-Crabbe
include the following lines:

Perchance while pit and gallery cry "Hats off!"
And awed consumption checks his chided cough,
Some giggling daughter of the Queen of Love
Drops, reft of pin, her playbill from above;
Like Icarus, while laughing galleries clap,
Soars, ducks, and dives in air the printed scrap;
But, wiser far than he, combustion fears;
And, as it flies, eludes the chandeliers;
Till, sinking gradual, with repeated twirl,
It settles, curling, on a fiddler's curl,
Who from his powdered pate the intruder strikes,
And, for mere malice, sticks it on the spikes.

"The story of the flying playbill," says the mock-preface, "is
calculated to expose a practice, much too common, of pinning playbills
to the cushions insecurely, and frequently, I fear, not pinning them
at all. If these lines save one playbill only from the fate I have
recorded, I shall not deem my labour ill employed."

Modern playbills may be described as of two classes, indoor and
out-of-door. The latter are known also as "posters," and may thus
manifest their connection with the early method of "setting up
playbills upon posts." Shakespeare's audiences were not supplied with
handbills as our present playgoers are; such of them as could read
were probably content to derive all the information they needed from
the notices affixed to the doors of the theatre, or otherwise publicly
exhibited. Of late years the vendors of playbills, who were wont
urgently to pursue every vehicle that seemed to them bound to the
theatre, in the hope of disposing of their wares, have greatly
diminished in numbers, if they have not wholly disappeared. Many
managers have forbidden altogether the sale of bills outside the doors
of their establishments. The indoor programmes are again divided into
two kinds. To the lower-priced portions of the house an inferior bill
is devoted; a folio sheet of thin paper, heavily laden and strongly
odorous with printers' ink. Visitors to the more expensive seats are
now supplied with a scented bill of octavo size, which is generally,
in addition, the means of advertising the goods