n that the originators of this disturbance were not
"schoolboys, apprentices, clerks, or mechanics," but lawyers, "a body
of gentlemen perhaps less honoured, but certainly more feared here
than they are in France," who, "from living in colleges (Inns of
Court), and from conversing always with one another, mutually preserve
a spirit of independency through the body, and with great ease form
cabals.... At Paris the cabals of the pit are only among young
fellows, whose years may excuse their folly, or persons of the meanest
education and stamp; here they are the fruit of deliberation in a very
grave body of people, who are not less formidable to the minister in
place than to the theatrical writers." But the Abbe relates that on a
subsequent occasion, when another new play having been announced, he
had looked for further disturbance, the judicious dramatist of the
night succeeded in calming the pit by administering in his prologue a
double dose of incense to their vanity. "Half-an-hour before the play
was to begin the spectators gave notice of their dispositions by
frightful hisses and outcries, equal, perhaps, to what were ever heard
at a Roman amphitheatre." The author, however, having in part tamed
this wild audience by his flattery, secured ultimately its absolute
favour by humouring its prejudices after the grossest fashion. He
brought upon the stage a figure "with black eyebrows, a ribbon of an
ell long under his chin, a bag-peruke immoderately powdered, and his
nose all bedaubed with snuff. What Englishman could not know a
Frenchman by this ridiculous figure?" The Frenchman was presently
shown to be, for all the lace down every seam of his coat, nothing but
a cook, and then followed severe satire and criticism upon the manners
and customs of France. "The excellence and virtues of English beef
were extolled, and the author maintained that it was owing to the
qualities of its juice that the English were so courageous and had
such a solidity of understanding, which raised them above all the
nations in Europe; he preferred the noble old English pudding beyond
all the finest ragouts that ever were invented by the greatest
geniuses that France ever produced." These "ingenious strokes" were
loudly applauded by the audience, it seems, who, in their delight at
the abuse lavished upon the French, forgot that they came to condemn
the play and to uphold the ancient liberties of the stage. From that
time forward, the Abbe states,