m the new theatre.
It was open for brief seasons with such exhibitions of music, dancing,
and pantomime, as were held to be unaffected by the Act, and
permissible under the license of the local magistrates. From time to
time, however, the relentless patentees took proceedings against the
actors. Delpini, the clown, was even committed to prison for
exclaiming "Roast Beef!" in a Christmas pantomime. By uttering words
without the accompaniment of music he had, it appeared, constituted
himself an actor of a stage play.

Some five-and-twenty years later, Elliston was now memorialising the
king, now petitioning the House of Commons and the Privy Council, in
reference to the opening of an additional theatre. He had been in
treaty for the Pantheon, in Oxford Street, and urged that "the
intellectual community would be benefited by an extension of license
for the regular drama." As lessee of the Royal Circus or Surrey
Theatre, he besought liberty to exhibit and perform "all such
entertainments of music and action as were commonly called pantomimes
and ballets, together with operatic or musical pieces, accompanied
with dialogue in the ordinary mode of dramatic representations,"
subject, at all times, to the control and restraint of the Lord
Chamberlain, "in conformity to the laws by which theatres possessing
those extensive privileges were regulated." But all was in vain. The
king would not "notice any representation connected with the
establishment of another theatre." The other petitions were without
result.

Gradually, however, it became necessary for the authorities to
recognise the fact that the public really did require more amusements
of a theatrical kind than the privileged theatres could furnish. But
the regular drama, it was held, must still be protected: performed
only on the patent boards. So now "burletta licenses" were issued,
under cover of which melodramas were presented, with entertainments of
music and dancing, spectacle and pantomime. In 1809, the Lyceum or
English Opera House, which for some years before had been licensed for
music and dancing, was licensed for "musical dramatic entertainments
and ballets of action." The Adelphi, then called the Sans Pareil
Theatre, received a "burletta license" about the same time. In 1813 the
Olympic was licensed for similar performances and for horsemanship;
but it was for a while closed again by the Chamberlain's order, upon
Elliston's attempt to call the theatre Little