of the cause in which we suffered, as the ancients sacrificed a goat,
a supposed unhealthy animal, to AEsculapius, on our feast-nights we cut
up a goose, an animal typical of the popular voice, to the deities of
Candour and Patient Hearing. A zealous member of the society once
proposed that we should revive the obsolete luxury of viper-broth;
but, the stomachs of some of the company rising at the proposition, we
lost the benefit of that highly salutary and antidotal dish."

It is to be observed that when a play is hissed there is this
consolation at the service of those concerned: they can shift the
burden of reproach. The author is at liberty to say: "It was the fault
of the actors. Read my play, you will see that it did not deserve the
cruel treatment it experienced." And the actor can assert: "I was not
to blame. I did but speak the words that were set down for me. My fate
is hard--I have to bear the burden of another's sins." And in each
case these are reasonably valid pleas. In the hour of triumph,
however, it is certain that the author is apt to be forgotten, and
that the lion's share of success is popularly awarded to the players.
For the dramatist is a vague, impalpable, invisible personage; whereas
the actor is a vital presence upon the scene; he can be beheld, noted,
and listened to; it is difficult to disconnect him from the humours he
exhibits, from the pathos he displays, from the speeches he utters.
Much may be due to his own merit; but still his debt to the dramatist
is not to be wholly ignored. The author is applauded or hissed, as the
case may be, by proxy. But altogether it is perhaps not surprising
that the proxy should oftentimes forget his real position, and
arrogate wholly to himself the applause due to his principal.

High and low, from Garrick to the "super," it is probably the actor's
doom, for more or less reasons, at some time or another, to be hissed.
He is, as Members of Parliament are fond of saying, "in the hands of
the house," and may be ill-considered by it. Anyone can hiss, and one
goose makes many. Lamb relates how he once saw Elliston, sitting in
state, in the tarnished green-room of the Olympic Theatre, while
before him was brought for judgment, on complaint of prompter, "one of
those little tawdry things that flirt at the tails of choruses--the
pertest little drab--a dirty fringe and appendage of the lamp's
smoke--who, it seems, on some disapprobation expressed by a 'highly
respe