At the performance of a recent melodrama, "Sweet Nell of
Old Drury," I happened to be in the last row of the stalls. My seat was
not altogether well adapted for seeing and hearing the play, but it was
admirably adapted for observing the pit, and I gave some of my attention
to my neighbours there. Whenever a foolish joke was made on the stage,
when Miss Julia Neilson, as Nell, the orange girl, stuttered with
laughter or romped heavily across the stage, the pit thrilled and
quivered with delight. At every piece of clowning there was the same
responsive gurgle of delight. Tricks of acting so badly done that I
should have thought a child would have seen through them, and resented
them as an imposition, were accepted in perfect good faith, and gloated
over. I was turning over the matter in my mind afterwards, when I
remembered something that was said to me the other day by a young
Swedish poet who is now in London. He told me that he had been to most
of the theatres, and he had been surprised to find that the greater part
of the pieces which were played at the principal London theatres were
such pieces as would be played in Norway and Sweden at the lower class
theatres, and that nobody here seemed to mind.
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