in the early days assembled before seven o'clock, had to be sent home
happy. After the tragedy, the slap-stick or the loud guffaw; after
"Romeo and Juliet," Cibber's "Hob in the Well"; after "King Lear," "The
Irish Widow." (These two illustrations are taken at random from the
programs of the Charleston theatre in 1773.) This custom persisted
until comparatively recent times. The fathers and mothers of the present
generation can remember when William Warren, at the Boston Museum, would
turn of an evening from such a part as his deep-hearted Sir Peter Teazle
to the loud and empty vociferations of a Morton farce. The entertainment
in those days would hardly have been considered complete without the
"afterpiece," or, as time went on, sometimes the "curtain raiser." It is
by no means certain that theatre seats were always cheaper than to-day.
In some cases, certainly, they were relatively quite as high. But it
is certain that you got more for your money. You frequently saw your
favorite actor in two contrasted roles, two contrasted styles of acting
perhaps, and you saw him from early evening till a decently late hour.
You didn't get to the theatre at 8.30, wait for the curtain to rise on a
thin-spun drawing-room comedy at 8.45, and begin hunting for your wraps
at 10.35. One hates to think, in fact, what would have happened to a
manager fifty years ago who didn't give more than that for the price
of a ticket. Our fathers and mothers watched their pennies more sharply
than we do.

For various reasons, one of them no doubt being the growth of cheaper
forms of amusement and the consequent desertion from the traditional
playhouse of a considerable body of those who least like, and can least
afford, to spend money irrespective of returns, the "afterpiece" and
"curtain raiser" have practically vanished from our stage. They have so
completely vanished, in fact, that theatre goers have lost not only the
habit of expecting them, but the imaginative flexibility to enjoy them.
If you should play "Romeo and Juliet" to-day and then follow it with
a one-act farce, your audience would be uncomfortably bewildered. They
would be unable to make the necessary adjustment of mood. If you focus
your vision rapidly from a near to a far object, you probably suffer
from eye-strain. Similarly, the jump from one play to the other in the
theatre gives a modern audience mind- or mood-strain. It is largely
a matter of habit. We, to-day, have lost the trick