t, as if you were feeling your way, and it's
sure to do. The tent scene is confessedly worth half-a-sovereign, and so
you have the fight in, gratis, and everybody knows what an effect may be
produced by a good combat. One--two--three--four--over; then,
one--two--three--four--under; then thrust; then dodge and slide about;
then fall down on one knee; then fight upon it, and then get up again and
stagger. You may keep on doing this, as long as it seems to take--say
ten minutes--and then fall down (backwards, if you can manage it without
hurting yourself), and die game: nothing like it for producing an effect.
They always do it at Astley's and Sadler's Wells, and if they don't know
how to do this sort of thing, who in the world does? A small child, or a
female in white, increases the interest of a combat materially--indeed,
we are not aware that a regular legitimate terrific broadsword combat
could be done without; but it would be rather difficult, and somewhat
unusual, to introduce this effect in the last scene of Richard the Third,
so the only thing to be done, is, just to make the best of a bad bargain,
and be as long as possible fighting it out.

The principal patrons of private theatres are dirty boys, low
copying-clerks, in attorneys' offices, capacious-headed youths from city
counting-houses, Jews whose business, as lenders of fancy dresses, is a
sure passport to the amateur stage, shop-boys who now and then mistake
their masters' money for their own; and a choice miscellany of idle
vagabonds. The proprietor of a private theatre may be an
ex-scene-painter, a low coffee-house-keeper, a disappointed eighth-rate
actor, a retired smuggler, or uncertificated bankrupt. The theatre
itself may be in Catherine-street, Strand, the purlieus of the city, the
neighbourhood of Gray's-inn-lane, or the vicinity of Sadler's Wells; or
it may, perhaps, form the chief nuisance of some shabby street, on the
Surrey side of Waterloo-bridge.

The lady performers pay nothing for their characters, and it is needless
to add, are usually selected from one class of society; the audiences are
necessarily of much the same character as the performers, who receive, in
return for their contributions to the management, tickets to the amount
of the money they pay.

All the minor theatres in London, especially the lowest, constitute the
centre of a little stage-struck neighbourhood. Each of them has an
audience exclusively its own; and at any