les, I only wished that he would hold his
tongue, deuce take him!...

"What a vulgar subject! what low ideas!" he exclaimed, loud enough for
every one to hear. "And this is how comedies are written!"...

"But let us listen to it," said I, finding my chief's comments quite
intolerable. "We can laugh at Moratin afterwards."

"But I cannot bear such a medley of absurdities," he went on. "We do
not come to the theatre to see just what is to be seen any day in the
streets, or in every house you go into. If instead of enlarging on her
matrimonial experiences, the lady were to come in invoking curses on
an enemy because he had killed one-and-twenty of her sons in battle,
and left her with only the twenty-second, still an infant at the
breast, and if she had to carry that one off to save him from being
eaten by the besieged, all dying of famine--then there would be some
interest in the plot, and the public would clap their hands till they
were sore. Gabriel, my boy, we must protest, protest vehemently. We
must thump the floor with our feet and sticks to show that we are
bored and out of patience. Yawn; open your mouth till your jaws are
dislocated; look about you; let all the neighbors see that we are
people of taste, and utterly weary of this tiresome and monstrous
piece."

No sooner said than done: we began thumping on the floor, and yawning
in chorus, exclaiming, "What a bore!" "What a dreary piece!" "What
waste of money!" and other phrases to the same effect; all of which
soon bore fruit. The party in the pit imitated our patriotic example
with great exactness. A general murmur of dissatisfaction was
presently audible from every part of the theatre; for though the
author had enemies, he had no lack of friends too, scattered
throughout the pit, boxes, and upper tiers, and they were not slow to
protest against our demonstration, sometimes by applauding, and then
again by roaring at us with threats and oaths, to be silent; till a
stentorian voice from the very back of the pit bellowed, "Turn the
blackguards out!" raising a noisy storm of applause that reduced us to
silence.

Our poetaster was almost jumping out of his skin with indignation, and
persisted in making his remarks as the piece went on....

"A pretty plot indeed! It seems hardly credible that a civilized
nation should applaud it. I would sentence Moratin to the galleys, and
forbid his writing such coarse stuff as long as he lives. So you call
this a play, Ga