. The men of the
music hall live, as I have said, entirely in a dull convention; and,
if a set of thorough artists were to portray them exactly, no one
would be more surprised than the folk whose portraits were taken. The
gentlemen who are resolved to regenerate the music-hall stage persist
in not considering the audience; and yet, when all is said and done,
the poor stupid audience should be considered a little. If we played
Browning's "Strafford" for them, how much would they be "raised"? They
would not laugh, they would not yawn; they would be stupefied, and a
trifle insulted. Give them a good silly swinging chorus about some
subject connected with the tender affections, and let the refrain run
to a waltz rhythm or to a striking drawl, and they are satisfied in
mind and rejoice exceedingly. The finer class of people in the
East-end of London seem to enjoy the very noblest and even the most
abstruse of sacred music at the Sunday concerts; but it will be long
before the music-hall audiences are educated up even to the standard
of those crowds who come off the Whitechapel pavements to hear Handel.
We cannot hurry them: why try? Their lives are very hard, and, when
the brief gleam comes on the evening of evenings in the week, we
should be content with ensuring them decency, safety, order, and let
them enjoy their own entertainment in their own way. A thoroughly
prosaic and logical preacher might say to those poor souls with
perfect truth, "Why do you waste time in coming here to see things
which are done much better in the streets? You roar and cheer and
stamp when you see a real cab-horse come across from the wings, and
yet in an hour you might watch a hundred cabs pass you in the street
and you would not cheer the least bit. You hear a costermonger on the
stage say, 'Give me my 'umble fireside, and let my good old missus
'and me my cup o' tea and my 'ard-earned bit o' bread, and all the
dooks and lords in Hengland ain't nothin' to me!'--you hear that, and
you know quite well that no costermonger on this goodly earth ever
talked in that way, and still you cheer. You like only what is unreal,
and, when you are shown a character which is supposed in some
mysterious way to resemble you, you are more than delighted, and you
applaud a thing which is either a silly caricature or an utterly
foolish libel." The poor and lowly personage thus hailed with cutting
denunciation and logic might say, "Please mind your own business. Do