rb, fools now endeavour to make wise
men, and the Clown on the stage combines the teacher with the tumbler;
is didactic and funny; intermingles philosophy with antics, and
moralizes and makes faces by turns. The play-going public may perhaps
admire this conjunction of light and shade with motley; if so, its taste
will be catered for by enterprising managers. In the preparation of the
Pantomimes for Christmas, the Clowns should be got to rehearse their
parts carefully, with a view to the correct delivery of those discourses
which will constitute the serious portion of their business. When the
Clown throws off his great head, and his regal vestments, or doublet and
trunk hose, and rushes to the foot-lights, he utters an exclamation and
propounds an interrogatory. Tradition requires thus much; but Fashion
will demand more. He will have to expand and amplify the old forms of
words whose brevity has hitherto been sufficiently instructive as well
as amusing, so as to elucidate the fulness of their significance. For
example:--Having been transformed from Emperor to Zany, MR. MERRYMAN, at
the tap of the Fairy's wand, jumps out of his robes, and appears in his
diversified and proper colours. He turns his toes in, and runs up to one
of the stage boxes. He there stoops forwards, resting his hands on his
knees, grins, squints, rolls his eyes, thrusts his tongue out, and
pulling himself by the ears, draws it back again. He then composes his
flake-white and vermilion countenance, and utters the following
soliloquy:--

"On this spot of earth, at this moment of time, between the past and
the future, that is to say, HERE, an aggregation of human entities,
animal creatures endowed with reason and conscience, a multitude of
Objects that constitute You in relation to the One Individual
Subject, Myself: in a word, WE, exist in a state of conscious Being,
of self-cognisant perceptivity and ratiocinativity; in short, ARE!

"In what condition, mental or bodily, of suffering or enjoyment, of
weal or woe, of riches or poverty, of health or disease, of
seriousness or levity, of gravity or mirth, of appetite or satiety,
of wakefulness or somnolence, more briefly, How, in respect to the
state of conscious being, self-cognisant perceptivity and
ratiocinativity, exist, or ARE, that multitude of Objects which in
relation to my Individual Selfhood, constitute YOU?

"To condense my meaning into t