For many generations in our playhouse it was the custom to follow
the long play of the evening with an "afterpiece," generally in
one act, but always brief, and almost always gay, if not
farcical. Audiences, which 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.
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