But it
is certain that you got more for your money. You frequently saw
your favorite actor in two contrasted roles, two contrasted
styles of acting perhaps, and you saw him from early evening till
a decently late hour. You didn't get to the theatre at 8.30, wait
for the curtain to rise on a thin-spun drawing-room comedy at
8.45, and begin hunting for your wraps at 10.35. One hates to
think, in fact, what would have happened to a manager fifty years
ago who didn't give more than that for the price of a ticket. Our
fathers and mothers watched their pennies more sharply than we
do.
For various reasons, one of them no doubt being the growth of
cheaper forms of amusement and the consequent desertion from the
traditional playhouse of a considerable body of those who least
like, and can least afford, to spend money irrespective of
returns, the "afterpiece" and "curtain raiser" have practically
vanished from our stage. They have so completely vanished, in
fact, that theatre goers have lost not only the habit of
expecting them, but the imaginative flexibility to enjoy them. If
you should play "Romeo and Juliet" to-day and then follow it with
a one-act farce, your audience would be uncomfortably bewildered.
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