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VGW(HU.752.043
18 Jun 1752:11 (77)
Entertainment. . . [12 lines] What can we sometimes
conceive of an audience at a play-house, where I have heard
the dullest chitchat between gentlemen and ladies called
humour, and applauded as such! On the other side, Albumazar
was but coldly received, and the little French lawyer of
Fletcher was hissed off the stage.
And here I cannot omit a pleasant fact to which I was
myself a witness. A certain comic author produced a piece
on Drury-Lane stage, called The Highland Fair, in which he
intended to display the comical humours of the Highlanders;
the audience, who had for three nights together sat staring
at each other, scarce knowing what to make of their
entertainment, on the fourth joined in an unanimous
exploding laugh. This they had continued through an act,
when the author, who unhappily mistook the peels of laughter
which he heard, for applause, when up to the manager, and,
with an air of triumph, said -- Seel o' my saul, Sare, they
begin to tauk the humour at last.
Whether the audience or the poet erred most on this
occasion, I shall not determine. Certainly it is no unusual
thing in the former, to make very grose mistakes in this
matter, as great indeed as the late learned Bernard Lintott
the book seller, who, having purchased a copy of the tragedy
called Phaedra and Hypolitus, lamented that the author had
not put a little more humour in it; for that, he said, as
the only thing it wanted. . . [1/2 column more, discussing
humour and roasting men's characters]
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