with the substitution of inoffensive white silk stockings for the reprehensible hose of flesh-colour that had originally been assumed.  Of course much talk followed upon this, with great laughter and ridicule; caricatures of the spiritual peers and the opera-dancers abounded.  In a drawing by Gillray, Miss Rose, with other danseuses, is depicted performing what is called “La Danse a l’Eveque;” the ladies have assumed, out of excessive regard for decorousness and the bishop’s arguments, that apron of black silk which has long been thought peculiar to prelates.  Another satirical illustration bore the title of “Ecclesiastical Scrutiny; or, The Durham Inquest on Duty.”  Bishops were represented as attending in the dressing department of the opera-house; one is seen to be measuring the dancers’ skirts with a tailor’s yard; another arranges their stockings in an ungraceful fashion; while a third inspects their corsets, decreeing some change in the form of those articles of attire.  The Bishop of Durham was further portrayed in another broadsheet as armed with his pastoral staff, and sturdily contesting hand to hand with the Spirit of Evil arrayed in ballet costume.  In short, this subject of the bishops and the ballet-girls occupied and amused the public very considerably, and doubtless proved profitable, as an advertisement of his wares, to the manager of the opera-house.

Still the bishops kept a watchful eye upon the proceedings of the theatre.  In 1805 there is record of a riot at the opera-house, “some reforming bishops having warned the managers that if the performances were not regularly brought to a close before twelve o’clock on Saturday evenings, prosecutions would be commenced.”  Accordingly, the performances were shortened by the omission of an act of the ballet of “Ossian,” greatly to the dissatisfaction of the audience, who assaulted Mr. Kelly, the manager, commenced an attack upon the chandeliers, benches, musical instruments, &c., and indeed threatened to demolish the theatre.  The curtain had fallen at half-past eleven, which the audience thought much too early.  Of a certain prelate it was recorded that he frequently attended the Saturday-night performances at the opera-house, and that upon the approach of midnight he was wont to stand up in his box holding out his watch at arm’s length, by way of intimating to the spectators that it was time for them to depart and for the theatre to close.  Of course this bishop could hardly have avoided seeing the ballet; but for whatever distress he may have endured on that account, a sense of his efforts to benefit his species, including of course the opera-dancers, no doubt afforded him a sufficient measure of compensation.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

CORRECT COSTUMES.

The question of dress has always been of the gravest importance to the theatrical profession.  It was a charge brought against the actors of Elizabeth’s time, that they walked about the town in gaudy and expensive attire.  The author of “The Return from Parnassus,” first published in 1606, but held to have been written at an earlier date, specially refers to the prosperity, and the consequent arrogance of the players.  He is believed to have had in view Alleyn or even Shakespeare: