When that dread curse of Lear’s
      Had burst tremendous on a thousand ears: 

rather an anti-climax, by the way, for it means an audience of but five hundred, which would have been a beggarly account for the new Drury.  There is nothing either about its “dome,” or about the scenery, except commonplaces so flat that one doubts if it be quite fair to quote them—­

      The very use, since so essential grown,
      Of painted scenes, was to his [Shakspere’s] stage unknown.

This is not an improvement on the “waves not yet quite dry,” a Lamb-like touch which could not have been invented by the critic, and may go far to convince us of his veracity.

Above all, there is no trace of that splendidly audacious suggestion that Coleridge was the first “whose muse had soared” within the new dome—­unless we find a blind one in the closing lines, supposing them to have been converted by the simple process of inversion.  Instead of Coleridge being the first whose muse had soared in the new Drury, Drury was the first place in which his dramatic muse had soared.

Lamb was not among the writers parodied by the “sneering brothers” (as he called them later), but Coleridge was.  Lamb’s turn came in 1825, when P.G.  Patmore, afterwards his friend and the father of Coventry Patmore, wrote Rejected Articles, in which was a very poor imitation of Elia.

Line 9. Betterton or Booth. Thomas Betterton, born probably in 1635, acted for the last time in 1710, the year in which he died.  Barton Booth (1681-1733) left the stage in 1728.  Betterton was much at the Little Theatre in Lincoln’s Inn Fields; also at Sir John Vanbrugh’s theatre in the Haymarket.

Line 11. Quin.  James Quin (1693-1766) of Drury Lane and Covent Garden, Garrick’s great rival, famous as Falstaff.  His last appearance was in 1753.

Line 12. Garrick. Garrick’s Drury Lane, in which Lamb saw his first play, was that built by Sir Christopher Wren in 1674.  It lasted, with certain alterations, including a new face by the brothers Adam, nearly 120 years.  The seating capacity of this theatre was modest.  In 1794 a new Drury Lane Theatre, the third, was opened—­too large for comfortable seeing or hearing.  This was burned down in 1809; and the new one, the fourth, and that in which “Remorse” was produced, was opened in 1812.  This is the building (with certain additions) that still stands.

Lines 13-16. Garrick in the shades. Many years later Lamb used the same idea in connection with Elliston (see “To the Shade of Elliston,” Vol.  II.).

Line 20. Ben and Fletcher. Ben Jonson (1573?-1637) and John Fletcher (1579-1625), Beaumont’s collaborator.  Ben Jonson’s “Every Man in His Humour” was produced at the Globe in 1598, Shakspeare being in the caste; but in the main he wrote for Henslowe, who was connected with the Rose and the Swan, on Bankside, and with the theatre in Newington Butts, and who built, with Alleyn, in 1600, the Fortune in Golden Lane, Cripplegate Without.  Beaumont and Fletcher’s plays went for the most part to Burbage, who owned the Globe at Southwark and the Blackfriars’ Theatre.  Shakspeare also wrote for Burbage.