of the stage.”  In order, therefore, to accommodate the patrons who required the performances to commence at an early hour, and to gratify those who demanded that the entertainments should be continued until late, it was proposed to divide every evening’s entertainment into two distinct parts or performances.  Each performance was to consist of a full three-act opera; or of a short opera with a ballet or musical entertainment.  The first performance was to begin at six o’clock, and to last till about nine; and the second performance was to begin at half-past nine, and to conclude at twelve; the prices to either performance being considerably reduced.  “We are fully aware,” said the public address of the management, “that we shall have to encounter many professional jokes on this occasion, but we are prepared to smile at the good-humoured raillery of our friends, and the hostile attempts of our enemies, who may both, perhaps, be inclined to call this a ‘Bartholomew Fair scheme.’  Let them call it what they will, we know that our sole aim is to exist by your favour, and by devising all means for your entertainment, till we ultimately receive an honest reward for our labours.”

The new plan was not found to work very well, however.  A very thin audience attended the first performance, and a few hisses were heard in opposition to the project; the friends of the management applauding lustily.  At the conclusion of the first entertainment, certain obstinate persons refused to resign their seats and make way for their successors, though the stage lamps were extinguished and they were threatened with total darkness.  The manager then came forward, and formally announced that the first performance had concluded.  One or two then threw their money on the stage, as the price of their admission to the second performance, and finding that the malcontents were resolved to keep their seats, the manager submitted and retired.  The plan was only continued for ten nights, when the theatre was closed for the season.  In a farewell address, the manager stated that the experiment, so far as he could judge, had succeeded; during the ten nights, compared with the ten nights preceding, an addition of one-third having been made to the number of persons visiting the theatre.  Still, he did not feel justified in pledging himself to continue the arrangement in future seasons.  There was indeed no further trial of the double-performance system in lieu of half-price.

It is rather curious to find the plan of half-price having any sort of effect upon dramatic literature, yet we find, in the “Autobiography of Thomas Dibdin,” 1827, the following advice, given him by Lewis, the stage-manager at Covent Garden, in regard to writing for the stage, and apropos of Mr. Dibdin’s comedy, called “Liberal Opinions”: