court.  In summing up, Chief Justice Mansfield observed:  “I cannot tell on what grounds many people think they have a right, at a theatre, to make such a prodigious noise as to prevent others hearing what is going forward on the stage.  Theatres are not absolute necessaries of life, and any person may stay away who does not approve of the manner in which they are managed.  If the prices of admission are unreasonable, the evil will cure itself.  People will not go, and the proprietors will be ruined, unless they lower their demand.  If the proprietors have acted contrary to the conditions of the patent, the patent itself may be set aside by a writ of scire facias in the Court of Chancery.”  To the great majority of playgoers it probably occurred that hissing was a simpler and more summary remedy of their grievances and relief to their feelings than any the Court of Chancery was likely to afford.  In due time, however, came free trade in the drama and the abolition of the special privileges and monopolies too long enjoyed by the patent theatres.

After the failure of his luckless farce, “Mr. H.,” Charles Lamb wrote to Wordsworth:  “A hundred hisses (hang the word!  I wrote it like kisses—­how different!), a hundred hisses outweigh a thousand claps.  The former come more directly from the heart.”  The reception of the little play had been of a disastrous kind, and Lamb, sitting in the front row of the pit, is said to have joined in condemning his own work, and to have hissed and hooted as loudly as any of his neighbours.  “I had many fears; the subject was not substantial enough.  John Bull must have solider fare than a letter.  We are pretty stout about it; have had plenty of condoling friends; but, after all, we had rather it should have succeeded.  You will see the prologue in most of the morning papers.  It was received with such shouts as I never witnessed to a prologue.  It was attempted to be encored....  The quantity of friends we had in the house—­my brother and I being in public offices, &c.—­was astonishing, but they yielded at last to a few hisses.”  “Mr. H.” could probably in no case have achieved any great success, but it may be that its failure was precipitated by the indiscreet cordiality of its author’s “quantity of friends.”  They were too eager to express approbation, and distributed their applause injudiciously.  The pace at which they started could not be sustained.  As Monsieur Auguste, the famous chef des claqueurs at the Paris Opera House, explained to Doctor Veron, the manager, “Il ne fallait pas trop chauffer le premier acte; qu’on devait, au contraire, reserver son courage et ses forces pour enlever le dernier acte et le denoument.”  He admitted that he should not hesitate to award three rounds of applause to a song in the last act, to which, if it had occurred earlier in the representation, he should have given one round only.  Lamb’s friends knew nothing of this sound theory of systematised