Every seat on each side of the stage
reserved for the "quality" was occupied. There was just room for the
actors and no more. The gallery was crammed with a mob--a host of
footmen prone to unruly behaviour, butchers from Clare Market ready to
applaud their favourite Jemmy Spiller, Covent Garden salesmen and
porters--a miscellaneous rabble that might easily become turbulent.
In the pit were well to do tradesmen and their wives cheek by jowl with
well seasoned playgoers who had seen every stage celebrity and every
famous tragedy and comedy for the past quarter of a century, who were
well versed in all the traditional "business" of the boards, who in fact
were the real critics to be pleased--or offended. Into the second row
Lancelot Vane had squeezed himself all expectation, with eyes and ears
for no one but Polly Peachum.
Gay's friends filled a box next to that occupied by the Duke of Argyll,
an enthusiastic patron of the stage. Gay himself was there supported on
either side by Pope, Dr. Arbuthnot, Bolingbroke and others. Dean Swift,
who had had so much to do with the inception of the opera and who had
contributed to it some of the most stinging verse, would have been
present had he not been in Ireland at the death-bed of his beloved
Stella, and so also would have been Congreve but that he was blind and
in feeble health.
It was seen at the very commencement that the audience was not disposed
to accept the innovations of the "Beggar's Opera" without protest.
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