ASSUMING A VIRTUE.

535

The changes which have taken place in the theatres themselves are as great as those which have taken place in the plays which were represented therein. We seldom see on our stage to-day any such absolute defiance of good morals as was exhibited by the dramatists of the Restoration.

Even our blonde burlesquers make a pretense of respecting public opinion, and offer "appeals to the public" in defence of their nude "innocent amusements."

Not so in old times. The dramatists of the Restoration were frankly and confessedly wicked. "If they were devoid of virtuous instruction, they did not pretend to proffer it; if their plays were one long-drawn sneer at female chastity, they did not affect to believe in its existence; if they gibed at the sober citizen, they vowed that they thought a rake-helly life the only one for a man of spirit, and money of no value except to squander in the brothel or at the basset-table, upon loose ladies of quality or upon tailors of a brilliant taste. The refined corruptions of the court and the stolid virtues of the city were the constant themes of playwrights, who professed an easy familiarity with the one and an impudent contempt for the other. They laughed at their monarchs, and they libelled their merchants. They borrowed money, and repaid the obligation by ruining the lender's wife. It was a rare joke, at-which the whole theatre roared, to bilk a banker of his cash, and then to destroy his domestic happiness. It showed wit and good breeding to gibe at his honesty, to caricature his religion, to sneer at his punctuality, and to burlesque the formality of his manners. Yet the men who were thus systematically subjected to derision not merely laid the foundation of the commercial greatness of England, but were continually called upon to supply the necessities of a poor yet extravagant court. The palace depended for food and raiment upon the counting

536

A VULGAR TYPE OF WOMEN.

house, when it did not more ignominiously depend upon the subsidies of Louis XIV. There is a laughable story in Pepys of the lamentable shifts to which Charles II. was driven in the matter of clean linen, through the peculations of his valet and the badness of the royal credit with the draper. A fine lady in the comedies which we are considering was a hybrid of French levity grafted upon English coarseness. After her marriage-and sometimes before it she felt herself at liberty to swear, to gamble, to drink, and to intrigue. The chief business of her life was to irritate and mortify and ruin her husband; to pass all day in bed reading romances, and all night at a drum dancing minuets; to play high and to paint high; to divert herself with ratafia, the spleen, or coarse talk over a raking pot of tea; to disseminate scandal about her dearest friends, and to cheapen old China at an auction. Virtue did well enough for parsons' wives and dowagers in their decadence. But virtue could not satisfy the wants of a fine lady. 'Can virtue,' sneers Sir Harry Wildair, 'bespeak a front row in the boxes? No; for the players cannot live upon virtue. Can your virtue keep you a coach and six? No, no; your virtuous woman walks afoot. Can your virtue hire you a pew in the church? Why, the very sexton will tell you, No. Can your virtue stake for you at piquet? No; then what business has a woman with virtue?' Yet this very homily comes from gallant, dashing, delightful Sir Harry—a part often played by a woman, as a print of pretty Mrs. Greville in the cha racter, in our possession, attests. It is strange that this vulgar type of tainted women should, for so many years, have kept possession of the English stage, from which it has now, and, as we trust, forever, almost entirely disappeared. The character of Lady Teazle, which is but a faint and tolerably modest copy of her predecessors, was the last specimen of it upon the London boards."

THE HORRIBLE OLD THIRD TIER.

537

Coming down to more modern days, and to American theatres, it is noteworthy that changes of the most thorough and sweeping character have taken place in the dramatic temples of our days.

It is within my own recollection that the hideous abomination known as the "third tier" was in existence in our theatres. I can only speak from hearsay, of course, concerning the wickedness of this shameful evil; but I well remember, in my early girlhood, having looked up from my place on the stage, to the brutal exhibition of faces in the gallery, with something such a feeling as one might have in looking over into pandemonium.

That dark, horrible, guilty "third tier!" How dreadful it seemed to me that the theatre should be cursed with such a monstrous iniquity!

I well remember the newspaper war which was waged upon the last lingering remnant of this shameful thing in the Cincinnati theatres. There was but one theatre left where the loathesome wickedness of the "third tier" had failed to yield to the onward march of public opinion. And on this theatre a determined attack was made by the press, with the settled purpose of breaking up the wickedness.

I cannot better place on record this foul shame than by quoting one of the articles which appeared at this time in the Cincinnati Daily Enquirer,-an article which at once tells my readers what the vile old third tier was, and illustrates the vigor of the war which was made upon it when public opinion was once turned against it.

"From the bills of this house," says the Enquirer, alluding to the old National theatre, "the public learn that its doors will be closed for the time being, for the purpose of re-decoration, etc., and that it will again open, in a few days, with a powerful company. It is to be hoped that if its polluted doors are again to be opened to

538

A STINGING ATTACK.

the public, the management will pursue a different course from the one which has characterized his conduct during the whole season, and give us dramatic entertainments worthy the patronage of the citizens and the public, and not of the 'exclusiveness' which has been exhibited nightly on its boards, and which was of such a 'powerful' character, in connection with the scenes enacted in the 'third tier,' by drunken cyprians, as to drive the more respectable and order-loving portion of the lovers of the drama from the house. The time was when a 'third tier' for prostitutes in a theatre was looked upon as a matter of necessity; and as long as these prostitutes were prevented from exhibiting themselves to those in the lower tiers of boxes, it was thought nothing of. The parent saw no impropriety in taking his sons and daughters to the theatre. The precepts inculcated by the great bards, in the productions of the stage, were considered of a salutary character to the young mind. It made no difference to him how many cyprians were admitted to the third tier, so long as his children were not brought under their contaminating influence, and were not aware of the fact. But the times have changed. We are progressive, and have learned to the contrary. Many a parent has learned from sad experience that he was in error when he permitted his children to visit places of amusement where free license was given to prostitutes of the most abandoned and degraded character, for we believe it is admitted on all sides that none but the most degraded of prostitutes visit the theatre, and they only to entrap and deceive the unwary. Some three months since, the press of this city in the most unqualified manner, denounced the National theatre as the vilest of 'assignation houses,' and advised their readers to discountenance the house unless the third tier was closed. The appeal to the people was too strong for the management to resist, and the third tier was closed,

A SUGGESTIVE PICTURE.

539

with a promise that it should not be opened again,—at least we were so advised by the stage manager. What was the result? It was announced in the bills and through the press, that the third tier would be closed in future. The better portion of our citizens took the manager at his word, and once more graced the theatre with the beauty and fashion of the city. The third tier being closed, everything was orderly and quiet; the ear of the wife and daughter was not shocked by the profanity of language and licentious actions that nightly before descended from that sink of iniquity, the 'assignation house' of the National. The warm season coming on, and the greater portion of our theatre-going public leaving the city on tours of pleasure, the attendance at the theatre necessarily diminished. The cause was natural, but the management thought not. They thought the people must be brought out; if they could not bring the respectable portion to the theatre when the thermometer stood at 95, the rabble must be induced to come; and to do this, the third tier was again opened, and an officer despatched to the low dens of prostitution, to invite their inmates to revel once more within the luxurious bar-room of the assignation tier of the National. Reader, think for a moment on the idea of the management. Is it not horrible, revolting, and diabolical? He seeks to fill his theatre and put money in his pocket, by placing prostitutes in the third tier, that they may, by their temptations, allure the youth of our city from the paths of rectitude. It is nothing more, disguise it as you will, but opening an assignation house on a large scale, and in a public manner; for do not the abandoned women who visit there nightly do so for the purpose of carrying on a trade in the prostitution of their bodies and souls? Most assuredly they do. Our laws are stringent on this subject, and yet, although the police have been busy, within a few days past, in