The Hillyars and the Burtons by Henry Kingsley

THE "Theatre Royal" at Palmerston was a miserable and effete squatiocracy (with their wretched aping of the still more miserable and effete aristocracy of the Old World, as our friend Mr. O'Callaghan chose to call it); the "Opera House" is arranged on strictly democratic principles.

What the actors call in their quaint self-satisfied slang, "the house," as if the normal destination and mission of bricks and mortar was to form the walls of a theatre, was entirely arranged for the comfort of the great unwashed. The galleries contained more than one half of the audience; and, whether the heavy father gave his blessing, the young lady, driven to despair by the unprincipled conduct of the British officer, uttered a touching sentiment. (Said British officer in private life being generally a gentle and kind being, with stores of knowledge about foreign parts, which he is shy of imparting to you for fear of boring you. Mostly having a hobby, such as ornithology or chess. A man who, if he gets to like you, is always preternaturally anxious to introduce you to his mother.) Whether, to resume the thread of this most wonderful sentence, the first tragedian made a point and stopped short and refused to fulfil his engagement, until the audience had brought their grovelling souls to appreciate the fact; --whether the villain of the piece, and his more villanous creature, after discharging accusatory sentences at one another, made like pistol shot, suddenly stalked across the stage and changed places (and that is the deepest mystery in theatrical ethics); --whether the first comedy said "Heigh ho" in her lover's absence exactly as we do in private life, or her waiting-maid was "Arch," and took up her apron by the corners, when "rallied" about her penchant for the groom; --in short, whatsoever of the old time-honored balderbash done on the stage, was addressed to the galleries.