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": "MY DEAR TOM,--This will be your first five-act production, and don't be offended if an old practitioner ventures to offer (from the respect he bears you) the fruits of his long experience. Half-price is a very proper privilege for those whose time or pockets do not afford them an opportunity of visiting the theatre earlier; but it is often the bane of an author on the first night of a five-act play. The new-comers know nothing of the foregone part of the drama; and having no context with which to connect allusions in the fourth and fifth acts, are apt to damn without consideration that which they are no judges of-- And what they cannot comprehend deny. "To be fore-armed against this contingency, contrive to make some character (either in the heat of passion, or in any way you please) briefly run over all the foregoing parts of the story, so as to put everyone in possession of what they otherwise would have lost by absence; and, take my word, you will reap the benefit of it."