MRS. DANGLE. Yes; but wasn’t the farce damned, Mr. Dangle? And to be sure it is extremely pleasant to have one’s house made the motley rendezvous of all the lackeys of literature; the very high ’Change of trading authors and jobbing critics!—Yes, my drawing-room is an absolute register-office for candidate actors, and poets without character.—Then to be continually alarmed with misses and ma’ams piping hysteric changes on Juliets and Dorindas, Pollys and Ophelias; and the very furniture trembling at the probationary starts and unprovoked rants of would-be Richards and Hamlets!—And what is worse than all, now that the manager has monopolized the Opera House, haven’t we the signors and signoras calling here, sliding their smooth semibreves, and gargling glib divisions in their outlandish throats—with foreign emissaries and French spies, for aught I know, disguised like fiddlers and figure dancers? DANGLE. Mercy! Mrs. Dangle! MRS. DANGLE. And to employ yourself so idly at such an alarming crisis as this too—when, if you had the least spirit, you would have been at the head of one of the Westminster associations—or trailing a volunteer pike in the Artillery Ground! But you—o’ my conscience, I believe, if the French were landed tomorrow, your first inquiry would be, whether they had brought a theatrical troop with them. DANGLE. Mrs. Dangle, it does not signify—I say the stage is ‘the mirror of nature’, and the actors are ‘the Abstract and brief Chronicles of the Time’: and pray what can a man of sense study better?—Besides, you will not easily persuade me that there is no credit or importance in being at the head of a band of critics, who take upon them to decide for the whole town, whose opinion and patronage all writers solicit, and whose recommendation no manager dares refuse. MRS. DANGLE. Ridiculous!—Both managers and authors of the least merit laugh at your pretensions.—The public is their critic—without whose fair approbation they know no play can rest on the stage, and with whose applause they welcome such attacks as yours, and laugh at the malice of them, where they can’t at the wit. DANGLE. Very well, madam—very well! _Enter_ SERVANT. SERVANT. Mr. Sneer, sir, to wait on you. DANGLE. Oh, show Mr. Sneer up.—[_Exit_ SERVANT.]—Plague on’t, now we must appear loving and affectionate, or Sneer will hitch us into a story. MRS. DANGLE. With all my heart; you can’t be more ridiculous than you are. DANGLE. You are enough to provoke— _Enter_ SNEER. Ha! my dear Sneer, I am vastly glad to see you.—My dear, here’s Mr. Sneer. MRS. DANGLE. Good-morning to you, sir. DANGLE. Mrs. Dangle and I have been diverting ourselves with the papers. Pray, Sneer, won’t you go to Drury Lane Theatre the first night of Puff’s tragedy?