SNEER. Yes; but I suppose one shan’t be able to get in, for on the first night of a new piece they always fill the house with orders to support it. But here, Dangle, I have brought you two pieces, one of which you must exert yourself to make the managers accept, I can tell you that; for’tis written by a person of consequence. DANGLE. So! now my plagues are beginning. SNEER. Ay, I am glad of it, for now you’ll be happy. Why, my dear Dangle, it is a pleasure to see how you enjoy your volunteer fatigue, and your solicited solicitations. DANGLE. It’s a great trouble—yet, egad, it’s pleasant too.—Why, sometimes of a morning I have a dozen people call on me at breakfast-time, whose faces I never saw before, nor ever desire to see again. SNEER. That must be very pleasant indeed! DANGLE. And not a week but I receive fifty letters, and not a line in them about any business of my own. SNEER. An amusing correspondence! DANGLE. [_Reading_.] _Bursts into tears and exit_.—What, is this a tragedy? SNEER. No, that’s a genteel comedy, not a translation—only taken from the French: it is written in a style which they have lately tried to run down; the true sentimental, and nothing ridiculous in it from the beginning to the end. MRS. DANGLE. Well, if they had kept to that, I should not have been such an enemy to the stage; there was some edification to be got from those pieces, Mr. Sneer! SNEER. I am quite of your opinion, Mrs. Dangle: the theatre, in proper hands, might certainly be made the school of morality; but now, I am sorry to say it, people seem to go there principally for their entertainment! MRS. DANGLE. It would have been more to the credit of the managers to have kept it in the other line. SNEER. Undoubtedly, madam; and hereafter perhaps to have had it recorded, that in the midst of a luxurious and dissipated age, they preserved two houses in the capital, where the conversation was always moral at least, if not entertaining! DANGLE. Now, egad, I think the worst alteration is in the nicety of the audience!—No _double-entendre_, no smart innuendo admitted; even Vanbrugh and Congreve obliged to undergo a bungling reformation! SNEER. Yes, and our prudery in this respect is just on a par with the artificial bashfulness of a courtesan, who increases the blush upon her cheek in an exact proportion to the diminution of her modesty. DANGLE. Sneer can’t even give the public a good word! But what have we here?—This seems a very odd— SNEER. Oh, that’s a comedy on a very new plan; replete with wit and mirth, yet of a most serious moral! You see it is called _The Reformed House-breaker_; where, by the mere force of humour, house-breaking is put in so ridiculous a light, that if the piece has its proper run, I have no doubt but that bolts and bars will be entirely useless by the end of the season. DANGLE. Egad, this is new indeed!