The manager has acted with his usual promptitude on this trying
occasion. He has contracted for 300 tons of gunpowder, which
are at this moment placed in a small barrel under the pit, and
a descendant of Guy Faux, assisted by Colonel Congreve, has
undertaken to blow up the house, when necessary, in so novel and
ingenious a manner, that every O.P. shall be annihilated, while not
a whisker of the N.P.'s shall be singed. This strikingly displays
the advantages of loyalty and attachment to government. Several
other hints have been taken from the theatrical regulations of the
not-a-bit-the-less-on-that-account-to-be-universally-execrated monster
Bonaparte. A park of artillery, provided with chain-shot, is to be
stationed on the stage, and play upon the audience in case of any
indication of misplaced applause or popular discontent (which accounts
for the large space between the curtain and the lamps); and the public
will participate our satisfaction in learning that the indecorous custom
of standing up with the hat on is to be abolished, as the Bow Street
officers are provided with daggers, and have orders to stab all such
persons to the heart, and send their bodies to Surgeons' Hall; gentlemen
who cough are only to be slightly wounded. Fruit-women bawling "Bill of
the Play" are to be forthwith shot, for which purpose soldiers will be
stationed in the slips, and ball-cartridge is to be served out with the
lemonade. If any of the spectators happen to sneeze or spit they are to
be transported for life, and any person who is so tall as to prevent
another seeing, is to be dragged out and sent on board the tender, or, by
an instrument taken out of the pocket of Procrustes, to be forthwith cut
shorter, either at the head or foot, according as his own convenience may
dictate.
Thus, ladies and gentlemen, have the committee, through my medium,
set forth the not-in-a-hurry-to-be-paralleled plan they have
adopted for preserving order and decorum within the walls of their
magnificent edifice. Nor have they, while attentive to their own
concerns, by any means overlooked those of the cities of London
and Westminster. Finding, on enumeration, that they have with a
with-two-hands-and-one-tongue-to-be-applauded liberality, contracted
for more gunpowder than they want, they have parted with the surplus
to the mattock-carrying and hustings-hammering high bailiff of
Westminster, who has, with his own shovel, dug a large hole in
the front of the parish church of St. Paul, Covent Garden, that,
upon the least symptom of ill-breeding in the mob at the general
election, the whole of the market may be blown into the air. This,
ladies and gentlemen, may at first make provisions _rise_, but
we pledge the credit of our theatre that they will soon _fall_
again, and people be supplied as usual with vegetables in the
in-general-strewed-with-cabbage-stalks-but-on-Saturday-night-lighted-up-
with-lamps market of Covent Garden.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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