Produced by Paul Haxo with special thanks to the Internet Archive and the Library of Congress. COMEDIETTAS AND FARCES BY JOHN MADDISON MORTON NEW YORK HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS 1886 PREFACE. I HAVE been asked to write a few words of Preface to this little book of Plays. I may state that two are original; for the remainder (being too old an offender in this respect to do otherwise), I thankfully admit my indebtedness to French material, claiming, however, for myself, considerable alterations in plot, situations, etc., and complete originality of dialogue. I beg to call the attention of Amateurs to these pieces--they having been written by me with a special view to Private performance. JOHN MADDISON MORTON CONTENTS. PAGE BOX AND COX 11 FIRST COME, FIRST SERVED 35 PEPPERPOT'S LITTLE PETS 61 AFTER A STORM COMES A CALM 85 EXPRESS! 106 TAKEN FROM THE FRENCH 125 DECLINED--WITH THANKS 147 JOHN MADDISON MORTON. THE present generation is familiar enough with "Box and Cox," that best and brightest of good old English farces, and hundreds of other plays of the same kind, that were written years ago by one of the driest of humorists and most genial of gentlemen; but few young play-goers, I take it, are aware how much the stage owes to John Maddison Morton. Of the form and features of one of the most prolific writers for the stage, I believe many of my own contemporaries to be absolutely ignorant. They know little of his antecedents or history, and yet they, and their fathers before them, have laughed right merrily over the quips and cranks, the quaint turns of expression, the odd freaks of humor that distinguished a writer of fun belonging to the old school. No one has ever filled the place left vacant by John Maddison Morton. Managers for many years past have assumed that the public does not want farces, and are content to tolerate badly-acted rubbish before the play of the evening begins. But a strong reaction is setting in. The pit and gallery are not content any longer to remain open-mouthed while the scenes of the play of the evening are being set, or to be deluded into applauding the silly stuff that is nowadays served up as farce, and in which the principal actors and actresses do not condescend to appear. Why, when I first began to consider myself a regular play-goer, some five-and-twenty years ago, when I struggled with the young men of my time into the pit, I could see, quite irrespective of the play of the evening, Webster at the Adelphi in "One Touch of Nature," say at seven o'clock in the evening; Toole and Paul Bedford and Selby and Billington and Bob Romer, always in some favorite farce that began or ended the evening's amusement, at the Haymarket; Buckstone, old Rogers, and Chippendale in such plays as