It would be tedious to enumerate all the references to actors and plays, famous or forgotten, which crowd the pages of _Punch_ in this period; to quote them in full would be impossible. Toole was one of his favourites. Boucicault was not, and excites satirical comment for having written a letter to Disraeli in 1876, puffing his own play _The Shaughraun_. A little earlier The Great Vance--immortalized in Stevenson's _Wrong Box_--the "lion comique" of the music-halls, is rapped over the knuckles for advertising his performances as "patronized by the Prince and Princess of Wales." _Punch's_ notice of Zola's _L'Assommoir_ when he saw it in Paris in May, 1879, reflects a divided mind. He found it fascinating and intolerable. Gil-Naza's acting as Coupeau was "wonderful, fearful, admirable, awful, infernal." Yet "the moral to most of those who assisted, the other evening, at _L'Assommoir_ was, 'I say! Dash it! It's too horrible! Let's go and drink!' and the biggest drink I've had for a long time--much needed, I assure you--was after seeing _L'Assommoir_." _Punch_ doubts whether the play could ever be done in English, but it was produced at the Princess's Theatre only a few weeks later in Charles Reade's version, with Charles Warner as Coupeau. The notice in _Punch_ purports to be written by a working man, who signs himself "one as is a-thinking seriously of Taking the Pledge, but don't see his Way to it yet." He acknowledges the terrible realism of Warner's acting, but his testimonial is invalidated by the final sentences:-- Yes, Sir, _Drink_ is a moral drama if ever there was one. It ought to do a deal of good. And as I think it over, I feel as I want a little something just to take the taste on it out o' my mouth.