For the next two days Goldsmith was fully occupied making such changes in his play as were suggested to him in the course of the rehearsals. The alterations were not radical, but he felt that they would be improvements, and his judgment was rarely at fault. Moreover, he was quick to perceive in what direction the strong points and the weak points of the various members of the company lay, and he had no hesitation in altering the dialogue so as to give them a better chance of displaying their gifts. But not a line of what Colman called the “pot-house scene” would he change, not a word of the scene where the farm servants are being trained to wait at table would he allow to be omitted. Colman declined to appear upon the stage during the rehearsals. He seems to have spent all his spare time walking from coffee house to coffee house talking about the play, its vulgarity, and the certainty of the fate that was in store for it. It would have been impossible, had he not adopted this remarkable course, for the people of the town to become aware, as they certainly did, what were his ideas regarding the comedy. When it was produced with extraordinary success, the papers held the manager up to ridicule daily for his false predictions, and every day a new set of lampoons came from the coffee-house wits on the same subject. But though the members of the company rehearsed the play loyally, some of them were doubtful about the scene at the Three Pigeons, and did not hesitate to express their fears to Goldsmith. They wondered if he might not see his way to substitute for that scene one which could not possibly be thought offensive by any section of playgoers. Was it not a pity, one of them asked him, to run a chance of failure when it might be so easily avoided? To all of these remonstrances he had but one answer: the play must stand or fall by the scenes which were regarded as ungenteel. He had written it, he said, for the sake of expressing his convictions through the medium of these particular scenes, and he was content to accept the verdict of the playgoers on the point in question. Why he had brought on those scenes so early in the play was that the playgoers might know not to expect a sentimental piece, but one that was meant to introduce a natural school of comedy, with no pretence to be anything but a copy of the manners of the day, with no fine writing in the dialogue, but only the broadest and heartiest fun. “If the scenes are ungenteel,” said he, “it is because nature is made up of ungenteel things. Your modern gentleman is, to my mind, much less interesting than your ungenteel person; and I believe that Tony Lumpkin when admirably represented, as he will be by Mr. Quick, will be a greater favourite with all who come to the playhouse than the finest gentleman who ever uttered an artificial sentiment to fall exquisitely on the ear of a boarding-school miss. So, by my faith! I'll not interfere with his romping.”