'Tis boxing night—every theatre is crammed, As close as a jelly the people are jammed; Every corner is full from the roof to the floor, And money is being refused at the door. The play of George Barnwell is being gone through, 'Mid the usual regular hullabaloo. A middle-aged actor appears on the scene, Representing the weak-minded youth of eighteen; 'Tis true he's past forty, but collars turned down, With tie _à la_ Byron, and wig of light brown, With whiskers shaved off, and rouge daubed on in plenty, The old boy of forty looks something like twenty. But our sympathies, somehow, he doesn't engage, He's laughed at whenever he comes on the stage; His uncle they wont let him murder in peace, But the incident causes a cry of "police." The uncle elicits no pity at all, For shouts of rude merriment follow his fall; And when his assassin has killed him outright, Some "wag" in the gallery bids him "good night." The pathos of Trueman, though good of its sort, Is met with proposals for cutting it short; And Barnwell goes off to be hanged 'mid a cry Of "shame," "turn him out," "serve him right" and "good-bye." The pantomime now is awaited by all; The house for the overture raises a call; Confusion prevails, bits of orange-peel flit From the gallery's hands to the heads of the pit; The cat-call so loud, and the whistle so shrill, Are blended with shouts such as "Bob, where's your 'Bill!'" At length the musicians have taken their seats, The leader a lamp with his fiddle-stick beats; Such silences ensues that the dropping of pins Might be heard through the house when the playing begins. The overture's always a musical salad, A mixture of Polka, Cachuca, and ballad: If the season has furnished a popular air, The ear that is ticklish will meet with it there. The taste of the public will often insist on A _solo_ for trumpet or _cornet-à-piston_, Which, played well or ill, from the audience draws, At Christmas, a general round of applause; During holiday time you can never do wrong If even a passage you gave to the gong, Or formed a quartette most delicious and tender, With poker, and shovel, and tongs, and the fender. The overture's finished, the curtain's ascended, A scene is before us exceedingly splendid. A lovely princess is reduced to despair At long being wooed by a man she can't bear, A wretch in a mask with inelegant features, That are found nowhere else but in pantomime creatures; But after the lady there constantly dangles A youth whose thin calves are bedizened with spangles; For under his cloak his legs we discover, And "afterwards harlequin" peeps through the lover.