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_ It is never well for the public interest that the originator of any
social reform should be soon forgotten. Further, it is neither
wholesome nor right (being neither generous nor just) that the merit
of his work should be gradually transferred elsewhere.
Some few weeks ago, our contemporary, the Pall Mall Gazette, in
certain strictures on our Theatres which we are very far indeed from
challenging, remarked on the first effectual discouragement of an
outrage upon decency which the lobbies and upper-boxes of even our
best Theatres habitually paraded within the last twenty or thirty
years. From those remarks it might appear as though no such Manager
of Covent Garden or Drury Lane as Mr. Macready had ever existed.
It is a fact beyond all possibility of question, that Mr. Macready,
on assuming the management of Covent Garden Theatre in 1837, did
instantly set himself, regardless of precedent and custom down to
that hour obtaining, rigidly to suppress this shameful thing, and
did rigidly suppress and crush it during his whole management of
that theatre, and during his whole subsequent management of Drury
Lane. That he did so, as certainly without favour as without fear;
that he did so, against his own immediate interests; that he did so,
against vexations and oppositions which might have cooled the ardour
of a less earnest man, or a less devoted artist; can be better known
to no one than the writer of the present words, whose name stands at
the head of these pages. _
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