If you manage to shoulder your way through the Hordes of Covent Garden Nymphs, who tramp the Road and will happily resign their engaging Persons to your Honour for a Pint of Wine and a Shilling in an upstairs Room or upright in an Alley; you will at last reach the Theatre.Perhaps you might expect mighty matters from the Playhouse. There you will find some clapping and stamping, some hissing and scoffing: some Cockhorse on the Seats damning and confounding the Play and Players, they know not why; others throwing about their Wigs, blinding you with fulsome Powders from them, or tormenting you with noisome Scents; others prating with Orange Wenches and bantering with Whores.
If that is not Entertainment enough, on the Stage might be a new Play, a Shakespeare or an Opera; though you are just as likely to find a veritable Inundation of French Dancers, Italian Singers, Rope Walkers and Vaulters on Horseback; a Man mimicking the Harmony of Essex Lions, Mr. Clinch of Barnet with his Kit-Organ, and a hundred other notable Curiosities.
2 comments:
what did they call this land of ours in the 18th century?
Well - England, really, in practice; but the acts of Union with Scotland were in 1706 and 1707, and officially created the Kingdom of Great Britain.
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