Punch (58.1870)

Mat 28, 1870.] PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. 209

"CRUELTY TO ANIMALS."

Irritated beyond Endurance at the Patience and Fortitude with
which his bald-headed ffilend had borne the attacks of a demoniacal
Blue-Bottle all the Afternoon Service, the Irascible Churchwarden
Jumps up and Dispatches the Insect in the Middle of the Sermon !

THE CHAEITY OP THE STAGE.

" The Dramatic College Benefit was in every respect a great
success. . . . This admirable charity is in urgent need of funds."

Kind reader, have you any knowledge
Of the famed Dramatic College ?
Poor players here a shelter find,
When blows ill fortune's wintry-wind.
Here they may live, by cares unruffled,
When off their stage coil they have shuffled.

Macbeth, acquitted of his crimes,
May read the murders in the Times:
Malvolio with Sweet Anne Page
A warfare in bezique may wage ;
And Bohadil with Celia chat,
While Rosalind learns how to tat.

By daylight here the Ghost may stalk,
Launce take his dog a country walk ;
Pistol and Poins their thefts may cease,
And talk of brigandage in Greece ;
While haply Shylock finds in Tony
Lumpkin a most, delightful crony.

The Hunchback here may doff his hunch,
And serious Mawworm laugh o'er Punch ;
Here Catharine may rest from strife,
Petruchio lead a quiet life ;
Falstaff aside his fat may HiDg,
Sad Jaques be happy as a kintr:
Rotund with ease while Slender grows,
And Bardolf paints no more his nose:.

One thing alone, your help, they need :
For this not vainly Punch may plead.

A Minister of Great Horse-Power.

Do they manage everything better in France? The
question is asked with timidity by us poor blundering
Englishmen, because it appears that, up to the present
time, the Imperial Stables have been under the control
of the Ministry of Fine Arts ! Bather an odd association,
was it not? But we forget. In Paris, Art claims every
Muse; and so the Royal Mews was not allowed to remain
an exception. _

couplet and chronicle.

Plebiscitum,
Repetitum.

DRAMATIC ORIGIN OF SPECIES.

Hear Mr. Buckstone speaking to the toast, " Prosperity to the
General Theatrical Fund," coupled with his name at the anniversary
dinner of that Charity, by the Prince of Wales -.—

"It was remarked a little while ago, that in the twenty-four theatres now
open in London on Shakspeake's birthday, not one of his plays was repre-
sented at any of them, and that music-hall tunes and nigger breakdowns were
preferred to any of his immortal works ; this may be attributed to the multi-
plicity of theatres now allowed to be erected in almost every street, where the
insane passion for burlesque is in the ascendant. A short time since a mana-
gerial authority informed us that Shakspeare means ruin and bankruptcy."

One would think, however, that the multiplicity of theatres would
simply afford ample accommodation in the way of entertainment to
even all the fools in London, leaving Shakspkare possible at one, if i
only one, house for an intelligent public. That the multiplicity of
theatres is not anyhow the sole reason why the idiotic drama has
ousted the Shakspearian, Mr. Buckstone himself will perhaps discern,
on consideration of what he himself went on to say :—

" It was not always so. I remember Mr. Charles Kemble once saying to
me, 'Mr. Btjckstone, when I was at Covent Garden Theatre, with my
brother John and my sister Sarah, and we could not procure attractive novelty,
we always put up Schaksper—so he pronounced the name—and Schaksper
always pulled us through.' "

Yes ; but who were they whom Schaksper always pulled through ?
They who put him up and played his principal characters; "I, and my
brother John, and my sister Sarah ? " Were there now at the head
of a company at any theatre in London such a constellation as John
and Charles Kemble and Sarah Siddons, is it not likely enough
that Shakspeare would still pull them through, and not mean ruin
and bankruptcy ? Let us think so, and not rather suppose that the

play-going portion of the British Public are in a transition state, revert-
ing, if the Darwinian theory of development is true, degenerating
whether or no, to the level of apes.

A JOVIAL "READING" PARTY.

Are there not desponding spirits who say that conviviality in Eng-
land is in a rapid decline— that hospitality is fast becoming one of the
lost aria in this poor, decaying State ? Good news awaits them.
There is one county, certainly, on which this reproach cannot be cast,
where the good old doings of the good old days appear to be repro-
duced with a very fair approach to a successful imitation—and that
county the Royal one, Berkshire.

On Friday last, Mr. Punch read (in the agreeable Daily News) with
audible delight, and openly expressed wishes that he had been born a
Berkshire grandee, the following cheering paragraphs, which satisfied
him that conviviality, like trade, is at last reviving in this country :—

" Sheriffs' Banquet at Reading.—The Mayor's Banquet was held on
Wednesday night at the Town Hall, Reading. . . . The Banquet lasted until
four o'clock yesterday morning."

The Prince aud Princess of Wales are expected soon to visit
Reading, to lay a foundation-stone. Wherever they go, they find a
hearty welcome; but Mr. Punch is sure, after what he has read and
quoted, that in the capital of Berkshire, they will meet with a particu-
larly jolly reception.

Slang Explained,

"King Arthur and his pals," would hardly sound respectful, cer-
tainly not romantic ; and yet the expression, when examined, turns out
to be nothing worse than an abbreviation of "King Arthur and his
paladius."

Vol. 58.

7—2