Page:Foggerty.djvu/221

Rh dialogue to the stage-manager and company. I certainly consider myself an object of sympathy when a piece fails. I am not of opinion that I ought to be held responsible for the character of the entertainment I provide for the audience. What have I to do with it? I am only the manager.

—I was a member of the audience this evening. I have seen the defendant's play. I think it an extremely bad play. It is full of very long and (to me) very tedious speeches. I was pleased with the scene between the rival tradesmen in the grocer's back-parlour because I thought it true to nature; but I consider the scene between the Duke and the Duchess highly improbable. I hissed it on that account. No Duchess would be likely to speak as that Duchess spoke. The scene between the wicked Member of Parliament and the Home Secretary is open to the same objection. I consider myself a judge of a play. I have written a play myself. It has not been acted—not yet.

Cross-examined by the Author.—I am a journeyman plumber. I consider myself a judge of what Dukes and Duchesses would be likely to say—at least, as good a judge as any author. I have plumbed in the very best families. I have supplied a ball-cock to a Royal cistern. Dukes and Duchesses talk quite unlike ordinary people. They have a conversation of their own, which can only be mastered by means of a long familiarity with their mode of life. I consider that nothing on earth is more improbable than that a Duke would say "By Jove!"