A curious sidelight is thrown on the composition of theatrical programmes in the 'forties by the ironical regret expressed at the passing of the old school of comic song: "The old comic song was a description in lively verse of a murder or a suicide or some domestic affliction, and if sung at a minor theatre just after the half-price came in, never missed an encore." At the major theatres, and especially Drury Lane, the cast in spectacular plays was already reinforced by four-footed performers, and processions of animals through the streets were a familiar mode of theatrical advertisement. Managerial enterprise has always had its menagerial side. Foreign bipeds, however, were not always popular, and when _Monte Cristo_ was produced at Drury Lane in 1848, with French performers, there was a patriotic hostile demonstration.
Judged by modern standards salaries were modest. Well-known actors are charged with extortion in demanding £60 a week, but it must be remembered that £60 was exactly all that Douglas Jerrold ever made out of his most popular and successful play--_Black Eyed Susan_. Those simple souls who lament the decadence of the harlequinade will be comforted to learn that as early as 1843 _Punch_ deplores the triumph of scenery over fun, the supersession of Grimaldi by Stanfield; and he returns to his complaint in 1849 in "Christmas is not what it ought to be":--
Pantomime's quite on the wane, Though vainly they try to enrich it, By calling, again and again, For "_Hot Codlins_" and "_Tippetywitchet_." The stealing of poultry by clown Has ceased irresistible sport to be, If he swallowed a turkey it wouldn't go down; Christmas is not what it ought to be.
The red-hot poker business has at any rate taken an unconscionably long time in dying, and it is not dead yet. But clowns, outside pantomime, have taken on a new lease of life thanks to Marceline and Grock. The present writer ventures to predict wonderful possibilities for harlequinade if revived and developed on the romantic and grotesque lines of the Russian ballet, to say nothing of the opportunities which it affords for satire. The craze for child actors and marionettes in 1852 led _Punch_ to bestow an ironical commendation on the latter on the ground that they never squabbled in the greenroom.