Transcription
LETTER
TO
Mr. ASTLEY, Jun.
---
SIR,
As an admirer of your public amusements, I no sooner heard of your new Theatre, than my anxious curiosity was raised, so as to endeavour to obtain an inspection of its plan and execution. Applying to you for the favour of viewing it, I here acknowledge my obligations for your kind permission, and polite explanations of its nature and principles. And as the taste, elegance, and accommodation are equally excellent. I cannot but admire the abilities you have thus displayed, and applaud the spirit you have evinced in producing a Theatre, that, for its size, undoubtedly equals every other that has yet fallen within my notice.
Having, as above, paid you those acknowledgements your public efforts deserve, permit me, with equal justice, to remind you of a part of your conduct, which must materially affect your interest. For a series of years, I have observed that you have been attached to a mode of advertising, which is called “billing the town.” This, undoubtedly, might be as much as a common puppet-show or Fantocini deserve, and it might have effect in such towns as Liverpool and Dublin, where such a number of daily prints as are in London, are not open for your advertisements. But in the metropolis, where newspapers are the daily reading of all the gay, polite, learned, and distinguished;--to distribute hand-bills, is not only depreciating your amusements, but preventing your best and most fashionable patrons being informed of what you are daily preparing with so much zeal and industry for their entertainment. A hand-bill in the street, may be given to a porter, barber, shoe-black, scavenger, or nightman, but how few ladies and gentlemen will deign to receive them, left their sight should be offended with some disgusting nostrum of quackery!—For your interest, therefore, be persuaded to adopt the more respectable and advantageous mode of advertising in the public papers—you may then be assured of the most elevated ranks in the kingdom being timely informed of your entertainments. But what more particularly induces me to advise you to adopt this mode is, the present respectability of your Theatre; as it will, undoubtedly view to our most eminent; why should you disgrace it by advertising it in the manner of Quacks, Taylors, Hair-dressing Academies, Irish-Giants, Polish Dwarfs, Wild Beasts, Monsters and Mummies are handed to the public?
You have every right to assume the consequence, although you have not the patent sanction of Royal Theatres. The merit of yout entertainments have been for years established by the unrivalled encouragement and approbation of a generous and deserving public. As you rival them in merit, why not, at least, equal them in respectability of conduct? Accept of my advice, and be as successful as your uncommon talents and industry deserve from the patronage of
THOUSANDS.
