Excerpt from History of the American Theatre, Vol. 1 of 2 Colley cibber, in his Apology, the best book ever written on the subject of the Theatre, thus speaks of the increase of Playhouses in London, and the effect on the actors and the public Their extraordinary number, of course, reduced them to live upon the gratification of such hearers as they knew would be best pleased with public offence; and public offence, of what kind soever, will always be a good reason for making laws to restrain it. We have seen acted over and over again, in America, that which Cibber describes and laments as occurring in his time They were reduced to have recourse to foreign novelties; l'abbe, Balon, and Mademoiselle Subligny, three of the most famous dancers of the French Opera at that period, were at several times brought over, at extraordinary rates, to revive that sickly appetite which plain sense and nature had satiated. But, alas! There was no recovering to a sound constitution by those merely costly cordials; the novelty of a dance was but of a short duration, and perhaps hurtful in its consequence; for it made a play without a dance less eu dured than it had been before, when such dancing was not to be had and the same may be said of every deviation from plain sense and nature. Colley Gibber's Apology is one of those books in which a man finds all that he wants to know or say on the subject he is considering. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.