Of like kidney was the Grecian Theatre, where one went out between the
acts to dance, or to see the dancing, upon a great illuminated platform.
'T was the drama brought back to its primitive origins in the Bacchic
dances--the Grecian Theatre, in good sooth! How they footed it under the
stars, those regiments of romping couples, giggling, flirting, munching!
Alas! _Fuit Troja!_ The Grecian is "saved." Its dancing days are over, it
is become the Headquarters of Salvation. But it is still gay with music,
virtue triumphs on, and vice grovels at the penitent form. In such quaint
wise hath the "Eagle" renewed its youth, for the Grecian began life as
the Eagle, and was Satan's deadliest lure to the 'prentices of
Clerkenwell and their lasses:
Up and down the City Road,
In and out the Eagle;
That's the way the money goes!
Pop goes the weasel.
Concerning which immortal lines one of your grammatical pedants has
observed, "There ain't no rhyme to City Road, there ain't no rhyme to
Eagle." Great pantomimes have I seen at the Grecian--a happy gallery boy
at three pence--pantomimes compact of fun and fantasy, far surpassing,
even to the man's eye, the gilded dullnesses of Drury Lane. The
pantomimes of the Pavilion, too, were frolicsome and wondrous, marred
only by the fact that I knew one of the fairies in real life, a
good-natured girl who sewed carpet-slippers for a living.
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