Eventually, unable or unwilling to modify their personal habits any further, the beau monde stopped trying to get to the theater for the first act and took to sending a servant to hold their seats for them till they had finished dining. Generally they would show up—noisy, drunk, and disinclined to focus—for the later acts. For a generation or so it was usual for a theatrical company to perform the first half of a play to an auditorium full of dozing servants who had no attachment to the proceedings and to perform the second half to a crowd of ill-mannered inebriates who had no idea what was
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