At Covent Garden Theatre, David sees Julius Caesar and “the new Pantomime.” He finds that seeing “noble Romans alive,” “walking in and out for my entertainment, instead of being the stern taskmasters they had been at school,” is “a most novel and delightful effect.”
Charles Dickens, David Copperfield (1850).
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Wednesday, July 29, 2026
After the show
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Fielding has an amusing scene in which Tom Jones and some of the other characters go to see a Shakespeare play performed, in their case Hamlet. (Partridge has some difficulty remembering that it's only a play.)
ReplyDeleteThat sounds like fun. (I’ve never read Tom Jones.) Ron Padgett tells a story of going to the movies with Ted Berrigan (around Times Square, I think) and hearing derelict viewers shouting at the screen: “Don’t go in there, lady,” or words to that effect.
ReplyDeleteI wonder about folks on their couch immersed for an afternoon of watching all those beautiful people on television soaps, and then going off to the reality of Walmart.
ReplyDeleteOr people who lived through the Great Depression watching beautiful black-and-white musicals before going back to their own surroundings.
ReplyDelete