"Much disapprobation was manifested at the close of the curtain."
While I'm making plodding progress through my recent icon requestathon, here's a little something I stumbled across on Google Books, while on yet another workcentric fact-hunt.
In these days of creator/critic blogfights and celebrity Twitterwars, it may be refreshing to realize that the phenomenon of getting a crap review for your work is far from new. Here's the theatre section from an issue of The Gentleman's Magazine from 1825, which contains a delightful combination of formal phraseology and good old-fashioned rudeness. I can only imagine how the anonymous critic might have viewed some of today's cultural offerings.
However, if the above critique hits you with the whiff known as "teal deer", I have taken the liberty of summarizing the key points in a rather more modern idiom, as follows:
THE PLAYS WOT I SAW:
Leocadea - EPIC FAIL (but Miss Kelly was totally hot, OMG)
The Scape Goat - Meh.
'Twas I - ROFLMAO!
The Three Strangers - German WTF? + written by a CHICK = EPIC FAIL.
So what have we learned from this? Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, maybe. Or perhaps that comment is free, cheap shots are cheap, and the way to Miss Kelly's heart was probably very, very expensive...
In these days of creator/critic blogfights and celebrity Twitterwars, it may be refreshing to realize that the phenomenon of getting a crap review for your work is far from new. Here's the theatre section from an issue of The Gentleman's Magazine from 1825, which contains a delightful combination of formal phraseology and good old-fashioned rudeness. I can only imagine how the anonymous critic might have viewed some of today's cultural offerings.
However, if the above critique hits you with the whiff known as "teal deer", I have taken the liberty of summarizing the key points in a rather more modern idiom, as follows:
THE PLAYS WOT I SAW:
Leocadea - EPIC FAIL (but Miss Kelly was totally hot, OMG)
The Scape Goat - Meh.
'Twas I - ROFLMAO!
The Three Strangers - German WTF? + written by a CHICK = EPIC FAIL.
So what have we learned from this? Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, maybe. Or perhaps that comment is free, cheap shots are cheap, and the way to Miss Kelly's heart was probably very, very expensive...