Some Men Are Brothers

Dropped intro. Frederic Reynolds, 12 years old, thought he was going to die. He was walking down the narrow passage between Vinegar Yard and Bridges Street at nine o'clock on a May evening in 1777, when he heard a terrible noise above his head. The sudden, tremendous rumble made him sure that Drury Lane theatre, which formed one side of the passage, was collapsing, and that he was going to be killed. He covered his head with his hands and ran for his life, but 'found the next morning that the noise did not arise from the falling of the house, but from the falling of the screen in the fourth act; so violent and so tumultuous was the applause and laughter.' He had passed by the opening night of Sheridan's new play, The School for Scandal." - Fintan O'Toole, A Traitor's Kiss
[A Traitor's Kiss: The Life of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, by Fintan O'Toole, Granta, London, 1997. I never realised that Sheridan had so much politics in him; nor that they were of such a good democratic sort. And you can judge the journalistic pizzazz from the above.]