Reviews of Second Thoughts Are Best, a Revised Version of The World as It Goes

Summary

The Morning Chronicle and London Advertiser, issue 3699 (March 26, 1781): 3

THEATRICAL INTELLIGENCE.

On Saturday evening Mrs. Cowley's last Comedy, presented three weeks since, under the title of The World As It Goes, was restored to the Theatre under the new name of SECOND THOUGHTS ARE BEST. The author had made a great variety of emendations, by omission, alteration, and insertion, in most of which she gave testimony of a promptitude of ability and an apt judgment; but unfortunately, not only the foundation of her dramatic building, but the superstructure itself, was ill chosen, undramatically conceived, and both uninterestingly and offensively executed; every attempt to ornament and embellish, served therefore, (like white silk stockings worn by a bandy-legged chimneysweeper,) rather to expose than to conceal the deformity of the whole, which, as we asserted in our first critique on the original play, was too replete with radical defects to be easily cured. The theatre was extremely crouded, and the audience were put into good humour by a laughable prologue, in which the new title of the Piece was played upon with some pleasantry. Soon after the performance began, it became pretty evident that the persons who filled the theatre were divided into three parties; the candid and unbiassed, the determined advocates of the author, and her no less determined opposers. We mention the three descriptions in this order, because the first must strike every man as the most respectable, the second appeared to be the most numerous, and the third deserved to be put in the back ground: from their contemptible display of venomous industry, in the cause of malice and persecution. In the early part of the representation, a struggle arose between the two latter parties, where each was guilty of the same cause of reprehension: the friends of the author, in their eagerness to applaud, made the theatre resound with plaudits, where no praise was due; and her enemies, with just as little judgment, seemed determined, that the candid and impartial should not be allowed a momentary opportunity of hearing whether the play did or did not deserve condemnation.