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The Apothecary was highly amused as he watched the audience take its seats.
    A footman, who appeared to be sleeping in a lower stage box, suddenly shambled to his feet as the box’s occupant appeared. John gaped as a heap of human blubber wobbled into the space, knocking the footman out of the way with his walking cane as he did so. The creature lowered itself onto an agonised chair and allowed his stomach to fall forward as he did so, while the footman, bowing, made his way out. The colossus ignored him completely.
    He was quite the fattest man that John had ever seen in his life – and in his profession he had seen a few. It was hideously terrifying and at the same time horribly fascinating. The man’s chins, of which there were several, protruded not only downwards but outwards, giving him the look of an abundant harvest moon. On his head he wore a small greyish wig curled up on either side, which only served to enhance his general enormity. He was clean shaven but his eyebrows were of a vivid saffron shade, thick and curling and doing little or nothing to enhance his looks. John gazed in total entrancement.
    Feeling someone staring at him, the man looked round and scowled, then stretched his arm over the front of the box and took a frothing tankard of two quarts of ale which he proceeded to drink with obvious satisfaction. Then he belched deep, the vapour rising from the depths of his gaseous stomach. After that he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then rose a little in his protesting chair before settling himself back on to it, stretching out his short, stocky legs. John guessed that the man had let loose a fart, for the woman in the box next to his raised her handkerchief to her nostrils with a little shrill of alarm.
    Sir Gabriel said, amused, ‘I see someone has caught your eye, my dear.’
    ‘Yes, that gross creature sitting in the stage box left. Have you ever seen the like of it?’
    His father raised his quizzer and peered, then said shortly, ‘No, never.’
    ‘I wonder who he can be?’
    ‘We must ask a discreet question at the hotel. There can surely be only one such answering his description.’
    ‘I agree.’
    Now the footmen were leaving the other boxes as the last of the patrons arrived. The candles were snuffed in the auditorium and lit by the snuffers before the stage, the musicians entered and struck up a foot-tapping air. The performance had begun.

Four
    The comedy was banal but hilarious and John, looking at his father, thought that he had never seen him laugh so heartily before. In fact Sir Gabriel’s cheeks were wet with tears and he applied his handkerchief several times. From the gallery above, the Apothecary could hear the sound of Irish Tom’s loud guffaws, while he himself added uncontrollable giggling to the general cacophony.
    The story was simple. A pleasure-seeking young woman asks her husband for permission to visit the Hotwell and the theatre. She will be accompanied by her mother, played by Samuel Foote, complete with slyly false bosom, highly rouged cheeks and a great many lascivious glances at the audience. Her husband, played by the great Irish actor Spranger Barry, taking a rest from his usual Shakespearean roles but still enunciating the words as if he were speaking as Othello, exclaims, ‘Oh horrid! The Long Room is a school of Wickedness and the Playhouse a Nursery to the Devil!’ This brought the house to its feet and there was deafening cheering for a few minutes. John took the opportunity of looking at the mammoth in the stage box and saw that the creature was imbibing yet another quart of ale and growing very red in the face as a result.
    The play continued with much joviality, Sam Foote even doing a parodied country dance with Mr Barry, which was made all the funnier by the fact that Foote had only one leg so that the violent dips and curtseys he made beneath the hooped skirts were amusingly accentuated. The evening ended with a pantomime in which the