To all Tavern-kitchen Frequenters and Haunters,
Who go thither to hear Mistress Cooks foolish Banters
To Partake of a Dumpling, or Sop in the Pan;

A Large Rummer Drank up, troop as fast as they can ;
To all sober Half-Pint Men, and serious Sippers ;

To all old Maudlin Drinkers, and 12 a Clock Bibbers;
To all Drinking Committees, Knots, Clubs, Corporations
Who while others are snoaring, they'r settling the Nations;
To all the brisk Beaus who think Life but a Play,
Who make Day like the Night, and turn Night into Day;
To all Lovers of Red and White-Port, Syracuse,
Barcelona, Navarr, or Canary's sweet Juice;

To all Alicant Tasters, and Malaga-Sots,

To all Friends to Straw-Bottles, and Nicking Quart-Pots,

To all Bacchus his Friends, who have Taverns frequented,

This following Poem is Humbly Presented."

The searchers after claret spend two days visiting the taverns and find none. I suppose that the war with France had caused a stoppage of the supply. In the same way, during the long war with France, 1793-1815, the people forgot their old taste for claret; when they drank it at all, it was heavy stuff. They visit eightyeight taverns between Whitechapel and Temple Bar and at Westminster, and this without going out of the main streets. Many of these taverns are still remembered by the tokens which they issued for copper money. Most of these taverns were not hostels, and did not provide lodgings; they were taverns and nothing more; they were frequented, as has been said, by tradesmen during the day; in the evening there were societies, clubs, and trades, which held their meetings in the taverns. For instance, in the Mitre, Cheapside, afterwards called the Goose and Gridiron, the Society of Musicians met and gave their concerts. At the Cock and the Devil of Fleet Street the lawyers thronged.

CHAPTER V

THEATRE AND ART

ON December 8, 1660, a great change was effected at the theatre. For the first time, to the exasperation of the Puritans, a woman's part was taken by a woman. The place was the theatre of Vere Street. The part first performed was that of Desdemona. The prologue written "to introduce the first woman that came to act on the stage was as follows (Leigh Hunt, The Town) :

"I came unknown to any of the rest

To tell the news; I saw the lady drest:
The woman plays to-day; mistake me not,
No man in gown, or page in petticoat:

A woman to my knowledge, yet I can't,

If I should die, make affidavit on't.

Do you not twitter, gentlemen? I know
You will be censuring: do it fairly, though;

'Tis possible a virtuous woman may

Abhor all sorts of looseness, and yet play:

Play on the stage-where all eyes are upon her:

Shall we count that a crime France counts as an honour?

In other kingdoms husbands safely trust 'em ;

The difference lies only in the custom.

And let it be our custom, I advise :

I'm sure this custom's better than th' excise,
And may procure us custom hearts of flint
Will melt in passion, when a woman's in't.
But, gentlemen, you that as judges sit

In the Star chamber of the house-the pit,
Have modest thoughts of her: pray, do not run
To give her visits when the play is done,
With damn me, your most humble servant, lady:'
She knows these things as well as you, it may be :
Not a bit there, dear gallants, she doth know
Her own deserts, and your temptations too.
But to the point-in this reforming age

We have intents to civilize the stage.

Our Women are defective, and so sized,

You'd think they were some of the guard disguised :
For, to speak truth, men act that are between

Forty and fifty, wenches of fifteen,

With bone so large and nerve so incompliant,
When you call Desdemona, enter giant.

We shall purge everything that is unclean,
Lascivious, scurrilous, impious, or obscene:
And when we've put all things in this fair way
Barebones himself may come to see a play."

And the epilogue, much shorter, was as follows:

"And how do you like her? Come, what is't ye drive at?
She's the same thing in public as in private,
As far from being what you call a whore
As Desdemona injured by the Moor:
Then he that censures her in such a case
Hath a soul blacker than Othello's face.
But, ladies, what think you? for it you tax
Her freedom with dishonour to your sex,
She means to act no more, and this shall be
No other play, but her own tragedy.
She will submit to none but your commands,
And take commission only from your hands."

At the beginning it
When the spectators

This change altered the whole character of the theatre. lowered the tone of the stage, which was already bad enough. became accustomed to the appearance of women on the stage, it began perhaps to have a refining influence, but certainly not at first.

In Wycherley's Country Wife, Pinchwife takes his wife to the "eighteen-penny place" so that she shall not be seen. This place was the tier called the upper boxes. Ladies sometimes went into the Pit, but not alone. In the same play Alithea says to her lover, "I will not go if you intend to leave me alone in the Pit as you used to do." Ladies, however, for the most part, went into the first tier or dress circle, where they received visits from their friends. Lord Foppington says, "After dinner I go to the play, where I amuse myself till nine o'clock with looking upon the company, and usually dispose of an hour more in leading them out."

The tickets were, to the boxes, 4s.; to the Pit, half-a-crown; to the upper boxes, Is. 6d. ; and to the gallery, Is. There were only two theatres, the King's and the Duke of York's; the seats were simple benches without backs.

Pepys, a great lover of the stage, commends the improvement of the theatre since the Restoration:

"The stage is now by his pains a thousand times better and more glorious than ever heretofore. Now, wax-candles, and many of them; then, not above 3 lbs. of tallow now, all things civil, no rudeness anywhere; then, as in a bear-garden: then, two or three fiddlers; now, nine or ten of the best: then, nothing but rushes upon the ground, and everything else mean; and now, all otherwise: then, the Queen seldom, and King never would come; now, not the King only for state, but all civil people do think they may come as well as any. He tells me that he hath gone several times, eight or ten times, he tells me, hence to Rome, to hear good musique; so much he loves it, though he never did sing or play a note. That he hath ever endeavoured in the late King's time, and in this, to introduce good musique, but he never could do it, there never having been any musique here better than ballads. Nay, says, 'Hermitt poore' and 'Chevy Chese' was all the musique we had; and yet no ordinary fiddlers get so much money. as ours do here, which speaks our rudenesse still" (Pepys, vol. vi. pp. 171, 172).

Bankside had long since ceased to be the chosen seat of the drama. The Globe, after being burned down and rebuilt, was finally pulled down in 1644; the Rose, the Swan, and the Bear Garden had met the same fate; the Fortune Theatre was destroyed by soldiers in 1549; the Curtain had become, before it was pulled

down, a place for prize fights; Blackfriars Theatre, after standing empty for some years, in accordance with the law, was pulled down in 1655.

In 1642 the Parliament commanded the cessation of plays on the ground "that public sports do not well agree with public calamities, nor public stage plays with the seasons of humiliation." So the houses were closed. Then, as always happened, the law was timidly and tentatively broken; the theatres began again. In 1647,

however, a second ordinance appeared calling upon the magistrates to enter houses where performances were going on and to arrest the performers. This ordinance. proving of more effect, a third and more stringent law was passed denouncing stage plays, interludes, and common plays as the occasion of many and sundry great vices and disorders, tending to the high provocation of God's wrath and displeasure, ordered the destruction of all galleries, seats, and stages of the theatre. This settled the question for the time. Most of the actors went off to fight for the King; a few remained and gave private performances at the residences of noblemen. In 1658 Davenant opened the old Cockpit Theatre in Drury Lane for performances of declamation and music without being molested. Probably he ascertained beforehand what the Protector would do. On the Restoration a bookseller of dramatic propensities took possession of the Cockpit, where he played with his two apprentices, Betterton and Kynaston. Killigrew and Davenant obtained patents for opening theatres, Killigrew's company to be called the King's servants, Davenant's to be called the Duke of York's servants. Davenant associated with himself the dramatic booksellers, and after a season at the Phoenix went to the new theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and from there to the larger theatre in Dorset Garden, Fleet Street, a place more commodious because it was on the river, the great highway of London. Killigrew began at the Red Bull in St. John's Street, going from that place, which seems to have been out of the way, to Gibbon's Tennis Court in Clare Market. He then proceeded to build a new theatre in Drury Lane, not far from the Phoenix. The new theatre opened with Beaumont and Fletcher's comedy of the Humourous Lieutenant on April 8, 1663. Ten of the company were in the Royal household, and had allowances of scarlet cloth and lace for liveries; did they wear the livery on the stage? It was here that Charles fell in love with Nell Gwynne; she was playing Valeria in Dryden's Tyrannic Love. She died on the stage and then jumped up and spoke the epilogue:

Here Pepys saw her, was presented to her, and kissed her, "and a mighty pretty soul she is." And again And again he mentions how he saw her in a part called Florimell, "a comical part done by Nell that I never can hope to see the like done again by man or woman."

It is sometimes stated that the theatres of the time were still without a roof. This appears to be incorrect. Pepys mentions the inconvenience of rain. "To the King's house and saw the Silent Woman. Before the play was done it fell such a storm of hail that we in the pit were fain to rise and all the house in disorder." A few years later, however, he notes (May 1, 1668) another visit to the same theatre,