"A Prologue, to introduce the first Woman that came to act on the Stage, in the Tragedy called The Moor of Venice.

"I come, unknown to any of the rest,
To tell you 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 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 siz❜d,

You'd think they were some of the guard disguis'd:
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 every thing 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."

The Epilogue, which consists of but twelve lines, is in the same strain of apology:

"And how do you like her? Come, what is't ye drive at? She's the same thing in publick as in private;

As far from being what you call a whore;
As Desdemona, injur'd 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 if 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.”

From a paper in Sir Henry Herbert's hand-writing, I find that Othello was performed by the Red Bull company, (afterwards his Majesties servants,) at their new theatre in Vere Street, near Clare Market, on Saturday, December 8, 1660, for the first time that winter. On that day therefore it is probable an actress first appeared on the English stage. This theatre was opened on Thursday, November 8, with the play of King Henry the Fourth. Most of Jordan's prologues and epilogues appear to have been written for that company.

It is certain, however, that for some time after the Restoration men also acted female parts; and Mr. Kynaston, even after women had assumed their proper rank on the stage, was not only endured, but admired; if we may believe a contemporary writer; who assures us, "that being then very young, he made a complete stage beauty, performing his parts so well, (particularly Arthiope and Aglaura,) that it has since been disputable any woman that among the judicious, whether ceeded him, touched the audience so sensibly as he."

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In D'Avenant's company, the first actress that appeared was probably Mrs. Saunderson, who performed Ianthe in The Siege of Rhodes, on the opening of his new theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields, in April, 1662. It does not appear from Downes's account, that while D'Avenant's company performed at the Cockpit in Drury Lane during the years 1659, 1660, and 1661,

they had any female performer among them: or that Othello was acted by them at that period.

In the infancy of the English stage it was customary in every piece to introduce a Clown, "by his mimick gestures to breed in the less capable mirth and laughter.” The privileges of the Clown were very extensive; for, between the acts, and sometimes between the scenes, he claimed a right to enter on the stage, and to excite merriment by any species of buffoonery that struck him. Like the Harlequin of the Italian comedy, his wit was often extemporal, and he sometimes entered into a contest of raillery and sarcasm with some of the audience. He generally threw his thoughts into hobbling doggrel verses, which he made shorter or longer as he found convenient; but, however irregular his metre might be, or whatever the length of his verses, he always took care to tag them with words of corresponding sound; like Dryden's DOEG,

"He fagotted his notions as they fell,'

And if they rhym'd and rattled, all was well.”

Thomas Wilson and Richard Tarleton, both sworn servants to Queen Elizabeth, were the most popular performers of that time in this department of the drama, and are highly praised by the Continuator of Stowe's Annals, for "their wondrous plentiful, pleasant, and extemporal wit." Tarleton, whose comick powers were so great, that, according to Sir Richard Baker, "he delighted the spectators before he had spoken a word," is thus described in a very rare old pamphlet: "The next, by his sute of russet, his buttoned cap, his taber, his standing on the toe, and other tricks, I knew to be either the body or resemblance of Tarleton, who living, for his pleasant conceits was of all men liked, and, dying, for mirth left not his like." In 1611 was published a book entitled his Jeasts, in which some specimens are given of the extempore wit which our ancestors thought so excellent. As he was performing some part "at the Bull in . Bishops-gate-street, where the Queenes players oftentimes played," while he was "kneeling down to aske his

father's blessing," a fellow in the gallery threw an apple at him, which hit him on the cheek. He immediately took up the apple, and advancing to the audience, addressed them in these lines:

"Gentlemen, this fellow, with his face of mapple,
Instead of a pippin hath throwne me an apple;
But as for an apple he hath cast a crab,

So instead of an honest woman God hath sent him a drab.”

"The people," says the relater, "laughed heartily; for the fellow had a quean to his wife."

Another of these stories, which I shall give in the author's own words, establishes what I have already mentioned, that it was customary for the Clown to talk to the audience or the actors ad libitum.

"At the Bull at Bishops-gate, was a play of Henry the V. [the performance which preceded Shakspeare's,] wherein the judge was to take a box on the eare; and because he was absent that should take the blow, Tarlton himselfe ever forward to please, tooke upon him to play the same judge, besides his own part of the clowne; and Knel, then playing Henry the Fifth, hit Tarleton a sound box indeed, which made the people laugh the more, because it was he: but anon the judge goes in, and immediately Tarleton in his clownes cloathes comes out, and asks the actors, What news? O, saith one, had'st thou been here, thou shouldest have seen Prince Henry hit the judge a terrible box on the eare. What, man, said Tarlton, strike a judge! It is true, i'faith, said the other. No other like, said Tarlton, and it could not be but terrible to the judge, when the report so terrifies me, that methinks the blowe remaines still on my cheeke, that it burnes againe. The people laught at this mightily, and to this day I have heard it commended for rare; but no marvell, for he had many of these. But I would see our clownes in these days do the like. No, I warrant ye; and yet they thinke well of themselves too."

The last words show that this practice was not discontinued in the time of Shakspeare, and we here see that he had abundant reason for his precept in Hamlet :

"Let those that play your clowns, speak no more than is set down for them; for there be of them, that will of themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too; though in the mean time some necessary question of the play be then to be considered."

This practice was undoubtedly coeval with the English stage; for we are told that Sir Thomas More, while he lived as a page with Archbishop Moreton, (about the year 1490,) as the Christmas plays were going on in the palace, would sometimes suddenly step upon the stage, "without studying for the matter," and exhibit a part of his own, which gave the audience much more entertainment than the whole performance besides.

But the peculiar province of the Clown was to entertain the audience after the play was finished, at which time themes were sometimes given to him by some of the spectators, to descant upon; but more commonly the audience were entertained by a jig. A jig was a ludicrous metrical composition, often in rhyme, which was sung by the Clown, who likewise, I believe, occasionally danced, and was always accompanied by a tabor and pipe. In these jigs more persons than one were sometimes introduced. The original of the entertainment which this buffoon afforded our ancestors between the acts and after the play, may be traced to the satyrical interludes of Greece, and the Attellans and Mimes of the Roman stage. The Exodiarii and Emboliaria of the Mimes are undoubtedly the remote progenitors of the Vice and Clown of our ancient dramas.

No writer that I have met with, intimates that in the time of Shakspeare it was customary to exhibit more than a single dramatic piece on one day. Had any shorter pieces of the same kind with our modern farces, (beside the jigs already mentioned,) been presented after the principal performance, some of them probably would have been printed; but there are none of them extant of an earlier date than the time of the Restoration. practice therefore of exhibiting two dramas successively in the same afternoon, we may be assured, was not established before that period. But though our ancient audiences were not gratified by the representation of more

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