Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/191

BEN JONSON - 175 First Child. What, upon the stage too ? Second Child. Yes ; and I step forth like one of the children, and ask you. Would you have a stool, sir ? Third Child. A stool, boy ! Second Child. Ay, sir, if you'll give me sixpence I'll fetch you one. Third Child. For what, I pray thee ? what shall I do with it ? Second Child. O Lord, sir ! will you betray your ignorance so much? Why, throne yourself in state upon the stage, as other gentlemen use, sir." On which we may quote the comment of Gifford : "At the theatres in Jonson's time, spectators were admitted on the stage. Here they sat on stools, the price of which, as the situation was more or less com- modious, was sixpence or a shilling : here, too, their own pages, or the boys of the house, supplied them with pipes and tobacco. Amidst such confusion and indecency were the dramatic works of Shake- speare and his contemporaries produced." Much as we admire and love the pipe, we must admit that it was quite out of place on the stage of a theatre while a genuine drama was proceeding; especially as abundant and abominable spitting appears to have been the ordinary custom of the age in smoking. How the actors got through their parts at all is a miracle ; the case was even worse than in that para- dise of cads, the modern music-hall, where at least the stage is free from intrusion. Returning to " Every man out of His Humour," Carlo Buffone, the "public, scurrilous, and prophane jester, that more swift than Circe, with absurd similies will transform any person into deformity; the good feast-hound or banquet-beagle, that will scent you out a supper some three miles off; whose religion is