great figures of English history came out upon the stage, or stories from Greek and Roman writers; or sometimes it was an extemporized allegory. Shakspeare himself has left us many pictures of the village drama. Doubtless he had seen many a Bottom in the old Warwickshire hamlets; many a Sir Nathaniel playing 'Alissander,' and finding himself 'a little o'erparted.' He had been with Snug the joiner, Quince the carpenter, and Flute the bellows-mender, when a boy, we will not question, and acted with them, and written their parts for them; had gone up with them in the winter's evenings to the Lucys' Hall before the sad trouble with the deer-stealing; and afterwards, when he came to London and found his way into great society, he had not failed to see Polonius burlesquing Cæsar on the stage, as in his proper person Polonius burlesqued Sir William Cecil. The strolling players in Hamlet might be met at every country wake or festival; it was the direction in which the especial genius of the people delighted to revel. As I desire in this chapter not only to relate what were the habits of the people, but to illustrate them also, within such compass as I can allow myself, I shall transcribe out of Hall[1] a description of a play which was acted by the boys of St Paul's School, in 1527, at Greenwich, adding some particulars, not mentioned by Hall, from another source.[2] It is a good instance of the fantastic splendour with which ex-
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REIGN OF HENRY THE EIGHTH.
[ch. i.
