them elbow roome: their Poet cries perhaps a pox go with you, but care not you for that, theres no musick without frets.
Mary if either the company, or indisposition of the weather binde you to sit it out, my counsell is then that you turne plain Ape, take vp a rush and tickle the earnest eares of your fellow gallants, to make other fooles fall a laughing: mewe at passionate speeches, blare at merrie, finde fault with the musicke, whew at the childrens Action, whistle at the songs: and aboue all, curse the sharers, that whereas the same day you had bestowed forty shillings on an embrodered Felt and Feather, (scotch-fashion) for your mistres in the Court, or your punck in the city, within two houres after, you encounter with the very same block on the stage, when the haberdasher swore to you the impression was extant but that morning.
To conclude, hoard vp the finest play-scraps you can get, vpon which your leane wit may most sauourly feede for want of other stuffe, when the Arcadian and Euphuisd gentlewomen haue their tongues sharpened to set vpon you: that qualitie (next to your shittlecocke) is the onely furniture to a Courtier thats but a new beginner, and is but in his A B C of complement. The next places that are fild, after the Playhouses bee emptied, are (or ought to be) Tauernes, into a Tauerne then let vs next march, where the braines of one Hogshead must be beaten out to make vp another.
APPENDIX I
RESTORATION TESTIMONY
i.
[Extracts from A Short Discourse of the English Stage. To his Excellency,
the Lord Marquess of Newcastle, attached to Richard Flecknoe's Love's
Kingdom (1664), and reprinted in Hazlitt, E. D. S. 275. Flecknoe, who
died c. 1678, was old enough to travel abroad in 1640.]
They Acted nothing here but Playes of the holy Scripture, or
Saints' Lives; and that without any certain Theaters or set Companies,
till, about the beginning of Queen Elizabeth's Reign, they
began here first to assemble into Companies, and set up Theaters,
first in the City, (as in the Inn-yards of the Cross-Keyes, and Bull
in Grace and Bishops-Gate Street at this day is to be seen) till that
Fanatick Spirit which then began with the Stage, and after ended
with the Throne, banisht them thence into the Suburbs, as after they
did the Kingdom, in the beginning of our Civil Wars. In which
time, Playes were so little incompatible with Religion, and the Theater
with the Church, as on Week-dayes after Vespers, both the Children
of the Chappel and St. Pauls Acted Playes, the one in White-Friers,
the other behinde the Convocation-house in Pauls, till people growing
more precise, and Playes more licentious, the Theatre of Pauls was
