worſe doe you diſtaſt them: and beeing on your feete, ſneake not away like a coward, but ſalute all your gentle acquaintance that are ſpred either on the ruſhes or on ſtooles about you, and draw what troope you can from the ſtage after you: the mimicks are beholden to you, for allowing them elbow roome: their poet cries perhaps, a pox go with you, but care not you for that; there’s 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 plaine ape: take up a ruſh and tickle the earneſt eares of your fellow gallants, to make other fooles fall a laughing: mewe at the paſſionate ſpeeches, blare at merrie, finde fault with the muſicke, whewe at the children’s action, whiſtle at the ſongs; and above all, curſe the ſharers, that whereas the ſame day you had beſtowed forty ſhillings on an embroidered felt and feather (Scotch-faſhion) for your miſtres in the court, or your punck in the clttie, 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, hoord up the fineſt play-ſcraps you can get, upon which your leane wit may moſt favourly feede, for want of other ſtuffe, when the Arcadian and Euphuis’d gentlewomen have their tongues ſharpened to ſet upon you: that qualitie (next to your ſhittlecocke) is the only furniture to a courtier that’s but a new beginner, and is but in his ABC of complement. The next places that are fil’d after the play-houſes bee emptied, are (or ought to be) tavernes: into a taverne then let us next march, where the braines of one hogſhead muſt be beaten out to make up another.”
I ſhould have attempted on the preſent occaſion to enumerate all other pamphlets, &c. from whence particulars relative to the conduct of our early theatres might be collected, but that Dr. Percy, in his firſt volume of the Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, (third edit. p. 128, &c.) has extracted ſuch paſſages from them as tend to the illuſtration of this ſubject; to which he has added more accurate remarks than my experience in theſe matters would have enabled me to ſupply.
