Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 3.djvu/357

 9 th S. III. MAY 6, '99.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

351

With regard to the second ticket, the ques-

ion is, What and where was the Queen's

^heatre? The two patent companies, the

King's Servants," who acted at Drury Lane,


 * jid the " Duke's Company," who acted at the

theatre in Dorset Gardens, amalgamated in

682, and the united companies opened the

eason at Drury Lane Theatre on 16 Nov.,

1682, and thenceforth, as Dr. Doran says

in his 'Annals of the English Stage,' "from

1682 to 1695 there was but one theatre in

London."

Can any of your readers enlighten me in legard to a Queen's Theatre in 1684, or what authority Wilkinson can have had for saying that Queen Maria d'Este became patroness of a theatre after her husband's accession to the throne, and that it was named after her? I can easily conceive that Wilkinson may have made a mistake in regard to the heads on these tickets ; but what was the Queen's Theatre in 1684, when both the patent com- panies constituted a united company at Drury Lane, as the Theatre Royal was called from 1682; and how came it that this pass was struck 1 MONTAGUE GUEST.

[The Dorset Garden Theatre was in 1685 called the Queen's Theatre, and probably in 1684. It is incorrect to say that from 1682 to 1695 there was but one theatre in London. Dorset Garden was kept open by the united companies. Several plays those especially that required much machi- nerywere produced thereat. Among the pieces there given were ' The Scornful Lady,' Kavenscroft's ' Dame Dobson ; or, the Cunning Woman ' (1684), Otway's ' Atheist ' (1684), D'Urfey's ' Sir Hercules Buffoon' (1684), Dryden's 'Albion and Albanius' ("with an extraordinary expense," 1685), Tate's 'Cuckold's Haven' (1685), Mountfort's 'Dr. Faustus' (between 1684 and 1688), 'The Prophetess' (con- verted by Betterton into an opera, 1690), Wilson's 'Belphegor'(1690), Dryden's 'King Arthur' (1691). In 1695 the theatre in Little Lincoln's Inn Fields was opened. The price of the upper gallery in 1688 was one shilling. Four shillings was the charge for the admission of ladies to the theatre.]

" AN ICE " (9 th S. iii. 26, 152). According to Herve and Galignani's ' The Picture of Paris ' (see fourth edition, London, Tegg, &c., 1829, p. 427), "it was ban-ton early in this century to sit [at the Cafe Tortoni] eating ices." Dickens in one of his ' Sketches by Boz,' viz., 'Horatio Sparkins,' relates how all the (matri- monial) hopes of the Maldertons were destined at once to melt away, " like the lemon ices at a Company's dinner." Is not the feeble hydro- phobic punning upon the card in a pastry- cook's window, " Water-ices and Ice-creams " ('Water I sees and I screams "), already in its dotage ? It seems reasonable to look for earlier instances of ices in literature than those yet quoted. Was not the popularization

of cheap ices in London, among the masses, largely due to Italian enterprise (Gatti, &c.) ? The ' Dictionnaire de 1'Academie Fran9aise ' (sixth edition, 1835) has already a whole nomenclature of glaces. At St. Petersburg, and probably elsewhere in Russia, the moro- jenik or ice-monger, with his large heavy tub of assorted ices balanced jauntily on his sturdy head, has long been an institution at popular summer out-of-door gatherings, but he is gradually being driven from the field by the more pretentious, if hardly more wholesome vendor with gaily -painted box- barrow of confectioner's ices. H. E. M. St. Petersburg.

ENGLISH ROOM-PANELLING (9 th S. iii. 265). The simplest gave place to those that have mouldings of separate wood, which are nearly all under a century old. I cannot tell when doorways without rebates were most abun- dant. Generally all mediaeval doorways have them, and the outer arch is of one or two seg- ments, with centres far below the springing. Elliptic arches were never used, nor yet "straight-sided Tudor" ones. These latter are a purely recent blunder. The term Tudor applied to depressed pointed arches is mis- leading. The four-centred ones are absent, 1 believe, from all continental Europe. They are confined to Asia and the British Isles. But they appear here as early as any pointed ones. The oldest I know is the vaulting of the chancel of Easton Church, near Win- chester. Then comes that of the choir of the Temple Church ; and not much later that of the eastern chapel at St. Alban's. In Asia the three-centred form was more frequent, as the windows of the Dome of the Rock, Jeru- salem. In Winchester Cathedral nave both the main vaulting and aisle arches take this form ; but the west porches are four-centred, and from 1400 this superseded every other for English gateways, afterward doors, and finally windows. E. L. GARBETT.

No. 4 came into use in Evelyn's time. He speaks of it (deal painted) in the ' Diary,' but chapter and verse cannot now be hunted up. There is variety in this panelling. The panel is not always " on same plane as framework." It is a delightful surrounding this panelling if you hit on good colours. The writer knows, having " kept " all his college time in rooms so panelled, and now dwelling in a house fitted up in like manner. Possibly some may doubt about the importation of deal (" Baltic " it is) so early as Stuart times. It was brought to Weymouth, and so were " blew slatts," long before. In the late seventeenth- century house above mentioned every chip of