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 and above all Frankfort, where the two great marts or fairs held annually at Easter and in the autumn served as a rallying-point for travellers and entertainers of every species. The early successes of the English in Germany are reported by Fynes Moryson, who was at Frankfort for the autumn fair of 1592:

'Germany hath some fewe wandring Comeydians, more deseruing pitty then prayse, for the serious parts are dully penned, and worse acted, and the mirth they make is ridiculous, and nothing lesse then witty (as I formerly haue shewed). So as I remember that when some of our cast dispised stage players came out of England into Germany, and played at Franckford in the tyme of the Mart, hauing nether a complete number of Actours, nor any good Appareil, nor any ornament of the Stage, yet the Germans, not vnderstanding a worde they sayde, both men and women, flocked wonderfully to see theire gesture and Action, rather then heare them, speaking English which they vnderstoode not, and pronowncing peeces and patches of English playes, which my selfe and some English men there present could not heare without great wearysomenes. Yea my selfe comming from Franckford in the company of some cheefe marchants Dutch and Flemish, heard them often bragg of the good markett they had made, only condoling that they had not the leasure to heare the English players.'

In the Netherlands the English players, according to Moryson, brought themselves into a singular difficulty. Here, too, was no native stage:

'For Commedians, they litle practise that Arte, and are the poorest Actours that can be imagined, as my selfe did see when the Citty of Getrudenberg being taken by them from the Spanyards, they made bonsfyers and publikely at Leyden represented that action in a play, so rudely as the poore Artizans of England would haue both penned and acted it much better. So as at the same tyme when some cast players of England came into those partes, the people not vnderstanding what they sayd, only for theere action followed them with wonderfull concourse, yea many young virgines fell in loue with some of the players, and followed them from citty to citty, till the magistrates were forced to forbid them to play any more.'

Moryson's account finds confirmation in the praise lavished upon English acting by German writers, such as Erhard Cellius in 1605, Joannes Rhenanus about 1610, and Daniel von Wensin in 1613. Undoubtedly the German stage, which had been*