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 of 1616 contains a vigorous protest. But the gallant liked to be seen as well as to see, and liked to slip in and out of the tiring house and hob-nob with the players. It was not until Caroline times that the custom became intolerable. On the stage stools were provided for those who did not care to sit on the rushes, and for these they paid at least sixpence and sometimes a shilling. One result of the introduction of sitting on the stage appears to have been that the lord's room lost its attractiveness and consequently its status. It fell into the background, and became the haunt of a rather disreputable class of playgoer. The lords were now to be found either on the stage itself, or in the private rooms of the lower gallery. Presumably the 'grate' to which the courtier of Sir John Davies' epigram relegated himself, was in the lord's room, perhaps fitted with a casement for scenic purposes. The change is chronicled by Dekker in the passage of The Gull's Horn Book, in which the gull is instructed how to behave himself in a play-house. He must by all means advance himself up to the throne of the stage.

'I meane not into the Lords roome (which is now but the Stages Suburbs): no, those boxes, by the iniquity of custome, conspiracy of waiting-women and Gentlemen-Ushers, that there sweat together, and the couetousnes of Sharers, are contemptibly thrust into the reare,

not see a pair of gallants sit not far hence like a couple of bough-pots to make the room smell?']
 * [Footnote: for the Duke to employ: every ordinary affords fools enow; and didst