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 bestiall forme. Those also stand within the stroke of my penne, who were wont to Curtaine ouer their defects with knauish conueyances, and scum off the froth of all wanton vanity, to qualifie the eager appetite of their slapping Fauorites.'

lx. 1615. J. Cocke.

[The variant texts of this character are here given from the two editions of John Stephens' essays, in each of which it is Bk. ii, char. 4, viz. (A) Satyrical Essayes Characters and Others (1615) and (B) ''Essayes and Characters, Ironical and Instructive. The second impression (1615), of which a reprint is in J. O. Halliwell, Old Books of Characters'' (1857), 131. Between A and B had appeared the sixth edition of The Wife, with the character of An Excellent Actor and the reference to a rival as 'the imitating Characterist' (v. No. lxi). To this the additions in B are a rejoinder, and they are reinforced by two epistles. One is 'To the namelesse Rayler: who hath lenghthened his Excellent Actor, a most needy Caracter following the wife with a peece of dog-skin witt; dressed ouer with oyle of sweaty Posthorse'. Here the writer, I. S., says he did 'admit a friends Satyre'. The other epistle, 'To the nameles Author of a late Character entituled, an Excellent Actor, following the Wife', is signed by 'I. Cocke', who says, 'witnes your gross mistaking of approued and authorised actors for counterfeit Runagates, or country Players, inueighed against by the Characterist'. Some appended verses claim for Cocke the authorship of the Tinker, Apparator, and Almanac-maker in The Wife. It seems clear that Cocke and not Stephens wrote the present character, and that An Excellent Actor was a reply to it. It is true that Stephens only speaks of it as 'lenghthened' by the attack on himself, but 'lenghthened' may mean 'pieced out', and there is no version, long or short, in any of the five first editions of The Wife, while a reference to 'the sixt impression of S. Thomas Overburyes wife' on p. 434 of B shows this was before its writers. John Stephens (cf. ch. xxiii) was a Lincoln's Inn dramatist. I cannot find a likely Cocke in the Lincoln's Inn Admission Books; there is an Isaac Cox, admitted 10 Jan. 1611 (i. 154), and a John Cookes on 6 June 1614 (i. 166). Can the satirist be the John Cooke (cf. ch. xxiii) who wrote Greene's Tu Quoque?]

A common Player

Is a slow Payer, seldom a Purchaser, never a Puritan. The Statute hath done wisely to acknowledg him a Rogue errant, for his chiefe essence is, A daily Counterfeit : He hath beene familiar so long with out-sides, that he professes himselfe (being unknowne) to be an apparant Gentleman. But his thinne Felt, and his silke Stockings, or his foule Linnen, and faire Doublet, doe (in him) bodily reveal the Broker: So beeing not sutable, hee proves a Motley: his mind observing the same fashion of his body: both consist of parcells and