Page:The Plays of William Shakspeare (1778).djvu/96

84 wore doe you ditat them: and beeing on your feete, neake not away like a coward, but alute all your gentle acquaintance that are pred either on the ruhes or on tooles about you, and draw what troope you can from the tage 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 muick without frets. Mary, if either the company, or indipoition of the weather binde you to it it out, my counell is then that you turne plaine ape: take up a ruh and tickle the earnet eares of your fellow gallants, to make other fooles fall a laughing: mewe at the paionate peeches, blare at merrie, finde fault with the muicke, whewe at the children’s action, whitle at the ongs; and above all, cure the harers, that whereas the ame day you had betowed forty hillings on an embroidered felt and feather (Scotch-fahion) for your mitres in the court, or your punck in the clttie, within two houres after, you encounter with the very ame block on the tage, when the haberdaher wore to you the impreion was extant but that morning. To conclude, hoord up the finet play-craps you can get, upon which your leane wit may mot favourly feede, for want of other tuffe, when the Arcadian and Euphuis’d gentlewomen have their tongues harpened to et upon you: that qualitie (next to your hittlecocke) 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-houes bee emptied, are (or ought to be) tavernes: into a taverne then let us next march, where the braines of one hoghead mut be beaten out to make up another.”

I hould have attempted on the preent occaion 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 firt volume of the Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, (third edit. p. 128, &c.) has extracted uch paages from them as tend to the illutration of this ubject; to which he has added more accurate remarks than my experience in thee matters would have enabled me to upply. The