Page:The Story of Nell Gwyn.djvu/25

Rh conversation against a suspicion of disloyalty and fanaticism. Even the common people took to gay-coloured dresses as before; and a freedom of spirits, rendered familiar by early recollection, and only half subdued by Presbyterian persecution, was confirmed by a licence of tongue which the young men about court had acquired while in exile with their sovereign.

Not the least striking effect of the restoration of the King was the revival of the English theatres. They had been closed and the players silenced for three-and-twenty years, and in that space a new generation had arisen, to whom the entertainments of the stage were known but by name. The theatres were now re-opened, and with every advantage which stage properties, new and improved scenery, and the costliest dresses, could lend to help them forward. But there were other advantages equally new, and of still greater importance, but for which the name of Eleanor Gwyn would in all likelihood never have reached us.

From the earliest epoch of the stage in England till the theatres were silenced at the outbreak of the Civil War, female characters had invariably been played by men, and during the same brilliant