Page:The Story of Nell Gwyn.djvu/59

Rh They were looked upon as women of the worst character, possessed of no inclination or inducement to virtue. Few, indeed, were found to share the sentiment expressed by one of Shadwell's manliest characters, "I love the stage too well to keep any of their women, to make 'em proud and insolent and despise that calling to take up a worse." The frailty of "playhouse flesh and blood" afforded a common topic for the poet in his prologue or his epilogue, and other writers than Lee might be found who complain of the practice of "keeping" as a grievance to the stage. Davenant, foreseeing their fate from an absence of any control, boarded his four principal actresses in his own house; but, with one exception (that of Mrs. Betterton before referred to), the precaution was altogether without effect. The King, Prince Rupert, the Duke of Richmond, the Earl of Oxford, Lord Buckhurst, Sir Charles Sedley, Sir Philip Howard, his brother Sir Robert Howard, were all successful in the arts of seduction or inducement. So bad indeed was the moral discipline of the times, that even Mrs. Knep, loose as were her notions of virtue, could see the necessity of parting with a pretty servant girl, as the tiring-room