Page:The portrait of Mr. W. H (IA portraitofmrwh01wild).pdf/90

 by playing the Duchess in the tragedy of “The Cardinal,” and who in a poem that is clearly modelled upon some of Shakespeare's Sonnets is described by one who had seen him as “beauty to the eye, and music to the ear”: and Kynaston, of whom Betterton said that “it has been disputed among the judicious, whether any woman could have more sensibly touched the passions,” and whose white hands and amber-coloured hair seem to have retarded by some years the introduction of actresses upon our stage.

The Puritans, with their uncouth morals and ignoble minds, had of course railed against them, and dwelt on the impropriety of boys disguising as women, and learning to affect the manners and passions of the female sex. Gosson, with his shrill voice, and Prynne, soon to be made earless for many shameful slanders, and others to whom the rare and subtle sense of abstract beauty was denied, had from pulpit and through pamphlet said foul or foolish things to their dishonour. To Francis Lenton, writing in 1629, what he speaks of as—