1663, a pass was granted to them to bring over new scenes and decorations.

Oldys speaks of a brother of Shakspeare who had survived to this period, and who often visited the actors, by whom he was much questioned touching the poet. "But he, it seems, was so stricken in years, and possibly his memory so weakened by infirmities (which might make him the easier pass for a man of weak intellects), that he could give them but little light into their inquiries; and all that could be recollected from him of his brother Will in that station, was the faint, general, and almost lost ideas, he had of having once seen him act a part in one of his own comedies, wherein being to personate a decrepit old man, he wore a long beard, and appeared so weak and drooping, and unable to walk, that he was forced to be supported and carried by another person to a table, at which he was seated among some company who were eating, and one of them sung a song." This description applies to old Adam, in "As You Like It; but it is doubtful if he who feebly shadowed it forth, and formed a link which connected the old theatre with the new, was a brother of Shakspeare; Richard died in 1613; Edmund, the player, in 1607, and Gilbert is supposed to have predeceased William.

The principal actors in Killigrew's company, included Burt, Cartwright, Clun, Hart, Lacy, and Mohun. Later additions gave to this company Kynaston, "Scum " Goodman, Griffin, Haines, and Joe Harris. It was also supplied, as was Davenant's company, with young recruits from the nursery, or school for players, which Legg founded by license, in 1664.

The chief "ladies" were Mrs. Corey, Hughes, Knip, the Marshalls (Anne and Rebecca), and later, Mrs. Boutel, Gwyn (Nell), and Reeves. These were sworn at the Lord Chamberlain's Office to serve the King. Of the "gentlemen," ten were enrolled on the Royal Household Establishment, and provided with liveries of scarlet cloth and silver lace. In the warrants of the Lord Chamberlain they were styled "Gentlemen of the Great Chamber."

The company sworn to serve the Duke of York, at Lincoln's Inn Fields, included Betterton, Nokes, and six lads employed to represent female characters,-Angel, William Betterton, a brother of the great actor (drowned early in life, at Wallingford), Kynaston, and Nokes (James). Later, Davenant added Harris, Price, Medbourn, Norris, Sandford, Smith, and Young. The chief actresses were Mrs. Davenport, Holden, Jennings, and

FEMALES EMPLOYED AS ACTRESSES.

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Mrs. Saunderson, whom Betterton shortly after married. This new fashion of actresses was a French fashion. A French company, with women among them, came over to London, in Charles the First's reign. Hoping for the sanction of their countrywoman, Queen Henrietta Maria, they established themselves in Blackfriars. Prynne called these actresses by very unsavory names; but in styling them "unwomanish and graceless," he did not mean to imply that they were awkward and unfeminine, but that acting was unworthy of their sex, and unbecoming women born in an era of grace. "Glad am I to say," remarks another Puritan, Thomas Brand, in a comment addressed to Laud, "They were hissed, hooted, and pippin-pelted from the stage." More sober thinking people did not fail to see the propriety of Juliet being represented by a girl rather than by a boy. Accordingly, we hear of English actresses even before the Restoration, mingled, however, with boys who shared with them that line of business." "The boy's a pretty actor," says Lady Strangelove, in the "Court Beggar," played at the Cockpit, in 1632," and his mother can play her part. The women now are in great request." Nevertheless, when Rhodes was permitted to re-open the stage, he could only assemble boys about him for his Evadnes, Aspasias, and the other heroines of ancient tragedy. Now, the resumption of the practice of "women's parts being represented by men in the habits of women," gave offence, and in the first patents Killigrew and Davenant were authorised to employ actresses to represent all female characters. Killigrew was the first to avail himself of the privilege. It was time. Some of Rhodes's "boys" were men past forty, who frisked it as wenches of fifteen; even real kings were kept waiting because theatrical queens had not yet shaved. The lady who first trod the stage as a professional actress, belonged to Killigrew's company. The character she assumed was Desdemona, she was introduced by a prologue written by Thomas Jordan, and the actress was, probably, either Anne Marshall or Margaret Hughes. On the 3rd of January, 1661, Beaumont and Fletcher's "Beggar's Bush was performed at Killigrew's Theatre, "it being very well done, says Pepys, "and here the first time that ever I saw women come upon the stage.' Davenant did not bring forward his actresses before the end of June, 1661, when he produced the second part of the "Siege of Rhodes," with Mrs. Davenport as Roxalana, and Mrs. Saunderson as Ianthe. Killigrew abused his privilege to employ ladies. In 1664, his comedy, the "Parson's

Wedding," wherein the plague is made a comic incident, connected with unexampled profligacy, was acted, "I am told," are Pepys' words, "by nothing but women, at the King's house." There were three members of the King's company, who were admirable representatives of female characters before the Civil Wars. These were Hart, Burt, and Clun, pupils of luckless Robinson, slain in fight, who was himself an accomplished "actress." Hart's Duchess, in Shirley's "Cardinal," was the best of his youthful parts. After the Restoration, he was almost

as great in the Moor, as Betterton. His Alexander, which he created, had a dignity which was said to convey a lesson even to kings. His Brutus was scarcely inferior, and his Catiline was so unapproachable, that Jonson's tragedy died with him. Rymer styles him and Mohun, the Esopus and Roscius of their time. When they acted together (Amintor and Melantius) in the "Maid's Tragedy," the town asked no greater treat. Hart was a man whose presence delighted the eye, before his accents enchanted the ear. The humblest character entrusted to him was distinguished by careful study. On the stage he acknowledged no audience; their warmest applause could never draw him into a moment's forgetfulness of his assumed character. His salary was, at the most, three pounds a week, but he realised £1,000 yearly, after he became a shareholder in the theatre. He retired in 1682, on a pension amounting to half his salary, which he enjoyed, however, scarcely a year. He died of a painful inward complaint in 1683, and was buried at Stanmore Magna.

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After

Burt acted Cicero with rare ability, in "Catiline," for the getting up of which piece Charles II. contributed £500 for robes. Clun's Iago was superior to Mohun's, and as Subtle, in the Alchymist," he was the admiration of all play-goers. acting this comic part, Clun made a tragic end on the night of the third of August, 1664. With a lady on his arm, and some liquor under his belt, he was gaily passing on his way to his country lodgings in Kentish Town, when he was assailed, murdered, and flung into a ditch. "The house will have a great miss of him," is the epitaph of Pepys upon versatile Clun.

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Of the boys belonging to Davenant's Company, who at first appeared in woman's boddice, Kynaston and James Nokes long survived to occupy prominent positions on the stage. Kynaston made "the lovliest lady," for a boy, ever beheld by Pepys. This was in 1660, when Kynaston played Olympia, in the "Loyal Subject." On the 7th of January, 1661, says Pepys, "Tom and

AN ACTOR BEATEN.

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I, and my wife, to the theatre, and there saw The Silent Woman." Among other things here, Kynaston, the boy, had the good turn to appear in three shapes. First, as a poor woman, in ordinary clothes, to please Morose; then, in fine clothes as a gallant-and in them was clearly the prettiest woman in the whole house; and lastly, as a man, and then likewise did appear the handsomest man in the house." When the play was concluded, and it was not the lad's humour to carouse with the men, the ladies would seize on him, in his theatrical dress, and, carrying him to Hyde Park in their coaches, be foolishly proud of the precious freight which they bore with them. There was another handsome man, Sir Charles Sedley, whose style of dress the young actor aped; and his presumption was punished by a ruffian, hired by the baronet, who accosted Kynaston in St. James's Park, as "Sir Charles," and thrashed him in that character. The actor then mimicked Sir Charles on the stage. A consequence was, that on the 30th of January, 1669, Kynaston was waylaid by three or four assailants, and so clubbed by them, that there was no play on the following evening; and the victim, mightily bruised, was forced to keep his bed. Kynaston retained a certain beauty to the last. "Even at past sixty," Cibber tells us, "his

teeth were all sound, white, and even as one would wish to see in a reigning toast of twenty." Colley attributes the gravity of Kynaston's mien "to the stately step he had been so early confined to in a female decency." The same writer praises Kynaston's Leon, in "Rule a Wife and have a Wife," for its determined manliness and honest authority. In the heroic tyrants, his piercing eye, his quick, impetuous tone, and the fierce, lion-like majesty of his bearing and utterance, " gave the spectator a kind of trembling admiration."

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The true majesty of his Henry IV. was so manifest, that when he whispered to Hotspur, "Send us your prisoners, or you'll hear of it," he conveyed, says Cibber, "a more terrible menace in it than the loudest intemperance of voice could swell to." Again, in the interview between the dying King and his son, the dignity, majestic grief, the paternal affection, the injured, kingly feeling, the pathos and justness of the rebuke, were alike remarkable. Kynaston remained on the stage from 1659 to 1699. His memory began to fail and his spirit to leave him. Kynaston was the original Count Baldwin, in "Isabella." He was the greatest of boy-actresses." So exalted was his reputation, that," says

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Downes, it has since been disputable among the judicious,

whether any woman that succeeded him, so sensibly touched the audience as he." He died in 1712.

Kynaston's contemporary, James Nokes, was as prudent and as fortunate as he; but James was not so well-descended. Nokes's father (and he himself for a time) was a city toyman, not so well to do, but he allowed his sons to go on the stage, where Robert was, to the last night of his career, famous for his impersonation of the Nurse in two plays; first, in that strange adaptation by Otway, of "Romeo and Juliet" to a Roman tragedy, "Caius Marius;" and secondly, in Nevil Payne's fierce drama, "Fatal Jealousy." Cibber thus photographs him for the entertainment of posterity.

He scarce ever made his first entrance in a play but he was received with an involuntary applause; not of hands only, but by a general laughter, which the very sight of him provoked, and nature could not resist; yet the louder the laugh the graver was his look upon it and sure the ridiculous solemnity of his features were enough to have set a whole bench of bishops into a titter, could he have been honoured (may it be no offence to suppose it) with such grave and right reverend auditors. In the ludicrous distresses which, by the laws of comedy folly is often involved in, he sunk into such a mixture of piteous pusillanimity, and a consternation so ruefully ridiculous and inconsolable, that when he had shook you to a fatigue of laughter, it became a moot point whether you ought not to have pitied him. When he debated any matter by himself, he would shut up his mouth with a dumb, studious pout, and roll his full eye into such a vacant amazement, such a palpable ignorance of what to think of it, that his silent perplexity (which would sometimes hold him several minutes) gave your imagination as full content as the most absurd thing he could say upon it."

In May, 1670, Charles II., and troups of courtiers, went down to Dover to meet the Queen-mother, and took with them the Lincoln's-Inn-Fields comedians. When Henrietta Maria arrived, with her suite of French ladies and gentlemen, the latter attired, according to the prevailing fashion, in very short blue or scarlet laced coats, with broad sword belts, the English comedians played before the royal host and his guests, the play, founded on Molière's 'Ecole des Femmes," and called Sir Solomon." Nokes acted Sir Arthur Addel, in dressing for which part he was assisted by the Duke of Monmouth. In order that he might the better ape the French mode, the duke took off his own sword and belt, and buckled them to the actor's side. At his first entrance on the

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