Doran John
Their Majesties' Servants. Annals of the English Stage (Volume 1 of 3)
Of Mrs. Cibber, it can only be said that she was the wife of a great, and of Bullock, that he was the father of a good, actor. To Johnson no more praise can be awarded than to Bullock.48 William49 Mills deserves a word or two more of notice than these last. He was on the stage from 1696 to 1737,50 and though only a "solid" actor, he excelled Cibber, in Corvino, in Jonson's "Volpone;" surpassed Smith in the part of Pierre, and was only second to Quin, in Volpone himself. His Ventidius, in Dryden's tragedy, "All for Love," to Booth's Anthony, is praised for its natural display of the true spirit of a rough and generous soldier. Of his original parts, the chief were Jack Stanmore, in "Oroonoko;" Aimwell, in the "Beaux Stratagem;" Charles, in the "Busy Body;" Pylades, in the "Distressed Mother;" Colonel Briton, in the "Wonder;" Zanga, in the "Revenge;" and Manly, in the "Provoked Husband." That some of these were beyond his powers is certain; but he owed his being cast for them to the friendship of Wilks, when the latter was manager. To a like cause may be ascribed the circumstance of his having the same salary as Betterton, £4 per week, and £1 for his wife; but this was not till after Betterton's death.
At Lincoln's Inn Fields, Thurmond, though a respectable actor, failed to shake any of the public confidence in Betterton. Of Scudamore, I have already spoken. Pack was a vivacious comic actor, whose "line" is well indicated in the characters of Brass, Marplot, and Lissardo, of which he was the original representative. He withdrew from the stage in 1721, a bachelor; and, in the meridian of life, opened a tavern in Charing Cross. I have now named the principal actors and actresses who first appeared between the Restoration and the year 1701, Betterton and Mrs. Barry being the noblest of the players of that half century; Cibber, Booth, and Mrs. Oldfield, the bright promises of the century to come. It is disappointing, however, to find that in the very last year of the seventeenth century "the grand jury of Middlesex presented the two play-houses, and also the bear-garden, as nuisances and riotous and disorderly assemblies." So Luttrell writes, in December 1700, at which time, as contemporary accounts inform us, the theatres were "pestered with tumblers, rope-dancers, and dancing men and dogs from France." Betterton was then in declining health, and appeared only occasionally; the houses, lacking other attraction, were ill attended, and public taste was stimulated by offering the "fun of a fair," where Mrs. Barry had drowned a whole house in tears. The grand jury of Middlesex did not see that with rude amusements the spectators grew rude too. The jury succeeded in preventing play-bills from being posted in the city, and denounced the stage as a pastime which led the way to murder. The last denunciation was grounded on the fact, that Sir Andrew Slanning had been killed just before, on his way from the play-house. When men wore swords and hot tempers these catastrophes were not infrequent. In 1682, a coffee-house was sometimes turned into a shambles by gentlemen calling the actors at the Duke's House "Papists." What was the cause of the fray in which Sir Andrew fell I do not know. Whatever it was, he was run through the body by Mr. Cowlan; and that the latter took some unfair advantage is to be supposed, since he was found guilty of murder, and in December 1700 was executed at Tyburn, with six other malefactors, who, on the same day, in the Newgate slang of the period, went Westward Hoe!
On the poor players fell all the disgrace; but I think I shall be able to show, in the next chapter, that the fault lay rather with the poets. These, in their turn, laid blame upon the public; but it is the poet's business to elevate, and not to pander to a low taste. The foremost men of the tuneful brotherhood, of the period from the Restoration to the end of the century, have much to answer for in this last respect.
CHAPTER IX
THE DRAMATIC POETS
Noble, gentle, and humble Authors
It is a curious fact, that the number of dramatic writers between the years 1659-1700, inclusive, exceeds that of the actors. A glance at the following list will show this.
Sir W. Davenant, Dryden, Porter, Mrs. Behn, Lee, Cowley, Hon. James Howard, Shadwell, Sir S. Tuke, Sir R. Stapylton, Lord Broghill (Earl of Orrery), Flecknoe, Sir George Etherege, Sir R. Howard, Lacy (actor), Betterton (actor), Earl of Bristol, Duke of Buckingham, Dr. Rhodes, Sir Edward Howard, Settle, Caryll (Earl of Caryll, of James II.'s creation), Henry Lucius Carey (Viscount Falkland), Duke of Newcastle, Shirley, Sir Charles Sedley, Mrs. Boothby, Medbourne (actor), Corye, Revet, Crowne, Ravenscroft, Wycherley, Arrowsmith, Neville Payne, Sir W. Killigrew, Duffet, Sir F. Fane, Otway, Durfey, Rawlins, Leanard, Bankes, Pordage, Rymer, Shipman, Tate, Bancroft, Whitaker, Maidwell, Saunders (a boy-poet), and Southerne.
Here are already nearly threescore authors (some few of whom had commenced their career prior to the Restoration) who supplied the two theatres, between 1659 and 1682, in which latter year began that "Union," under which London had but one theatre till the year 1695.
Within the thirteen years of the Union, appeared as dramatic writers,
The Earl of Rochester; – Jevon, Mountfort, Harris, Powell, and Carlisle (actors); Wilson, Brady, Congreve, Wright, and Higden.
From the period of the dissolution of the Union to the end of the century occur the names of,
Colley Cibber (actor), Mrs. Trotter (Cockburn), Gould, Mrs. Pix, Mrs. Manley, Norton, Scott, Dogget (actor), Dryden, jun., Lord Lansdowne (Granville), Dilke, Sir John Vanbrugh, Gildon, Drake, Filmer, Motteux, Hopkins, Walker, W. Phillips, Farquhar, Boyer, Dennis, Burnaby, Oldmixon, Mrs. Centlivre (Carroll), Crauford, and Rowe.
In the above list there are above a hundred names of authors, none of whose productions can now be called stock-pieces; though of some four or five of these writers a play is occasionally performed, to try an actor's skill or tempt an indifferent audience.
Of the actors who became authors, Cibber alone was eminently successful, and of him I shall speak apart. The remainder were mere adapters. Of Betterton's eight plays, I find one tragedy borrowed from Webster; and of his comedies, one was taken from Marston; a second raised on Molière's "George Dandin"; a third was never printed; his "Henry the Fourth" was one of those unhallowed outrages on Shakspeare, of which the century in which it appeared was prolific; his "Bondman" was a poor reconstruction of Massinger's play, in which Betterton himself was marvellously great; and his "Prophetess" was a conversion of Beaumont and Fletcher's tragedy into an opera, by the efficient aid of Henry Purcell, who published the music in score, in 1691. There was noble music wedded to noble words, and for the recreation of those who could appreciate neither; there was a dance of quaint figures from whom, when about to sit down, the chairs slipped under them, took up the measure, and concluded by dancing it out.
Medbourne produced only his translation of the "Tartuffe," Jevon only one comedy. Mountfort, like Betterton, was an indifferent author. His "Injured Lovers" ends almost as tragically as the apocryphal play in which all the characters being killed at the end of the fourth act, the concluding act is brought to a close by their executors. In Mountfort's loyal tragedy all the principal personages receive their quietus, and the denouement is left in the hands of a solitary and wicked colonel, with a contented mind. "Edward the Third" is so much more natural than the above, that it is by some assigned to Bancroft, while "Zelmane" is only hypothetically attributed to Mountfort, on the ground, apparently, of its absurdities. In the preface to his "Successful Strangers," Mountfort modestly remarks, "I have a natural inclination to poetry, which was born and not bred in me." He showed small inventive power in his bustling comedy, "Greenwich Park," and less respect for a master in minstrelsy, when he turned poor Kit Marlowe's "Doctor Faustus" into an impassioned sort of burlesque, with the addition of Harlequin and Scaramouch to give zest to the buffoonery!
Carlisle, the actor who fell at Aghrim, was the author of the "Fortune Hunters;" and Joseph Harris, who was a poor comedian, and the marrer of four adapted and unsuccessful plays, resumed under Queen Anne his original vocation of engraver to the Mint. The age was one of adapters, whose cry was that Shakspeare would not attract, and accordingly George Powell combined authorship with acting, and borrowed from Shirley, from Brome, and from Middleton. Mrs. Pix, and the romancers, produced a few plays, from one of which a recent dramatist has stolen as boldly as George himself was wont to steal. I allude to the "Imposture Defeated," in which Artan (a demon) enables Hernando, a physician, to foretell the fate of each patient, according as Artan takes his stand at the foot or at the head of the bed. One word will suffice for Dogget's contribution to stage literature. He was the author of one lively, but not edifying, piece, entitled the "Country Wake," in which he provided himself with a taking part called Hob, and one for Mrs. Bracegirdle – Flora. In a modified form, this piece was known to our grandfathers as "Flora;" or, "Hob in the Well."
The actors themselves, then, were not efficient as authors. Let us now see what the noble gentlemen, the amateur rather than professional poets, contributed towards the public entertainment, and their own reputation, during the last half of the seventeenth century.
They may be reckoned at a dozen and a half, from dukes to knights. Of the two dukes, Buckingham and Newcastle, the former is the more distinguished dramatic writer. He was a man of great wit and no virtue; a member of two universities, but no honour to either. He was one who respected neither his own wife nor his neighbour's, and was faithful to the King only as long as the King would condescend to obey his caprices. From 1627, when he was born, to April 1688, the year of his death, history has placed no generous action of his upon record, but has registered many a crime and meanness. He lived a profligate peer, in a magnificence almost oriental; he died a beggar; bankrupt in everything but impudence. Dryden and Pope have given him everlasting infamy; the latter not without a touch of pity, felt not at all by the former. Historians have justified the severity of the poets; Gilbert Burnet has dismissed him with a sneer, and Baxter has thrown in a word on behalf of his humanity.
His play of the "Chances" was a mere adaptation of the piece so named, by Beaumont and Fletcher. Plays which were attributed to him, but of which he was not the author, need not be mentioned. The Duke's dramatic reputation rests on his great burlesque tragedy, the "Rehearsal;" but even in this he is said to have had the assistance of Butler, Martin Clifford, and Dr. Sprat. Written to deride the bombastic tragedies then in vogue, Davenant, Dryden, and Sir Robert Howard are, by turns, struck at, under the person of the poet Bayes; and the irritability of the second, under the allusions, are perhaps warrant that the satire was good. The humour is good, too; the very first exhibition of it excited the mirth which afterwards broke into peal upon peal of laughter. The rehearsed play commences with a scene between the royal usher and the royal physician, in a series of whispers; for, as Mr. Bayes remarks, the two officials were plotting against the King; but this fact it was necessary, as yet, to keep from the audience!
Mr. Cavendish, whose services in the royal cause deservedly earned for him that progress through the peerage which terminated in his creation as Duke of Newcastle, was the opposite of Buckingham in most things save his taste for magnificence, in which he surpassed Villiers. Two thousand pounds were as cheerfully spent on feasting Charles I., as the Duke's blood was vainly shed for the same monarch in the field. He lived like a man who had the purse of Fortunatus; but in exile at Antwerp, he pawned his best clothes and jewels, that he and his celebrated wife might have the means of existence. He was the author of a few plays, two of which were represented after the Restoration. The "Country Captain," and "Variety," were composed in the reign of Charles I. The "Humourous Lovers," and the "Triumphant Widow," subsequently. These are bustling but immoral comedies, suiting, but not correcting the vices of the times; and singular, in their slip-shod style, as coming from the author of the pompous treatise on horses and horsemanship. Pepys ascribes the "Humourous Lovers" to the Duchess. He calls it a "silly play; the most silly thing that ever came upon a stage. I was sick to see it, but yet would not but have seen it, that I might the better understand her." Pepys is equally severe against the "Country Captain." The Duke seems to have aimed at the delineation of character, particularly in "Variety," and the "Triumphant Widow, or, the Medley of Humours." Johnson grieves over the oblivion which, in his time, had fallen on these works, and later authors have declared that the Duke's comedies ought not to have been forgotten. They have at least been remembered by some of our modern novelists in want of incident.
Of the three earls, all of whose pieces were produced previous to 1680, there is not much to be said in praise. The eccentric, clever, brave, inconsistent, contradictory George Digby, Earl of Bristol, he who turned Romanist at the instigation of Don John of Austria, and aiming at office himself, conspired against Clarendon, was the author of one acted piece, "Elvira," one of the two out of which Mrs. Centlivre built up her own clever bit of mosaic, the "Wonder." Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, in whom all the vices of Buckingham were exaggerated; to whom virtue and honour seemed disgusting, and even the affectation of them, or of ordinary decency, an egregious folly, found leisure in the least feverish hour of some five years' drunkenness, to give to the stage an adaptation of "Valentinian," by Beaumont and Fletcher, in which he assigned a part to Mrs. Barry – the very last that any other lover would have thought of for his mistress. The noble poet, little more than thirty years old, lay in a dishonoured grave when his piece was represented, in 1680;51 but the young actress just named, gaily alluded, in a prologue, to the demure nymphs in the house who had succumbed, nothing loath, to the irresistible blandishments of this very prince of blackguards.
The Earl of Caryll was a man of another spirit. He was the head of the family to which Pope's Carylls belonged, and being a faithful servant of James II., in adversity as well as in prosperity, the King made him an earl, at that former period, when the law of England did not recognise the creation. Caryll was of the party who talked of the unpopularity of Shakspeare, and who for the poet's gold offered poor tinsel of their own. His rhymed drama of the "English Princess, or the death of Richard the Third," owed its brief favour to the acting of Betterton, who could render even nonsense imposing. His comedy of "Sir Solomon, or the Cautious Coxcomb," was "taken from the French." The chief scenes were mere translations of Molière's "Ecole des Femmes;" but life, and fun, and wit were given to them again by Betterton, who in the comic old Sir Solomon shook the sides of the "house," as easily as he could, in other characters, move them to wonder, or melt them to tears.
In 1664, another "lance was broken with Shakspeare" by Lord Orrery, the Lord Broghill of earlier days. There was something dramatic in this lord's life. He was a marvellous boy, younger son of a marvellous father, the "great Earl of Cork." Before he was fifteen, Dublin University was proud of him. At that age he went on the "grand tour," at twenty married the Earl of Suffolk's daughter, and landed in Ireland, to keep his wedding, on the very day of the outbreak of the Rebellion of 1641. The young bridegroom fought bravely for homestead and king, and went into exile when that king was slain; but he heeded the lure of Cromwell, won for him the victory of Macroom, rescued him from defeat at Clonmel, and crushed Muskerry and his numerous Papal host. From Richard Cromwell, Broghill kept aloof, and helped forward the Restoration, for which service Charles made him a peer – Earl of Orrery. The earl showed his gratitude by deifying kings, and inculcating submissiveness, teaching the impeccability of monarchs, and the extreme naughtiness of their people. Pepys comically bewails the fact, that on going to see a new piece by Orrery, he sees only an old one under a new name, such wearying sameness is there in the rhymed phrases of them all.
Orrery's tilt against Shakspeare is comprised in his attempt to suppress that poet's "Henry V.," by giving one of his own, in which Henry and Owen Tudor are simultaneously in love with Katherine of France. The love is carried on in a style of stilted burlesque; and yet the dignity and wit of this piece enraptured Pepys – but then he saw it at Court in December 1666, Lord Bellasis having taken him to Whitehall, after seeing "Macbeth" at the Duke's House, – "and there," he says, "after all staying above an hour for the players, the King and all waiting, which was absurd, saw 'Henry V.' well done by the Duke's people, and in most excellent habits, all new vests, being put on but this night. But I sat so high, and so far off, that I missed most of the words, and sat with a wind coming into my back and neck, which did much trouble me. The play continued till twelve at night, and then up, and a most horrid cold night it was, and frosty, and moonshine;" and it might have been worse.
In Orrery's "Mustapha" and "Tryphon," the theme is all love and honour, without variation. Orrery's "Mr. Anthony" is a five-act farce, in ridicule of the manners and morals of the Puritans. Therein the noble author rolls in the mire for the gratification of the pure-minded cavaliers. Over Orrery's "Black Prince," even vigilant Mr. Pepys himself fell asleep, in spite of the stately dances. Perhaps he was confused by the author's illustration of genealogical history; for in this play, Joan, the wife of the Black Prince, is described as the widow of Edmund, Earl of Kent —her father! But what mattered it to the writer whose only teaching to the audience was, that if they did not fear God, they must take care to honour the King? Orrery's "Altemira" was not produced till long after his death. It is a roar of passion, love (or what passed for it), jealousy, despair, and murder. In the concluding scene the slaughter is terrific. It all takes place in presence of an unobtrusive individual, who carries the doctrine of non-intervention to its extreme limit. When the persons of the drama have made an end of one another, the quietly delighted gentleman steps forward, and blandly remarks, that there was so much virtue, love, and honour in it all, that he could not find it in his heart to interfere, though his own son was one of the victims!
A contemporary of Orrery, young Henry Carey, Viscount Falkland, son of the immortal soldier who fell at Newbury, wrote one piece, the "Marriage Night," of which I know nothing, save that it was played in the Lent of 1664; but I do know that the author had wit, for when some one remarked, as Carey took his seat in the House of Commons for the first time, that he looked as if he had not sown his wild oats, he replied, that he had come to the place where there were geese enough to pick them up!
The last of the dramatic lords of this century was that Lord Lansdowne whom Pope called "Granville the polite," and absurdly compared with Surrey, by awkwardly calling the latter the "Granville of a former age." Granville was a statesman, a Tory, a stiff-backed gentleman in a stiff-backed period, and a sufferer for his opinions. Driven into leisure, he addressed himself to literature, in connection with which he committed a crime against the majesty of Shakspeare, which was unpardonable. He reconstructed the "Merchant of Venice," called it the "Jew of Venice," and assigned Shylock to Dogget. Lord Lansdowne's "She Gallants" is a vile comedy for its "morals," but a vivacious one for its manner. Old Downes, the prompter, sneers at the offence taken at it by some ladies, who, he thinks, affected rather than possessed virtue themselves. But ladies, in 1696, were offended at such outrages on decency as this play contains. They were not the first who had made similar protest. Even in this lord's tragedy of "Heroic Love," Achilles and Briseis are only a little more decent than Ravenscroft's loose rakes and facile nymphs. The only consolation one has in reading the "Jew of Venice" (produced in 1701) is, that there are some passages the marrer could not spoil. As for Shylock, Rowe expressed the opinion of the public when, in spite of the success of the comic edition of the character, he said, modestly enough, "I cannot but think the character was tragically designed by the author." Dryden, Pope, and Johnson have in their turn eulogised Granville; but, as a dramatic poet, he reflects no honour either on the century in which he was born, or on that in which he died. Indeed, of the dramatist peers of the seventeenth century, there is not a play that has survived to our times.
And now, coming to a dozen of baronets, knights, and honourables, let us point to two, – Sir Samuel Tuke and Sir William Killigrew, who may claim precedence for their comparative purity, if not for decided dramatic talent. To the former, an old colonel of the cavalier times, Charles II. recommended a comedy of Calderon's, which Sir Samuel produced at the Lincoln's Inn Fields theatre, in 1663, under the title of the "Adventures of Five Hours." The public generally, and Pepys especially, were unusually delighted with this well-constructed comedy. When it was played at Whitehall, Mrs. Pepys saw it from Lady Fox's "pew;" and, making an odd comparison, the diarist thought "Othello" a "mean thing," when weighed against the "Adventures;" but his chief praise is, that it is "without one word of ribaldry;" and Echard has added thereto his special commendation as a critic.
Sir Robert Stapylton says of William Killigrew what could not be said of his brother Tom (whose plays were written before the Restoration), that in him were found —
" – plots well laid,
The language pure and ev'ry sentence weighed."
Sir William, a soldier of the first Charles's fighting time, a courtier, and vice-chamberlain to the Queen, in "Rowley's" days, was the author of four or five plays, one only of which deserves any notice here, – namely, his comedy of "Pandora." The heroine of this drama, resolving to cloister herself up from marriage, allows love to be made to her in jest, and, of course, ends by becoming a wife in happy earnest. The author had, at first, made a tragedy of "Pandora." The masters of the stage objected to it in that form; and, it being all the same to the complaisant Sir William, he converted his tragedy into a comedy!
Sir Robert Stapylton, himself a Douay student converted to Protestantism; a cavalier, who turned to a hanger-on at court – but who was always a scholar and a gentleman, – has received more censure than praise at the hands of a greater critic and poet than himself. Pepys took no interest in Stapylton's "Slighted Maid," even though his own wife's maid, Gosnell, had a part in it; and Dryden has remarked of it, with too much severity, that "there is nothing in the first act that might not be said or done in the second; nor anything in the middle which might not as well have been at the beginning or the end." Stapylton, like the wits of his time, generally wrote more weakly than he spoke. This was the case, too, with Tom Killigrew, of whom Scott remarks truly, in a very awkward simile (Life of Dryden), that "the merit of his good things evaporated as soon as he attempted to interweave them with comedy."
But who is this jaunty personage, so noisy at a rehearsal of one of his own indifferent plays? It is "Ned Howard," one of the three sons of the dirty Earl of Berkshire, the first Howard who bore that title, and whom Pepys saw one July day of 1666, serving the King with liquor, "in that dirty pickle I never saw man in, in my life." The daughter of this Earl was the wife of Dryden.
And what does Ned Howard say at rehearsal? The actors are making some objection to his piece; but he exclaims, "In fine, – it shall read, and write, and act, and print, and pit, box, and gallery it, egad, with any play in Europe!" The play fails; and then you may hear Ned in any coffee house, or wherever there is a company, proclaiming, by way of excuse, that "Mr. So-and-so the actor didn't top his part, sir!" It was Ned Howard's favourite phrase.
The old Earl of Berkshire gave three sons to literature, besides a daughter to Dryden; namely, Sir Robert, James, and this Edward. The last-named was the least effective. His characters "talk," but they are engaged in no plot; and they exhibit a dull lack of incident. The most of his six or seven dramas were failures; but from one of them, which was the most original, indecent, and the most decidedly damned, Mrs. Inchbald condescended to extract matter which she turned to very good purpose in her "Every one has his Fault." Edward Howard gratified the court-party in his tragedy of "The Usurper," by describing, under the character of Damocles the Syracusan, the once redoubted Oliver Cromwell: while Hugo de Petra but thinly veiled Hugh Peters; and Cleomenes is said to have been the shadow of General Monk. Lacy said that Ned was "more of a fool than a poet;" and Buckingham was of the same opinion.
James Howard came under Buckingham's censure too; and an incident in the "English Monsieur," which, if Pepys's criticism may be accepted, was a mighty, pretty, witty, pleasant, mirthful comedy, furnished the satirical touch in the "Rehearsal," where Prince Volscius falls in love with Parthenope, as he is pulling on his boots to go out of town. James Howard belonged to the faction which affected to believe that there was no popular love for Shakspeare, to render whom palatable, he arranged "Romeo and Juliet" for the stage, with a double denouement – one serious, the other hilarious. If your heart were too sensitive to bear the deaths of the loving pair, you had only to go on the succeeding afternoon to see them wedded, and set upon the way of a well-assured domestic felicity!
This species of humour was not wanting in Sir Robert Howard, – who won his knighthood by valour displayed in saving Lord Wilmot's life in that hot affair at Cropredy Bridge. Sir Robert has been as much pommelled as patted by Dryden. Buckingham dragged him in effigy across the stage, and Shadwell ridiculed the universality of his pretensions by a clever caricature of him, in the "Impertinents," as Sir Positive Atall. For the King's purpose, Howard cajoled the Parliament out of money; for his own purpose, he cajoled the King out of both money and place; and netted several thousands a year by affixing his very legible signature to warrants, issued by him as Auditor of the Exchequer. The humour which he had in common with his brother James, he exhibited, by giving two opposite catastrophes to his "Vestal Virgin," between which the public were free to choose. Sir Robert has generally been looked upon as a servile courtier; but people were astounded at the courage displayed by him in his "Great Favourite, or the Duke of Lerma;" in which the naughtiness of the King's ways, and still more that of the women about him, was shown in a light which left no doubt as to the application of the satire. His bombastic periods have died away in the echoes of them which Fielding caught in his "Tom Thumb;" but his comic power is strongly and admirably manifested in his "Committee," a transcript of Puritan life, which – applied to Quakers, for want of better subjects for caricature – may still be witnessed in country theatres, in the farce of "Honest Thieves." Like many other satirists, Sir Robert could not detect his own weak points. In his "Blind Lady," he ridicules an old widow in desperate want of a seventh husband; and at threescore and ten, he himself married buxom Mistress Dives, one of the Maids of Honour to Queen Mary.
Of comedies portraying national or individual follies, perhaps the most successful, and the most laughable, was James Howard's "English Monsieur," in which the hero-Englishman execrates everything that is connected with his country. To him an English meal is poison, and an English coat degradation. The English Monsieur once challenged a rash person who had praised an English dinner, and, says he, "I ran him through his mistaken palate, which made me think the hand of justice guided my sword." Is there a damp walk, along which the Gallo-Englishman passes – he can distinguish between the impressions previously left there by English or French ladies, – the footsteps of the latter being of course altogether the more fairy-like. "I have seen such bonne mine in their footsteps, that the King of France's maître de danse could not have found fault with any one tread amongst them all. In these walks," he adds, "I find the toes of English ladies ready to tread upon one another."
Later in the play, the hero quarrels with a friend who had found fault with a "pair of French tops," worn by the former. These boots made so much noise when the wearer moved in them, that the friend's mistress could not hear a word of the love made to her. The wearer, however, justifies the noise as a fashionable French noise: "for, look you, sir, a French noise is agreeable to the ear, and therefore not unagreeable, not prejudicial to the hearing; that is to say, to a person who has seen the world." The English Monsieur, as a matter of course, loves a French lady, who rejects his suit; but to be repulsed by a French dame had something pleasant in it; "'twas a denial with a French tone of voice, so that 'twas agreeable." Ultimately, the nymph bids him a final adieu, and the not too dejected lover exclaims to a friend: "Do you see, sir, how she leaves us; she walks away with a French step!"
