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Such was the petition of the suppressed players in 1642; but, in 1653, their secret exultation appears, although the stage was not yet restored to them, in some verses prefixed to RICHARD BROME’S Plays, by ALEXANDER BROME, which may close our little history. Alluding to the theatrical people, he moralises on the fate of players:–

See the strange twirl of times; when such poor things
Outlive the dates of parliaments or kings!
This revolution makes exploded wit
Now see the fall of those that ruin’d it;
And the condemned stage hath now obtain’d
To see her executioners arraign’d.
There’s nothing permanent: those high great men,
That rose from dust, to dust may fall again;
And fate so orders things, that the same hour
Sees the same man both in contempt and power;
For the multitude, in whom the power doth lie,
Do in one breath cry Hail! and Crucify!

At this period, though deprived of a theatre, the taste for the drama was, perhaps, the more lively among its lovers; for, besides the performances already noticed, sometimes connived at, and sometimes protected by bribery, in Oliver’s time they stole into a practice of privately acting at noblemen’s houses, particularly at Holland-house, at Kensington: and “Alexander Goff, the woman-actor, was the jackal, to give notice of time and place to the lovers of the drama,” according to the writer of “Historica Histrionica.” The players, urged by their necessities, published several excellent manuscript plays, which they had hoarded in their dramatic exchequers, as the sole property of their respective companies. In one year appeared fifty of these new plays. Of these dramas many have, no doubt, perished; for numerous titles are recorded, but the plays are not known; yet some may still remain in their manuscript state, in hands not capable of valuing them. All our old plays were the property of the actors, who bought them for their own companies. The immortal works of Shakspeare had not descended to us, had Heminge and Condell felt no sympathy for the fame of their friend. They had been scattered and lost, and, perhaps, had not been discriminated among the numerous manuscript plays of that age. One more effort, during this suspension of the drama, was made in 1655, to recal the public attention to its productions. This was a very curious collection by John Cotgrave, entitled “The English Treasury of Wit and Language, collected out of the most, and best, of our English Dramatick Poems.” It appears by Cotgrave’s preface, that “The Dramatick Poem,” as he calls our tragedies and comedies, “had been of late too much slighted.” He tells us how some, not wanting in wit themselves, but “through a stiff and obstinate prejudice, have, in this neglect, lost the benefit of many rich and useful observations; not duly considering, or believing, that the framers of them were the most fluent and redundant wits that this age, or I think any other, ever knew.” He enters further into this just panegyric of our old dramatic writers, whose acquired knowledge in ancient and modern languages, and whose luxuriant fancies, which they derived from no other sources but their own native growth, are viewed to great advantage in COTGRAVE’S commonplaces; and, perhaps, still more in HAYWARD’S “British Muse,” which collection was made under the supervisal, and by the valuable aid, of OLDYS, an experienced caterer of these relishing morsels.

[Footnote 148:
Macrobius, Saturn., lib. iii. 1, 14. ]

[Footnote 149:
Several of them have been reprinted by the Shakespeare Society since the above was written. Particularly the work of Gosson here alluded to. ]

[Footnote 150:
The “Historica Histrionica” notes Stephen Hammerton as “a most noted and beautiful woman-actor,” in the early part of the seventeenth century. Alexander Goffe, “the woman-actor at Blackfriars,” is also mentioned as acting privately “in Oliver’s time.” ]