while he was a boy, and others—­later ones—­are known to have been first given without the aid of his music. The Indian Emperour was first played in 1665; Purcell added music in 1692. Tyrannic Love was produced in 1668 or 1669; the music was added in 1694. The Indian Queen was produced before The Emperour; the music was done in the last year of Purcell’s life.  If the Circe music is indeed Purcell’s, it cannot have been written until the author, Davenant, had been in his grave seventeen years.  If only the estimable ladies and gentlemen whose passion for writing about Purcell has wrapped the real man in a haze of fairy tales had taken the preliminary trouble of learning a little of the literature and drama of Purcell’s day!  Nay, had they only looked at the scores of Purcell’s “operas”!  Most of these plays undoubtedly had some music from the beginning.  It will be remembered that during the Puritan, joyless reign of dunderheadedness the playhouses were closed; but Cromwell, who loved music and gave State concerts, licensed Davenant to give “entertainments”—­plays in which plot, acting, and everything else were neglected in favour of songs, dances, and such spectacles as the genius and machinery of the stage managers enabled them to devise.  When the Puritan rule faded, the taste for these shows still persisted.  Dryden took full advantage of this taste, and after 1668 threw songs wholesale into his plays.  Further, it would seem to have been the custom of theatre managers, when “reviving” forgotten or half-forgotten plays, to put in new songs and dances and gorgeous scenes, in the very spirit of Mr. Vincent Crummles, as the extra attractions.  As Purcell’s fame spread, his help would be more and more sought.  At first Mr. Crummles would be content with a few simple things, but later, finding these “a draw,” he would rely more on Purcell’s aid.  This is pure speculation, but it is fact that the earlier plays embellished by Purcell have nothing like the quantity of music we find in the later ones.  One venturesome biographer, by the way, not only insists on Purcell’s authorship of the Macbeth music, but suggests that “probably the recognition of the excellence and effectiveness” of such dull stuff “induced the managers of theatres to give him further employment.”  They were certainly a long time about it, for Lee’s Theodosius, the first play for which Purcell is known to have composed incidental music, was not produced till 1680, eight years after the latest possible date of the Macbeth music; and, apart from Dido, which is not a play, but an opera, it was eighteen years till these same astute managers were “induced” by “the excellence and effectiveness” of the Macbeth or any other music to give Purcell something serious to do in the theatre.  It was in 1690 that Dioclesian appeared, the first and one of the most important of a long string of works for the stage.  The hypotheses, the “wild