their public meetings.  A clock was set up in 1560, no doubt very much to the admiration of the citizens.  A new Tholsel or City Hall was erected in 1683, on the same site, and there was a “’Change,” where merchants met every day, as in the Royal Exchange in London.  Public dinners were given here also with great magnificence; but from the marshy nature of the ground on which the building had been set up, it fell to decay in 1797, and a new Sessions-house was erected in Greenstreet.

Nor did the good people of Dublin neglect to provide for their amusements.  Private theatricals were performed in the Castle at the latter end of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, if not earlier.  The sum of one-and-twenty shillings and two groats was expended on wax tapers for the play of “Gorbodne,” “done at the Castle,” in September, 1601.  Miracle and mystery plays were enacted as early as 1528, when the Lord Deputy was “invited to a new play every day in Christmas;” where the Tailors acted the part of Adam and Eve, it is to be supposed because they initiated the trade by introducing the necessity for garments; the Shoemakers, the story of Crispin and Crispianus; the Vintners, Bacchus and his story; the Carpenters, Mary and Joseph; the Smiths represented Vulcan; and the Bakers played the comedy of Ceres, the goddess of corn.  The stage was erected on Hogges-green, now College-green; and probably the entertainment was carried out al fresco.  The first playhouse established in Dublin was in Werburgh-street, in 1633.  Shirley’s plays were performed here soon after, and also those of “rare Ben Jonson.”  Ogilvy, Shirley’s friend, and the promoter of this enterprise, was appointed Master of the Revels in Ireland in 1661; and as his first theatre was ruined during the civil war, he erected a “noble theatre,” at a cost of L2,000, immediately after his new appointment, on a portion of the Blind-quay.  Dunton describes the theatres, in 1698, as more frequented than the churches, and the actors as “no way inferior to those in London.”  The Viceroys appear to have been very regular in their patronage of this amusement; and on one occasion, when the news reached Dublin of the marriage of William of Orange and Mary, the Duke of Ormonde, after “meeting the nobility and gentry in great splendour at the play, passed a general invitation to all the company to spend that evening at the Castle."[535]

The inventory of the household effects of Lord Grey, taken in 1540, affords us ample information on the subject of dress and household effects.  The list commences with “eight tun and a pype of Gaskoyne wine,” and the “long board in the hall.”  A great advance had been made since we described the social life of the eleventh century; and the refinements practised at meals was not the least of many improvements.  A bord-clothe was spread on the table, though forks were not used until the reign of James I. They came from Italy, to which country we owe many of the new fashions introduced in the seventeenth century.  In The Boke of Curtosye there are directions given not to “foule the bord-clothe wyth the knyfe;” and Ben Jonson, in his comedy of “The Devil is an Ass,” alludes to the introduction of forks, and the consequent disuse of napkins: