constitution, rich in poetry of the noblest class.  It is sufficient to say, indeed, that it was the drama of Shakespeare and his contemporaries.  To a very large class, therefore, the persecution of the players and the suppression of the stage must have been grave misfortune and real privation.  To many the theatre still supplied not merely recreation but education and enlightenment as well.  That there was any rising of the public on behalf of the players does not appear.  Puritanism was too strong for opposition; and besides, the playgoer, by the nature of his favourite pursuit, almost avows himself a man of peace and obedient to the law.  The public had to submit, as best it could, to the tyranny of fanaticism.  But that bitter mortification was felt by very many may be taken for granted.

The authors were deprived of occupation so far as concerned the stage; they sought other employment for their pens; printing a play, however, now and then, by way of keeping their hands in as dramatists.  The managers, left with nothing to manage, perhaps turned to trade in quest of outlet for their energies—­the manager has been always something of the trader.  But for the actors, forbidden to act, what were they to do?  They had been constituted Malignants or Royalists almost by Act of Parliament.  The younger players promptly joined the army of King Charles.  Mohun acquired the rank of captain, and at the close of the war, served in Flanders, receiving the pay of a major.  Hart became a lieutenant of horse, under Sir Thomas Dallison, in the regiment of Prince Rupert.  In the same troop served Burt as cornet, and Shatterel as quartermaster.  Allen, of the Cockpit, was a major and quartermaster-general at Oxford.  Robinson, serving on the side of the King, was long reputed to have lost his life at the taking of Basing House.  The story went that the Cromwellian General Harrison had, with his own hands, slain the actor, crying, as he struck him down:  “Cursed is he that doeth the work of the Lord negligently.”  Chalmers maintains, however, that an entry in the parish register of St. Anne’s, Blackfriars, of the death and burial of “Richard Robinson, a player,” in March, 1647, negatives this account of the actor’s fate.  Possibly there were two actors bearing the not uncommon name of Robinson.  These were all players of note, who had acquitted themselves with applause in the best plays of the time.  Of certain older actors, unable to bear arms for the king, Lowin turned innkeeper, and died, at an advanced age, landlord of the Three Pigeons at Brentford.  He had been an actor of eminence in the reign of James I.; “and his poverty was as great as his age,” says one account of him.  Taylor, who was reputed to have been taught by Shakespeare himself the correct method of interpreting the part of Hamlet, died and was buried at Richmond.  These two actors, as did others probably, sought to pick up a little money by publishing copies of plays that had obtained favour