in performance, but had not before been printed.  Thus, in 1652, Beaumont and Fletcher’s “Wild Goose Chase” was printed in folio, “for the public use of all the ingenious, and the private benefit of John Lowin and Joseph Taylor, servants to his late Majesty, and by them dedicated to the honoured few lovers of dramatic poesy:  wherein they modestly intimate their wants, and that with sufficient cause, for whatever they were before the wars, they were afterwards reduced to a necessitous condition.”  Pollard, possessed of some means, withdrew to his relatives in the country, and there ended his days peacefully.  Perkins and Sumner lodged humbly together in Clerkenwell, and were interred in that parish.  None of these unfortunate old actors lived to see the re-opening of the theatres or the restoration of the monarchy.

But one actor is known to have sided with the Parliament and against the King.  He renounced the stage and took up the trade of a jeweller in Aldermanbury.  This was Swanston who had played Othello, and had been described as “a brave roaring fellow, who would make the house shake again.”  “One wretched actor only,” Mr. Gifford writes, in the introduction to his edition of Massinger, “deserted his sovereign.”  But it may be questioned whether Swanston really merited this reprehension.  He was a Presbyterian, it seems, and remained true to his political opinions, even though these now involved the abandonment of his profession.  If his brother-players fought for the King, they fought no less for themselves, and for the theatre the Puritans had suppressed.  Nor is the contrast Mr. Gifford draws, between the conduct of our actors at the time of the Civil War, and the proceedings of the French players during the first French Revolution, altogether fair.  As Isaac Disraeli has pointed out, there was no question of suppressing the stage in France—­it was rather employed as an instrument in aid of the Revolution.  The actors may have sympathised sincerely with the royal family in their afflicted state, but it was hardly to be expected that men would abandon, on that account, the profession of their choice, in which they had won real distinction, and which seemed to flourish the more owing to the excited condition of France.  The French Revolution, in truth, brought to the stage great increase of national patronage.

The Civil War concluded, and the cause of King Charles wholly lost, the actors were at their wits’ end to earn bread.  Certain of them resolved to defy the law, and to give theatrical performances in spite of the Parliament.  Out of the wreck of the companies of the different theatres they made up a tolerable troop, and ventured to present some few plays, with as much caution and privacy as possible, at the Cockpit, in Drury Lane.  This was in the winter of 1648.  Doubtless there were many to whom the stage was dear, who were willing enough to encourage the poor players.  Playgoing had now become as a vice or a misdemeanour, to be prosecuted