Kirkman’s book is a collection of certain “scenes or parts of plays ... the fittest for the actors to represent at this period, there being little cost in the cloaths, which often then were in great danger to be seized by the soldiers.”  These “select pieces of drollery, digested into scenes by way of dialogue, together with variety of humours of several nations, fitted for the pleasure and content of all persons, either in court, city, county, or camp,” were first printed in 1662, by H. Marsh, and were originally contrived by Robert Cox, a comic genius in his way, who exhibited great ingenuity in evading the ordinances of Parliament, and in carrying on dramatic performances in spite of the Puritans.  He presented at the Red Bull what were professedly entertainments of rope-dancing, gymnastic feats, and such coarse practical fun as may even now be seen in the circus of strolling equestrian companies; but with these he cunningly intermingled select scenes from the comedies of the best English dramatists.  From Kirkman’s book, which is now highly prized from its rarity, it appears that the “drollery” entitled “The Bouncing Knight, or the Robbers Robbed,” is, in truth, a famous adventure of Sir John Falstaff’s, set forth in close accordance with the original text; while the comedy of “Rule a Wife and have a Wife” is reduced to a brief entertainment called “The Equal Match.”  Other popular plays are similarly dealt with.  But Cox, it seems, invented not less than he borrowed.  Upon the foundation of certain old-established farces, he raised up entertainments something of the nature of the extemporary comedy of Italy:  characters being devised or developed expressly with a view to his own performance of them.  “All we could divert ourselves with,” writes Kirkman, “were these humours and pieces of plays, which, passing under the name of a merry conceited fellow called Bottom the Weaver, Simpleton the Smith, John Swabber, or some such title, were only allowed us, and that by stealth too ... and these small things were as profitable and as great get-pennies to the actors as any of our late famed plays.”  He relates, moreover, that these performances attracted “a great confluence of auditors,” insomuch that the Red Bull, a playhouse of large size, was often so full, that “as many went back for want of room as had entered;” and that meanly as these “drolls” might be thought of in later times, they were acted by the best comedians “then and now in being.”  Especially he applauds the actor, author, and contriver of the majority of the farces—­“the incomparable Robert Cox.”  Isaac Disraeli gives him credit for preserving alive, as it were by stealth, the suppressed spirit of the drama.  That he was a very natural actor, or what would now be called “realistic,” may be judged from the story told of his performance of a comic blacksmith, and his securing thereby an invitation to work at the forge of a master smith, who had been present among the audience.  “Although your father speaks so ill of you,” said the employer of labour, “if you will come and work with me, I will give you twelvepence a-week more than I give any other journeyman.”  As Kirkman adds:  “Thus was he taken for a smith bred, that was, indeed, as much of any trade.”