and entitled “Maroccos Exstaticus, or Bankes Bay Horse in a Traunce; a Discourse set down in a Merry Dialogue between Bankes and his Beast,” contains a wood-print of the performing animal and his proprietor.  Banks’s horse must have been one of the earliest “trained steeds” ever exhibited.  His tricks excited great amazement, although they would hardly now be accounted very wonderful.  Marocco could walk on his hind legs, and even dance the Canaries.  At the bidding of his master he would carry a glove to a specified lady or gentleman, and tell, by raps with his hoof, the numbers on the upper face of a pair of dice.  He went through, indeed, much of what is now the regular “business” of the circus horse.  In 1600 Banks amazed London by taking his horse up to the vane on the top of St. Paul’s Cathedral.  Marocco visited Scotland and France, and in these countries his accomplishments were generally attributable to witchcraft.  Banks rashly encouraged the notion that his nag was supernaturally endowed.  An alarm was raised that Marocco was possessed by the Evil One.  To relieve misgivings and escape reproach, Banks made his horse pay homage to the sign of the cross, and called upon all to observe that nothing satanic could have been induced to perform this act of reverence.  A rumour at one time prevailed that the horse and his master had both, as “subjects of the Black Power of the world,” been burned at Rome by order of the Pope.  More authentic accounts, however, show Banks as surviving to Charles I.’s time, and thriving as a vintner in Cheapside.  But it is to be gathered from Douce’s “Illustrations of Shakespeare,” that of old certain performing horses suffered miserably for their skill.  In a little book, “Le Diable Bossu,” Nancy, 1708, allusion is made to the burning alive at Lisbon, in 1707, of an English horse, whose master had taught him to know the cards; and Grainger, in his “Biographical History of England,” 1779, states that, within his remembrance, “a horse, which had been taught to perform several tricks, was, with its owner, put into the Inquisition.”

Marocco was but a circus horse; there is no evidence to show that he ever trod the stage or took any part in theatrical performances.  It is hard to say, indeed, when horses first entered a regular theatre.  Pepys chronicles, in 1668, a visit “to the King’s Playhouse, to see an old play of Shirley’s, called ‘Hide Park,’ the first day acted [revived], where horses are brought upon the stage.”  He expresses no surprise at the introduction of the animals, and this may not have been their first appearance on the scene.  He is content to note that “Hide Park” is “a very moderate play, only an excellent epilogue spoken by Beck Marshall.”  The scene of the third and fourth acts of the comedy lies in the Park, and foot and horse races are represented.  The horses probably were only required to cross the stage once or twice.