“Gag” is a word of this class.  It belongs of right to the actors, but of its age or derivation nothing can be ascertained, Modern lexicography of the best repute does not acknowledge it, and for a long time it remained unnoticed, even by the compilers of glossaries of strange and cant terms.  Thus, it is not to be found in “Grose’s Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue,” published in 1796.  This is a coarse, but certainly a comprehensive work, and from its omitting to register “gag,” we may assume that the word had no ascertained existence in Grose’s time.  In the “Slang Dictionary; or, The Vulgar Words, Street Phrases, and ‘Fast’ Expressions of High and Low Society,” published in 1864, “gag” is duly included, and defined to be “language introduced by an actor into his part.”  Long before this, however, the word had issued from the stage-door, and its signification had become a matter of general knowledge.

And even if the word be comparatively new, the thing it represents and defines is certainly old enough, dating, probably, from the very birth of the drama.  So soon as the author began to write words for the actors to deliver, so soon, be sure, did the comedians begin to interpolate speech of their own contriving.  For, as a rule, gag is the privilege and the property of the comic performer.  The tragedian does not gag.  He may require his part to be what is called “written up” for him, and striking matter to be introduced into his scenes for his own especial advantage, but he is generally confined to the delivery of blank verse, and rhythmical utterances of that kind do not readily afford opportunities for gag.  There have been Macbeths who have declined to expire upon the stage after the silent fashion prescribed by Shakespeare, and have insisted upon declaiming the last dying speech with which Garrick first enriched the character.  But these are actors of the past.  If Shakespeare does not often appear upon the modern stage, at any rate he is not presented in the disguised and mutilated form which won applause in what are now viewed as the “palmy days” of the drama.  And the prepared speeches introduced by the tragedians, however alien they may be to the dramatist’s intentions, and independent of his creations, are not properly to be considered as gag.

It was in 1583, according to Howes’ additions to Stow’s “Chronicle,” that Queen Elizabeth, at the request of Sir Francis Walsingham, and with the advice of Mr. Edmond Tyllney, her Master of the Revels, selected twelve performers out of some of the companies of her nobility, to be her own dramatic servants, with the special title of the Queen’s Players.  They duly took the oaths of office, and were allowed wages and liveries as Grooms of the Chambers.  Among these actors were included Robert Wilson, described as gifted with “a quick, delicate, refined, extemporal wit;” and Richard Tarleton, of “a wondrous, plentiful, pleasant, extemporal wit.”  From this it would almost seem that these comedians