to live their short hour, and disappear with exceeding suddenness.  They may be originally issued in hundreds or even in thousands; but once gone they are gone for ever.  Relative to such matters there is an energy of destruction that keeps pace with the industry of production.  The demands of “waste” must be met:  fires must be lighted.  So away go the loose papers, sheets and pamphlets of the minute.  They have served their turn, and there is an end of them.  Hence the difficulty of obtaining, when needed, a copy of a newspaper of old date, or the guide-book or programme of a departed entertainment, or the catalogue of a past auction of books or pictures.  It has been noted that, notwithstanding the enormous circulation it enjoyed, the catalogue of our Great Exhibition of a score of years ago is already a somewhat rare volume.  Complete sets of the catalogues of the Royal Academy’s century of exhibitions are possessed by very few.  And of playbills of the English stage from the Restoration down to the present time, although the British Museum can certainly boast a rich collection, yet this is disfigured here and there by gaps and deficiencies which cannot now possibly be supplied.

The playbill is an ancient thing.  Mr. Payne Collier states that the practice of printing information as to the time, place, and nature of the performances to be presented by the players was certainly common prior to the year 1563.  John Northbrooke, in his treatise against theatrical performers, published about 1579, says:  “They used to set up their bills upon posts some certain days before, to admonish people to make resort to their theatres.”  The old plays make frequent reference to this posting of the playbills.  Thus, in the Induction to “A Warning for Fair Women,” 1599, Tragedy whips Comedy from the stage, crying: 

    ’Tis you have kept the theatre so long
    Painted in playbills upon every post,
    While I am scorned of the multitude.

Taylor, the water-poet, in his “Wit and Mirth,” records the story of Field the actor’s riding rapidly up Fleet Street, and being stopped by a gentleman with an inquiry as to the play that was to be played that night.  Field, “being angry to be stayed upon so frivolous a demand, answered, that he might see what play was to be played upon every post.  ‘I cry you mercy,’ said the gentleman.  ’I took you for a post, you rode so fast.’”

It is strange to find that the right of printing playbills was originally monopolised by the Stationers’ Company.  At a later period, however, the privilege was assumed and exercised by the Crown.  In 1620, James I. granted a patent to Roger Wood and Thomas Symcock for the sole printing, among other things, of “all bills for playes, pastimes, showes, challenges, prizes, or sportes whatsoever.”  It was not until after the Restoration that the playbills contained a list of the dramatis personae, or of the names of the actors.  But it had been usual, apparently, with the title of the drama, to supply the name of its author, and its description as a tragedy or comedy.  Shirley, in the prologue to his “Cardinal,” apologises for calling it only a “play” in the bill: