Perhaps, he adds, Shakspeare alludes to this personage, as habited in his own time.  The old age of Pantaloon is marked by his leanness, and his spectacles and his slippers.  He always runs after Harlequin, but cannot catch him; as he runs in slippers and without spectacles, is liable to pass him by without seeing him.  Can we doubt that this Pantaloon had come from the Italian theatre, after what we have already said?  Does not this confirm the conjecture, that there existed an intercourse between the Italian theatre and our own?  Farther, Tarleton the comedian, and others, celebrated for their “extemporal wit,” was the writer or inventor of one of these “Platts.”  Stowe records of one of our actors that “he had a quick, delicate, refined, extemporal wit.”  And of another, that “he had a wondrous, plentiful, pleasant, extemporal wit.”  These actors, then, who were in the habit of exercising their impromptus, resembled those who performed in the unwritten comedies of the Italians.  Gabriel Harvey, the Aristarchus of the day, compliments Tarleton for having brought forward a new species of dramatic exhibition.  If this compliment paid to Tarleton merely alludes to his dexterity at extemporaneous wit in the character of the clown, as my friend Mr. Douce thinks, this would be sufficient to show that he was attempting to introduce on our stage the extemporal comedy of the Italians, which Gabriel Harvey distinguishes as “a new species.”  As for these “Platts,” which I shall now venture to call “Scenarios,” they surprise by their bareness, conveying no notion of the piece itself, though quite sufficient for the actors.  They consist of mere exits and entrances of the actors, and often the real names of the actors are familiarly mixed with those of the dramatis personae.  Steevens has justly observed, however, on these skeletons, that although “the drift of these dramatic pieces cannot be collected from the mere outlines before us, yet we must not charge them with absurdity.  Even the scenes of Shakspeare would have worn as unpromising an aspect, had their skeletons only been discovered.”  The printed scenarios of the Italian theatre were not more intelligible; exhibiting only the hints for scenes.

Thus, I think, we have sufficient evidence of an intercourse subsisting between the English and Italian theatres, not hitherto suspected; and I find an allusion to these Italian pantomimes, by the great town-wit Tom Nash, in his “Pierce Pennilesse,” which shows that he was well acquainted with their nature.  He indeed exults over them, observing that our plays are “honourable and full of gallant resolution, not consisting, like theirs, of pantaloon, a zany, and a w——­ e, (alluding to the women actors of the Italian stage;[55]) but of emperors, kings, and princes.”  My conviction is still confirmed, when I find that Stephen Gosson wrote the comedy of “Captain Mario;” it has not been printed, but “Captain Mario” is one of the Italian characters.[56]