of most of these farces.  How have I heard him cried up for his John Swabber, and Simpleton the Smith; in which he being to appear with a large piece of bread and butter, I have frequently known several of the female spectators and auditors to long for it; and once that well-known natural, Jack Adams of Clerkenwell, seeing him with bread and butter on the stage, and knowing him, cried out, ’Cuz!  Cuz! give me some!’ to the great pleasure of the audience.  And so naturally did he act the smith’s part, that being at a fair in a country town, and that farce being presented, the only master-smith of the town came to him, saying, ’Well, although your father speaks so ill of you, yet when the fair is done, if you will come and work with me, I will give you twelve pence a week more than I give any other journeyman.’  Thus was he taken for a smith bred, that was, indeed, as much of any trade.”

To this low state the gloomy and exasperated fanatics, who had so often smarted under the satirical whips of the dramatists, had reduced the drama itself; without, however, extinguishing the talents of the players, or the finer ones of those who once derived their fame from that noble arena of genius, the English stage.  At the first suspension of the theatre by the Long Parliament in 1642, they gave vent to their feelings in an admirable satire.  About this time “petitions” to the parliament from various classes were put into vogue; multitudes were presented to the House from all parts of the country, and from the city of London; and some of these were extraordinary.  The porters, said to have been 15,000 in number, declaimed with great eloquence on the bloodsucking malignants for insulting the privileges of parliament, and threatened to come to extremities, and make good the saying “necessity has no law;” there was one from the beggars, who declared, that by means of the bishops and popish lords they knew not where to get bread; and we are told of a third from the tradesmen’s wives in London, headed by a brewer’s wife:  all these were encouraged by their party, and were alike “most thankfully accepted.”

The satirists soon turned this new political trick of “petitions” into an instrument for their own purpose:  we have “Petitions of the Poets,”—­of the House of Commons to the King,—­Remonstrances to the Porters’ Petition, &c.:  spirited political satires.  One of these, the “Players’ Petition to the Parliament,” after being so long silenced, that they might play again, is replete with sarcastic allusions.  It may be found in that rare collection, entitled “Rump Songs,” 1662, but with the usual incorrectness of the press in that day.  The following extract I have corrected from a manuscript copy:—­

    Now while you reign, our low petition craves
    That we, the king’s true subjects and your slaves,
    May in our comic mirth and tragic rage
    Set up the theatre, and show the stage;