portune moments, but it is certain that clowns have continued to indulge in their impertinences in spite of Hamlet's protest and Shakspere's pains to give them something to do; for many famous gaggers " have continued to delight English audiences since the days of Tarleton and Wilson, Singer and Kempe. Notable among these are Pinkethman, Bullock, Angell, and Norris in the late seventeenth century; Hippisley, Shuter, Faucett and Edwin in the eighteenth century; Liston and Power in the early nineteenth century. As a matter of fact, the existence of so-called "adlibitum parts," that is, rôles in which actors were expected to practice the methods of the old comedia dell'arte, was very common until comparatively recent times. Bayes in Villiers' Rehearsal and Puff in Sheridan's Critic, to illustrate, were such parts; and such famous actors as Cibber, Garrick, and Henderson enlivened the speeches of Bayes with numerous local hits of their own. Cibber, it will be remembered, by having Bayes comment on Three Hours after Marriage received the lasting hate of Alexander Pope. That actors sometimes took unnecessary liberties with "ad-libitum parts" is illustrated by the entertaining story told in Benson Hill's Playing About (11, 13). Yates had engaged Hill to act on short notice and with full freedom the Irish watchman in the once famous play Tom and Jerry. In a spirit of fun he indulged in such an overflow of nonsense about the Irishman's pedigree as to take actors and audience by storm and to teach Yates not to be too liberal in prescribing "gags" to certain players. Perhaps as influential as Italian precedent in encouraging impromptu speeches on the English stage has been the strict, and oftentimes unreasonable, censorship which has handicapped the British theater from its very beginning. Examiners of plays were apparently as fastidious in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as they were a few years ago in objecting to undesirable allusions in dramas to politics, morality, and religion. Being human, the early actors naturally employed their extemporal abilities in the enjoyable pastime of nagging supersensitive authorities. As early as 1537 complaint was made that a seditious May-game was given in Suffolk in which the actor who played the rôle of Husbandry said many things "against Gentlemen more than was in the book of the play "; 18 and at Perth in 1589 the ministers and elders, 18 Letters and Papers of Henry VIII (1537), pp. 557-585. evidently profiting by an earlier experience, gave permission for a play to be presented on condition that it contained no swearing or banning" and "that nothing shall be added to what is in the register of the play itself." 19 Sir Henry Herbert, licencer of plays under James I and Charles I, was especially careful in expunging all seditious or blasphemous material from the text of dramas to be publicly acted; and as a means of protecting himself against the additions of actors he considered it necessary to keep in his possession a copy of each play in its licenced form.20 This precaution seems to have been fortunate; for in 1633, referring to Jonson's Magnetic Lady, which had caused trouble on account of its oaths, he declared that the actors at first would have "excused themselves on mee and the poett" but finally admitted that they were responsible for interpolating the objectionable words.21 Naturally playwrights would object to actors supplying material which would bring their dramas under the ban of the civil authorities; hence we find Nash complaining that the players were responsible for some of the offensive matter in his very objectionable play The Isle of Dogs; 22 while Chapman wrote to the authorities who refused to licence his Biron plays: "I see not myne owne Plaies; nor carrie the Actors Tongues in my mouthe." 23 As would be expected, the Puritan element was loud in its objection to the extemporal lewdness which actors incorporated after the more decent forms of the plays had been licenced for performance. The author of The Second and Third Blast of Retreat gives usual jesting and riming ex-tempore" as one of the reasons why plays should not be tolerated in a Christian commonwealth; and William Prynne, probably referring specifically to extemporal jigs, objects that especially those who act the parts of clowns and amorous persons are wont to "adde many obscure lascivious jests and passages of their owne, by way of appendix, to delight the auditors, which were not in their parts before" (Histriomastix, p. 930). That the Puritans were justified in such objections there 19 Murray, Eng. Dramatic Companies, II, 379. 20 Gildersleeve, Government Regulation of Elizabethan Drama, p. 78. " Gifford-Cunningham ed. of Jonson, II, 391; Adams, Dramatic Records of Sir Henry Herbert, p. 32. 22 Lenten Stuff (ed. Grosart), p. 200. 23 Cf. Athenaeum for April 6, 1901. can be no doubt. Dekker in his Strange Horse-Race had already protested against the indecency of extemporal jigs (Prose Works, ed. Grosart, III, 340). One remembers also in this connection the frequent appearance of the printer's sign "&c" in early printed plays, and wonders how much extemporal indecency was covered by its use, especially in dramas after the act of 1606 forbidding the use of oaths on the stage.24 Objections to profanity in drama did not cease with the Puritans any more than actors ceased their extemporal coarseness in accordance with the wishes of religious bodies. Naturally the early Methodists in their zealous and frequently ludicrous fight against the theater repeated the old arguments employed by Gosson, Prynne, and the rest. Among them was the stressing of the evil effects of "profane jests and obscure swearing" on the stage. The Methodists no less than the Puritans were frequently justified in such complaints. This is a fact admitted by no less an enemy of the sect than the well-known actor and manager, Tate Wilkinson, who, however, resents the wholesale condemnation of drama by the Methodists in their tabernacles because certain actors insist on introducing "low indecent jokes and a volley of oaths not in the parts." Nor is it fair, he argues,25 to blame managers too severely for not stopping an evil which cannot be effectually stopped by them. 24 Note, for example, the following: Pilgrimage to Parnassus, III, 4; Wily Beguiled, 1. 592; Brome's Mad Couple Well Match'd, III, i. For other interesting cases of the use of "&c," some of which are no doubt mistakes for various marks of punctuation but the majority of which cover an oath or indicate that the actor was left to supply words as he saw fit, see Randolph's Hey for Honesty, I, 4; Ford's Love's Sacrifice, II, 2; Heywood's Wise Woman of Hogsdon, 1, i; Westward Hoe, Iv, i; Middleton's Blurt, Master Constable, IV, 3; Merry Devil of Edmonton, IV, ì; Brome's English Moor, 1, 3 and III, 2; Brome's The Queen and Concubine, Iv, 8; Brome's Covent Garden Weeded, IV, 2; Heywood's Fair Maid of the West (ed. Pearson), p. 20; Greene's Orlando Furioso (ed. Dyce), 1, 43. In the first act of Thomas Porter's The French Conjurer (1678) an interesting stage direction informs the reader that Monsieur is to swear to himself "all the while they are dressing him," and the text follows: "Mons. Journee Morbleau; oh Diabolo, Diabolo, &c "-which surely indicates that the printed sign might well have stood for a good deal of pretty offensive language even during the Restoration. * Memoirs, 1, 85-86. There is no reason to doubt Wilkinson's statement that managers of good repute conscientiously tried to prevent actors from indulging in unseasonable "gagging." Various anecdotes have come down to us which illustrate the point, as, for example, Charles Lee Lewes's account of Isaac Sparks, who, tired of playing the stock duke of tragedy, secured his discharge from the Dublin theater by a bit of extemporal impertinence during the senate scene in Otway's Venice Preserved.26 Better known, perhaps, is John Bernard's story of the famous strolling manager Jemmy Whitely and an ambitious impersonator of the Player King in Hamlet. The latter in speaking the lines For us and for our tragedy, Here stooping to your clememcy, embellished the original with the couplet And if on this we may rely, Why, we'll be with you by and by. To which Whitely, who was reclining on the stage as Hamlet, sarcastically replied: And if on pay-day you rely, Take care I stop no sala-ry." Of more significance is the discharge of George Staley by Mossop late in the eighteenth century because he introduced a toast of political intent into a Dublin performance of High Life below Stairs. Staley, who was very resentful of his severe treatment, defended his extemporal wit by saying that he was merely doing what everybody else was practicing; and he gives a few instances out of "Thousands of Cases," the examples being "gags" by Sparks, Mrs. Bellamy, and Mrs. Abington introduced to fit local Dublin life and politics.28 Gilliland's anecdote 29 of the "FortMajor of Sheerness" is introduced at this point, not because the Major was a theatrical manager, but because it is a good story and 26 Memoirs, 1, 85-86. 27 Retrospections of the Stage, 1, 201. 28 Life and Opinions, 1, 175 ff. For other examples of this sort of thing see Leman's Memoirs of an Old Actor, pp. 153-154. "Dramatic Mirror, 1, 179. illustrates, provided it can be trusted, the severity with which those in power sometimes punished any departure from the author's text. The Major, says Gilliland, had "bespoken " the play of Cato at Margate. Charles Mate was the Sempronius, who procured of the Major seven supernumeraries, to have the play done in style as he called it. Six were very tractable; but the seventh, a drummer, dressed in a soldier's old coat, with a long buff belt buckled round his waste, notwithstanding Mate's instructions that, at the words 'See the unhapy men; they weep!' they were to appear to do so, kept nodding to his old friends in the gallery, and grinning throughout the scene. Richardson, who played Cato, vexed at his conduct, in addition to 'Sempronius, see they suffer death!' said, 'but for that fellow in the buff belt, let him have all the torments can be felt!' The Fort-Major, on his return, examined the play, and not finding the last couplet, banished the company from Sheerness, and they remained out of bread for three weeks," which shows that Majors other than those of a very recent date have made asses of themselves in trivial matters of discipline. In spite of the protests of Methodists, the efforts of managers and the devices of such martinets as the " Fort-Major," the practice of "gagging" went merrily on; and many of the efforts at timely additions by actors, whereas they were pronounced coarse or ridiculously out of season by the more fastidious part of the audience and the more rigid guardians of morals, were nevertheless hailed with delight by the general public and consequently have been handed down to us by purveyors of theatrical anecdotes. It would be foolish to attempt to list all such cases, but a few may be given as specimens. In his Wandering Patentee (III, 29) Tate Wilkinson gives what he regards as an especially inappropriate bit of impromptu: Every reader will recollect that, in the farce of the Farmer, Jemmy Jumps is not only in search of a wife but an utter stranger to Valentine. Mr. Darcy was the Captain Valentine and Mr. Faucett the Jemmy Jumps. The night before the Farmer was acted, Mrs. Faucett (to the pride and joy of her young husband) was brought to bed. In the Park scene, Valentine, who had not seen Jemmy Jumps till then, and did not know who he was, inquired warmly after the health of Jemmy Jumps' wife, which Jemmy answered with great pleasure, by assuring him that she had the night preceding produced a chopping boy, and was as well as could be |