The ladies were treated to apples, and sometimes applied their lips to a tobacco-pipe.

Prynne, in his "Histriomastix," 1633, states that, even in his time, ladies were occasionally "offered the tobacco-pipe" at plays.

Then, as now, new plays attracted larger audiences than ordinary.

Dekker observes, in his "News from Hell," 1606, "It was a comedy to see what a crowding, as if it had been at a new play, there was upon the Acherontic strand." How the spectators comported themselves upon these occasions, Ben Jonson, "the Mirror of Manners," as Mr.Collier well surnames him, has described in his comedy "The Case is Altered," acted at Blackfriars about 1599.

"But the sport is, at a new play, to observe the sway and variety of opinion that passeth it.