the spectators frequently mounting the stage, and making a more bloody catastrophe among themselves than the players did." Occasionally, it appears, the audience compelled the actors to perform, not the drama their programmes had announced, but some other, such as "the major part of the company had a mind to: sometimes 'Tamerlane;' sometimes 'Jugurtha;' sometimes 'The Jew of Malta;' and, sometimes, parts of all these; and, at last, none of the three taking, they were forced to undress and put off their tragic habits, and conclude the day with 'The Merry Milkmaids.'" If it so chanced that the players were refractory, then "the benches, the tiles, the lathes, the stones, oranges, apples, nuts, flew about most liberally; and as there were mechanics of all professions, everyone fell to his own trade, and dissolved a house on the instant, and made a ruin of a stately fabric.

It was not then the most mimical nor fighting man could pacify; prologues nor epilogues would prevail; the Devil and the Fool [evidently two popular characters at this time] were quite out of favour; nothing but noise and tumult fills the house," &c.

&c.
Concerning the dramatist of the time, upon the occasion of the first performance of his play, his anxiety, irascibility, and peculiarities generally, Ben Jonson provides sufficient information.

"We are not so officiously befriended by him," says one of the characters in the Induction to "Cynthia's Revels," "as to have his presence in the tiring-house, to prompt us aloud, stamp at the bookholder [or prompter], swear at our properties, curse the poor tireman, rail the musick out of tune, and sweat for every venial trespass we commit as some author would." While, in the Induction to his "Staple of News," Jonson has clearly portrayed himself.

"Yonder he is," says Mirth, in reply to some remark touching the poet of the performance, "within--I was in the tiring-house awhile, to see the actors dressed--rolling himself up and down like a tun in the midst of them ...