CHAPTER VI.
STROLLING PLAYERS.
It is rather the public than the player that strolls nowadays.

The theatre is stationary--the audience peripatetic.

The wheels have been taken off the cart of Thespis.

Hamlet's line, "Then came each actor on his ass," or the stage direction in the old "Taming of the Shrew" (1594), "Enter two players with packs on their backs," no longer describes accurately the travelling habits of the histrionic profession.

But of old the country folk had the drama brought as it were to their doors, and just as they purchased their lawn and cambric, ribbons and gloves, and other raiment and bravery of the wandering pedlar--the Autolycus of the period--so all their playhouse learning and experience they acquired from the itinerant actors.