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mancer: for the only bufinefs and ufe of this character, is to open the fubject in a long prologue, to evoke the devil, and fummon the court. The devil kicks the necromancer, for waking him fo foon in the morning: a proof, that this drama was performed in the morning, perhaps in the chapel of the palace. A variety of measures, with fhreds of Latin and French, is ufed: but the devil fpeaks in the octave ftanza. One of the stage-directions is, Enter Balfebub with a Berde. To make him both frightful and ridiculous, the devil was most commonly introduced on the ftage, wearing a visard with an immense beard'. Philargyria quotes Seneca and saint

aThus in Turpin's HISTORY OF CHAR-
LEMAGNE, the Saracens appear, "Ha-
"bentes LARVAS BARBATAS, Cornutas,
"DÆMONIBUS Confimiles."
c. xviii.
And in LEWIS THE EIGHTH, an old
French romance of Philip Mouskes.

Jot apries lui une barboire,
Com diable cornu et noire.

There was a fpecies of masquerade cele-
brated by the ecclefiaftics in France, called
the SHEW OF BEARDS, entirely confifting
of an exhibition of the most formidable
beards. Gregory of Tours fays, that the
abbefs of Poictou was accused for suffering
one of these shews, called a BARBATORIA,
to be performed in her monaftery. HIST,
lib. x. c. vi. In the EPISTLES of Peter
de Blois we have the following paffage,
"Regis curiam fequuntur affidue hiftrio-
60 nes, candidatrices, aleatores, dulcorarii,

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caupones, nebulatores, mimi, BARBA

TORES, balatrones, et hoc genus omne." EPIST. xiv. Where, by Barbatores, we are not to understand Barbers, but mimics, or buffoons, difguifed in huge bearded masks. In Don Quixote, the barber who perfonates the fquire of the princess Micomicona, wears one of these masks, “ una

gran barba, &c." Part. prim. c. xxvi. 1.3. And the countefs of Trifaldi's fquire has "la mas larga, la mas horrida, &c.", Part. fec. c. xxxvi. 1. 8. See OBSERVAT. ON SPENSER, vol. i. p. 24. SECT. ii.

About the eleventh century, and long

before, beards were looked upon by the clergy as a fecular vanity; and accordingly were worn by the laity only. Yet in England this diftinction feems to have been more rigidly obferved than in France. Malmesbury fays, that king Harold, at the Norman invafion, fent fpies into Duke William's camp; who reported, that most of the French army were priests, because their faces were fhaved. HIST. lib. iii. p. 56. b. edit. Savil. 1596. The regulation remained among the English clergy at least till the reign of Henry the eighth for Longland bishop of Lincoln, at a Vifitation of Oriel college, Oxford, in 1531, orders one of the fellows, a prieft, to abstain, under pain of expulfion, from wearing a beard, and pinked fhoes, like a laic; and not to take the liberty, for the future, of infulting and ridiculing the governor and fellows of the fociety. ORDINAT. Coll. Oriel. Oxon. APPEND. ad Joh. TROKELOWE, p. 339. See Edicts of king John, in Prynne, LIBERTAT. ECCLES. ANGL. tom. iii. p. 23. But among the religious, the Templars were permitted to wear long beards. In the year 1311, king Edward the fecond granted letters of fafe conduct to his valet Peter Auger, who had made a vow not to fhave his beard; and who having refolved to vifit fome of the holy places abroad as a pilgrim, feared, on account of the length of his beard, that he might be mistaken for a knight-templar, and infulted. Pat. iv. Edw. ii. In Dug

dale's

Austin and Simony offers the devil a bribe. The devil rejects her offer with much indignation: and fwears by the foule Eumenides, and the hoary beard of Charon, that she shall be well fried and roafted in the unfathomable fulphur of Cocytus, together with Mahomet, Pontius Pilate, the traitor Judas, and king Herod. The laft fcene is clofed with a view of hell, and a dance between the devil and the necromancer. The dance ended, the devil trips up the necromancer's heels, and disappears in fire and fmoke. Great must have been the edification and entertainment which king Henry the feventh and his court derived from the exhibition of fo elegant and rational a drama! The royal tafte for dramatic reprefentation seems to have suffered a very rapid transition: for in the year 1520, a goodlie comedie of Plautus was played before king Henry the eighth at Greenwich. I have before mentioned Skelton's play of MAGNIFICENCE..

dale's WARWICKSHIRE, p. 704. Many orders about Beards occur in the registers of Lincoln's-inn, cited by Dugdale. In the year 1542, it was ordered, that no member, wearing a BEARD, fhould prefume to dine in the hall. In 1553, fays Dugdale, "fuch as had beards fhould pay twelve

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pence for every meal they continued "them; and every man to be shaven,

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upon pain of being put out of commons." ORIG. JURID. cap. 64. p. 244. In 1559, no member is permitted to wear any beard above a fortnight's growth; under pain of expulfion for the third tranfgreffion. But the fashion of wearing beards beginning to fpread, in 1560 it was agreed at a council, that "all orders before that time made, "touching BEARDS, fhould be void and "repealed." Dugd. ibid. p. 245.

In the Mystery of MARY MAGDALENE, juft mentioned, one of the ftagedirections is," Here enters the prynfe of "the devylls in a ftage, with hell onder"neth the stage." MSS. DIGB. 133.

с

Hollinfh. iii. 850.

d It is in Mr. Garrick's valuable collection. No date. 4to. Hawkins, in the

HISTORY OF Music, has firft printed a Song written by Skelton, alluded to in the CROWNE OF LAWRELL, and fet to mufic by William Cornifhe, a musician of the chapel royal under Henry the feventh. B. i. ch. i. vol. iii. p. 3. Lond. 1776. It begins,

Ah, befhrew you, by my fay,

These wanton clarkes are nice alway, &c. The fame diligent and ingenious inquirer has happily illuftrated a paffage in Skelton's defcription of RIOT. Ibid. B. iii. ch. ix. vol. ii. p. 354.

Counter he coulde O Lux upon a potte. That is, this drunken diforderly fellow could play the beginning of the hymn, O Lux beata Trinitas, a very popular melody, and on which many fugues and canons were antiently compofed, on a quartpot at the tavern. See alfo, ibid. B. i. ch. vii. p. 90. ii. 1. p. 130.

By the way, the abovementioned William Cornish has a poem printed at the end of Skelton's Works, called a Treatise between Trouthe and Information, containing Aaa 2 fome

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MORALITIES feem have arrived at their heighth about the clofe of the feventh Henry's reign'. This fort of spectacle was now so fashionable, that John Raftall, a learned typographer, brother in law to fir Thomas More, extended its province, which had hitherto been confined, either to moral allegory, or to religion blended with buffoonery, and conceived a defign of making it the vehicle of science and philosophy. With this view he published, A new INTERLUDE and a mery, of the nature of the iiii Elements, declaringe many proper points of phylofophy naturall and dyvers ftraunge landys, &c. In the cosmographical part of the play, in which the poet profeffes to treat of dyvers ftraunge regyons, and of the new founde landys, the tracts of America recently discovered, and the manners of the natives, are described. The characters are, a Meffenger who speaks the prologue, Nature, Humanity, Studious Defire, Sensual Appetite, a Taverner, Experience, and Ignorance'.

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man, difputynge who is a veray gentyl"man, and how men fhuld come to auc"toryte, compiled in maner of an INTER

66

LUDE. With dyvers TOYES and GESTIS "addyd therto, to make mery paftyme "and difport. J. Raftall me fieri fecit." Printed by himself in quarto, without date.

PR. "Ŏ what a gret welth and." Alfo, "A new Commodyte in Englysh in maner "of an ENTERLUDE ryght elygant and "full of craft of rhetoryck: wherein is "fhewed and dyfcrybyd, as well the "beute of good propertes of women, as "theyr vyces and evyll condicions, with 66 a morall conclufion and exhortation to "vertew. 7. Raftall me imprimi fecit." In folio, without date. This is in English verfe, and contains twelve leaves. PR. "Melebea, &c." He reduced a dialogue of Lucian into English verfe, much after the manner of an interlude, viz. "NECRO"MANTIA. A Dialogue of Lucyan for

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I have before obferved, that the frequent and public exhibition of personifications in the PAGEAUNTS, which antiently accompanied every high festivity, greatly contributed to cherish the spirit of allegorical poetry, and even to enrich the imagination of Spenfer". The MORALITIES, which now began to acquire new celebrity, celebrity, and in which the same groupes of the imperfonated vices and virtues appeared, must have concurred in producing this effect. And hence, at the fame time, we are led to account for the national relish for allegorical poetry, which fo long prevailed among our ancestors. By means of these spectacles, ideal beings became common and popular objects: and emblematic imagery, which at present is only contemplated by a few retired readers in the obfolete pages of our elder poets, grew familiar to the general eye.

"his fantafy fayned for a mery paftyme, "&c.-J. Raffall me fieri fecit." It is tranflated from the Latin, and has Latin notes in the margin. It may be doubted, whether Raftall was not the printer only of thefe pieces. If the printer only, they might come from the feftive genius of his brother fir Thomas More. But Raftall appears to have been a scholar. He was educated at Oxford; and took up the employment of printing as a profeffion at that time efteemed liberal, and not unfuitable to the character of a learned and ingenious man. An English translation of Terence, called TERENS in ENGLISH, with a prologue in ftanzas, beginning

The famous renown through the worlde "is fpronge," is believed, at least from fimilarity of type, to be by Raftall. In quarto, without date. He published, in 1525, The MERY GESTYS of one callyd EDYTH the lyeng wydow. This is a defcription, in English rhymes, of the frauds practifed by a female fharper in the neighbourhood of London: the fcene of one of her impoftures is laid in fir Thomas More's houfe at Chelfea. The author, one of her dupes, is Walter Smyth. Emprynted at London at the Ligne of the Meremayde at

Pollis gate next to Chepefyde by J. Raftall. fol. It will be fufficient to have given this fhort incidental notice of a piece which hardly deserves to be named. Raftall wrote and printed many other pieces, which I do not mention, as unconnected with the hiftory of our poetry: I shall only observe further, in general, that he was eminently skilled in mathematics, cofmography, hiftory, our municipal law, and theology. He died 1536.

And of Shakespeare. There is a paffage in ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA, where the metaphor is exceedingly beautiful; but where the beauty both of the expreffion and the allufion is loft, unless we recollect the frequency and the nature of these shews in Shakespeare's age. ACT iv. Sc. xi. I muft cite the whole of the context, for the fake of the laft hemistich.

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IN

SECT. XVI.

Na work of this general and comprehenfive nature, in which the fluctuations of genius are furveyed, and the dawnings or declenfions of tafte must alike be noticed, it is impoffible that every part of the fubject can prove equally splendid and interefting. We have, I fear, been toiling for fome time through materials, not perhaps of the most agreeable and edifying nature. But as the mention of that very rude fpecies of our drama, called the MORALITY, has incidentally diverted our attention to the early state of the English stage, I cannot omit fo fortunate and seasonable an opportunity of endeavouring to relieve the weariness of my reader, by introducing an obvious digreffion on the probable causes of the rise of the MYSTERIES, which, as I have before remarked, preceded, and at length produced, these allegorical fables. In this refpect I fhall imitate thofe map-makers mentioned by Swift, who

O'er inhofpitable downs,

Place elephants for want of towns.

Nor fhall I perhaps fail of being pardoned by my reader, if, on the fame principle, I fhould attempt to throw new light on the history of our theatre, by pursuing this enquiry through those deductions which it will naturally and more immediately fuggeft".

About the eighth century, trade was principally carried on by means of fairs, which lafted feveral days. Charlemagne established many great marts of this fort in France; as did William the conqueror, and his Norman fucceffors, in

8 Compare vol. i. p. 235,

England.

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