This agreement subsisted for five years and a half, during which time Sir Henry Herbert had ten benefits, the most profitable of which produced seventeen pounds, and ten shillings, net on the 22d of Nov. 1628, when Fletcher's Custom of the Country was performed at Blackfriars; and the least emolument which he received was on the representation of a play which is not named, at the Globe, in the summer of the year 1632, which produced only the sum of one pound and five shillings, after deducting from the total receipt in each instance the nightly charge above mentioned.

On the 30th of October, 1633, the managers of the king's company agreed to pay him the fixed sum of ten pounds every Christmas, and the same sum at Midsummer, in lieu of his two benefits, which sums they regularly paid him from that time till the breaking out of the civil wars.

From the receipts on these benefits I am led to believe that the prices were lower at the Globe theatre, and that therefore, though it was much larger than the winter theatre at Blackfriars, it did not produce a greater sum of money on any representation. If we suppose twenty pounds, clear of the nightly charges already mentioned, to have been a very considerable receipt at either of these houses, and that this sum was in our poet's time divided into forty shares, of which fifteen were appropriated to the housekeepers or proprietors, three to the purchase of copies of new plays, stage-habits, &c. and twenty-two to the actors, then the performer who had two shares on the representation of each play, received, when the theatre was thus successful, twenty shillings. But supposing the average nightly receipt (after deducting the nightly expences) to be about nine pounds, then his nightly dividend would be but nine shillings, and his weekly profit, if they played five times a week, two pounds five shillings, The acting season, I believe, at that time lasted forty weeks. In each of the companies then subsisting there were about twenty persons, six of whom probably were* principal, and the others subordinate; so that we may suppose two shares to have been the reward of a princi pal actor; six of the second class perhaps enjoyed a whole share each; and each of the remaining eight half a share. On all these data, I think it may be safely concluded, that the performers of the first class did not derive froin their profession more than ninety pounds a year

at the utmost. * Shakspeare, Heminge, Condell, Burbidge, Lowin, and Taylor had without doubt other shares as proprietors or leaseholders; but what the different proportions were which each of them possessed in that right, it is now impossible to ascertain. According to the supposition already stated, that fifteen shares out of forty were appropriated to the proprietors, then was there on this account a sum of six hundred and seventy. five pounds annually to be divided among them. Our poet, as author, actor, and proprietor, probably received from the theatre about two hundred pounds a year.Having, after a very long search lately discovered the will of Mr. Heminge, I hoped to have derived from it some information on this subject; but I was disappointed. He indeed more than once mentions his several parts or shares held by lease in the Globe and Blackfriars play houses; but uses no expression by which the value of each of those shares can be ascertained. His books of account, which he appears to have regularly kept, and which, he says, will shew that his shares yielded him "a good yearly profit," will probably, if they shall ever be found, throw much light on our early stage history.

REFLECTIONS ON TRAGEDY.

WHOSOEVER reflects that Tragedy has a much stronger power of affecting a great part of mankind than Comedy, will easily conclude from hence, that their imitations are no further interesting than in proportion to the greater or less impressions which the object imitated would have made upon us. Now, it is certain, that men

"The verye hyerlings of some of our plaiers, [i. e. men occasionally hired by the night] says Stephen Gosson in the year 1579, which stand at reversion of vi s. by the weeke, jet under gentlemen's noses in sutes of silke." Schoole of Abuse, p. 22.

Hart, the celebrated tragedian, after the Restoration had but three pounds a week as an actor, that is, about ninety pounds a year; for the acting season did not, I believe, at that time exceed thirty weeks; but he had besides, as a proprietor, six shillings and three pence every day on which there was any performance at the king's theatre, which produced about £56. 5. 0. more. Betterton even at the beginning of the present century had not more than five pounds a week.

in general are not so much moved with theatrical action during the representation of a Comedy as that of a Tragedy; those, whose studies or amusements lead them to the dramatic walk, talk inore frequently, and with more warmth, of the Tragedies than of the Comedies they have seen represented, and consequently have the former more in quotation than the latter; in short, we are readier to excuse a mediocrity in the tragic than in the comic style, though the latter seems not to have the same command over our attention as the first.

-Habet comœdia tanto

Plus oneris, quanto veniæ minus.

HOR.

Those, whose labours are designed for the stage, talk in the same strain, and mostly agree that there is not so much danger in giving the public an entertainment to weep at, as to divert them with laughing.

One would imagine, nevertheless, that Comedy ought to draw men's attentions more than Tragedy. A comic poet does not exhibit to the spectators heroic characters, or such as they have no knowledge of but from some vague ideas formed from the relation of historians; he does not entertain the pit with conspiracies against the state, with oracles and other marvellous events, and such as the greatest part of the spectators, who have never had any share in the like adventures, would not be able to tell whether the circumstances and consequences thereof are set forth with any resemblance of truth. On the contrary, he entertains us with the picture of our friends, and of those with whom we have a constant intercourse and familiarity. The theatre, according to Plato, subsists, as it were, entirely by the errors and foibles which are daily incident to men, by reason of their not being sufficiently acquainted with themselves; some imagining themselves more powerful than they really are; some more knowing, and others, in fine, more amiable.

The tragic poet exposes the inconveniences arising from the want of self-knowledge in sovereigns and other independent persons, the consequences of whose vindictive temper make generally a great noise, whose resentments are naturally violent, and whose passions, proper for the stage, are capable of being the springs of the greatest events. The comic poet exhibits the consequences of self-ignorance among the general ranks of

people, whose resentments are subordinate to the laws, and whose passions, proper for the scenes, are productive only of domestic broils and ordinary adventures.

The comic poet entertains us therefore with the advent tures of equals, and presents us with the portraits of originals that are constantly before us: he makes even the pit (allowing the expression) mount upon the stage. Man, therefore, who is naturally fond of any discovery he can make of his neighbour's foibles, and desirous of all knowledge that can entitle him to lessen his esteem of others, ought naturally to resort to Thalia rather than Melpomene, especially as the former is much more fertile than the latter of lessons for private people's instructions.

Though Comedy may not, perhaps, correct all the failings it exposes, yet it teaches us at least how to live with such as are subject to those failings, and how to conform so in company, as to avoid that roughness which provokes them, or that servility which flatters them. Tragedy, on the contrary, represents heroes, with whom our situation forbids us to attempt any resemblance, and whose lessons and examples are drawn from events so dissimilar to those we are commonly exposed to, that the applications which we might be willing to make would be extremely vague and imperfect; hence, as it is the imitation of the crimes and misfortunes of great men, so likewise it is the imitation of the sublimest virtues of which they are capable.

The tragic poet exhibits men who are captives to the most extravagant passions, and the most tumultuous agitations. He shews us a sort of unjust but all-powerful deities, who demand a young innocent princess to be saerificed at the foot of their altars; he sets before us the progress of heroes, the deaths of tyrants, and the revolution of empires: it is true, we never find our friend in. any tragic personages, but their passions are more impetuous, and as the laws are but a feeble barrier to these passions, they are attended with much greater consequences than those of comic characters: thus the terror and pity, which the picture of tragical events excites in our souls, engages us much more than all the laughter and contempt excited by the several incidents of Comedy.

But let us see how Tragedy, thus defined, is capable of exciting terror and pity, in order to refine and purify in us all sorts of passion; it excites terror and compassion in us, by setting before our eyes the calamities which: those who are like ourselves have fallen into by involun

tary faults, and it refines them, by rendering those very misfortunes familiar to us, because it teaches us not to be too much concerned when they really happen. This is Aristotle's account of it: and this is what the ablest critics, both ancient and modern, have held to be the purest and most genuine illustration of it, (though his opinion, from the greatness of his character, and the general subscription to it for above two thousand years past, should make it decisive.) The good emperor Marcus Aurelius passed the same judgment on it in the following words:" Tragedies," says he, "were first introduced to put men in mind of those accidents which happen in their lives; to inform them they must necessarily come; and to teach them, that those things they see with so much delight on the stage, should not appear insupportable on the grand theatre of the world."

The advantage Tragedy brings to mankind is by no means inconsiderable; it prepares us to bear the most unlucky accidents courageously, aud disposes the most miserable to think themselves happy, and they compare their own misfortunes with those which Tragedy has represented to them. In whatever condition a man may be, yet, when he shall see an Edipus or a Lear, he cannot but think his own afflictiou slight in comparison with their's; but it stops here: it refines, not at the same time, all those other passions which may precipitate us into the same troubles; for, in exhibiting the crines which they have drawn those miserables into what they suffer, it teaches us to stand on our guard, and powerfully induces us to moderate and refine in ourselves what was the only cause of their loss; thus Tragedy becomes a useful medicine to the mind, by thoroughly purging the passions, at the same time that we receive a pleasure in the operation.