*

the third of January, 1596, the comedy of Silvanus was acted, in what College we cannot tell, neither by whom it was written. In the same year, Hispanus was acted, "in die comitiali." Of this we are in the same ignorance as the other. In 1597, Machiavellus was acted, probably at St. John's, as it was written by D. Wiburne, a fellow of the College; in which play there is a Jew, but very unlike Shylock. He is a shrewd intriguing fellow, of considerable humour, who, to obtain possession of a girl, puts a number of tricks on the Machiavel of the piece, and generally outwits him. In one scene, he overhears his rival despairing of success with the father of his mistress, and expressing a wish that he had some instrument wherewith to put an end to his misery. On this, he lays a knife in his way, but first takes care to whet it. To The Merchant of Venice, or Gernutus, the Latin play was indebted. These three are in the possession of Mr. Douce, who, it is to be hoped, will some day publish them. In this year, also, as Fuller † affirms, but, according to other authorities, in 1599, the comedy of Club Law was represented. Dr. Farmer was in possession of a manuscript play, without a title, which, from its tendency to abuse the mayor and corporation of Cambridge, has been supposed to be Club Law. Mr. Hawkins, in his edition of Ignoramus, thinks, that as it is wholly founded on the expectation of a visit from King James, and refers to events which happened in his reign, it does not seem probable that it was the Club Law that was performed in this year. Fuller has preserved some information concerning this play it is to be doubted whether it now exists. He relates, "That the gownsmen conceiving themselves injured by the townsmen, the particulars whereof," he says, "I know not, betook themselves, for revenge, to their wits; and having procured a discovery of some town privacies from Miles Gouldsborough, one of their own corporation, composed in English a merry but abusive comedy, which they called Club Law, and which was acted at Clare Hall, in 1597-8. The mayor and his brethren, and their wives, were invited to see it, or, rather, to see themselves abused in it; for the scholars had not only enabled themselves to imitate and ridicule the habits, gestures, language, jests, and expressions of the townsmen, but had even borrowed the townsmen's own best clothes to perform their respective parts in. At the performance it was so contrived, that the townsmen, being rivetted in on both sides by scholars, should have no opportunity of departing till the play was over, and should, therefore, be com

* Illustrations of Shakspeare, v. i., pp. 260. 265. 266.
+ History of Cambridge, p. 156.

pelled to sit out the whole performance. The mayor and townsmen complained to the lords of the privy-council, of the insult thus offered to them, but obtained no further redress than a promise from some of them, that they would shortly come to Cambridge; and, in order the better to judge of the subject of complaint, and to proportion the punishment to the nature and degree of the offence, would direct the comedy to be again performed before themselves, and in the presence of the townsmen. Rather, however, than submit to a second representation, the townsmen thought it prudent to drop all further thoughts of redress.

Party feelings between two honourable rivals are always bad; but much more so when they outstrip the bounds of moderate controversy, and shew themselves in violent assault and outrage. Two centuries ago, such paltry jealousies existed in an eminent degree: we have, in our day, the satisfaction of knowing, that they exist no longer. The retrospective view of them in the nineteenth century, will, therefore, excite a laugh against them, rather than a participation from any one in such illiberal and absurd ideas. The disturbances at King's were nothing more than what would be now called, in the underivable slang of the day, a row: there was then no other ill blood evinced by the excluded gownsmen, than a breakage of the windows; but in February 1600, a premeditated attack was made by the men of Trinity at their comedies, upon those of St. John's. The case, sufficiently puerile, was investigated in the vice-chancellor's court: one can scarcely tell which party deserves most censure, the school-boy malevolence of the one, or the absurd irritability of the other. But all will now be more inclined to ridicule and laugh at the folly displayed by both, than to embrace the monstrous opinions which prevailed at the period. The fellows and scholars of St. John's exhibited a bill of complaint against certayne injuries and outrages committed against them, by the stage-keepers of Trinity College."* From the evidence of sixty witnesses, the assault was clearly proved. The chamber-maid at the Sunt declared upon oath, that she heard some Trinity men say, "that if the two cooks of St. John's came to the comedies, they should come badly off;—and upon the previous Tuesday, Carre, a scholler of Trinity College, pupil unto Mr. Bartin, counseylled Sir Probeyn, a student of St. John's, to beware how he came

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* MS. in the Register Office. 6 104.

+ Lord Clarendon in his life, written by himself, speaks of sleeping at the Sun, opposite Trinity College.

The writer of this article is informed by a very learned antiquarian, that he remembers when Bachelors of Arts were always called Sir.

amongst the crowds the night following, and thereat he gave this reason;-that their skulls, by the appointment of some of their fellows, had gathered and layd up in the tower as many stones as would fill a large studye. The goodwife Freshbien deposed, that upon the Wednesday night, four schollers, more or less, of Trinity Colledge, coming into her shopp for tobacco, at what tyme she knew not, spoke to her of the provision of stones layd up; and also of some bucketts to be provided to fetch water from her conduyt, to poure downne upon St. John's mene. Then comes the testimony of six boys who carried up the stones, and that of divers others. Pratt, of St. John's, standing facing Trinity, by the trompeteres, received a grievous wound, from a stone cast from the touere ; and Mr. Massey, master of arts, upon being brought in by one stage-keeper, was turned out by another; and, as he descended the hall steps, was felled to the ground by a club: upwards of twenty-five proved that clubs were used, and that the stage-keepers, during all the time of the comedy, walked the court, inquiring for men of St. John's." The case, from the number of witnesses examined, must have occupied a considerable length of time: the records consulted give us no information concerning its decision.

Most of our early dramatic pieces were performed in the yards of inns, in which, in the beginning of Queen Elizabeth's reign, the comedians, who then first united themselves in companies, erected an occasional stage. The spectators viewed the performance from the galleries or corridors, which, at that time, generally ran round the court-yards at inns: many of which may still be seen in the City of London, and the Borough, and some slight remains of them exist in the Eagle Inn-yard, and the Falcon-yard, Cambridge. In the latter, there are remains on one side of two tiers of railed galleries, of one tier on the opposite side, and one tier at the end: the stage, we may reasonably suppose, was on the fourth side. The Falcon Inn ceases to exist there, but the area still bears the name. There are slight vestiges of a gallery of this nature at the Black Bear Inn-yard, Cambridge; where, upon May the 28th, 1600, an interlude was performed, at which one Dominus Pepper was seen with an improper habit, having deformed long locks of unseemly sight, and great breaches, undecent for a graduate or scholar of orderly carriage; therefore, the said Pepper was commanded to appear presently, and procure his hair to be cut or powled, and which being done, the said Pepper returning to the consistory, was then suspended ab omni gradu suscepto et suscipiendo."* In this extract, two

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* MS. in the Register Office. 9, 78. In October 1812, an order was made by St. John's and Trinity College, that every young man who appeared in Hall or Chapel in pantaloons or trowsers, should be considered as absent.

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prevailing, fashions of the beginning of the 17th century are mentioned, the long hair, and the large breeches or trunk hose: each of these peculiarities are frequently noticed by the writers of that period. Stubbe, in his rare book called the Anatomy of Abuses, says, that the new-fangled breeches were of Parisian origin; they were made ridiculously large, and stuffed out with rags, until they were brought to an enormous size. A lamentable complaint of the poor country men against great hose," exists in the Harleian collection, and an act passed to restrain such absurdities. A picture of them is in the frontispiece to the Latin play of Pedantius. The practice of wearing long hair afforded a pretext to the learned puritan, William Prynne, to write a book (his scarcest) upon the Unlovelinesse of Love-lockes: like most of his works, it contains hundreds of quotations, and fully justifies that part of his severe epitaph, where he is called

"This grand scripturient paper-spiller;

This endless, needless, margin-filler."

His work was followed by Hall's Comarum Akoopia: The loathsomenesse of long haire; § a small book, equally scarce, and much more curious. In this we are told, that " periwigs of falsecoloured hair | (which begins to be rife, even amongst scholars in the Universities,) are utterly unlawful, and are condemned by Christ himself; that the wearing of long hair is condemned and forbidden by the word of God. From Ezekiel lxiv. 20, they shall not shave their heads, nor suffer their locks to grow long, they shall only poll their heads. Both the extremes are here forbidden; shaving, on the one hand; and long hair on the other. But polling, as a mean between both, is commanded; and, that not a light kind of polling, or a polling at large of some part of the head, but it must be a strict polling or rounding of the whole head. Look abroad into the world, and see whether the vilest men do not usually wear the longest locks. Tell me whether ragged rascals, nasty varlets, raggamuffian soldiers, tinkers, crate-carriers, gaol-birds, &c. &c. are not partakers with thee in this ruffianly guise? and if so, I should think one

* Part printed in Strutt's Manners and Customs, v. iii., p. 85; and Boswell's excellent edition of Malone's editionof Shakspeare, v. ix. p. 53. + 12mo. 1631.

Lond. 4to. 1628.

By Thomas Hall, B.D. and Pastor of Kingsnorton. Lond, 12mo. 1654. Appended are divers reasons and arguments against painting, spots, naked backs, breasts, arms, &c.

See Much Ado about Nothing, Act ii., Scene 3. "And her hair shall be of what colour it please God;" and Act iii., Scene iv.; and the variorum notes upon those passages.

need not bid thee change thy fashion." He afterwards writes, that "the gravest and godliest divines and Christians in our nation, whose examples the younger sort should imitate) do still wear, and formerly did wear the shortest hair witness Cartwright, Perkins, Reynolds, Rogers, Abbot, Dodd, Brinsley, Hildersham, Herring, Fen, Whately, Prideaux, &c. In their works, they plead for it; in their lives, they practised it; (as many now living can testify) and the effigies of many of them which are to be seen at this day in Oxford Library."* Stoughton, another divine and Trichotomist, says, that Absalom's hair was his halter, and that our long-haired gentlemen ought to make use thereof; besides, how strangely do men cut their hairs; some all before, some all behind, some long round about, their crowns being cut short like cootes, or Popish priests, and friars; some have long locks at their ears, as if they had four ears, or were prick-eared; some have a little long lock only before, hanging down to their noses, like to the tail of a weasel; every man being made a fool at the barber's pleasure, or making a fool of the barber for money to make him such a fool.+"

Having brought the Latin plays down to the beginning of the seventeenth century, we shall now lay before our readers the names of some to which we have been unable to assign any date, and concerning which we possess but scanty information.

Clytophon. Manuscript, in Emmanuel College Library, Cambridge at the end is written Gulielmus Bretonus possessor Georgius Ainsworthius scriptor: whether scriptor applies to the author, or the transcriber, we shall leave our readers to decide.

Parthenia. Manuscript, in Emmanuel College Library, Cambridge.

Euribates. Manuscript, in Emmanuel College Library, Cambridge, written by Crouse of Caius College.

Pseudomasia. Manuscript, in Emmanuel College Library, Cambridge, written by Mewe, a fellow of the College..

* See pp. 15, 17, 59, 75.

These were not the only books written upon this absurd subject; another, entitled "A testimony against Periwigs and Periwigmaking, and playing on instruments of music among Christians, or any other in the days of the Gospel, being several reasons against these things, by John Mulliner;" was printed in 1677, 4to, without the name of the place: the author himself belonged to the town of Northampton. In the first page, he states "the reasons why he left off his employment, and how it was with him as to his inward condition before he joined the people called Quakers."