dBooks desire

Dekker observes, in his "News from Hell,"
1606, "It was a comedy to see what a crowding, as if it had been at a
new play, there was upon the Acherontic strand." How the spectators
comported themselves upon these occasions, Ben Jonson, "the Mirror of
Manners," as Mr. Collier well surnames him, has described in his
comedy "The Case is Altered," acted at Blackfriars about 1599. "But
the sport is, at a new play, to observe the sway and variety of
opinion that passeth it. A man shall have such a confused mixture of
judgment poured out in the throng there, as ridiculous as laughter
itself. One says he likes not the writing; another likes not the plot;
another not the playing; and sometimes a fellow that comes not there
past once in five years, at a Parliament time or so, will be as
deep-mired in censuring as the best, and swear, by God's foot, he
would never stir his foot to see a hundred such as that is!" The
conduct of the gallants, among whom were included those who deemed
themselves critics and wits, appears to have usually been of a very
unseemly and offensive kind.


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