This was in the winter of 1648. Doubtless
there were many to whom the stage was dear, who were willing enough to
encourage the poor players. Playgoing had now become as a vice or a
misdemeanour, to be prosecuted in secret--like dram-drinking. The
Cockpit representations lasted but a few days. During a performance of
Fletcher's tragedy of "Rollo, Duke of Normandy," in which such
excellent actors as Lowin, Taylor, Pollard, Burt, and Hart were
concerned, a party of troopers beset the house, broke in about the
middle of the play, and carried off the players, accoutred as they
were in their stage dresses, to Hatton House, then a prison, where,
after being detained some time, they were plundered of their clothes
and dismissed. "Afterwards, in Oliver's time," as an old chronicler of
dramatic events has left upon record, "they used to act privately,
three or four miles or more out of town, now here, now there,
sometimes in noblemen's houses--in particular Holland House, at
Kensington--where the nobility and gentry who met (but in no great
numbers) used to make a sum for them, each giving a broad-piece or the
like.
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