love, either in prose or verse; but we have
seen such. We conclude with:

"SYLPHIDE!
"In three days you shall hear from me."

MODERN SCENES AND SCENERY.

WHEN I here speak of modern scenery, I am
not thinking of the improvements that have
taken place in the art of stage decoration within
the last forty years; but I use the word in a
much more relative sense, referring it back to
the latter half of the seventeenth century. It
is generally agreed that the history of the
English drama was chopped into two pieces, exceedingly
unlike each other, when the Puritans
closed the theatres, in 1647, for a period of
thirteen years. For my own part, being in the sere
and yellow leaf, I am not inclined to look upon
thirteen years as such an exceedingly long time
as some apparently suppose it to be; and my
studies of dramatic literature, imperfect as they
are, serve to convince me that the later plays of
one epoch are much more like the earlier plays
of the other than is generally imagined. But
no matter for that. The period of theatrical
repose that continued through the Commonwealth
and the Protectorate will serve very
well to make a division. For the purpose of
marking a boundary between two adjacent
counties, a fordable brook will serve as well as a
navigable river.

Besides, though there may not be any very
great difference between the plays that end one
epoch and begin the other, in our knowledge
of the two epochs the difference is enormous.
In the dramatic literature produced during the
reigns of Elizabeth and the first two Stuarts
we may be as learned as we please, allowance
being of course made for the depredations
committed by Warburton's cook. But of the authors,
Shakespeare included, we know next to nothing;
of most of the actors, still less; while the
details of theatrical production afford one of those
broad fields for conjecture, which are the special
delight of the archæologist. Even our information
as to the repertory of the old theatres, and
their rank with respect to each other, is most
imperfect. That the "King's servants," who
owned the Blackfriars and the Globe, held the
topmost position, is a certain fact, and as they
brought out the works of Shakespeare and other
leading dramatists, it would not be extremely
difficult to construct a series of programmes
that might give a tolerable notion of their
proceedings, so far as that could be done without
dates. But directly we quit this company and
endeavour to ascertain the relative rank of some
nine theatres, belonging to other companies,
we are in a fog. Even the scanty information
afforded by the following short passage which I
extract from a well-known "Dialogue on Old
Plays and Old Players," published in 1699, is
to be received with gratitude:

"Before the wars, there were in being all
these theatres at the same time: The
Blackfriars and Globe on the Bankside, a winter and
summer house belonging to the same company,
called the King's servants; the Cockpit, or
Phœnix, in Drury-lane, called the Queen's
servants; the private house in Salisbury-court,
called the Prince's servants; the Fortune, near
Whitecross-street; and the Red Bull, at the
upper end of St. John-street. The two last
were mostly frequented by citizens and the
meaner sort of people. All these companies
got money, and lived in reputation, especially
those of the Blackfriars, who were men of grave
and sober behaviour."

The above refers only to the last years of the
period ending in 1647. The queen, who gave
her name to the actors at the Cockpit, was
originally Anne of Denmark, and it seems that, on
her death in 1619, the nominal patroness of the
company was the Princess Elizabeth, but that
they resumed their old title on the marriage of
Charles the First, in compliment to Queen
Henrietta. The prince named in connexion with
Salisbury Court is Charles the Second, as Prince
of Wales. The two theatres in Shoreditch, and
the smaller theatres on the Surrey side of the
Thames, which, according to Mr. J. P. Collier's
opinion, were all open on the accession of James
the First, have vanished from the record; and
of the five theatres mentioned, there are three
respecting which we know next to nothing.
The Fortune and the Red Bull were evidently
not deemed places of fashionable resort at the date
to which the Dialogue refers, but there might
have been as much difference between them as
between Sadler's Wells, under Mr. Phelps, and
a low theatre in some obscure suburb. From a
"Prologue upon the removing of the late
Fortune players to the Bull," in which the audience
are requested to remark that the curtains are
"pure Naples silk, not worsted," and to forbear
the "wonted custom" of throwing pieces of tile
or pears against them, to lure the actors forth,
Mr. J. P. Collier conjectures that in 1640, when
the Prologue was published, the Bull was superior
to the Fortune. I am not quite clear that the
premisses are sufficient for the conclusion, and,
at all events, if the Bull was superior to the
Fortune in 1640, we may fairly conjecture that in
the days of the noted Edward Alleyne, the
founder of Dulwich College, who owned the
Fortune, and there acquired all his wealth, and
moreover was deemed one of the greatest actors
of his time, the Fortune stood higher than the
Bull. But Alleyne had retired from theatrical
life before the death of Henry, Prince of Wales,
which occurred in 1611, and in thirty years all
sorts of changes are possible. Who that derived
his knowledge of the Drury-lane and Olympic
theatres from the years immediately preceding
the management of the latter by Madame Vestris
could have foreseen that a time was coming
when the small upstart house in Wych-street
would be one of the most fashionable in London,
while the larger edifice, to which a hundred
traditions are attached, would be so completely
ignored by the better class of playgoers, that its
restoration to something like its old position