Doran's pleasant old book. Three
hundred years and more of a singularly varied and vivacious sort of
history!--it was a bold thing to undertake; and Dr. Doran did his work
well--did it with adequate "love." These Annals of the English Stage,
from Thomas Betterton to Edmund [74] Kean, are full of the colours of
life in their most emphatic and motley contrasts, as is natural in
proportion as the stage itself concentrates and artificially
intensifies the character and conditions of ordinary life. The long
story of "Their Majesties' Servants," treated thus, becomes from age to
age an agreeable addition to those personal memoirs--Evelyn's, and the
like--which bring the influence and charm of a visible countenance to
the dry tenour of ordinary history, and the critic's work upon it
naturally becomes, in the first place, a mere gathering of some of the
flowers which lie so abundantly scattered here and there.

A history of the English stage must necessarily be in part a history of
one of the most delightful of subjects--old London, of which from time
to time we catch extraordinary glimpses in Dr. Doran's pages. From 1682
to 1695, as if the Restoration had not come, there was but one theatre
in London. In Charles I.'s time Shoreditch was the dramatic quarter of
London par excellence.--

"The popular taste was not only there directed towards the stage, but
it was a district [75] wherein many actors dwelt, and consequently
died. The baptismal register of St. Leonard's, Shoreditch, contains
Christian names which appear to have been chosen with reference to the
heroines of Shakespeare; and the record of burials bears the name of
many an old actor of mark whose remains now lie within the churchyard."

Earlier and later, the Surrey side of the Thames was the favourite
locality for play-houses. The Globe was there, and the Bear-garden,
represented in Mr. Lowe's luxurious new edition by delightful woodcuts.
For this new edition adds to the original merits of the work the very
substantial charm of abundant illustrations, first-rate in subject and
execution, and of three kinds--copper-plate likenesses of actors and
other personages connected with theatrical history; a series of
delicate, picturesque, highly detailed woodcuts of theatrical
topography, chiefly the little old theatres; and, by way of tail-pieces
to the chapters, a second series of woodcuts of a vigour and reality of
information, within very limited compass, which