us
there appears something so repulsive in the exhibition of boys or men
personating female characters, that one cannot conceive how they could
ever have been tolerated as a substitute for the spontaneous grace,
the melting voice, and the soothing looks of a female."

The absurdity which he suggests was aptly expressed by a poet of
the reign of Charles II., in a prologue which was written as an
introduction to the play in which appeared the first actress:

"Our women are defective, and so sized,
You'd think they were some of the guard disguised
For to speak truth, men act, that are between
Forty and fifty, wenches of fifteen;
With brows so large and nerve so uncompliant,
When you call Desdemona--enter giant."

Nell Gwynn is said first to have attracted the attention of King
Charles when she appeared in a humorous part at the theatre; she
was one of the earliest actresses to appear _in propria persona_. As
ungraceful as were the female parts when taken by men, the innovation
of women was not received kindly by many critics of the stage.
Thus Pepys, in his _Diary_, is found lamenting the new custom: "The
introduction of females on the stage was the beginning of a change
ever to be regretted. Pride of birth, but not insolence, is, to a
certain extent, highly commendable, and which had hitherto been the
chief characteristic of the old English aristocracy, who had kept
themselves till now almost universally free from stained alliances;
but from this time they became the patrons, and even the husbands, of
any lewd, babbling, painted, pawed-over thing that the purlieus of the
theatre could produce."

Evelyn comments upon the theatre to the same effect, and remarks that
he very seldom attended it, because of its godless liberty: "Foul and
indecent women now (and never till now) permitted to appear and act,
who, inflaming several young noblemen and gallants, become their
misses, and to some their wives." He then instances several of the
nobility whom he says fell into such snares, to the reproach of their
families and the ruin of themselves in both body and soul. He laments
the fact that the splendid products of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson were
crowded off the stage to make room for the pasteboard and tinsel of
John Dryden and Thomas Shadwell. At the time that Evelyn and Pepys
were recording their comments upon the tone of the stage, thousands
were living who well remembered the vehement denunciation of plays by