ay's lords and law-givers, running to and fro the London streets,
one bawling 'Ink or pens, ink or pens!', another 'Boots or shoes, boots
or shoes to mend!', a third 'Fine Seville oranges, fine lemons!', whilst
Mrs. Cromwell exchanges Billingsgate with a crowd of jeering boys, must
have caused the house absolutely to rock with merriment.

With all its point and cleverness _The Rump_, however, from a technical
point of view, is ill-digested and rough. The scenes were evidently
thrown off hastily, and sadly lack refining and revision. Mrs. Behn has
made the happiest use of rather unpromising material. The intrigues
between Loveless and Lady Lambert, who in Tatham is very woodeny and
awkward, between Freeman and Lady Desbro', which give _The Roundheads_
unity and dramatic point, are entirely her own invention. In the
original _Rump_ neither cavaliers nor Lady Desbro' appear. Ananias
Goggle also, the canting lay elder of Clements, with his subtle
casuistry that jibs at 'the person not the office,' a dexterous
character sketch, alive and acute, we owe to Mrs. Behn.

Amongst the many plays, far too numerous even to catalogue, that scarify
the puritans and their zealot tribe, _The Cheats_ (1662), by Wilson, and
Sir Robert Howard's _The Committee_ (1662), which long kept the stage,
and, in a modified form, _The Honest Thieves_, was seen as late as the
second half of the nineteenth century, are pre-eminently the best. Both
possess considerable merit and are worthy of the highest comic
traditions of the theatre.

As might have been expected, the dissolution of the Rump Parliament let
loose a flood of political literature, squibs, satires and lampoons.
Such works as _The famous Tragedie of the Life and Death of Mrs. Rump
... as it was presented on a burning stage at Westminster, the 29th of
May, 1660_ (4to, 1660), are of course valueless save from a purely
historical interest. A large number of songs and ballads were brought
together and published in two parts, 1662, reprint 1874. This collection
(_The Rump_), sometimes witty, sometimes angry, sometimes obscene, is
weighty evidence of the loathing inspired by the republicans and their
misrule, but it is of so personal and topical a nature that the
allusions would hardly be understood by any one who had not made a very
close and extended study of those critical months.

THEATRICAL HISTORY.

_The Roundheads; or, The Good Old Cause_ was produced at the Duke's
Theatre in