own ruins.
Alexander Brome, in his verses on Richard Brome's Comedies, discloses
the secret motive:--

---- 'Tis worth our note,
Bishops and _players_, both suffer'd in one vote:
And reason good, for _they_ had cause to fear them;
One did suppress their schisms, and t'other JEER THEM.
Bishops were guiltiest, for they swell'd with riches;
T'other had nought but verses, songs and speeches,
And by their ruin, the state did no more
But rob the spittle, and unrag the poor.

They poured forth the long-suppressed bitterness of their souls six
years afterwards, in their ordinance of 1648, for "the suppression of
all stage-plaies, and for the taking down all their boxes, stages, and
seats whatsoever, that so there might be no more plaies acted." "Those
proud parroting players" are described as "a sort of superbious
ruffians; and, because sometimes the asses are clothed in lions' skins,
the dolts imagine themselves somebody, and walke in as great state as
Caesar." This ordinance against "boxes, stages, and seats," was, without
a metaphor, a war of extermination. They passed their ploughshare over
the land of the drama, and sowed it with their salt; and the spirit
which raged in the governing powers appeared in the deed of one of their
followers. When an actor had honourably surrendered himself in battle to
this spurious "saint," he exclaimed, "Cursed be he who doth the work of
the Lord negligently," and shot his prisoner because he was an actor!

We find some account of the dispersed actors in that curious morsel of
"Historica Histrionica," preserved in the twelfth volume of Dodsley's
Old Plays; full of the traditional history of the theatre, which the
writer appears to have gleaned from the reminiscences of the old
cavalier, his father.

The actors were "Malignants" to a man, if we except that "wretched
actor," as Mr. Gifford distinguishes him, who was, however, only such
for his politics: and he pleaded hard for his treason, that he really
was a presbyterian, although an actor. Of these men, who had lived in
the sunshine of a court, and amidst taste and criticism, many perished
in the field, from their affection for their royal master. Some sought
humble occupations; and not a few, who, by habits long indulged, and
their own turn of mind, had hands too delicate to put to work, attempted
often to entertain secret audiences, and were often dragged to prison.

These disturb