ill preserved alive, as it
were by stealth, the suppressed spirit of the drama. That he merited the
distinctive epithet of "the incomparable Robert Cox," as Kirkman calls
him, we can only judge by the memorial of our mimetic genius, which will
be best given in Kirkman's words. "As meanly as you may now think of
these Drolls, they were then acted by the best comedians; and, I may
say, by some that then exceeded all now living; the incomparable Robert
Cox, who was not only the principal actor, but also the contriver and
author of most of these farces. How have I heard him cried up for his
_John Swabber_, and _Simpleton the Smith_; in which he being to appear
with a large piece of bread and butter, I have frequently known several
of the female spectators and auditors to long for it; and once that
well-known natural, _Jack Adams of Clerkenwell_, seeing him with bread
and butter on the stage, and knowing him, cried out, 'Cuz! Cuz! give me
some!' to the great pleasure of the audience. And so naturally did he
act the smith's part, that being at a fair in a country town, and that
farce being presented, the only master-smith of the town came to him,
saying, 'Well, although your father speaks so ill of you, yet when the
fair is done, if you will come and work with me, I will give you twelve
pence a week more than I give any other journeyman.' Thus was he taken
for a smith bred, that was, indeed, as much of any trade."

To this low state the gloomy and exasperated fanatics, who had so often
smarted under the satirical whips of the dramatists, had reduced the
drama itself; without, however, extinguishing the talents of the
players, or the finer ones of those who once derived their fame from
that noble arena of genius, the English stage. At the first suspension
of the theatre by the Long Parliament in 1642, they gave vent to their
feelings in an admirable satire. About this time "petitions" to the
parliament from various classes were put into vogue; multitudes were
presented to the House from all parts of the country, and from the city
of London; and some of these were extraordinary. The _porters_, said to
have been 15,000 in number, declaimed with great eloquence on the
bloodsucking malignants for insulting the privileges of parliament, and
threatened to come to extremities, and make good the saying "necessity
has no law;" there was one from the _beggars_, who declared, that by
means of the bishops and popish lords they knew not whe