as they laugh at us, they do at you;
Only i' the contrary we disagree,
For you can make them cry faster than we.
Your tragedies more real are express'd,
You murder men in earnest, we in jest:
There we come short; but if you follow thus,
Some wise men fear you will come short of us.
As humbly as we did begin, we pray,
Dear schoolmasters, you'll give us leave to play
Quickly before the king comes; for we would
Be glad to say you've done a little good
Since you have sat: your play is almost done
As well as ours--would it had ne'er begun.
But we shall find, ere the last act be spent,
_Enter the King, exeunt the Parliament._
And _Heigh then up we go!_ who by the frown
Of guilty members have been voted down,
Until a legal trial show us how
You used the king, and _Heigh then up go you!_
So pray your humble slaves with all their powers,
That when they have their due, you may have yours.

Such was the petition of the suppressed players in 1642; but, in 1653,
their secret exultation appears, although the stage was not yet restored
to them, in some verses prefixed to RICHARD BROME'S Plays, by ALEXANDER
BROME, which may close our little history. Alluding to the theatrical
people, he moralises on the fate of players:--

See the strange twirl of times; when such poor things
Outlive the dates of parliaments or kings!
This revolution makes exploded wit
Now see the fall of those that ruin'd it;
And the condemned stage hath now obtain'd
To see her executioners arraign'd.
There's nothing permanent: those high great men,
That rose from dust, to dust may fall again;
And fate so orders things, that the same hour
Sees the same man both in contempt and power;
For the multitude, in whom the power doth lie,
Do in one breath cry _Hail!_ and _Crucify!_

At this period, though deprived of a theatre, the taste for the drama
was, perhaps, the more lively among its lovers; for, besides the
performances already noticed, sometimes connived at, and sometimes
protected by bribery, in Oliver's time they stole into a practice of
privately acting at noblemen's houses, particularly at Holland-house, at
Kensington: and "Alexander Goff, _the woman-actor_, was the jackal, to
give notice of time and place to the lovers of the drama," according to
the writer of "Historica Histrionica." The players, urged by their
necessiti