save for the details of Lady Fulbank's design upon Gayman, when he is
conveyed to her house by masqued devils and conducted to her chamber by
Pert dressed as a withered beldame. In this Mrs. Behn exactly copies
Shirley's excellent comedy, _The Lady of Pleasure_, produced at the
Private House in Drury Lane, October, 1635, (4to 1637). In the course of
Lady Bornwell's intrigue with Kickshaw he is taken blindfold to the
house of the procuress, Decoy, who, in the guise of a doting crone,
leads him to a chamber where he imagines he is to meet a succubus,
whilst the Lady, unknown to him, entertains him herself.

THEATRICAL HISTORY.

_The Lucky Chance; or, An Alderman's Bargain_, produced at the Theatre
Royal, Drury Lane, in 1687, was, with the exception of the disapproval
of a certain pudibond clique, received with great favour, and kept the
stage for a decade or more. During the summer season of 1718 there was,
on 24 July, a revival, 'not acted twenty years,' of this witty comedy at
Lincoln's Inn Fields. Gayman was played by Frank Leigh, son of the
famous low comedian; Sir Feeble Fainwou'd by Bullock.

On 25 November, 1786, there was produced at Drury Lane a comedy by Mrs.
Hannah Cowley (1743-1809), a prolific but mediocre dramatist, entitled,
_A School for Greybeards; or, The Mourning Bride_ (4to 1786 and 1787).
Genest writes: 'On the first night it struck me that I had seen
something like the play before and when the 4th act came I was fully
satisfied--that part of the plot which concerns Antonia, Henry, and
Gasper [Donna Antonia (The Mourning Bride), Mrs. Crouch; Don Henry,
Kemble; Don Gasper (a Greybeard), Parsons; Donna Seraphina, Miss
Farren]; and even the outlines of Seraphina's character, are taken from
_The Lucky Chance_--as Mrs. Behn's play, though a very good one is too
indecent to be ever represented again. Mrs. Cowley might without any
disgrace to herself have borrowed whatever she pleased provided she had
made a proper acknowledgement--instead of which she says in her preface
"--The idea of the business which concerns Antonia, Henry and Gasper was
presented to me in an obsolete Comedy; I say the _idea_, for when it is
known that in the original the scene lay among traders in London--and
those traders of the lowest and most detestable manners, it will be
conceived at once, that in removing it to Portugal and fixing the
characters among the nobility, it was hardly possible to carry with me
_more_ than the i