oducing the four stock characters which have
lasted with little disguise for so many centuries There was an old
"grandfather," the forerunner of the modern pantaloon; a cunning
sharper; a garrulous glutton with a fat face (known as "Chops"); and
an amorous Simple Simon. Sometimes types of foreigners or provincials
were introduced, with caricatures of their dress and language, after
the manner, and probably with the veracity, of the stage Scotchman,
Irishman, or Frenchman. All these parts were played in masks.

The interlude again was a slight piece with very little plot, and
composed in a large measure of buffoonery, practical jokes, hitting
and slapping, and dancing. Topical allusions and contemporary
caricatures were freely introduced, and the whole performance, however
coarsely amusing, was both vulgar and indecent. In these pieces no
masks were worn and also no shoes, and the women's parts--taken in the
other instances by men and boys--were actually played by females,
whose posture-dances were no credit to their sex.

The dumb-shows or "pantomimes" were performances in which expressive
and elaborate gestures and movements were left to tell the whole tale.
For this kind of piece the actors naturally required not only uncommon
cleverness but also great suppleness of body. As usual, these
qualities, together with the qualities of voice, the magnificent
dress, and the carefully cultivated long hair, won for the actor
demoralising influence over too large a number of the more
impressionable and untrammelled Roman dames.

Meanwhile the huge audience must not be conceived as sitting in quiet
and restrained attention, but as roaring with laughter, applauding and
stamping, shouting approval and encores, hissing and waving
handkerchiefs. And meanwhile the _claqueurs_ will have been duly
distributed by those interested in the success of the performance.
Every now and then a fine rain of saffron perfume is shed over the
audience from pipes and jets distributed round the building. It
deserves remark also that in the theatre, as in the other places of
amusement, the gathering frequently broke out into demonstrations of
its feeling towards persons and politics. There was safety in numbers,
and the applause or hissing which greeted a personage or a topical
allusion--or a line which could be twisted into such--could hardly be
laid to the account of any individual. A certain license was conceded
and fully utilised at the festivals