Earl of Essex seemed to have no distress but his
poverty; and my Lord Foppington wanted any better means to show
himself a fop than by wearing stockings of different colours. In a
word, though they have had a full barn for many days together, our
itinerants are so wretchedly poor that the heroes appear only like
sturdy beggars, and the heroines gipsies." It is added that the stage
of these performers "is here in its original situation of a cart." In
the "Memoirs of Munden" a still stranger stage is mentioned. A
strolling company performing in Wales had for theatre a bedroom, and
for stage a large four-post bed! The spaces on either side were
concealed from the audience by curtains, and formed the tiring-rooms
of the ladies and gentlemen of the troop. On this very curious stage
the comedian afterwards famous as Little Knight, but then new to his
profession, appeared as Acres in "The Rivals," and won great applause.
Goldsmith's Strolling Player is made to reveal many of the smaller
needs and shifts of his calling, especially in the matter of costume.
"We had figures enough, but the difficulty was to dress them. The same
coat that served Romeo, turned with the blue lining outwards, served
for his friend Mercutio: a large piece of crape sufficed at once for
Juliet's petticoat and pall; a pestle and mortar from a neighbouring
apothecary answered all the purposes of a bell; and our landlord's own
family, wrapped in white sheets, served to fill up the procession. In
short, there were but three figures among us that might be said to be
dressed with any propriety; I mean the nurse, the starved apothecary,
and myself." Of his own share in the representation the stroller
speaks candidly enough: "I snuffed the candles, and, let me tell you,
that without a candle-snuffer the piece would lose half its
embellishments." But there has always been forthcoming a very abundant
supply of stories of this kind, not always to be understood literally,
however, concerning the drama under difficulties, and the comical side
of the player's indigence, distresses, and quaint artifices to conceal
his poverty.

A word should be said as to the courage and enterprise of our early
strollers. Travelling is nowadays so easy a matter that we are apt to
forget how solemnly it was viewed by our ancestors. In the last
century a man thought about making his will as a becoming preliminary
to his journeying merely from London to Edinburgh. But the strollers
wer