suppressed. Nor is the contrast Mr. Gifford draws, between the conduct
of our actors at the time of the Civil War, and the proceedings of the
French players during the first French Revolution, altogether fair. As
Isaac Disraeli has pointed out, there was no question of suppressing
the stage in France--it was rather employed as an instrument in aid of
the Revolution. The actors may have sympathised sincerely with the
royal family in their afflicted state, but it was hardly to be
expected that men would abandon, on that account, the profession of
their choice, in which they had won real distinction, and which seemed
to flourish the more owing to the excited condition of France. The
French Revolution, in truth, brought to the stage great increase of
national patronage.

The Civil War concluded, and the cause of King Charles wholly lost,
the actors were at their wits' end to earn bread. Certain of them
resolved to defy the law, and to give theatrical performances in spite
of the Parliament. Out of the wreck of the companies of the different
theatres they made up a tolerable troop, and ventured to present some
few plays, with as much caution and privacy as possible, at the
Cockpit, in Drury Lane. This was in the winter of 1648. Doubtless
there were many to whom the stage was dear, who were willing enough to
encourage the poor players. Playgoing had now become as a vice or a
misdemeanour, to be prosecuted in secret--like dram-drinking. The
Cockpit representations lasted but a few days. During a performance of
Fletcher's tragedy of "Rollo, Duke of Normandy," in which such
excellent actors as Lowin, Taylor, Pollard, Burt, and Hart were
concerned, a party of troopers beset the house, broke in about the
middle of the play, and carried off the players, accoutred as they
were in their stage dresses, to Hatton House, then a prison, where,
after being detained some time, they were plundered of their clothes
and dismissed. "Afterwards, in Oliver's time," as an old chronicler of
dramatic events has left upon record, "they used to act privately,
three or four miles or more out of town, now here, now there,
sometimes in noblemen's houses--in particular Holland House, at
Kensington--where the nobility and gentry who met (but in no great
numbers) used to make a sum for them, each giving a broad-piece or the
like." The widow of the Earl of Holland who was beheaded in March,
1649, occupied Holland House at this time. She was the granddaught