re now too mature, both in years and aspect, for such an
occupation.

Doubting we should never play agen,
We have played all our women into men!

says the prologue, introducing the first actress. Hart and Mohun,
Clun, Shatterel and Burt, who were now leading actors, had been
boy-actresses before the closing of the theatres. And even after the
Restoration, Mohun whose military title of major was always awarded
him in the playbills, still appeared as Bellamante, one of the
heroines of Shirley's tragedy of "Love's Cruelty." But this must have
been rather too absurd. At the time of the Restoration Mohun could
hardly have been less than thirty-five years of age. It is to be
noted, however, that Kynaston, a very distinguished boy-actress, who,
with Betterton, was a pupil of Rhodes, arose after the Restoration. Of
the earlier boy-actresses, their methods and artifices of performance,
Kynaston could have known nothing. He was undoubtedly a great artist,
winning extraordinary favour both in male and female characters, the
last and perhaps the best of all the epicene stage-players of the
past.

But if the stage, after the Restoration, differed greatly from what it
had been previously, it yet prospered and gained strength more and
more. It was most fortunate in its actors and actresses, who lent it
invaluable support. It never attained again the poetic heights to
which it had once soared; but it surrendered gradually much of its
grossness and its baser qualities, in deference to the improving
tastes of its patrons, and in alarm at the sound strictures of men
like Jeremy Collier. The plagiarist, the adapter, and the translator
did not relax their hold upon it; but eventually it obtained the aid
of numerous dramatists of enduring distinction. The fact that it again
underwent decline is traceable to various causes--among them, the
monopoly enjoyed by privileged persons under the patents granted by
Charles II.; the bungling intervention of court officials invested
with supreme power over the dramatic literature of the nation; and
defective copyright laws, that rendered justice neither to the native
nor to the foreign writer for the theatre. And something, too, the
stage of later years has been affected by a change in public taste,
which has subordinated the play to the novel or poem, and converted
playgoers into the supporters of circulating libraries.

CHAPTER XXII.

STAGE BANQUETS.

A veteran actor of inferi