[57] Preface to The Good Natured Man.
[58] See, for example, Steele and The Sentimental Comedy, by M. E. Hare, in Eighteenth Century Literature, An Oxford Miscellany, Oxford, 1909. This speaks of “Sentimental Comedy invented by the great essayist Sir Richard Steele.”
[59] Macaulay, History of England, Chapter VII.
[60] During the reign of Charles not every one had been in entire sympathy with the state of the theatre. Evelyn, in a letter to Viscount Carnbury, February 9, 1664–1665, in speaking of the acting of plays on Saturday evenings says: “Plays are now with us become a licentious excess, and a vice, and need severe censors that should look as well to their morality as to their lines and numbers.”
[61] Traill, Social England, IV. 593.
[62] The Laureat, p. 53. “I can remember, that soon after the publication of Collier’s book, several informations were brought against the players, at the instance and at the expense of the Society for the Reformation of Manners, for immoral words and expressions, contra bonos mores, uttered on the stage. Several informers were placed in the pit, and other parts of the house, to note down the words spoke, and by whom, to be able to swear to them and many of them would have been ruined by these troublesome prosecutions, had not Queen Anne, well satisfied that these informers lived upon their oaths, and that what they did, proceeded not from conscience, but from interest, by a timely nolle prosequi, put an end to the inquisition.”
[63] The “Joan Sanderson” was a dance in which each one of the company takes part. It began by the first dancer’s choosing a partner, who in turn chose another, the chain continuing until each one had danced alone and with a partner. See G. C. M. Smith, Fucus Histriomastix, Introduction, p. xviii.
[64] Apology, I, 85.
[65] Ibid., I, 194–5.
[66] Dramatic Miscellanies, III, 432.