[Come[347] to them, and fencing of a congey with arms and legs, be round with them.
Gentlemen,[348] I could wish for the women’s sakes you had all soft cushions; and, gentlewomen, I could wish that for the men’s sakes you had all more easy standings.
What would they wish more but the play now? and that they shall have instantly. 144
[Exeunt.
[326] The Induction was added in ed. 2.
[327] For an account of William Sly and the other actors introduced in the Induction, see Collier’s Memoirs of the Principal Actors in the Plays of Shakespeare.
[328] The Malcontent had been acted at the Blackfriars Theatre, a private theatre. It was afterwards acted at the Globe, a public theatre.
[329] It was a common practice for gallants to sit on the stage; but when a coxcomb obstructed the view by planting himself in a prominent position, the audience naturally took offence. Dekker, in the chapter of the Gull’s Horn-Book, describing “how a gallant should behave himself at a play-house,” writes:—“But on the very rushes where the comedy is to dance, yea, and under the state of Cambyses himself, must our feathered estridge, like a piece of ordnance, be planted valiantly (because impudently), beating down the mews and hisses of the opposed rascality.”
[330] Sixpence, as we learn from the Gull’s Horn-Book, Induction to Cynthia’s Revels, &c., was the usual charge for the loan of a stool. Francis Lenton in his Young Gallant’s Whirligig tells us of an “expensive fool” who was ready to “pay an angel for a paltry stool.” It was not uncommon to pay a shilling for the convenience.
[331] Dr. Karl Elze in his Notes on the Elizabethan Dramatists (2nd. ser., pp. 160-4) indulges in some speculations about this actor.