“Leatherhead. A better way, sir; that is too learned and poetical for our audience: what do they know what Hellespont is? guilty of true love’s blood? or what Abydos is? or the other Sestos height?—No; I have entreated master Littlewit to take a little pains to reduce it to a more familiar strain for our people.
“Littlewit. I have only made it a little easy and modern for the times, sir, that’s all: as for the Hellespont, I imagine our Thames here; and then Leander, I make a dyer’s son about Puddle-wharf; and Hero, a wench o’ the Bank-side, who going over one morning to Old Fish-street, Leander spies her land at Trig’s-stairs, and falls in love with her: now do I introduce Cupid, having metamorphosed himself into a drawer, and he strikes Hero in love with a pint of sherry.”
While “Cokes is handling the puppets” the doorkeepers call out “Twopence a-piece, gentlemen; an excellent motion.” Other visitors enter and take their seats, and Cokes, while waiting with some of his acquaintance, employs the time at the “game of vapours, which is nonsense; every man to oppose the last man that spoke, whether it concerned him or no.” The audience become impatient, and one calls out, “Do you hear puppet-master, these are tedious vapours; when begin you?” Filcher, Leatherhead’s man, with the other doorkeepers, continue to bawl, “Twopence a-piece, sir; the best motion in the Fair.” Meanwhile the company talk, and one relates that he has already seen in the Fair, the eagle; the black wolf; the bull with five legs, which “was a calf at Uxbridge Fair two years agone;” the dogs that dance the morrice; and “the hare o’ the taber.”
Ben Jonson’s mention of the hare that beat the tabor at Bartholomew Fair in his time, is noticed by the indefatigable and accurate Strutt; who gives the following [representation] of the feat itself, which he affirms, when he copied it from a drawing in the Harleian collection, (6563,) to have been upwards of four hundred years old.
Hare and Tabor.
For an idea of Leatherhead’s motion take as follows: it commences thus:—
Leatherhead.
Gentiles, that no longer your expectations may wander,
Behold our chief actor, amorous Leander;
With a great deal of cloth, lapp’d about him like a scarf,
For he yet serves his father, a dyer at Puddle-wharf.
Which place we’ll make bold with to call it our Abidus,
As the Bank-side is our Sestos; and let it not be denied us
Now as he is beating, to make the dye take the fuller,
Who chances to come by, but fair Hero in a sculler;
And seeing Leander’s naked leg, and goodly calf,
Cast at him from the boat a sheep’s eye and an half,
Now she is landed, and the sculler come back,
By and by you shall see what Leander doth lack.
Puppet Leander. Cole, Cole, old Cole.
Leatherhead. That is the sculler’s name without controul.
Pup. Leander. Cole, Cole, I say, Cole.
Leatherhead. We do hear you.
Pup. Leander. Old Cole.
Leatherhead. Old Cole? is the dyer turn’d collier?—
Pup. Leander. Why Cole, I say, Cole.
Leatherhead. It’s the sculler you need.
Pup. Leander. Aye, and be hang’d.
Leatherhead. Be hang’d! look you yonder,
Old Cole, you must go hang with master Leander.
Puppet Cole. Where is he?
Puppet Leander. Here Cole. What fairest of fairs
Was that fare that thou landest but now at Trig’s-stairs?
Puppet Cole. It is lovely Hero.
Puppet Leander. Nero?
Puppet Cole. No, Hero.
Leatherhead. It is Hero
Of the Bank-side, he saith, to tell you truth, without erring,
Is come over into Fish-street to eat some fresh herring.
Leander says no more but as fast as he can,
Gets on all his best clothes, and will after to the swan.