The acting of children in adult characters is of very ancient date. Labathiel Pavy, a boy who died in his thirteenth year, was so admirable an actor of old men, that Ben Jonson, in his elegant epitaph on him, says, the fates thought him one, and therefore cut the thread of life. This boy acted in “Cynthia’s Revels” and “The Poetaster,” in 1600 and 1601, in which year he probably died. The poet speaks of him with interest and affection.
Weep with me all you that read
This little story;
And know for whom a tear you shed
Death’s self is sorry.
’Twas a child that did so thrive
In grace and feature,
That heaven and nature seem’d to strive
Which own’d the creature.
Years he number’d, scarce thirteen
When fates turn’d cruel,
Yet three fill’d Zodiacs had he been
The stage’s jewel.
And did act, what now we moan,
Old men so duly,
As sooth, the Parcæ thought him one,
He played so truly.
Jonson.
A Dumb Peal of Grandsire Triples.
In the just departed summer, (1827,) on my way from Keston, I stept into “The Sun—R. Tape,” at Bromley, to make inquiry of the landlord respecting a stage to London; and, over the parlour mantelpiece, carefully glazed, in a gilt frame, beneath the flourishing surmounting scroll, there appeared the following inscription “in letters of gold:”—