epeating what he knew was
sure of pleasing. Our theatres of the Elizabethan period seem to have
had here the extemporal comedy after the manner of the Italians; we
surely possess one of these _Scenarios_, in the remarkable "Platts,"
which were accidentally discovered at Dulwich College, bearing every
feature of an Italian _Scenario_. Steevens calls them "_a mysterious
fragment_ of ancient stage direction," and adds, that "the paper
describes a species of dramatic entertainment of which no memorial is
preserved in any annals of the English stage."[53] The commentators on
Shakspeare appear not to have known the nature of these Scenarios. The
"Platt," as it is called, is fairly written in a large hand, containing
directions appointed to be stuck up near the prompter's station; and it
has even an oblong hole in its centre to admit of being suspended on a
wooden peg. Particular scenes are barely ordered, and the names, or
rather nicknames, of several of the players, appear in the most familiar
manner, as they were known to their companions in the rude green-room of
that day: such as "Pigg, White and Black Dick and Sam, Little Will
Barne, Jack Gregory, and the Red-faced fellow."[54] Some of these
"Platts" are on solemn subjects, like the tragic pantomime; and in some
appear "Pantaloon, and his man Peascod, with _spectacles_." Steevens
observes, that he met with no earlier example of the appearance of
Pantaloon, as a specific character on our stage; and that this direction
concerning "the spectacles" cannot fail to remind the reader of a
celebrated passage in _As You Like It_:

----The lean and _slipper'd Pantaloon_,
With _spectacles_ on nose----.

Perhaps, he adds, Shakspeare alludes to this personage, as habited in
his own time. The old age of Pantaloon is marked by his _leanness_, and
his _spectacles_ and his _slippers_. He always runs after Harlequin, but
cannot catch him; as he runs in _slippers_ and without _spectacles_, is
liable to pass him by without seeing him. Can we doubt that this
Pantaloon had come from the Italian theatre, after what we have already
said? Does not this confirm the conjecture, that there existed an
intercourse between the Italian theatre and our own? Farther, Tarleton
the comedian, and others, celebrated for their "extemporal wit," was the
writer or inventor of one of these "Platts." Stowe records of one of our
actors that "he had a quick, delicate, refined, _extemporal_ wit." And
of an