acted, only it was my fortune to sit by a most pretty and most ingenuous
lady, which pleased me much."

Dryden, in his prologues, makes frequent mention of the Dorset Gardens
Theatre, more especially in the address on the opening of the new Drury
Lane, March, 1674. The Whitefriars house, under Davenant, had been the
first to introduce regular scenery, and it prided itself on stage pomp
and show. The year before, in Shadwell's opera of _The Tempest, or the
Enchanted Island_, the machinery was very costly, and one scene, in
which the spirits flew away with the wicked duke's table and viands just
as the company was sitting down, had excited the town to enthusiasm.
_Psyche_, another opera by Shadwell, perhaps adapted from Moliere's
Court spectacle, had succeeded the _Tempest_. St. Andre and his French
dancers were probably engaged in Shadwell's piece. The king, whose taste
and good sense the poet praises, had recommended simplicity of dress and
frugality of ornament. This Dryden took care to well remember. He
says:--

"You who each day can theatres behold,
Like Nero's palace, shining all in gold,
Our mean, ungilded stage will scorn, we fear,
And for the homely room disdain the cheer."

Then he brings in the dictum of the king:--

"Yet if some pride with want may be allowed,
We in our plainness may be justly proud:
Our royal master willed it should be so;
Whate'er he's pleased to own can need no show.
That sacred name gives ornament and grace,
And, like his stamp, makes basest metal pass.
'Twere folly now a stately pile to raise,
To build a playhouse, while you throw down plays.
While scenes, machines, and empty operas reign,
And for the pencil you the pen disdain:
While troops of famished Frenchmen hither drive,
And laugh at those upon whose alms they live,
Old English authors vanish, and give place
To these new conquerors of the Norman race."

And when, in 1671, the burnt-out Drury Lane company had removed to the
Portugal Street Theatre, Dryden had said, in the same strain,--

"So we expect the lovers, braves, and wits;
The gaudy house with scenes will serve for cits."

In another epilogue Dryden alludes sarcastically to the death of Mr.
Scroop, a young rake of fortune, who had just been run through by Sir
Thomas Armstrong, a sworn friend of the Duke of Monmouth, in a quarrel
at the Dorset Gardens Theatre, and died soon after. This