ce of
_Tarugo's Wiles, or the Coffee House_, a comedy, in 1667, which Samuel
Pepys described as "the most ridiculous and insipid play I ever saw in
my life." The author was Thomas St. Serf. The piece opens in a lively
manner, with a request on the part of its fashionable hero for a change
of clothes. Accordingly, Tarugo puts off his "vest, hat, perriwig, and
sword," and serves the guests to coffee, while the apprentice acts his
part as a gentleman customer. Presently other "customers of all trades
and professions" come dropping into the coffee house. These are not
always polite to the supposed coffee-man; one complains of his coffee
being "nothing but warm water boyl'd with burnt beans," while another
desires him to bring "chocolette that's prepar'd with water, for I hate
that which is encouraged with eggs." The pedantry and nonsense uttered
by a "schollar" character is, perhaps, an unfair specimen of
coffee-house talk; it is especially to be noticed that none of the
guests ventures upon the dangerous ground of politics.

In the end, the coffee-master grows tired of his clownish visitors,
saying plainly, "This rudeness becomes a suburb tavern rather than my
coffee house"; and with the assistance of his servants he "thrusts 'em
all out of doors, after the schollars and customers pay."

In 1694, there was published Jean Baptiste Rosseau's comedy, _Le Caffe_,
which appears to have been acted only once in Paris, although a later
English dramatist says it met with great applause in the French capital.
_Le Caffe_ was written in Laurent's cafe, which was frequented by
Fontenelle, Houdard de la Motte, Dauchet, the abbe Alary Boindin, and
others. Voltaire said that "this work of a young man without any
experience either of the world of letters or of the theater seems to
herald a new genius."

About this time it was the fashion for the coffee-house keepers of
Paris, and the waiters, to wear Armenian costumes; for Pascal had
builded better than he knew. In _La Foire Saint-Germain_, a comedy by
Dancourt, played in 1696, one of the principal characters is old
"Lorange, a coffee merchant clothed as an Armenian". In scene 5, he says
to Mlle. Mousset, "a seller of house dresses" that he has been "a
naturalized Armenian for three weeks."

Mrs. Susannah Centlivre (1667?-1723), in her comedy, _A Bold Stroke for
a Wife_, produced about 1719, has a scene laid in Jonathan's coffee
house about that period. While the stock jobbers are talk