and inventions of an
individual perfumer. Attempts to follow Parisian example, and to make
the playbill at once a vehicle for general advertisements and a source
of amusing information upon theatrical subjects, have been ventured
here occasionally, but without decided success. From time to time
papers started with this object under such titles as the "Opera
Glass," the "Curtain," the "Drop Scene," &c., have appeared, but they
have failed to secure a sufficiency of patronage. The playgoer's
openness to receive impressions or information of any kind by way of
employment during the intervals of representation, has not been
unperceived by the advertisers, however, and now and then, as a
result, a monstrosity called an "advertising curtain" has disfigured
the stage. Some new development of the playbill in this direction may
be in store for us in the future. The difficulty lies, perhaps, in the
gilding of the pill. Advertisements by themselves are not very
attractive reading, and a mixed audience cannot safely be credited
with a ruling appetite merely for dramatic intelligence.

CHAPTER VI.

STROLLING PLAYERS.

It is rather the public than the player that strolls nowadays. The
theatre is stationary--the audience peripatetic. The wheels have been
taken off the cart of Thespis. Hamlet's line, "Then came each actor on
his ass," or the stage direction in the old "Taming of the Shrew"
(1594), "Enter two players with packs on their backs," no longer
describes accurately the travelling habits of the histrionic
profession. But of old the country folk had the drama brought as it
were to their doors, and just as they purchased their lawn and
cambric, ribbons and gloves, and other raiment and bravery of the
wandering pedlar--the Autolycus of the period--so all their playhouse
learning and experience they acquired from the itinerant actors. These
were rarely the leading performers of the established London
companies, however, unless it so happened that the capital was
suffering from a visitation of the plague. "Starring in the provinces"
was not an early occupation of the players of good repute. As a rule,
it was only the inferior actors who quitted town, and as Dekker
contemptuously says, "travelled upon the hard hoof from village to
village for cheese and buttermilk." "How chances it they travel?"
inquires Hamlet concerning "the tragedians of the city"--"their
_residence_ both in reputation and profit were better both ways.