and the narrowness of the streets, the inhabitants could not, in an
afternoon, "take in any provision of beere, coales, wood, or hay;" the
passage through Ludgate was many times stopped up, people "in their
ordinary going" much endangered, quarrels and bloodshed occasioned,
and disorderly people, towards night, gathered together under pretence
of waiting for those at the plays. Christenings and burials were many
times disturbed; persons of honour and quality dwelling in the parish
were restrained, by the number of coaches, from going out or coming
home in seasonable time, to "the prejudice of their occasions;" and it
was suggested that, "if there should happen any misfortune of fire,"
it was not likely that any order could possibly be taken, since, owing
to the number of the coaches, no speedy passage could be made for
quenching the fire, to the endangering both of the parish and of the
city. It does not appear that any action on the part of Laud or the
Privy Council followed this curious petition.

It seems clear that the Elizabethan audiences were rather an unruly
congregation. There was much cracking of nuts and consuming of pippins
in the old playhouses; ale and wine were on sale, and tobacco was
freely smoked by the upper class of spectators, for it was hardly yet
common to all conditions. Previous to the performance, and during its
pauses, the visitors read pamphlets or copies of plays bought at the
playhouse-doors, and, as they drank and smoked, played at cards. In
his "Gull's Horn Book," 1609, Dekker tells his hero, "before the play
begins, fall to cards;" and, winning or losing, he is bidden to tear
some of the cards and to throw them about, just before the entrance of
the prologue. The ladies were treated to apples, and sometimes applied
their lips to a tobacco-pipe. Prynne, in his "Histriomastix," 1633,
states that, even in his time, ladies were occasionally "offered the
tobacco-pipe" at plays. Then, as now, new plays attracted larger
audiences than ordinary. Dekker observes, in his "News from Hell,"
1606, "It was a comedy to see what a crowding, as if it had been at a
new play, there was upon the Acherontic strand." How the spectators
comported themselves upon these occasions, Ben Jonson, "the Mirror of
Manners," as Mr. Collier well surnames him, has described in his
comedy "The Case is Altered," acted at Blackfriars about 1599. "But
the sport is, at a new play, to observe the sway and variety of
opinion t