f manager,
proprietor, and actor. Even the fragments of the candles that had
lighted the representations were divided amongst the company.
Permission had always to be sought of the local magnates before a
performance could be given; and the best-dressed and most
cleanly-looking actor was deputed to make this application, as well as
to conciliate the farmer or innkeeper, whose barn, stable, or great
room was to be hired for the occasion. Churchill writes:

The strolling tribe, a despicable race,
Like wandering Arabs, shift from place to place.
Vagrants by law, to justice open laid,
They tremble, of the beadle's lash afraid;
And fawning, cringe for wretched means of life
To Madame Mayoress or his worship's wife.

"I'm a justice of the peace and know how to deal with strollers," says
Sir Tunbelly, with an air of menace, in "The Relapse." The
magistrates, indeed, were much inclined to deal severely with the
wandering actor, eyeing his calling with suspicion, and prompt to
enforce the laws against him. Thus we find in "Humphrey Clinker," the
mayor of Gloucester eager to condemn as a vagrant, and to commit to
prison with hard labour, young Mr. George Dennison, who, in the guise
of Wilson, a strolling player, had presumed to make love to Miss Lydia
Melford, the heroine of the story.

In truth, the stroller's life, with all its seeming license and
independence, must always have been attended with hardship and
privation. If the player had ever deemed his art the "idle calling"
many declared it to be, he was soon undeceived on that head. There was
but a thin partition between him and absolute want; meanwhile his
labour was incessant. The stage is a conservative institution,
adhering closely to old customs, manners, and traditions, and what
strolling had once been it continued to be almost for centuries. "A
company of strolling comedians," writes the author of "The Road to
Ruin," who had himself strolled in early life, "is a small kingdom, of
which the manager is the monarch. Their code of laws seems to have
existed, with little variation, since the days of Shakespeare." Who
can doubt that Hogarth's famous picture told the truth, not only of
the painter's own time, but of the past and of the future? The poor
player followed a sordid and wearisome routine. He was constrained to
devote long hours to rehearsal and to the study of various parts,
provided always he could obtain a sight of the book of the pl