matter was deemed important enough to justify royal intervention. An
order was issued in 1665, reciting that complaints had been made by
"our servants, the actors in the Royal Theatre," of divers persons
refusing to pay at the first door of the said theatre, thereby
obliging the doorkeepers to send after, solicit, and importune them
for their entrance-money, and stating it to be the royal will and
pleasure, for the prevention of these disorders, and so that such as
are employed by the said actors might have no opportunity of deceiving
them, that all persons thenceforward coming to the said theatre should
at the first door pay their entrance-money, which was to be restored
to them again in case they returned the same way before the end of the
act. The guards attending the theatre, and all others whom it might
concern, were charged to see that this order was obeyed, and to return
to the Lord Chamberlain the names of such persons as offered "any
violence contrary to this our pleasure."

Apparently the royal decree was not very implicitly obeyed by the
playgoers. At any rate we find, under date January 7th, 1668, the
following entry in Mr. Pepys's "Diary" bearing upon the matter: "To
the Nursery, but the house did not act to-day; and so I to the other
two playhouses, into the pit to gaze up and down, and there did by
this means for nothing see an act in the 'School of Compliments,' at
the Duke of York's house, and 'Henry IV.' at the King's House; but not
liking either of the plays, I took my coach again and home." At the
trial of Lord Mohun, in 1692, for the murder of Mountford, the actor,
John Rogers, one of the doorkeepers of the theatre, deposes that he
applied to his lordship and to Captain Hill, his companion, "for the
overplus of money for coming in, because they came out of the pit upon
the stage. They would not give it. Lord Mohun said if I brought any of
our masters he would slit their noses." It was the fashion for patrons
of the stage at this time to treat its professors with great scorn,
and often to view them with a kind of vindictive jealousy, "I see the
gallants do begin to be tired with the vanity and pride of the theatre
actors, who are indeed grown very proud and rich," noted Pepys, in
1661. In the second year of her reign, Queen Anne issued a decree "for
the better regulation of the theatres," the drama being at this period
the frequent subject of royal interference, and strictly commanded
that "no person