those violent spirits with some tearing tragedy full of fights
and skirmishes ... the spectators frequently mounting the stage, and
making a more bloody catastrophe among themselves than the players
did." Occasionally, it appears, the audience compelled the actors to
perform, not the drama their programmes had announced, but some other,
such as "the major part of the company had a mind to: sometimes
'Tamerlane;' sometimes 'Jugurtha;' sometimes 'The Jew of Malta;' and,
sometimes, parts of all these; and, at last, none of the three taking,
they were forced to undress and put off their tragic habits, and
conclude the day with 'The Merry Milkmaids.'" If it so chanced that
the players were refractory, then "the benches, the tiles, the lathes,
the stones, oranges, apples, nuts, flew about most liberally; and as
there were mechanics of all professions, everyone fell to his own
trade, and dissolved a house on the instant, and made a ruin of a
stately fabric. It was not then the most mimical nor fighting man
could pacify; prologues nor epilogues would prevail; the Devil and the
Fool [evidently two popular characters at this time] were quite out of
favour; nothing but noise and tumult fills the house," &c. &c.

Concerning the dramatist of the time, upon the occasion of the first
performance of his play, his anxiety, irascibility, and peculiarities
generally, Ben Jonson provides sufficient information. "We are not so
officiously befriended by him," says one of the characters in the
Induction to "Cynthia's Revels," "as to have his presence in the
tiring-house, to prompt us aloud, stamp at the bookholder [or
prompter], swear at our properties, curse the poor tireman, rail the
musick out of tune, and sweat for every venial trespass we commit as
some author would." While, in the Induction to his "Staple of News,"
Jonson has clearly portrayed himself. "Yonder he is," says Mirth, in
reply to some remark touching the poet of the performance, "within--I
was in the tiring-house awhile, to see the actors dressed--rolling
himself up and down like a tun in the midst of them ... never did
vessel, or wort, or wine, work so ... a stewed poet!... he doth sit
like an unbraced drum, with one of his heads beaten out," &c. The
dramatic poets, it may be noted, were admitted gratis to the theatres,
and duly took their places among the spectators. Not a few of them
were also actors. Dekker, in his "Satiromastix," accuses Jonson of
sitting in the gallery