players who are to be found in these last years of the nineteenth
century, travelling from one third-class hotel to another, and
wondering whether they will ever make enough money to return home and
sun themselves on the New York Rialto.

Humble as they were in the time of Queen Anne, her Government saw fit
to subject the strollers to what might be called police regulation,
and the Master of the Revels, who was a censor of plays and a
supervisor-in-general of theatrical matters, had to issue an imposing
order setting forth that whereas "several Companies of Strolling
Actors pretend to have Licenses from Noblemen,[A] and presume under
that pretence to avoid the Master of the Revels, his Correcting
their Plays, Drolls, Farces, and Interludes: which being against Her
Majesty's Intentions and Directions to the said Master: These are to
signifie That such Licenses are not of any Force or authority. There
are likewise several Mountebanks Acting upon Stages, and Mountbanks
on Horseback, Persons that keep Poppets, and others that make Shew
of Monsters, and strange Sights of Living Creatures, who presume to
Travel without the said Master of the Revels' Licence," &c. &c. The
whole pronunciamento went to show that the despised strollers were not
beneath the notice of a lynx-eyed Government.

[Footnote A: A survival of the days when noblemen often had their own
companies of actors, and were empowered to regulate the performances
of these dramatic servants.]

It is curious that the functionary to whom was assigned the important
critical duty of revising plays should also be obliged to concern
himself with the doings of puppets and country "side shows." Yet
before the law there was very little if any difference between a