present attraction of the scene, and the theatre became to him, "upon
a new stock, the most delightful of recreations."

Audiences have always been miscellaneous. Among them not only youth
and age, but rich and poor, wise and ignorant, good and bad, virtuous
and vicious, have alike found representation. The gallery and the
groundlings have been catered for not less than the spectators of the
boxes and private rooms; yet, upon the whole, the stage, from its
earliest period, has always provided entertainment of a reputable and
wholesome kind. Even in its least commendable condition--and this, so
far as England is concerned, we may judge to have been during the
reign of King Charles II.--it yet possessed redeeming elements. It was
never wholly bad, though it might now and then come very near to
seeming so. And what it was, the audience had made it. It reflected
their sentiments and opinions; it accorded with their moods and
humours; it was their creature; its performers were their most
faithful and zealous servants.

Playgoers, it appears, were not wont to ride to the theatre in coaches
until late in the reign of James I. Taylor, the water-poet, in his
invective against coaches, 1623, dedicated to all grieved "with the
world running on wheels," writes: "Within our memories our nobility
and gentry could ride well mounted, and sometimes walk on foot,
gallantly attended with fourscore brave fellows in blue coats, which
was a glory to our nation, far greater than forty of these leathern
tumbrels! Then, the name of coach was heathen Greek. Who ever saw, but
upon extraordinary occasions, Sir Philip Sidney and Sir Francis Drake
ride in a coach? They made small use of coaches; there were but few in
those times; and they were deadly foes to sloth and effeminacy. It is
in the memory of many when, in the whole kingdom, there was not one!