Fill my discourses up drinking tobacco._

And in Ben Jonson's "Every Man out of his Humour," 1600, Fastidious
Brisk, "a neat, spruce, affecting courtier," smokes while he talks to
his mistress. A feather-headed gallant, when in the presence of
ladies, often found himself, like others of his tribe of later date,
gravelled for lack of matter for conversation, and the puffing of
tobacco-smoke helped to occupy the pauses.

When our gallant went to the theatre he loved to occupy one of the
stools at the side of the stage. There he could sit and smoke and
embarrass the actors with his audible criticisms of play and players.

_It chaunc'd me gazing at the Theater,
To spie a Lock-Tabacco Chevalier
Clowding the loathing ayr with foggie fume
Of Dock Tobacco friendly foe to rhume_--

says a versifier of 1599, who did not like smoking in the theatre and
so abused the quality of the tobacco smoked--though admitting its
medicinal virtue. Dekker suggests, probably with truth, that one
reason why the young gallant liked to push his way to a stool on the
stage, notwithstanding "the mewes and hisses of the opposed
rascality"--the "mewes" must have been the squeals or whistles
produced by the instrument which was later known as a cat-call--was
the opportunity such a prominent position afforded for the display of
"the best and most essential parts of a gallant--good cloathes, a
proportionable legge, white hand, the Persian lock, and a tolerable
beard." Apparently, too, serving-boys were within call, and thus
lights could easily be obtained, which were handed to one another by