*** The morris-dance was one of the most applauded merriments of Old England. Robin Hood, Little John, Friar Tuck, Maid Marian, the Queen or Lady of the May, the fool, the piper, to which were afterwards added a dragon, and a hobbyhorse, were the characters that figured away in that truly ancient and grotesque movement. Will Kempe, “the comical and conceited jest-monger, and vicegerent to the ghost of Dicke Tarleton,” who “raised many a roar by making faces and mouths of all sorts,” danced the morris with his men of Gotham, in his “Nine daies' wonder from London to Norwich.” Kempe's “new jigg,” rivalled in popularity his Peter in Romeo and Juliet; Dogberry, in “Much ado about nothing;” and
Justice Shallow, of which he was the original performer. In “Jacke Drum's Entertainment,” 4to. 1601, is the following song:
ON THE INTRODUCTION OF A WHITSUN MORRIS-DANCE.
“Skip it and trip it nimbly, nimbly, Tickle it, tickle it lustily, Strike up the tabour for the wenches' favour, Tickle it, tickle it, lustily. Let us be seene on Hygate Greene, To dance for the honour of Holloway. Sing we are come hither, let us spare for no leather, To dance for the honour of Holloway.”
May games, stage-plays, * fairs, and the various pastimes that delighted the commonalty, were sternly prohibited. The heart sickens at the cant and cruelty of these monstrous times, when fanaticism, with a dagger in one hand, and “_Hooks and Eyes for an Unbeliever's Breeches_,” in the other, revelled in the destruction of all that was intellectual in the land.
* Plays were suppressed by the Puritans in 1633. The actors were driven off the stage by the soldiers; and the only pleasantry that Messrs. “Praise-God-Barebones” and “Fight- the-good-fight,” indulged in, was “Enter red coat, exit hat and cloak;” a cant phrase in reference to this devout tyranny. Randolph, in “The Muses' Looking-glass,” makes a fanatic utter this charitable prayer:
“That the Globe, Wherein (quoth he) reigns a whole world of vice, Had been consum'd, the Phoenix burnt to ashes; The Fortune whipp'd for a blind--Blackfriars!
He wonders how it 'scap'd demolishing I' the time of Reformation: lastly, he wished The Bull might cross the Thames to the Bear Gardens, And there be soundly baited.