As we have supposed Wilson himself to have acted Simplicity in "The three Ladies of London," we may perhaps conclude that he sustained the same character in "The three Lords and three Ladies of London." The part was an excellent one for the display of comic humour and clownish drollery, and the enumeration of the old ballads he sings and sells needs no illustration here, where, in fact, it would be out of place. The familiar manner in which Simplicity at times addresses the audience, for the sake of raising a laugh, is even more unlicensed in this play than in its predecessor, and we never before saw the words "To the audience" introduced, by way of stage-direction to the performer, that he might appeal to the spectators.[18]
The copy of this play most employed in the ensuing pages is the property of the Editor, but he has had an opportunity of comparing it with another in the library of the Duke of Devonshire.
The connection between the productions of our ancient and more modern stage, such as it existed at the close of the reign of Elizabeth, is even more slightly evidenced by the drama which conies last in our volume, the main features of which bear only a distant resemblance to our drama, while it was still under the trammels of allegorical impersonation. Nevertheless, the likeness is to be traced without difficulty; and when we find such a character as Honesty most prominently engaged from the beginning to the end of the performance (to say nothing of the introduction of the representative of the principle of evil in two passages), the mind is carried back to a period of our theatrical history when such characters were alone employed on our stage. Honesty has no necessary connection with the plot, nor with its development, beyond the exposure by his means of fraud, flattery, and hypocrisy: he bears no relation, however distant, to any of the parties engaged in the performance, and seems to have been designed by the unknown author as a sort of running commentator and bitter satirist upon the vices and follies of mankind. On the other hand, the chief characters among the _dramatis personae_ are real and historical, and King Edgar and Bishop Dunstan, with Ethenwald and Alfrida, may be said to figure prominently throughout. The Knight, the Squire, and the Farmer, who make their appearance further on, are clearly embodiments of the several classes of society to which they appertain. Thus, although the "Knack to know a Knave" makes a nearer approach to comedy than any of the four dramas which precede it, it still by no means entirely discards the use of personages of a description which, many years earlier, engrossed our stage. Characters and scenes of life and manners are blended with others supported only by conventional impersonations, in which the dialogue is not intended to advance the plot, but merely to enforce a lesson of morality, probity, or discretion.