** Spence, in his anecdotes, describes a Mystery he saw at Turin, "where a damned female soul, in a gown of flame- coloured satin, intreats, as a favor, to be handed over to the fires of purgatory, for only as many years as there are drops of water in the ocean!"
*** "The Wits, or Sport upon Sport: being a curious collection of several Drolls and Farces, as they have been sundry times acted at Bartholomew and other Fairs, in halls and taverns, on mountebanks' stages at Charing Cross, Lincoln's Inn Fields, and other places, by Strolling Flayers, Fools, Fiddlers, and Zanies, with loud laughter and applause. Now newly collected by your old friend, Francis Kirkman, 1673." The author says, in his preface to the Second Part, "I have seen the Red Bull Playhouse, which was a large one, so full, that as many went back for want of room as had entered; and as meanly as you may think of these Drolls, they were acted by the best comedians then, and now in being. I once saw a piece at a country inn, called 'King Pharaoh, with Moses, Aaron, and some others; to explain which figures was added this piece of poetry,
Here Pharaoh, with his goggle eyes, does stare on The High Priest Moses, with the Prophet Aaron. Why, what a rascal Was he that would not let the people go to eat the Pascal!
I believe he who pictured King Pharaoh had never seen a king in his life; for all the majesty he was represented with was goggle eyes, that his picture might be answerable to the verse."
--or Sport upon Sport" and "The Stroller's Pacquet Open'd--except when a Smithfield bard, "bemus'd in beer," ventured upon originality, and added "Robin Hood, * an Opera," and "The Quaker's Opera," ** to the classical press of Bartholomew Fair.
* "Robin Hood, an opera, as it is performed at Lee and Harper's Great Theatrical Booth in Bartholomew Fair, 1730."
** "The Quaker's Opera, as it is performed at Lee and Harper's Great Theatrical Booth in Bartholomew Fair, 1728."
This is the story of Jack Sheppard dramatised and set to rough music! It may be gratifying to the curious to see how the adventures of this house and prison-breaker were "improved" (!!) by a Methodist Preacher under the Piazza of Covent Garden. "Now, my beloved, we have a remarkable instance of man's care for his tabernacle of clay in the notorious malefactor Jack Sheppard! How dexterously did he, with a nail, pick the padlock of his chain! how manfully burst his fetters; climb up the chimney; wrench out an iron bar; break his way through a stone wall, till he reached the leads of the prison! and then fixing a blanket through the wall with a spike, he stole out of the chapel! How intrepidly did he descend from the top of the Turner's house! and how cautiously pass down the stairs, and make his escape at the street-door! Oh, that ye were all like Jack Sheppard! Let me exhort ye, then, to open the locks of your hearts with the nail of repentance; to burst asunder the fetters of your beloved desires; to mount the chimney of hope; take from thence the bar of good resolution; break through the stone wall of despair; raise yourselves to the leads of divine meditation; fix the blanket of faith with the spike of the conventicle; let yourselves down the Turner's house of resignation, and descend the stairs of humility; so shall you come to the door of deliverance, from the prison of iniquity, and escape the clutches of that old executioner, the devil."