* "Let me never live to look so high as the two-penny room again," says Ben Jonson, in his prologue to Every Man out of his Humour, acted at the Globe, in 1599. The price of the "best rooms" or boxes, was one shilling; of the lower places two-pence, and of some places only a penny. The two-penny room was the gallery. Thus Decker, "Pay your two-pence to a player, and you may sit in the gallery--Bellman's Night Walk. And Middleton, "One of them is a nip, I took him once into the two-penny gallery at the Fortune." In Every Man out of his Humour there is also mention of "the lords' room over the stage." The "lords' room" answered to the present stage- boxes. The price of them was originally one shilling. Thus Decker, in his Gull's Hornbook, 1609, "At a new play you take up the twelve-penny room next the stage, because the lords and you may seem to be hail fellow, well met."
For many dismal seasons the fair dragged on from hand to mouth, hardly allowing its exhibitors (in the way of refection) to put the one to the other. And though my Lord Mayor * and the keeper of Newgate might take it cool, (in a tankard!) it was no laughing matter to the hungry mountebank, who could grin nobody into his booth; to the thirsty musician (who had swallowed many a butt!) grinding on his barrel; and the starved balladmonger (corn has ears, but not for music!) singing for his bread. We hasten to more prosperous times. "Another glass, and then." Yet, ere the sand of the present shall have run out, good night to St. Bartholomew! We cannot say with Mr. Mawworm, "We likes to be despised!" nor are we emulous of "crackers," unless they appertain unto wine and walnuts.
* On the morning the fair is proclaimed, according to ancient custom, his Magnificence the Mayor drinks "a cool tankard" (not of aqua pura,) with that retentive knight, the keeper of Newgate.
But, sooner than our grotesque friends shall want a chronicler, we will apostrophise the learned pig, the pig-faced lady, and the most delicate monster that smokes his link for a cigar, picks his teeth with a hay-fork, and takes his snuff with a fire-shovel. Not that we love Sir Andrew less, but that we love St. Bartle-my more.
_Higman Palatine_ * in 1763 delighted the court at Richmond Palace, and the commonalty at the "Rounds," with his "surprising deceptions;" and, gibing his heel, followed the toe of Mr. Breslaw.
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