this absurd legend can boast some foundation of fact.  At any rate, Mr. Parke, the respectable oboist of the Opera House, who published his Musical Memoirs in 1830, is found gravely recording of one Cubit, a subordinate actor and singer of Covent Garden Theatre, that once, “when during one of his summer engagements at a provincial theatre, he was announced to perform the character of Hamlet, he was seized with a sudden and serious illness in his dressing-room, just before the play was going to begin; whereupon the manager, having ‘no more cats than would catch mice,’ was constrained to request the audience to suffer them to go through with the play, omitting the character of Hamlet; which, being complied with, it was afterwards considered by the bulk of the audience to be a great improvement.”  Mr. Parke proceeds to record, by way, perhaps, of fortifying his story:  “Although this may appear ridiculous and improbable, an occurrence of a similar kind took place several years afterwards at Covent Garden Theatre, when Cooke, the popular actor, having got drunk, the favourite afterpiece of ‘Love a la Mode’ was performed before a London audience (he being absent) without the principal character, Sir Archy MacSarcasm.”

CHAPTER XXVII.

BENEFITS.

Philip Henslowe, who, late in the sixteenth century, was proprietor of the old Rose Theatre, which stood a little west of the foot of London Bridge, at Bankside, combined with his managerial duties the occupation of pawnbroker, and was employed, moreover, as a kind of commission agent, or middleman, between dramatic authors and actors.  It probably seemed as natural to the manager to engage in these different employments as to require his players to “double” or “treble” parts in plays possessed of an unusually long list of dramatis personae.  He had married Agnes Woodward, a widow, whose daughter, Joan, became the first wife of Edward Alleyn, the actor, the founder of Dulwich College.  Henslowe had been the servant of Mrs. Woodward, and by his union with her he acquired considerable property.  Forthwith he constituted himself “a banker of the poor”—­to use the modern euphonious synonym for pawnbroker—­and advanced money for all needing it who were able to deposit with him plate, rings, jewels, wearing apparel, or other chattels of value.  The playwrights of the time constantly obtained loans from him, not always that he might secure their compositions for his theatre, but often to relieve their immediate wants; and it is plain that he constantly availed himself of their necessitous condition to effect bargains with them very advantageous to his own interests.  Robert Daborne, the dramatist, for instance, appears to have been particularly impecunious, and he was, moreover, afflicted with a pending lawsuit; the sums he obtained for his plays from the manager were therefore very disproportionate and uncertain.  His letters to Henslowe are urgent in solicitations for payment on