I had not slept long, when I was awakened by the noise of merriment within an adjoining booth.  It was the itinerant theatre, rudely constructed of boards and canvas.  I peeped through an aperture, and saw the whole dramatis personae, tragedy, comedy, pantomime, all refreshing themselves after the final dismissal of their auditors.  They were merry and gamesome, and made their flimsy theatre ring with laughter.  I was astonished to see the tragedy tyrant in red baize and fierce whiskers, who had made my heart quake as he strutted about the boards, now transformed into a fat, good humored fellow; the beaming porringer laid aside from his brow, and his jolly face washed from all the terrors of burnt cork.  I was delighted, too, to see the distressed damsel in faded silk and dirty muslin, who had trembled under his tyranny, and afflicted me so much by her sorrows, now seated familiarly on his knee, and quaffing from the same tankard.  Harlequin lay asleep on one of the benches; and monks, satyrs, and Vestal virgins were grouped together, laughing outrageously at a broad story told by an unhappy count, who had been barbarously murdered in the tragedy.  This was, indeed, novelty to me.  It was a peep into another planet.  I gazed and listened with intense curiosity and enjoyment.  They had a thousand odd stories and jokes about the events of the day, and burlesque descriptions and mimickings of the spectators who had been admiring them.  Their conversation was full of allusions to their adventures at different places, where they had exhibited; the characters they had met with in different villages; and the ludicrous difficulties in which they had occasionally been involved.  All past cares and troubles were now turned by these thoughtless beings into matter of merriment; and made to contribute to the gayety of the moment.  They had been moving from fair to fair about the kingdom, and were the next morning to set out on their way to London.

My resolution was taken.  I crept from my nest, and scrambled through a hedge into a neighboring field, where I went to work to make a tatterdemalion of myself.  I tore my clothes; soiled them with dirt; begrimed my face and hands; and, crawling near one of the booths, purloined an old hat, and left my new one in its place.  It was an honest theft, and I hope may not hereafter rise up in judgment against me.

I now ventured to the scene of merrymaking, and, presenting myself before the dramatic corps, offered myself as a volunteer.  I felt terribly agitated and abashed, for “never before stood I in such a presence.”  I had addressed myself to the manager of the company.  He was a fat man, dressed in dirty white; with a red sash fringed with tinsel, swathed round his body.  His face was smeared with paint, and a majestic plume towered from an old spangled black bonnet.  He was the Jupiter tonans of this Olympus, and was surrounded by the interior gods and goddesses of his court.  He sat on the end of a bench, by a table, with one arm akimbo and the other extended to the handle of a tankard, which he had slowly set down from his lips as he surveyed me from head to foot.  It was a moment of awful scrutiny, and I fancied the groups around all watching us in silent suspense, and waiting for the imperial nod.