Better thou mayst, but worse thou can'st not be
Than in this vale of tears and misery.
Like Cæsar, with assurance then come on,
And unamaz'd attempt the laurel crown,
That lies on th' other side Death's Rubicon.

The Surrender.

I yield, I yield! Divine Althæa, see
How prostrate at thy feet I bow,
Fondly in love with my captivity,

So weak am I, so mighty thou.
Not long ago I could defie,
Arm'd with wine and company,
Beauty's whole artillery :

Quite vanquish'd now by thy miraculous charms,
Here, fair Althæa, take my arms,

For sure he cannot be of human race,

That can resist so bright, so sweet a face.

Richard Flecknoe, Roman Catholic priest and playwright, was born at Oxford, the nephew of a distinguished Jesuit of the English Mission, Father William Flecknoe or Flexney (b. 1575). Richard was educated at various foreign Jesuit colleges, became a Jesuit, and was ordained priest. He soon left the Society; was during the Civil War driven as a Catholic to go abroad; but after some ten years travels in the Low Countries, Rome, Constantinople, Portugal, and Brazil (1640–50), came to London, mingled in the wars of the wits, and became a writer for the press. In Fleeno an English Priest at Rome, Andrew Marvell gives an amusing account of his visit to the long, lean, halfstarved priest-poet, in his narrow garret up three pair of stairs in Rome. Flecknoe, who seems to have died about 1678, produced some volumes of religious verse and prose, several plays, a number of odes and occasional verses, Enigmaticall Characters, Heroick Portraits, Epigrams, all of which are long forgotten. His name is now remembered only as that of the stalking-horse over whom Dryden applied the merciless lash of his satire to Shadwell-that savage Mac Flecknoe which served as part-model to Pope's more famous Dunciad. Flecknoe, who—

In prose and verse was owned without dispute
Through all the realms of nonsense absolute,

seeks a successor, and fixes on Shadwell as the one of his sons on whom most appropriately his mantle might be laid. How far he owes his oblivion—an oblivion so complete that in several large and wellequipped libraries you shall with difficulty find one single odd specimen of all his twenty separate publications to the inherent defects of his work and how far to Dryden's offended amour propre may be doubted. And it is also open to doubt if Dryden thought him such an utter dullard and fool as he pretends. It should be remembered-to Flecknoe's credit-that more than thirty years before Jeremy Collier's famous impeachment of the stage, Flecknoe, himself a playwright, made a pithy and vehement onslaught, in prose and verse, on the grossness and indecency of some contem

porary plays. And Dryden, whom Flecknoe in one of his epigrams had praised as

The Muses' darling and delight,

Than whom none ever flew so high a flight, was notoriously one of the worst offenders against decency in his comedies: An Evening's Love (1668) was condemned on this score not merely by Evelyn but by Pepys! Southey shrewdly guessed that this was probably a main reason for Dryden's dislike. And Southey justly says that Flecknoe was 'by no means the despicable writer Dryden suggests'-adding, 'if the little volume of epigrams which I possess may be considered a sample.' He further shows his limited acquaintance with Flecknoe by inferring from one of the epigrams that he must have been in Brazil, and regretting he did not write a book of travels. Now, as is well known, Flecknoe did in 1656 publish his Relation of Ten Years Travel in Europe, Asia, Affrique, and America. Southey not unjustly suggests that Flecknoe imitated D'Avenant, and finds fault with him for introducing conversational and unduly familiar expressions. 'Far from despicable' is faint praise. Flecknoe was not a great poet, but some of his verses are pretty, his thoughts felicitous, and his conceits not so strained as those of many contemporaries. It seems hard that he should not merely have been driven from a modest place in the temple of Fame, but made a minus quantity in the scale of intelligence and a byword to boot, by a spiteful sneer of 'glorious John's.'

Among the works were a Hierothalamium or the Heavenly Nuptials of our Blessed Saviour with a Pious Soule; The Affections of a Pious Soule unto our Saviour Christ; Love's Dominion, a Dramatick Piece; The Marriage of Oceanus and Britannia; The Idea of his Highness Oliver, late Lord Protector; Erminia or the Fair and Virtuous Lady; The Damoiselles à la Mode; Sir William D'Avenant's Voyage to the other World. Of his plays, only Love's Dominion, 'written as a pattern for the reformed stage,' was acted in London, but (as might be guessed) it was not successful.

To the fair Daughter of as fair a Mother.
What you 'll be in Time we know
By the stock on which you grow,
As by Roses we may see
What in time the Buds will be:
So in Flowers and so in Trees,
So in everything that is;
Like its like does still produce,
As 'tis Nature's constant use.
Grow still then till you discover
All the beauties of your Mother;
Nothing but fair and sweet can be
From so sweet and fair a Tree.

To Sir Kenelm] D[igby] in Italy, with a Memorial.
I must beg of you, Sir, nay what is more
('Tis a disease so infectious to be poor!)
Must beg you'd beg for me; which whilst I do,
What is 't but even to make you beggar too?

But poverty being as honourable now

As 'twas when Cincinnatus held the plough;
Senators Sow'd and Reap'd, and who had been
In Car of Triumph fetcht the harvest in :
Whilst mightiest Peers do want, nay what is worse,
Even greatest Princes live on others purse
And very Kings themselves are beggers made,
No shame for any, Sir, to be o' th' Trade.

Flecknoe anticipates Burns writing thus pointedly

Of an Unworthy Nobleman.

See yonder thing that looks as if he'd cry
I am a Lord, a mile ere he comes nigh?
And thinks to carry it by being proud
Or looking high and big, and talking loud.
But mark him well, you'll hardly finde enough
In the whole man to make a Laquey of;

And for his words, you'll hardly pick from thence
So much of man as comes to common sence.
Such things as he have nothing else of worth,
But place and title for to set them forth
Just like a Dwarf drest up in Gyant's cloaths,
Bigger he'd seem the lesser still he shows;
Or like small Statues on huge Bases set

Their highth but onely makes them [seem] less great.
He ingeniously apostrophises the smallpox as
One of those Devils that by power Divine,
Cast out of men once, went to the heard of Swine,
And giving them the Pox art come agen
To play the Devil, as thou didst, with men ;

and says of a 'malitious person :'

She lov'd not the world and 'twas less to be pittyed Since the world lov'd not her, and so they were fitted.

On your scurrilous and obscene Dramatick Poets.
Shame and disgrace o' th' Actors and the Age
Poet more fit for th' Brothel than the Stage!
Who makes thy Muse a Strumpet, and she thee
Bawd to her lust, and so you will agree.
Bawdry however washt is foul enough,
But thou dost write such foul unwashed stuff,
Thou onely seems to have taken all the pain
To write for Whitestones-parke or Lewknors-lane:
And Water-poets we have had before,

But never Kennel ones till thee before.

What Divel made thee write? for sure there's none
Coud write so bad without the help of one,
Which till 't be exorcised and quite cast out,
Th' art onely fit to write for the common rout,
And with thy impudent lines and scurrilous stile

To make Fools laugh and wise men blush the while. Whetstone's Park, between Lincoln's Inn Fields and Holborn, was notorious for its immorality; and Lewknor's Lane, off Drury Lane, was an even more unholy rendezvous.

If Dryden supposed he was even remotely alluded to in this, or supposed that the cap fitted, he might well conceive a profound disdain for Flecknoe's person, character, and abilities.

One of the pieces quoted by Southey (in Omniana), and from him probably by Lamb (prefixed to his essay on a Quaker's meeting), is from Flecknoe's play of Love's Dominion, and called

Invocation to Silence.
Sacred Silence, thou that art
Floud-gate of the deeper heart;
Off-spring of a heavenly kinde;

Frost o' th' mouth, and thaw o' th' minde;
Admiration's readyest Tongue;
Leave thy Desert Shades among
Reverend Hermits hallowed cells
Where retyr'd devotion dwells;
With thy Enthusiasmes come,
Ceaze this Nymph, and strike her dumb.

Noble Love.

It is the counterpoise that mindes
To fair and vertuous things inclines;

It is the gust we have and sence
Of every noble excellence;
It is the pulse by which we know
Whether our souls have life or no ;
And such a soft and gentle fire
As kindles and inflames desire;
Until it all like Incence burns

And unto melting sweetness turns.

In these fifth and sixth lines surely noble love is described by a noble metaphor nobly worded. In a little pastoral we have, neatly put, the very plot of Henryson's famous Robin and Makyne:

A Rural Dialogue.

Chorus. Once a nymph and shepherd meeting,
Never past there such a greeting,
Nor was heard 'twixt such a pair
Plainer dealing than was there.
He pay'd women, and she men ;
He slights her, she him again.
Words with words were overthwarted,
Thus they meet and greet and parted.
Shepherd. He who never takes a wife

Lives a most contented life.
Nymph. She the whole contentment loses
Who a husband ever chooses.
Sh. I of women know too much
Ere to care for any such.
Ny. I of men too much do know

To care [whether you do or no].
Sh. Since you are resolv'd, farewell;
Look you lead not Apes in Hell.
Ny. Better lead apes thither, then

Thither to be led by men.

Sh. They to Paradise would bear ye,
Be but rul'd by what they bid ye.
Ny. To Fools Paradise, 'tis true,

Would they but be rul'd by you.
Chorus. Thus they parted as they met ;
Hard to say who best did get
Or of love was least affraid.
When being parted either said :
Ambo. Love, what fools thou makst of men
When th' are in thy power; but when
From thy power they once are free,
Love, what a Fool men make of thee!

than

In 1822 a writer in the Retrospective Review discovered Flecknoe, and, on the strength of the

to modify the harsh censure universally accepted, to show that Flecknoe was 'not the contemptible scribbler he has been generally represented,' while cautiously repudiating the wish to 'canonise dulness.' He quoted freely from the only two small volumes at his command, including one smart and lively description from the Characters:

A Make-bate.

She is a tattling gossip that goes a fishing or groping for secrets, and tickles you under the gills, till she catches hold of you; only the politick eel escapes her hand, and wrigles himself out again: she tells you others' secrets only to hook yours out of you, and baits men as they do fishes one with another still. She is as industrious as a bee in flying about and sucking every flower; only she has the spider's quality of making poison instead of honey of it. For she has all her species of arithmetic, multiplication, addition, and detraction too, only at numeration she is always out, making everything more or less than 'tis indeed. . . . In fine you have divers serpents so venomous as they infect and poison with their very breaths; but none have breaths more infectious nor poisonous than she, who would set man and wife at dissention the first day of their marriage, and children and parents the last day of their lives; nor will innocence ever be safe nor conversation innocent till such as she be banished human society; the bane of all societies where they come; and if I could afford them being anywhere with Ariosto's discord, it should be only amongst my enemies meantime 'tis my prayer, God bless my friends from them.

:

It seems odd, but so it is, that critics who poohpooh Dryden's own plays, and while admiring the ability deny the poetry of his verse, should without inquiry or hesitation subscribe to his most damning critical judgments on dramatists and poets. And it should be remembered that in the poem which has overwhelmed Flecknoe and Mac Flecknoe, Dryden treats with the same contempt both Heywood and Shirley, as well as Ogilby and Shadwell. Among the forgotten rubbish of the past,

Much Heywood, Shirley, Ogleby there lay, But loads of Shadwell almost choked the way. Now, Charles Lamb praises Heywood as a 'prose Shakespeare,' and calls Shirley the 'last of a great race, all of whom spoke nearly the same language ;' and more modern critics recognise the simplicity and directness of Heywood's pathos,' and the charming poetry' and 'pleasing and musical songs' scattered through his plays. It seems now agreed that Shirley, contemned by Dryden, was a 'dramatic poet of rare original power,' whose plays are adorned and elevated by the spirit of poetry.' Without assuming that Flecknoe was either poet or dramatist of this rank, we may hold that the reversal of Dryden's estimate of two such men as Heywood and Shirley justify us in reconsidering the verdict, still currently taken as final, on Flecknoe (see pages 431 and 484; and for Ogilby, page 823). Langbaine, the author of the Account of the

maintained feud with Dryden. But it was not on that account presumably that he says of Flecknoe's Characters that they were written with all the advantages and helps that the noblest company, divertisements and accommodation could afford to quicken the wit, heighten the fancy, and delight the mind whose main design is to honour nobility, praise virtue, tax vice, laugh at folly, and pity ignorance.'

Flecknoe anticipated Rochester in writing a poem On Nothing, which Flecknoe dedicated to some one who had already produced a poem on that interesting subject. Flecknoe's pastoral may have suggested Rochester's cynical Dialogue between Strephon and Daphne, also two unloving lovers, and in the very same rhythms, beginning: Prithee now, fond Fool, give over Since my Heart is gone before. To what purpose should I stay? Love commands another way.

It should be recorded to Flecknoe's credit that in D'Avenant's Voyage to the other World he shows more intelligent respect for Shakespeare than Dryden or most of his contemporaries; for Shakespeare amongst the shades is aggrieved at D'Avenant's 'so mangling and spoiling of his plays.'

Gillow's Biographical Dictionary of the English Catholics (vol. ii. 1885) has facts about Flecknoe not given in the Dictionary of National Biography. There is no ground for calling him an Irishman.

John Tatham was a minor dramatist of whose personal history little is known save that he seems to have succeeded Taylor, the water-poet, as laureate of the Lord Mayor's Show in 1653, the pageants in this connection having been regularly produced by him from 1657 to 1664. The dates of his birth and death are not known: he printed a pastoral play, Love Crowns the End, in 1632; a dozen pageants-several of them bearing the same name, London's Triumphs or London's Glory, another The Royal Oak—are extant; but his chief dramatic productions are The Distracted State (written in 1641); The Scots Figgaries, or a Knot of Knaves (1651); and The Rump, or the Mirrour of the Late Times (1661). Tatham was a vehement Cavalier who hated all Puritans, but especially loathed and abhorred the Scots, whom he represents also as base and contemptible. To this end apparently he invented for the Scots characters he introduces a marvellous jargon, which he may have believed to resemble the vernacular Scottish as spoken by his contemporaries. A good many of the words are actually genuine Scotch or very near it; some are exaggerated but not wholly unfair phonetic spellings of some Scottish pronunciations of English words, Aberdonian and Border tones being quite impartially and impossibly compounded; many of the most conspicuous and characteristic Scots words or sounds have not been noted; and much of this prepos terous lingo is mere perverted English, with no

kind of resemblance to anything spoken or heard in any part of Scotland at any period in the history of the world. In The Distracted State 'a Scotch mountebank' jabbers some screeds of this gibberish in bargaining to poison a king for a trifling consideration. In The Scots Figgaries half-a-dozen pages at a time are printed, continuously and unbrokenly, in this factitious dialect- for whose edification or amusement it is hard to say; for if spoken as printed it must have been, like so many Scotch jokes still made in England, almost as incomprehensible to Englishmen as to Scotsmen. In The Rump the jargon is more sparingly used, mainly by 'Lord Wareston,' a caricature of Johnston of Warriston. Yet this monstrous fiction seems not merely to have been accepted by Tatham's contemporaries as actual Scotch, but to have been rather extensively imitated. There is something of the kind in the numerous songs supposed to be Scotch that appear in The Westminster Drollery and D'Urfey's Pills to Purge Melancholy; and Lacy's Sauny the Scot, in the play so called (1686), though happily he talks less than Tatham's Scottish rogues and fools, is for a Scotsman quite as puzzling. In this artificial jargon, for example, the English no and go and so are represented by nea and gea and sea (for nae, gae, sae); tang is supposed to be Scotch for tongue; awd and cawd for old and cold. Stomach is weem or weomb (wame being good Scotch); one finger is spelt not ae or ane finger, but ean finger; more is meer instead of mair, and bearns stands for bairns. If Tatham's Scotch characters are on the whole as little like Scotsmen as their lingo is to the Scots dialect, then Scottish amour propre may hold itself amply avenged!

A short specimen from Tatham's Scots Figgaries has linguistic and historical, if not literary or dramatic, interest. The first act is mainly a dialogue between two base Scotsmen who, to their good fortune, have found their way into England, and begins thus :

ha

I

Jocky. A sirs! thes eyr hes a mickle geod savour. creept thus firr intol th' kingdom like an erivigg intoll a mons lug, and sall as herdly be got oout. Ise sa seff here as a sperrow under a penthoowse. Let the Sheriff o Cumberlond gee hang himsell ins own gartropts, Ise ferr enough off him, ans fellow officer th' hangman noow. I, a Scot theff may pass for a trow mon here. Aw, the empty weomb and thin hide I full oft bore in Scotlond, an the geod fare I get here! Be me saw, Ise twa yards gron about sin I cam fro Scotlond, the Deele split me gif I com at thee mere, Scotlond. Ise eene noow ny the bonny court, wur meny a Scot lad is gron fro a maggot ta a bran goose; marry, Ise in a geod pleight. Weele, Scotlond, weele, tow gaffst me a mouth, but Anglond mon find me met; tis a geod soile, geod feith, an gif aw my contremon wod plant here, th'od thrive better thon in thair non. [Enter Billy.] In the foule Deel's name, wha's yon? A sud be me contremon by's scratin an scrubbin ; a leokes like Scotlond it sell, bar an naked; a carries noought bet tha walth o Can aboot him, filth and virmin.

Billy. Aw Scotlond, Scotlond, wa worth tha tim I cam oout o thee. Ise like the wandering Jew ha worn my hoofes sa thin as pauper, an can get ne shod for um. Anglond has geod sooft grond, bet tha peple ha mickle hard hearts. Aw Billy, Billy, th'adst better ha tane tha stripe for stelling in Scotlond (bet thot 'tis sin ta rob the spettle) an ha thriv'd by 't, than ta come ta be hangd here or stervd; tis keen justace a mon sud dee sick a deeth for macking use o his hands; I ha ne oder mamber woorth ought.

Eyr, air; creept would in Scotch be cruppen; firr and ferr, far (Scotch faur); earwig is in Scotch gellock, golloch, &c.; Ise, I am; gartropts is presumably meant for cart-ropes (Sc. cairt-raips); 1, ay; saw, soul (Sc. saul); wur, where (Sc. whaur); meny (Sc.mony); maggot (Sc. mawk); contremon, both countryman and countrymen (Sc. kintraman, kintramen); Can, Cain; hoofes and shod are not Scotch, nor met for meat, nor stelling for stealing, nor pauper for paper, nor mamber for member, nor woorth for worth; sooft, soft, would in Scotch be saft; spettle is spital, for hospital.-Tatham's Dramatic Works were republished in 1879 in Paterson's 'Dramatists of the Restoration.'

On

Roger Boyle (1621-79), soldier, statesman, and dramatist, was third son of the Earl of Cork, and in childhood was made Baron Broghill. Educated at Trinity College, Dublin, he in the Civil War first took the royalist side, but after the death of the king came under the personal influence of Cromwell, and distinguished himself in the Irish campaign. He became one of Cromwell's special council, and a member of his House of Lords. Cromwell's death he tried to support Richard, but foreseeing that his cause was hopeless, crossed to Ireland, and secured it for the king. Four months after the Restoration he was made Earl of Orrery. He is noteworthy as having introduced rhymed tragedies, having six tragedies and two comedies to his account (several of them fairly successful). Besides, he produced some poems, a entitled Parthenissa (1654), and a Treatise of the Art of War (1677); and he enjoyed the friendship of D'Avenant, Dryden, and Cowley.

romance

Sir Robert Howard (1626-98), sixth son of the first Earl of Berkshire, fought on the royalist side, was imprisoned under the Commonwealth, but after the Restoration held many public posts (including that of auditor of the Exchequer), besides being knighted. As a member of the House of Commons he was a strong Whig. He wrote halfa-dozen tragedies and comedies, of which The Committee, a comedy, was the best and long held the stage. Very bad was the dramatic blankverse in which he wrote expressly to confute his brother-in-law Dryden's contention in favour of rhymed plays. He had collaborated with Dryden in the play of The Indian Queen.

John Wilson (1627 ?-96), playwright, was born in London, was educated at Exeter College and Lincoln's Inn, and about 1681 was appointed Recorder of Londonderry. A devoted loyalist throughout, he followed James after the siege, and died in London. Besides two Jonsonian comedies, he wrote a tragi-comedy and a blankverse tragedy.

(GEORGE

The Duke of Buckingham VILLIERS; 1625-87), intriguing statesman and wit, was the son of the first duke, and after his father's assassination was brought up with Charles I.'s children. On the outbreak of the Civil War he hurried from Cambridge to the royalist camp, and lost, recovered, and once more lost his estates. He attended Charles II. to Scotland, and after the battle of Worcester escaped in disguise to the Continent. There he was regarded with much suspicion | by Clarendon and the king's other advisers, who could not make out whether he was a Papist or a Presbyterian, admitted his cleverness, but thought him wanting in judgment and character. Estranged from the king, and returning secretly to England, he married, in 1657, the daughter of Lord Fairfax, to whom his forfeited estates had been assigned. The Restoration gave them back to their owner and brought Buckingham to court, where for twenty-five years he was the wildest and wickedest roué of them all. In 1667 he killed in a duel the Earl of Shrewsbury, whose countess, his paramour, looked on, disguised as a page. When sated with pleasure, he would turn for a change to ambition, and four times his mad freaks lodged him in the Tower. He was mainly instrumental in Clarendon's downfall; was a member of the infamous 'Cabal;' and on its break-up in 1673 passed over, like Shaftesbury, to the popular side. But crippled

with debt, he retired, after Charles's death in 1685, to his manor of Helmsley, in Yorkshire, and amused himself with the chase. He died on 16th April 1688 at Kirby-Moorside, miserably enough, if not, as Pope put it, 'in the worst inn's worst room.' Buckingham, though best remembered as the Zimri' of Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel, a portraiture of merciless fidelity-

A man so various that he seemed to be
Not one, but all mankind's epitome-

was the friend of Cowley from his youth up, of Etherege and Wycherley; a patron of writers, he was also an accomplished author in various kinds. He wrote pamphlets on political and ecclesiastical questions, occasional poems, lampoons, several comedies (two being adaptations of Beaumont and Fletcher), and even a treatise in defence of religion. Though the Duke was a spendthrift of body, time, and estate, a libertine in life, and without political morals, his Discourse on the Reasonableness of Religion seems sincere enough to disprove current suggestions that he was an atheist; his last lamentable letter from his death-bed-forsaken by all my acquaintances, despised by my country, and, I fear, forsaken by my God'-is rather repentant than despairing in tone.

The wittiest of the plays, The Rehearsal (1671), still read and edited, is a satiric tragi-comedy. It was a deliberate onslaught on the heroic drama that had come into vogue, and was specifically a travesty of several of Dryden's tragedies of this type. It was a carefully considered publication,

and seems, though not performed till 1671, to have been written before 1665. The Restoration dramatists, beginning with D'Avenant, contravened the rules of French taste, and in deference to English popular taste made their plays 'heroic' and sensational. Buckingham also detested rhyming plays. In The Rehearsal as first written D'Avenant was the Bayes satirised, and some of the points retained in the acted version apply only to him. But the play was adapted to take off the foibles of Dryden, poet-laureate when it actually came on the stage; and the nickname 'Bayes' (i.e. ‘laureate') stuck to Dryden, though originally meant for Dryden's predecessor in the laureateship. Ultimately this clever burlesque, which served as model to Fielding for his Tom Thumb and to Sheridan for his Critic, is believed to have satirised and caricatured seventeen plays, of which six are Dryden's; a key to the points was published in 1705. Evelyn speaks of it as a 'ridiculous farce and rhapsody, buffooning all plays.' It created a prodigious sensation, created a model for such things, and raised controversies, personal and literary, that lasted into another generation. In his chef d'œuvre Buckingham is said to have had the assistance of Martin Clifford, afterwards Master of the Charterhouse; of his own chaplain, Sprat, afterwards Bishop of Rochester; and also of Butler, author of Hudibras; but there is no reason to doubt that the work was in substance mainly his own. The plan is that Bayes, the author-manager, is made to submit his new piece to the criticism of a town amateur and a country gentleman, and receives their comments and suggestions with no very good grace.

From 'The Rehearsal.'

Johnson. Honest Frank! I am glad to see thee with all my heart: how long hast thou been in town?

Smith. Faith, not above an hour: and, if I had not met you here, I had gone to look you out; for I long to talk with you freely of all the strange new things we have heard in the country.

Johns. And, by my troth, I have long'd as much to laugh with you at all the impertinent, dull, fantastical things we are tired out with here.

Smith. Dull and fantastical! that's an excellent composition. Pray, what are our men of business doing? Johns. I ne'er inquire after 'em. Thou knowest my humour lies another way. I love to please myself as much, and to trouble others as little as I can; and therefore do naturally avoid the company of those solemn fops, who, being incapable of reason and insensible of wit and pleasure, are always looking grave and troubling one another, in hopes to be thought men of business.

Smith. Indeed, I have ever observed that your grave lookers are the dullest of men.

Johns. Ay, and of birds and beasts too: your gravest bird is an owl, and your gravest beast is an ass.

Smith. Well but how dost thou pass thy time? Johns. Why, as I used to do; eat, drink as well as I can, have a friend to chat with in the afternoon, and sometimes see a play; where there are such things, Frank, such hideous, monstrous things, that it has almost made me forswear the stage, and resolve to apply myself