Chapter 27 - Page 2

artificial bank which
had been raised around three-fourths of the playground, the remainder
being left open for the entrance and exit of the performers. Here
sate the uncritical audience, the Chamberlain in the centre, as the
person highest in office, all alive to enjoyment and admiration, and
all therefore dead to criticism.

The characters which appeared and disappeared before the amused and
interested audience, were those which fill the earlier stage in all
nations--old men, cheated by their wives and daughters, pillaged by
their sons, and imposed on by their domestics, a braggadocia captain,
a knavish pardoner or quaestionary, a country bumpkin and a wanton
city dame. Amid all these, and more acceptable than almost the whole
put together, was the all-licensed fool, the Gracioso of the Spanish
drama, who, with his cap fashioned into the resemblance of a coxcomb,
and his bauble, a truncheon terminated by a carved figure wearing a
fool's cap, in his hand, went, came, and returned, mingling in every
scene of the piece, and interrupting the business, without having any
share himself in the action, and ever and anon transferring his gibes
from the actors on the stage to the audience who sate around, prompt
to applaud the whole.

The wit of the piece, which was not of the most polished kind, was
chiefly directed against the superstitious practices of the Catholic
religion; and the stage artillery had on this occasion been levelled
by no less a person than Doctor Lundin, who had not only commanded the
manager of the entertainment to select one of the numerous satires
which had been written against the Papists, (several of which were
cast in a dramatic form,) but had even, like the Prince of Denmark,
caused them to insert, or according to his own phrase, to infuse here
and there, a few pleasantries of his own penning, on the same
inexhaustible subject, hoping thereby to mollify the rigour of the
Lady of Lochleven towards pastimes of this description. He failed not
to jog Roland's elbow, who was sitting in state behind him, and
recommend to his particular attention those favourite passages. As for
the page, to whom, the very idea of such an exhibition, simple as it
was, was entirely new, he beheld it with the undiminished and ecstatic
delight with which men of all ranks look for the first time on
dramatic representation, and laughed, shouted, and clapped his hands
as the performance proceeded. An incident at length took place, which
effectually broke off his interest in the business of the scene.

One of the principal personages in the comic part of the drama was, as
we have already said, a quaestionary or pardoner, one of those
itinerants who hawked about from place to place relics, real or