From the south-western corner of Lincoln's Inn Fields a winding and confined court leads to Vere Street, Clare Market. Midway or so in the passage there formerly existed Gibbon's Tennis Court--an establishment which after the Restoration, and for some three years, served as a playhouse; altogether distinct, be it remembered, from the far more famous Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, situate close by in Portugal Street, at the back of the College of Surgeons. Nevertheless, the Vere Street Theatre, as it was called, can boast something of a history; at any rate, one event of singular dramatic importance renders it memorable. For on Saturday, the 8th of December, 1660, as historians of the drama relate, it was the scene of the first appearance upon the English stage of the first English actress. The lady played Desdemona; and a certain Mr. Thomas Jordan, an actor and the author of various poetical pieces, provided for delivery upon the occasion a "Prologue to introduce the first woman that came to act on the stage in the tragedy called 'The Moor of Venice.'" So far the story is clear enough. But was this Desdemona really the first English actress? Had there not been earlier change in the old custom prescribing that the heroines of the British drama should be personated by boys? It is certain that French actresses had appeared here so far back as 1629. Prynne, in his "Histriomastix," published in 1633, writes: "They have now their female players in Italy and other foreign parts, and Michaelmas, 1629, they had French women-actors in a play personated at Blackfriars, to which there was great resort." These ladies, however, it may be noted, met with a very unfavourable reception. Prynne's denunciation of them was a matter of course. He had undertaken to show that stage-plays of whatever kind were most "pernicious corruptions," and that the profession of "play-poets" and stage-players, together with the penning, acting, and frequenting of stage-plays, was unlawful, infamous, and misbecoming Christians. He speaks of the "women-actors" as "monsters," and applies most severe epithets to their histrionic efforts: "impudent," "shameful," "unwomanish," and such like. Another critic, one Thomas Brande, in a private letter discovered by Mr. Payne Collier in the library of Lambeth Palace, and probably addressed to Laud while Bishop of London, writes of the just offence to all virtuous and well-disposed persons in this town "given by the vagrant French players who had been expelled from their own country," and adds: "Glad am I to say they were hissed, hooted, and pippin-pelted" (pippin-pelted is a good phrase) "from the stage, so as I do not think they will soon be ready to try the same again." Mr. Brande was further of opinion that the Master of the Revels should have been called to account for permitting such performances. Failing at Blackfriars, the French company subsequently appeared at the Fortune and Red Bull Theatres, but with a