In his "Essay of Dramatic Poesy," Dryden complains of the "tumults to which we are subject in England by representing duels, battles, and the like, which renders our stage too like the theatres where they fight prizes. For what is more ridiculous than to represent an army with a drum and four men behind it, all which the hero of the other side is to drive before him? or to see a duel fought and one slain with two or three thrusts of the foils, which we know are so blunted that we might give a man an hour to kill another in good earnest with them?" Two things were especially prized by the audiences of the past: a speech and a combat. "For God's sake, George, give me a speech and let me go home!" cried from the pit the wearied country squire of Queen Anne's time to his boon companion Powell, the actor, doomed to appear in a part deficient in opportunities for oratory. "But, Mr. Bayes, might we not have a little fighting?" inquires Johnson, in the burlesque of "The Rehearsal," "for I love those plays where they cut and slash one another on the stage for a whole hour together." The single combats that occur in Shakespeare's plays are very numerous. There is little need to remind the reader, for instance, of the hand-to-hand encounters of Macbeth and Macduff, Posthumus and Iachimo, Hotspur and the Prince of Wales, Richard and Richmond. Romeo has his fierce brawl with Tybalt, Hamlet his famous fencing scene, and there is serious crossing of swords both in "Lear" and "Othello." English audiences, from an inherent pugnacity, or a natural inclination for physical feats, were wont to esteem highly the combats of the stage. The players were skilled in the use of their weapons, and would give excellent effect to their mimic conflicts. And this continued long after the wearing of swords had ceased to be a necessity or a fashion. The youthful actor acquired the art of fencing as an indispensable step in his theatrical education. A sword was one of the earliest "properties" of which he became possessor. He always looked forward to impressing his audience deeply by his skill in combat. Charles Mathews, the elder, has recorded in his too brief chapters of autobiography, "his passion for fencing which nothing could overcome." As an amateur actor he paid the manager of the Richmond Theatre seven guineas and a half for permission to undertake "the inferior insipid part of Richmond," who does not appear until the fifth act of the play. The Richard of the night was a brother-amateur, equally enthusiastic, one Litchfield by name. "I cared for nothing," wrote Mathews, "except the last scene of Richmond, but in that I was determined, to have my full swing of carte and tierce. I had no notion of paying my seven guineas and a half without indulging my passion. In vain did the tyrant try to die after a decent time; in vain did he give indications of exhaustion; I would not allow him to give in. I drove him by main force from any position convenient for his last