as a simpleton from the country, longs for everything, and wonders at everything, buys up toys and gingerbread, is separated from all his companions, robbed of his money and even of his outer garments, and in this condition finally settles down at a puppet-show. Meanwhile the Puritan Busy, by his zeal against the "heathen abominations" of the fair on one hand, and Waspe, by his quarrelsome temper on the other, fall into a series of scrapes, which end in both being carried to the stocks. They are there joined by another important personage. Justice Overdo, who is distinguished by an extraordinary zeal for the right administration of justice and the suppression of social vices of all kinds, has come into the fair in disguise, in order to make himself acquainted with its various abuses, and he passes among them unknown; and his inquisitive intermeddling brings him into a variety of mishaps, in the course of which he also is seized by the constable, and allows himself to be taken to the stocks, rather than betray his identity. Thus all three, Busy, Waspe, and Overdo, are placed in the stocks at the same time; but Waspe, by a clever trick, escapes, and leaves the Puritan and the justice confined together, the one looking upon himself as a martyr for religion's sake, the other rather glorying in suffering through his disinterested zeal for the common good. They, too, after a while make their escape through an accidental oversight of their keepers, and mix again with the mob. The women, likewise, have been separated from their male companions, have fallen among sharpers and bullies, been made drunk, and escaped but narrowly from still worse disasters. They all finally meet before the puppet-show, which has fixed the attention of Cokes, and there justice Overdo discovers himself. Such are the materials of Ben Jonson's "Bartholomew Fair," the busiest and most amusing of plays. It is said, when first acted, to have given great satisfaction to king James, by the ridicule thrown upon the Puritans, and it continued to be a favourite comedy when revived after the Restoration.