Perhaps, he adds, Shakspeare alludes to this personage, as habited in his own time. The old age of Pantaloon is marked by his _leanness_, and his _spectacles_ and his _slippers_. He always runs after Harlequin, but cannot catch him; as he runs in _slippers_ and without _spectacles_, is liable to pass him by without seeing him. Can we doubt that this Pantaloon had come from the Italian theatre, after what we have already said? Does not this confirm the conjecture, that there existed an intercourse between the Italian theatre and our own? Farther, Tarleton the comedian, and others, celebrated for their "extemporal wit," was the writer or inventor of one of these "Platts." Stowe records of one of our actors that "he had a quick, delicate, refined, _extemporal_ wit." And of another, that "he had a wondrous, plentiful, pleasant, _extemporal_ wit." These actors, then, who were in the habit of exercising their impromptus, resembled those who performed in the unwritten comedies of the Italians. Gabriel Harvey, the Aristarchus of the day, compliments Tarleton for having brought forward a _new species of dramatic exhibition_. If this compliment paid to Tarleton merely alludes to his dexterity at _extemporaneous wit_ in the character of the _clown_, as my friend Mr. Douce thinks, this would be sufficient to show that he was attempting to introduce on our stage the extemporal comedy of the Italians, which Gabriel Harvey distinguishes as "a new species." As for these "Platts," which I shall now venture to call "Scenarios," they surprise by their bareness, conveying no notion of the piece itself, though quite sufficient for the actors. They consist of mere exits and entrances of the actors, and often the real names of the actors are familiarly mixed with those of the _dramatis personæ_. Steevens has justly observed, however, on these skeletons, that although "the drift of these dramatic pieces cannot be collected from the mere outlines before us, yet we must not charge them with absurdity. Even the scenes of Shakspeare would have worn as unpromising an aspect, had their skeletons only been discovered." The printed _scenarios_ of the Italian theatre were not more intelligible; exhibiting only the _hints_ for scenes.