_Othello_ was followed, in 1696, by _Oroonoko_, a tragedy in five acts, by Thomas Southerne. The real Oroonoko was an African prince stolen from his native kingdom of Angola during the reign of Charles the Second, and sold as a slave in an English settlement in the West Indies. Aphra Behn saw and became intimate with him at Surinam, when her father was Lieutenant-General of the islands, and made him the hero of the tale upon which the dramatist based his once famous play. With the more humble slaves by whom he was surrounded, the stage Oroonoko spoke in the stilted blank-verse of the dramatic literature of that period, and without any of the accent or phraseology of the original West Indian blacks. Mr. Pope was the creator of Oroonoko; and the part was a favorite one of the elder Kean in England and of the elder Booth in this country. It has not been seen upon either stage in many years. Oroonoko, of course, had a black skin and woolly hair. When Jack Bannister, who began his career as a tragic actor, said to Garrick that he proposed to attempt the hero of Southerne's drama, he was told by the great little man that, in view of his extraordinarily thin person, he would "look as much like the character as a chimney-sweep in consumption!" It was to Bannister, on this same occasion, that Garrick uttered the well-known aphorism, "Comedy is a very serious thing!" [Illustration: CHARLES DIBDIN AS MUNGO.] Mungo was a stage negro of a very different stamp, and the first of his race. He figured in _The Padlock_, a comic opera, words by Isaac Bickerstaffe, music by Charles Dibdin, first presented at Drury Lane in 1768. Mungo was the slave of Don Diego, a West Indian planter. It was written for and at the suggestion of John Moody, who had been in Barbadoes, where he had studied the dialect and the manners of the blacks. He never played the part, however, which was originally assumed by Dibdin himself. Mungo sang: "Dear heart, what a terrible life I am led! A dog has a better that's sheltered and fed. Night and day 'tis the same; My pain is deir game; Me wish to de Lord me was dead! Whate'er's to be done Poor black must run. Mungo here, Mungo dere, Mungo everywhere; Above and below, Sirrah, come, sirrah, go; Do so, and do so. Oh! oh! Me wish to de Lord me was dead!" This is a style of ballad which has been very popular with Mungo's descendants ever since. It may be added that Mungo got drunk in the second act, and was very profane throughout.