[83] This description applies to old Adam in As You Like It. Many are the evidences that Shakespeare's reputation had from time to time a struggle to maintain itself. James Howard, in Pepys's day-- "Belonged to the faction which affected to believe that there was no popular love for Shakespeare, to render whom palatable he arranged Romeo and Juliet for the stage, with a double denouement--one serious, the other hilarious. If your heart were too sensitive to bear the deaths of the loving pair, you had only to go on the succeeding afternoon to see them wedded, and set upon the way of a well-assured domestic felicity." In 1678 Rymer asserted (was it undesignedly a true testimony to the acting of his time?) that Shakespeare had depicted Brutus and Cassius as "Jack Puddins." Here, as in many another detail, we are reminded, of course, of the difference between our own and past times in mimic as in real life. For Prynne one of the great horrors of the stage was the introduction of actresses from France by Henrietta Maria, to take the place of young [84] male actors of whom Dr. Doran has some interesting notices. Who the lady was who first trod the stage as a professional actress is not known, but her part was Desdemona. And yet it was long after that-- "Edward Kynaston died (in 1712). He lies buried in the churchyard of St. Paul's, Covent Garden. If not the greatest actor of his day, Kynaston was the greatest of the 'boy-actresses.' So exalted was his reputation 'that,' says Downes, 'it has since been disputable among the judicious, whether any woman that succeeded him so sensibly touched the audience as he.'"