The sword appears to have been drawn in as hot wrath at the playhouse as in the park; and sometimes to have figured by way of ridicule. I may cite, as an example of the latter, an incident of the time of Charles II. The court was at Dover, whither the King had gone to receive his sister, and the mistress which that sister brought in her hand as a bribe whereby to make of Charles the enemy of his people! At this time, the French courtiers wore laced coats, of various colours, but all ridiculously short. The shortness of the front part was made up for by the breadth of the waistbelt. Nokes, the Keeley of his day, was dressed to play Sir Arthur Addle, in ‘Sir Solomon;’ and his costume, a caricature on the already sufficiently absurd dress of the French, so delighted the celebrated Duke of Monmouth, that the latter took his own sword and belt from his side, and buckled it with his own semi-royal hands about the person of the player. We should be somewhat startled in these days if we were to hear of Lord Augustus Fitzclarence fastening a cutlass upon the thigh of Mr. Keeley, when acting in the ‘Thirst for Gold:’ but in Charles’s days such freaks were very mildly construed of. The appearance of Nokes, in his short coat and long sword, elicited a roar from King and court, all the louder that the French originals were present. The latter must have taken our most religious and gracious King for a sorry barbarian; and, as chivalrous ideas went, it was very well that they did not surround Nokes as he was going home, and “pink” him into an everlasting incapability of ever caricaturing them again. James II. was unquestionably more of a true gentleman in outward bearing than his brother Charles. I have an instance of this appropriate to this very subject of swords and actors. In the reign of James, an actor of unimpeachable character and of very refined manners, named Smith, had a discussion behind the scenes with a young nobleman, who, losing his temper with getting the worst of the argument, drew his sword and struck Smith,—for want of logic to confute him. The King forbade the courtier to appear in his presence; and by this means proclaimed his opinion that the nobleman was less of a gentleman than the player. But such a manifestation of opinion roused all the so-called _gentlemen_ against the so-called vagabond players; and the next time Smith played they resorted to the theatre, sword in hand and catcall between their lips, and so plied both, that, despite the royal protection, he was driven from the stage for ever. Luckily for him, the “vagabond” was better off, on two points, than the “noble gentlemen,” his antagonists: he had a considerable fortune, and he was in debt to no man, not even to his tailor.