Time, place, propriety, and a respect for contemporary history, are amusingly violated throughout the veracious details. Nothing can equal the confusion, nothing can be more absurd than the errors. But great men have committed errors as grave. Shakespeare opened a seaport in Bohemia, and Mr. Macaulay wrote of one Penn what was only to be attributed to another. And now, have the dramatists treated St. George better than the romancers? The national saint was, doubtless, often introduced in the Mysteries; but the first occasion of which I have any knowledge of his having been introduced on the stage, was by an author named John Kirke. John was so satisfied with his attempt that he never wrote a second play. He allowed his fame to rest on the one in question, which is thus described on his title-page: “The Seven Champions of Christendome. Acted at the _Cocke Pit_, and at the _Red Bull_ in St. John’s Streete, with a general liking, And never printed till this _yeare_ 1638. Written by J. K.--London, printed by J. Okes, and are (_sic_) to be sold by James Becket, at his Shop in the Inner Temple Gate, 1638.” John Kirke treats his subject melodramatically. In the first scene, Calib the Witch, in a speech prefacing her declarations of a love for foul weather and deeds, tells the audience by way of prologue, how she had stolen the young St. George from his now defunct parent, with the intention of making a bath for her old bones out of his young warm blood. Love, however, had touched her, and she had brought up “the red-lipped boy,” with some indefinite idea of making something of him when a man. With this disposition the old lady has some fears as to the possible approaching term of her life; but, as she is assured by “Tarfax the Devill” that she can not die unless she love blindly, the witch, like a mere mortal, accounting that she loves wisely, reckons herself a daughter of immortality, and rejoices hugely. The colloquy of this couple is interrupted by their son Suckabud, who, out of a head just broken by St. George, makes complaint with that comic lack of fun, which was wont to make roar the entire inside of the Red Bull. The young clown retires with his sire, and then enters the great St. George, a lusty lad, with a world of inquiries touching his parentage. Calib explains that his lady mother was anything but an honest woman, and that his sire was just the partner to match. “Base or noble, pray?” asks St. George. To which the witch replies:-- “Base and noble too; Both base by thee, but noble by descent; And thou born base, yet mayst thou write true gent:” and it may be said, parenthetically, that many a “true gent” is by birth equal to St. George himself.