While on the subject of the chivalrous originals of the mock knights of the Stage, I may be permitted to mention here, that Jonson’s Bobadil was popularly said to have been named after, if not founded upon, a knight in the army of the Duke of Alva, engaged in subduing the Netherlands beneath the despotism of Philip II. According to Strada, after the victory at Giesen, near Mons, in 1570, Alva sent Captain Bobadilla to Spain, to inform Philip of the triumph to his arms. “The ostentation of the message, and still more of the person who bore it, was the origin of the name being applied to any vain-glorious boaster.” The Bobadilla family was an illustrious one, and can hardly be supposed to have furnished a member who, in any wise, resembles Jonson’s swashbuckler. On the other hand, there was Boabdil, the last sultan of Granada, who had indeed borne himself lustily, in his early days, in the field, but who at last cried like a child at losing that Granada which he was not man enough to defend. But it would be injustice even to the son of Muley Abel Hassan, to imagine that Jonson only took his name to distinguish therewith the knight of huge words and weapons who lodged with Oliver Cob the Water-bearer. The few other Stage Knights whom I have to name, I will introduce them to the reader in the next chapter. STAGE KNIGHTS. “The stage and actors are not so contemptful As every innovating puritan, And ignorant swearer, out of jealous envy, Would have the world imagine.”--GEORGE CHAPMAN. The Commonwealth had no admiration for the stage, and no toleration for actors. When theatricals looked up again, the stage took its revenge, and seldom represented a puritan who was not a knave. There is an instance of this in the old play, entitled “The Puritan, or the Widow of Watling Street.” “Wilt steal me thy master’s chain?” quoth Captain Idle to Nicholas St. Antlings, the puritan serving-man. “Steal my master’s chain!” quoth Nicholas; “no, it shall ne’er be said that Nicholas St. Antlings committed bird-lime. Anything else that I can do,” adds the casuist in a serge jerkin, “had it been to rob, I would ha’ done it; but I must not steal, that’s the word, the literal, _Thou shalt not steal_; and would you wish me to steal then?” “No, faith,” answers Pyeboard, the scholar; “that were too much;--but wilt thou nim it from him?” To which honest St. Nicholas, so anxious to observe the letter of the law, so careless about its spirit, remarks, with alacrity, “_That_, I will!”