But I fear I have said more than enough about stage knights; may I add some short gossip touching real knights with stage ladies? Before doing so, I may just notice that the wedded wife of a _bona fide_ knight once acted on the English boards under the chivalric name--and a time-honored one it is in Yorkshire--of her husband, Slingsby. Dame, or Lady Slingsby, who had been formerly a Mrs. Lee, was a favorite actress in the days of James II. She belonged to the Theatre Royal, resided in St. James’s parish, and was buried in Pancras church-yard in March 1693-4. In the list of the Slingsbys, baronets, of Scriven, given in Harborough’s “History of Knaresborough,” Sir Henry Slingsby, who died in 1692, is the only one of whose marriage no notice is taken. But to our stage ladies and gallant lovers. STAGE LADIES AND THE ROMANCE OF HISTORY. “Our happy love may have a secret church, Under the church, as Faith’s was under Paul’s, Where we may carry on our sweet devotion, And the cathedral marriage keep its state, And all its decencies and ceremonies.” CROWNE, _The Married Beau_. After the loose fashion of Master Crowne’s Married Beau, it was no uncommon thing for gallants once to woo the mimic ladies of the scene. From the time that ladies first appeared upon the stage, they seem to have exercised a powerful attraction upon the cavaliers. Under date of the 18th October, 1666, Evelyn says in his Diary: “This night was acted my Lord Broghill’s tragedy, ‘Mustapha,’ before their majesties at court, at which I was present, very seldom going to the public theatres, for many reasons, now, as they are abused to an atheistical liberty, foul and undecent women now (and never till now) permitted to appear and act, who, inflaming several young noblemen and gallants, became their misses, and to some their wives; witness the Earl of Oxford, Sir R. Howard, Prince Rupert, the Earl of Dorset, and another greater person than any of them, who fell into their snares, to the reproach of their noble families, and ruin of both body and soul. I was invited by my Lord Chamberlain to see this tragedy, exceedingly well written, though in my mind I did not approve of any such pastime in a time of such judgments and calamities.”