Although Evelyn, in 1666, says that “never till now” were women admitted to assume characters on the stage, he is not quite correct in his assertion. There were actresses full thirty years previous to that period. Thus, in 1632, the “Court Beggar” was acted at the Cockpit. In the last act, Lady Strangelove says:--“If you have a short speech or two, the boy’s a pretty actor, and his mother can play her part: women-actors now grow in request.” Our ancestors wisely followed a foreign fashion when they ceased to employ boys in female characters. Prynne says, in 1633, “They have now their female players in Italy and other foreign parts;” and in Michaelmas 1629, they had French women-actors in a play personated at Blackfriars, to which there was a great resort. Geneste quotes Freshwater as writing thus of French actresses in Paris, in 1629: “Yet the women are the best actors; they play their own parts, a thing much desired in England.” In Davenant’s patent for opening Lincoln’s-inn Fields, in 1661, permission was given for the engaging of women as actresses, on the ground that the employment of men in such parts had given great offence. I more particularly notice this matter, because it was a knight who first opened a theatre with a regular female _troupe_ added to the usual number of male actors. Sir William’s ladies were Mrs. Davenport, Mrs. Saunderson, Mrs. Davies, Mrs. Long, Mrs. Gibbs, Mrs. Norris, Mrs. Holden, and Mrs. Jennings. The first four were Sir William’s principal actresses, and these were boarded in the knight’s own dwelling-house. Their title of “Mistress” does not necessarily imply that they were married ladies, but rather that they were old enough to be so. This knight, too, was the first who introduced scenery on the stage. I will add (_par parenthèse_) that it was a priest who first suggested the levelling of the pit with the stage, for the purpose of masquerades and balls. Prynne was not among those who fancied that morality would profit by the introduction of actresses. He had his misgivings as to the effects likely to be produced on the susceptible young gallants of his day. Touching the appearance of the French actresses at the Blackfriars Theatre, noticed above, he calls it “an impudent, shameful, un-womanish, graceless, if not more than w----ish attempt.” The fashion was, undoubtedly, first set by the court, and by no less a person than a queen. Anne of Denmark, wife of James I., acted a part in a pastoral. They who remember some of the incidents of the training she gave her son, the princely knight young Henry, will hardly think that Anne gave dignity to the occupation she temporarily assumed.