*** “The Wits, or Sport upon Sport: being a curious collection of several Drolls and Farces, as they have been sundry times acted at Bartholomew and other Fairs, in halls and taverns, on mountebanks' stages at Charing Cross, Lincoln's Inn Fields, and other places, by Strolling Flayers, Fools, Fiddlers, and Zanies, with loud laughter and applause. Now newly collected by your old friend, Francis Kirkman, 1673.” The author says, in his preface to the Second Part, “I have seen the Red Bull Playhouse, which was a large one, so full, that as many went back for want of room as had entered; and as meanly as you may think of these Drolls, they were acted by the best comedians then, and now in being. I once saw a piece at a country inn, called 'King Pharaoh, with Moses, Aaron, and some others; to explain which figures was added this piece of poetry, Here Pharaoh, with his goggle eyes, does stare on The High Priest Moses, with the Prophet Aaron. Why, what a rascal Was he that would not let the people go to eat the Pascal! I believe he who pictured King Pharaoh had never seen a king in his life; for all the majesty he was represented with was goggle eyes, that his picture might be answerable to the verse.” --or Sport upon Sport” and “The Stroller's Pacquet Open'd--except when a Smithfield bard, “bemus'd in beer,” ventured upon originality, and added “Robin Hood, * an Opera,” and “The Quaker's Opera,” ** to the classical press of Bartholomew Fair. * “Robin Hood, an opera, as it is performed at Lee and Harper's Great Theatrical Booth in Bartholomew Fair, 1730.” ** “The Quaker's Opera, as it is performed at Lee and Harper's Great Theatrical Booth in Bartholomew Fair, 1728.”