It was obviously impossible to select more than a few specimens of this class of ballads, and it seemed best to choose three or four which for various reasons were of more historical interest than the rest (see pp. 99, 101, 146), and to add two from the Pepys and Druce collections not previously reprinted (pp. 143, 145). The existence of so many ballads of this kind--and there are many more of them in the Pepysian collection, besides others in Lord Crawford’s possession--proves beyond a doubt the growth of popular interest in the navy. Another proof is furnished by the fact that contemporary dramatists represented sailors in their plays with increasing frequency. Shakespeare was one of the first to do this. Everyone will remember the shipwreck scene with which _The Tempest_ opens, and the song of Stephano: ‘The master, the swabber, the boatswain and I, the gunner and his mate, Loved Moll, Meg, Marian, and Marjory, but none of us cared for Kate,’ with its philosophical conclusion, ‘To sea, boys, and let her go hang.’ In Davenant’s _Siege of Rhodes_, performed in 1656, sailors are introduced whose sentiments would do credit to Dibdin’s heroes. ‘What,’ says one of them, will not the valiant English do When Beauty is distressed and virtue too?’ In Charles the Second’s time Wycherley in 1677 brought upon the stage, in _The Plain Dealer_, Manley, a gentleman ‘of an honest, surly, nice humour, supposed first in the time of the Dutch war to have procured the command of a ship, out of honour, not of interest, and choosing a sea life only to avoid the world.’ There is also Freeman, Manley’s lieutenant, ‘a gentleman well educated, but of a broken fortune.’ The first scene introduces some of Manley’s crew, who speak of him affectionately as ‘our bully tar,’ and tell how he sank his ship that the Dutch might not have her nor the courtiers beg the hulk. Manley’s crew love him in spite of his surliness. ‘He’s always as dogged,’ says one, ‘as an old tarpaulin when hindered of a voyage by a young pantaloon captain.’ ‘’Tis true,’ answers another, ‘I never saw him pleased but in the fight, and then he looked like one of us coming from the pay table, with a new lining to our hats under our arm.’ D’Urfey’s Captain Porpuss, already mentioned, belongs to the year 1681. These instances refute Mr. Gosse’s statement that Ben, in Congreve’s _Love for Love_ (1695), is the ‘first of a long line of stage sailors.’ On the other hand, Ben represents the type in its most perfect shape. He is a younger son, ‘half home bred and half sea bred,’ designed to marry Miss Prue, whom he woos in technical language. ‘I don’t stand much towards matrimony. I love to roam from port to port and from land to land: I would never abide to be port bound.’ Nevertheless he confesses Prue has charms. ‘You’re a tight vessel and well rigged, an you were but as well manned.’ This promising beginning ends in a quarrel. She