Venice had to thank the Companions of the Hose Club for some of the first real theatrical performances ever given, which gradually led to the creation of the ‘ridotti,’ and were more or less aristocratic gambling clubs in connection with the theatres. We read that in 1529 the Companions played a comedy with immense success in the house of one of the Loredan family. In the following year the Duke of Milan visited the city, and the Club determined to out-do all its previous festivities. A Giustiniani was then the president of the ‘Royals,’ and he appeared with a deputation before the Doge and the Signory. After announcing that the Club had determined to produce the spectacle of a naval combat, he requested the government to lend for the purpose forty of the light war-pinnaces from the Arsenal. As if this were nothing unusual, he went on to ask for the use of the hall of the Great Council for a dance, of the Library for a supper, and of the Square of Saint Mark’s for a stag-hunt. The Hose Club evidently had large ideas. The Doge, however, granted all that was necessary for the naval show, but said that he should have to think over the other requests! It is needless to say that the ladies of Venice had their share in the gay doings of the Club, first as invited guests only, but later as honorary Companions, wearing the emblem embroidered on their sleeves and on the scarlet ‘felse’ of their gondolas, until the sumptuary laws interfered. There were times when the Signors of the Night and the Council of Ten thought fit to limit the Club’s excessive gaiety, and it was found necessary to issue a decree which strictly prohibited any of the eleven thousand light ladies of the city from being received as Companions, or asked to its entertainments; for, oddly enough, the reputables do not seem to have resented the presence of the disreputables in the sixteenth century. Now and then the Companions fell out among themselves. Marin Sanudo, in his diary, mentions that in February 1500 the Companions [Sidenote: _Marin Sanudo, iii. I, 39._] dined in the house of Luca Gritti, son of late Omobono; and after dinner Zuan Moro, the treasurer of the Club, went out with Angelo Morosini, Andrea Vendramin, and Zacaria Priuli; and they quarrelled about a matter concerning which I refer my scholarly reader to his Muratori, and Zuan Moro was wounded in the face, and turned and gave his assailants as good as he had got, to the infinite scandal of the whole city, for these Companions were all the young husbands of beautiful women, and they disfigured each other!