By way of introducing his elaborate narrative of Darnley’s fate, Mr. Froude tells us of Mary Stuart, that on the political stage she was “a great actress. The ‘woman’ had a drama of her own going on behind the scenes; the theatre caught fire; the mock heroics of the Catholic crusade burnt into ashes; and a tremendous domestic tragedy was revealed before the astonished eyes of Europe.” And later again, describing Mary’s caressing wiles to beguile and tranquilise her doomed husband, on the eve of the catastrophe, the same historian employs the same histrionic figure: “Mary Stuart was an admirable actress; rarely, perhaps, on the world’s stage has there been a more skilful player.” But the part, he adds, was a difficult one; she had still some natural compunction; and the performance was not quite perfect. Most of our business is farce, writes old Montaigne: _Mundus universus exercet histrioniam_ (which the old French essayist’s old English translator renders, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players”). We must play our part well, he adds, but withal as the part of a borrowed personage; we must not make a real essence of a mask and outward appearance, etc. So it is one of Ben Jonson’s “Discoveries,” “de vitâ humanâ,” that our whole life is like a play—wherein every man, forgetful of himself, is in travail with expression of another. In one of his comedies, rare Ben makes a sham inn-keeper, taking his ease in his own inn, and following his own fancies there, “imagine all the world’s a play:— “The state, and men’s affairs, all passages Of life, to spring new scenes; come in, go out, And shift, and vanish.... I have got A seat to sit at ease here, in mine inn, To see the comedy; and laugh, and chuck At the variety and throng of humours And dispositions, that come justling in And out still, as they one drove hence another.” For every man, in the play of this world, says pious Master Feltham, is not only an actor, but is a spectator, too: “At the beginning (that is, in his youth) it promises so much that he is loth to leave it; when it grows towards the middle (the act of virility), then he sees the scenes grow thick, and fill, and would gladly understand the end: but, when that draws near, and he finds what it will be, he is then content to depart and leave his room to others.” Fielding’s philosopher asks if the actor is esteemed happier to whose lot it falls to play the principal part, than he who plays the lowest? and yet the drama may run twenty nights together, and so outlast our lives; but at the best, says he, “life is only a little longer drama; and the business of the great stage is consequently a little more serious than that which is performed at the theatre-royal.”