Who remembers John Schanke? He, like Kempe and Armin, carried on the traditions of low comedy. He was great in the invention of 'jigs.' A notable 'jig' was that called 'Schanke's Ordinary,' in which several performers took part. There is an odd story told by Collier of a 'Schanke, a player.' It was in the year 1642. There came galloping to London three of the Lord General's officers with the news that there had been a great battle in which the London Companies had been cut to pieces, and 20,000 men had fallen on both sides. They spread their news as they rode through the villages: they spread it abroad in the city. It was ascertained on inquiry that there had not been any battle at all, but that those three men--Captain Wilson, Lieutenant Whitney, and one Schanke, a player--were simply runaways. Therefore they were all clapped in the Gatehouse, and brought to undergo punishment according to martial law 'for their base cowardliness.' One remarks that the race of comic actors or low comedians never becomes extinct. That power of always seizing on the comic side in everything, of always being able to make an audience laugh throughout a whole piece, is never, happily, taken away from a world which would be too sad without it. Great poets do not occur more than once in a century: great novelists not more than twice: but the low comedian, the comic man, whose face, whose voice, whose carriage, are as humorous as his words, never fails us. Tarlton is followed by Kempe, Kempe by Armin, Armin by Schanke. So Robson follows Liston, and Toole follows Robson, with lesser lights besides. There are many other actors. The painstaking Collier finds out what parts they played and where they lived. Alas! He tells us no more. Perhaps there is no more to tell. The rank and file of the theatrical company are never a very interesting collection. Underwood, Toovey, Eccleston, Cowley, Cooke, Sly, Argan--they are shadows that have long since passed out, made an exit, and so an end. They were forgotten by the audience the day after they were dead. Why seek to revive their memory when there is not a single solitary fact to go upon? A bone would be something: out of the skull of Yorick we might perhaps reconstruct his life, with all the adventures, love-making, disappointments, distresses and triumphs.