This extraordinary creature must have been more than twenty years of age when Evelyn saw her, for the engraved portrait described by Granger bears the following inscription:--"Barbara Vanbeck, wife to Michael Vanbeck, born at Augsburg, in High Germany; daughter of Balthasar and Anne Ursler. Aged 29. A.D. 1651. R. Gaywood f. London." Another engraved portrait, in the collection of the Earl of Bute, represents her playing the harpsichord, and has a Dutch inscription, with the words--"Isaac Brunn delin. et sc. 1653." One of Gaywood's prints, which, in Granger's time, was in the possession of Fredericks, the bookseller, at Bath, had the following memorandum written under the inscription:--"This woman I saw in Ratcliffe Highway in 1668, and was satisfied she was a woman. JOHN BULFINCH." Granger describes her from the portraits, as follows:--"The face and hands of this woman are represented hairy all over. Her aspect resembles that of a monkey. She has a very long and large spreading beard, the hair of which hangs loose and flowing like the hair of the head. She is playing on the organ. Vanbeck married this frightful creature on purpose to carry her about for a show." CHAPTER III. Strolling Players in the Seventeenth Century--Southwark Fair--Bartholomew Fair--Pepys and the Monkeys--Polichinello--Jacob Hall, the Rope-Dancer--Another Bearded Woman--Richardson, the Fire-Eater--The Cheshire Dwarf--Killigrew and the Strollers--Fair on the Thames--The Irish Giant--A Dutch Rope-Dancer--Music Booths--Joseph Clark, the Posturer--William Philips, the Zany--William Stokes, the Vaulter--A Show in Threadneedle Street. The period of the Protectorate was one of suffering and depression for the entertaining classes, who were driven into obscure taverns and back streets by the severity with which the anti-recreation edicts of the Long Parliament were enforced, and even then were in constant danger of Bridewell and the whipping-post. Performances took place occasionally at the Red Bull theatre, in St. John Street, West Smithfield, when the actors were able to bribe the subordinate officials at Whitehall to connive at the infraction of the law; but sometimes the fact became known to some higher authority who had not been bribed, or whose connivance could not be procured, and then the performance was interrupted by a party of soldiers, and the actors marched off to Bridewell, where they might esteem themselves fortunate if they escaped a whipping as well as a month's imprisonment as idle vagabonds.