The Old Showmen and the Old London FairsFrost, Thomas
History
The Old Showmen and the Old London Fairs
Frost, Thomas
Fairs -- England -- London; London (England) -- Social life and customs
I have found no Bartholomew Fair advertisement of Lee and Harper for this
year; but at Southwark Fair, where their show stood on the bowling green,
behind the Marshalsea Prison, they presented _Bateman_, with a variety of
singing and dancing, and a pantomimic entertainment called the _Harlot's
Progress_. A change of performance being found necessary, they presented
the "celebrated droll" of _Jephtha's Rash Vow_, in which Harper played the
strangely incongruous part of a Captain Bluster.
"To which," continues the advertisement, "will be added, a new Pantomime
Opera (which the Town has lately been in Expectation to see perform'd)
call'd
"The Fall of PHAETON. Wherein is shown the Rivalship of Phaeton and
Epaphus; their Quarrel about Lybia, daughter to King Merops, which causes
Phaeton to go to the Palace of the Sun, to know if Apollo is his father,
and for Proof of it requires the Guidance of his Father's Chariot, which
obtain'd, he ascends in the Chariot through the Air to light the World; in
the Course the Horses proving unruly go out of their way and set the World
on Fire; Jupiter descends on an Eagle, and with his Thunder-bolt strikes
Phaeton out of the Chariot into the River Po.
"The whole intermix'd with Comic Scenes between Punch, Harlequin,
Scaramouch, Pierrot, and Colombine.
"The Part of Jupiter by Mr. Hewet; Apollo, Mr. Hulett; Phaeton, Mr. Aston;
Epaphus, Mr. Nichols; Lybia, Mrs. Spiller; Phathusa, Mrs. Williamson;
Lampetia, Mrs. Canterel; Phebe, Mrs. Spellman; Clymena, Mrs. Fitzgerald.
"N.B. We shall begin at Ten in the Morning and continue Playing till Ten
at Night.
"N.B. The true Book of the Droll is printed and sold by G. Lee in Bluemaid
Alley, Southwark, and all others (not printed by him) are false."
Fawkes, the conjuror, whose show has been incidentally mentioned, located
it, in the intervals between the fairs, in James Street, near the
Haymarket, where he this year performed the marvellous flower trick, by
which the conjuror, Stodare, made so much of his fame a few years ago at
the Egyptian Hall. Fawkes had a partner, Pinchbeck, who was as clever a
mechanist as the former was a conjuror; and no small portion of the
attractiveness of the show was due to Pinchbeck's musical clock, his
mechanical contrivance for moving pictures, and which he called the
Venetian machine (something, probably, like the famous cyclorama of the
Colosseum), and his "artificial view of the world," with dioramic effects.
Feats of posturing were exhibited between Fawkes's conjuring tricks and
the exhibition of Pinchbeck's ingenious mechanism.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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