to be found names that have since become celebrated as the fellow-actors of Shakspeare--Field, Underwood, and others. It was the same with Hart, Mohun, and others, who were players in the time of Cibber. It appears that children with good voices were sometimes _kidnapped_ for a supply.[28] Tusser, who wrote the Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry, is thought to have been thus pressed into the service; and a relic of the custom is supposed to have existed in that of pressing drummers for the army, which survived so late as the accession of Charles the First. The exercise of the right of might over children, and by people who wanted singers--an effeminate press-gang--would seem an intolerable nuisance; but the children were probably glad enough to be complimented by the violence, and to go to sing and play before a court. Ben Jonson has some pretty verses on one of these juvenile actors: Weep with me, all you that read This little story; And know, for whom a tear you shed, Death's self is sorry. 'Twas a child that so did thrive In grace and feature, As heaven and nature seemed to strive Which owned the creature. Years he numbered, scarce thirteen, When fates turned cruel; Yet three filled zodiacs had he been The stage's jewel; And did act (what now we moan) Old men so duly, As, sooth, the Parcæ thought him one, He played so truly. Till, by error of his fate, They all consented; But viewing him since (alas! too late) They have repented; And have sought (to give new birth) In baths to steep him! But being so much too good for earth, Heaven vows to keep him. This child, we see, was celebrated for acting old men. It is well known that, up to the Restoration, and sometimes afterwards, boys performed the parts of women. Kynaston, when a boy, used to be taken out by the ladies an airing, in his female dress after the play. This custom of males appearing as females gave rise, in Shakspeare's time, to the frequent introduction of female characters disguised; thus presenting a singular anomaly, and a specimen of the gratuitous imaginations of the spectators in those days; who, besides being contented with taking the bare stage for a wood, a rock, or a garden, as it happened, were to suppose a boy on the stage _to pretend to be himself_.