This resort to the theatres displeased better men than non-juring Collier. Mirthful-minded South, he who preached to the Merchant Tailors of the remnant that should be saved, calls theatres "those spiritual pest-houses, where scarce anything is to be heard or seen but what tends to the corruption of good manners, and from whence not one of a thousand returns, but, infected with the love of vice, or at least with the hatred of it very much abated from what it was before. And that, I assure you, is no inconsiderable point gained by the tempter, as those who have any experience of their own hearts sufficiently know. He who has no mind to trade with the devil, should be so wise as to keep away from his shop." South objects to a corrupt, not to a "well-trod stage." Yet South, like Collier later, laid to the scene much of the sin of the age. If we were to judge of the character of women by the comedies of the last half of the seventeenth century, we might conclude that they were all, without exception, either constantly at the play, or constantly wishing to be there. But the Marquis of Halifax, in his _Advice to a Daughter_, shows that they were only a class. "Some ladies," he says, "are bespoke for merry meetings, as Bessus was for duels. They are engaged in a circle of idleness, where they turn round, for the whole year, without the interruption of a serious hour. They know all the players' names, and are intimately acquainted with all the booths at Bartholomew Fair. The spring, that bringeth out Flies and Fools, maketh them inhabitants in Hyde Park. In the winter, they are an encumbrance to the play-house, and the ballast of the drawing-room." We may learn how the playhouse, encumbered by the fast ladies of bygone years, stood, and what were the prospects of the stage at this time, by looking into a private epistle. A few lines in a letter from "Mr. Vanbrook" (afterwards Sir John Vanbrugh) to the Earl of Manchester, and written on Christmas Day, 1699, will show the position and hopes of the stage as that century was closing. "Miss Evans," he writes, "the dancer at the new play-house, is dead; a fever slew her in eight and forty hours. She's much lamented by the town, as well as by the house, who can't well bear her loss; matters running very low with 'em this winter. If Congreve's play don't help 'em they are undone. 'Tis a comedy, and will be played about six weeks hence. Nobody has seen it yet." The same letter informs us that Dick Leveridge, the bass singer of Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, was tarrying in Ireland, rather than face his creditors in England, and that Dogget (of whom there is no account, during the years 1698, 1699, 1700), had been playing for a week at the above theatre, for the sum of £30! This is the first instance I know of, of the "starring" system; and it is remarkable that the above sum should have been given for six nights' performances, when Betterton's salary did not exceed £5 per week.