Shakspeare, in name, at least, re-appears more frequently on the stage during the Drury Lane season of 1703-4, when "Hamlet," "King Lear," "Macbeth," "Timon of Athens," "Richard III.," the "Tempest," and "Titus Andronicus," were performed.[80] These, however, were the "improved" editions of the poets. The novelties were, the "Lying Lover," by Steele; "Love, the Leveller;" and the "Albion Queens." It was the season in which great Anne fruitlessly forbade the presence of vizard-masks in the pit, and of gallants on the stage; recommended cleanliness of speech, and denounced the shabby people who occasionally tried to evade the money-takers.[81] Steele, in his play, attempted to support one of the good objects which the Queen had in view; but in striving to be pure, after his idea of purity, and to be moral, after a loose idea of morality, he failed altogether in wit, humour, and invention. He thought to prove himself a good churchman, he said, even in so small a matter as a comedy; and in his character of comic poet, "I have been," he says, "a martyr and confessor for the church, for this play was damned for its piety." This is as broad an untruth as anything uttered by the "Lying Lover" himself, who, when he does express a mawkish sentiment after he has killed a man in his liquor, can only be held to be "a liar," as before. Steele was condemned for stupidity in a piece, the only ray of humour in which pierces through the dirty, noisy, drunken throng of gallows birds in Newgate. That Steele seriously intended his play to be the beginning of an era of "new comedy," is, however, certain. In the prologue, it was said of the author-- "He aims to make the coming action move On the tried laws of Friendship and of Love. He offers no gross vices to your sight,-- Those too much horror raise, for just delight." Steele's comedy was a step in a right direction; and his great fault was pretending to be half-ashamed of having made it. That it had a "_clear_ stage and no favour," is literally true. It was one of the first pieces played without a mingling of the public with the players;--an evil fashion, which was not entirely suppressed for threescore years after Queen Anne's decree, when Garrick proved more absolute than her majesty. It was a practice which so annoyed Baron, that proudest of French actors, that to suggest to the audience in the house the absurdity of it, he would turn his back on them for a whole act, and play to the audience on the stage. Sometimes the noise was so loud, that an actor's voice could be scarcely heard. "You speak too low!" cried a pit-critic to Defresne. "And you too high!" retorted the actor. The offended pit screamed its indignation, and demanded an abject apology. "Gentlemen," said Defresne, "I never felt the degradation of my position till now;" ... and the pit interrupted the bold exordium by rounds of applause, under which he resumed his part.