Although the monarch who made England merry with all sorts of frivolities had passed away, the influences of his life did not quickly cease. One of the social changes which came about in his reign was destined to become very widely extended and to have an important bearing upon the structure of English society. This was the introduction of women upon the stage. In discussing the amusements of the English people in the several periods, we have as yet said nothing with regard to the theatre, because it did not relate to woman in an especial manner. The old mediæval mystery and morality plays were given under the auspices of the Church, and formed a part of the religious instruction of a people who neither knew how nor had the facilities to read. With the rise of the modern drama and of such masterly interpreters of human passion as the dramatists of the Elizabethan era, the stage was secularized and the range of subjects and appeal was very much widened. In 1660, for the first time, women were engaged to perform female characters. Before that time, they had been prohibited from appearing on the stage; largely because the female parts were usually--and especially in the beginning of the popularity of the theatre--so vulgar and obscene that it not only would have been highly disgraceful for a woman to appear in such characters, but the vulgarity was too great even for the countenance of females in the audience without resorting to the expedient of wearing masks. This practice led to shameful intrigues and discreditable escapades which added to living the zest which was craved by the women of the court who, thus disguised, were _habituées_ of the theatre. If it was thought that by allowing women to take female parts in the plays the tone of such characters might be improved, the ordinances which permitted the practice certainly failed of effect. D'Israeli, taking the æsthetic view of this innovation of the time of Charles II., says: "To us there appears something so repulsive in the exhibition of boys or men personating female characters, that one cannot conceive how they could ever have been tolerated as a substitute for the spontaneous grace, the melting voice, and the soothing looks of a female." The absurdity which he suggests was aptly expressed by a poet of the reign of Charles II., in a prologue which was written as an introduction to the play in which appeared the first actress: "Our women are defective, and so sized, You'd think they were some of the guard disguised For to speak truth, men act, that are between Forty and fifty, wenches of fifteen; With brows so large and nerve so uncompliant, When you call Desdemona--enter giant."