it, and must proceed. My feelings are so similar to those put into the mouth of the young Montague that it must be strange if I mistake my part. The company have formed great expectations of me, I am told, from hearing me rehearse; and the manager, who is a busy talkative person, is puffing his performers among the town's-people, and me among the rest. As I shall, perhaps, endeavour to amuse you now and then with the adventures of the theatre, it may not be unnecessary to inform you of the police and oeconomy of the society of which I am a temporary member: that is, as far as I myself have learned.
A COMPANY of travelling comedians is a small kingdom, of which the manager

is the monarch. Their code of laws, from the little reading I have had upon the subject, seems to have existed, with few material variations, at, or perhaps, before the days of Shakespeare, who is, with great reason
the god of their idolatry.
The person who is rich enough to furnish a wardrobe and scenes, commences manager, and has his privileges and restrictions. The royal revenues are extensive, being in the ratio of five to one.—As thus—If there are twenty persons in the company, the manager included, the receipt of the house, after all incidental expences are deducted, is divided into four and twenty shares, four of which are called dead shares, and taken by the manager as a payment for the use of his cloaths and scenes; to these is added the share which he is entitled to as a performer.


OUR monarch, to resume my metaphor, through the fecundity of the queen consort, sweeps eleven shares into the royal pouch every night, having five sons and daughters, who are ranked as performers. This is a continual subject of discontent to the rest of the comedians, who are all, to a man, disaffected to the government. For my part, I do not think it worth while to be dissatisfied, having it in my own option to submit to these laws, or leave them for more equitable ones. That is not the case with them, they being all in debt to the manager, and, of course, chained to his galley; which he does not fail to inform them of, when they are refractory. They appear to be a sett of thoughtless, merry beings, who laugh in the midst of poverty, and who never want a quotation, or a story to recruit their spirits. When they get any money,

they seem,