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May-poles, wrestling-matches, bear-baitings, puppet-shows, bowls, horse-racing, betting, rope-dancing, romping under the mistletoe on Christmas, eating boars' heads, attending the theatres, health-drinking, all these old-fashioned ways, in which the English sought merriment, were restored.
In Edward J. Wood's Giants and Dwarfs, London, 1868, I find the following: A newspaper of December 19th, 1751, announces as follows: At the new theatre in the Haymarket, this day, will be performed a concert of musick, in two acts. Boxes 3s., pit 2s., gallery 1s. Between the acts of the concert will be given, gratis, several exercises of rope-dancing and tumbling.
She must have been one of the rope-dancing players, mother told me, for afterwards her grandmother noticed that their tent was close by the dancing dog place. Little Marie looked up at the girl without speaking. Then the girl said to her, 'I have two little dogs that dance much better than that. Will the young lady come with me to see them?
One ordinance directed that all the Maypoles in England should forthwith be hewn down. Another proscribed all theatrical diversions. The playhouses were to be dismantled, the spectators fined, the actors whipped at the cart's tail. Rope-dancing, puppet-shows, bowls, horse-racing, were regarded with no friendly eye.
I would rather have given it to the travelling musicians. They, like us humanists, are allied to the Muses and, moreover, are harmless, happy folk." Lienhard Groland listened till his older friend had finished. Then, after thanking him for his well-meant counsel, he answered, turning to the others also: "In better days rope-dancing was the profession of yonder poor, coughing creature.
The clumsiness of the German scholar and his social distastefulness agree alarmingly well with his physical rope-dancing and nimble boldness, of which all the Gods have learnt to be afraid.
When the Emperor had seated himself and given the signal, the sports began. Sometimes a rope-dancing elephant would begin the entertainment, by mounting even to the summit of the building and descending by a cord.
He wrote, "For immediately to repeat a multitude of names or words once repeated before, I esteem no more than rope-dancing, antic postures, and feats of activity; and, indeed, they are nearly the same thing, the one being the abuse of the bodily, as the other is of mental powers; and though they may cause admiration, they cannot be highly esteemed."
Here are all sorts of traders, who sell by wholesale or retail; as goldsmith's toymen, braziers, turners, milliners, haberdashers, hatters, mercers, drapers, pewterers, china warehouses, and in a word, most trades that can be found in London. Here are also taverns, coffee-houses, and eating-houses, in great plenty. The chief diversions are puppets, rope-dancing, and music booths.
Every swaggering statue of a saint, every rope-dancing angel, every cherub of those that on the carven and gilded clouds above the high altar float "Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders,"
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