TOBACCO ON THE STAGE. 175 



Christians, who follow Veritie and Truth, and detest and 

 abhor the devil as a lyar and deceiver of mankind.' In the 

 first year of this century, pipes were not only exhibited, but 

 were used upon the stage. They seem at first to have been 

 smoked, not during 'the induction.' In the induction to 

 Ben Jonson's 'Cynthia's Kevels' (1601), the Third Child 

 says: '^Now, sir, suppose I am one of your genteel auditors, 

 that am come in, having paid my money at the door, with 

 much ado ; and here take my place, and sit down, I have my 

 three sorts of tobacco in my pocket, my light by me, and 

 thus I begin.' The Third Child thereupon smokes; but it 

 seems as if the smoking on the stage was a kind of protest 

 against a prior smoking in the pit. In John Webster's 

 ' Malcontent,' as augmented by John Marston in 1604, Sly 

 says in the introduction : ' Come, coose, (coz or goose !) let's 

 take some tobacco.' 



" In ' The Puritan, or the Widow of Watling Street,' 

 published in 1607, and attributed by some to Shakespeare, 

 tobacco-taking or tobacco-drinking (as smoking was then 

 usually called) appears no longer in the induction, but in the 

 play itself, Idle, the highwayman, says to the old soldier, 

 Skirmish, l Have you any tobacco about you ?' Idle being 

 supplied, smokes a pipe on the stage. These extracts, how- 

 ever, may have been cited before, together with others of 

 like character in the great days of the English Drama. 

 Pipes continued to appear upon the stage until its abolition 

 (in company with the Prayer Book) by the Puritan rulers. 

 They reappeared on the stage of the Restoration. In 

 Thomas ShadwelPs ' Yirtuos ' (1676), to take one instance, 

 Mirando and Clarinda fling away Snarl's cane, hat and peri- 

 wig, and break his pipes, because he * takes nasty tobacco 

 before ladies.' " 



There is printed evidence, however, in this same period to 

 show not only that all the English ladies of the time were 

 not enemies to tobacco, but that some of them were them- 

 selves smokers. In 1674 an anonymous quarto appeared 

 under the title of " The Women's Petition against Coffee." 

 It was a protest against the growing influence of the coffee- 

 houses in seducing men away from their homes to sit together 

 making mischief and drinking "this boiled soot." It was 

 answered in the same year by " The Men's Answer to the 

 Women's Petition." After speaking of the providential 



