60 TOBACCO IN EUROPE. 



v 



Follies Anatomie (1611), speaks of the custom of taking 

 tobacco at theatres (instancing the Globe — Shake- 

 speare's theatre) : — 



" the crowded stage 



Must needs be graced with you and your page, 

 Sweare for a place with each controlling foole, 

 And send your hackney servant for a stoole." 



Tobacco was even sold at the play-house, and in 

 Bartholomew Fair, Ben Jonson talks of those " who 

 accomodate gentlemen with tobacco at our theatres." * 



Ben Jonson thus further alludes to the general 

 prevalence of smoking : — 



" Carmen 



Are got into the yellow starch, and chimney sweepers 

 To their tobacco, and strong waters, Hum, 

 Meath and Obarni." 



The Devil is an Ass, Act i. Sc. i. 



The same author makes his Volpone, when disguised 

 as a Mountebank, declare if his nostrums had been 

 well known — 



"No Indian drug had e'er been famed — 

 Tobacco, sassafras, not named." 



The affected phrases used by tobacco-smokers, and 

 the pretences they made to carry the choicest tobacco 

 about them, much as the modern " swells " do expen- 

 sive cigars, is very excellently ridiculed, in the old 

 Comedy known as Greene's Tic Quo que, 1614. The 

 scene is a fashionable London ordinary, where some 

 " fast men " of the day meet, and one asks of another, 



* See also the Actor's Remonstrance. 1645. 



