THE FIRST leaves of Autumn are falling in the garden of Lord Leicester's
great mansion as the front door of a new house on its northern side
opens, and two gentlemen carefully descend the steps into the
street. Behind them, an old woman with streaky grey hair, close-set
eyes, and a discontented expression closes the door with a bang;
the shorter, more portly, of the two men, who is carrying a sheaf of
papers, sighs.

The two slowly turn the corner into Little Newport Street, and
make toward the Strand; then the taller, who has an air of authority
and an assertive way of pushing his chin forward, remarks: "You are
to have Mrs. Bracegirdle and Mrs. Mountfort this time--not patch on
Nelly Gwyn nor on Annie Reeves. Pah, they can't act no more!"

"Dear Robert", says his plump, rubicund companion, "they
never could act, those women. You forget the trouble I had with The
Conquest of Granada. . ." "The trouble you had! The trouble is,
John, to be frank, that you read your things so abominably badly at the
first shot that you depress'em. You read as if you were one of my clerks
at the Exchequer telling over His Majesty's profit and loss account!"

John smiles indulgently. Robert has not changed a little bit since
the days at the Blue Anchor, or the time when they had that little tiff
in print about his opinion on--what was it? To rhyme plays or not
to rhyme them, or something of that sort: still as positive as ever, old
Robert, but as good a brother-in-law as one could hope to have and
now head of the Exchequer.

And so two old gentlemen pass into the portals of the theatre,
the familiar smell of carpentry and paint, the bustle and hustle of the
preparations for yet another play by John Dryden, his Amphitryon.

It is not his first play since the Revolution--the new Revolution,
that is. His Spanish Friar had been revived for the very first visit the

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