Ned Ward, to whose descriptions modern readers are indebted, partly through the aid of John Ashton,[A] for many a glimpse of old-time London life, has left us a vivid picture of the fair as it appeared to him.

The entrance to it, he says, was like unto a "Belfegor's concert," with its "rumbling of drums, mixed with the intolerable squalling of catcalls and penny trumpets." Nor could the sense of smell have been much better catered to than that of hearing, owing to the "singeing of pigs and burnt crackling of over-roasted pork." Once within the enclosure he saw all sorts of remarkable things, including the actors, "strutting round their balconies in their tinsey robes and golden leather buskins;" the rope-dancers, and the dirty eating-places, where "cooks stood dripping at their doors, like their roasted swine's flesh." Ward also looked on at several comedies, or "droles," being enacted in the grounds, and, after coming to the conclusion that they were like "State fireworks," and "never do anybody good but those that are concerned in the show," he repaired to a dancing booth.

Here he had the privilege of watching a woman "dance with glasses full of liquor upon the backs of her hands, to which she gave variety of motions, without spilling." [Footnote A: See Ashton's "Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne."] All this may have a curious interest, but it looks a trifle inconsistent, does it not, to lament the unjustness of connecting puppet entertainments and the like with the stage, and then deliberately devote space to the mysteries of Bartholomew Fair?
It is more to the purpose to speak of the two theatres which claimed the attention of London playgoers in the year 1703--the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, and the house in Lincoln's Inn Fields.
Of the two, Drury Lane was the more important in an historical sense, having been the house of the famous "King's Company," as the players of Charles II.

were styled, and then of the combined forces formed in 1682 by the union of this organisation and the "Duke of York's Company." This was the house into which Nance Oldfield came as a modest _debutante_.

It had been built from the designs of Wren, to replace the old theatre destroyed by fire in 1672.
Cibber has sketched for us the second Drury Lane's interior, as it appeared in its original form, before the making of changes intended to enlarge the seating capacity.