Here and there a frail actress might depart from the stony path of virtue, or an actor give himself up to wine and the dodging of bailiffs, yet the attending scandals were not flaunted in the face of the public.

In other words, there were Thespians of doubtful reputation then, just as there are now, and these black sheep helped materially to keep up against their white brethren that remarkable prejudice which has endured even unto the present decade.
As a class, the players had no social position of any kind, although the great ones of the earth, the men of rank, never hesitated to hobnob with them when, like Mrs.Gamp, they felt "so dispoged." Even in the enlightened reign of Queen Anne, there existed among many intelligent persons the vague idea that one who trod the boards was nothing more or less than a vagabond, and we are not surprised to learn, therefore, that in a royal proclamation of the period, "players and mountebanks" are mentioned in the same sentence, as though there was little difference between them.
Perhaps, the "artists" to whom the title of vagabond might be applied with a certain degree of justice were the strolling players, who seem to have been much after the fashion of others of their ilk, before and since.

Good-natured, poverty-stricken barnstormers they doubtless were, living from-hand-to-mouth, and quite willing to go through the whole gamut of tragedy, from Shakespeare to Dryden, for the sake of a good supper.

Here is a graphic picture of such a band of dramatic ne'er-do-wells, drawn by Dick Steele in the forty-eighth issue of the _Spectator_: "We have now at this place [this is a letter of an imaginary correspondent to 'Mr.Spectator'] a company of strollers, who are very far from offending in the impertinent splendor of the drama.

They are so far from falling into these false gallantries, that the stage is here in his original situation of a cart.