The lowest vagrant theatre must, like the lady in the nursery ballad, have music wherever it goes.

No doubt this is often of most inferior quality, suggestive of a return to very early musical methods.

But poverty constrains to primitiveness.

Mr.Pepys, comparing the state of the stage under Killigrew to what it had been in earlier years, notes: "Then, two or three fiddlers; now, nine or ten of the best," &c.

The orchestra of a strolling theatre has been known to consist of one fiddler only, and he has been required to combine with his musical exertions the discharge of secretarial duties, enlivened by occasional appearances on the stage to strengthen casts, or help fill up the scene.