Note 1763 — BOOK IV THE PLAY-HOUSES (continued 5)

C. is A. II. vii. 36, of the players in Utopia (England), ‘Sebastian. And how are their plaies? as ours are? extemporall? Valentine. O no! all premeditated things’. The references of Whetstone, Heptameron (1582), Sp. Tragedy, IV. i. 163, Middleton, Spanish Gypsy, IV. ii. 38, are specifically to French and Italian practice, and so too, presumably, A. C. v. ii. 216, ‘The quick comedians Extemporally will stage us’. The interpretation of Hamlet, II. ii. 420, ‘For the law of writ and the liberty, these are the only men’, is open, but Falstaff says in 1 Hen. IV, II. iv. 309, ‘Shall we have a play extempore?’