Note 133 — AN ESSAY OF DRAMATIC POESY.

"The Adventures of five Hours," is a comedy imitated from the Spanish of Calderon, by Sir Samuel Tuke, with some assistance from the Earl of Bristol. It was acted at court 1663, and received great applause. Cowley writes a laudatory poem, for which in the "Session of Poets" he is censured by Apollo; Diego is described, in the characters of the dramatis personæ, as "servant to Octavio, bred a scholar, a great coward, and a pleasant droll." It would seem from the preface, that this mode of affixing characters to the dramatis personæ was then a novelty.