nature."[1] While after his third visit he observes that it is impossible to have Florimel's part, which is the most comical that ever was made for woman, ever done better than it is by Nelly.[2]
The support of the performance rested, it must be owned, on Hart's character of Celadon and on Nelly's part of Florimel. Nell indeed had to sustain the heavier burden of the piece. She is seldom off the stage—all the loose rattle of dialogue belongs to her, nay more, she appears in the fifth act in male attire, dances a jig in the same act, often of itself sufficient to save a play, and ultimately speaks the epilogue in defence of the author;
I left my client yonder in a rant
Against the envious and the ignorant,
Who are he says his only enemies;
But he contemns their malice, and defies
The sharpest of his censurers to say
Where there is one gross fault in all his play,
The language is so fitted to each part,
The plot according to the rules of art;
And twenty other things he bid me tell you,
But I cry'd "E'en go do't yourself, for Nelly!"
There are incidents and allusions in the parts of Celadon and Florimel which must have carried a personal application to those who were, speaking technically, behind the scenes. Nelly, if not actually
