DANIEL HAD NEVER been an actor on a stage, of course, but when he went to plays at Roger Comstock's theatre – especially when he saw them for the fifth or sixth time – he was struck by the sheer oddity of these men (and women!) standing about on a platform prating the words of a script for the hundredth time and trying to behave as if hundreds of persons weren't a few yards away goggling at them. It was strangely mannered, hollow, and false, and all who took part in it secretly wanted to strike the show and move on to something new. Thus London during this the Third Dutch War, waiting for news of the Fall of Holland.