dangerous to read his name at a play dore, as a printed bill on a plague dore,” the allusion being to the practice of writing “Lord have mercy upon us” on the doors of houses in which the plague had broken out, which words of course were a caution, and made people pass on hurriedly. In the same play also we find a curious illustration of our subject in a reference to the part of one of the inferior actors. In act iii. the stage direction says, “Enter Belch setting up bills.” And it may not be out of place to remark that the word poster is evidently derived from the custom of sticking bills on posts. That bills were stuck on posts for choice, many of them at stated or customary places, there is plenty of evidence. Sometimes they were ordered to be stuck upon doors and gates, as in the following, though this very possibly means door or gate post. From the Moderate Intelligencer, March 18-25, 1647, we discover that in the time of civil war, when the bishops’ lands and palaces were sold, the following places were appointed by Parliament to be used for affixing bills concerning the sales. Upon the outer gate and upon the hall door of Sir Richard Gourney’s house in the Old Jewry (this was the office where the committee charged with those sales held their sitting), upon the north door of St Paul’s Church, upon the gate of Guildhall, and upon the gate of Blackwell Hall.
As long as they have had an existence—from the sixteenth century—these bills have gone by the name