When the Drury Lane theater was closed in 1709, Joseph Addison published a fanciful list of the properties for sale:

• Spirits of right Nantz brandy, for lambent flames and apparitions.
• Three bottles and a half of lightning.
• One shower of snow in the whitest French paper.
• Two showers of a browner sort.
• A sea, consisting of a dozen large waves; the tenth bigger than ordinary, and a little damaged.
• A dozen and a half of clouds, trimmed with black, and well-conditioned.
• A rainbow, a little faded.
• A set of clouds after the French mode, streaked with lightning, and furbelowed.
• A new moon, something decayed.
• A pint of the finest Spanish wash, being all that is left out of two hogsheads sent over last winter.
• A coach very finely gilt, and little used, with a pair of dragons, to be sold cheap.
• A setting-sun, a pennyworth.
• An imperial mantle made for Cyrus the Great, and worn by Julius Caesar, Bajazet, King Harry the Eighth, and Signor Valentini.
• A basket-hilted sword, very convenient to carry milk in.
• Roxana’s night-gown.
• Othello’s handkerchief.
• The imperial robes of Xerxes, never worn but once.
• A wild boar, killed by Mrs. Tofts and Dioclesian.
• A serpent to sting Cleopatra.
• A mustard-bowl to make thunder with.
• Another of a bigger sort, by Mr. D—-s’s directions, little used.
• Six elbow-chairs, very expert in country dances, with six flower-pots for their partners.
• The whiskers of a Turkish Bassa.
• The complexion of a murderer in a band-box; consisting of a large piece of burnt cork, and a coal-black peruke.
• A suit of clothes for a ghost, viz. a bloody shirt, a doublet curiously pinked, and a coat with three great eyelet-holes upon the breast.
• A bale of red Spanish wool.
• Modern plots, commonly known by the name of trapdoors, ladders of ropes, vizard-masks, and tables with broad carpets over them.
• Three oak-cudgels, with one of crab-tree; all bought for the use of Mr. Penkethman.
• Materials for dancing; as masks, castanets, and a ladder of ten rounds.
• Aurengezebe’s scymitar, made by Will. Brown in Piccadilly.
• A plume of feathers, never used but by Œdipus and the Earl of Essex.

“Mr. D—-” is John Dennis, a critic. Elsewhere Addison wrote, “If we may believe our logicians, man is distinguished from all other creatures by the faculty of laughter.”