BOOK II

THE CONTROL OF THE STAGE

[Greek: Alla ma Di', ephê, ouk epi toutô mega phronô. All' epi tô mên; Epi nê Dia tois aphrosin. houtoi gar ta ema neuropasta theômenoi trephousi me.]--Xenophon, _Symposium_.

VIII

HUMANISM AND PURITANISM

[_Bibliographical Note._--Most of the material for the present chapter, including extracts from a few pre-Elizabethan writers, is collected in Appendix C; the more official documents in Appendix D are occasionally drawn upon. The Puritan controversy has been studied by C. H. Herford, _A Sketch of the History of the English Drama in its Social Aspects_ (1881), and E. N. S. Thompson, _The Controversy between the Puritans and the Stage_ (1903), from the academic point of view in F. S. Boas, _University Drama in the Tudor Age_ (1914), and in relation to the theory of dramatic criticism by H. S. Symmes, _Les Débuts de la Critique dramatique en Angleterre jusqu'à la Mort de Shakespeare_ (1903), and Renaissance criticism in general by J. E. Spingarn, _History of Literary Criticism in the Renaissance_ (1899), and G. Saintsbury, _History of Criticism_, vol. ii (1902). Useful collections of contemporary treatises are G. Gregory Smith, _Elizabethan Critical Essays_ (1904), and J. E. Spingarn, _Critical Essays of the Seventeenth Century_ (1908).]

The investigations of my opening book have shown clearly enough that in the Tudor, as in the mediaeval, scheme of things there was ample room for the stage and its players. The revelling instinct survived, and the old native love of _mimesis_ and _spectacle_ had been reinforced by a literary delight in the revival of classical drama and in every form of the give and take of dialogue. Nor was the appreciation of the folk for the ruder forms of sensational and farcical entertainment less keen; and a period of general acceptance of the stage as an element in social life might have been anticipated, in which it stood greatly to gain by the more settled and less migratory habits of the royal household and the possibilities of building up a permanent head-quarters for itself in London which resulted from the change. Unfortunately, however, events moved otherwise. A new factor emerged, which militated against anything like general acceptance; and the period of the greatest literary vitality in the development of the English drama proved to be also a period of embittered conflict with widespread ethical and religious tendencies, which in fact ranged over the whole of social life and was ultimately destined to shatter, not only the stage, but the Tudor scheme of things itself. In its main outlines the issue was that which had been set ever since the decadent theatre of Greece and Rome came face to face with Semitic asceticism and barbarian indifference. The traditional dislike and contempt of the moralist for the mime had still to find their last expression. But it is a noteworthy aspect of this new revival of the secular struggle, that the attack came less from official churchmanship than from those extreme champions of reformation principles, whose zeal against abuses, and in particular against abuses countenanced by official churchmanship, won them the name of Puritans. The rise of Puritanism was coincident with the beginnings of the agitation against the stage, and the growth of Puritanism in London was the chief feature in a process which stirred the local magistracy, as represented by the Lord Mayor and Corporation of the City, to try its strength, with the stage as a bone of contention, against the central authority of the Privy Council. The controversy is so important a one, from the point of view of the history of the stage and of civilization, that even at the risk of retraversing ground already trod, it is desirable to consider at some length the forces that were at work.[759]

The general relation of Reformation sentiment to the drama is a matter of rather complicated cross-currents. In the first place, there was the humanist rediscovery of the classics, fanning into flame the enthusiasm for Terence which had smouldered throughout the Middle Ages themselves, and making full use in its theory of education of the school-play as a means of inculcating pure Latinity, sound moral precepts, and gentlemanly self-possession in the conduct of affairs. In some at least of its manifestations this tendency is comprehensive enough to include the professional, as well as the academic, player. An example may be found in the treatise _De recta reipublicae administratione_ of the German jurist, John Ferrarius. This was written in 1556 and translated into English by William Bavande of the Middle Temple in 1559. It was probably not without its influence upon the line of apologetic adopted by those gentlemen of the Inns of Court to whom the London stage came to look as its warmest supporters. For Ferrarius players are no longer the proscribed folk of the Middle Ages. They have become one of the seven handicrafts of the commonweal; and, provided that care is taken that their performances shall stand with honesty, they have a function, not merely to delight in times of recreation, but also to further morals by ministering ensamples of virtue and goodness to be embraced, and of vice and filthy living to be eschewed. In his short chapter, Ferrarius makes use of two notions, which became commonplaces of Elizabethan dramatic criticism. Both are derived from classical sources. One is Horace's statement in the _De Arte Poetica_ of the double object of comedy in the mingling of delight with profit;[760] the other the Plutarchan image of the bee sucking its honey even from noxious herbs, the honey of ethical precept from the herbs of wanton or foolish writings.[761] Even more famous, from its glorification in _Hamlet_, is a third passage which Ferrarius does not cite, and that is the definition of comedy, attributed by the fourth-century grammarian Donatus to Cicero but not discoverable in his extant works, as _imitatio vitae, speculum consuetudinis, imago veritatis_.[762]

There were, however, other humanists who may have shared the abstract ideal of Ferrarius, but who at any rate were sufficiently conscious of the extent to which the popular stage of their own day fell short of that ideal, and were in consequence led to condemn, or perhaps more often to ignore, it. Of such was Ludovicus Vives, who devoted to dramatic poetry a section of his work on the corruption of the arts, in which, while accepting the Horatian account of the end of comedy, he points out that, with the notable exception of the author of _Celestina_, the playwrights, having been driven by the resentment of the great against satire to find their material in love-intrigues and similar themes, had lamentably failed to justify themselves by a proper determination of their plots to the ends of salutary morals. Even for Vives, Plautus and Terence are necessary to education; but he would use his blue pencil, and is by no means so warm a champion of the Latin drama on its ethical side as his older and more famous contemporary Erasmus. In his formal writings on education Erasmus gives Terence the first place amongst Latin writers, adding Plautus with more hesitation and with a stipulation for carefully selected plays. And in a letter written about 1489 to an anonymous friend he tilts with vehemence against the doctrine of certain _homunciones imperituli, imo lividuli_, who maintain that Terence is no fit reading for Christians, and explains to their ignorance that the end of dramatic writing lies precisely in the refutation of vice. Erasmus is closely followed by his English disciple, Sir Thomas Elyot, whose defence of comedies in _The Governour_ (1531), as no 'doctrinall of rybaudrie' but 'a mirrour of man's life, wherin iuell is not taught but discouered', served as a standard authority to be quoted in support of much later apologetic. Nor is the point of view confined to what may be called the secular wing of humanism. The Terentian school-play is an essential feature in the pedagogy of such convinced reformers as Philip Melanchthon at Wittenberg and John Sturm at Strasburg,[763] and from Sturm the tradition passes direct to one of the most scholarly and by no means one of the least austere of early English Protestants, Roger Ascham. It is to be observed, however, that Ascham's concern for Terence is wholly on the side of letters and Latinity. Both Vives and Erasmus had had their moments of uneasiness as to how far, after all, the ethics of pagan Rome were quite meet to be assimilated by Christian youth. Vives would expurgate both Plautus and Terence, and Erasmus Plautus at least. Ascham, very much impressed with the demoralizing influence of Italian books and Italian manners on English civilization, has no doubt at all that, necessary as both Plautus and Terence are to the schoolmaster, their matter is but 'base stuff' for the contemplation of the budding divine or civil servant. Views similar to Ascham's had already established themselves amongst both Catholic and Protestant teachers, and the attempt to combine Roman impeccability of phrase with Christian impeccability of theme and incident had produced the remarkable dramatic type known as the 'Christian Terence'.[764] This had had its vernacular, as well as its Latin, developments in many lands. Its acceptability in the eyes of the earlier reformers in England may be illustrated from the chapter _De honestis ludis_, which forms part of the treatise _De regno Christi_ written by Martin Bucer as a New Year's gift for Edward VI in 1551.[765] Bucer allows of plays, both for the exercise of youth, and for the honest and not unprofitable delectation of the public. They must be written by learned and pious men, and may be either comedies or tragedies, which deal respectively with mean and exalted actions. For comic themes he instances the dissension between the shepherds of Abraham and Lot, the marriage of Isaac and Rebecca, and Jacob's service amongst the flocks of Laban; and he expounds no less than six moral lessons which the first of these plots may serviceably inculcate. As for tragedy, the histories of patriarchs, kings, prophets, and apostles, from Adam onwards, are full of those [Greek: peripeteiai] upon which Aristotle lays such stress. It is from such sources that Christians should draw their poetry, rather than from the impious fables and histories of the Gentiles. And care must be taken to let vice awaken a horror of sin and well-doing a sense of the divine grace; for edification is to be the end of the action, even if, in order to attain it, some sacrifice of literary decorum is necessitated. Bucer holds that plays conceived in this spirit may with advantage be performed by youth in the vernacular, as well as in Greek and Latin; and declares that some have already been written which, although men of secular learning may miss in them the literary graces to be found in the comedies of Aristophanes, Plautus, and Terence and the tragedies of Sophocles, Euripides, and Seneca, are yet to be preferred for their religious character to pieces whose effect upon morality can only be deplorable. It is to be noticed that Bucer proposes to submit all plays before production to the judgement of persons at once expert in the dramatic art and of sound divinity, one of whose functions it shall be to let nothing which is _leve aut histrionicum_ be shown. This is interesting not only because it anticipates the actual Tudor experiments in a dramatic censorship, but also because it indicates that the idea of a censorship arose out of ethical, as well as out of merely political, considerations. It is possible that Bucer may have been familiar with the actual working of the system at Geneva, to which further reference will presently be made.

In actual practice the Protestant religious drama, whether it was imitating Latin comedy or advancing on the lines of the popular morality, used the Scriptures with some discrimination. It drew freely upon the historical books and upon the parables. The parable of the prodigal son, in particular, perhaps because it was so obviously cognate to beloved Terentian themes, became the parent of a copious dramatic literature, both in Christian Latin and in all the vernaculars. The central topics, the mysteries of the faith in creation, fall, and incarnation, and the life of Christ himself, were much more charily touched. This may have been due to a reprobation of the methods of the miracle-plays, which is itself traceable to more than one cause. Protestant reverence could hardly fail to reinforce the criticism of the _leve aut histrionicum_ in the popular representations, which often made itself heard even amongst orthodox Churchmen. Luther is at one with Ludovicus Vives on the point.[766] And Protestantism had its own particular ground of quarrel with the miracle-plays, in that they were hardly dissociable from the Catholic doctrines of transubstantiation and the like, which their great feast-day of Corpus Christi had been specially invented to glorify. Certainly the decadence of the Corpus Christi play sets in pretty quickly after the middle of the sixteenth century, and in more than one instance the hand of the Protestant reformer is to be traced in the process.[767] It is of the Corpus Christi plays, as well as of the Hock-play at Coventry, that Robert Laneham is thinking when he regrets 'the zeal of certain theyr Preacherz: men very commendabl for their behauiour and learning, & sweet in their sermons, but sumwhat too sour in preaching awey theyr pastime'.[768] An exception to the normal temper of Protestantism in this respect is to be found in that fiery protagonist of the earlier English reformation, John Bale, amongst whose few extant plays are a _Prophetae_, a _John Baptist_, and a _Temptation_, while a list of his various dramatic experiments, which he has himself left upon record, indicates that they included a continuous New Testament cycle from the _Presentation in the Temple_ to the _Resurrection_.[769]

It is, of course, in form only and not in spirit that Bale touched the ecclesiastical compilers of the Corpus Christi plays. The author of _Kinge Johan_ and the translator of _Pammachius_ is the typical English figure of that characteristic sixteenth-century movement whereby the drama, like every other form of literary expression, bound itself for a time to the service of heretical controversy. Both the Christian Terence and the vernacular morality contained elements which could be readily adapted to the purposes of polemic, no less than to those of edification; and Bale appears to have been the principal agent of Cromwell's statecraft in what was probably a deliberate attempt to capture so powerful an engine as the stage in the interests of Protestantism. And it is to be observed that this movement was not confined to those academic branches of the drama in which it may be supposed to have had its origin. For once the theologian and the _histrio_ laid aside their ancient antagonism, and not in school and college refectories only, but in every inn-yard and on every village green, the praises of the pure Gospel were sung, and Pope and priests were derided in play, at the bidding of the wily Privy Seal. Of this there is sufficient evidence in the passionate protest of Bale after Cromwell had fallen, and the players' mouths had been shut by the _Act_ for the _Advancement of true Religion_ in 1543.[770]

None leave ye unvexed and untrobled, no, not so much as the poore minstrels, and players of enterludes, but ye are doing with them. So long as they played lyes, and sange baudy songes, blasphemed God, and corrupted men's consciences, ye never blamed them, but were verye well contented. But sens they persuaded the people to worship theyr Lorde God aryght, accordyng to hys holie lawes and not yours, and to acknoledge Jesus Chryst for their onely redeemer and Saviour without your lowsie legerdemains, ye never were pleased with them.

No doubt many things were changed in English Protestantism after the days of the Marian exile; and a ready explanation of the active Puritan hostility to the stage is afforded by the substitution of a Calvinist for a Lutheran bias in the conduct of the Reformation. But the antithesis must not be pressed too far. Assuredly the returning preachers brought with them a new seriousness in their view of life and a haunting mistrust of the moral evils lurking even in innocent modes of recreation. The 'merry England' of tradition formed no part of their ideal. Moreover, they were less in bondage than their predecessors of Henry's reign to the prestige of secular learning, and less likely to be impressed, therefore, by the literary and educational significance of the drama. But so far as the popular stage is concerned, there is no reason to suppose that they would have failed to see eye to eye with John Bale himself, for it is pretty clear from the passage quoted above that Bale's tolerance of the interlude-players was entirely conditioned by the polemical use he had been enabled to make of them, and that, apart from what he chose to regard as their conversion, they would have had short shrift at his hands. Now by the time of the Puritans this break in the normal relations of the stage to the pulpit had come to an end. The drama of Protestant controversy survived its original manipulator, Cromwell. It flourished greatly under Edward VI. It won the imitation of the Catholics under Mary. And when Elizabeth came, its exponents made haste to re-enter a field which was probably by now capable of yielding profit in a worldly as well as a spiritual sense. It is clear that at the beginning of the reign Elizabeth and her ministers deliberately continued Cromwell's policy of encouraging stage-polemic. During the Christmas of 1558 the court and the streets were full of masks, in which cardinals, bishops, and abbots were held up to derision as crows, asses, and wolves.[771] During the debates on the Act of Uniformity in the following spring, Abbot Feckenham protested against the way in which 'by the onely preachers and scaffold players of this newe religion, all thinges are turned up-side downe'.[772] Almost simultaneously the dispatches of Venetian agents mention the prevalence of anti-Catholic plays in hostels and taverns, and dwell particularly upon one performance in which Philip and Mary and Cardinal Pole were represented in exposition of their religious views.[773] The inwardness of the movement is made clear by a letter of the Duke of Féria to Philip himself, in which he reports Elizabeth's diplomatic repudiation of the insolent pieces, and adds that he knew for a fact that the arguments were given to the players by none other than Sir William Cecil.[774] The Elizabethan methods of government were tortuous, and it is a little difficult to say how long the licence of the stage to deal with matters of religion lasted. Ostensibly the proclamation of 16 May 1559, presumably issued in deference to De Feria's complaints, brought it to a very definite stop. But it was one thing to issue a proclamation and another to see that it was enforced; and as late as the June of 1562 we find De Feria's successor, the Bishop of Aquila, still protesting against Elizabeth's failure to carry out her perpetual promises, by suppressing the books, farces, and songs which were written in dishonour of his royal master.[775] The burden of these, however, may have been political rather than strictly religious. Certainly, when Elizabeth considered that she had 'settled' the affairs of the Church, it in no way remained part of her intention that they should continue to be matter for public debate. Nor is it likely that the extreme vulgarities of Protestant controversy were altogether to her private taste. Already during the Christmas of 1559 a play at court had been broken off for some unknown offence, and when some Cambridge students pursued the queen to Hinchinbrook in the autumn of 1564 with a scandalous dramatic parody of Catholic ritual, the royal displeasure was unmistakable.[776] Meanwhile the pulpit attacks upon the 'fleshly and filthy' sayings and doings of players begin with Bishop Alley's St. Paul's sermon delivered in 1561, and it is natural to suppose that the temporary alliance between Church and Stage was already dissolved and the normal hostility restored, before Bishop Grindal came to pen his vehement outburst to Cecil on 23 February 1564 in favour of the permanent inhibition of the '_histriones_, common playours', that 'idle sorte off people, which have ben infamouse in all goode common weales'. The theory that the first controversial phase of the Elizabethan popular drama was but of short duration need not be regarded as invalidated by the fact that plays of distinctly Protestant type continued to be published until at least the third decade of the reign. There is no very obvious proof that these plays were performed at all, and certainly none that they belonged to the popular rather than the academic stage. Moreover, there is no reason to suppose that the dates of composition fell anywhere near the dates of publication, and in some cases such evidence as is available points to a period very shortly after Elizabeth's accession. Several Protestant plays of Edwardian or earlier origin were apparently revived by publishers at about the same time.[777] In some of these the closing prayers have been altered so as to apply to Elizabeth, and a similar revision has taken place in the text, extant only in manuscript, of Bale's _Kinge Johan_. This seems to be evidence, perhaps more certainly as regards the manuscript than as regards the prints, of actual performance during the new reign.

If, then, what might have been the natural attitude of the earlier English Protestantism to the popular stage was deflected by something of an accident, it is also not quite true to suppose that Calvinism was always and everywhere uncompromisingly opposed to the drama in its more respectable forms. Calvin himself was not unaffected by humanist influences, and more than one of his near associates, notably Theodore Beza, his successor at Geneva, are to be reckoned amongst academic playwrights. The annals of stage-history at Geneva throw a valuable light upon the order of ideas from which the Puritans started. During the later Middle Ages the city had taken its full delight in _spectacula_ of many kinds. The abuses connected with these had formed the subject of constant ecclesiastical prohibitions, the tradition of which had only been continued by the reformers.[778] Calvin's principal forerunner, William Farel, had published _theses_ at Bâle in 1524, in which he laid down abstinence from disguisings as a counsel of perfection.[779] But he did not succeed in making his principles wholly operative at Geneva, and even when, after an abortive attempt in 1537, the so-called 'theocracy' was finally established by Calvin's constitutions of 1541, there was no absolute condemnation, except for the clergy, of plays.[780] Dances were prohibited and such heathen ceremonies as the _Roi-boit_ at Twelfth Night and the _Mardigras_[781]; but it seems to have been thought sufficient to leave plays under the close inspection and control of the body of ministers, whose functions included the maintenance of Church discipline with the aid of a consistory of elders, and the advising of the secular town council on all matters appertaining to faith and morals. It was not long, however, before more radical views began to commend themselves to a certain section of the ministers, and the question came to a serious issue in some stormy episodes of the year 1546. On 2 May, being Quasimodo Sunday, the council had permitted the performance of a morality by one Roux Monet and others. They had before them a certificate from the ministers that it was of an edifying character, although some grumbling persons declared that its object was to ridicule and satirize the tradesmen.[782] About a month later, two fresh applications came before them. One was apparently from a troupe of travelling players and acrobats, and this was summarily refused as likely to cause scandal.[783] The other was more plausible. Some local _joueurs des ystoires_ desired to represent for the edification of the people a dramatization of _The Acts of the Apostles_. The council ordered the book of the piece to be submitted to Calvin, and agreed that it might be performed, should his report be favourable. Calvin and the other ministers did not much like the proposal, more particularly as the players declined to give alms to the poor out of the profits of the enterprise. It so happened, however, that one of the ministers, Abel Poupin, was himself the author of the play, and partly because of this, and partly because he was not sure that an attempt to prevent the performance would be successful, Calvin seems to have persuaded his colleagues to offer no objection. The formal sanction of the council was therefore given, and Abel Poupin was ordered to make himself responsible for the conduct of the play. Reading between the lines, we may perhaps discern some resentment amongst the ministers, not only at the performance itself, which they considered a waste of money that might have gone in charity, but also at the domineering attitude adopted by Calvin and Poupin. Even while the matter was still under discussion, one of them, Philibert de Beauxlieux, was haled before the consistory for saying that Calvin was taking the part of the Pope and Poupin that of the cardinal. And when the decision was arrived at there was an outbreak. A preacher of fiery temper, Michel Cop, got into the pulpit and denounced the play, accusing the women performers of a shameless desire to display themselves in public and thereby ensnare the eyes of men. For this he was summoned before the council; but Calvin took his part, and although they had differed as to the toleration of the play, claimed that Cop had only exercised the preacher's proper liberty in saying freely what he thought on a question of morals.[784] The documents concerning this incident include, in addition to numerous entries in official registers, two private letters from Calvin to Farel,[785] in which he describes what had taken place, and makes it clear that his own willingness to allow the play arose from motives of expediency and from a feeling that there were limits to the pressure which could be put upon the public to abstain from recreation. In reply the aged reformer anticipated the probable future destiny of the frequenters of plays in terms which recall the worst ferocities of Tertullian on this subject.[786] Something more may be gathered as to Calvin's personal attitude towards plays from a sermon preached in 1556, in which he expounds the prohibition of the change of sex-costume in _Deuteronomy_ xxii. 5 as an absolute one, and as applying particularly to the wearing of men's dresses by women and of women's dresses by men in masks and mummeries.[787] This is an exegesis which counted for a good deal in the Puritan criticism of a stage in which boys habitually took the female parts.

Abel Poupin's much-discussed _Acts of the Apostles_ was duly given, and the council ordered themselves _loges_ at the public expense to see the show, and decreed a four days' suspension of arrest for debt in honour of the occasion. Shortly afterwards the ministers approached the council as a body in order to urge that the money devoted to plays might be better bestowed on the poor, and it was thereupon resolved that no more _ystoyres_ should be given '_jusque lon voye le temps plus propre_'.[788] This determination must, I think, have been motived by some temporary conditions of special economic distress, for it was far from being the end of plays in Geneva. In the following year, 1547, Richard Chaultemps and his wife and children were refused permission for a _jeu de passe-temps_, which was thought contrary to Christianity, and were given a _teston_ to go on their way. On the other hand, the council attended officially in the same year at a performance of a Latin dialogue '_du livre de Joseph_' by the scholars of the college. In 1548 a wandering _tragechieur_ was allowed to perform on condition of avoiding any '_chose contre Dieu_'. In 1549 the scholars played a comedy of Terence in a meadow, and received a gift of two crowns for a banquet. In 1551 the council forbade the recitation of a _ballade_ by Abel Poupin at a banquet, but sanctioned a '_petite farce de joyeuseté_' for recreation's sake. In 1558 the seigneurs of Berne paid a visit to Geneva and one Maître Enoch proposed a play on a subject taken from the Berne _armoiries_ of Jupiter and Europa, and another on the execution of five Berne scholars at Lyons. This application was referred to Calvin for a report. In 1560 the reprinting of Beza's tragedy of _Abraham's Sacrifice_ was approved by the consistory. In 1561 Conrad Badius's comedy of _Le Pape Malade_ was performed in the college hall and afterwards printed, and permission was also given for a comedy by Jerome Wyart, '_si M. Calvin est de cet avis_'. An interval of some years without plays followed, until in 1568 the series was resumed with Jacques Bienvenu's comedy of _Le Monde Malade et Mal Pansé_.[789] It is hardly necessary to carry the record further, since the proof is sufficient that, whatever the private opinions of some of the ministers may have been, the actual working of the theocracy was not inconsistent with the production, under a careful censorship, of academic or bourgeois plays, or even, although more rarely, of entertainments of the type afforded by a professional _tragechieur_. It was not until 1572 that the Synod of Nîmes passed a constitution for the whole of the French reformed churches, by which all plays, other than those of a strictly educational character, were forbidden.[790]

It must be doubtful whether even this decree would have fully met the views of Michel Cop and his supporters. At any rate, it is possible to trace the growth of a sentiment amongst English theologians of the Calvinistic persuasion, which was not prepared to exclude the academic play from the general condemnation of things theatrical. Naturally this tendency shows itself mainly at the Universities, where tragedies and comedies, both in Latin and in English, continued to be part of the ordinary exercise of youth, especially when Christmas was kept or entertainment had to be found for a royal visit, and where men of high ecclesiastical standing, such as James Calfhill, Penitentiary of St. Paul's and Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity, did not disdain to furnish dramas for the use of their scholars.[791] So far as Cambridge is concerned, we find Vice-Chancellor Beaumont reporting to Archbishop Parker in 1565 that 'two or three in Trinity College think it very unseeming that Christians should play or be present at any profane comedies or tragedies'.[792] We find Sir John Harington, who was an undergraduate from 1576 to 1578, noting his recollection about 1597 that 'in Cambridge, howsoever the presyser sort have banisht them, the wyser sort did, and still doe mayntayn them'. And we find John Smith of Christ's haled before the University for an unguarded attack upon the less strict practice of his fellows in a Lenten sermon of 1586.[793] It was at Oxford, however, that the divergence of opinion became most articulate. The protagonist was John Rainolds, afterwards President of Corpus Christi College, and a man of great influence in the Puritan party, whom he represented at the Hampton Court Conference of 1604. Rainolds first touched the question, to which his attention was probably called by the dispute then raging in London, with a passing allusion to the '_pestes scenicorum, theatralia spectacula_' as one of the great interruptions to Oxford studies, in his preface to some disputations published in 1581. There is no reason to suppose that he voiced the general view of the University, and in particular of those of its members who were still under the influence of the humanist spirit. Probably these were better represented by the commentaries on the _Ethics_ and _Politics_ of Aristotle published by John Case, Fellow of St. John's College, in his _Speculum moralium quaestionum_ (1585) and _Sphaera civitatis_ (1588). Case commends plays, provided that they are an expression of _comitas_, the Aristotelian [Greek: eutrapelia], and not of its excess _scurrilitas_. They are sanctioned by the use of antiquity, and they give a lively picture of antiquity itself. They teach experience of things and of the human heart, and afford training--it is the _scenae trigemina corona_--in the management of the voice, the features, the gestures. All this is, of course, in the traditional humanist vein. Some of the current criticisms of the drama are quoted, only to be refuted. It is not necessarily _indecorum_ for a man to wear the dress of a harlot on the stage, if his object is to expose the vices of harlotry, '_non est enim monstrum vestes sed mores meretricis induere_'. It is true that the Fathers condemned plays, but they had in mind the abuses of plays and in particular the devotion of plays to the service of idols. It is ridiculous to hold that the dignity of kingship is offended if it is impersonated by an actor. The offence is no more than when the outlines of a king are represented in a picture. No doubt Case has the academic drama almost wholly in his mind, and would have been inclined to dismiss the professional stage contemptuously enough as _scurrilitas_.[794] He is certainly careful to make it clear that the plays of which he approves are not '_inanes et histrionicae fabulae, Veneris illecebrae_', but witty comedies and magnificent tragedies '_in quibus expressa imago vitae morumque cernitur_'. He did not convince John Rainolds; it is just possible that the ninepin arguments, which in true scholastic fashion he set up and knocked down again, were hardly to be accepted as an adequate statement of the Puritan position. Rainolds evidently acquired a reputation in the University for 'preciseness' as regards the drama; and the time came when the academic playwrights thought it well to challenge him in public. Their champion was Dr. William Gager of Christ Church, two of whose plays, _Ulysses Redux_ and _Rivales_, were down for performance by the Christ Church students during the Christmas of 1591-2. Rainolds was invited by one Thomas Thornton to see the _Ulysses Redux_. He refused and being pressed gave his reasons. It was not therefore unnatural that when Gager appended to the _Hippolytus_, which was also given, a new apologetical epilogue in which arguments against the stage, very similar to those of Rainolds, were put into the mouth of one Momus, our theologian should infer that by Momus none other was intended than himself. He must have cried '_Touché_', and thereby gave Gager an opportunity of sending him a printed copy of _Ulysses_, with an enlarged epilogue and a repudiation of any personal intention in the character of Momus. This led to a letter from Rainolds, in which he set out his views upon the stage at great length and with considerable learning, to a reply from Gager, who was or professed to be stung by some of the reflections cast by Rainolds upon the Christ Church men, and to a rejoinder from Rainolds, in which he reiterated his original arguments with even greater elaboration. His main contentions were four in number. Firstly, he laid stress upon the _infamia_ with which the Roman praetors had 'noted' _histriones_, and refused to accept Gager's pleas that this only applied to those who played for gain, or that gentlemen who only appeared upon the stage rarely and at long intervals could not properly be called _histriones_ at all. Secondly, he adopted Calvin's interpretation of the Deuteronomic prohibition of the change of sex-costume as an absolute one, belonging to the moral and not merely the ceremonial law. Gager had taken the view, which later on had the support of the learned Selden, and which to a folklorist hardly needs demonstration, that what Moses had in mind was a change of costume forming part of an idolatrous ritual; and had also committed himself to the weaker argument that a man might justifiably, as Achilles did, put on a woman's clothing to save his life. The latter Rainolds denied, and pointed out that, even if it held good, it would hardly cover a change designed for a purely histrionic purpose. His third argument was based on the moral deterioration entailed by counterfeiting wanton behaviour in a play; and his fourth on the waste both of time and money involved. He does not wish to be thought an enemy either of poetry or of reasonable recreation, but he expresses a doubt whether some hours were not spent over Gager's plays that ought to have been spent at sermons. The theory of humanistic educators that acting teaches lads self-confidence he is not prepared to admit as a sufficient justification of their practice. The debate is, of course, a good deal complicated by topics of mere erudition and by disputes as to whether Momus was really meant as a caricature of Rainolds, or as to whether Rainolds's abstract argument about _infamia_ bore the concrete implication that such honest youths as the Christ Church students or so well-voiced a musician as the Master of the Choristers, who had played with them, were in fact _infames_, or as to the extent of approval implied by the presence of University dignitaries and of the queen herself at performances of Gager's pieces. Anyway, said Rainolds, the queen's laws set down players as vagabonds. Given their common premises, it must be acknowledged that both in learning and in logic the Puritan had the advantage over his opponent, although common sense was on the side of the latter, and it is with some scepticism that one reads the statement of the printer who gave Rainolds's share of the controversy to the world in 1599, that ultimately Gager 'let goe his hold, and in a Christian modestie and humilitie yeelded to the truth, and quite altered his judgement'. My own conviction is that Gager would have subscribed to anything, in order to have done with receiving argumentative letters from Rainolds. But when Rainolds had disposed of Gager, he had to meet a fresh adversary in Alberico Gentili, an Italian who held the professorship of civil law at Oxford and had committed himself to a different view as to the force of the praetorian _infamia_. Between these two pundits the discussion continued for some time without contributing much to the elucidation of the main issue. Rainolds's book, the first line of the title of which was _Th' overthrow of Stage-Playes_, furnished many weapons later on for the armoury of Prynne, and material for ridicule in the play of _Fucus, sive Histriomastix_, produced at Queens' College, Cambridge, in 1623.

The problem with which, long before the University disputants handled the matter at all, the London Puritans had to deal, was not one of nice differentiation between the position of the amateur and that of the professional player. Their concern with the academic drama was comparatively small; some at least of them were prepared to subscribe to all the allowances for it that were made by the Synod of Nîmes.[795] What they were face to face with was the rapid growth in London of professional playing as a recognized occupation, using an increasing number of playing-places, almost entirely free from control on its ethical side, and tending more and more to become a permanent element in the life of the community. And the attitude of condemnation which they adopted was in the main one in which Lutheran, Calvinist, and humanist, Case and Gager no less than Rainolds, would in theory at least have concurred. The writings against the stage, especially those of the critical period from 1576 to 1583, are of a very heterogeneous character. The most important are, on the one hand, long passages in two treatises by ministers devoted to the flagellation of social evils generally, the _Dicing, Dauncing, Vaine Playes, or Enterludes_ (1577) of John Northbrooke, and the _Anatomie of Abuses_ (1583) of Phillip Stubbes; and on the other, three special pamphlets by sometime playwrights who had embraced conversion, and had the advantage of speaking from inner knowledge of the profession they were attacking. Of these two, _The Schoole of Abuse_ (1579) and _Playes Confuted in Five Actions_ (1582) were by Stephen Gosson, who became the vicar of St. Botolph's in the City, and the third was by Anthony Munday, who, as Gosson put it, returned to his own vomit again, and resumed play-writing. Munday's contribution was the _Third Blast_ of a composite publication issued under the title of _A Second and Third Blast of Retrait from Plaies and Theaters_ (1580). The _Second Blast_ was a translation of the chapter against _spectacula_ from Salvian's fifth-century _De Gubernatione Dei_.[796] These five books form the main indictment of the stage, as it developed itself at Puritan hands or under Puritan influences. In addition there were many minor onslaughts, in sermons by Thomas White (1577), John Stockwood (1578), and others at the famous City pulpit of Paul's Cross, in works of devotional theology, such as Gervase Babington's _Exposition of the Commandements_ (1583), and in many examples of the miscellaneous literature that stood for modern journalism. The arguments used in support of the attack are naturally various. Some of them coincide with those used later by Rainolds at Oxford. Calvin's objection, based on Deuteronomy, to the wearing of women's clothes by boys makes its appearance.[797] The condemnations of _histriones_ by the Fathers and by the austerer pagans are applied without discrimination to their Elizabethan successors, and there is a deliberate attempt to brand these alike with the Roman note of _infamia_ and with the more recent stigma of vagabondage. The historical disquisitions lay much stress on the origin of pagan plays in idolatry. Gosson, who in his second book affects a methodical treatment of the subject, and draws upon his recollection of Aristotle for analysis of the efficient, material, formal, final causes and effects of plays, justifies himself from Tertullian in finding the efficient cause of plays in none other than the incarnate Devil.[798] He also derives from Aristotle, although he knew less of Aristotle than did John Case, a theory that acting, being essentially the simulation of what is not, is by its very nature 'with in the compasse of a lye, which by Aristotle's judgment is naught of it selfe and to be fledde'.[799] A similar doctrine is readily applied to the imaginations of poets which give actors their opportunity.[800] As Touchstone puts it, poetry is not 'honest in deed and word' nor 'a true thing', for 'the truest poetry is the most feigning'.[801]

Whatever weight such abstract reasonings may have carried, they were after all but the fringes and trimmings of the controversy. The main burden of the complaints raised by the Puritans rested neither on theology nor on history, but on the character of the London plays as they knew them, and on the actual conditions under which representations were given. In a stage from which Protestant polemic was now banned, they found nothing but _scurrilitas_. They resented the impurity of speech and gesture. They resented the scoffs at virtue and religion, especially when these were interlaced with themes taken, as dramatic themes were still often taken, from the Scriptures.[802] And their disapproval was hardly less when the plays were wholly secular, for in tragedies they could discern nothing but examples to honest citizens of murders, treacheries, and rebellions, and in comedies nothing but demoralizing pictures of intrigues and wantonness. Plays, they declared, are the snares of the devil set to catch souls. By plays the imagination of youth is corrupted, and matronly chastity first turned to thoughts of sin. With their ready touch upon vituperative rhetoric, they found for the theatre a string of nicknames of which Gosson's 'the school of abuse' was the model, and 'the school of bawdery', 'the nest of the devil', 'the consultorie of Satan', may serve as further samples. And what the plays began, they held that the surroundings of the playhouses were only too well adapted to finish. In them was focused all the sin of the city. Here men came, not merely to waste their time and their money, but to meet wantons, and to whisper dishonourable proposals in the ears of any respectable women with whom they found themselves in company. The constant presence of harlots amongst the audience, the dallying with them in the front of the galleries, the manning of them home afterwards, even if the buildings adjacent to the stage did not themselves afford a convenient shelter for ill-doing, are dwelt upon with a vigour of description which perhaps testifies to the horror wherewith this connexion of the stage with sexual immorality had affected the Puritan mind.[803]

Above all, there was Sabbatarianism to be taken into account. During the earlier part of Elizabeth's reign, Sunday was the usual day for plays. The trumpets blew for the performances just as the bells were tolling for afternoon prayer; and writer after writer bears testimony to the fact that too often the yards and galleries were filled with an appreciative crowd, while the preacher's sermon was unfrequented.[804] Thus a touch of professional _amour propre_ gave its sting to the conflict, and there is no one point that is more insisted upon in sermon after sermon and pamphlet after pamphlet than the desecration of the Lord's Day which the attendance at theatres directly entailed. The preachers did not disdain an appeal to popular superstitions which they probably themselves shared, and the visitations of plague from which Elizabethan London regularly suffered,[805] no less than such events as earthquakes[806] or the fall of ruinous buildings,[807] were interpreted as tokens of divine wrath at the wickedness of plays and in particular at the breach of the Fourth Commandment. A curious legend was whispered abroad in various forms, to the effect that the devil himself had been known on occasion to take an unrehearsed part in this or that godless piece.[808]

The playwright, no less than the theologian, has a ready pen, and the Puritan attacks naturally provoked a counter-literature of apology. This first took shape in critical prefaces attached to such contemporary plays, mainly of literary rather than stage origin, as reached the honours of print.[809] Gosson's _Schoole of Abuse_, a treacherous performance from the point of view of his former colleagues, called for a more elaborate reply. More than one pamphlet was written, of which the _Honest Excuses_ (_c._ 1579) Thomas Lodge has alone come down to us. The serious argument of this, as well as of the prefaces which preceded it, continues the main humanist tradition. Against the denunciations of the Fathers and of certain pagan moralists, the apologists set the antiquity of plays and the honour in which after all they were held in the palmy days of Greece and Rome. The examples of violence and wantonness in tragedy and comedy they justify by the moral end of drama. Decorum--the literary sense of what is psychologically appropriate to a given character--requires that, as George Whetstone puts it, 'grave old men should instruct, yonge men should show the imperfections of youth, strumpets should be lascivious, boyes unhappy, and clownes should be disorderly'. But whether the action be merry or mournful, grave or lascivious, the ultimate object is edification, even as the bee sucks honey from flowers and weeds alike. 'By the rewarde of the good, the good are encowraged in well doinge; and with the scowrge of the lewde, the lewde are feared from evil attempts.' Comedy, no doubt, aims at delight, but it is a delight which, on the Horatian principle, is mingled with the useful. This appears to have been the especial theme of the _Play of Plays and Pastimes_, in which the actors essayed their own defence on the boards of the Theatre. Unfortunately this piece is only known by Gosson's unfriendly account of its plot in _Playes Confuted_.[810] It was in the form of an allegorical morality, in which was shown the dependence of Life on Delight and Recreation as a protection from Glut and Tediousness, and how Zeal, in order to govern Life aright, must be reduced to Moderate Zeal and work hand in hand with Delight, using comedies for which it is prescribed 'that the matter be purged, deformities blazed, sinne rebuked, honest mirth intermingled, and fitte time for the hearing of the same appointed'. It is the note of humanism, again, which is prominent in the group of critical writings of which the first and most important is Sir Philip Sidney's _Defence of Poetry_ (_c._ 1583). It is reasonable to suppose that this treatise had its origin in the train of ideas awakened by the Puritan outcries. Gosson had dedicated _The Schoole of Abuse_ to Sidney, and as Gabriel Harvey told Spenser, was 'for hys labor scorned; if at leaste it be in the goodnesse of that nature to scorne'. Certainly the _Defence_ can hardly be regarded as a direct contribution to the controversy. Sidney was not particularly concerned to uphold the contemporary stage, and occupied himself rather with answering a general attack upon poetry contained in _The Schoole of Abuse_, which had been merely incidental to Gosson's principal argument. But in the course of his discussion he comes to examine tragedy and comedy as branches of imaginative literature, and the definitions which he frames are conceived once more in the full spirit of humanism. He speaks of 'high and excellent tragedy, that openeth the greatest wounds, and showeth forth the ulcers that are covered with tissue; that maketh kings fear to be tyrants and tyrants manifest their tyrannical humors; that with stirring the effects of admiration and commiseration teacheth the uncertainty of this world, and upon how weak foundations gilden roofs are builded'. So, too, the work of the comic poet is 'an imitation of the common errors of our life which he representeth in the most ridiculous and scornful sort that may be, so as it is impossible that any beholder can be content to be such a one'. The _Defence_ was not published until 1595, but it must have been well known in private before that, since, itself founded on such Italian writers as Scaliger, Minturno, and Castelvetro, it in turn furnished inspiration for William Webbe's _Discourse of English Poesie_ (1586), Puttenham's _Arte of English Poesie_ (1589), and Sir John Harington's _Apologie of Poetrie_ (1591). All these three writers emphasize the moral lessons of tragedy and comedy on the familiar humanist lines.

It must be admitted that the humanist theory was not altogether conclusive as an answer to the Puritans. These were not prepared to accept the authority of Horace as making delight, even in conjunction with the useful, a legitimate end, when, as they pointed out, the delight was a carnal and not a spiritual one.[811] Nor could the arguments in favour of decorum, which were wholly of a literary and not an ethical nature, be expected to appeal to them. And as to the moral lessons to be learned by witnessing plays, whether tragedies or comedies, they were entirely sceptical. They return again and again, with obvious irritation, to the probably mythical story of a good woman who swore by her troth that she had been as much edified at a play as at any sermon.[812]

If, says Northbrooke, you will learne howe to bee false and deceyue your husbandes, or husbandes their wyues, howe to playe the harlottes, to obtayne ones loue, howe to rauishe, howe to beguyle, howe to betraye, to flatter, lye, sweare, forsweare, howe to allure to whoredome, howe to murther, howe to poyson, howe to disobey and rebell against princes, to consume treasures prodigally, to mooue to lustes, to ransacke and spoyle cities and townes, to bee ydle, to blaspheme, to sing filthie songes of loue, to speake filthily, to be prowde, howe to mocke, scoffe and deryde any nation ... shall not you learne, then, at such enterludes howe to practise them.[813]

And if sometimes notorious evil-doers are held up to reprobation on the stage, it seems to the preachers that such rebuke might more suitably come from the pulpit, since in a theatre the appeal must needs be made to an audience hardly fit to be judges in any man's cause.[814] Gosson and Munday, having been playwrights, and having presumably suffered at the hands of their masters, pay off old scores with another argument. If plays had really a moral influence, would not this be apparent in the lives of those who are most conversant with them, the players themselves. Yet the players are not only extremely insolent and swaggering persons, but notoriously practise in real life the very vices which they represent on the stage. Moreover, they take young boys and bring them up in shamelessness. How can it be expected that good shall be done, where there is no will in the agent to do good?[815] The inconclusiveness of the discussion was of course largely due to the fact that the Puritan and the humanist disputants were not talking about quite the same thing. Obviously the influence of a play, if any, upon conduct must depend on the manner of handling and on the dramatic idea involved; and it may be taken for granted that the ideal comedy and tragedy, which the humanists praised and which some of them tried to realize, were often very imperfectly represented by the actual pieces put before a London audience. This is to some extent admitted on both sides. Sidney is frankly contemptuous of the popular stage. Whetstone speaks of his 'commendable exercise' as 'discredited with the tryfels of yonge, unadvised, and rashe witted wryters'. Lodge and the author of _The Play of Plays_ are fully conscious of abuses, which must be remedied if the drama is to take the place assigned to it in the humanist scheme of things. On the other hand, Gosson is fair-minded enough to admit that certain plays, principally his own, are beyond reproach; and even that, as compared with an earlier period than that of which he wrote, there had been some purging of the language used on the boards.[816] Yet, when all allowance has been made on this score, it would seem that there must still remain some fundamental incompatibility between the views of the Puritans and those of the humanists as regards the psychological effects of the drama upon conduct. Perhaps this is hardly to be wondered at. After all, the psychological effect of a drama, or of any other work of art, is not a simple thing, but depends upon an incalculable relation between what the artist puts into his work and what the spectator brings to the contemplation of it. And it may fairly be assumed that what a Sidney brought and what a limb of Limehouse brought were sufficiently different things. Were this a philosophic work on the drama and not merely a history of the stage, it might be appropriate to dwell upon the fact that, however much the Puritans and the humanists might disagree, they were at one in referring their judgement of the drama to purely ethical standards of value, and that the conception of aesthetic value, which means so much for modern thought, was in the main beyond the scope of Elizabethan criticism.

So far as the character of the particular plays put on the stage was material, the case for the defence grew stronger as these approached more nearly to literature. Thus Thomas Nashe, whose _Pierce Penilesse His Supplication_ (1592) contains by far the most effective of the apologies for the drama from a popular point of view, is in a position, not only to vaunt the respectability of English actors as compared with the 'squirting baudie comedians' of beyond the seas, to repudiate the idea that rowdy apprentices were wanted in the theatres at all, and to claim a distinct superiority for play-going over gaming, whoreing and drinking as a pastime for courtiers and other idle men; but also to give point to his glorification of the moral purpose of tragedy and comedy by a special reference to the chronicle plays then at the height of their success, 'wherein our forefathers valiant acts, that haue line long buried in rustie brasse and worme-eaten bookes, are reuiued, and they themselues raised from the graue of obliuion, and brought to pleade their aged honours in open presence; than which, what can be a sharper reproofe to these degenerate, effeminate dayes of ours?' Nashe can even illustrate his contention from the Talbot scenes of Shakespeare's _1 Henry VI_; and it is indeed the ultimate paradox of the Puritan controversy that a movement, which was undoubtedly designed in the interests of honest and clean living, would have had the result, if it had been successful, of shutting out the world from the possibilities of a Shakespeare.

After the publication of the _Anatomie of Abuses_ in 1583 there was some slackening in the literary warfare carried on by the Puritans. The duty of abstinence from plays becomes a commonplace of treatises on morals and devotion, and the preachers continue to complain, but the only specialist pamphlet during the next quarter of a century is the comparatively unimportant _Mirrour of Monsters_ (1587) by another cast playwright, William Rankins. It must be doubtful whether this was due to any decrease in the strength of the sentiment against the stage. But the trial of forces was over, and for a time there was little further advance to be made. Something, as will be seen in the next chapter, had been won, so far as the observance of Sunday was concerned; on the other hand, the main issue had been pretty definitely lost. Moreover, there were other things to be thought of; firstly the Martin Marprelate controversy, which for a while absorbed much ink and paper, and secondly, the persecution which recusants had to undergo at the hands of the dominant party in Church and State. Aggressive at the beginning of Elizabeth's reign, by its close Puritanism had to stand on its defence. A corresponding change in its relations with the stage was inevitable. From an assailant, it became an object of assault. The players had never been disposed to endure criticism without hitting back. Lewis Wager, as early as 1566, has his word against the hypocrites, who slander plays from fear lest their own wickedness should be revealed in public; and one may be sure that the actor's side of the question was as remorselessly pressed from the scaffold as that of the Puritan from the pulpit. This tendency can only have gathered impetus from the official encouragement given for a time to the players to intervene against Martin Marprelate.[817] The tone of the later apologists for the stage has become insolent rather than deprecatory. Nashe, always ready to carry any war into the enemy's quarter, boldly ascribes the attacks upon plays to the envy felt by vintners, alewives, and victuallers for more respectable places of entertainment than their own, and to the indifference to greatness of avaricious citizens, who 'know when they are dead they shall not be brought upon the stage for any goodness, but in a merriment of the Usurer and the Diuel, or buying Armes of the Herald'. So, too, Henry Chettle, in his _Kind-Harts Dreame_ (1592), puts into the mouth of the ghost of Tarleton, not only the usual serious defence of the moral value of plays and an appeal to the youth of the city not to disturb the peace of the theatres, but also a mock protest from the keepers of bowling-alleys, dicing-houses, and brothels against the competition of actors with their trades, and the discovery in jig and jest of 'our crosse-biting, our conny-catching, our traines, our traps, our gins, our snares, our subtilties'. Nashe and Chettle are perhaps tilting rather at some of the civic allies of the Puritans, than at the Puritans themselves. But the latter had to bear their full share of the stage's revengeful triumph. The printer of _Th' Overthrow of Stage Playes_ in 1599 notes in his preface how some 'haue not bene afraied of late dayes to bring vpon the stage the very sober countenances, graue attire, modest and matronelike gestures & speaches of men & women to be laughed at as a scorne and reproch to the world'. A detailed analysis of the satire of Puritanism in later Elizabethan and in Jacobean comedy would pass beyond the limits of this study. For a sample may be taken the figure of Rabbi Zeal-of-the-Land Busy in Jonson's _Bartholomew Fair_ (1614). Busy has a scruple against eating pig at the fair, 'for the very calling it a _Bartholmew_-pigge, and to eat it so, is a spice of _Idolatry_, and you make the _Fayre_, no better than one of the high _Places_'. But the lust of the flesh overcomes him, and he eats 'two and a half to his share' and drinks 'a pailefull'. This, however, does not dispose him to be lenient to the pride of the eyes at the fair. He condemns a doll with 'See you not Goldylocks, the purple strumpet, there? in her yellow gowne, and greene sleeues?' and pulls down a pile of gingerbread cakes as 'this idolatrous groue of images, this flasket of idols'. Naturally, his extreme wrath is against the puppet, which he calls Dagon, and 'a beame in the eye of the brethren; a very great beame, an exceeding great beame; such as are your _Stage-players_, _Rimers_, and _Morrise-dancers_, who have walked hand in hand, in contempt of the _Brethren_, and the _Cause_'. He disputes with the puppet, and produces the 'old stale argument' of the male putting on the apparel of the female and the female of the male, and is finally refuted when the puppet 'takes up his garment', and reveals that it has no sex.[818]

When Puritanism gathered head again under James, it was the sting of caricature which directly led to the renewal of the old controversy. Two hypocrites in _The Puritan_ (_c._ 1606) had been christened after the churches of St. Antholin and St. Mary Overies, which were known to be the principal centres in London of Puritan faith and practice. William Crashaw, the father of the poet, protested in a sermon at Paul's Cross. Two years later, he again rebuked the players for their opposition to the Virginian expedition, which he declared to be due to pique at the godly determination of the adventurers to take no company to their plantation. There were other 'seditious sectists' at work, and a leading actor of the Queen's men, who was also a prolific dramatist, Thomas Heywood, took up the cudgels for his 'quality' against these 'over-curious heads' in an elaborate _Apology for Actors_, which must have been written about 1608, but was not published until 1612. This resumes, effectively enough, most of the arguments both of the humanists and of popular disputants such as Nashe, but does not contribute anything very novel upon a subject as to which, indeed, little novel remained to be said, with the exception of a reminder to the preachers that, whatever the Fathers may have thought about the Roman _ludi_, nothing had been said against them by either Christ or his Apostles.[819] Heywood dwells, of course, upon the established position to which by his time actors had attained in the favour both of English and of foreign sovereigns. But he is not blind to the abuses of his profession, and while lauding many of his fellows as men 'of substance, of government, of sober lives and temperate carriages, house-keepers, and contributory to all duties enjoyned them', regrets the licentiousness of others, as well as a growing tendency to inveigh upon the stage both against 'the state, the court, the law, the citty', and against 'private men's humors'.[820] Heywood was answered by one I. G. in _A Refutation of the Apologie for Actors_ (1615), which in its turn covered much ground already trod; and a year later another actor, Nathan Field, was moved to a _Remonstrance_ by some personal attacks levelled at himself and the rest of the King's men by Thomas Sutton, minister of St. Mary Overies. This brings us to the limit of the Shakespearian period, and in the distance still lie the final and portentous presentation of the whole Puritan case in Prynne's _Histriomastix_ (1633), the closing of the theatres by the Long Parliament, and the reaction of the Restoration under which men looked back to the stage of James and Charles as a model of decency and order.[821]

There is one clear heritage of English Puritanism from the Genevan theocracy, and that is the claim of the ministers, not only to direct the consciences of their flocks, but also to call upon the municipal authorities to put down with the might of the secular arm whatever in the life of the community did not conform to the religious and ethical standards which they preached. Most of the sermons and pamphlets of 1576-83 are quite deliberately addressed to the 'magistrate', with a view to the exercise of the regulative powers conferred by the proclamation of 1559 and the statute of 1572 for the remedy of the abuses of playhouses, and if possible to the complete suppression of playing. The City fathers, although Gosson railed against their 'sleepiness', were by no means deaf to these appeals.[822] Many of them had themselves adopted Puritanic principles. And apart from strictly religious considerations, they had their own reasons for looking with disfavour upon plays. They were husbands and employers, and their wives and apprentices wasted both time and money in gadding abroad to theatres, at a risk to their virtue and even their honesty. They were dignitaries, and were not invariably treated with respect upon the boards. They were the health authority, and even if plays did not stir the divine wrath to send a plague or an earthquake, the crowded assemblies certainly helped to spread infection, and the rickety structures brought hazard to life and limb.[823] They were responsible for the maintenance of law and order, and plays were not only the occasions for frays and riots, but also brought bad characters together, and were suspected of affording secret opportunities for the hatching of sedition. It must be borne in mind that, so far as the external abuses of theatres go, the complaints of their bitterest enemies are fairly well supported by independent evidence. The presence of improper persons in the theatres is amply testified to by the satirists, and by references in the plays themselves.[824] Intrigues and other nefarious transactions were carried on there[825]; and careful mothers, such as Lady Bacon, anxiously entreated their sons to choose more salutary neighbourhoods for their lodgings.[826] Some serious disturbances of the peace of which theatres were the centres will require attention in the next chapter, while law-court and other records preserve the memory of both grave crimes and minor misdemeanours of which they were the scenes.[827] Like the bawdy-houses, they appear to have been at the mercy of the traditional rowdiness of the prentices on Shrove Tuesday.[828]

On divers grounds therefore the Corporation of London seem to have reached the conclusion, about 1582 if not before, that the only way to reform the theatres was to end them. Probably they were influenced by the views of some of their permanent officials, of whom Thomas Norton, Remembrancer from 1571 to 1584, although himself a part-author of the tragedy of _Gorboduc_, and William Fleetwood, Recorder from 1571 to 1594, are known to have been determined opponents of the stage. The voluminous reports on city affairs, which Fleetwood was in the habit of sending to Lord Burghley, add much to our knowledge of a critical period.[829] Had the matter rested wholly with the Corporation, the policy of prohibition would doubtless have been brought into effective operation. But it did not rest wholly with them. Not only were the most important theatres, from 1576, outside the limits of their jurisdiction, but also account had to be taken of an authority greater even than that of the City of London, the authority, ill-defined but imperative, of the Privy Council. And the Privy Council was, as a rule, swayed by principles and personalities by no means enamoured of prohibition. Of this the anti-stage pamphleteers show themselves fully conscious. Gosson, addressing his _Schoole of Abuse_ to the Lord Mayor for the time being, acknowledges the difficulties which the 'letters of commendations' held by the companies put in the way of reform, and laments that players share the natures of the cuttle-fish and the torpedo, so that 'how many nets so euer ther be layde to take them, or hookes to choke them, they haue ynke in their bowels to darken the water, and sleights in their budgets, to dry up the arme of euery magistrate'. In _Playes Confuted_, he prayed for 'some noble Scipio in the courte' to drive the 'daunsing chaplines of Bacchus' out of England, and in a prefatory epistle to Sir Francis Walsingham he declared that the cleansing of the Augean stable was only possible for 'some Hercules in the court, whom the roare of the enimy can never daunt'. No doubt he hoped that the combined functions of a Scipio and of a Hercules would be undertaken by Walsingham himself.[830] Anthony Munday is even more explicit. He urges the city not to be daunted by 'particular men of auctoritie', and inveighs against the nobility who 'restraine the magistrates from executing their office', in order to pleasure servants whom they are unwilling to maintain themselves, and therefore license to roam throughout the country, publishing their 'mametree' in every temple of God, and begging alms in their masters' names from house to house.[831] The Council, however, were by no means disposed to give the City a free hand, and with themselves the policy of prohibition made little headway. They had, indeed, to reconcile conflicting considerations. They too, like the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, feared the opportunities for riots and seditions which the theatres afforded;[832] and the danger of the spread of plague was their constant preoccupation. Moreover, they were especially concerned to see that the players did not touch upon matters of state or religion, and to visit with sharp chastisement any offences in these directions. They frequently, therefore, thought it well to intervene with temporary inhibitions of plays, particularly during hot summers when the anticipations of plague were at their greatest. But they were never prepared to assent to the chronic request of the City that these inhibitions should be made permanent. After all, the people must have their recreation, and, what was more, the Queen must have hers.[833] And if her majesty's 'solace' at Christmas was to be provided upon economical terms, it was necessary that the players should be allowed facilities for 'exercise', and incidentally for earning their living, through public performances.[834] In a sense, therefore, it was really the Court play which saved the popular stage, and enabled the companies to establish themselves in a position which neither preachers nor aldermen could shake. One may suppose that the members of the Privy Council did not all quite see eye to eye on the theatrical question; and there were occasional fluctuations of policy which caused alarm in the tiring-rooms. Even in the high quarters where the natural attitude to the drama was that of humanism, Puritan sympathies were sometimes to be found. Leicester, indeed, who frequently curried favour with the Puritans, failed them in this respect, as may be seen from a letter written in 1581 by John Field, minister of the word of God, and author of an _Exhortation_ on the fall of Paris Garden, in which he rebukes Leicester for his patronage of plays 'to the great greife of all the godly'.[835] Burghley may have been personally inclined to the views of his friend and correspondent William Fleetwood, although even at the end of his long life he had not forgotten the services of the stage to his earlier statecraft.[836] It was to Walsingham that Gosson looked as a Scipio and a Hercules in the dedication of his _Playes Confuted_ in 1583, but Gosson was unlucky in his dedications, and in the following year Walsingham was officially concerned in the formation of the company of Queen's players. One would gladly know who was the 'notable wise counseller' dead in 1591, who, according to Sir John Harington, stood up for the play of _The Cards_, against those who thought that it was 'somewhat too plaine'. I should not be surprised if this were Walsingham.[837] By virtue of their offices, the Lord Chamberlain and Vice-Chamberlain, who were responsible for Court entertainments, were almost bound to take the players' part. But there was a moment of trepidation when Lord Cobham, who was known to be touched with Puritanism, succeeded for a few months in 1596 the 'old lord', Henry Lord Hunsdon, on whom the companies had learnt to rely. There is nothing to show that Elizabeth, beyond holding out for her 'solace', took any personal interest in the controversy. That very irritating document, the _Acts of the Privy Council_, which is little more than a letter-book, does not record whether she was present or not at the Council meetings at which theatrical affairs were discussed. But it must be assumed that the general attitude of the Council had her concurrence. Certainly she had no Puritan tendencies, and on the rare occasions on which her interference can be traced she was acting in the interests of one or other favoured company.[838]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 759: _Mediaeval Stage_, ii. 206.]

[Footnote 760: Horace, _De Arte Poetica_, 343:

Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci, lectorem delectando pariterque monendo.

Horace's treatise was first translated into English by Thomas Drant in 1567; cf. O. L. Jiriczek, _Der Elisabethanische Horaz_ (1911, _Sh.-Jahrbuch_, xlvii. 42).]

[Footnote 761: Plutarch, _Quomodo adolescens poetas audire debet_, c. xii.]

[Footnote 762: Donatus (ed. Wessner, i. 22), _Excerpta de Comoedia_; cf. _Hamlet_, III. ii. 23, also Gosson's criticism of Lodge's scholarship on this point in App. C, No. xxx.]

[Footnote 763: W. H. Woodward, _Studies in Education during the Age of the Renaissance_, 218; C. H. Herford, _Studies in the Literary Relations of England and Germany in the Sixteenth Century_, 101.]

[Footnote 764: _Mediaeval Stage_, ii. 216.]

[Footnote 765: Extract in App. C, No. v. Symmes, 31, cites Peter Martyr Vermigli as representing the same point of view, but the passage on plays in his _In librum Iudicum Commentarii_ (1563), c. 14, reproduced in his _Loci Communes_ (1563), Classis ii, c. 12, is not very lucid.]

[Footnote 766: J. E. Gillet (_M. L. A._ xxxiv. 465), citing e.g. an utterance of 1530, 'Et ego non illibenter viderem gesta Christi in scholis puerorum ludis seu comoediis latine et germanice rite ac pure compositis repraesentari propter rei memoriam et affectum iunioribus augendum'.]

[Footnote 767: _Mediaeval Stage_, ii. 111.]

[Footnote 768: _Robert Laneham's Letter_ (ed. Furnivall), 27.]

[Footnote 769: _Mediaeval Stage_, ii. 224, 446.]

[Footnote 770: _Mediaeval Stage_, ii. 222. The passage quoted is from the _Epistel Exhortatorye of an Inglyshe Christian_ (1544), written under the pseudonym of Henry Stalbridge. Foxe, _Book of Martyrs_, vi. 57, says of Bishop Gardiner, 'He thwarteth and wrangleth much against players, printers, preachers. And no marvel why: for he seeth these three things to be set up of God, as a triple bulwark against the triple crown of the Pope to bring him down; as, God be praised, they have done meetly well already.']

[Footnote 771: Cf. ch. v.]

[Footnote 772: Strype, _Annals_, 1. ii. 436, 'Sithence the comynge and reigne of our most soveraigne and dear lady quene Elizabeth, by the onely preachers and scaffold players of this newe religion, all thinges are turned up-side downe, and notwithstandinge the quenes majesties proclamations most godly made to the contrarye, and her vertuous example of lyvinge, sufficyent to move the hearts of all obedyent subjects to the due service and honour of God.' If a proclamation as to plays is meant, it must be the earlier one of 8 April 1559, as the speech was probably delivered in the debate on the second reading of the Act of Uniformity on 26 April. Strype, 1. i. 109, points out that it is definitely assigned by _Cotton MS. Vesp._ D. 18, to Feckenham, and that Burnet's ascription to Nicholas Heath, Archbishop of York, which has been followed by Collier, i. 168, and others, rests on a mistaken note by a later hand on a copy in a _C. C. C. C. Synodalia MS._]

[Footnote 773: _V. P._ vii. 65, 71, 80.]

[Footnote 774: _Sp. P._ i. 62 (29 April 1559), 'She was very emphatic in saying that she wished to punish severely certain persons who had represented some comedies in which your Majesty was taken off. I passed it by, and said that these were matter of less importance than the others, although both in jest and earnest more respect ought to be paid to so great a prince as your Majesty, and I knew that a member of her Council had given the arguments to construct these comedies, which is true, for Cecil gave them, as indeed she partly admitted to me.']

[Footnote 775: _Sp. P._ i. 247. England and Protestantism got as good as they gave. Bohun, 99, records how, about 1560-2, Sir Nicholas Throgmorton was made the butt of French court jesters and comedians. Mary of Scotland was hardly persuaded, in 1565, to punish some Catholics who had made a play against the ministers, with a mock baptism of a cat in it (Randolph to Cecil, in Wright, _Eliz._ i. 190).]

[Footnote 776: Cf. ch. v.]

[Footnote 777: Cf. ch. xxii.]

[Footnote 778: Calvin, _Opera_, xxi. 207 (_Annales Calviniani_), gives prohibitions made under Farel's influence in 1537; for earlier records, cf. E. Doumergue, _Jean Calvin_, iii. 579; H. D. Foster, _Geneva before Calvin_ in _American Hist. Review_, viii. 231.]

[Footnote 779: A. L. Herminjard, _Correspondance des Réformateurs dans les pays de langue française_, i. 195, 'Christianum alienum oportet a bachanalibus quae gentium more celebrantur, et ab hypocrisi Iudaica in ieiuniis et aliis quae non directore spiritu fiunt: ac cavere oportet a simulachris quam maxime.' Possibly, however, 'simulachra' means 'images' rather than 'disguisings'.]

[Footnote 780: Calvin, _Opera_, xᵃ. 5, 16.]

[Footnote 781: The proceedings against Mme Françoise Perrin for allowing a dance in her house are described in A. Roget, _Hist. du Peuple de Genève_, ii. 225. In 1550 the council resolved (Calvin, _Opera_, xxi. 460), 'Item des ordonnances des dances qu'elles ne soyent point admoindries mais que l'on ne soufre pas cela. Surquoy est arreste que soyent faictes cries a voix de trompe que nulz naye a danser ny chanter chansons deshonnestes ny dancer en façon que soit: sur poienne de estre mis troys iours en prison en pain et eaue et de soixante sols pour une chescune foy la moytie applique a l'hospital et laultre moytie a la court'. In 1557 (_Opera_, xxi. 662) persons were brought before the consistory on an accusation of 'insolences faictes a un royaulme'. They had a cake, and in one girl's slice 'y mirent ung grain de genievre et pour ce lappellerent Royne et crierent a aulte voix la Royne boit'.]

[Footnote 782: Calvin, _Opera_, xxi. 379; cf. Roget, ii. 235.]

[Footnote 783: Calvin, _Opera_, xxi. 382; cf. Roget, ii. 238, 'Aulcungs joueurs des antiques et puissance de Hercules ont prié que plaise a MM. de les laisser jouer de bonne grâce la bataille des Mores et puissance de Harodes et aultres antiques héros. Arresté pour obvier scandalle que ne doibgent point jouer, mes que demain se doibgent retirer.' Cf. the notices of the Hercules performances at Paris in 1572 and at Utrecht in 1586 (ch. xiii, s.v. Leicester's), and p. 152, n. 1, for an early Italian parallel.]

[Footnote 784: Calvin, _Opera_, xxi. 381-4; cf. Roget, ii. 236; Doumergue, iii. 579; W. Walker, _John Calvin_, 298.]

[Footnote 785: Calvin, _Ep._ 800 (_Opera_, xii. 347), '... Nihil hic habemus novi, nisi quod secunda comedia iam cuditur. Cuius actionem testati sumus nobis minime probari. Pugnare tamen ad extremum noluimus, quia periculum erat ne elevaremus nostram autoritatem, si pertinaciter repugnando tandem vinceremur. Video non posse negari omnia oblectamenta. Itaque mihi satis est si hoc, quod non est adeo vitiosum, indulgeri sibi intelligant, sed nobis invitis....' This was on 3 June. _Ep._ 807 (_Opera_, xii. 355), of 4 July, describes the dissensions amongst the ministers, and adds, 'Auditis fratribus, respondi multas ob causas nobis non videri expedire ut agerentur, et simul causas exposui; nos tamen nolle contendere, si senatus contenderet ... nunc ludi aguntur'.]

[Footnote 786: Calvin, _Ep._ 802 (_Opera_, xii. 351) 'Farellus Calvino ... Isti qui tam delectantur ludis, utinam non serio dolore torqueantur. Timendum est, ne qui alienis personis oblectantur quum propriam in Christo debeant sustinere in omni genere officiorum, ne ferre cogantur non personatos, qui fingunt nocere, sed qui nimis vere afflictent et angant. Sed quis tandem perfectam ... habebit plebem? Utinam in malis personati tandem essent, nec aliquid ipsi facerent, tantum aliorum peccata repraesentarent ... omnes ea vitarent, in bonis veri essent actores, imo factores.... 16 Iunii, 1546.']

[Footnote 787: Calvin, _Sermo_, cxxvi (_Opera_, xxviii. 18), 'Ainsi donc ce n'est point sans cause que ceste loy a esté mise; et ceux qui prennent plaisir à se desguiser, despittent Dieu: comme en ces masques, et en ces momons, quand les femmes s'accoustrent en hommes, et les hommes en femmes, ainsi qu'on en fait: et qu'adviendra-t-il? Encores qu'il n'y eust point nulle mauvaise queue, la chose en soy est desplaisante à Dieu: nous oyons ce qui en est ici prononcé: _Quiconques le fait, est en abomination_.' Other sermons, e.g. _Sermo_ lvii, condemn dances and _jeux_ generally, without any special stress on plays; cf. P. Lobstein, _Die Ethik Calvins_, 113.]

[Footnote 788: Calvin, _Opera_, xxi. 385.]

[Footnote 789: Calvin, _Opera_, xxi. 406, 450, 684, 734; Roget, ii. 238, 243; iii. 139; vi. 192; Doumergue, iii. 579, sqq.]

[Footnote 790: _Discipline des Églises Réformées_, ch. xiv, art. 28 (_Bulletin de la Soc. de l'Hist, du Protestantisme_, xxxv. 211), 'Il ne sera aussi permis aux fidèles d'assister aux comédies, tragédies, farces, moralités et autres jeux, joués en public ou en particulier, vu que de tout temps cela a été défendu entre chrétiens, comme apportant corruption de bonnes mœurs, mais surtout quand l'Écriture sainte est profanée; néanmoins, quand, dans un collège, il sera trouvé utile à la jeunesse de représenter quelque histoire, on la pourra tolérer pourvu qu'elle ne soit comprise en l'Écriture sainte, qui n'est pas donnée pour être jouée, mais purement prêchée, et aussi que cela se fasse rarement et par l'avis du Colloque qui en verra la composition.' The original decree of the Synod of Poitiers in 1560, to which this was an addition, only laid down that 'les momeries et batelleries ne seront point souffertes, ni faire le Roi boit, ni le Mardi gras'.]

[Footnote 791: Cf. ch. xxiii, s.v. Calfhill, for Walter Haddon's somewhat slighting reference to his _theatri celebritas_.]

[Footnote 792: _Parker Correspondence_ (Parker Soc.), 226.]

[Footnote 793: Strype, _Annals_ (1824), III. i. 496. Smith had said, 'Si illud verum sit quod auditione accepi, istius modi certe ludos diris devoveo et actores et spectatores'.]

[Footnote 794: I am not writing the history of the Oxford stage, but it is pertinent to note that a statute of 1584, just as Case was writing, had excluded common stage-plays from the University, both on grounds of health and economy, and that 'the younger sort ... may not be spectatours of so many lewde and evill sports as in them are practised' (Boas, 225).]

[Footnote 795: Northbrooke, 103. Stubbes took the same line in the _Preface_ to his first edition, but afterwards cancelled the passage.]

[Footnote 796: Cf. _Mediaeval Stage_, i. 18.]

[Footnote 797: Gosson, _P. C._ 195.]

[Footnote 798: Gosson, _P. C._ 169.]

[Footnote 799: Gosson, _P. C._ 197.]

[Footnote 800: Gosson, _P. C._ 188; Munday, 145.]

[Footnote 801: _A. Y. L._ III. iii. 17.]

[Footnote 802: Northbrooke, 92; Munday, 144; Stubbes, 140.]

[Footnote 803: Gosson, _S. A._ 35; _P. C._ 215; Munday, 139.]

[Footnote 804: Northbrooke, 92; Stockwood, 23; Munday, 128; Field, _Epistle_.]

[Footnote 805: White, 46; Gosson, _P. C._ 215.]

[Footnote 806: Stubbes, 180, speaks of serious accidents at theatres due to panic at an earthquake, which must be that of 6 April 1580; but the account published at the time (cf. App. C, No. xxv) makes no reference to theatres, although it does, oddly enough, record that the only deaths were those of two children who were listening to a sermon in Christ Church, Newgate.]

[Footnote 807: The fall of the Paris Garden bear-baiting house on 13 January 1583 led John Field, in his _A Godly Exhortation_ (1583) on that event, which is closely related to the anti-stage literature, to anticipate a similar fate for the theatres. The Puritans should have taken to heart the wise comment of Sir Thomas More on a similar occasion (cf. ch. xvi, s.v. Hope).]

[Footnote 808: Cf. ch. xxiii, s.v. Marlowe, _Dr. Faustus_.]

[Footnote 809: Cf. App. C, Nos. iv, ix, x, xiv, xix. Something might be added from the prefaces of the Senecan translators (cf. ch. xxiii).]

[Footnote 810: Gosson, _P. C._ 201.]

[Footnote 811: Gosson, _P. C._ 203.]

[Footnote 812: Northbrooke, 92; Munday, 139; Stubbes, 143.]

[Footnote 813: Northbrooke, 92; cf. Stubbes, 144.]

[Footnote 814: Munday, 150.]

[Footnote 815: Gosson, _P. C._ 182; Munday, 147.]

[Footnote 816: Gosson, _S. A._ 37.]

[Footnote 817: Cf. ch. ix and App. C, No. xl.]

[Footnote 818: _B. Fair_, i. 2, 3, 6; iii. 2, 6; iv. 1, 6; v. 5; cf. Jonson's _Epigr._ lxxv. _On Lippe the Teacher_. I suppose that the treatise on the question of sex-apparel which Selden sent to Jonson in 1616 (App. C, No. lxii) was meant to furnish annotations for _B. Fair_.]

[Footnote 819: Heywood, 24.]

[Footnote 820: Heywood, 43, 61.]

[Footnote 821: Cf. App. J.]

[Footnote 822: Gosson, _P. C._ 211.]

[Footnote 823: Henslowe, i. 136, records a payment of 10_s._ by the Admiral's in May 1601, 'to geatte the boye into the ospetalle which was hurt at the Fortewne'. At St. James, Clerkenwell, was buried on 26 May 1613 (_Harl. Soc._ xvii. 123) 'John Brittine yᵗ was killed with a fall in the Pley howse'. There was a shooting accident also in an Admiral's play of 1587; cf. ch. xiii.]

[Footnote 824: Cf. ch. xviii.]

[Footnote 825: One of the charges brought against the Venetian ambassador Foscarini on his return to Venice in 1616 was that he had tried to seduce the penitent of an English religious attached to the embassy, 'sometimes attending the public comedies and standing among the people on the chance of seeing her' (_Venetian Papers_, xiv. 593). About 1594 a diamond stolen from the loot of a Spanish carrack was bought by some goldsmiths from a mariner whom they met by chance 'at a play in the theatre at Shoreditch', and who afterwards showed them the diamond in Finsbury Fields (_Cecil Papers_, vii. 504).]

[Footnote 826: Cf. ch. xvi, s.v. Bull.]

[Footnote 827: In _Stukeley_, 610, the hero owes the bailiff of Finsbury, 'for frays and bloodshed in the Theatre fields, five marks'. The Middlesex justices had to deal with cases of stealing a purse at the Curtain in 1600, of a 'notable outrage' at the Red Bull in 1610, of abusing gentlemen at the Fortune in 1611, of stealing a purse at the Red Bull in 1613, and of stabbing at the Fortune in 1613 (_Middlesex County Records_, i. 205, 217, 259; ii. xlvii, 64, 71, 86, 88). On 7 July 1602 James wrote from Scotland to one James Hudson to intercede with the Council for John Henslay or Henchelawe of Grimsby, who was assaulted by Nicholas Blinstoun or Blunston at a play about the previous Whitsunday (23 May), and slew him (_Scottish Papers_, ii. 815; _Hatfield MSS._ xii. 363). Dekker (ii. 326), in _Jests to Make you Merrie_ (1607), gives the private playhouse as the habitat of the 'foist' or pickpocket, and says, 'The times when his skirmishes are hottest, or yᵉ time when they run attilt, is ... a new play'. Again (iii. 158), in _The Belman of London_ (1608), he tells us that rogues haunt playhouses, and (iii. 212) in _Lanthorne and Candlelight_ (1609), 'A foyst nor a nip shall not walke into a fayre or a Play-house, but euerie cracke will cry looke to your purses'.]

[Footnote 828: Divers persons were slain and others hurt and wounded in an attempt to pull down the Cockpit in Drury Lane on Shrove Tuesday 1617 (_M. S. C._ i. 374); cf. Camden, _Annales_ (4 March 1617), 'Theatrum ludionum nuper erectum in Drury-Lane a furente multitudine diruitur, et apparatus dilaceratur'; John Taylor, _Jack a Lent_ (1620, ed. Hindley), 'Put play houses to the sack and bawdy houses to the spoil'; _The Owles Almanack_ (1618), 9, 'Shroue-tuesday falls on that day, on which the prentices plucked downe the cocke-pit, and on which they did alwayes vse to rifle Madam _Leakes_ house, at the vpper end of _Shorditch_'. This was not Puritanism, but a traditional Saturnalia of apprentices at Shrovetide; cf. Earle, _Microcosmography_, char. 64 (A Player), 'Shrove-tuesday he feares as much as the bawdes'; Busino, _Anglopotrida_ (1618, _V. P._ xv. 246), describing the bands of prentices, 3,000 or 4,000 strong, who on Shrove Tuesday and 1 May do outrages in all directions, especially the suburbs, where they destroy houses of correction; E. Gayton, _Festivous Notes upon Don Quixote_ (1654), 271, 'I have known upon one of these festivals, but especially at Shrove-tide, where the players have been appointed, notwithstanding their bills to the contrary, to act what the major part of the company had a mind to. Sometimes _Tamerlane_, sometimes _Jugurtha_, sometimes _The Jew of Malta_, and sometimes parts of all these; and at last, none of the three taking, they were forced to undress and put off their tragick habits, and conclude the day with _The Merry Milkmaides_. And unless this were done, and the popular humour satisfied (as sometimes it so fortun'd that the players were refractory), the benches, the tiles, the laths, the stones, oranges, apples, nuts, flew about most liberally; and as there were mechanicks of all professions, who fell every one to his trade, and dissolved a house in an instant, and made a ruin of a stately fabric'.]

[Footnote 829: Most of these letters are printed in Wright, _Eliz._; a few are still unprinted among the _Lansdowne_ and _Hatfield MSS._; cf. App. D, Nos. xxxv, xxxvii, lxxiv.]

[Footnote 830: Gosson, _S. A._ 56; _P. C._ Epistle, 178.]

[Footnote 831: Munday, 128.]

[Footnote 832: Occasionally players were of use as spies. On 30 March 1603 four players gave information of an alleged proclamation of Lord Beauchamp as king by Lord Southampton (_Hist. MSS._ xiii. 4. 126).]

[Footnote 833: Cf. App. D, Nos. xl, liii, lviii, lxxi, lxxiii, lxxv, lxxxiv, lxxxv, ci, cxiv. The notion of the need of the public, as distinct from that of the Queen, for dramatic recreation gradually makes its appearance (cf. especially App. D, No. cii); but imperial Rome might have taught its lesson of _panem et circenses_.]

[Footnote 834: Taylor, _Wit and Mirth_ (1629, Hazlitt, _Jest Books_,