Chapter XIX: Book II: The Control of the Stage (2)

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_, iii. 62), burlesques the point of view in a story of the visit of the Queen's ape to Looe in Cornwall. The showman approached the mayor, who did visit and 'put off his hat and made a leg', and there was a proclamation, 'These are to will and require you, and every of you, with your wives and families, that upon the sight hereof, you make your personall appearance before the Queenes Ape, for it is an Ape of ranke and quality, who is to bee practised through her Majesties dominions, that by his long experience amongst her loving subjects, hee may bee the better enabled to doe her majesty service hereafter; and hereof faile you not, as you will answer the contrary'.]

[Footnote 835: App. D, No. liv.]

[Footnote 836: Hawarde, 48, records that in a Star Chamber case of cozening on 18 June 1596 'The Lord Treasurer would haue those yᵗ make the playes to make a comedie hereof, & to acte it with these names'; cf. p. 244. In _Hatfield MSS._ vii. 270 is a 'lewd saucy letter' of 25 June 1597 from Sir John Hollis to Burghley, who on the last Star Chamber day had pronounced Hollis's great-grandfather 'an abominable usurer, a merchant of broken paper, so hateful and contemptible a creature that the players acted him before the King [Henry VII or VIII] with great applause'. It is printed in H. Walpole, _Royal and Noble Authors_ (ed. Park, ii. 283).]

[Footnote 837: App. C, No. xlv. Was this the Chapel _Game of the Cards_ on 26 Dec. 1582, or was it the play in which Tarlton (cf. ch. xv) glanced at Raleigh as the knave commanding the queen?]

[Footnote 838: These interventions were the Admiral's men in 1600 and for Oxford's and Worcester's men in 1602 (cf. App. D, Nos. cxvii, cxxx).]

IX

THE STRUGGLE OF COURT AND CITY

[_Bibliographical Note._--Most of the material for the present
chapter is collected in Appendix D. An outline of the subject
was given in _Tudor Revels_ (1906), and it is well and fully
treated in V. C. Gildersleeve, _Government Regulation of the
Elizabethan Drama_ (1908). G. M. G., _The Stage Censor_ (1908),
and F. Fowell and F. Palmer, _Censorship in England_ (1913),
are perhaps more valuable on later periods. Vagabond life and
legislation may be studied in G. Nicholls, _History of the
English Poor Law_² (1898), C. J. Ribton-Turner, _History of
Vagrants and Vagrancy_ (1887), E. M. Leonard, _Early History of
English Poor Relief_ (1900), and F. Aydelotte, _Elizabethan
Rogues and Vagabonds_ (1913), and the working of local
government in C. A. Beard, _The Office of Justice of the Peace
in England_ (1904), and E. Trotter, _Seventeenth Century Life
in the Country Parish_ (1919).]

The foregoing chapter has endeavoured to define the practical and spiritual forces which underlay the controversy between Puritanism and the stage; it remains to study the working of the constitutional forms through which, as a resultant of those forces, the 'quality' of the player ultimately established itself as a recognized constituent of the polity. And first, for the social status of the players. The wittier Puritans were fond of twitting them, on the ground that, if all men had their rights, they would count as no better than vagabonds. There is little more than a verbal truth in the taunt. No doubt, in certain circumstances, players, like minstrels before them, might fall within the danger of a series of statutes which, in the course of formulating the provisions of a nascent poor-law, attempted also to regulate the wandering elements of society. It was part of the mediaeval conception of things to assign to every individual a definite function in the social organism and to expect from him the regular fulfilment of that function. To such a theory the migratory beggar and the masterless man were naturally repugnant. But it was primarily a shortage of labour towards the end of the fourteenth century which brought about the first serious endeavour to check vagabondage by legislation, and to compel the able-bodied vagrant, through the machinery of local government, to return to the village of his domicile and there take up again the service which he had abandoned. This policy was continued and developed by the Tudors. The principal act which was operative, when Elizabeth came to the throne, had been passed under Henry VIII in 1531. It provided that any able-bodied beggar or idle vagrant, having no land or master, and using no lawful merchandise, craft, or mystery for his living, should be brought before a justice of the peace, or in a corporate town the mayor, who should see him whipped at the cart-tail, and then, if a beggar, returned to his place of birth or residence, there to work as a true man ought to do, or if an idle person but no beggar, either put to labour or set in the stocks until he found surety to go to service. This statute was replaced by one of greater severity in 1547, under which vagabonds were to be branded and put to forced labour as slaves. But it was revived in 1550 and kept in force by frequent renewals, of which the last was under Elizabeth herself in 1563. In these Acts there is no mention by name either of players or of minstrels.[839] It may, however, be assumed that the quality of a player would no more be regarded than that of a tinker or a pedlar as a merchandise, craft or mystery, and the fact that some of the early companies were composed of men for whom playing had originally been subsidiary to a regular craft would hardly serve them, after they had obviously deserted that craft and were travelling abroad to make a living by the arts of migratory entertainment.[840] Their actual safeguard was quite a different one. By definition the vagabond was a masterless man, and with the exception of a few bodies of town players, who probably did not wander far from their settled habitations, the Tudor companies were not masterless. They were all under the protection of some nobleman or gentleman of position, as whose 'servants' they passed, bearing with them, no doubt, at any rate after this was required by a proclamation of 1554, a 'certificate' or letter of recommendation as proof of identity.[841] No doubt the relation in the larger companies of lord and servants was little more than a nominal one. The strict regulations of Henry VII against retainers who were not household servants had become relaxed with the disappearance of the conditions which necessitated them.[842] The players would wear a livery or badge, and would do some courtesy of attendance on festival occasions. The lord might intervene to help them if they got into an undeserved difficulty, and would see to it that they did not bring his name into bad repute. There was no economic dependence; the players lived by their earnings, not by wages. But they were not reckoned as masterless men.

A secure status, however, did not mean complete absence of control. The players had no free hand to play just when and where and what they liked. They were subject to certain conveniences as to times and seasons and localities, to precautions against breaches of the peace and dangers to public health and safety. Above all, in a time of political and ecclesiastical ferment, the sentiments of their plays had to be such as would stand the scrutiny of a government by no means tolerant of criticism. On these matters it was not, except in so far as heresy was constituted by Acts of Uniformity and the like, with statutes that they had to deal, but with the administrative regulations of the local and central executives. All over the country there were bodies charged with a general responsibility for public order, public safety, and public decency, as the Elizabethans conceived it. In the rural districts there were the justices of the peace, with powers more considerable than clearly defined; in the towns there were mayors and corporations, also acting as justices, but armed with a further authority derived both from custom and from charters, and with a very clear intention to use this authority to the full in the government of their communities. The regulation of amusements had always been regarded as falling within the scope of municipal activity, and in the end it proved a fortunate thing for the players, in London at any rate, that the central authority found itself driven by the pressure of circumstances to take over a large measure of the responsibility for stage control from the hands of the corporations.

For it need hardly be said that in the Tudor scheme of things the power of the local authorities was an immediate rather than an ultimate one. Both the justices of the peace and, for all their charters, the corporations had to reckon with a considerable and growing measure of central control, resting upon the royal prerogative, and claiming not merely to further define, but also in some respects to replace, dispense with, or override legislative enactments. This development of regulation from the centre is, of course, an established feature of sixteenth-century history. It arose out of many convergent causes, the strength of the monarchy in face of the great houses weakened by civil contention, the personal qualities of the Tudor sovereigns, the urgent need of fresh machinery to deal with problems created by ecclesiastical changes, by the growth of the press, by the growth of the stage itself, for which the legal and administrative traditions of the Middle Ages provided no solution. And if it was largely unconstitutional and destined ultimately to bring the prerogative to perdition, this did not in the meantime affect the position of the actor, who would certainly be fined and imprisoned if he did not obey, or to any great extent that of the justices or corporations, who might prove recalcitrant or at least argumentative, but in the long run found it profitable to obey also. There were three main avenues through which the royal prerogative found exercise. The first of these was the ancient procedure of Chancery. The will of the sovereign might be expressed in a writ or mandate, directed to the subject, and stamped for greater solemnity with the impression of the Great Seal of England. Such a writ was generally used in granting licences, in conferring offices, or in issuing commissions to execute functions on behalf of the Crown. It took the form of letters patent, so called because they were intended as open communications to all whom they might concern. These were handed to the recipient after an elaborate diplomatic process during which they passed successively under the royal Sign Manual, the Signet, the Privy Seal, and the Great Seal itself, while a copy was enrolled in the Court of Chancery, and thus became matter of public record.[843] Secondly, there was the proclamation. This was in theory the formal announcement either of an executive act, or of the royal intention as to the enforcement or interpretation of a statute. In practice it tended more and more, during the Tudor period, itself to take the place of a statutory enactment. Proclamations were made by direction of the sovereign in council, and were enrolled, like the patents, in Chancery. Both proclamations and, at a comparatively late stage, patents were made use of in the process of regulating players. But they were largely supplemented by the third method through which the royal prerogative expressed itself, namely that day-by-day activity of the Privy Council in the general co-ordination and supervision of affairs, which has already been described.[844] The Council Register itself and the local archives, especially those of London, are full of letters from head-quarters to justices and corporations, directing them as to the allowance or inhibition of plays in general, or calling for special action in cases in which a company of players had provoked a breach of the peace or had brought themselves under suspicion of heresy or sedition. No doubt the corporations, in particular, would often have preferred to act upon their own discretion. Sometimes they argued or protested or deferred compliance. But the Council had the powers of the Star Chamber behind them; and if in the end they resorted to more direct ways of control, this was probably rather for the sake of avoiding administrative friction than because they found any ultimate difficulty in imposing their will by means of correspondence upon reluctant magistrates.