Appendix C Documents of Criticism

[There is much vain repetition in learned controversy, whether literary or ethical. I have attempted, by extract or summary, to indicate the main critical positions taken up by writers of different schools with regard to plays, and at the same time to preserve the incidental information which they furnish on points of stage history. It does not seem to me necessary to do more than cite, as of minor importance, and practically adding nothing, T. Becon, The Catechisme (1564, Works, i, f. cccccxxxii); E. Hake, Merry Maidens of London (1567), A Touchstone for this Time (1574), sig. G 4v; E. Dering, Catechisme for Householders (1572); T. Brasbridge, Poor Man’s Jewel (1578); R. Crowley, Unlawful Practises of Prelates (> 1583), sig. B 3v; N. Bownde, Doctrine of the Sabbath (1595), 211; J. Norden, Progress of Piety (1596, ed. Parker Soc.), 177; T. Beard, Theatre of God’s Judgments (1597), 193, 197, 374; W. Vaughan, The Golden Grove (1600), i. 51; F. Hering, Rules for the Prevention of the Sickness (1603), sig. A 4v; R. Knolles, Six Books of a Commonweal (1606, from J. Bodin, Six Livres de la République, 1576–8, 1601), vi. 1; W. Perkins, Cases of Conscience (1608, ed. T. Pickering), 118; R. Bolton, Discourse of True Happiness (1611), 73; L. Bayly, Practice of Piety (c. 1612, ed. Webster, 1842), 182, 190; O. Lake, Probe Theologicall upon the Commandments (1612), 267; J. Dod and R. Cleaver, Exposition of the Ten Commandments (1612); G. Wither, Abuses Stript and Whipt (1613), ii. 3; D. Dyke, Michael and the Dragon (1615), 216. Probably such references could be multiplied indefinitely; they show how dread of the stage became a commonplace of pastoral theology. Thomas Spark’s Rehearsal Sermon (1579) is only known from the citation of it by Munday (cf. No. xxvii, infra).]

i. 1489 (?). Desiderius Erasmus.

[From Epistola 31, to an unnamed friend (P. S. Allen, Opus Epistolarum Des. Erasmi Roterodami, i. 123), conjecturally dated by Mr. Allen in 1489. Erasmus more briefly commends the educational use both of Terence and Plautus in De Ratione Studii (1511, Opera, i. 521). In 1532 he edited Terence, and to the same year belongs Epist. 1238 (Opera, iii. 2, 1457), which praises the comedies without re-arguing at length the ethical controversy; cf. W. H. Woodward, Desiderius Erasmus concerning the Aim and Method of Education (1904), 28, 39, 113, 164.]

Est enim in his Terentianis comoediis mirifica quaedam sermonis puritas, proprietas, elegantia ac, vt in tam antiquo comico, horroris minimum; lepos (sine quo rustica est omnis, quantumuis phalerata, oratio) et vrbanus et salsus. Aut hoc igitur magistro aut nemine discere licebit quo pacto veteres illi Latini, qui nunc vel nobis peius balbutiunt, locuti sint. Hunc itaque tibi non modo etiam atque etiam lectitandum censeo, verumetiam ad verbum ediscendum.

Caue autem ne homuncionum istorum imperitulorum, imo liuidulorum garritus te quicquam permoueant, qui vbi in ineptissimis authoribus Florista, Ebrardo Graecista, Huguitione se senuisse viderunt, nec tantis ambagibus ex imperitiae labyrintho potuisse emergere, id vnicum suae stulticiae solatium proponunt, si in eundem errorem suum iuniores omnes pelliciant. Nefas aiunt a Christianis lectitari Terentianas fabulas. Quam ob rem tandem quaeso? Nihil, inquiunt, praeter lasciuiam ac turpissimos adolescentum amores habent, quibus lectoris animum corrumpi necesse sit. Facile vnde libet corrumpitur qui corruptus accesserit. Syncerum nisi vas, quodcunque infundis acescit. Itane isti religiosuli ad caetera vel vtilissima talpis caeciores, ad vnam, si qua est, lasciuiam capreae sunt? Imo capri ac stolidi nihil sibi praeter nequitiam, qua sola imbuti sunt (indocti quippe iidemque mali), rapientes, non vident quanta illic sit moralitas, quanta vitae instituendae tacita exhortatio, quanta sententiarum venustas. Neque intelligunt totum hoc scripti genus ad coarguenda mortalium vitia accommodatum, imo adeo inuentum. Quid enim sunt comoediae, nisi seruus nugator, adolescens amore insanus, meretrix blanda ac procax, senex difficilis, morosus, auarus? Haec nobis in fabulis, perinde atque in tabula, proponuntur depicta; vt, quum in moribus hominum quid deceat, quid dedeceat, viderimus, alterum amemus alterum castigemus. En, in Eunucho Phaedria ille ex summa continentia in summam ineptiam amore, tanquam morbo validissimo, immutatus, adeo vt eundem esse non cognoscas; quam pulchro exemplo docet amorem rem esse et miserrimam et anxiam, instabilem et prorsus insaniae turpissimae plenam. Assentatores istos, pestilens hominum genus, Gnatonem suum, artis suae principem, spectare iubeto. Iactabundi et sibi placentes, quales diuitum plerosque imperitos videmus, Thrasonem suum spectent ac tandem cum sua magnificentia quam ridiculi sint intelligant.

Sed de his latius (quum [quae] de litteris scripsimus edemus) nostra leges, volente quidem Deo. Ad praesentem locum satis fuerit tetigisse comoedias Terentianas; modo recte legantur, non modo non ad subuertendos mores, verum etiam ad corrigendos maximopere valere, certe ad Latine discendum plane necessarias iudicauerim. An potius istud ex Catholicon, Huguitione, Ebrardo, Papia caeterisque ineptioribus sperare iubebunt? Mirum vero si his authoribus quis quid Latine dicat, cum ipsi nihil non barbare locuti sint. Huiusmodi amplectatur, qui balbutire volet; qui loqui cupiet, Terentium dicat, quem Cicero, quem Quintilianus, quem Hieronymus, quem Augustinus, quem Ambrosius et iuuenes didicere et senes vsi sunt; quem denique nemo, nisi barbarus, non amauit.

ii. 1523–31. Iohannes Ludovicus Vives.

(a)

[From Commentary on St. Augustine, De Civitate Dei (1522), viii. 27. The book was placed on the Index Expurgatorius, ‘donec corrigatur’, and Rainolds, Th’ Overthrow of Stage-Playes, 161, says that this was one of the offending passages. Vives, a Spaniard by birth, was lecturer at Louvain 1520–3, mainly in England 1523–8, and at Bruges 1528–31.]

At qui mos nunc est, quo tempore sacrum celebratur Christi morte sua genus humanum liberantis, ludos nihil prope a scenicis illis veteribus differentes populo exhibere, etiam si aliud non dixero satis turpe existimabit quisquis audiet, ludos fieri in re maxime seria. Ibi ridetur Iudas, quam potest ineptissima iactans, dum Christum prodit: ibi discipuli fugiunt militibus persequentibus, nec sine cachinnis et actorum et spectatorum: ibi Petrus auriculam rescindit Malcho, applaudente pullata turba, ceu ita vindicetur Christi captiuitas. Et post paulum, qui tam strenue modo dimicarat, rogationibus unius ancillulae territus abnegat magistrum, ridente multitudine ancillam interrogantem, et exibilante Petrum negantem. Inter tot ludentes, inter tot cachinnos et ineptias solus Christus est serius et seuerus. Quumque affectus conatur moestos elicere, nescio quo pacto non ibi tantum, sed etiam ad sacra frigefacit, magno scelere atque impietate, non tam eorum qui vel spectant vel agunt, quam sacerdotum, qui eiusmodi fieri curant. Sed hisce de rebus loquemur forsan commodiore loco.

(b)

[From De Tradendis Disciplinis, iii. 6 (1531, Opera, vi. 328).]

After comparing the Latinity of Plautus and Terence for school purposes, he adds:

Ex vtroque cuperem resecta quae pueriles animos iis vitiis possent polluere ad quae naturae quasi nutu quodam vergimus.

(c)

[From De Causis Corruptarum Artium, ii. 4 (1531, Opera, vi. 99).]

Venit in scenam poesis, populo ad spectandum congregato, et ibi sicut pictor tabulam proponit multitudini spectandam, ita poeta imaginem quandam vitae; vt merito Plutarchus de his dixerit, Poema esse picturam loquentem, et picturam poema tacens, ita magister est populi, et pictor, et poeta: corrupta est haec ars, quod ab insectatione flagitiorum et scelerum transiit ad obsequium prauae affectionis, vt quaecunque odisset poeta, in eum linguae ac stili intemperantia abuteretur: cui iniuriae atque insolentiae itum est obuiam, primum a diuitibus potentia sua, et opibus, hinc legibus, quibus cauebatur, ne quis in alium noxium carmen pangeret: tum inuolucris coepit tegi fabula; paullatim res tota ad ludicra, et in vulgum plausibilia, est traducta, ad amores, ad fraudes meretricum, ad periuria lenonis, ad militis ferociam et glorias; quae quum dicerentur cuneis refertis puerorum, puellarum, mulierum, turba opificum hominum, et rudium, mirum quam vitiabantur mores ciuitatis admonitione illa, et quasi incitatione ad flagitia, praesertim quum comici semper catastrophen laetam adderent amoribus, et impudicitiae; nam si quando addidissent tristes exitus, deterruissent ab iis actibus spectatores, quibus euentus esset paratus acerbissimus. In quo sapientior fuit qui nostra lingua scripsit Celestinam tragicomoediam; nam progressui amorum, et illis gaudiis voluptatis, exitum annexuit amarissimum, nempe amatorum, lenae, lenonum casus et neces violentas: neque vero ignorarunt olim fabularum scriptores turpia esse quae scriberent, et moribus iuuentutis damnosa ... Recentiores in linguis vernaculis multo, mea quidem sententia, excellunt veteres in argumento deligendo. Nullae fere exhibentur nunc publicae fabulae quae non delectationem vtilitate coniungant.

iii. 1531. Sir Thomas Elyot.

[From The Governour, i. 13 (ed. H. H. S. Croft, i. 123).]

‘They whiche be ignoraunt in poetes wyll perchaunce obiecte, as is their maner, agayne these verses [Horace, Epist. ii. 1. 126–31], sayeng that in Therence and other that were writers of comedies, also Ouide, Catullus, Martialis, and all that route of lasciuious poetes that wrate epistles and ditties of loue, some called in latine Elegiæ and some Epigrammata, is nothyng contayned but incitation to lechery.

First, comedies, whiche they suppose to be a doctrinall of rybaudrie, they be undoutedly a picture or as it were a mirrour of man’s life, wherin iuell is nat taught but discouered; to the intent that men beholdynge the promptnes of youth unto vice, the snares of harlotts and baudes laid for yonge myndes, the disceipte of seruantes, the chaunces of fortune contrary to mennes expectation, they beinge therof warned may prepare them selfe to resist or preuente occasion. Semblably remembring the wisedomes, aduertisements, counsailes, dissuasion from vice, and other profitable sentences, most eloquently and familiarely shewed in those comedies, undoubtedly there shall be no litle frute out of them gathered. And if the vices in them expressed shulde be cause that myndes of the reders shulde be corrupted: than by the same argumente nat only entreludes in englisshe, but also sermones, wherin some vice is declared, shulde be to the beholders and herers like occasion to encreace sinners.’ Quotes Terence, Eunuchus, v. 4. 8–18, on the moral end of comedy and virtuous counsel from Plautus, Amphitruo, ii. 2. 17–21; Ovid, Remedia Amoris, 131–6; and Martial, Epigr. xii. 34. ‘Wherfore sens good and wise mater may be picked out of these poetes, it were no reason, for some lite mater that is in their verses, to abandone therefore al their warkes, no more than it were to forbeare or prohibite a man to come into a faire gardein, leste the redolent sauours of swete herbes and floures shall meue him to wanton courage, or leste in gadringe good and holsome herbes he may happen to be stunge with a nettile. No wyse man entreth in to a gardein but he sone espiethe good herbes from nettiles, and treadeth the nettiles under his feete whiles he gadreth good herbes. Wherby he taketh no damage, or if he be stungen he maketh lite of it and shortly forgetteth it. Semblablye if he do rede wanton mater mixte with wisedome, he putteth the warst under foote and sorteth out the beste, or, if his courage be stered or prouoked, he remembreth the litel pleasure and gret detriment that shulde ensue of it, and withdrawynge his minde to some other studie or exercise shortly forgetteth it.... So all thoughe I do nat approue the lesson of wanton poetes to be taughte unto all children, yet thynke I conuenient and necessary that, when the mynde is become constante and courage is asswaged, or that children of their naturall disposition be shamfaste and continent, none auncient poete wolde be excluded from the leesson of suche one as desireth to come to the perfection of wysedome.’

iv. c. 1538 (?). Nicholas Udall.

[From Prologue to Roister Doister (? 1566–7).]

What Creature is in health, eyther yong or olde,

But som mirth with modestie wil be glad to use

As we in thys Enterlude shall now unfolde,

Wherin all scurilitie we utterly refuse,

Avoiding such mirth wherin is abuse:

Knowing nothing more comendable for a mans recreation

Than Mirth which is used in an honest fashion:

For Myrth prolongeth lyfe, and causeth health.

Mirth recreates our spirites and voydeth pensivenesse,

Mirth increaseth amitie, not hindring our wealth,

Mirth is to be used both of more and lesse,

Being mixed with vertue in decent comlynesse.

As we trust no good nature can gainsay the same:

Which mirth we intende to use, avoidyng all blame.

The wyse Poets long time heretofore,

Under merrie Comedies secretes did declare,

Wherein was contained very vertuous lore,

With mysteries and forewarnings very rare.

Suche to write neither Plautus nor Terence dyd spare,

Whiche among the learned at this day beares the bell:

These with such other therein dyd excell.

v. 1551. Martin Bucer.

[From De honestis ludis, a section of De Regno Christi, presented to Edward VI by Bucer, who was then Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, on 1 Jan. 1551, printed in 1557, and again in Scripta Anglicana (1577), ii. 54.]

Poterit iuuentus etiam exerceri agendo comoedias et tragoedias: populisque his honesta, et ad augendam pietatem non inutilis exhiberi oblectatio: sed piis, et ad regnum Christi doctis atque sapientibus viris opus fuerit, qui comoedias eas atque tragoedias componant: in quibus nimirum eiusmodi imitatio repraesentetur, consiliorum, actionum, atque euentuum humanorum, siue communium et vulgarium, vt fit in comoediis: sive singularium et qui sint maioris admirationis, quod proprium est tragoediae, quae ad certam morum correctionem, et piam conserat vitae institutionem.

Vt si comoedia repraesentetur iurgium pastorum Abrahae et Lot, atque horum a se inuicem discessio.... In huiusmodi comoedia tractari possent, et vtili ad piam institutionem oblectatione repraesentari, hi loci.... Ad eundem modum suppeditet piae comoediae vberem sane et aedificandae pietati peridoneam materiam, historia quaesitae, obtentae et adductae Isaaco sponsae Ribkae: ex hac enim historia queat describi pia parentum cura, quaerendi liberis suis religiosa connubia: fides bona et officiositas proborum seruorum.... Non dissimile argumentum desumi queat et ex ea historiae de Iacobo parti qua describitur, vt metu fratris, relictis parentibus, ad Labam auunculum suum concesserit....

Tragoediis, Scripturae vbique perquam copiosam offerunt materiam, historiis prope omnibus S. Patrum, regum, Prophetarum et Apostolorum inde ab Adam vsque, primo humani generis parente. Omnino enim refertae sunt hae historiae diuinis et heroicis personis, affectionibus, moribus, actionibus, euentibus quoque inexpectatis, atque in contrarium quam expectarentur cadentibus, quae Aristoteles vocat περιπετείας. Quae omnia cum mirificam vim habeant fidem in Deum confirmandi, et amorem studiumque Dei accendendi admirationem item pietatis atque iusticiae, et horrorem impietatis, omnisque peruersitatis ingenerandi atque augendi: quanto magis deceat Christianos, ut ex his sua poemata sumant, quibus magna et illustria hominum consilia, conatus, ingenium, affectus atque casus repraesentent, quam ex impiis ethnicorum vel fabulis vel historiis! Adhibendae autem sunt in vtroque genere poematum, comico et tragico, vt cum hominum vitia et peccata describuntur, et actione quasi oculis conspicienda exhibentur, id fiat ea ratione, vt quamuis perditorum hominum referantur scelera, tamen terror quidam in his diuini iudicii, et horror appareat peccati: non exprimantur exultans in scelere oblectatio, atque confidens audacia. Praestat hinc detrahere aliquid decoro poetico, quam curae aedificandi pietate spectatores; quae poscit vt in omni peccati repraesentatione sentiantur, conscientiae propriae condemnatio, et a iudicio Dei horrenda trepidatio.

At dum piae et probae exhibentur actiones, in his debet exprimi quam clarissime sensus divinae misericordiae laetus, securaque et confidens, moderata tamen, et diffidens sibi exultansque in Deo fiducia promissionum Dei cum sancta et spirituali in recte faciendo voluptate. Hac enim ratione sanctorum et ingenia, et mores, et affectus, ad instaurandam in populo omnem pietatem ac virtutem, quam scitissima imitatione repraesentantur. Eum autem fructum vt Christi populus ex sanctis comoediis et tragoediis percipiant praeficiendi et huic rei erunt viri, vt horum poematum singulariter intelligentes, ita etiam explorati et constantis studii in regnum Christi: ne qua omnino agatur comoedia, aut tragoedia, quam hi non ante perspectam decreuerint agendam.

Hi quoque curabunt, ne quid leue aut histrionicum in agendo admittatur: sed omnia exhibeantur sancta quadam, et graui, iucunda tamen, sanctis duntaxat, actione: qua repraesententur non tam res ipsae, et actiones hominum, affectus et perturbationes, quam mores et ingenia: ac ita repraesententur, vt excitetur in spectatoribus studiosa imitatio: eorum autem quae secus sunt instituta et facta, confirmetur detestatio, et excitetur declinatio vigilantior.

His observatis cautionibus, poterit sane multa, nec minus ad virtutem alendam prouehendamque, vtilis ludendi materia iuuentuti praeberi, maxime cum studium et cura eiusmodi et comoediarum et tragoediarum excitata fuerit, cum lingua vernacula, tum etiam lingua Latina et Graeca. Extant nunc aliquot non poenitendae huius generis comoediae et tragoediae, in quibus, etiamsi docti mundi huius desiderent in comoediis illud acumen, eumque leporem, et sermonis venustatem, quem admirantur in Aristophanis, Terentii, Plautique fabulis: in tragoediis, grauitatem, versutiam, orationisque elegantiam, Sophoclis, Euripidis, Senecae: docti tamen ad regnum Dei, et qui viuendi Deo sapientiam discere student, non desiderant in his nostrorum hominum poematis doctrinam coelestem, affectus, mores, orationem, casusque dignos filiis Dei. Optandum tamen, vt quibus Deus plus dedit in his rebus praestare, vt id mallent ad eius gloriam explicare, quam aliorum pia studia intempestiuis reprehensionibus suis retardare: atque ducere satius, comoedias atque tragoedias exhibere, quibus si minus ars poetica, scientia tamen vitae aeternae praeclare exhibetur, quam quibus vt ingenii linguaeque cultus aliquid iuuatur, ita animus et mores impia atque foeda et scurrili mutatione conspurcantur.

vi. 1559. William Bavande.

[From A Woork of Ioannes Ferrarius Montanus touchynge the good orderynge of a Common-weale, translated from the De Republica bene instituenda Paraenesis, published by Ferrarius, a Marburg jurist, in 1556.]

[Extracts] f. 81. ‘The laste of all [the seven handicrafts in a commonweal] is the exercise of stage plaiyng, where the people use to repaire to beholde plaies, as well priuate as publique, whiche be set forthe partlie to delight, partlie to move us to embrace ensamples of vertue and goodnesse, and to eschue vice and filthie liuyng’ ... f. 100v. ‘Chapter viii, Concernyng Scaffolds and Pageauntes of divers games and plaies and how farre thei be to be allowed, and set forthe in a Citee.... Plaies, set foorthe either upon stages, or in open Merket places, or els where, for menne to beholde. Whiche, as thei doe sometime profite, so likewise thei tourne to great harme, if thei be not used in such sorte, as is bothe ciuill and semely in a citee, whiche wee dooe abuse, when anythyng is set foorthe openly, that is uncleanlie, unchaste, shamefull, cruell, wicked, and not standyng with honestie.... Soche pastimes therefore muste bee set foorthe in a commonweale, as doe minister unto us good ensamples, wherin delight and profite be matched togither.... It is a commendable and lawfull thing to bee at plaies, but at soche tymes as when we be unoccupied with grave and seuere affaires, not onely for our pleasure and minde sake, but that hauyng little to doe, we maie learne that, whiche shall bee our furtheraunce in vertue.... There shall be no Tragedie, no Comedie, nor any other kinde of plaie, but it maie encrease the discipline of good maners, if by the helpe of reason and zeale of honestie, it bee well emploied. Which then is doen, when, if thou either hearest, or seest anything committed that is euill, cruell, vilanous, and unseamely for a good manne, thou learnest thereby to beware and understandest that it is not onely a shame to committe any soche thinge but also that it shall be reuenged with euerlasting death. Contrariwise, if thou doest espie any thing dooen or saied well, manfully, temperatly, soberly, iustly, godlilye, & vertuously, thou ... maiest labour to doe that thyself, whiche thou likest in another.... With whiche discrecion, who so beholdeth Tragedies, Comedies, ... plaies of histories, holie or prophane, or any pageaunt, on stage or on grounde, shall not mispende his time. But like as a Bee of diuers floures, that be of theire owne nature of smalle use, gathereth the swetenes of her honie: so thence gathereth he that which is commodious for the trade of his life, ioigneth it with his painfull trauaile, and declareth that soche histories and exercises bee the eloquence of the bodie.’

vii. 1563–8. Roger Ascham.

[From The Scholemaster (1570), as reprinted in W. A. Wright, English Works of Roger Ascham (1904), 171. The tract, which was largely based on the teaching of Ascham’s friend John Sturm, was begun as a New Year gift for Elizabeth in December 1563, and left unfinished at the author’s death in 1568. The best modern edition is by J. E. B. Mayor (1863).]

The first booke teachyng the brynging vp of youth.... P. 185. In the earliest stage of Latin, Ascham ‘would haue the Scholer brought vp withall, till he had red, & translated ouer ye first booke of [Cicero’s] Epistles chosen out by Sturmius, with a good peece of a Comedie of Terence also.... P. 208. There be som seruing men do but ill seruice to their yong masters. Yea, rede Terence and Plaut. aduisedlie ouer, and ye shall finde in those two wise writers, almost in euery commedie, no vnthriftie yong man, that is not brought there vnto, by the sotle inticement of som lewd seruant. And euen now in our dayes Getae and Daui, Gnatos and manie bold bawdie Phormios to, be preasing in, to pratle on euerie stage, to medle in euerie matter, when honest Parmenos shall not be hard, but beare small swing with their masters.... The second booke teachyng the ready way to the Latin tong.... P. 238. Read dayly vnto him ... some Comedie of Terence or Plautus: but in Plautus, skilfull choice must be vsed by the master, to traine his Scholler to a iudgement, in cutting out perfitelie ouer old and vnproper wordes.... On Imitatio ... P. 266. The whole doctrine of Comedies and Tragedies, is a perfite imitation, or faire liuelie painted picture of the life of euerie degree of man.... One of the best examples, for right Imitation we lacke, and that is Menander, whom our Terence (as the matter required) in like argument, in the same Persons, with equall eloquence, foote by foote did follow. Som peeces remaine, like broken Iewelles, whereby men may rightlie esteme, and iustlie lament, the losse of the whole.... P. 276. In Tragedies, (the goodliest Argument of all, and for the vse, either of a learned preacher, or a Ciuill Ientleman, more profitable than Homer, Pindar, Vergill, and Horace: yea comparable in myne opinion, with the doctrine of Aristotle, Plato, and Xenophon,) the Grecians, Sophocles and Euripides far ouer match our Seneca, in Latin, namely in οἱκονομία et Decoro, although Senecaes elocution and verse be verie commendable for his tyme.’ ... P. 284. Ascham describes some contemporary Latin tragedies.... P. 286. ‘Of this short tyme of any pureness of the Latin tong, for the first fortie yeare of it, and all the tyme before, we haue no peece of learning left, saue Plautus and Terence, with a litle rude vnperfit pamflet of the elder Cato. And as for Plautus, except the scholemaster be able to make wise and ware choice, first in proprietie of wordes, then in framing of phrases and sentences, and chieflie in choice of honestie of matter, your scholer were better to play, then learne all that is in him. But surelie, if iudgement for the tong, and direction for the maners, be wisely ioyned with the diligent reading of Plautus, than trewlie Plautus, for that purenesse of the Latin tong in Rome, whan Rome did most florish in wel doing, and so thereby, in well speaking also, is soch a plentifull storehouse, for common eloquence, in meane matters, and all priuate mens affaires, as the Latin tong, for that respect, hath not the like agayne. Whan I remember the worthy tyme of Rome, wherein Plautus did liue, I must nedes honor the talke of that tyme, which we see Plautus doth vse. Terence is also a storehouse of the same tong, for an other tyme, following soone after, & although he be not so full & plentiful as Plautus is, for multitude of matters, & diuersitie of wordes, yet his wordes, be chosen so purelie, placed so orderly, and all his stuffe so neetlie packed vp, and wittely compassed in euerie place, as, by all wise mens iudgement, he is counted the cunninger workeman, and to haue his shop, for the rowme that is in it, more finely appointed, and trimlier ordered, than Plautus is.... The matter in both, is altogether within the compasse of the meanest mens maners, and doth not stretch to any thing of any great weight at all, but standeth chiefly in vtteryng the thoughtes and conditions of hard fathers, foolish mothers, vnthrifty yong men, craftie seruantes, sotle bawdes, and wilie harlots, and so, is moch spent, in finding out fine fetches, and packing vp pelting matters, soch as in London commonlie cum to the hearing of the Masters of Bridewell. Here is base stuffe for that scholer, that should becum hereafter, either a good minister in Religion, or a Ciuill Ientleman in seruice of his Prince and contrie: except the preacher do know soch matters to confute them, whan ignorance surelie in all soch thinges were better for a Ciuill Ientleman, than knowledge. And thus, for matter, both Plautus and Terence, be like meane painters, that worke by halfes, and be cunning onelie, in making the worst part of the picture, as if one were skilfull in painting the bodie of a naked person, from the nauell downward, but nothing else.’

viii. 1565. William Alley.

[From Miscellanea of notes to a Praelectio of 1561 in Πτωχὸμυσεȋον: The Poore Mans Librarie (1565). On Alley, v. ch. xxiii, s.v.]

Alas, are not almost al places in these daies replenished with iuglers, scoffers, iesters, plaiers, which may say and do what they lust, be it neuer so fleshly and filthy? and yet suffred and heard with laughing and clapping of handes.

ix. 1565–71. Richard Edwardes.

[The Prologue to Damon and Pithias. It appears from the title-page that this had been ‘somewhat altered’ between the production of the play in 1565 and its publication in 1571; cf. ch. xxiii.]

On euerie syde, wheras I glaunce my rouyng eye,

Silence in all eares bent I playnty do espie:

But if your egre lookes doo longe suche toyes to see,

As heretofore in commycall wise, were wont abroade to bee:

Your lust is lost, and all the pleasures that you sought,

Is frustrate quite of toying Playes. A soden change is wrought.

For loe, our Authors Muse, that masked in delight,

Hath forst his Penne agaynst his kinde, no more suche sportes to write.

Muse he that lust, (right worshipfull) for chaunce hath made this change,

For that to some he seemed too muche, in yonge desires to range:

In whiche, right glad to please, seyng that he did offende,

Of all he humblie pardon craues: his Pen that shall amende:

And yet (worshipfull Audience,) thus much I dare aduouche.

In Commedies, the greatest Skyll is this, rightly to touche

All thynges to the quicke: and eke to frame eche person so,

That by his common talke, you may his nature rightly knowe:

A Royster ought not preache, that were to straunge to heare,

But as from vertue he doth swerue, so ought his woordes appeare:

The olde man is sober, the yonge man rashe, the Louer triumphyng in ioyes,

The Matron graue, the Harlot wilde and full of wanton toyes.

Whiche all in one course they [in] no wise doo agree:

So correspondent to their kinde their speeches ought to bee.

Which speeches well pronounste, with action liuely framed,

If this offende the lookers on, let Horace then be blamed,

Which hath our Author taught at Schole, from whom he doth not swarue,

In all suche kinde of exercise decorum to obserue,

Thus much for his defence (he sayth) as Poetes earst haue donne,

Which heretofore in Commedies the selfe same rase did ronne:

But now for to be briefe, the matter to expresse,

Which here wee shall present: is this Damon and Pithias,

A rare ensample of Friendship true, it is no Legend lie,

But a thinge once donne in deede as Hystories doo discrie,

Whiche doone of yore in longe time past, yet present shalbe here,

Euen as it were in dooynge now, so liuely it shall appeare:

Lo here in Siracusae thauncient Towne, which once the Romaines wonne,

Here Dionysius Pallace, within whose Courte this thing most strange was donne,

Which matter mixt with myrth and care, a iust name to applie,

As seemes most fit wee haue it termed, a Tragicall Commedie,

Wherein talkyng of Courtly toyes, wee doo protest this flat,

Wee talke of Dionysius Courte, wee meane no Court but that,

And that wee doo so meane, who wysely calleth to minde.

The time, the place, the Authours here most plainely shall it finde,

Loe this I speake for our defence, lest of others wee should be shent:

But worthy Audience, wee you pray, take thinges as they be ment,

Whose vpright Judgement wee doo craue, with heedefull eare and eye,

To here the cause, and see theffect of this newe Tragicall Commedie.

x. 1566. Lewis Wager.

[From Prologue to The Life and Repentance of Marie Magdalene (1566). cf. ch. xxiii.]

l. 10. We and other persons haue exercised

This comely and good facultie a long season,

Which of some haue bene spitefully despised;

Wherefore, I thinke, they can alleage no reason.
Where affect ruleth, there good iudgement is geason.
They neuer learned the verse of Horace doubtles,
Nec tua laudabis studia, aut aliena reprehendes....

l. 24. I maruell why they should detract our facultie:

We haue ridden and gone many sundry waies;

Yea, we haue vsed this feate at the vniuersitie;

Yet neither wise nor learned would it dispraise: ...

l. 31. Doth not our facultie learnedly extoll vertue?

Doth it not teache, God to be praised aboue al thing?

What facultie doth vice more earnestly subdue?

Doth it not teache true obedience to the kyng?
What godly sentences to the mynde doth it bryng!
I saie, there was neuer thyng inuented,
More worth for man’s solace to be frequented.

Hipocrites that wold not haue their fautes reueled

Imagine slaunder our facultie to let;

Faine wold they haue their wickednes still concealed;

Therfore maliciously against vs they be set;
O (say they) muche money they doe get.
Truely, I say, whether you geue halfpence or pence,
Your gayne shalbe double, before you depart hence....

l. 80. We desire no man in this poynt to be offended,

In that vertues with vice we shall here introduce;

For in men and women they haue depended:

And therfore figuratiuely to speake, it is the vse.
I trust that all wise men will accept our excuse.
Of the Preface for this season here I make an ende;
In godly myrth to spend the tyme we doe intende.

xi. 1569. Anon.

[T. Warton, History of Poetry, iii (1781) 288 (ed. Hazlitt, iv. 217), ascribes to this year a ‘Puritanical pamphlet without name’, The Children of the Chapel stript and whipt, which he says was ‘among Bishop Tanner’s books at Oxford’. It is not, however, now traceable in the Bodleian. Warton’s extracts are quoted in ch. xii, s.v. Chapel.]

xii. 1569. Henry Cornelius Agrippa.

[From Henry Cornelius Agrippa, of the Vanitie and uncertaintie of Artes and Sciences, Englished by Ja[mes] San[ford] Gent. (1569), a translation of De incertitudine et vanitate scientiarium et artium atque excellentia Verbi Dei declamatio (1530), written in 1526 (Opera, ii. 1).]

‘Cap. 4. Of Poetrie’ condemns it as lying. ‘Cap. 20. Of the Science of stage Plaiers.’ After defining the player’s art and citing the discussion between Cicero and Roscius recorded by Macrobius (cf. no. xliii and ch. xi) and the banishment of players by the City of Marseilles (cf. Mediaeval Stage, i. 7), Agrippa concludes, ‘And therefore to exercise this Arte, is not onely a dishonest and wicked occupation, but also to behold it, and therein to delite is a shameful thinge, bicause that the delite of a wanton minde is an offence. And to conclude, there was in times paste no name more infamous then stage players, and moreouer, al they that had plaide an Enterlude in the Theater, were by the lawes depriued from all honour.’ Plays are briefly referred to in ‘Cap. 59. Of Holy daies’ and ‘Cap. 63. Of the whoorishe Arte’.

xiii. 1574. Geoffrey Fenton.

[From A Forme of Christian Pollicie gathered out of French (1574). No single source has been traced and the treatise is probably a compilation.]

Book iii, ch. 7. ‘Players ... corrupt good moralities by wanton shewes and playes: they ought not to be suffred to prophane the Sabboth day in such sportes, and much lesse to lose time on the dayes of trauayle. All dissolute playes ought to be forbidden: All comicall and tragicall showes of schollers in morall doctrines, and declamations in causes made to reprooue and accuse vice and extoll vertue are very profitable.’ The 7 Chapter expands the foregoing.... ‘Great then is the errour of the magistrate to geue sufferance to these players, whether they bee minstrels, or enterludours who on a scaffold, babling vaine newes to the sclander of the world, put there in scoffing the vertues of honest men.... There often times are blowen abroade the publike and secreete vices of men, sometimes shrowded under honourable personage, withe infinite other offences.... How often is the maiestie of God offended in those twoo or three howres that those playes endure, both by wicked wordes, and blasphemye, impudent jestures, doubtful sclaunders, unchaste songes, and also by corruption of the willes of the players and the assistauntes. Let no man obiect heare that by these publike plaies, many forbeare to doo euill, for feare to bee publikely reprehended ... for it may be aunswered first, that in such disguised plaiers geuen over to all sortes of dissolucion, is not found a wil to do good, seeing they care for nothing lesse than vertue: secondlye that is not the meane to correct sinne.... Heare I reprooue not the plaies of scollers ... Ch. 6. I wish that in place of daunses at mariage, the time were supplied with some comical or historical show of the auncient manages of Abraham and Sara, of Isaac and Rebecca, and of the two Tobies and theyr wiues, matters honest and tending much to edify the assistauntes.’

xiv. 1575. George Gascoigne.

[Prologue to The Glasse of Governement (cf. ch. xxiii).]

What man hath minde to heare a worthie Jest,

Or seekes to feede his eye with vayne delight:

That man is much unmeete to be a guest,

At such a feaste as I prepare this night.

Who list laye out some pence in such a Marte,

Bellsavage fayre were fittest for his purse,

I lyst not so to misbestowe mine arte,

I have best wares, what neede I then shewe woorse?

An Enterlude may make you laugh your fill,

Italian toyes are full of pleasaunt sporte:

Playne speache to use, if wanton be your wyll,

You may be gone, wyde open standes the porte.

But if you can contented be to heare,

In true discourse howe hygh the vertuous clyme,

Howe low they fall which lyve withouten feare

Of God or man, and much mispende theyr tyme:

What ryght rewardes a trustie servaunt earnes,

What subtile snares these Sycophantes can use,

Howe soone the wise such crooked guyles discernes,

Then stay a whyle: gyve eare unto my Muse.

A Comedie, I meane for to present,

No Terence phrase: his tyme and myne are twaine:

The verse that pleasde a Romaine rashe intent,

Myght well offend the godly Preachers vayne.

Deformed shewes were then esteemed muche,

Reformed speeche doth now become us best,

Mens wordes muste weye and tryed be by touche

Of Gods owne worde, wherein the truth doth rest.

Content you then (my Lordes) with good intent,

Grave Citizens, you people greate and small,

To see your selves in Glasse of Governement:

Beholde rashe youth, which daungerously doth fall

On craggy rockes of sorrowes nothing softe,

When sober wittes by Vertue clymes alofte.

xv. 1577. Thomas White.

[From A Sermon preached at Pawles Crosse on Sunday the thirde of November 1577 in the time of the Plague. By T. W. This was printed, according to the colophon, by F. Coldocke on 10 Feb. 1578. There are two copies in the B.M., but one has been bound in error with the title-page of an earlier sermon of 9 Dec. 1576, by the same author. T. W. was probably Thomas White, vicar of St. Dunstan-in-the-West, and later founder of Sion College and of White’s Professorship of Moral Philosophy at Oxford. The sermon is sometimes claimed for Thomas Wilcox; but he was in ecclesiastical disgrace in 1577 and unlikely to have access to Paul’s Cross.]

P. 46. ‘Looke but vppon the common playes in London, and see the multitude that flocketh to them and followeth them: beholde the sumptuous Theatre houses, a continuall monument of Londons prodigalitie and folly. But I vnderstande they are nowe forbidden bycause of the plague. I like the pollicye well if it holde still, for a disease is but bodged or patched vp that is not cured in the cause, and the cause of plagues is sinne, if you looke to it well: and the cause of sinne are playes: therefore the cause of plagues are playes.... Shall I reckon vp the monstrous birds that brede in this nest? without doubt I am ashamed, and I should surely offende your chast eares: but the olde world is matched, and Sodome ouercome, for more horrible enormities and swelling sins are set out by those stages, than euery man thinks for, or some would beleeue, if I shold paint them out in their colours: without doubt you can scantly name me a sinne, that by that sincke is not set a gogge: theft and whoredome; pride and prodigality; villanie and blasphemie; these three couples of helhoundes neuer cease barking there, and bite manye, so as they are vncurable euer after, so that many a man hath the leuder wife, and many a wife the shreuder husband by it: and it can not otherwise be, but that whiche robbeth flatlye the Lord of all his honor, and is directly against the whole first table of his law, should make no bones of breache of the second also, which is toward our neighbour only. Wherefore if thou be a father, thou losest thy child: if thou be a maister, thou losest thy seruaunt; and thou be what thou canst be, thou losest thy selfe that hauntest those scholes of vice, dennes of theeues, and Theatres of all leudnesse: and if it be not suppressed in time, it will make such a Tragedie, that London may well mourne whyle it is London, for it is no playing time.’

xvi. 1577. John Northbrooke.

[From A Treatise wherein Dicing, Dauncing, Vaine playes, or Enterluds, with other idle pastimes, &c., commonly used on the Sabboth day, are reproued by the Authoritie of the word of God and auntient writers. N.D. H. Bynneman for George Byshop. This is doubtless the ‘booke wherein Dycinge, dauncinge, vaine playenge and Interludes, with other idle pastimes, &c., comonlie used on the Saboth daie are reproved’, entered for Bishop in S. R. on 2 Dec. 1577 (Arber, ii. 321). A second edition was printed in 1579. Northbrooke was a Gloucester minister. The book was edited by J. P. Collier (1843, Sh. Soc.).]

[Summary and Extracts.] The treatise is ‘made dialogue-wise’ between Youth and Age. Epistles to Sir John Yong and to The Christian and Faithful Reader, dated respectively from Bristol and Henbury. A Treatise against Idlenes, Idle Pastimes, and Playes. The greater part deals generally with ‘ydle playes and vaine pastimes’ and their relation to the Christian life. P. 82. Youth asks Age his opinion of ‘playes and players, which are commonly vsed and much frequented in most places in these dayes, especiallye here in this noble and honourable citie of London’. Age condemns ‘stage playes and enterludes’ as ‘not tollerable, nor sufferable in any common weale, especially where the Gospell is preached; for it is right prodigalitie, which is opposite to liberalitie’. Considers ‘the giftes, buildings, and maintenance of such places for players a spectacle and schoole for all wickednesse and vice to be learned in’, and particularly applies this to ‘those places also, whiche are made vppe and builded for such playes and enterludes, as the Theatre and Curtaine is, and other such lyke places.... Satan hath not a more speedie way, and fitter schoole to work and teach his desire, to bring men and women into his snare of concupiscence and filthie lustes of wicked whoredome, than those places, and playes, and theatres are; and therefore necessarie that those places, and players, shoulde be forbidden, and dissolued, and put downe by authoritie, as the brothell houses and stewes are’. Quotes the Fathers on the offences to chastity at theatres. P. 92. Condemns the playing of ‘histories out of the scriptures. By the long suffering and permitting of these vaine plays, it hath stricken such a blinde zeale into the heartes of the people, that they shame not to say, and affirme openly, that playes are as good as sermons, and that they learne as much or more at a playe, than they do at God’s worde preached.... Many can tarie at a vayne playe two or three houres, when as they will not abide scarce one houre at a sermon.... I speake (alas! with griefe and sorowe of heart) against those people that are so fleshlye ledde, to see what rewarde there is giuen to such crocodiles, whiche deuoure the pure chastitie bothe of single and maried persons, men and women, when as in their playes you shall learne all things that appertayne to craft, mischiefe, deceytes, and filthinesse, &c. If you will learne howe to bee false and deceyue your husbandes, or husbandes their wyues, howe to playe the harlottes, to obtayne one’s loue, howe to rauishe, howe to beguyle, howe to betraye, to flatter, lye, sweare, forsweare, how 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 songs 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?... Therefore, great reason it is that women (especiallye) shoulde absent themselues from such playes.’ Notes the infamia of histriones, which he translates ‘enterlude players’, and refers to the statute of 1572. Expounds the heathen origin of plays. P. 101. Youth admits ‘that they ought to be ouerthrowne and put downe.... Yet I see little sayd, and lesse done vnto them; great resort there is daily vnto them, and thereout sucke they no small aduantage’. P. 102. ‘They vse to set vp their billes vpon postes certain dayes before, to admonishe the people to make their resort vnto their theatres, that they may thereby be the better furnished, and the people prepared to fill their purses with their treasures.’ P. 102. Youth concludes: ‘I maruaile the magistrates suffer them thus to continue, and to haue houses builded for such exercises.... I maruaile much, sithe the rulers are not onely negligent and slowe herein to doe, but the preachers are as dumme to speake and saye in a pulpitte against it’; and Age: ‘I doubt not but God will so moue the hearts of magistrates, and loose the tongue of the preachers in such godly sort (by the good deuout prayers of the faithfull) that both with the sworde and the worde such vnfruitfull and barren trees shall be cut downe’. P. 103. Youth then raises the question of scholastic plays. These Age admits. ‘I thinke it is lawefull for a schoolmaster to practise his schollers to playe comedies, obseruing these and the like cautions: first, that those comedies which they shall play be not mixt with anye ribaudrie and filthie termes and wordes (which corrupt good manners). Secondly, that it be for learning and vtterance sake, in Latine, and very seldome in Englishe. Thirdly, that they vse not to play commonly and often, but verye rare and seldome. Fourthlye, that they be not pranked and decked vp in gorgious and sumptious apparell in their play. Fiftly, that it be not made a common exercise, publickly, for profit and gaine of money, but for learning and exercise sake. And lastly, that their comedies be not mixte with vaine and wanton toyes of loue. These being obserued, I iudge it tollerable for schollers.’ An Inuectiue against Dice-Playing and A Treatise against Dauncing.

xvii. 1578. John Stockwood.

[From A Sermon Preached at Paules Crosse on 24 Aug. 1578. A reprint is in Harrison, iv. 329. John Stockwood was Master of Tonbridge Grammar School.]

P. 23. ‘Wyll not a fylthye playe, wyth the blast of a Trumpette, sooner call thyther a thousande, than an houres tolling of a Bell, bring to the Sermon a hundred? nay euen heere in the Citie, without it be at this place, and some other certaine ordinarie audience, where shall you finde a reasonable company? whereas, if you resorte to the Theatre, the Curtayne, and other places of Playes in the Citie, you shall on the Lords day haue these places, with many other that I can not recken, so full, as possible they can throng.’ P. 50. ‘We notwithstanding on the Lordes daye must haue Fayers kept, must haue Beare bayting, Bulbayting (as if it wer a thing of necessity for the Beares of Paris garden to be bayted on the Sunnedaye) must haue baudie Enterludes.’ P. 85. Calls on the Mayor, Sheriffs and Aldermen as ‘publike magistrates’ to keep watch against ‘flocking and thronging to baudie playes by thousandes’ on the Lord’s Day, and notes ‘resorting to playes in the time of sermons a thing too manifest’. P. 133. ‘There be not many places where ye word is preached besides the Lords day (I woulde to God there were) yet euen that day the better parte of it is horriblie prophaned by diuellishe inuentions, as with Lords of Misserule, Morice dauncers, May-games, insomuch that in some places, they shame not in ye time of diuine seruice, to come and daunce aboute the Church, and without to haue men naked dauncing in nettes, which is most filthie: for the heathen that neuer hadde further knowledge, than the lighte of nature, haue counted it shamefull for a Player to come on the stage without a slop, and therefore amongest Christians I hope suche beastly brutishnesse shal not be let escape vnpunished, for whiche ende I recite it, and can tell, if I be called, where it was committed within these fewe weekes. What should I speake of beastlye Playes, againste which out of this place euery man crieth out? haue we not houses of purpose built with great charges for the maintenance of them, and that without the liberties, as who woulde say, there, let them saye what they will say, we will play. I know not how I might with the godly learned especially more discommende the gorgeous Playing place erected in the fieldes, than to terme it, as they please to haue it called, a Theatre ... I will not here enter this disputation, whether it be vtterly vnlawfull to haue any playes, but will onelye ioine in this issue, whether in a Christian common wealth they be tolerable on the Lords day.... If playing in the Theatre or any other place in London, as there are by sixe that I know to many, be any of the Lordes wayes (which I suppose there is none so voide of knowledge in the world wil graunt) then not only it may, but ought to be vsed, but if it be any of the wayes of man, it is no work for ye Lords Sabaoth, and therfore in no respecte tollerable on that daye.’ P. 137. ‘For reckening with the leaste, the gaine that is reaped of eighte ordinarie places in the Citie whiche I knowe, by playing but once a weeke (whereas many times they play twice and somtimes thrice) it amounteth to 2000 pounds by the yeare.’

xviii. 1578. John Florio.

[From First Fruites (1578), A_{1}, an Anglo-Italian phrase book.]

Where shal we goe?

To a playe at the Bull, or els to some other place.

Doo Comedies like you wel?

Yea sir, on holy dayes.

They please me also wel, but the preachers wyll not allowe them.

Wherefore, knowe you it:

They say, they are not good.

And wherfore are they vsed?

Because euery man delites in them.

I beleeue there is much knauerie vsed at those Comedies: what thinke you?

So beleeue I also.

xix. 1578. George Whetstone.

[From Epistle to William Fleetwood, dated 29 July 1578, prefixed to Promos and Cassandra; cf. ch. xxiii.]

... I devided the whole history into two Commedies: for that, Decorum used, it would not be convayde in one. The effects of both, are good and bad: vertue intermyxt with vice, unlawful desyres (yf it were possible) queancht with chaste denyals: al needefull action (I thinke) for publike vewe. For by the rewarde of the good, the good are encowraged in wel doinge: and with the scowrge of the lewde, the lewde are feared from evil attempts: mainetayning this my oppinion with Platoes auctority. ‘Nawghtinesse commes of the corruption of nature, and not by readinge or hearinge the lives of the good or lewde (for such publication is necessarye), but goodnesse (sayth he) is beawtifyed by either action.’ And to these ends Menander Plautus and Terence, themselves many yeares since intombed, (by their Commedies) in honour live at this daye. The auncient Romanes heald these showes of suche prise, that they not onely allowde the publike exercise of them, but the grave Senators themselves countenaunced the Actors with their presence: who from these trifles wonne morallyte, as the Bee suckes the honny from weedes. But the advised devises of auncient Poets, discredited with the tryfels of yonge, unadvised, and rashe witted wryters, hath brought this commendable exercise in mislike. For at this daye, the Italian is so lascivious in his commedies, that honest hearers are greeved at his actions: the Frenchman and Spaniarde folowes the Italians humor: the Germaine is too holye: for he presentes on everye common Stage, what Preachers should pronounce in Pulpets. The Englishman in this quallitie, is most vaine, indiscreete, and out of order: he fyrst groundes his worke, on impossibilities: then in three howers ronnes he throwe the worlde: marryes, gets Children, makes Children men, men to conquer kingdomes, murder monsters, and bringeth Gods from Heaven, and fetcheth Divels from Hel. And (that which is worst) their ground is not so unperfect, as their working indiscreete: not waying, so the people laugh, though they laugh them (for theyr folleys) to scorne: Manye tymes (to make mirthe) they make a Clowne companion with a Kinge: in theyr grave Counsels, they allow the advise of fooles: yea they use one order of speach for all persones: a grose Indecorum, for a Crowe wyll yll counterfet the Nightingales sweete voice: even so, affected Speeche doth misbecome a Clowne. For to work a Commedie kindly, grave olde men should instruct: yonge men should showe the imperfections of youth: Strumpets should be lascivious: Boyes unhappy: and Clownes should be disorderly: entermingling all these actions, in suche sorte, as the grave matter may instruct, and the pleasant delight: for without this chaunge, the attention would be small, and the likinge, lesse. But leave I this rehearsall, of the use, and abuse of Commedies: least that I check that in others, which I cannot amend in my selfe. But this I am assured, what actions so ever passeth in this History, either merry, or morneful: grave or lascivious; the conclusion showes the confusion of Vice, and cherishing of Vertue....

xx. 1579. T. F.

[From Newes from the North. Otherwise called a Conference between Simon Certen and Pierce Plowman. Faithfully collected and gathered by T. F. Student (1579, 1585), F4, quoted from 1585 ed. in Stubbes, 299. There seems to be no justification for Collier’s identification of T. F. with Francis Thynne.]

I call to witnesse the Theaters, Curtines, Heauing houses, Rifling boothes, Bowling alleyes, and such places, where the time is so shamefully mispent, namely the Sabaoth daies, vnto the great dishonor of God, and the corruption and vtter distruction of youth.

xxi. 1579. Thomas Twyne.

[From Physic against Fortune (1579), i. 30. This is a translation from Petrarch’s De remediis utriusque Fortunae; but Twyne has adapted the wording to bring in the names of the London theatres.]

Joy. I am delighted with sundrie Shewes.

Reason. Perhaps with the Curteine or Theater: which two places are well knowen to be enimies to good manners: for looke who goeth thyther evyl, returneth worse. For that iourney is unknowen to the good, whiche yf any undertake uppon ignoraunce, he cannot choose but be defyled.

xxii. 1579. Stephen Gosson.

[From The Schoole of Abuse, Containing a pleasaunt inuectiue against Poets, Pipers, Plaiers, Iesters and such like Caterpillers of a Commonwelth ... (1579; S. R. 22 July 1579). A second edition appeared in 1587. There are modern reprints in Somers Tracts, iii (1810), 552, and by J. P. Collier (1841, Sh. Soc.) and E. Arber (1868, English Reprints). On 5 (or 16) Oct. 1579 Spenser wrote to Gabriel Harvey (Gregory Smith, i. 89, from Two Other very Commendable Letters, 1580): ‘Newe Bookes I heare of none, but only of one, that writing a certaine Booke, called The Schoole of Abuse, and dedicating it to Maister Sidney, was for hys labor scorned, if at leaste it be in the goodnesse of that nature to scorne. Suche follie is it not to regarde aforehande the inclination and qualitie of him to whome wee dedicate oure Bookes.’]

[Summary and Extracts.] Epistle to Sidney. Epistle to the Reader.... ‘I take vpon mee to driue you from playes, when mine owne woorkes are dayly to be seene vpon stages, as sufficient witnesses of mine owne folly, and seuere iudges againste my selfe.’ Poetry and Music are first attacked; an apologist for Homer being likened (p. 21) ‘to some of those players, that come to the scaffold with drum and trumpet to profer skirmishe, and when they haue sounded allarme, off go the peeces to encounter a shadow, or conquere a paper monster.’ P. 28. ‘As poetrie and piping are cosen germans: so piping and playing are of great affinity, and all three chayned in linkes of abuse.’ P. 29. ‘I was first instructed in the university, after drawne like a nouice to these abuses.’ Criticism of the theatre by the graver Greeks and Romans and its abuses in Rome. Similar abuses have replaced ‘the olde discipline of Englande’. P. 35. ‘In our assemblies at playes in London, you shall see suche heauing, and shoouing, suche ytching and shouldring, too sitte by the women; suche care for their garments, that they bee not trode on: such eyes to their lappes, that no chippes light in them: such pillowes to ther backes, that they take no hurte: such masking in their eares, I knowe not what: such giuing them pippins to passe the time: suche playing at foote saunt without cardes: such ticking, such toying, such smiling, such winking, and such manning them home, when the sportes are ended, that it is a right comedie, to marke their behauiour, to watche their conceites, as the catte for the mouse, and as good as a course at the game it selfe, to dogge them a little, or followe aloofe by the printe of their feete, and so discouer by slotte where the deare taketh soyle. If this were as well noted, as ill seene: or as openly punished, as secretly practised: I haue no doubte but the cause would be seared to dry vp the effect, and these prettie rabbets very cunningly ferretted from their borrowes. For they that lack customers al the weeke, either because their haunte is vnknowen, or the constables and officers of their parishe watch them so narrowly, that they dare not queatche, to celebrate the Sabboth, flock to theaters, and there keepe a generall market of bawdrie: not that any filthynesse in deede is committed within the compasse of that grounde, as was doone in Rome, but that euery wanton and his paramour, euery man and his mistresse, euery John and his Joan, euery knaue and his queane, are there first acquainted and cheapen the merchandise in that place, which they pay for elsewhere as they can agree.’ Players at least indirectly to blame for London’s wantonness. P. 37. ‘They seeke not to hurte, but desire too please: they haue purged their comedyes of wanton speaches, yet the corne whiche they sell, is full of cockle, and the drinke that they drawe, ouercharged with dregges.’ Advises those who would avoid offence to avoid the theatre. The abuses are contrary to the Queen’s will. P. 39. ‘How often hath her Maiestie, with the graue aduise of her honorable Councell, sette downe the limits of apparell to euery degree, and how soone againe hath the pride of our harts ouerflowen the chanel? How many times hath accesse to theaters beene restrayned, and how boldly againe haue we reentred. Ouerlashing in apparel is so common a fault, that the very hyerlings of some of our players, which stand at reuersion of vi.s by the weeke, iet vnder gentlemens noses in sutes of silke, exercising themselues too prating on the stage, and common scoffing when they come abrode, where they looke askance ouer the shoulder at euery man, of whom the Sunday before they begged an almes. I speake not this, as though euerye one that professeth the qualitie so abused him selfe, for it is well knowen, that some of them are sober, discreete, properly learned honest housholders and citizens well thought on amonge their neighbours at home, though the pryde of their shadowes (I meane those hangebyes whome they succour with stipend) cause them to bee somewhat il talked of abroade. And as some of the players are farre frome abuse: so some of their playes are without rebuke: which are as easily remembered as quickly reckoned. The twooe prose bookes plaied at the Belsauage, where you shall finde neuer a woorde without wit, neuer a line without pith, neuer a letter placed in vaine. The Iew and Ptolome, showne at the Bull, the one representing the greedinesse of worldly chusers, and bloody mindes of usurers: the other very liuely descrybing how seditious estates, with their owne deuises, false friendes, with their owne swoordes, and rebellious commons in their owne snares are owerthrowne: neither with amorous gesture wounding the eye: nor with slouenly talke hurting the eares of the chast hearers. The Blacke Smiths daughter, and Catilins Conspiracies vsually brought in to the Theater: the first contayning the trechery of Turkes, the honourable bountye of a noble minde, and the shining of vertue in distresse: the last, because it is knowen too be a pig of myne owne sow, I will speake the lesse of it; onely giuing you to vnderstand, that the whole marke which I shot at in that woorke, was too showe the rewarde of traytors in Catilin, and the necessary gouernment of learned men, in the person of Cicero, which forsees euery danger that is likely to happen, and forstalles it continually ere it take effect.... These playes are good playes and sweete playes, and of al playes the best playes and most to be liked, woorthy to bee soung of the Muses, or set out with the cunning of Roscius himself, yet are they not fit for euery mans dyet: neither ought they commonly to bee shewen. Now if any man aske me why my selfe haue penned comedyes in time paste, and inueigh so egerly against them here, let him knowe that Semel insaniuimus omnes: I have sinned, and am sorry for my fault: hee runnes farre that neuer turnes, better late than neuer. I gaue my self to that exercise in hope to thriue but I burnt one candle to seek another, and lost bothe my time and my trauell, when I had doone.’ Deprecates the excuse that plays keep idle heads occupied. P. 42. ‘These because they are allowed to play euery Sunday, make iiii or v Sundayes at least euery weeke, and all that is doone is good for Augustus, to busy the wittes of his people, for running a wool-gathering, and emptie their purses for thriuing to fast.’ Has shown the abuses of players out of profane writers rather than out of the Scriptures. Exhorts against vanity; but, p. 44, ‘if players can promise in woordes, and performe it in deedes, proclame it in their billes, and make it good in theaters; that there is nothing there noysome too the body, nor hurtfull to the soule: and that euerye one which comes to buye their iestes, shall haue an honest neighbour, tagge and ragge, cutte and longe tayle, goe thither and spare not, otherwise I aduise you to keepe you thence, my selfe will beginne too leade the daunce’. Briefly reprehends dancers, tumblers, dicers, carders, and bowlers, and more at length fencers. Epistle to Sir Richard Pipe, Lord Mayor, and the Aldermen.... P. 56. ‘I woulde the abuses of my Schoole were as wel knowen of you, to reformation: as they are found out by other to their owne peril. But the fishe Sepia can trouble the water to shun the nettes, that are shot to catch her: Torpedo hath craft inough at the first touch to inchant the hooke, to coniure the line, to bewitch the rod, and to benumme the handes of him that angleth. Whether our players be the spawnes of such fishes, I know not wel, yet I am sure 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 vp the arme of euery magistrate. If their letters of commendations were once stayed, it were easie for you to ouerthrow them.... I doubte not but the gouernours of London will vexe mee for speaking my minde, when they are out of their wittes, and banishe their players, when they are beste aduised.’ Epistle to the Gentlewomen Citizens of London.... P. 58. ‘It is not ... your sober countenance, that defendeth your credite; nor your friends which accompany your person, that excuse your folly; nor your modestie at home, that couereth your lightnesse, if you present your selues in open theaters.... Though you go to theaters to se sport, Cupid may catche you ere you departe.... In deede I muste confesse there comes to playes of all sortes, old and young; it is hard to say that all offend, yet I promise you, I wil sweare for none.’

xxiii. c. 1579. Thomas Lodge.

[From a print without title-page edited by D. Laing (1853, Sh. Soc.) under the title of A Defence of Poetry, Music and Stage Plays; part in Gregory Smith, i. 61. There can be little doubt that this is the Honest Excuses of Gosson’s Apology and the suppressed work of Lodge referred to in his Alarum and Gosson, P. C. (Nos. xxx, xxxv, infra); cf. J. D. Wilson in M. L. R. iii. 166.]

[Summary and Extracts.] P. 3. ‘There came to my hands lately a litle (would God a wittye) pamphelet, baring a fayre face as though it were the Scoole of Abuse.’ Defends against Gosson poetry, music, and thirdly players, for whose art he claims both ‘antiquity’ and ‘use and comoditye’ as an instrument of moral criticism. P. 24. Of comedies he says, ‘Tulley defines them thus, Comedia (saith he) is imitatio vitae, speculum consuetudinis, et imago veritatis’. P. 27. He has concessions to make. ‘I wish as zealously as the best that all abuse of playinge weare abolished, but for the thing, the antiquitie causeth me to allow it, so it be used as it should be. I cannot allow the prophaning of the Sabaoth. I praise your reprehension in that; you did well in discommending the abuse, and surely I wysh that folly wer disclaymed; it is not to be admitted, it maks those sinne, which perhaps if it were not, would have binne present at a good sermon. It is in the magistrate to take away that order, and appoynt it otherwyse. But sure it were pittie to abolish that which hath so great vertue in it, because it is abused.’ P. 28. He turns on the critic. ‘But, after your discrediting of playmaking, you salue upon the sore somewhat, and among many wise workes there be some that fitte your vaine: The Practice of Parasites is one, which I meruel it likes you so well, since it bites you so sore. But sure in that I like your judgement, and for the rest to, I approue your wit, but for the pigg of your owne sow, (as you terme it) assuredly I must discommend your verdit: Tell me, Gosson, was all your owne you wrote there? did you borow nothing of your neyghbours? Out of what booke patched you out Cicero’s Oration? Whence fet you Catilin’s Inuectiue?.... Beleue me I should preferr Wilson’s Shorte and sweete if I were judge, a peece surely worthe prayse, the practice of a good scholler; would the wiser would ouerlooke that, they may perhaps cull some wisedome out of a player’s toye.’ Assents to Gosson’s rebuke of carders, dicers, fencers, bowlers, dancers, and tumblers.

xxiv. 1579. Stephen Gosson.

[From The Ephemerides of Phialo and a short Apologie of the Schoole of Abuse (1579; S. R. 7 Nov. 1579). A second edition appeared in 1586. The Apologie is reprinted by E. Arber with The Schoole of Abuse (1868).]

[Extracts.] Epistle to Sidney.... Sith it hath beene my fortune to bear sayle in a storme, since my first publishing the Schoole of Abuse ... I can not but acknowledge my safetie, in your Worships patronage. The Ephemerides of Phialo.... I think it necessary, before I set downe the discourses of Phialo ... to whippe out those Doggs, which haue barked ... at mee for writinge the Schoole of Abuse.... It is not long since, a friend of mine presented me with straunge newes out of Affrick [in margin, ‘A Libell cast out against the Schoole of Abuse’] requesting me earnestly to shape them an answere.... I ... unfolded the Paper, and found nothing within but guttes and garbage.... And had not the writer himself, which sent these newes into England, reuealed his name to some of his friends by whom I hearde it, I would haue iudged such a Daw to bee hacht in Barbary, and the tydinges that came, to be scribled in post.... This Doctour of Affrike with a straunge kinde of style begins to write thus: To his frinds the Plaiers ... If Players get no better Atturnie to pleade their case, I will holde mee contented where the Haruest is harde, too take Otes of yl debters in parte of payment.... I intende not to aunswere him.... An Apologie of the Schoole of Abuse.... Such is the skirmishe of our players, who perceiuing the truthe to stand on my side as an armour of proofe; and finding them selues vnappointed for the fielde, keepe a farre off, biting me in corners, casting out libels which are but clay, and rattle on mine armour, or tippe me on the shinnes, without farther hurt.... If plaiers take a little more counsel of their pillowe, they shall finde them selues to be the worste and the daungerousest people in the world.... If Diogenes were nowe aliue, to see the abuses that growe by playes, I beleeue hee would wyshe rather to bee a Londoners hounde than his apprentice, bicause hee rateth his dogge, for wallowing in carrion; but rebukes not his seruaunt for resorting to playes, that are ranke poyson.... We perceiue not ... that players counterfaiting a shewe to make vs merry, shoote their nettes to worke our misery; that when Comedie comes vpon the stage, Cupide sets vpp a Springe for Woodcockes, which are entangled ere they descrie the line, and caught before they mistruste the snare.... Our players, since I set out the Schole of abuse, haue trauailed to some of mine acquaintance of both Vniuersities, with fayre profers, and greater promises of rewardes, yf they woulde take so much paine as too write agaynst mee.... When neither of both Vniuersities would heare their plea, they were driuen to flie to a weake hedge, and fight for themselues with a rotten stake.... It is tolde mee that they haue got one in London to write certaine Honest Excuses, for so they tearme it, to their dishonest abuses which I reuealed.... How he frames his excuses, I knowe not yet, because it is doone in hudder mudder. Trueth can neuer be Falsehods Visarde, which maketh him maske without a torche and keepe his papers very secret.... If the Excuser be the man that is named to me, he is as famous a Clarke as Clauitius Sabinus, which was so troubled with a grosse conceite, and as short a memory, that euery minute he forgote the names of Vlisses, Achilles, Priamus, and such as he knew as well as the Begger his dishe.... I was determined to send you greater matters, touching the saleable toung of Curio, but I stay my handes till I see his booke, when I haue perusd it I will tel you more.

xxv. 1580. Anon.

[From Stationers’ Register, 8 April 1580 (Arber, ii. 368). This is one of a number of ballads and pamphlets entered in April-June 1580 as a result of the earthquake on 6 April; Abraham Fleming, in his A Bright Burning Beacon, names eight writers on the subject besides himself, including Thomas Churchyard and Richard Tarlton. It may be that several of these improved the occasion by reproving bear-baitings and plays, as did Arthur Golding in his A Discourse Upon the Earthquake, but it does not appear from Golding’s ‘reporte’ that any playhouses suffered serious damage, although Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 369, quotes Munday, View of Sundry Examples (1580), ‘At the playhouses the people came running foorth, supprised with great astonishment’, and S. Gardiner, Doomes-day Booke (1606), ‘The earthquake ... shaked not only the scenicall Theatre, but the great stage and theatre of the whole land’. On the contrary, the only deaths were those of two children killed ‘while they were hearing a sermon’ at Christ Church, Newgate, a detail which is omitted in the reprint of the ‘reporte’ and of some of Golding’s moralizing, with an official Order of Prayer issued for use in parish churches (Liturgical Services, Parker Soc., 573).]

H. Carr, ‘a ballat intituled comme from the plaie, comme from the playe: the house will fall, so people saye: the earth quakes, lett us hast awaye’.

xxvi. 1580. Anthony Munday (?).

[Entry in S. R. for Edward White on 10 Nov. 1580 (Arber, ii. 381). Collier, S. R. ii. 125, prints a ballad, probably forged, ‘which has come down to us in MS.’, and suggests that it may be the one in question. Fleay, 52, Thompson, 86, and J. D. Wilson in M. L. R. iv. 486, suppose the entry to refer to the ‘balat against plays’ ascribed to Munday (cf. ch. xxiii).]

A Ringinge Retraite Couragiouslie sounded, wherein Plaies and Players are fytlie Confounded.

xxvii. 1580. Anthony Munday (?).

[From A second and third blast of retrait from plaies and Theaters: the one whereof was sounded by a reuerend Byshop dead long since: the other by a worshipful and zealous Gentleman now aliue: ... Set forth by Anglo-phile Eutheo (1580; S. R. 18 Oct. 1580) in Hazlitt, E. D. S. 97. It bears the City arms. The title recalls that of No. xxvi. J. D. Wilson (M. L. R. iv. 484) supports the conjectural attribution of Fleay, 51, to Munday, on the ground that the author is a converted playwright, probably identical with the one referred to in Gosson, P. C., in terms resembling those applied to Munday in A True Report of ... M. Campion (cf. ch. xxiii).]

[Summary and Extracts.] Anglo-phile Eutheo to the Reader.... P. 99. ‘The first blast in my compt is The Schoole of abuse: a title not vnfitlie ascribed vnto plaies. For what is there which is not abused thereby?... that not vnfitlie they are tearmed, as of late The schoole of abuse, by one; The schoole of Bauderie, by another; The nest of the Diuel, and sinke of al sinne, by a third’ [in margin, ‘Mr Spark in his rehersal sermon at Paules Crosse, 29 of April, Ann. 1579’].... ‘I cal them, A second and third blast ... in respect of the time present, wherein none, that I knowe, besides these Autors haue written, though manie, thanked be God, in the principal places of this land haue, and dailie, yea and openlie do speake against plaies and Theaters.... Touching the Autor of the latter blast, thou maist coniecture who he was, but I maie not name him at this time for my promise sake; yet this do I saie of him, that he hath bine, to vse his verie wordes, A great affecter of that vaine Art of plaie making, &c. Yea, which I ad, as excellent an Autor of those vanities, as who was best.... Praise God, I beseech you, for bringing this Autor, and Maister Gosson, who made the Schoole of Abuse, out of Babylon.’ A second blast of retrait. This is translated from Salvian, De Gubernatione Dei, lib. vi. A third blast of retrait. P. 120. ‘Such doubtles is mine opinion of common plaies, vsual iesting, and riming extempore that in a Christian-weale they are not sufferable. My reason is, because they are publike enimies to virtue, & religion: allurements vnto sinne; corrupters of good manners; the cause of securitie and carelesnes; meere brothel houses of Bauderie: and bring both the Gospel into slander; the Sabboth into contempt; mens soules into danger; and finalie the whole Common-weale into disorder.’ Offers his judgement for what it is worth; describes his experience of plays and the reasons that led him to turn from them. P. 123. ‘I confess that ere this I haue bene a great affecter of that vaine art of Plaie-making, insomuch that I haue thought no time so wel bestowed, as when my wits were exercised in the inuention of those follies.’ P. 125. ‘What I shal speake of the abuse of plaies by my owne knowledge, I know maie be affirmed by hundreds, to whom those matters are as wel knowen as to my selfe. Some citizens wiues, vpon whom the Lord for ensample to others hath laide his hands, haue euen on their death beds with teares confessed, that they haue receiued at those spectacles such filthie infections, as haue turned their minds from chast cogitations, and made them of honest women light huswiues; by them they haue dishonored the vessels of holines; and brought their husbandes into contempt, their children into question, their bodies into sicknes, and their soules to the state of euerlasting damnation.... When I gaue my selfe first to note the abuse of common plaies ... the Theater I found to be an appointed place of Bauderie; mine owne eares haue heard honest women allured with abhominable speeches. Sometime I haue seen two knaues at once importunate vpon one light huswife; whereby much quarel hath growen to the disquieting of manie. There seruants, as it is manifestlie to be prooued, haue consented to rob their maisters, to supplie the want of their harlots; there is the practising with married wiues to traine them from their husbands, and places appointed for meeting and conference. When I had taken a note of all these abuses, & sawe that the Theater was become a consultorie house of Satan, I concluded with my selfe, neuer to imploie my pen to so vile a purpose, nor to be an instrument of gathering the wicked together.’ Apologizes for pressing forward in the cause. The abuse of the Sabbath is the first thing to be put down. P. 128. ‘Let therefore the Magistrate but repel them from the libertie of plaieng on the Sabboth daie, For that is the abuse which is generalie found fault withal, & allowed of none but those who are altogether destitute of the feare of God, and without conscience. To plaie on the Sabboth is but a priuiledge of sufferance, and might with ease be repelled, were it throughlie followed. The warrant which Magistrats have to forbid plaies is great, and passed vnto them by such a Prince, whose auctoritie is aboue al auctorities of earthlie gouernors.... Is not the Sabboth of al other daies the most abused?... Are not our eies (there) carried awaie with the pride of vanitie? our eares abused with amorous, that is lecherous, filthie and abhominable speech? Is not our tong, which was giuen vs onelie to glorifie God withal, is not our tong there imploied to the blaspheming of Gods holie Name; or the commendation of that is wicked? Are not our hartes through the pleasure of the flesh; the delight of the eie; and the fond motions of the mind, withdrawen from the seruice of the Lord, & meditation of his goodnes? So that albe it is a shame to saie it, yet doubtles whosoeuer wil mark with what multitudes those idle places are replenished, & how emptie the Lordes sanctuarie is of his people, may wel perceaue what deuotion we haue.... Alas, what folie is in you, to purchase with a penie damnation to your selues?... The Magistrate is therefore to prouide in time a remedie to redresse the mischiefes that are like to ensue by this common plague.... The Magistrates hart must be as the hart of a Lion. He is not to shrinke in the Lordes cause, or to stand in feare to reforme abuses of the Common-weale, because of some particular men of auctoritie.... Alas, that priuate affection should so raigne in the Nobilitie, that to pleasure, as they thinke, their seruants, and to vphold them in their vanitie, they should restraine the Magistrates from executing their office! What credite can returne to the Noble, to countenance his men to exercise that qualitie which is not sufferable in anie Common-weale? wheras it was an ancient custome, that no man of Honor should reteine anie man, but such as was excellent in some one good qualitie or other, whereby if occasion so serued, he might get his owne liuing? Then was euerie noble mans house a Common-weale in it selfe: but since the reteining of these Caterpillers, the credite of noble men hath decaied, they are thought to be couetous by permitting their seruants, which cannot liue of them selues, and whome for neerenes they wil not maintaine, to liue at the deuotion or almes of other men, passing from countrie to countrie, from one Gentlemans house to another, offering their seruice, which is a kind of beggerie. Who in deede, to speake more trulie, are become beggers for their seruants. For commonlie the goodwil men beare to their lordes, makes them drawe the stringes of their purses to extend their liberalitie to them; where otherwise they would not.... Such like men, vnder the title of their maisters or as reteiners, are priuiledged to roaue abroad, and permitted to publish their mametree in euerie Temple of God, and that through England, vnto the horrible contempt of praier. So that now the Sanctuarie is become a plaiers stage, and a den of theeues and adulterers.... And trust me I am of that opinion, that the Lord is neuer so il serued as on the holie-daies. For then hel breakes loase. Then wee permit our youth to haue their swinge; and when they are out of the sight of their maisters, such gouernment haue they of themselues, that what by il companie they meete withal, & il examples they learne at plaies, I feare me, I feare me their harts are more alienated in two houres from virtue, than againe maie wel be amended in a whole yeare.’ P. 135. Players break the first commandment by profanity. P. 137. Appeal against vanities. ‘Those pleasures of the stage, what are they, but the drifts of Satan?... The foole no sooner showeth himselfe in his colors to make men merrie, but straight-waie lightlie there foloweth some vanitie, not onlie superfluous, but beastlie and wicked. P. 139. Whosoeuer shal visit the chappel of Satan, I meane the Theater, shal finde there no want of yong ruffins, nor lacke of harlots, vtterlie past al shame: who presse to the fore-frunt of the scaffoldes, to the end to showe their impudencie, and to be as an obiect to al mens eies. Yea, such is their open shameles behauior, as euerie man maie perceaue by their wanton gestures, wherevnto they are giuen; yea, they seeme there to be like brothels of the stewes. For often without respect of the place and company which behold them, they commit that filthines openlie, which is horrible to be done in secret; as if whatsoeuer they did, were warranted. For neither reuerence, iustice, nor anie thing beside can gouerne them.’ The shamelessness of young men. ‘Seeke to withdrawe these felowes from the Theater vnto the sermon, they wil saie, By the preacher they maie be edified, but by the plaier both edified and delighted.’ P. 142. Plays are a snare to chastity, both through the examples shown on the stage, and the comments of companions on the scaffolds. ‘The nature of these Comedies are, for the most part, after one manner of nature, like the tragical comedie of Calistus; where the bawdresse Scelestina inflamed the maiden Melibeia with her sorceries.’ P. 144. Examples of the intrigues ‘aptlie taught in the Schoole of abuse.... I am sorie this schoole is not pluckt downe by the magistrate; and the schoole-maisters banished this citie.... The reuerend word of God & histories of the Bible, set forth on the stage by these blasphemous plaiers, are so corrupted with their gestures of scurrilitie, and so interlaced with vncleane, and whorish speeches, that it is not possible to drawe anie profite out of the doctrine of their spiritual moralities.’ P. 145. Attacks the authors of plays. ‘The notablest lier is become the best Poet.... Our nature is led awaie with vanitie, which the auctor perceauing frames himself with nouelties and strange trifles to content the vaine humors of his rude auditors, faining countries neuer heard of; monsters and prodigious creatures that are not; as of the Arimaspie, of the Grips, the Pigmeies, the Cranes, & other such notorious lies. And if they write of histories that are knowen, as the life of Pompeie; the martial affaires of Caesar, and other worthies, they giue them a newe face, and turne them out like counterfeites to showe themselues on the stage.... What doe they leaue behind them? monumentes of wanton wicked life, and doting things for men of these latter daies.... But some perhaps wil saie, The noble man delighteth in such things, whose humors must be contented, partlie for feare, & partlie for commoditie: and if they write matters pleasant, they are best preferred in court among the cunning heads.... Those goodlie persons, if they be voide of virtue, maie wel be counted like faire clothes ouer a foule wal; big bladers ful of wind, yet of no waight.’ P. 147. Attacks the actors. ‘When I see by them yong boies, inclining of themselues vnto wickednes, trained vp in filthie speeches, vnnatural and vnseemlie gestures, to be brought vp by these Schoole-masters in bawderie, and in idlenes, I cannot chuse but with teares and griefe of hart lament.... And as for those stagers themselues, are they not commonlie such kind of men in their conuersation, as they are in profession? Are they not as variable in hart, as they are in their partes? Are they not as good practisers of Bawderie, as inactors? Liue they not in such sort themselues, as they giue precepts vnto others? doth not their talke on the stage declare the nature of their disposition?’ Meets divers objections. P. 148. ‘But they perhaps wil saie, that such abuses as are handled on the stage, others by their examples, are warned to beware of such euils, to amendment.... I cannot by anie means beleeue that the wordes proceeding from a prophane plaier, and vttered in scorning sort, interlaced with filthie, lewde, & vngodlie speeches, haue greater force to mooue men vnto virtue, than the wordes of truth vttered by the godlie Preacher.... If the good life of a man be a better instruction to repentance than the tong, or words, why do not plaiers, I beseech you, leaue examples of goodnes to their posteritie?... Are they not notoriouslie knowen to be those men in their life abroade, as they are on the stage, roisters, brallers, il-dealers, bosters, louers, loiterers, ruffins?... To conclude, the principal end of all their interludes is to feede the world with sights, & fond pastimes; to iuggle in good earnest the monie out of other mens purses into their owne handes.’ P. 150. ‘Some haue obiected, that by these publique places manie forbeare to do euil for feare to be publiquelie reprehended. And for that cause they wil saie it was tolerated in Rome, wherein Emperors were touched, though they were present. But to such it maie be answered, first that in disguised plaiers giuen ouer to al sortes of dissolutenes, is not found so much as a wil to do good, seing they care for nothing lesse than for virtue. Secondlie, that is not a good meanes to correct sinne. For that if it be secret, it ought not to be reuealed openlie, but by such meanes to be reformed as Christ himselfe alloweth in his Gospel.’ P. 151. ‘The antiquitie of plaieng is likewise often vsed for an argument to proue it allowable. But the custome of euil is not to be maintained, because of antiquitie.’ P. 152. A final appeal. ‘The citie Marsiles ... would receaue into it no stage-plaiers.... I would to God the Magistrates of our citie of London would haue the like foresight. The permission of plaies so long a time hath alreadie corrupted this citie; and brought the name of the citizens into slander; the examples of Gods iudgement is at this present an example in this citie.’

xxviii. 1581. Anon.

[Only known to me from the entry in Catalogue of Chatsworth Library, iv. 49.]

A Treatise of Daunses, wherein it is showed, that they are as it were accessories and dependants (or things annexed) to whoredom: where also by the way is touched and proved, that Playes are ioyned and knit together in a ranck or rowe with them.

xxix. 1581. John Rainolds.

[From Praefatio ad Academiam Oxoniensem, dated ‘Febr. 2. 1580’, to Sex Theses de Sacra Scriptura et Ecclesia (1580), 30. A translation is on p. 678 of The Summe of the Conference between John Rainolds and John Hart (1584). Rainolds was Fellow of C.C.C., Oxford, 1566–86, then retired to Queens, became Dean of Lincoln in 1593 and President of C.C.C. in 1598; for his share in later stage controversy cf. No. 1.]

Excitate studia, paene dixeram iacentia, sed spero meliora. Extinguite Sirenes a studiis auocantes, desidiam, dulce malum: delicias, escam Veneris: conuiuiorum luxum, vanitatem vestium, ludos illiberales, symposia intempestiua, pestes scenicorum, Theatralia spectacula.

xxx. 1582. Stephen Gosson.

[From Playes Confuted in fiue Actions, Prouing that they are not to be suffred in a Christian common weale, by the waye both the Cauils of Thomas Lodge, and the Play of Playes, written in their defence, and other obiections of Players frendes, are truely set downe and directlye aunsweared (N.D.; S. R. 6 Apr. 1582), reprinted by Hazlitt, E. D. S. 157.]

[Summary and Extracts.] Epistle to Sir Frances Walsingham. ‘So fareth it this present time with me, which giuing forth my Defiaunce vnto Playes, am mightily beset with heapes of aduersaries.... I thought it necessarye to nettle one of their Orators aboue the rest, not of any set purpose to deface hym, because hee hath dealt very grossely, homely, and vncharitably with me, but like a good Surgeon to cut, & to seare, when the place requireth, for his owne amendment. Which thinge I trust shall neither displease your honor, nor any of the godly, in the reading, so long as the person whom I touch is (as I heare by hys owne frendes, to hys repentance if he can perceiue it) hunted by the heauy hand of God, and become little better than a vagarant, looser than liberty, lighter than vanitie it selfe.’ Plays are an Augean stable to be cleansed. ‘If euer so notable a thinge bee brought to passe it must bee done by some Hercules in the Court, whom the roare of the enimy can neuer daunt.’ Hints that this should be Walsingham. ‘The Gentlemen Players in the citie of London, are growen in such a heate, that by their foming, their fretting, their stampinge, my frendes do perceiue how their harts woorke, and enforce me to bring to your honor no common fraighte, but as much as my life and securitie hereafter shall be woorth. If the prouidence of God, who many times scourgeth a man with the sinne that he loued, haue ordeined those players whom I fed with fancies, to be a whippe to my back, and a dagger to my brest, the fault is mine owne, the punishmente due.’ Epistle to the Universities and Inns of Court. P. 165. ‘I was very willing to write at this time, because I was enformed by some of you which heard it with your ears, that since my publishing the Schole of Abuse, two Playes of my making were brought to the Stage: the one was a cast of Italian deuises, called, The Comedie of Captaine Mario: the other a Moral, Praise at parting. These they very impudently affirme to be written by me since I had set out my inuectiue against them. I can not denie, they were both mine, but they were both penned two yeeres at the least before I forsoke them, as by their owne friends I am able to proue: but they haue got suche a custome of counterfaiting vpon the Stage, that it is growen to a habite, & will not be lefte. God knoweth, before whom to you all I doe protest, as I shall answer to him at the last day, when al hidden secrets shal be discouered, since the first printing of my Inuectiue, to this day, I neuer made Playe for them nor any other.... I departed from the City of London, and bestowed my time in teaching yong Gentlemen in the Countrie, where I continue with a very worshipfull Gentleman, and reade to his sonnes in his owne house.... As sonne as I had inueighed against Playes, I withdrewe my selfe from them to better studies, which so long as I liue I trust to follow.’ The Confutation of Playes. The First Action. The Efficient Cause of Plays. Defends his own change of mind. P. 167. ‘When I firste gaue my selfe to the studie of Poetrie, and to set my cunning abroache, by penning Tragedies and Comedies in the Citte of London: perceiuing such a Gordians knot of disorder in euery play house, as woulde neuer bee loosed without extremitie, I thought it better with Alexander to draw ye sword that should knappe it a sunder at one stroke, than to seeke ouernisely or gingerly to vndoe it, with the losse of my time and wante of successe. This caused mee to bidde them the base at their owne gole, and to geue them a volley of heathen writers: that our diuines considering the danger of suche houses as are set vp in London against the Lord, might better them thoroughly with greater shotts.’ An incomplete remedy. ‘Acknowledging the mischiefe bred by playes wee hope to auoid yt by changing their day yet suffer them still to remaine amonge vs.... The abhominable practises of playes in London haue bene by godly preachers, both at Paules crosse, and else where so zealously, so learnedly, so loudly cried out vpon to small redresse; that I may well say of them, as the Philosophers reporte of the moouing of the heauens, we neuer heare them, because we euer heare them.’ Notes an answer to him. P. 169. ‘Amongest all the fauorers of these vncircumcised Philistines, I meane the Plaiers, whose heartes are not right, no man til of late durst thrust out his heade to mayntaine there quarrell, but one, in witt, simple; in learning, ignorant; in attempt, rash; in name, Lodge: whose booke, as it came not to my handes in one whole yeere after the priuy printing thereof, so I confesse, that to it, before this time, I aunswered nothing, partlie because he brought nothing; partlie because my hearte was to bigge, to wrastle with him, that wanteth armes. Therefore considering with my selfe that such kinde of sores might bee launced to sone, I chose rather to let him ripen and breake of him selfe, that vomiting out his owne disgrace, & being worne out of fauour among his own friends, I might triumph in the cause & shedde no blood.... Some of his acquaintance haue vaunted to cut and hewe mee, I knowe not howe.’ The Devil is the efficient cause of plays, as noted by Tertullian. P. 171. ‘And William [‘Thomas’ on a cancel in some copies] Lodge in that patchte pamphlet of his ... confesseth openly that playes were consecrated by the heathens to ye honour of their gods.’ Expounds the policy of the Devil in the matter. P. 172. ‘First hee sente ouer many wanton Italian bookes.... Not contented with the number he hath corrupted with reading Italian baudery, because all cannot reade, [he] presenteth vs Comedies cut by the same paterne, which drag such a monstrous taile after them, as is able to sweep whole Cities into his lap.’ Argues that plays are of idolatrous origin, and disliked by Scipio Nasica and other severer Romans. Rome held players infamous. P. 178. ‘Wherefore I beseech God so to touch the heartes of our Magistrates with a perfite hatred of sinne, and feare of Iudgement; so to stirr vp some noble Scipio in the Courte, that these daunsing Chaplines of Bacchus and all such as set vp these wicked artes, may be driuen out of Englande.’ The Second Action. The Material Cause of Plays. P. 179. ‘Yonge Master Lodge thinking to iett vpon startoppes, and steale an ynche of his hight by the bare name of Cicero, allegeth from him, yt a Play is the Schoolmistresse of life; the lookinge glasse of manners; and the image of trueth.... It seemeth that Master Lodge saw this in Tullie with other folkes eyes, and not his owne. For to my remembrance I neuer read it in him, neither doe I thinke that Master Lodge can shewe it me.’ Cites passages of Cicero against spectacula. Sets down the matter of plays. P. 180. ‘The argument of Tragedies is wrath, crueltie, incest, iniurie, murther eyther violent by sworde, or voluntary by poyson. The persons, Gods, Goddesses, furies, fiendes, Kinges, Quenes, and mightie men. The grounde worke of Commedies, is loue, cosenedge, flatterie, bawderie, slye conueighance of whoredome; The persons, cookes, queanes, knaues, baudes, parasites, courtezannes, lecherous olde men, amorous yong men.’ Criticizes the Lodge-Cicero metaphor in detail. Plays no schoolmistress of life. ‘The beholding of troubles and miserable slaughters that are in Tragedies, driue vs to immoderate sorrow, heauines, womanish weeping and mourning, whereby we become louers of dumpes, and lamentation, both enemies to fortitude. Comedies so tickle our senses with a pleasanter vaine, that they make vs louers of laughter, and pleasure, without any meane, both foes to temperance. What schooling is this? Sometime you shall see nothing but the aduentures of an amorous knight, passing from countrie to countrie for the loue of his lady, encountring many a terible monster made of broune paper, & at his retorne, is so wonderfully changed, that he can not be knowne but by some posie in his tablet, or by a broken ring, or a handkircher, or a piece of a cockle shell. What learne you by that? When ye soule of your playes is eyther meere trifles, or Italian baudery, or wooing of gentlewomen, what are we taught?’ Aristotle forbade plays to the young. P. 182. ‘If any goodnes were to be learned at Playes it is likely that the Players them selues which committ euery sillable to memory shoulde profitte most ... but the dayly experience of their behauiour sheweth, that they reape no profit by the discipline them selues.’ Thinks Master Lodge found ‘some peeuish index or gatherer of Tullie to be a sleepe.... Wherein I perceiue hee is no changeling, for he disputeth as soundly being from the vniuersitie and out of exercise, as he did when hee was there, and at his booke.’ P. 183. Plays no glass of behaviour. Manners should not be rebuked where no reply is possible, or before such judges as ‘the common people which resorte to Theaters being but an assemblie of Tailers, Tinkers, Cordwayners, Saylers, olde Men, yong Men, Women, Boyes, Girles, and such like’. The Roman law of libel restrained ‘the ouer-lashing of players’. P. 185. Criticizes [Wilson’s] The Three Ladies of London [cf. ch. xxiii] for making Love detest and Conscience allow plays; also a rival play of London against the Three Ladies. Denies that intention either of poets or players is to profit those they rebuke. P. 187. Plays not the image of truth. P. 188. ‘In Playes either those thinges are fained that neuer were, as Cupid and Psyche plaid at Paules; and a greate many Comedies more at ye Blacke friers and in euery Playe house in London, which for breuities sake I ouer skippe: of if a true Historie be taken in hand, it is made like our shadows, longest at the rising and falling of the Sunne, shortest of all at hie noone. For the Poets driue it most commonly vnto such pointes as may best showe the maiestie of their pen in Tragicall speaches; or set the hearers a gogge with discourses of loue; or painte a fewe antickes to fitt their owne humors with scoffes & tauntes; or wring in a shewe to furnish the Stage when it is to bare; when the matter of it selfe comes shorte of this, they followe the practise of the cobler, and set their teeth to the leather to pull it out. So was the history of Caesar and Pompey, and the Playe of the Fabii at the Theater, both amplified there, where the Drummes might walke, or the pen ruffle; when the history swelled and ran to hye for the number of ye persons that should playe it, the Poet with Proteus [? Procrustes] cut the same fit to his owne measure; when it afoorded no pompe at al, he brought it to the racke to make it serue.... I may boldely say it because I haue seene it, that the Palace of pleasure, the Golden Asse, the Œthiopian historie, Amadis of Fraunce, the Rounde Table, baudie Comedies in Latine, French, Italian, and Spanish, haue beene throughly ransackt to furnish the Playe houses in London.... Forsooth saith the Authour of the Playe of plays showen at the Theater, the three and twentieth of Februarie last: They shalbe nowe purged, the matter shalbe good.... As for that glosing plaie at ye Theater which profers you so faire, there is enterlaced in it a baudie song of a maide of Kent, and a little beastly speech of the new stawled roge, both which I am compelled to burie in silence, being more ashamed to vtter them than they.’ Thinks the minority of honest plays a trick of the devil. Repeats his points as to the idolatrous origin of plays and the infamy of players at Rome. The devil makes them alluring. P. 192. ‘For the eye, beeside the beautie of the houses and the Stages, hee sendeth in Gearish apparell, maskes, vauting, tumbling, daunsing of gigges, galiardes, morisces, hobbihorses, showing of iudgeling castes.’ The Third Action. The Formal Cause of Plays. P. 195. ‘The Law of God very straightly forbids men to put on womens garments.’ This is not to be explained away as a prohibition of disguises meant to facilitate adultery, but is absolute. P. 197. ‘In Stage Playes for a boy to put one the attyre, the gesture, the passions of a woman; for a meane person to take vpon him the title of a Prince with counterfeit porte, and traine, is by outwarde signes to shewe them selues otherwise then they are, and so with in the compasse of a lye, which by Aristotles iudgement is naught of it selfe and to be fledde.’ Admits that Gregory Nazianzen and Buchanan wrote plays. ‘To what ende? To be Plaied vpon Stages? neither Players nor their friendes are able to proue it.’ Refutes another objection. P. 198. ‘Let the Author of the playe of playes & pastimes, take heede how he reason yt action, pronuntiation, agility of body are ye good gifts of God. Ergo, plaies consisting of these cannot be euill.’ Even the heathens condemned the waste of money in spectacles. The Fourth Action. The Final Cause of Plays. P. 201. The end of plays is sinful delight, as is proved by the admissions of Menander and Terence, ‘By the manner of penning in these dayes, because the Poets send theire verses to the Stage vpon such feete as continually are rowled vp in rime at the fingers endes, which is plaucible to the barbarous, and carrieth a stinge into the eares of the common people. By the obiect, because Tragedies and Commedies stirre vp affections, and affections are naturally planted in that part of the minde that is common to vs with brute beastes.’ Analyses the argument of the Author of the Play of Plays, ‘spreading out his battel to hemme me in’. P. 202. ‘He tyeth Life and Delight so fast together, that if Delight be restrained, Life presently perisheth; there, zeale perceyuing Delight to be embraced of Life, puttes a snafle in his mouth, to keepe him vnder. Delight beinge bridled, Zeale leadeth life through a wildernesse of lothsomenesse, where Glutte scarreth them all, chafing both Zeale and Delight from Life, and with the clubbe of amasednesse strikes such a pegge into the heade of Life, that he falles downe for dead vpon the Stage. Life beinge thus fainte, and ouertrauailed, destitute of his guyde, robbed of Delight, is readie to giue vp the Ghost, in the same place; then entereth Recreation, which with music and singing rockes Life a sleepe to recouer his strength. By this meanes Tediousnesse is driuen from Life, and the teinte is drawne out of his heade, which the club of amasednes left behinde. At last Recreation setteth vp the Gentleman vpon his feete, Delight is restored to him againe, and such kinde of sportes for cullices are brought in to nourishe him, as none but Delighte must applye to his stomache. Then time beinge made for the benefite of Life, and Life being allowed to followe his appetite, amongst all manner of pastimes, Life chooseth Commedies, for his Delight, partly because Commedies are neither chargable to ye beholders purse, nor painful to his body; partly, because he may sit out of the raine to veiwe the same, when many other pastimes are hindred by wether. Zeale is no more admitted to Life before he be somewhat pinchte in the waste, to auoyde extremitie, and being not in the end simply called Zeale but Moderate Zeale a fewe conditions are prescribed to Comedies, that the matter be purged, deformities blazed, sinne rebuked, honest mirth intermingled, and fitte time for the hearing of the same appointed. Moderate Zeale is contented to suffer them, who wyneth with delight to direct life againe, after which he triumphes ouer Death & is crowned with eternitie.’ P. 203. As Fathers and Councils ‘and ye skilfulst Deuines at this day in England which are compelled in Sermons to cry out against them’ are challenged by this playmaker, will answer him. Distinguishes between carnal and spiritual delight. Plays bring carnal delight, which is contrary to reason and comes of corruption. The Fifth Action. The Effects of Plays. P. 211. Why should he write against plays, when, although famous men in both universities cry out against plays, ‘none of them by printing haue taken the paines to write any full discouery against them’? Partly because, being young, he will be better excused than they if he ‘shoulde speake but one worde against ye sleepines of Magistrats which in this case is necessary to be toucht’; partly because, ‘hauing once already written against playes, which no man that euer wrote playes, did, but one, who hath changed his coppy, and turned himself like ye dog to his vomite, to plays againe, and being falsly accused my selfe to do ye like, it is needfull for me to write againe’. Declares the effects of plays. Wantonness on the stage excites the passions of the spectators. Theatres are ‘markets of bawdry’. P. 215. ‘Our Theaters, and play houses in London, are as full of secrete adulterie as they were in Rome.... In the playhouses at London, it is the fashion of youthes to go first into the yarde, and to carry theire eye through euery gallery, then like vnto rauens where they spye the carion thither they flye, and presse as nere to ye fairest as they can.... They giue them pippines, they dally with their garmentes to passe ye time, they minister talke vpon al occasions, & eyther bring them home to their houses on small acquaintance, or slip into tauerns when ye plaies are done. He thinketh best of his painted sheath, & taketh himselfe for a iolly fellow, yt is noted of most, to be busyest with women in all such places.’ The players are an evil in the commonwealth. P. 215. ‘Most of the Players haue bene eyther men of occupations, which they haue forsaken to lyue by playing, or common minstrels, or trayned vp from theire childehood to this abhominable exercise & haue now no other way to get theire liuinge.... In a commonweale, if priuat men be suffered to forsake theire calling because they desire to walke gentleman like in sattine & veluet, with a buckler at their heeles, proportion is so broken, vnitie dissolued, harmony confounded, that the whole body must be dismembred and the prince or the heade cannot chuse but sicken.... Let them not looke to liue by playes; the little thrift that followeth theire greate gaine, is a manifest token that God hath cursed it.’ A final appeal to his countrymen, ending, ‘God is iust, his bow is bent & his arrowe drawen, to send you a plague, if you staye too long’.

xxxi. 1583. John Field.

[From A godly exhortation, by occasion of the late iudgement of God, shewed at Parris-garden, the thirteenth day of Ianuarie: where were assembled by estimation aboue a thousand persons, whereof some were slaine; & of that number, at the least, as is crediblie reported, the thirde person maimed and hurt. Giuen to all estates for their instruction, concerning the keeping of the Sabboth day. By Iohn Field, Minister of the word of God.... Robert Waldegrave for Henry Carre, 1583. There is no entry in S. R., but on 21 Jan. Richard Jones and William Bartlett were imprisoned and fined for printing ‘a thing of the fall of the gallories at Paris Garden’ without licence (Arber, ii. 853). On 19 Jan. Fleetwood wrote to Lord Burghley (M. S. C. i. 160, from Lansdowne MS. 37, f. 10; also in Wright, ii. 184), ‘Vpon the same day [13 Jan.] the violaters of the Sabothe were punished by Godes providens at Paris garden and as I was writing of these last wordes loo here is a booke sett downe vpon the same matter’.]

Epistle to the Lord Mayor, William Fleetwood, the Recorder, and the Aldermen. Explains the address to them. A 2v. ‘Is it not a lamentable thing, that after so long preaching of the Gospell, there should bee so great prophanation amongst vs? that Theaters should be full and churches be emptie? that the streetes shoulde be replenished, and the places of holy exercises, left destitute? I write not this simplie but in respect, and by comparison.... If you say that this thing belongeth not vnto you, because that Parris garden is out of your iurisdiction, yet why are these men suffered to bring their Beares into the citie, that thereby they may gather your company vnto them? It were duety in you to hinder these and to take order that none of the citie should repaire vnto such places.... 18th January 1583. Iohn Feild.’ The exhortation is mainly a general call to repentance and fear of judgement, without special reference to the occasion. B 3. Stress is laid on abuse of the Sabbath. B 4. ‘There is no Dicing house, Bowling alley, Cock pit, or Theater, that can be found empty. Those flagges of defiance against God, & trumpets that are blown to gather together such company, will sooner preuail to fil those places, then the preaching of the holy worde of God ... to fill Churches. Nothing can stoppe them from the same: neyther feare of danger, losse of tyme, corruption of maners, infection of diseases, expence of money, suspition of honestie and such like.... Pounds and hundreds can be well ynough afforded, in following these least pleasures, though euery dore hath a payment, & euery gallerie maketh a yearely stipend: thogh euery dog hath a coller, & euery Beare a prize, and euery cracke bring a great aduenture.’ Enforces the warning of Paris Garden. B viiv. ‘I wil set it down as plainly as I can, and as truly as can be gathered from the examination of those same common euidences, that haue fallen out.... You shal vnderstand therfore (beloued Christians) that vpon the last Lords day being the thirteen day of the first month, that cruell and lothsome exercise of bayting Beares being kept at Parris-garden, in the after-noone, in the time of common praiers, and when many other exercises of Religion, both of preaching and Catechizing were had in sundry places of the City, diuers Preachers hauing not long before also cryed out against such prophanations: yet (the more pitty) there resorted thither a great company of people of al sorts and conditions, that the like nomber, in euery respect (as they say) had not beene seene there a long time before. Beeing thus vngodly assembled, to so vnholy a spectacle and specially considering the time; the yeard, standings, and Galleries being ful fraught, being now amidest their iolity, when the dogs and Bear were in the chiefest Battel, Lo the mighty hand of God vppon them. This gallery that was double, and compassed the yeard round about, was so shaken at the foundation, that it fell (as it were in a moment) flat to the ground, without post or peere, that was left standing, so high as the stake whervnto the Beare was tied. Although some wil say (and as it may be truly) that it was very old and rotten and therefore a great waight of people, being planted vpon it then was wont, that it was no maruaile that it fayled: and would make it but a light matter. Yet surely if this be considered, that no peece of post, boord, or stake was left standing: though we vrge it not as a miracle, yet it must needes be considered as an extraordinary iudgement of God, both for the punishment of those present prophaners of the Lordes day that were then, & also informe and warne vs that were abroad. In the fal of it, there were slaine fiue men and two women, that are come to knowledge, who they were and where they dwelled, to wit, Adam Spencer a Felmonger, in Southwarke, William Cockram a Baker, dwelling in Shordich, Iohn Burton Cleark, of S. Marie Wolmers in Lombard streat, Mathew Mason, seruant with Master Garland, dwelling in Southwarke, Thomas Peace, seruant with Robert Tasker, dwelling in Clerken well. The maydens names, Alice White, seruant to a Pursemaker without Cripplegate, and Marie Harrison, daughter to Iohn Harrison, being a waterbearer, dwelling in Lombard streat.’ C iv. Nowe beside these that were thus killed out right, with the flat fal of the Galleries, strangely wrunge in peeces as it were by God himselfe, it could not bee but in such confusion, there must needes come great hurt to many. Howe many carried away death, as it were in theyr bosomes, that died the same night, or some little tyme after, the Lorde knoweth. And we heare since, though we know not the iust number, that many of them are dead & buried, and namely one Web a Pewterer his wife that dwelt in Limestreete who being there sore wounded, is now gon with diuers others. Of all the multitude there, which must needes be farre aboue a thousande, it is thought by the iudgement of most people, that not the third personne escaped vnhurt; and by some that haue made search, they esteme that there were sore hurt and maimed, aboue one hundred and fiftye persons, some hauing theyr legs and armes broken, some theyr backes, theyr bodies beeing sore brused, so that euery way into the cittie from that time tyll towardes nine of the clocke and past: and specially ouer London bridge, many were carried in Chayres, & led betwixt their freendes, and so brought home wyth sorrowfull and heauy heartes lyke lame cripples. They say also that at the first, when the Scaffolde cracked (as it did once or twise) there was a crye of fire fire, which set them in such a maze as was wonderfull, so that as destitute of their wits they stood styll, and could make no shifte for them selues, till the Scaffold was made euen with the ground.... Amongst the rest it is credibly reported that there was one Woman, that beeing in the Gallery, threw downe her childe before her, & leaped after herselfe; and yet thankes bee to God neyther of both had any maner of hurt, so was it with diuers others. But it shoulde appere that they were most hurt and in danger, which stoode vnder the Galleries on the grounde, vpon whom both the waight of Timbre and people fel. And sure it was a miraculous worke of God, that any one of those should haue escaped. But heere also God shewed his power for one man falling downe into an hole as if it had beene some sawpit, it pleased God that it was the meane of his deliuerance, so as all things that fell vpon him did not touch him, and by that hee was preserued, wheras two of th’other were slaine of either side of him.’ C. iii. Urges the magistrates to ‘take order especially on the Sabaoth dayes that no Cittizen or Cittizens seruauntes haue libertie to repaire vnto any of those abuse places, that albeit the place be without the Cittie, and by that meanes they haue not to deale with them, yet that they keepe theyr Beares out, and their straggling Wantons in, that they may be better occupied. And as they haue with good commendation so far preuailed, that vppon Sabaoth dayes these Heathenishe Enterludes and Playes are banished, so it wyll please them to followe the matter still, that they may be vtterly rid and taken away. For surely it is to be feared, beesides the distruction bothe of bodye and soule, that many are brought vnto, by frequenting the Theater, the Curtin and such like, that one day those places will likewise be cast downe by God himselfe, & being drawen with them a huge heape of such contempners and prophane persons vtterly to be killed and spoyled in their bodyes. God hath giuen them as I haue heard manye faire warninges already.... January 17, 1583.’

xxxii. 1583. Phillip Stubbes.

[From The Anatomie of Abuses: Contayning a Discoverie, or briefe Summarie of such Notable Vices and Imperfections, as now raigne in many Christian Countreyes of the Worlde: but (especiallie) in a verie famous Ilande called Ailgna (S. R. 1 Mar. 1583; eds. 1 May 1583, 16 Aug. 1583, 1584, 1585, 1595), as reprinted by F. J. Furnivall (1877–9, N. S. S.); other reprints are by W. D. Turnbull (1836, from 1585) and J. P. Collier (1870). Stubbes, a layman and Londoner, was author of various ballads and pamphlets during 1581–93. A second part of The Anatomie of Abuses (S. R. 7 Nov. 1583) has not been reprinted.]

[Summary and Extracts.] The book, which is ‘made dialogue-wise’ between Spudeus and Philoponus, who does most of the denunciation, is not confined to the stage, but is a comprehensive analysis of contemporary frailty. Epistle to Phillip Earl of Arundel. Preface to the Reader. P. x. ‘Wheras in the processe of this my booke, I haue intreated of certen exercyses vsually practised amongest vs, as namely of Playes and Enterludes.... I would not haue thee so to take mee, as though my speaches tended to the overthrowe and vtter disliking of all kynd of exercyses in generall: that is nothing my simple meaning. But the particulare Abuses which are crept into euery one of these seuerall exercyses is the only thing which I think worthie of reprobation. For otherwise (all Abuses cut away) who seeth not that some kind of playes, tragedies and enterluds, in their own nature are not only of great ancientie, but also very honest and very commendable exercyses, being vsed and practised in most Christian common weales, as which containe matter (such they may be) both of doctrine, erudition, good example, and wholsome instruction; and may be vsed, in tyme and place conuenient, as conducible to example of life and reformation of maners. For such is our grosse and dull nature, that what thing we see opposite before our eyes, do pearce further and printe deeper in our harts and minds, than that thing which is hard onely with the eares.... But being vsed (as now commonly they be) to the prophanation of the Lord his sabaoth, to the alluring and inuegling of the People from the blessed word of God preached, to Theaters and vnclean assemblies, to ydlenes, vnthriftynes, whordome, wantonnes, drunkennes, and what not; and which is more, when they are vsed to this end, to maintaine a great sort of ydle Persons, doing nothing but playing and loytring, hauing their lyuings of the sweat of other Mens browes, much like vnto dronets deuouring the sweet honie of the poore labouring bees, than are they exercyses (at no hand) sufferable. But being vsed to the ends that I haue said, they are not to be disliked of any sober and wise Christian.’ The Maner of Sanctifiyng the Sabaoth in Ailgna. P. 137. ‘Some spend the Sabaoth day (for the most part) in frequenting of baudie Stage-playes and enterludes.’ P. 140. Of Stage-playes and Enterluds, with their wickednes. ‘All Stage-playes, Enterluds, and Commedies are either of diuyne or prophane matter: If they be of diuine matter, then are they most intollerable, or rather Sacrilegious; for that the blessed word of God is to be handled reuerently, grauely, and sagely, with veneration to the glorious Maiestie of God, which shineth therin, and not scoffingly, flowtingly, and iybingly, as it is vpon stages in Playes and Enterluds, without any reuerence, worship, or veneration to the same. The word of our Saluation, the price of Christ his bloud, & the merits of his passion, were not giuen to be derided and iested at, as they be in these filthie playes and enterluds on stages & scaffolds, or to be mixt and interlaced with bawdry, wanton shewes, & vncomely gestures, as is vsed (euery Man knoweth) in these playes and enterludes.... Doo these Mockers and Flowters of his Maiesty, these dissembling Hipocrites, and flattering Gnatoes, think to escape vnpunished? beware, therfore, you masking Players, you painted sepulchres, you doble dealing ambodexters, be warned betymes, and, lik good computistes, cast your accompts before, what wil be the reward therof in the end, least God destroy you in his wrath: abuse God no more, corrupt his people no longer with your dregges, and intermingle not his blessed word with such prophane vanities. For at no hand it is not lawfull to mixt scurrilitie with diuinitie, nor diuinitie with scurrilitie.... Vpon the other side, if their playes be of prophane matters, than tend they to the dishonor of God, and norishing of vice, both which are damnable. So that whither they be the one or the other, they are quite contrarie to the Word of grace, and sucked out of the Deuills teates to nourish vs in ydolatrie, hethenrie, and sinne. And therfore they, cariyng the note, or brand, of God his curse vppon their backs, which way soeuer they goe, are to be hissed out of all Christian kingdomes, if they wil haue Christ to dwell amongst them.’ Quotes the Fathers and ancients against histriones. P. 143. ‘Then, seeing that Playes were first inuented by the Deuil, practised by the heathen gentiles, and dedicat to their false ydols, Goddes and Goddesses, as the howse, stage, and apparell to Venus, the musicke to Appollo, the penning to Minerua and the Muses, the action and pronuntiation to Mercurie and the rest, it is more than manifest that they are no fit exercyses for a Christen Man to follow. But if there were no euill in them saue this, namely, that the arguments of tragedies is anger, wrath, immunitie, crueltie, iniurie, incest, murther, & such like, the Persons or Actors are Goddes, Goddesses, Furies, Fyends, Hagges, Kings, Queenes, or Potentates. Of Commedies the matter and ground is loue, bawdrie, cosenage, flattery, whordome, adulterie; the Persons, or agents, whores, queanes, bawdes, scullions, knaues, Curtezans, lecherous old men, amorous yong men, with such like of infinit varietie. If, I say, there were nothing els but this, it were sufficient to withdraw a good christian from the vsing of them; For so often as they goe to those howses where Players frequent, thei go to Venus pallace, & sathans synagogue [in margin, ‘Theaters and curtaines Venus pallaces’], to worship deuils, & betray Christ Iesus.’ To say that plays are ‘as good as sermons’ is to say that ‘the Deuill is equipolent with the Lord’. P. 144. ‘There is no mischief which these plaies maintain not. For do they not norish ydlenes? and otia dant vitia, ydlenes is the Mother of vice. Doo they not draw the people from hering the word of God, from godly Lectures and sermons? for you shall haue them flocke thither, thick & threefould, when the church of God shalbe bare & emptie.... Do they not maintaine bawdrie, infinit folery, & renue the remembrance of hethen ydolatrie? Do they not induce whordom & vnclennes? nay, are they not rather plaine deuourers of maydenly virginitie and chastitie? For proofe wherof, but marke the flocking and running to Theaters & curtens, daylie and hourely, night and daye, tyme and tyde, to see Playes and Enterludes; where such wanton gestures, such bawdie speaches, such laughing and fleering, such kissing and bussing, such clipping and culling, Suche winckinge and glancinge of wanton eyes, and the like, is vsed, as is wonderfull to behold. Then, these goodly pageants being done, euery mate sorts to his mate, euery one bringes another homeward of their way verye freendly, and in their secret conclaues (couertly) they play the Sodomits, or worse. And these be the fruits of Playes or Enterluds for the most part. And wheras you say there are good Examples to be learned in them, Trulie so there are: if you will learne falshood; if you will learn cosenage; if you will learn to deceiue; if you will learn to play the Hipocrit, to cogge, lye, and falsifie; if you will learne to iest, laugh, and fleer, to grin, to nodd, and mow; if you will learn to playe the vice, to swear, teare, and blaspheme both Heauen and Earth: If you will learn to become a bawde, vncleane, and to deuerginat Maydes, to deflour honest Wyues: if you will learne to murther, slaie, kill, picke, steal, robbe, and roue: If you will learn to rebel against Princes, to commit treasons, to consume treasurs, to practise ydlenes, to sing and talke of bawdie loue and venery; if you will lerne to deride, scoffe, mock, & flowt, to flatter & smooth: If you will learn to play the whore-maister, the glutton, Drunkard, or incestuous person: if you will learn to become proude, hawtie, & arrogant; and, finally, if you will learne to contemne God and al his lawes, to care nither for heauen nor hel, and to commit al kinde of sinne and mischeef, you need to goe to no other schoole, for all these good Examples may you see painted before your eyes in enterludes and playes: wherfore that man who giueth money for the maintenance of them must needs incurre the damage of premunire, that is, eternall damnation, except they repent. For the Apostle biddeth vs beware, least wee communicat with other mens sinnes; & this their dooing is not only to communicat with other mens sinnes, & maintain euil to the destruction of them selues & many others, but also a maintaining of a great sorte of idle lubbers, and buzzing dronets, to suck vp and deuoure the good honie, wherupon the poor bees should liue.’ Exhorts ‘all players & Founders of plaies and enterluds’ to leave their life. P. 146. ‘Away therfore with this so infamous an art! for goe they neuer so braue, yet are they counted and taken but for beggers. And is it not true? liue they not vpon begging of euery one that comes? Are they not taken by the lawes of the Realm for roagues and vacaboundes? I speak of such as trauaile the Cuntries with playes & enterludes, making an occupation of it, and ought so to be punished, if they had their deserts.’ Lords of Misrule in Ailgna.... The Manner of Church-ales in Ailgna.... The maner of keeping of Wakesses, and feasts in Ailgna.... The horrible Vice of pestiferous Dauncing, vsed in Ailgna.... Of Musick in Ailgna, and how it allureth to vanitie.... Beare baiting and other exercyses, vsed unlawfully in Ailgna. P. 177. ‘These Hethnicall exercyses vpon the Sabaoth day, which the Lord hath consecrat to holy vses, for the glory of his Name, and our spirituall comfort, are not in any respect tollerable, or to be suffered. For is not the baiting of a Bear, besides that it is a filthie, stinking, and lothsome game, a daungerous & perilous exercyse? wherein a man is in daunger of his life euery minut of an houre; which thing, though it weare not so, yet what exercyse is this meet for any Christian? what christen heart can take pleasure to see one poore beast to rent, teare, and kill another, and all for his foolish pleasure?... And, to be plaine, I thinke the Deuill is the Maister of the game, bearward and all.’ A Fearfull Example of God his Iudgement vpon the prophaners of his Sabaoth. P. 179. Describes the accident of 13 Jan. 1583, with the page-heading, ‘A wofull cry at Syrap garden’. ‘So that either two or three hundred men, women, and children (by estimation), wherof seuen were killed dead, some were wounded, some lamed, and othersome brused and crushed almost to the death.’ A fearfull Iudgement of God, shewed at the Theaters. P. 180. ‘The like Iudgement (almost) did the Lord shew vnto them a litle befor, being assembled at their Theaters, to see their bawdie enterluds and other trumperies practised: For he caused the earth mightely to shak and quauer, as though all would haue fallen down; wherat the People, sore amazed, some leapt down (from the top of the turrets, pinacles, and towres, wher they stood) to the ground; wherof some had their legs broke, some their arms, some their backs, some hurt one where, some another, and many sore crusht and brused; but not any but they went away sore affraid, & wounded in conscience. And yet can neither the one nor the other fray them from these diuelish exercyses, vntill the Lorde consume them all in his wrath; which God forbid! The Lord of his mercie open the eyes of the maiestrats to pluck down these places of abuse, that god may be honored and their consciences disburthened.’

xxxiii. 1583. Gervase Babington.

[From A very Fruitful Exposition of the Commandements by way of Questions and Answers (1583), 316. More general references to the evils of plays and bear-baiting are on pp. 190, 385. Babington was Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and tutor in the Earl of Pembroke’s house at Wilton; he afterwards became Bishop successively of Llandaff, Exeter, and Worcester.]

These prophane & wanton stage playes or interludes: what an occasion they are of adulterie and vncleanenesse, by gesture, by speech, by conueyances, and deuices to attaine to so vngodly desires, the world knoweth with too much hurt by long experience. Vanities they are if we make the best of them.... But I referre you to them, that vpon good knowledge of the abominations of them, haue written largely & wel against them. If they be dangerous on the day time, more daungerous on the night certainely: if on a stage, & in open courtes, much more in chambers and priuate houses. For there are manie roumes beside that where the play is, & peraduenture the strangenes of the place & lacke of light to guide them, causeth errour in their way, more than good Christians should in their houses suffer.

xxxiv. 1583 (?). Philip Sidney.

[From The Defence of Poesie (1595, William Ponsonby; S. R. 29 Nov. 1594), reprinted as An Apologie for Poetrie (1595, Henry Olney), and with 1598 and later editions of Arcadia. Among many modern editions are those by E. Arber (1868), E. Flügel (1889), A. S. Cook (1890), E. S. Schuckburgh (1891), J. C. Collins (1907), and in Gregory Smith (1904), i. 148. The date 1583 is conjecturally assigned by Cook on the ground of the stylistic development since the Arcadia (1580–3). But any date is possible between 1579, when Gosson’s School of Abuse, which probably stimulated it, and Spenser’s Faerie Queene, which it mentions, appeared, and Nov. 1585, when Sidney went to the Low Countries. The book contains a general valuation of poetry, on humanistic lines, together with a criticism of English poetry in particular. Only a few pages are devoted to the drama.]

P. 44. ‘Perchance it is the Comick, whom naughtie Playmakers and Stagekeepers, have iustly made odious. To the argument of abuse, I will answer after. Onely thus much now is to be said, that the Comedy is an imitation of the common errors of our life, which he representeth, in the most ridiculous and scornefull sort that may be. So as it is impossible, that any beholder can be content to be such a one.... So that the right vse of Comedy will (I thinke) by no body be blamed, and much lesse of the high and excellent Tragedy, that openeth the greatest wounds, and sheweth forth the Vlcers, that are couered with Tissue: that maketh Kinges feare to be Tyrants, and Tyrants manifest their tirannicall humors: that with sturring the affects of admiration and commiseration, teacheth, the vncertainety of this world, and vpon how weake foundations guilden roofes are builded.... But it is not the Tragedy they doe mislike: For it were too absurd to cast out so excellent a representation of whatsoeuer is most worthy to be learned.’ P. 50. Answers criticisms of poetry as the ‘Nurse of abuse’, &c. P. 63. Criticizes ‘Our Tragedies and Comedies (not without cause cried out against)’. Even in Gorboduc, much more in other plays, the unities are disregarded (cf. quotations in ch. xix). ‘Besides these gross absurdities, how all theyr Playes be neither right Tragedies, nor right Comedies: mingling Kings and Clownes’ in a ‘mungrell Tragy-comedie.... Our Comedians thinke there is no delight without laughter.... Delight hath a ioy in it, either permanent, or present. Laughter, hath onely a scornful tickling.... But I haue lauished out too many wordes of this play matter. I doe it because as they are excelling parts of Poesie, so is there none so much vsed in England, and none can be more pittifully abused.’

xxxv. 1584. Thomas Lodge.

[From An Alarum against Usurers (1584; S. R. 4 Nov. 1583), edited with Defence of Poetry by D. Laing (1853, Sh. Soc.).]

[Extract from Epistle to Inns of Court.] ‘About three yeres ago, one Stephen Gosson published a booke, intituled The Schoole of Abuse, in which having escaped in many and sundry conclusions, I, as the occasion then fitted me, shapt him such an answere as beseemed his discourse; which by reason of the slendernes of the subject, (because it was in defence of plaies and play makers) the godly and reverent that had to deale in the cause, misliking it, forbad the publishing: notwithstanding he, comming by a private unperfect coppye, about two yeres since made a reply, dividing it into five sections, and in his Epistle dedicatory, to the right honorable, Sir Frances Walsingham, he impugneth me with these reproches, that I am become a vagarant person, visited by the hevy hand of God, lighter than libertie, and looser than vanitie.’ He proceeds to call Gosson an ‘untamed curtail’ and an ‘injurious Asinius’.

xxxvi. 1584. George Whetstone.

[From A Touchstone for the Time, printed as an ‘Addition’ to A Mirour for Magestrates of Cyties (1584).]

The tract is mainly on gaming. P. 24. ‘The godly Divines, in public sermons, and others in printed books, have (of late) very sharply inveighed against Stage-plays (unproperly called, Tragedies, Comedies, and Morals), as the springs of many vices, and the stumbling-blocks of godliness and virtue. Truly the use of them upon the Sabbath day, and the abuse of them at all times, with scurrility and unchaste conveyance, ministred matter sufficient for them to blame, and the Magistrate to reforme.’

xxxvii. 1586. William Webbe.

[From A Discourse of English Poetrie (1586), ed. Arber, 27; also in Gregory Smith, i. 226. The promised expression of opinion (p. 42) is on humanist lines.]

The profitte or discommoditie which aryseth by the vse of these Comedies and Tragedies, which is most, hath beene long in controversie, and is sore urged among us at these dayes: what I think of the same, perhaps I shall breefely declare anon.

xxxviii. 1587. William Rankins.

[From A Mirrour of Monsters: Wherein is plainely described the manifold vices & spotted enormities, that are caused by the infectious sight of Playes, with the description of the subtile slights of Sathan, making them his instruments. Compiled by Wil. Rankins. Magna spes est inferni. Seene and allowed. I. C. for T. H. 1587. The reference to Holywell suggests that the author was the dramatist (cf. ch. xxiii).]

Describes the wedding of Fastus and Luxuria at the ‘Chapell Adulterinum’, near to Κοȋλοφρἑαρ ‘by interpretation from the Greeks Hollow well [i.e. Holywell] where my selfe lulled in the lap of Securitie, not long since was brought a sleepe by carelesse cogitations’. The Chapel Adulterinum is ‘the Theater and Curtine’ (4v). A banquet and mask with torchbearers furnish an allegory of the vices of players, and various allusions, to the fall of the Bear-garden (3), to the 2d. payment for entrance (3v), to advertisements by drums and trumpets (5) and bills (5v), to doorkeepers and boxholders (6v), are commented on in marginal notes.

xxxix. 1588. John Case.

[From Sphaera Civitatis (1588), a commentary on Aristotle’s Politics (ad v. 8; vii. 17). A similar passage from the commentary on the Ethics (iv. 8) in Speculum Moralium Quaestionum (1586), 183, is quoted by Boas, 228. It is interesting to find from The Christmas Prince, 12 (cf. ch. xxiv), that Case once served as lord of misrule at St. John’s, Oxford.]

(a) Lib. v, c. 8.

Alia nunc dubitatio sequitur, Vtrum ludi chorique permittendi sunt in ciuitate? Memini me olim in Ethicis de his rebus obiter disputasse, verum quoniam opportune se offert quaestio, abs re non erit eandem paucissimis demonstrare: censeo ergo quibusdam adhibitis circumstantiis haec tolerari ac permitti debere; non quod per se et vi sua res vtiles, sed quod in moderato illorum vsu splendor comitatis (quae virtus minima non est) manifeste apparet. Sunt igitur ludi non inanes et histrionicae fabulae, veneris illecebrae, sed facetae comoediae magnificaeque tragaediae, in quibus expressa imago vitae morumque cernitur.... Adhuc in his mores hominum depictos discere, praeclara inuenta doctorum obseruare, temporum antiquorum caniciem cernere, vocem, vultum, gestumque splendide componere, varios affectus et passiones mouere, famam acquirere et comparare possumus [in margin: scenae trigemina corona]. Cum ergo ex iis tot commoda existant, non solum toleranda sed etiam iuste approbanda videntur. Insuper antiquissimis olim temporibus in omni praeclare instituta republica floruerunt ista: ergo sunt licita.... Postremo his addi potest ratio quae est in textu, nempe quod hoc modo potentiores viri quos timet ciuitas (coacti ad ista edenda populo) elumbentur sedatioresque fiant.

(b) Lib. vii, c. 17.

Tertium est vt parentes suos liberos diligenter custodiant, et arceant ab audiendis, videndis, spectandis, malis sermonibus, obscoenis idolis Veneris, vanis spectaculis leuissimorum histrionum, qui plusquam ridiculas ne dicam impias fabellas huc illuc vagabundi agunt. Hic opportunè monendi sunt illi, qui suos infantulos iurare et conuitiari docent, qui simulachra Veneris intuenda, artemque amandi perdiscendam suis filiolis proponunt, qui denique ad theatra plena Veneris, plena vanitatis illos non solum ire permittunt sed etiam alliciunt. Non hic omnes ludos omnesque histriones praesertim hystoricos, tragicos, et si placet comicos (modò sint verè faceti) condemno: quippè Aristoteles hoc loco Theodorum quendam peritum tragoediarum actorem laudat, Cicero suum laudauit Roscium, nos Angli Tarletonum, in cuius voce et vultu omnes iocosi affectus, in cuius cerebroso capite lepidae facetiae habitant.

xl. 1588–90. Martin Marprelate Controversy.

[The texts of the Marprelate pamphlets have been edited by W. Pierce, The Marprelate Tracts (1911); some were reprinted earlier by E. Arber and in J. Petheram, Puritan Discipline Tracts (1842–60). The best accounts of this ribald controversy on Church government are E. Arber, An Introductory Sketch to the Martin Marprelate Controversy (1879); W. Pierce, Historical Introduction to the Marprelate Tracts (1908); J. D. Wilson, The Marprelate Controversy (1909, C. H. iii. 374), and Martin Marprelate and Shakespeare’s Fluellen (1912); R. B. McKerrow, Works of Nashe, v (1910), 34, 184; G. Bonnard, La Controverse de Martin Marprelate (1916). It seems probable that Martin was a composite personality; Sir Roger Williams, John Penry, and Job Throckmorton may all have had a share in the pamphlets. The replies were inspired by Richard Bancroft, then Canon of Westminster and a member of the High Commission. It seems clear that both Lyly and Nashe took part in them, and Pappe with an Hatchet may reasonably be ascribed to Lyly. Nashe has often been regarded as Pasquil, but Mr. McKerrow does not think that any of the pamphlets can be supposed with any certainty to be his; he probably contributed to the lost plays. Of these Bonnard, 92, would distinguish five—(a) Martin anatomized, (b) the May Game of Martinism, (c) Martin carried to hell, as a vice, (d) Martin as cock, ape, and wolf, (e) Martin ravishing Divinity; but (b) seems to be referred to as a forthcoming pamphlet rather than as a play, and of the others (d) and (e) almost certainly, and possibly all four, were episodes in the same piece. F. Bacon in his Advertisement Touching the Controversies (Works, viii. 74), written in the summer of 1589, criticizes the episcopal policy of answering like by like, and ‘this immodest and deformed manner of writing lately entertained, whereby matters of religion are handled in the style of the stage’.]

(a)

[From The Epistle to the Terrible Priests of the Confocation House (Oct.-Nov. 1588), 11, 19, reprinted by E. Arber (1880); also by J. Petheram (1842) in Puritan Discipline Tracts (Martinist).]

Sohow, brother Bridges [John Bridges, Dean of Salisbury] ... you haue bin a worthy writer as they say of a long time, your first book was a proper Enterlude, called Gammar Gurtons needle. But I think that this trifle, which sheweth the author to haue had some witte and inuention in him, was none of your doing: Because your bookes seeme to proceede from the braynes of a woodcocke as hauing neyther wit nor learning.... What if I should report abroad, that cleargie men come vnto their promotions by Simonie? haue not you giuen me iuste cause? I thinke Simonie be the bishops lacky. Tarleton tooke him not long since in Don Iohn [Aylmer] of Londons cellor.

(b)

[From A Whip for an Ape: Or Martin displaied (Apr. 1589), 53, 133, in Bond, Lyly, iii. 417 (Anti-Martinist).]

Now Tarleton’s dead, the Consort lackes a vice:

For knaue and foole thou maist beare pricke and price.

And ye graue men that answer Martins mowes,

He mockes the more, and you in vaine loose times:

Leaue Apes to dogges to baite, their skins to crowes,

And let old Lanam lash him with his rimes.

(c)

[From Anti-Martinus, sive Monitio cuiusdam Londinensis, ad Adolescentes utriusque Academiae, signed A. L. (1589; S. R. 3 July 1589), 59 (Anti-Martinist).]

Libros autem Martini qui legit, nihil aliud reperiet, quam perpetuatum conuitium; sic autem vibratum, vt facile videas ad huiusmodi scurrilitates conquirendas, totam eius vitam theatris illis Londinensibus, & leuissimis scenis, vel scurrarum & nepotum circulis insidiatam.

(d)

[From Theses Martinianae, or Martin Junior (c. 22 July 1589), sig. D ij (Martinist).]

‘There bee that affirme the rimers and stage-players to haue cleane putte you out of countenaunce ... the stage-players, poore rogues, are not so much to be blamed, if being stage-players, that is plaine rogues (saue onely for their liueries) they in the action of dealing against Maister Martin, have gotten them many thousande eie witnesses, of their wittelesse and pittifull conceites.’ The writer condoles with those who ‘for one poor penny’ play ‘ignominious fools for an hour or two together’. Martin may ‘contemn such kennel-rakers and scullions as have sold themselves’ to be laughed at as ‘a company of disguised asses’.

(e)

[From Martins Months Minde (Aug. 1589), in Grosart, Nashe, i. 164, 166, 175, 177, 180, 189 (Anti-Martinist).]

To the Reader. ‘Roscius pleades in the Senate house; Asses play vpon harpes; the Stage is brought into the Church; and vices make plaies of Churche matters.... These Iigges and Rimes, haue nipt the father [Martin] in the head & kild him cleane, seeing that hee is ouertaken in his owne foolerie. And this hath made the yong youthes his sonnes, to chafe and fret aboue measure, especiallie with the Plaiers, (their betters in all respects, both in wit, and honestie) whom sauing their liueries (for indeede they are hir Maiesties men, and these not so much as hir good subiects) they call Rogues, for playing their enterludes, and Asses for trauelling all daie for a pennie [in margin, Martin the vice condemneth the Plaiers, Eigulus, sigulum].... A true report of the death and buriall of Martin Marprelate. ... Martin ... being ... sundrie waies verie curstlie handled; as ... wormd and launced, that he tooke verie grieuouslie, to be made a May-game vpon the Stage [in margin, The Theater] ... as he saw that ... euerie stage Plaier made a iest of him ... fell into a feauer.... Martin, ... calling his sonnes ... said ... I perceiue that euerie stage plaier, if he play the foole but two houres together, hath somewhat for his labour: and I ... nothing.... [The common people are] now wearie of our state mirth, that for a penie, may haue farre better by oddes at the Theater and Curtaine, and any blind playing house euerie day.... In lept I ... with ... twittle tattles; that indeede I had learned in Alehouses, and at the Theater of Lanam and his fellowes.* ... These gambols (my sonnes) are implements for the Stage, and beseeme Iesters, and Plaiers, but are not fit for Church plotters.... Afterwards ensued his bequestes, in manner and forme following ... Item, all my foolerie I bequeath to my good friend Lanam; and his consort, of whom I first had it.’

(f)

[From A Countercuffe giuen to Martin Iunior: ... by Pasquill of England (Aug. 1589), in McKerrow, Nashe, i. 59 (Anti-Martinist).]

The Anotamie latelie taken of him, the blood and the humors that were taken from him, by launcing and worming him at London vpon the common Stage ... are euident tokens, that beeing thorow soust in so many showres, hee had no other refuge but to runne into a hole, and die as he liued, belching.

(g)

[From The Protestatyon of Martin Marprelat (1589, before 20 Oct.), 25 (Martinist).]

Then among al the rimers and stage plaiers, which my Ll. of the cleargy had suborned against me I remember Mar-Martin, Iohn a Cant. his hobbie-horse, was to his reproche, newly put out of the Morris, take it how he will; with a flat discharge for euer shaking his shins about a May-pole againe while he liued.

(h)

[From The Returne of the renowned Caualiero Pasquill of England (c. 20 Oct. 1589) in McKerrow, Nashe, i. 82, 92, 100 (Anti-Martinist).]

Howe whorishlie Scriptures are alleaged by them, I will discouer (by Gods helpe) in another new worke which I haue in hand, and intituled it, The May-game of Martinisme. Verie defflie set out, with Pompes, Pagents, Motions, Maskes, Scutchions, Emblems, Impreases, strange trickes, and deuises, betweene the Ape and the Owle, the like was neuer yet seene in Paris-garden. Penry the welchman is the foregallant of the Morrice, with the treble belles, shot through the wit with a Woodcocks bill: I woulde not for the fayrest horne-beast in all his Countrey, that the Church of England were a cup of Metheglin, and came in his way when he is ouer-heated; euery Bishopricke woulde prooue but a draught, when the Mazer is at his nose. Martin himselfe is the Mayd-marian, trimlie drest vppe in a cast Gowne, and a Kercher of Dame Lawsons, his face handsomlie muffled with a Diaper-napkin to couer his beard, and a great Nosegay in his hande, of the principalest flowers I could gather out of all hys works. Wiggenton daunces round about him in a Cotten-coate, to court him with a Leatherne pudding, and a woodden Ladle. Paget marshalleth the way, with a couple of great clubbes, one in his foote, another in his head, & he cryes to the people with a loude voice, Beware of the Man whom God hath markt. I can not yet find any so fitte to come lagging behind, with a budget on his necke, to gather the deuotion of the lookers on, as the stocke-keeper of the Bridewel-house of Canterburie; he must carrie the purse, to defray their charges, and then hee may be sure to serue himselfe.... Methought Vetus Comœdia beganne to pricke him at London in the right vaine, when shee brought foorth Diuinitie wyth a scratcht face, holding of her hart as if she were sicke, because Martin would haue forced her, but myssing of his purpose, he left the print of his nayles vppon her cheekes, and poysoned her with a vomit which he ministred vnto her, to make her cast vppe her dignities and promotions.... Who commeth yonder Marforius, can you tell me? Marforius. By her gate and her Garland I knowe her well, it is Vetus Comœdia. She hath been so long in the Country, that she is somewhat altred: this is she that called in a counsell of Phisitians about Martin, and found by the sharpnes of his humour, when they had opened the vaine that feedes his head, that hee would spit out his lunges within one yeere.... Pasquil. I haue a tale to tell her in her eare, of the slye practise that was vsed in restraining of her.

(i)

[From Pappe with an Hatchet (1589, end of Oct.) in Bond, Lyly, iii. 408 (Anti-Martinist).]

Sed heus tu, dic sodes, will they not bee discouraged for the common players? Would these Comedies might be allowed to be plaid that are pend, and then I am sure he would be decyphered, and so perhaps discouraged.

He shall not bee brought in as whilom he was, and yet verie well, with a cocks combe, an apes face, a wolfs bellie, cats clawes, &c. but in a cap’de cloake, and all the best apparell he ware the highest day in the yeare....

... Would it not bee a fine Tragedie, when Mardocheus shall play a Bishoppe in a Play, and Martin Hamman, and that he that seekes to pull downe those that are set in authoritie aboue him, should be hoysted vpon a tree aboue all other. [In margin] If it be shewed at Paules, it will cost you foure pence: at the Theater two pence: at Sainct Thomas a Watrings nothing.

(k)

[From G. Harvey, An Advertisement for Papp-Hatchett (1589, Nov. 5), printed with Pierces Supererogation (1593) and in Grosart, Harvey, ii. 131, 213 (Philo-Martinist).]

Had I bene Martin ... it should haue beene one of my May-games, or August triumphes, to haue driuen Officials, Commissaries, Archdeacons, Deanes, Chauncellors, Suffraganes, Bishops and Archbishops, (so Martin would have florished at the least) to entertaine such an odd, light-headded fellow for their defence; a professed iester, a Hickscorner, a scoff-maister, a playmunger, an Interluder; once the foile of Oxford, now the stale of London, and ever the Apesclogge of the presse, Cum Priuilegio perennitatis.... I am threatened with a Bable, and Martin menaced with a Comedie: ... All you, that tender the preseruation of your good names, were best to please Pap-hatchet, and fee Euphues betimes, for feare lesse he be mooued, or some One of his Apes hired, to make a Playe of you; and then is your credit quite vndone for euer, and euer: Such is the publique reputation of their Playes. He must needes be discouraged, whom they decipher. Better, anger an hundred other, then two such; that haue the Stage at commaundement, and can furnish-out Vices, and Diuels at their pleasure.

(l)

[From An Almond for a Parrat, Or Cutbert Curry-knaues Almes (1590, early), in McKerrow, Nashe, iii. 354 (Anti-Martinist).]

Therefore we must not measure of Martin as he is allied to Elderton or tongd like Will Tony, as he was attired like an Ape on the Stage, or sits writing of Pamphlets in some spare outhouse, but as he is Mar-Prelat of England.

(m)

[From The First parte of Pasquils Apologie ... Printed where I was, and where I will bee readie by the helpe of God and my Muse, to send you the May-game of Martinisme for an intermedium, betweene the first and seconde parte of the Apologie (2 July 1590), in McKerrow, Nashe, i. 135 (Anti-Martinist). It may be doubted whether The May-game of Martinism ever had an existence outside the allusions to it in these pamphlets.]

And when I haue sent you the May-game of Martinisme, at the next setting my foote into the styrroppe after it, the signet shall be giuen, and the fielde fought.

xli. 1589. Richard (?) Puttenham.

[From The Arte of English Poesie (1589; S. R. 9 Nov. 1588), edited by E. Arber (1869); also in J. Haslewood, Ancient Critical Essays, vol. i (1811), and in part in Gregory Smith, ii. 1. On the author, cf. ch. xxiii.]

Most of the treatise (bks. ii, iii) deals with the technicalities of poetic structure and style, which the author sometimes illustrates from interludes and verses of his own. Bk. i praises poetry in general, on familiar but non-controversial humanist lines, and discusses with some classical erudition the origin of various types of poetry, as tragedy, comedy, and pantomime (c. 11), comedy (c. 14), tragedy (c. 15), staging (c. 17), pastoral (c. 18). In a brief account of English poets (c. 31) occurs: ‘But the principall man in this profession at the same time [Edward’s] was Maister Edward [sic] Ferrys a man of no lesse mirth and felicitie that way, but of much more skil, and magnificence in his meeter, and therefore wrate for the most part to the stage, in Tragedie and sometimes in Comedie or Enterlude, wherein he gaue the king so much good recreation, as he had thereby many good rewardes.... Of the later sort I thinke thus. That for Tragedie, the Lord of Buckhurst and Maister Edward Ferrys for such doings as I haue sene of theirs do deserue the hyest price: Th’ Earle of Oxford and Maister Edwardes of her Maiesties Chappell for Comedy and Enterlude.’

xlii. 1589. Thomas Nashe.

[From an epistle To the Gentlemen Students of Both Universities, prefixed to Robert Greene’s Menaphon (1589; S. R. 23 Aug. 1589), reprinted from ed. 1610, which has some corrections possibly by Nashe, in McKerrow, iii. 311, with valuable notes (iv. 444) upon the allusions and supposed allusions. The suggestion of Collier that Menaphon was originally printed in 1587 appears to be baseless. Outside the three passages quoted, Nashe praises Watson’s translation of Antigone. McKerrow’s collection of material for the critical discussion of the epistle is so full that I need only compare briefly my conclusions with his. In (i) Nashe seems to me to be criticizing (a) ‘tragedians’, which for me are clearly ‘tragic actors’, while McKerrow inclines to make them ‘writers of tragedy’, and (b) their dramatists, who include blank-verse ‘Art-masters’, which I agree with McKerrow is more likely, in view of the fact that Greene above all flourished his University degree, to mean ‘masters of their art’ than ‘masters of Arts’, and translating tradesmen or serving-men with no education beyond a grammar-school. The slight suggestions that Nashe may have had Marlowe especially in mind are perhaps hardly sufficient to outweigh his statement in Have with you to Saffron Walden (1596) that he ‘neuer abusd Marloe’; and Marlowe was a University man, and no tradesman or serving-man. On the other hand, there is no specific praise of Marlowe with other University poets in the epistle. The whole of (i) is a precise parallel to the following lines by Thomas Brabine, also prefixed to Menaphon:

‘Come foorth you witts that vaunt the pompe of speach,

And striue to thunder from a Stage-mans throate:

View Menaphon a note beyond your reach;

Whose sight will make your drumming descant doate:

Players auaunt, you know not to delight;

Welcome sweete Shepheard; worth a Schollers sight.’

In (ii) I am rather more inclined than McKerrow to think that the ‘Nouerint’ and the ‘Kidde in Æsop’ may glance at Kyd, who was not one of the University group, and was a grammarian, a translator, and very likely already a serving-man. But the attempts to trace him elsewhere in the passage come to very little; nor is one playwright only necessarily in question, so that, although the ‘handfuls of Tragicall speeches’ may point to a play of Hamlet as already extant in 1589, the inference that Kyd was its author becomes extremely thin. In (iii) Nashe attacks the players as parasitic on the poets, in terms closely resembling those used later by Greene in his Groatsworth of Wit (No. xlviii). Probably Roscius is here Alleyn, and Caesar stands for the poets in general. I do not agree with Fleay, L. of S. 10, 99, that the epistle reflects a rivalry between the poets of the Queen’s men and those of Pembroke’s, who indeed did not yet exist, or any other company. The issue is between the University poets on the one hand and the players and illiterate poets on the other.]

P. 311. ‘I am not ignorant how eloquent our gowned age is grown of late; so that euery mechanicall mate abhorres the English he was borne too, and plucks, with a solemne periphrasis, his vt vales from the inkehorne: which I impute, not so much to the perfection of Arts, as to the seruile imitation of vainglorious Tragedians, who contend not so seriously to excell in action, as to embowell the cloudes in a speech of comparison, thinking themselues more than initiated in Poets immortality, if they but once get Boreas by the beard and the heauenly Bull by the deaw-lap. But heerein I cannot so fully bequeath them to folly, as their ideot Art-masters, that intrude themselues to our eares as the Alcumists of eloquence, who (mounted on the stage of arrogance) think to out-braue better pennes with the swelling bumbast of a bragging blanke verse. Indeede it may bee the ingrafted ouerflow of some kil-cow conceit, that ouercloyeth their imagination with a more than drunken resolution, being not extemporall in the inuention of any other meanes to vent their manhoode, commits the disgestion of their cholericke incumbrances to the spacious volubilitie of a drumming decasillabon. Mongst this kind of men that repose eternitie in the mouth of a Player, I can but ingrosse some deep read Grammarians, who, hauing no more learning in their skull than will serue to take vp a commoditie, nor Art in their braine than was nourished in a seruing mans idlenesse, will take vppon them to be the ironicall Censors of all, when God and Poetrie doth know they are the simplest of all. To leaue these to the mercy of their Mother tongue, that feed on nought but the crums that fall from the Translators trencher, I come (sweet friend) to thy Arcadian Menaphon, ...’ P. 315. ‘I’le turne backe to my first text of Studies of delight, and talke a little in friendship with a few of our triuiall translators. It is a common practise now a dayes amongst a sort of shifting companions, that runne through euery Art and thriue by none, to leaue the trade of Nouerint, whereto they were borne, and busie themselues with the indeuours of Art, that could scarcely Latinize their neck verse if they should haue neede; yet English Seneca read by Candlelight yeelds many good sentences, as Blood is a begger, and so forth; and if you intreate him faire in a frostie morning, hee will affoord you whole Hamlets, I should say handfuls of Tragicall speeches. But O griefe! Tempus edax rerum, whats that will last alwayes? The Sea exhaled by droppes will in continuance bee drie, and Seneca, let blood line by line and page by page, at length must needes die to our Stage; which makes his famished followers to imitate the Kidde in Æsop, who, enamoured with the Foxes newfangles, forsooke all hopes of life to leape into a newe occupation; and these men, renouncing all possibilities of credite or estimation, to intermeddle with Italian Translations: wherein how poorely they haue plodded, (as those that are neither prouenzall men, nor are able to distinguish of Articles,) let all indifferent Gentlemen that haue trauailed in that tongue discerne by their two-pennie pamphlets: & no maruell though their home borne mediocritie bee such in this matter; for what can bee hoped of those that thrust Elisium into hell, and haue not learned, so long as they haue liued in the Spheres, the iust measure of the Horizon without an hexameter? Sufficeth them to bodge vp a blanke verse with ifs and ands, and otherwhile for recreation after their Candle-stuffe, hauing starched their beards most curiously, to make a Peripateticall path into the inner parts of the Citie, and spend two or three howers in turning ouer French Doudie, where they attract more infection in one minute, then they can do eloquence all daies of their life, by conuersing with any Authors of like argument.’ P. 323. ‘There are extant about London many most able men to reuiue Poetry ... as, for example, Mathew Roydon, Thomas Atchelow, and George Peele; the first of whom, as he hath shewed himselfe singular in the immortall Epitaph of his beloued Astrophell, besides many other most absolute Comike inuentions (made more publike by euery mans praise, than they can be by my speech), so the second hath more than once or twice manifested his deepe witted schollership in places of credite: and for the last, though not the least of them all, I dare commend him to all that know him, as the chiefe supporter of pleasance now liuing, the Atlas of Poetrie, and primus verborum Artifex: whose first increase, the arraignement of Paris, might pleade to your opinions his pregnant dexterity of wit, and manifold varietie of inuention; where in (me iudice) he goeth a steppe beyond all that write. Sundry other sweete gentlemen I know, that haue vaunted their pennes in priuate deuices, and tricked vp a company of taffata fooles with their feathers, whose beauty if our Poets had not peecte with the supply of their periwigs, they might haue antickt it vntill this time vp and downe the Countrey with the King of Fairies, and dined euery day at the pease porredge ordinary with Delphrigus. But Tolossa hath forgot that it was sometime sacked, and beggars that euer they carried their fardels on footback: and in truth no meruaile, when as the deserued reputation of one Roscius is of force to enrich a rabble of counterfets; yet let subiects for all their insolence dedicate a De profundis euery morning to the preseruation of their Caesar, least their increasing indignities returne them ere long to their iugling to mediocrity, and they bewaile in weeping blankes the wane of their Monarchie.’

xliii. 1590. Robert Greene.

[From Francescos Fortunes: Or, The second part of Greenes Neuer too Late (1590), reprinted in Works, viii. 111. For the Roscius story, cf. No. xii and ch. xi.]

P. 129. A palmer, telling the tale of Francesco, which contains some probably autobiographical matter on the hero’s writing for the stage (cf. ch. xxiii, s.v. Greene), is interrupted by a request for his ‘iudgement of Playes, Playmakers and Players’. After observing that ‘some for being too lauish against that facultie, haue for their satiricall inuectiues been well canuased’, he sketches the growth of comedy at Athens and Rome, where ‘couetousnesse crept into the qualitie’ and ‘the Actors, by continuall vse grewe not onely excellent, but rich and insolent’. This is illustrated (p. 132) by a rebuke of Cicero to Roscius, ‘Why Roscius, art thou proud with Esops Crow, being pranct with the glorie of others feathers? of thy selfe thou canst say nothing, and if the Cobler hath taught thee to say Aue Caesar, disdain not thy tutor, because thou pratest in a Kings chamber: what sentence thou vtterest on the stage, flowes from the censure of our wittes, and what sentence or conceipte of the inuention the people applaud for excellent, that comes from the secrets of our knowledge. I graunt your action, though it be a kind of mechanical labour; yet wel done tis worthie of praise: but you worthlesse, if for so small a toy you waxe proud’. Publius Seruilius also bade a player ‘bee not so bragge of thy silken roabes, for I sawe them but yesterday make a great shew in a broakers shop’. The palmer concludes, ‘Thus sir haue you heard my opinion briefly of plaies, that Menander deuised them for the suppressing of vanities, necessarie in a common wealth, as long as they are vsed in their right kind; the play makers worthy of honour for their Arte: & players, men deseruing both prayse and profite, as long as they wax neither couetous nor insolent’.

xliv. 1591. Samuel Cox.

[This letter of 15 Jan. 1591 to an unknown correspondent, brother of one Mr. Lewin, occurs with other letters by Cox in the letter-book of Sir Christopher Hatton (Nicolas, Hatton, xxix), to whom he was secretary.]

Has his letter ‘reprehending me in some sort for my sharpness against the use of plays’. Cites view of Fathers, especially Chrysostom. Regrets present toleration of ‘these dangerous schools of licentious liberty, whereunto more people resort than to sermons or prayers’. Now ‘rich men give more to a player for a song which he shall sing in one hour, than to their faithful servants for serving them a whole year.... I could wish that players would use themselves nowadays, as in ancient former times they have done, which was only to exercise their interludes in the time of Christmas, beginning to play in the holidays and continuing until twelfth tide, or at the furthest until Ashwednesday, of which players I find three sorts of people: the first, such as were in wages with the king and played before him some time at Hallowmass, and then in the later holidays until twelfthtide, and after that, only in Shrovetide; and these men had other trades to live of, and seldom or never played abroad at any other times of the whole year. The second sort were such as pertained to noblemen, and were ordinary servants in their house, and only for Christmas times used such plays, without making profession to be players to go abroad for gain, for in such cases they were subject to the statute against retainers. The third sort were certain artisans in good towns and great parishes, as shoemakers, tailors, and such like, that used to play either in their town-halls, or some time in churches, to make the people merry; where it was lawful for all persons to come without exacting any money for their access, having only somewhat gathered of the richer sort by the churchwardens for their apparel and other necessaries.’

xlv. 1591. Sir John Harington.

[From A Preface, or rather a Briefe Apologie of Poetrie, and of the Author and Translator, prefixed to Harington’s translation of Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso (1591), reprinted in Gregory Smith, ii. 194.]

Harington upholds poetry on humanist lines, and answers the objections of Cornelius Agrippa. P. 209. ‘The last reproofe is lightnes & wantonnes.... First, the Tragicall is meerly free from it, as representing onely the cruell and lawlesse proceedings of Princes, mouing nothing but pitie or detestation. The Comicall, whatsoeuer foolish playmakers make it offend in this kind, yet being rightly vsed, it represents them so as to make the vice scorned and not embraced.... And for Tragedies, to omit other famous Tragedies, that that was played at S. Iohns in Cambridge, of Richard the 3, would moue (I thinke) Phalaris the tyraunt, and terrifie all tyrannous minded men from following their foolish ambitious humors, seeing how his ambition made him kill his brother, his nephews, his wife, beside infinit others, and, last of all, after a short and troublesome raigne, to end his miserable life, and to haue his body harried after his death. Then, for Comedies, how full of harmeles myrth is our Cambridge Pedantius? and the Oxford Bellum Grammaticale? or, to speake of a London Comedie, how much good matter, yea and matter of state, is there in that Comedie cald the play of the Cards, in which it is showed how foure Parasiticall knaues robbe the foure principall vocations of the Realme, videl, the vocation of Souldiers, Schollers, Marchants, and Husbandmen? Of which Comedie I cannot forget the saying of a notable wise counseller that is now dead, who when some (to sing Placebo) aduised that it should be forbidden, because it was somewhat too plaine, and indeed as the old saying is, sooth boord is no boord, yet he would haue it allowed, adding it was fit that They which doe that they should not should heare that they would not.’

xlvi. 1592. Thomas Nashe.

[From Pierce Penilesse his Supplication to the Diuell (1592; S. R. 8 Aug. 1592), reprinted in McKerrow, i. 149.]

[Extracts.] P. 211. ‘There is a certaine waste of the people for whome there is no vse, but warre: and these men must haue some employment still to cut them off.... To this effect, the pollicie of Playes is very necessary, howsoeuer some shallow-braind censurers (not the deepest serchers into the secrets of gouernment) mightily oppugne them. For whereas the after-noone beeing the idlest time of the day; wherein men that are their owne masters (as Gentlemen of the Court, the Innes of the Courte, and the number of Captaines and Souldiers about London) do wholy bestow themselues vpon pleasure, and that pleasure they deuide (howe vertuously it skils not) either into gameing, following of harlots, drinking, or seeing a Playe: is it not then better (since of foure extreames all the world cannot keepe them but they will choose one) that they should betake them to the least, which is Playes? Nay, what if I prooue Playes to be no extreame; but a rare exercise of vertue? First, for the subiect of them (for the most part) it is borrowed out of our English Chronicles, 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? How would it haue ioyed braue Talbot (the terror of the French) to thinke that after he had lyne two hundred yeares in his Tombe, hee should triumphe againe on the Stage, and haue his bones newe embalmed with the teares of ten thousand spectators at least (at seuerall times) who, in the Tragedian that represents his person, imagine they behold him fresh bleeding? I will defend it against any Collian, or clubfisted Vsurer of them all, there is no immortalitie can be giuen a man on earth like vnto Playes.... All Artes to them are vanitie: and, if you tell them what a glorious thing it is to haue Henrie the fifth represented on the Stage, leading the French King prisoner, and forcing both him and the Dolphin to sweare fealty, I, but (will they say) what do we get by it? Respecting neither the right of Fame that is due to true Nobilitie deceased, nor what hopes of eternitie are to be proposed to aduentrous mindes, to encourage them forward, but onely their execrable luker, and fillthie vnquenchable auarice. They know when they are dead they shall not be brought vpon the Stage for any goodnes, but in a merriment of the Vsurer and the Diuel, or buying Armes of the Herald, who giues them the Lyon, without tongue, tayle, or tallents, because his maister whome hee must serue is a Townesman, and a man of peace, and must not keepe any quarrelling beasts to annoy his honest neighbours. In Playes, all coosonages, all cunning drifts ouer-guylded with outward holinesse, all stratagems of warre, all the cankerwormes that breede on the rust of peace, are most liuely anatomiz’d: they shewe the ill successe of treason, the fall of hastie climbers, the wretched end of vsurpers, the miserie of ciuill dissention, and how iust God is euermore in punishing of murther.... Whereas some Petitioners of the Counsaile against them obiect, they corrupt the youth of the Cittie, and withdrawe Prentises from theyr worke; they heartily wishe they might bee troubled with none of their youth nor their prentises; for some of them (I meane the ruder handicrafts seruants) neuer come abroade, but they are in danger of vndoing: and as for corrupting them when they come, thats false; for no Play they haue, encourageth any man to tumult or rebellion, but layes before such the halter and the gallowes; or praiseth or approoueth pride, lust, whoredome, prodigalitie, or drunkennes, but beates them downe vtterly. As for the hindrance of Trades and Traders of the Citie by them, that is an Article foysted in by the Vintners, Alewiues, and Victuallers, who surmise, if there were no Playes, they should haue all the companie that resort to them, lye bowzing and beere-bathing in their houses euery after-noone.... Our Players are not as the players beyond Sea, a sort of squirting baudie Comedians, that haue whores and common Curtizens to playe womens partes, and forbeare no immodest speech or vnchast action that may procure laughter; but our Sceane is more statelye furnisht than euer it was in the time of Roscius, our representations honourable, and full of gallant resolution, not consisting, like theirs, of a Pantaloun, a Whore, and a Zanie, but of Emperours, Kings, and Princes; whose true Tragedies (Sophocleo cothurno) they do vaunt. Not Roscius nor Æsope, those admyred tragedians that haue liued euer since before Christ was borne, could euer performe more in action than famous Ned Allen.... If I euer write any thing in Latine (as I hope one day I shall) not a man of any desert here amongst vs, but I will haue vp. Tarlton, Ned Allen, Knell, Bentlie, shall be made knowne to France, Spaine, and Italie: and not a part that they surmounted in, more than other, but I will there note and set downe, with the manner of theyr habites and attyre.’

xlvii. 1592. Robert Greene.

[From A Quip for an Upstart Courtier: Or, A quaint Dispute between Velvet Breeches and Cloth Breeches. Wherein is plainely set downe the disorders in all Estates and Trades (Works, xi. 205).]

A jury is being empanelled between the disputants, who represent new and old ideals of gentry. P. 289. ‘An ouerworne gentleman attired in veluet and satin’ is followed by ‘two pert Applesquires: the one had a murrey cloth gowne on, faced down before with gray conny, and laid thicke on the sleeves with lace, which he quaintly bare vp to shew his white taffata hose, and black silk stockings: a huge ruffe about his necke wrapt in his great head like a wicker cage, a little Hat with brims like the wings of a doublet, wherein he wore a jewell of glasse, as broad as a chancery seale: after him followed two boies in cloakes like butterflies: carrying one of them his cutting sword of choller, the other his dauncing rapier of delight.’ The ‘ouerworne gentleman’ is a poet, the ‘applesquires’ a player and the usher of a dancing school. Velvet Breeches thinks the poet ‘a proud fellow’, the others ‘plaine, honest, humble men, that for a penny or an old-cast sute of apparell will do anything. Indeed quoth Cloth Breeches you say troth, they are but too humble, for they be so lowly, that they be base minded: I mean not in their lookes or apparell, for so they be peacockes and painted asses, but in their corse of life, for they care not how they get crowns, I meane how basely so they haue them, and yet of the two I hold the Plaier to be the better Christian, although in his owne imagination too full of selfe liking and selfe loue, and is vnfit to be of the Iury though I hide and conceale his faults and fopperies, in that I haue beene merry at his sports: onely this I must say, that such a plaine country fellow as my selfe, they bring in as clownes and fooles to laugh at in their play, whereas they get by vs, and of our almes the proudest of them all doth line. Well, to be breefe, let him trot to the stage, for he shall be none of the Iury.’

xlviii. 1592. Robert Greene.

[From Greens Groatsworth of Wit (1596; S. R. 20 Sept. 1592), reprinted in Grosart, xii. 131, and C. M. Ingleby, Shakespere Allusion-Books, Part i (1874, N. S. S.); cf. ch. xxiii, s.v. Greene.]

‘Roberto ... vttered his present greefe, beseeching his advuise how he might be imployed. Why easily, quoth hee, and greatly to your benefit: for men of my profession get by schollers their whole liuing. What is your profession, sayd Roberto? Truely sir, said he, I am a player. A Player, quoth Roberto, I tooke you rather for a gentleman of great liuing; for if by outward habit men shuld be censured, I tell you, you would be taken for a substantiall man. So am I where I dwell (quoth the player) reputed able at my proper cost, to build a Windmill. What though the worlde once went hard with mee, when I was faine to carrie my playing Fardle a footebacke; Tempora mutantur: I know you know the meaning of it better than I, but I thus conster it, it is otherwise now; for my very share in playing apparrell will not be solde for two hundred pounds. Truely (said Roberto) it is strange, that you should so prosper in that vaine practise, for that it seemes to me your voyce is nothing gracious. Nay then, said the player, I mislike your iudgement: why, I am as famous for Delphrigus, and the king of Fairies, as euer was any of my time. The twelue labors of Hercules haue I terribly thundred on the stage, and plaied three scenes of the deuill in the highway to heauen. Haue ye so (said Roberto?) then I pray you pardon me. Nay more (quoth the player) I can serue to make a prettie speech, for I was a countrie Author, passing at a morrall, for it was I that pende the Morral of mans wit, the Dialogue of Diues, and for seauen yeeres space was absolute interpreter of the puppets. But now my Almanacke is out of date:

The people make no estimation,

Of Morrals teaching education.

Was not this prettie for a plaine rime extempore? if ye will, ye shall haue more. Nay it is enough, said Roberto, but how meane you to vse mee? Why sir, in making playes, said the other, for which you shall be well paied, if you will take the paines.... Roberto, now famozed for an Arch-plaimaking-poet, his purse like the sea sometime sweld, anon like the same sea fell to a low ebbe; yet seldom he wanted, his labors were so well esteemed. Marry, this rule he kept, what euer he fingerd afore-hand, was the certaine meanes to vnbinde a bargaine; and being asked why he so sleightly dealt with them that did him good? It becomes me, sath hee, to be contrarie to the worlde: for commonly when vulgar men recieue earnest, they doe performe; when I am paid any thing afore-hand, I breake my promise.... To those Gentlemen, his Quondam acquaintance, that spend their wits in making Plaies, R. G. wisheth a better exercise, and wisdome to preuent his extremities.... Base minded men al three of you, if by my miserie ye be not warned: for vnto none of you (like me) sought those burres to cleaue: those Puppits (I meane) that speake from our mouths, those Anticks garnisht in our colours. Is it not strange that I, to whom they al haue beene beholding: is it not like that you, to whome they all haue beene beholding, shall (were ye in that case that I am now) be both at once of them forsaken? Yes, trust them not: for there is an vpstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tygers heart wrapt in a Players hide, supposes he is as well able to bumbast out a blank verse as the best of you: and being an absolute Iohannes fac totum, is in his owne conceit the onely Shake-scene in a countrie. O that I might intreate your rare wits to be imployed in more profitable courses: & let these Apes imitate your past excellence, and neuer more acquaint them with your admired inuentions. I know the best husband of you all will neuer proue an Vsurer, and the kindest of them all wil neuer prooue a kinde nurse: yet, whilst you may, seeke you better Maisters; for it is pittie men of such rare wits, should be subiect to the pleasures of such rude groomes. In this I might insert two more, that both haue writ against these buckram Gentlemen: but let their owne works serue to witnesse against their owne wickednesse, if they perseuer to maintaine any more such peasants. For other new commers, I leaue them to the mercie of these painted monsters, who (I doubt not) will driue the best minded to despise them: for the rest, it skils not though they make a ieast at them.’ Cf. ch. xxiii, s.v. Greene.

xlix. 1592. Henry Chettle.

[From Kind-Harts Dreame. Conteining fiue Apparitions, with their Inuectiues against abuses raigning. Deliuered by seuerall Ghosts vnto him to be publisht ... by H. C. (N. D.). The tract was entered in the Stationers’ Register (Arber, ii. 623) on 8 Dec. 1592. The Ghosts are those of Anthony Now Now a fiddler, William Cuckoe a juggler, Doctor Burcot a physician, Robert Greene, and Richard Tarlton. Greene died in Sept. 1592. The Epistle is signed by Henry Chettle (cf. ch. xxiii). The whole is reprinted by C. M. Ingleby in Part I (1874) of the Shakspere Allusion-Books of the New Shakspere Society.]

P. 37. To the Gentlemen Readers. ‘About three moneths since died M. Robert Greene, leauing many papers in sundry Booke sellers hands, among other his Groatsworth of wit, in which a letter written to diuers playmakers, is offensiuely by one or two of them taken; and because on the dead they cannot be auenged, they wilfully forge in their conceites a liuing Author: and after tossing it two and fro, no remedy, but it must light on me. How I haue all the time of my conuersing in printing hindered the bitter inueying against schollers, it hath been very well knowne; and how in that I dealt, I can sufficiently prooue. With neither of them that take offence was I acquainted, and with one of them I care not if I neuer be: The other, whome at that time I did not so much spare, as since I wish I had, for that as I haue moderated the heate of liuing writers, and might haue vsde my owne discretion (especially in such a case) the Author beeing dead, that I did not, I am as sory as if the originall fault had beene my fault, because my selfe haue seene his demeanor no lesse ciuill, than he exelent in the qualitie he professes: Besides, diuers of worship haue reported his vprightnes of dealing, which argues his honesty, and his facetious grace in writting, that aprooues his Art. For the first, whose learning I reuerence, and at the perusing of Greenes Booke, stroke out what then in conscience I thought he in some displeasure writ: or had it beene true, yet to publish it, was intollerable: him I would wish to vse me no worse than I deserue. I had onely in the copy this share: it was il written, as sometime Greenes hand was none of the best; licensd it must be, ere it could bee printed, which could neuer be if it might not be read. To be breife, I writ it ouer; and as neare as I could, followed the copy; onely in that letter I put something out, but in the whole booke not a worde in; for I protest it was all Greenes, not mine nor Maister Nashes, as some vniustly haue affirmed.’ Henrie Chettle.... The Dreame. P. 43. ‘There entered at once fiue personages.... The next, by his sute of russet, his buttond cap, his taber, his standing on the toe, and other tricks, I knew to be either the body or resemblaunce of Tarlton, who liuing, for his pleasant conceits was of all men liked, and dying, for mirth left not his like.... With him was the fifth, a man of indifferent yeares, of face amible, of body well proportioned, his attire after the habite of a schollerlike Gentleman, onely his haire was somewhat long, whome I supposed to be Robert Greene, maister of Artes: of whome (howe euer some suppose themselues iniured) I haue learned to speake, considering he is dead, nill nisi necessarium. He was of singuler pleasaunce the verye supporter, and, to no man’s disgrace bee this intended, the only Comedian of a vulgar writer in this country.’ P. 63. To all maligners of honest mirth, Tarleton wisheth continuall melancholy. ‘Now Maisters, what say you to a merrie knaue, that for this two years day hath not beene talkt of. Wil you giue him leaue, if he can, to make ye laugh? What, all a mort? No merry countenance? Nay then I see hypocrisie hath the vpper hand, and her spirit raignes in this profitable generation. Sith it is thus, Ile be a time-pleaser. Fie vppon following plaies, the expence is wondrous; vpon players speeches, their wordes are full of wyles; vppon their gestures, that are altogether wanton. Is it not lamentable, that a man should spende his two pence on them in an after-noone, heare couetousnes amongst them daily quipt at, being one of the commonest occupations in the countrey; and in liuely gesture see trecherie set out, with which euery man now adaies vseth to intrap his brother. Byr lady, this would be lookt into: if these be the fruites of playing, tis time the practisers were expeld. Expeld (quoth you); that hath been pretily performd, to the no smal profit of the Bouling-allyes in Bedlam and other places, that were wont in the after-noones to be left empty, by the recourse of good fellows vnto that vnprofitable recreation of Stage-playing. And it were not much amisse, would they ioine with the Dicing houses to make sute againe for their longer restraint, though the sicknesse cease. Is not this well saide (my maisters) of an olde buttond cappe, that hath most part of his life liu’d vppon that against which he inueighs: Yes, and worthily.’ Suppression of plays to the advantage of bawdy-houses, especially those not near Shoreditch. Discourse with a pander. P. 65. ‘And you, sir, find fault with plaies. Out vpon them, they spoile our trade, as you your selfe haue proued. Beside, they open our crosse-biting, our conny-catching, our traines, our traps, our gins, our snares, our subtilties: for no sooner haue we a tricke of deceipt, but they make it common, singing Iigs, and making ieasts of vs, that euerie boy can point out our houses as they passe by. Whither now Tarlton? this is extempore, out of time, tune, and temper.... Thy selfe once a Player, and against Players: nay, turne out the right side of thy russet coate, and lette the world know thy meaning. Why thus I meane, for now I speake in sobernes. Euery thing hath in it selfe his vertue and his vice: from one selfe flower the Bee and Spider sucke honny and poyson. In plaies it fares as in bookes, vice cannot be reproued, except it be discouered: neither is it in any play discouered, but there followes in the same an example of the punishment: now he that at a play will be delighted in the one, and not warned by the other, is like him that reads in a booke the description of sinne, and will not looke ouer the leafe for the reward. Mirth in seasonable time taken, is not forbidden by the austerest Sapients. But indeede there is a time of mirth and a time of mourning. Which time hauing been by the Magistrats wisely obserued, as well for the suppressing of Playes, as other pleasures: so likewise a time may come, when honest recreation shall haue his former libertie. And lette Tarleton intreate the yoong people of the Cittie, either to abstaine altogether from playes, or at their comming thither to vse themselues after a more quiet order. In a place so ciuill as this Cittie is esteemed, it is more than barbarously rude, to see the shamefull disorder and routes that sometimes in such publike meetings are vsed. The beginners are neither gentlemen, nor citizens, nor any of both their seruants, but some lewd mates that long for innouation; & when they see aduantage, that either Seruingmen or Apprentises are most in number, they will be of either side, though indeed they are of no side, but men beside all honestie, willing to make boote of cloakes, hats, purses, or what euer they can lay holde on in a hurley burley. These are the common causers of discord in publike places. If otherwise it happen (as it seldome doth) that any quarrell be betweene man and man, it is far from manhood to make so publike a place their field to fight in: no men will doe it, but cowardes that would faine be parted, or haue hope to haue many partakers. Nowe to you that maligne our moderate merriments, and thinke there is no felicitie but in excessiue possession of wealth: with you I would ende in a song, yea an Extempore song on this Theame, Ne quid nimis necessarium: but I am now hoarse, and troubled with my Taber and Pipe: beside, what pleasure brings musicke to the miserable. Therefore letting songes passe, I tell them in sadnes, how euer Playes are not altogether to be commended: yet some of them do more hurt in a day, than all the Players (by exercizing theyr profession) in an age. Faults there are in the professors as other men, this the greatest, that diuers of them beeing publike in euerie ones eye, and talkt of in euery vulgar mans mouth, see not how they are seene into, especially for their contempt, which makes them among most men most contemptible. Of them I will say no more: of the profession, so much hath Pierce Pennilesse (as I heare say) spoken, that for mee there is not any thing to speake. So wishing the chearefull, pleasaunce endlesse; and the wilfull sullen, sorrow till they surfet; with a turne on the toe I take my leaue. Richard Tarleton.’

l. 1592–9. John Rainolds v. William Gager and Alberico Gentili.

[A controversy arising out of criticism by Rainolds on the legitimacy of academic drama is contained in (a) Gager’s Momus and Epilogus Responsiuus, written c. Jan. 1592, spoken 8 Feb., printed with additional matter c. May (cf. ch. xxiii, s.v. Gager, Ulysses Redux; (b) Rainolds to Thomas Thornton, 6 Feb. 1592; (c) Rainolds to Gager, 10 July 1592; (d) Gager to Rainolds, 31 July 1592; (e) Rainolds to Gager, 30 May 1593; (f) Gentili, Commentatio de Professoribus et Medicis, printed with Ad Titulum de Maleficis et Mathematicis Commentarius (1593, with epistle of 26 June 1593; 1604); (g) Gentili to Rainolds, 7 July 1593; (h) Rainolds to Gentili, 10 July 1593; (i) Gentili to Rainolds, 14 July 1593; (k) Rainolds to Gentili, 5 Aug. 1593; (l) two further letters by Gentili and two by Rainolds, who ends the correspondence on 12 Mar. 1594; (m) Gentili, De Actoribus et Spectatoribus Fabularum non Notandis Disputatio (1599, with epistle of 14 Oct. 1597; reprinted in Gronovius, Thesaurus Antiquitatum, viii); (n) Th’ Overthrow of Stage-Players (1599, no imprint, with epistle from Printer to Reader; 1600; 1629). This is a print of (c), (e), (g), (h), (i), (k). All the twelve letters are in Oxon. C.C.C. MS. 352 and some in Queen’s Coll. MS. 359; a collection in Univ. Coll. MS. 157 is lost, but probably added no more. Rainolds is satirized in the Queen’s College, Cambridge, play of Fucus Histriomastix (1623, ed. G. C. Moore Smith, 1909), probably by Robert Ward.]

The academic controversy is fully summarized by F. S. Boas in Fortnightly Review for August 1907 and University Drama in the Tudor Age (1914), 229, together with the analysis of Gager’s defence by K. Young in An Elizabethan Defence of the Stage (1916, Wisconsin Shakespeare Studies, 103). I only quote the reference in the Epistle to Th’ Overthrow of 1599 to ‘Men ... that haue not been afraied of late dayes to bring vpon the Stage the very sober countenances, graue attire, modest and matronelike gestures, and speaches of men & women to be laughed at as a scorne and reproch to the world’.

li. 1597 (?). John Harington.

[From A Treatise on Playe, printed in Nugae, i. 191. I retain Park’s date of ‘circa 1597’, although I doubt whether it is based on anything but a conjecture that ‘this deere yeer’ (204) may be 1595 or 1597, and the latest definite event referred to is the death of Hatton on 20 Nov. 1591. The treatise deals mainly with gambling.]

One sayd merely that ‘enterludes weare the divells sarmons, and jesters the divells confessors; thease for the most part disgracing of vertue, and those not a little gracinge of vices’. But, for my part, I commend not such sowere censurers, but I thinke in stage-playes may bee much good, in well-penned comedies, and specially tragedies; and I remember, in Cambridge, howsoever the presyser sort have banisht them, the wyser sort did, and still doe mayntayn them.

lii. 1598. Francis Meres.

[From Palladis Tamia: Wit’s Treasury (S. R. 7 Sept. 1598). The general attitude of the treatise is humanist, but it is only of value for the incidental notices and appreciations of contemporary writers given in a rather fantastic series of parallels between classical and Elizabethan literature. Fuller extracts, including some personalia on Shakespeare and other playwrights, not reprinted here, are in C. M. Ingleby, Shakspere Allusion-Books, Part I (1874, N. S. S.), 151, and Gregory Smith, ii. 308.]

Our famous and learned Lawreat masters of England would entitle our English to far greater admired excellency if either the Emperor Augustus, or Octauia his sister, or noble Mecaenas were aliue to rewarde and countenaunce them; or if our witty Comedians and stately Tragedians (the glorious and goodlie representers of all fine witte, glorified phrase, and queint action) bee still supported and vphelde, by which meanes for lacke of Patrones (O ingratefull and damned age) our Poets are soly or chiefly maintained, countenaunced, and patronized....

... A comparatiue discourse of our English poets with the Greeke, Latine, and Italian poets....

... As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best for Comedy and Tragedy among the Latines: so Shakespeare among the English is the most excellent in both kinds for the stage. For Comedy, witnes his Gentlemen of Verona, his Errors, his Loue Labors Lost, his Loue Labours Wonne, his Midsummers Night Dreame, and his Merchant of Venice; For Tragedy, his Richard the 2, Richard the 3, Henry the 4, King Iohn, Titus Andronicus, and his Romeo and Iuliet....

... These are our best for Tragedie, The Lorde Buckhurst, Doctor Leg of Cambridge, Doctor Edes of Oxford, Master Edward Ferris, the author of the Mirror for Magistrates, Marlow, Peele, Watson, Kid, Shakespeare, Drayton, Chapman, Decker, and Beniamin Iohnson.

As M. Anneus Lucanus writ two excellent tragedies, one called Medea, the other De incendio Troiae cum Priami calamitate: so Doctor Leg hath penned two famous tragedies, the one of Richard the 3, the other of The Destruction of Ierusalem....

... The best for Comedy amongst vs bee Edward, Earle of Oxforde, Doctor Gager of Oxforde, Master Rowley, once a rare scholler of learned Pembrooke Hall in Cambridge, Maister Edwardes, one of Her Maiesties Chappell, eloquent and wittie Iohn Lilly, Lodge, Gascoyne, Greene, Shakespeare, Thomas Nash, Thomas Heywood, Anthony Mundye, our best plotter, Chapman, Porter, Wilson, Hathway, and Henry Chettle....

As Georgius Buchananus’ Iepthae amongst all moderne Tragedies is able to abide the touch of Aristotle’s precepts and Euripedes’s examples: so is Bishop Watson’s Absalon. As ... Watson for his Antigone out of Sophocles, ha[s] got good commendations: so these versifiers for their learned translations are of good note among vs ... the Translators of Seneca’s Tragedies, ... As Antipater Sidonius was famous for extemporall verse in Greeke, and Ouid for his Quicquid conabar dicere versus erat: so was our Tarleton, of whome Doctor Case, that learned physitian, thus speaketh in the Seuenth Booke and seuenteenth chapter of his Politikes: Aristoteles suum Theodoretum laudauit quendam peritum Tragœdiarum actorem, Cicero suum Roscium: nos Angli Tarletonum, in cuius voce et vultu omnes iocosi affectus, in cuius cerebroso capite lepidae facetiae habitant. And so is now our wittie Wilson, who for learning and extemporall witte in this facultie is without compare or compeere, as, to his great and eternall commendations, he manifested in his challenge at the Swanne on the Banke Side.

liii. 1603. Henry Crosse.

[From Vertues Commonwealth: Or The Highway to Honour, reprinted in A. B. Grosart, Occasional Issues, vii (1878), 111.]

Must the holy Prophets and Patriarkes be set vpon a Stage, to be derided, hist, and laught at? or is it fit that the infirmities of holy men should be acted on a Stage, whereby others may be inharted to rush carelessly forward into vnbrideled libertie?... Furthermore, there is no passion wherwith the king, the soueraigne maiestie of the Realme was possest, but is amplified, and openly sported with, and made a May-game to all the beholders.... If a man will learne to be proud, fantasticke, humorous, to make love, sweare, swagger, and in a word closely doo any villanie, for a twopenny almes hee may be throughly taught and made a perfect good scholler.... And as these copper-lace gentlemen growe rich, purchase lands by adulterous Playes, & not fewe of them vsurers and extortioners, which they exhaust out of the purses of their haunters, so are they puft vp in such pride and selfe-loue, as they enuie their equalles, and scorne theyr inferiours.... But especially these nocturnall and night Playes, at vnseasonable and vndue times, more greater euils must necessarily proceed of them, because they do not onely hide and couer the thiefe, but also entice seruants out of their maisters houses, wherby opportunitie is offered to loose fellowes, to effect many wicked stratagems.... To conclude, it were further to be wished, that those admired wittes of this age, Tragædians, and Comædians, that garnish Theaters with their inuentions, would spend their wittes in more profitable studies, and leaue off to maintaine those Anticks, and Puppets, that speake out of their mouthes: for it is pittie such noble giftes, should be so basely imployed, as to prostitute their ingenious labours to inriche such buckorome gentlemen.

liv. 1604–5 (?). Ben Jonson.

[Prologue to Every Man In His Humour, first printed in Folio of 1616, and possibly written for a Jacobean revival.]

Though neede make many Poets, and some such

As art, and nature haue not betterd much;

Yet ours, for want, hath not so lou’d the stage,

As he dare serue th’ill customes of the age:

Or purchase your delight at such a rate,

As, for it, he himselfe must iustly hate.

To make a child, now swadled, to proceede

Man, and then shoote vp, in one beard, and weede,

Past threescore yeeres: or, with three rustie swords,

And helpe of some few foot-and-halfe-foote words,

Fight ouer Yorke, and Lancasters long iarres:

And in the tyring-house bring wounds, to scarres.

He rather prayes, you will be pleas’d to see

One such, to day, as other playes should be.

Where neither Chorus wafts you ore the seas;

Nor creaking throne comes downe, the boyes to please;

Nor nimble squibbe is seene, to make afear’d

The gentlewomen; nor roul’d bullet heard

To say, it thunders; nor tempestuous drumme

Rumbles, to tell you when the storme doth come;

But deedes, and language, such as men doe vse:

And persons, such as Comœdie would chuse,

When she would shew an Image of the times,

And sport with humane follies, not with crimes.

Except, we make ‘hem such, by louing still

Our popular errors, when we know th’are ill.

I meane such errors as you’ll all confesse

By laughing at them, they deserue no lesse:

Which when you heartily doe, there’s hope left, then,

You, that haue so grac’d monsters, may like men.

lv. 1607. Ben Jonson.

[From Epistle to Volpone (cf. ch. xxiii).]

Hence is it, that I now render my selfe gratefull, and am studious to iustifie the bounty of your act: To which, though your mere authority were satisfying, yet it being an age wherein Poëtry and the Professors of it heare so ill on all sides, there will a reason bee look’d for in the subject. It is certaine, nor can it with any forehead be oppos’d, that the too-much licence of Poëtasters in this time hath much deform’d their Mistresse; that euery day their manifold and manifest ignorance doth stick vnnaturall reproches vpon her. But for their petulancy, it were an act of the greatest iniustice, either to let the learned suffer, or so diuine a skill (which indeed should not be attempted with vncleane hands) to fall vnder the least contempt. For if men will impartially, and not à-squint, looke toward the offices and function of a Poët, they will easily conclude to themselues the impossibility of any mans being the good Poët, without first being a good Man. He that is sayd to be able to informe yong-men to all good disciplines, inflame growne-men to all great vertues, keepe old men in their best and supreme state, or as they decline to child-hood, recouer them to their first strength; that comes forth the Interpreter and Arbiter of Nature, a Teacher of things diuine no lesse than humane, a Master in manners; and can alone, or with a few, effect the busines of Mankind. This, I take him, is no subject for Pride and Ignorance to exercise their railing rhetorique vpon. But it will here be hastily answer’d, that the Writers of these dayes are other things; that not onely their manners, but their natures, are inuerted, and nothing remaining with them of the dignity of Poët, but the abused name, which euery Scribe vsurpes; that now, especially in Dramatick, or (as they terme it) Stage-Poëtry, nothing but Ribaldry, Profanation, Blasphemy, al Licence of offence to God, and Man, is practisd. I dare not deny a great part of this, and am sory I dare not: because in some mens abortiue Features (and would they had neuer boasted the light) it is ouer-true. But that all are embarqu’d in this bold aduenture for Hell, is a most vncharitable thought, and vtterd, a more malicious slander. For my particular, I can, and from a most cleare conscience, affirme, that I haue euer trembled to thinke toward the least Prophanenesse; haue loathed the vse of such foule and vn-washd Baudr’y, as is now made the foode of the Scene.

lvi. 1608. William Crashaw.

[From The Sermon preached at the Crosse, Feb. xiiij. 1607 (1608, 2nd ed. 1609). Crashaw was preacher at the Inner Temple and father of Richard Crashaw, the poet. The hypocrites, Nicholas Saint-Tantlings and Simon Saint-Mary-Oueries, are characters in The Puritan (1607). John Selden says in his Table Talk (1689; ed. Reynolds, 134), ‘I never converted but two, the one was Mr. Crashaw from writing against plays, by telling him a way how to understand that place, of putting on woman’s apparel, which has nothing to do with the business’; cf. infra, s.v. Selden (1616).]

P. 169. ‘Now there are also besides these two great Babels, certaine other little pettie Babylons, namely, incurable sinnes amongst vs, ...’ P. 170. ‘2. The vngodly Playes and Enterludes so rife in this nation: what are they but a bastard of Babylon, a daughter of error and confusion, a hellish deuice (the diuels owne recreation to mock at holy things) by him deliuered to the Heathen, from them to the Papists, and from them to vs? Of this euill and plague, the Church of God in all ages can say, truly and with a good conscience, wee would haue healed her. [Quotes Tertullian and others.] ... All this they are daily made to know, but all in vaine, they be children of Babylon that will not bee healed: nay, they grow worse and worse, for now they bring religion and holy things vpon the stage: no maruel though the worthiest and mightiest men escape not, when God himselfe is so abused. Two hypocrites must be brought foorth; and how shall they be described but by these names, Nicolas S. Antlings, Simon S. Maryoueries. Thus hypocrisie a child of hell must beare the names of two Churches of God, and two wherein Gods name is called on publikely euery day in the yeere, and in one of them his blessed word preached euerie day (an example scarce matchable in the world): yet these two, wherin Gods name is thus glorified, and our Church and State honoured, shall bee by these miscreants thus dishonoured, and that not on the stage only, but euen in print.’ Complains of profaneness, atheism, blasphemy, and profaning of Sabbath ‘which generally in the countrie is their play day’. Calls on magistrate, lest God take the matter into his own hand.

lvii. 1608 (?). Thomas Heywood.

[From An Apology for Actors. Containing three briefe Treatises. 1. Their Antiquity. 2. Their ancient Dignity. 3. The True Use of their Quality (1612), reprinted by William Cartwright as The Actor’s Vindication (N.D., but according to Douce 1658) and in 1841 (Sh. Soc.). I think the treatise was probably written in 1607 and touched up in 1608, since (a) the series of actors named as dead ends with Sly, who died in Aug. 1608; (b) the Revels Office is located at St. John’s, which it lost about Feb. 1608; (c) the frustrated Spanish landing in ‘Perin’ in Cornwall ‘some 12 yeares ago’ is probably the abortive Spanish attempt to burn Pendennis Castle on Falmouth Harbour, 3 miles from Penrhyn, which appears from S. P. D. Eliz. cclvi, 21, 40, and Dasent, xxv. 15, to have taken place in the autumn of 1595, probably in connexion with the better-known landing of 22 July 1595 in Mount’s Bay. Here there is a Perranuthnoe, but this was a successful landing, resulting in serious damage to Penzance, Mousehole, and Newlyn (Procl. 879). There was also a raid at Cawsand Bay near Plymouth on 14 Mar. 1596 (S. P. D. Eliz. cclvi. 89), in which the invaders fired some houses and boats, and fled to sea on a shot being fired. But there is no ‘Perin’ in Cawsand Bay. In Journal of the Folk-Song Society, v. 275, is recorded a tradition that ‘the French once landed invading troops at Padstow Bay; but on seeing a number of mummers in red cloaks with their hobby-horse they supposed that the English army was at hand, and fled’. This raid was at St. Eval, 3 miles west of Padstow, on 13 July 1595 (Hatfield MSS. v. 285), and no doubt formed part of the same expedition which reached Mount’s Bay. Of course it was Spanish, not French; the perversion is characteristic of tradition. Conceivably this episode was what Heywood had in mind, but the nearest ‘Perin’, Perranporth, is some dozen miles farther west than St. Evall. Heywood was answered by I. G. in A Refutation of the Apology for Actors (1615), which contributes nothing new, and uses material from Gosson’s Plays Confuted (No. xxx), with references to the long-destroyed Theatre unchanged.]

[Summary and Extracts.] P. 3. To the Earl of Worcester. ‘I presumed to publish this unworthy worke under your gracious patronage ... as an acknowledgement of the duty I am bound to you in as a servant.’ P. 4. To my good Friends and Fellowes the Citty-Actors. ‘That it [our quality] hath beene esteemed by the best and greatest ... I need alledge no more than the royall and princely services in which we now live.... Some over-curious have too liberally taxed us ... we may as freely (out of our plainnesse) answere, as they (out of their perversenesse) object, instancing my selfe by famous Scaliger, learned Doctor Gager, Doctor Gentiles, and others.... So, wishing you judiciall audiences, honest poets, and true gatherers, I commit you all to the fulnesse of your best wishes.’ P. 6. Verses by, inter alios, John Webster, and by Richard Perkins, Christopher Beeston and Robert Pallant to their ‘fellow’. Book i. P. 15. The author is ‘mooved by the sundry exclamations of many seditious sectists in this age.... It hath pleased the high and mighty princes of this land to limit the use of certaine publicke theaters, which, since many of those over-curious heads have lavishly and violently slandered, I hold it not amisse to lay open some few antiquities to approve the true use of them.’ A vision of Melpomene. Actors in antiquity. P. 20. The lives of worthies ‘can no way bee so exquisitly demonstrated, nor so lively portrayed, as by action.... A description is only a shadow, received by the eare, but not perceived by the eye; so lively portrature is meerely a forme seene by the eye, but can neither shew action, passion, motion, or any other gesture to moove the spirits of the beholder to admiration: but to see a souldier shap’d like a souldier, walke, speake, act like a souldier; to see a Hector all besmered in blood, trampling upon the bulkes of kinges; a Troilus returning from the field, in the sight of his father Priam, as if man and horse, even from the steed’s rough fetlockes to the plume on the champion’s helmet, had bene together plunged into a purple ocean; to see a Pompey ride in triumph, then a Caesar conquer that Pompey; labouring Hannibal alive, hewing his passage through the Alpes. To see as I have seene, Hercules, in his owne shape, hunting the boare, knocking downe the bull, taming the hart, fighting with Hydra, murdering Geryon, slaughtering Diomed, wounding the Stymphalides, killing the Centaurs, pashing the lion, squeezing the dragon, dragging Cerberus in chaynes, and lastly, on his high pyramides waiting Nil ultra, Oh, these were sights to make an Alexander! To turne to our domesticke hystories: what English blood, seeing the person of any bold Englishman presented, and doth not hugge his fame, and hunnye at his valor, pursuing him in his enterprise with his best wishes, and as beeing wrapt in contemplation, offers to him in his hart all prosperous performance, as if the personator were the man personated? so bewitching a thing is lively and well-spirited action, that it hath power to new-mold the harts of the spectators, and fashion them to the shape of any noble and notable attempt. What coward, to see his countrymen valiant, would not bee ashamed of his owne cowardise? What English prince, should hee behold the true portrature of that famous King Edward the Third, foraging France, taking so great a king captive in his owne country, quartering the English lyons with the French flower-delyce, and would not bee suddenly inflam’d with so royale a spectacle, being made apt and fit for the like atchievement. So of Henry the Fift.’ The place of actors at Rome. P. 24. ‘Neither Christ himselfe, nor any of his sanctified apostles, in any of their sermons, acts, or documents, so much as named them, or upon any abusive occasion touched them.... Since they (I say) in all their holy doctrines, bookes, and principles of divinity, were content to passe them over, as thinges tollerated and indifferent, why should any nice and over-scrupulous heads, since they cannot ground their curiousnesse either upon the Old or New Testament, take upon them to correct, controule, or carpe at that, against which they cannot finde any text in the sacred scriptures?’ P. 25. ‘Since God hath provided us of these pastimes, why may we not use them to his glory? Now, if you aske me why were not the theaters as gorgeously built in all other cities of Italy as Rome, and why are not playhouses maintained as well in other cities of England as London? My answere is ... Rome was a metropolis, a place whither all the nations knowne under the sunne resorted: so is London, and being to receive all estates, all princes, all nations, therefore to affoord them all choyce of pastimes, sports, and recreations.’ Actors in Greece. The scriptural prohibition of change of sex-costume has no reference to plays. P. 28. ‘To see our youths attired in the habit of women, who knowes not what their intents be? who cannot distinguish them by their names, assuredly knowing they are but to represent such a lady, at such a tyme appoynted? Do not the Universities, the fountaines and well springs of all good arts, learning, and documents, admit the like in their colledges? and they (I assure my selfe) are not ignorant of their true use. In the time of my residence at Cambridge, I have seen tragedyes, comedyes, historyes, pastorals, and shewes, publickly acted, in which the graduates of good place and reputation have bene specially parted.’ Value of such exercises in teaching audacity in disputation and good enunciation. The critics of acting ‘a sorte of finde-faults’. Book ii. Antiquities of the theatre, and distribution of theatres in ancient and modern states. P. 40. ‘The King of Denmarke, father to him that now reigneth, entertained into his service a company of English comedians, commended unto him by the honourable the Earle of Leicester: the Duke of Brunswicke and the Landgrave of Hessen retaine in their courts certaine of ours of the same quality.... And amongst us one of our best English Chroniclers [in margin, ‘Stowe’] records, that when Edward the Fourth would shew himselfe in publicke state to the view of the people, hee repaired to his palace at S. Johnes, where he accustomed to see the citty actors: and since then that house, by the prince’s free gift, hath belonged to the Office of the Revels, where our court playes have beene in late daies yearely rehersed, perfected, and corrected before they come to the publike view of the prince and the nobility.’ Famous classical actors. P. 43. ‘According to the occasion offered to do some right to our English actors, as Knell, Bentley, Mils, Wilson, Crosse, Lanam, and others, these, since I never saw them, as being before my time, I cannot (as an eye-witnesse of their desert) give them that applause, which no doubt they worthily merit; yet by the report of many juditiall auditors their performances of many parts have been so absolute, that it were a kinde of sinne to drowne their worths in Lethe, and not commit their (almost forgotten) names to eternity. Here I must needs remember Tarleton, in his time gratious with the queene, his soveraigne, and in the people’s generall applause, whom succeeded Wil. Kemp, as wel in the favour of her majesty, as in the opinion and good thoughts of the generall audience. Gabriel, Singer, Pope, Phillips, Sly, all the right I can do them is but this, that, though they be dead, their deserts yet live in the remembrance of many. Among so many dead, let me not forget one yet alive, in his time the most worthy, famous Maister Edward Allen.... I also could wish, that such as are condemned for their licentiousnesse, might by a generall consent bee quite excluded our society; for, as we are men that stand in the broad eye of the world, so should our manners, gestures, and behaviours, savour of such government and modesty, to deserve the good thoughts and reports of all men, and to abide the sharpest censures even of those that are the greatest opposites to the quality. Many amongst us I know to be of substance, of government, of sober lives, and temperate carriages, house-keepers, and contributory to all duties enjoyned them, equally with them that are rank’t with the most bountifull; and if amongst so many of sort, there be any few degenerate from the rest in that good demeanor which is both requisite and expected at their hands, let me entreat you not to censure hardly of all for the misdeeds of some.’ On royal actors, quoting (p. 45) ‘M. Kid, in his Spanish Tragedy’. Book iii. The quality not to be condemned because of its abuses. P. 52. ‘Playing is an ornament to the citty.’ It refines the language, instructs the ignorant, and teaches moral lessons. P. 54. ‘Briefly, there is neither tragedy, history, comedy, morall, or pastorall, from which an infinite use cannot be gathered. I speake not in the defence of any lascivious shewes, scurrelous jests, or scandalous invectives. If there be any such I banish them quite from my patronage.’ Plays have discovered murders. P. 57. ‘We will prove it by a domestike and home-borne truth, which within these few years happened. At Lin, in Norfolke, the then Earl of Sussex players acting the old History of Feyer Francis’ drove a townswoman to confess the murder of her husband in circumstances parallel to those of the play. P. 58. Relates rout of Spanish raiders ‘at a place called Perin in Cornwall’, though their alarm at the drum and trumpets of ‘a company of the same quality some 12 yeares ago, or not so much ... playing late in the night’. Another story of a woman who had driven a nail into her husband’s brain, urged to remorse by a similar incident in ‘the last part of the Four Sons of Aymon’ played by ‘a company of our English comedians (well knowne)’ at Amsterdam. Summarizes the favour of many sovereigns to players. P. 60. ‘The cardinal at Bruxels hath at this time in pay a company of our English comedians.... But in no country they are of that eminence that our’s are: so our most royall and ever renouned soveraigne hath licenced us in London: so did his predecessor, the thrice vertuous virgin, Queen Elizabeth; and before her, her sister, Queene Mary, Edward the sixth, and their father, Henry the eighth.’ P. 61. ‘Moreover, to this day in divers places of England there be townes that held the priviledge of their faires, and other charters by yearely stage-playes, as at Manningtree in Suffolke, Kendall in the north, and others.... Now, to speake of some abuse lately crept into the quality, as an inveighing against the state, the court, the law, the citty, and their governements, with the particularizing of private men’s humors (yet alive) noblemen, and others: I know it distastes many; neither do I any way approve it, nor dare I by any meanes excuse it. The liberty which some arrogate to themselves, committing their bitternesse, and liberall invectives against all estates, to the mouthes of children, supposing their juniority to be a priviledge for any rayling, be it never so violent, I could advise all such to curbe and limit this presumed liberty within the bands of discretion and government. But wise and juditiall censurers, before whom such complaints shall at any time hereafter come, wil not (I hope) impute these abuses to any transgression in us, who have ever been carefull and provident to shun the like.’ P. 162. Epistle to the publisher. Notes the printer’s faults in his Britain’s Troy, and the pirating of his two epistles of Paris to Helen, and Helen to Paris by Jaggard [in The Passionate Pilgrim].

lviii. 1610. William Crashaw.

[From A Sermon Preached in London before the right honorable the Lord Lawarre, Lord Gouernour and Captaine Generall of Virginea ... Feb. 21, 1609 (1610).]

P. 57. ‘We confesse this action hath three great enemies: but who be they? euen the Diuell, Papists, and Players.’ P. 62. ‘3. As for Plaiers: (pardon me right Honourable and beloued, for wronging this place and your patience with so base a subiect) they play with Princes and Potentates, Magistrates and Ministers, nay with God and Religion, and all holy things: nothing that is good, excellent or holy can escape them: how then can this action?... But why are the Players enemies to this Plantation and doe abuse it? I will tell you the causes: First, for that they are so multiplied here, that one cannot liue by another, and they see that wee send of all trades to Virginea, but will send no Players, which if wee would doe, they that remaine would gaine the more at home. Secondly ... because wee resolue to suffer no Idle persons in Virginea, which course if it were taken in England, they know they might turne to new occupations.’

lix. 1615. I. H.

[From This World’s Folly. Or A Warning-Peece discharged vpon the Wickednesse thereof. By I. H. (1615).]

Bv-B2. ‘What voice is heard in our streetes? Nought but the squeaking out of those τερετίσματα, obscaene and light Iigges, stuft with loathsome and vnheard-of Ribauldry, suckt from the poysonous dugs of Sinne-sweld Theaters.... More haue recourse to Playing houses, then to Praying houses.... I will not particularize those Blitea dramata (as Laberius termes another sort) those Fortune-fatted fooles, and Times Ideots, whose garbe is the Tooth-ache of witte, the Plague-sore of Iudgement, the Common-sewer of Obscaenities, and the very Traine-powder that dischargeth the roaring Meg (not Mol) of all scurrile villanies vpon the Cities face; who are faine to produce blinde Impudence [in margin, ‘Garlicke’], to personate himselfe vpon their stage, behung with chaynes of Garlicke, as an Antidote against their owne infectious breaths, lest it should kill their Oyster-crying Audience. Vos quoque [in margin, ‘Or Tu quoque’], and you also, who with Scylla-barking, Stentor-throated bellowings, flash choaking squibbes of absurd vanities into the nosthrils of your spectators, barbarously diuerting Nature, and defacing Gods owne image, by metamorphising humane [in margin, ‘Greenes Baboone’] shape into bestiall forme. Those also stand within the stroke of my penne, who were wont to Curtaine ouer their defects with knauish conueyances, and scum off the froth of all wanton vanity, to qualifie the eager appetite of their slapping Fauorites.’

lx. 1615. J. Cocke.

[The variant texts of this character are here given from the two editions of John Stephens’ essays, in each of which it is Bk. ii, char. 4, viz. (A) Satyrical Essayes Characters and Others (1615) and (B) Essayes and Characters, Ironical and Instructive. The second impression (1615), of which a reprint is in J. O. Halliwell, Old Books of Characters (1857), 131. Between A and B had appeared the sixth edition of The Wife, with the character of An Excellent Actor and the reference to a rival as ‘the imitating Characterist’ (v. No. lxi). To this the additions in B are a rejoinder, and they are reinforced by two epistles. One is ‘To the namelesse Rayler: who hath lenghthened his Excellent Actor, a most needy Caracter following the wife with a peece of dog-skin witt; dressed ouer with oyle of sweaty Posthorse’. Here the writer, I. S., says he did ‘admit a friends Satyre’. The other epistle, ‘To the nameles Author of a late Character entituled, an Excellent Actor, following The Wife’, is signed by ‘I. Cocke’, who says, ‘witnes your gross mistaking of approued and authorised actors for counterfeit Runagates, or country Players, inueighed against by the Characterist’. Some appended verses claim for Cocke the authorship of the Tinker, Apparator, and Almanac-maker in The Wife. It seems clear that Cocke and not Stephens wrote the present character, and that An Excellent Actor was a reply to it. It is true that Stephens only speaks of it as ‘lenghthened’ by the attack on himself, but ‘lenghthened’ may mean ‘pieced out’, and there is no version, long or short, in any of the five first editions of The Wife, while a reference to ‘the sixt impression of S. Thomas Overburyes wife’ on p. 434 of B shows this was before its writers. John Stephens (cf. ch. xxiii) was a Lincoln’s Inn dramatist. I cannot find a likely Cocke in the Lincoln’s Inn Admission Books; there is an Isaac Cox, admitted 10 Jan. 1611 (i. 154), and a John Cookes on 6 June 1614 (i. 166). Can the satirist be the John Cooke (cf. ch. xxiii) who wrote Greene’s Tu Quoque?]

A common Player

Is a slow Payer, seldom a Purchaser, never a Puritan. The Statute hath done wisely to acknowledg him a Rogue errant, for his chiefe essence is, A daily Counterfeit: He hath beene familiar so long with out-sides, that he professes himselfe (being unknowne) to be an apparant Gentleman. But his thinne Felt, and his silke Stockings, or his foule Linnen, and faire Doublet, doe (in him) bodily reveal the Broker: So beeing not sutable, hee proves a Motley: his mind observing the same fashion of his body: both consist of parcells and remnants: but his minde hath commonly the newer fashion, and the newer stuffe: hee would not else hearken so passionately after new Tunes, new Trickes, new Devises: These together apparrell his braine and understanding, whilst he takes the materialls upon trust, and is himself the Taylor to take measure of his soules liking. Hee doth conjecture somewhat strongly, but dares not commend a playes goodnes, till he hath either spoken, or heard the Epilogue: neither dares he entitle good things Good, unlesse hee be heartned on by the multitude: till then hee saith faintly what hee thinkes, with a willing purpose to recant or persist: So howsoever hee pretends to have a royall Master or Mistresse, his wages and dependance prove him to be the servant of the people. When he doth hold conference upon the stage; and should looke directly in his fellows face; hee turnes about his voice into the assembly for applause-sake, like a Trumpeter in the fields, that shifts places to get an eccho. The cautions of his judging humor (if hee dares undertake it) be a certaine number of sawsie rude jests against the common lawyer; hansome conceits against the fine Courtiers; delicate quirkes against the rich Cuckold a cittizen; shadowed glaunce for good innocent Ladies and Gentlewomen; with a nipping scoffe for some honest Justice, who hath imprisoned him: or some thriftie Trades-man, who hath allowed him no credit: alwayes remembred, his object is, A new play, or A play newly revived. Other Poems he admits, as good-fellowes take Tobacco, or ignorant Burgesses give a voyce, for company sake; as thinges that neither maintaine nor be against him. To be a player, is to have a mithridate against the pestilence; for players cannot tarry where the plague raignes; and therfore they be seldome infected. He can seeme no lesse then one in honour, or at least one mounted; for unto miseries which persecute such, he is most incident. Hence it proceeds, that in the prosperous fortune of a play frequented, he proves immoderate, and falles into a Drunkards paradise, till it be last no longer. Otherwise when adversities come, they come together: For Lent and Shrovetuesday be not farre asunder, then he is dejected daily and weekely: his blessings be neither lame nor monstrous; they goe upon foure legges, but moove slowly, and make as great a distance between their steppes, as between the foure Tearmes. Reproofe is ill bestowed uppon him; it cannot alter his conditions: he hath bin so accustomed to the scorne and laughter of his audience, that hee cannot bee ashamed of himselfe: for hee dares laugh in the middest of a serious conference, without blushing. If hee marries, hee mistakes the Woman for the Boy in Womans attire, by not respecting a difference in the mischiefe: But so long as he lives unmarried, hee mistakes the Boy, or a Whore for the Woman; by courting the first on the stage, or visiting the second at her devotions. When hee is most commendable, you must confesse there is no truth in him: for his best action is but an imitation of truth, and nullum simile est idem. It may be imagined I abuse his carriage, and hee perhaps may suddenly bee thought faire-conditioned; for he playes above board. Take him at the best, he is but a shifting companion; for hee lives effectually by putting on, and putting off. If his profession were single, hee would think himselfe a simple fellow, as hee doth all professions besides his owne: His own therefore is compounded of all Natures, all humours, all professions. Hee is politick also to perceive the commonwealth doubts of his licence, and therefore in spight of Parliaments or Statutes hee incorporates himselfe by the title of a brotherhood. Painting and fine cloths may not by the same reason be called abusive, that players may not be called rogues: For they bee chiefe ornaments of his Majesties Revells. I need not multiplie his character; for boyes and every one, wil no sooner see men of this Facultie walke along but they wil (unasked) informe you what hee is by the vulgar title. Yet in the generall number of them, many may deserve a wise mans commendation: and therefore did I prefix an Epithite of common, to distinguish the base and artlesse appendants of our citty companies, which often times start away into rusticall wanderers and then (like Proteus) start backe again into the Citty number.

lxi. 1615. John Webster (?).

[This Character Of an Excellent Actor is one of the additions made in the 6th edition (1615) to the Characters printed with Sir Thomas Overbury’s The Wife, of which the 1st edition appeared after Overbury’s death on 15 Sept. 1613. The Characters do not profess to be all from Overbury’s hand, and the present one was evidently written as a reply to that of A Common Player (No. lx). The allusion to painting suggests that the model was Richard Burbadge. The passage Therefore the imitating Characterist ... flea them was omitted in the 7th edition (1616) and in later editions, including the 9th (1616), from which the reprints in E. F. Rimbault, Works of Overbury, 147, and H. Morley, Character Writings, 86, are taken. A. F. Bourgeois, in 11 N. Q. x. 3, 23, gives some striking parallels of phrase between the Characters of 1615 and the work of John Webster, which may point to his authorship. Later Characters of a Player are in J. Earle, Microcosmography (1628, ed. A. S. West, 81), and R. M., Micrologia (1629, Morley, 285).]

An Excellent Actor.

Whatsoeuer is commendable in the graue Orator, is most exquisitly perfect in him; for by a full and significant action of body, he charmes our attention: sit in a full Theater, and you will thinke you see so many lines drawne from the circumference of so many eares, whiles the Actor is the Center. He doth not striue to make nature monstrous, she is often seene in the same Scaene with him, but neither on Stilts nor Crutches; and for his voice tis not lower then the prompter, nor lowder then the Foile and Target. By his action he fortifies morall precepts with example; for what we see him personate, we thinke truely done before vs: a man of a deepe thought might apprehend, the Ghosts of our ancient Heroes walk’t againe, and take him (at seuerall times) for many of them. Hee is much affected to painting, and tis a question whether that make him an excellent Plaier, or his playing an exquisite painter. Hee addes grace to the Poets labours: for what in the Poet is but ditty, in him is both ditty and musicke. He entertaines vs in the best leasure of our life, that is betweene meales, the most vnfit time, either for study or bodily exercise: the flight of Hawkes and chase of wilde beastes, either of them are delights noble: but some think this sport of men the worthier, despight all calumny. All men haue beene of his occupation: and indeed, what hee doth fainedly that doe others essentially: this day one plaies a Monarch, the next a priuate person. Heere one Acts a Tyrant, on the morrow an Exile: A Parasite this man to night, to morow a Precisian, and so of diuers others. I obserue, of all men liuing, a worthy Actor in one kind is the strongest motiue of affection that can be: for when he dies, wee cannot be perswaded any man can doe his parts like him. Therefore the imitating Characterist was extreame idle in calling them Rogues. His Muse it seemes, with all his loud inuocation, could not be wak’d to light him a snuffe to read the Statute: for I would let his malicious ignorance vnderstand, that Rogues are not to be imploide as maine ornaments to his Maiesties Reuels; but the itch of bestriding the Presse, or getting vp on this wodden Pacolet, hath defil’d more innocent paper, then euer did Laxatiue Physicke: yet is their inuention such tyred stuffe, that like Kentish Posthorse they can not go beyond their ordinary stage, should you flea them. But to conclude, I valew a worthy Actor by the corruption of some few of the quality, as I would doe gold in the oare; I should not mind the drosse, but the purity of the metall.

lxii. 1616. John Selden.

[From a letter to Ben Jonson of ‘28th of Feb. 1615’ (Works, ii. 1690).]

‘I have most willingly collected what you wished, my notes touching the literal sense and historical of the holy text usually brought against the counterfeiting of sexes by apparell.’ Explains it as a prohibition of an idolatrous Palestine ritual.

lxiii. 1616. Nathan Field.

[From Feild the Players Letter to Mr Sutton, Preacher att St Mary Overs, 1616, printed by Halliwell, Illustrations, 115, from S. P. Dom. Jac. I, lxxxix. 105. There are some slight references to the stage in Thomas Sutton’s England’s First and Second Summons (1616), 27, 195, but these are Paul’s Cross sermons delivered, and in the case of the first at least printed, before he became preacher at Saint Mary Overies in 1616, and Field is probably answering something later and more pointed.]

Protests that Sutton’s labour ‘to hinder the Sacrament and banish me from myne owne parishe Churche’ is ‘uncharitable dealing with your poore parishioners, whose purses participate in your contribucion and whose labour yow are contented to eate’. Can find nothing in the Bible, ‘which I have studied as my best parte’, condemning players, nor does ‘our Caesar, our David’, King James, condemn them.