In much the same
tantalising
fashion, we catch a glimpse
of an attempt upon the Theater and the Curtain in the same year.
of an attempt upon the Theater and the Curtain in the same year.
Cambridge History of English Literature - 1908 - v06
XLII and xlii.
? English edition, 1606, bk. vi, chap. I, pp. 645, 646.
3 Bk. I, chap. xv. Cf. , also, his Contra los Juegos Publicos (Obras, vol. II, pp.
413–462).
* Bk. v, chap. VIII.
5 Yet Fenton, in his Tragicall Discourses (1567), employs the same arguments in
support of the novel as were used later by apologists for the drama.
## p. 378 (#396) ############################################
378 The Puritan Attack upon the Stage
before the attack began in England, exercised an appreciable
influence upon Northbrooke and was read and quoted by the
author of the Third Blast. Other examples, also, might be added
to our list, such as a translation from Petrarch by Francis
Twynne', who introduces into his original an unfavourable comment
upon the newly erected Theater and Curtain.
The puritan opposition to the English stage did not burst forth
in any violence until about 1576; but there are indications of its
existence, apart from the translations just noticed, long before
this date. English humanism, for example, though, for reasons
already given, inclined to look favourably upon the drama, was in
this as in many other respects laying down the lines upon which
puritanism developed later. Roger Ascham was no puritan;
yet his famous outburst against the popular romances of the
day is remarkably similar in tone and feeling to the invectives
launched by subsequent writers against plays which, to a large
extent, were nothing but dramatised versions of these very
romances. The connection between the humanistic attack upon
the Italian novel and the puritan attack upon the romantic drama
comes out most clearly in the case of William Alley, bishop
of Exeter, whose condemnation of Wanton Bookes' in The
Poore Man's Librarie (1565) expressly embraces plays. Alley
appears to have been the first in England, since Lollard days,
to take up the pen against the stage; he was the first English-
man, also, to cite with approbation the example of the ancient
city of Marseilles, which ‘kept so greate gravitie' that it would
never allow a player within its walls. A classical precedent
of this kind was so well adapted to the case of the city of
London that it was eagerly seized upon by later writers and
reappears in almost every pamphlet written against the stage.
Another remarkable indication of the prevalence of the anti-
dramatic spirit at this comparatively early period is to be
found in the prologue of Lewis Wager's Life and Repentance
of Marie Magdalene, first printed in 1566 but probably acted
considerably earlier, which shows us a dramatist not only already
on the defensive but employing the same arguments as were used,
afterwards, by Lodge, Gager and Heywood. But perhaps the most
tangible proof of the rising puritan flood was the quiet but
persistent suppression by bishop, preacher and zealous mayor of
local plays and pageants throughout England during the middle
years of the sixteenth century, as no longer seemly in this happie
1 Phisicke against Fortune (v. bibliography).
## p. 379 (#397) ############################################
General Attitude of the Authorities 379
time of the gospell\' London, almost the only city in the kingdom
with its own stage when the cleansing process was completed, was
to be the scene of the great struggle between puritan and player.
The puritan forces advanced against the London stage in three
lines : preachers, pamphleteers and civic authorities. In the
nature of the case, it is impossible to do more than indicate here
the incessant denunciation of the stage from the pulpits, and
especially from the famous rostrum at Paul's cross. The work of
the preachers was to sound the note for battle and to urge the
godly forward in the war; but, save for one or two sermons
which have found their way into print, few traces of their contri-
bution to the controversy have come down to our day. With the
pamphleteer it was different; his weapon was the book, and the
book has a tendency to endure. It will be well, however, to
defer our consideration of this aspect of the campaign until we
have examined the efforts of the corporation of London to drive
players out of the city; for, in its opening phases at any rate,
the literary attack was of secondary importance as compared with
the administrative. Indeed, to some extent, it seems to have been
prompted and controlled by the lord mayor himself.
The city merchant had reasons, other than those already
mentioned, for hating the player. The customary processions
through the streets, before playing, interfered with traffic. Public
performances were a possible source of disturbance. As for the
actor himself, he and his like, as the lord mayor informed the
privy council upon one occasion, were 'a very superfluous sort
of men? ' He was either the retainer of some nobleman, in which
case he was supported by his master, instead of being left to make
his living at the public expense, or he was by law a rogue
and a vagabond and ought to be dealt with accordingly. He
lived for and by pleasure alone, grew rich by beguiling the simple
poor of their money and, hereupon, aped the manners and habits
of gentlefolk, swaggering about the city in dress so extravagant
and costly as to be positively offensive to the eye'. In short,
his profession, as it seemed to the civic mind, represented a definite
and constant drain on the national resources. In the language
of the day, he was a caterpillar of the commonwealth. '
The player, therefore, could expect no mercy from the city
authorities ; but, fortunately for the development of the English
i Chambers, op. cit. vol. 81, pp. 110-113; Laneham's letter, Furnivall, pp. 26–28.
2 Malone Society Collections, part 1, p. 46.
3 A Second and Third Blast, Hazlitt, op. cit. p. 133.
• Schoole of Abuse, Arber, p. 39. Anatomy of Abuses, Furnivall, p. 146.
>
## p. 380 (#398) ############################################
380 The Puritan Attack upon the Stage
а
romantic drama, he found a rock of defence in the queen and her
courtiers Elizabeth liked to be provided every Christmas with
theatrical amusements, but refused to be responsible for the entire
maintenance of a special company. The privy council, accordingly,
was instructed to satisfy both her love of pleasure and her passion
for economy by seeing that the common players' were allowed
full opportunity, not merely of practising for Christmas festivities,
but of earning sufficient to maintain themselves at other seasons.
The privy council was not sorry to have an excuse for interfering
with the city's internal policy; but there was no reason why
without special royal injunctions, it should have lifted a finger
to succour the stage. Throughout its whole career, the Elizabethan
theatre, though essentially popular in origin and character,
depended for its very existence, upon the patronage of the court,
and the quarrel which we are now to consider was an early
trial of strength between the same forces which, later, broke
up England into two hostile camps. Apart from other considera-
tions, the legal status of the actor would have been sufficient of
itself to produce a conflict. It was defined by two regulations :
the proclamation of 16 May 1559, issued to prevent the handling
of religious and political questions upon the stage, which forbade
performances in any town without a licence from the mayor; and
the statute of 1572, which imposed the penalties of vagrancy upon
any player not in the service of some nobleman? . In other words,
acting companies, while placed under the direct protection of
great lords at court, were not allowed to produce plays without
the express permission of the lord mayor. Thus, the stage was
subject to two authorities, not only different in character but
rivals in policy and interest. The lord mayor was perpetually
trying to put his legal powers into force and so to clear the city of
actors; the court party, on the other hand, as perpetually inter-
vened through the privy council, or overrode the mayor's authority
by royal patents and other expedients of a similar nature. In the
end, the stage succeeded in freeing itself from the grip of the city,
but found itself, ipso facto, more than ever dependent upon the
court, and under the particular sway of the master of the revels.
A detailed account of the struggle would be scarcely possible
in the present state of our knowledge—80 meagre, fragmentary
and tantalising is the evidence hitherto brought to light upon the
subject. The normal course of the controversy may, however,
be followed in the correspondence between the privy council and
1 Cf. as to these regulations, ante, chap. x; and see Hazlitt, op. cit. pp. 19, 21,
## p. 381 (#399) ############################################
The City and the Stage 381
the lord mayor, to be found in the council's register and in the
city archives known as Remembrancia! The letters are amusing
.
enough. The city's trump card, played with wearisome monotony,
was the plague, almost as inevitable in Shakespeare's London as
smoke is in ours. While the sickness raged, the privy council
was as ready to close the playhouses as was the corporation? But,
ordinarily, the plague was only a summer visitor. In the autumn,
therefore, the lord mayor would receive a letter from the council
reminding him that the queen must have her Christmas amuse-
ments, and requiring him to allow the actors an opportunity of
practising their art. The city usually resisted these recommenda-
tions with all the power and ingenuity at its command.
Matters remaining in this constant state of tension, an occasional
crisis was inevitable; especially when an unusually severe epidemic
gave the lord mayor an excuse for attempting to suppress the
stage altogether. The documents at our disposal give us the
particulars of three such crises, two of which had an appreciable
influence upon the character and number of the tracts we are to
examine later. We even catch a glimpse of a possible fourth at
the time of the great plague in 1563, when Grindal, then bishop of
London, is found writing to Cecil to advise a year's inhibition of
all plays in the city and for three miles round, adding, significantly,
and if it were for ever it were not amiss' Our records, however,
do not begin till 1572 when, as Harrison tells us, with approval, in
his Chronologie", players were expelled because of the plague ;
and it seems that the lord mayor refused to re-admit them, if we
may judge from the letters of the privy council on their behalf
in 1573 and, again, in the spring of 1574. These letters, evidently,
were of no avail; for, on 7 May 1574, the court party found it
necessary to take out a royal patent in favour of the earl of
Leicester's company, giving it express permission to play within
the city notwithstanding any orders to the contrary, and eluding
the consequences of the proclamation of 1559 by stipulating
that its performances should be licensed by the master of the
revels. This is the beginning of the policy of subordinating the
9
i See Acts of the Privy Council, ed. Dasent, T. R. , and Malone Society Collections,
part 1, the latter of which gives all the letters from the Remembrancia and the
Burghley Papers, dealing with the stage. Unfortunately, there is a gap in the register
from June 1581 to Feb. 1586, and in the Remembrancia, from March 1584 to Jan. 1587.
2 Cf. ante, chap. x.
8 Remains of Grindal, Parker Soc. Publications, pp. 268, 269, Malone Society Col-
lections, part 1, p. 148.
* Furnivall, Harrison's Description of England, New Shaksp. Soc. part 1, p. liv.
cit. vol. VIII, pp. 131, 132, 215.
Hazlitt, op. cit. p. 25.
7
3 Acts, op.
6
## p. 382 (#400) ############################################
382 The Puritan Attack upon the Stage
stage to the revels' office. Its immediate effect was to force the
city to open its gates; but, later in the same year, the lord mayor
retaliated by procuring an order of the common council re-
quiring that all playhouses, companies and plays should be
licensed by the corporation, and enumerating in a preamble all
the 'great disorders and inconvenyances' occasioned by the drama;
which proves beyond doubt that the city's attitude was largely
influenced by puritanical convictions? . At this juncture, our in-
formation becomes insufficient to follow the sequence of events.
But the upshot of the conflict is clear. Certain players, finding
the city obdurate and unwilling to submit to its severe regulations,
began to look about them for some means of carrying on their
business out of reach of the mayor's authority. Thus, while
the innyards of the city continued to be used for dramatic
purposes, in 1575, the foundations of the first permanent playhouse
in London were laid 'in the fields to the North of the City,' and,
in 1576, or the following year, the buildings were completed?
The puritan watched with horror the rise of these “houses of
purpose, built with great charges for the maintenance of them and
that without the liberties, as who shall say: there, let them say
what they will, we will play&'; but he could not do anything save
vent his rage in sermons and tracts.
The second crisis appears to have centred round the great
plague of 1582—3, though there are signs of its approach several
In 1578, we find Fleetwood, the city recorder,
referring to certain standing orders by Burghley for dealing with
plays * ; and, in the correspondence of 1580, it is evident that
a campaign is on foot for the abolition of the stage not only in
the city but also in the fields An earthquake in April that
year, celebrated in a contemporary ballad beginning:
Comme from the plaio, comme from the playe:
the house will fall so people saye:
the earth quakes lett us hast awaye 6,
probably did much to strengthen the city's cause, and the plague
came to its assistance in 1581, so that the playhouses were shut all
through the summer. Then began the customary struggle over the
years earlier.
:
1 Hazlitt, op. cit. p. 27; Malone Society Collections, part 1, p. 175.
2 Cf. ante, chap. X.
3 Stockwood, Sermon, 1578, p. 134.
4 Wright, Elizabeth, vol. 11, p. 88; Malone Society Collections, part 1, p. 157.
• Malone Society Collections, part I, pp. 46–49.
6 Arber, Stationers' Register, vol. 11, p. 167 b. Cf. passage from Gardniers' Doomes-
day Booke, 1606, quoted in Halliwell-Phillipps, J. O. , Outlines, vol. I, p. 343, and
Stubbes's Anatomie, part 1, p. 180.
## p. 383 (#401) ############################################
The Crisis of 1582—3
383
players' re-admission. In December, we find the privy council, in
answer to a pitiful petition from the acting companies, obliged to
renew in a stronger form its usual reminder to the lord mayor that
the Christmas festivities were approaching? And, on 24 December,
the master of the revels was granted by royal patent certain wide,
if vague, powers over the whole stage which seem to have been
intended to counterbalance, if not to override, the powers of the
lord mayor? . It was probably this patent which called forth, as an
answer from the city, the famous undated act of common council
for the permanent prohibition of plays in the city which has been
usually, but, as has now been proved, erroneously, ascribed to the
year 15753. London had followed in the wake of Marseilles; the
filthy player had been expelled. At the beginning of 1582, the
privy council pleaded with the mayor to invoke his late 'in-
hibityon*,' but in vain, and further discussion was stopped for
that year by the plague.
It was not until the autumn of 1583 that the plague abated
sufficiently to allow of a renewal of the dispute. But, in the mean-
time, two events of great importance had taken place; the first prob-
ably doing more than a thousand learned treatises to stamp the stage
as an unholy institution. On Sunday 13 January 1583, great
crowds were gathered to watch the bearbaiting at Paris garden,
a pleasure resort outside the jurisdiction of the city, when a
wooden scaffold on which many were seated collapsed, killing
a few and injuring many more'. It seemed a direct fulfilment of
the prophecies of puritans, a 'judgment' which not even the
most abandoned playgoer could disregard. Yet the court hardened
its heart like Pharaoh, for, on 10 March, it once more stepped
in on the players' behalf. At Walsingham's suggestion and under
the direction of the master of the revels, 'a companie of players
for her Majestie' was formed. This, obviously, was intended as
a move against the lord mayor, though it led, also, to important
consequences for the stage. As in the case of the Leicester
1 Acts, vol. XIII, p. 269.
9 Chambers, Tudor Revels, pp. 62, 72, 75.
3 Orders appointed to be executed (Singleton), Art. 62. For the question of date,
v. Chambers, The Academy, 24 August 1895, and Malone Society Collections, part 1,
pp. 168–9.
• Malone Society Collections, part I, pp. 52—54; Acts, vol. XIII, p. 404. There is
evidently some confusion of dates here. The letter of the privy council is given
11 April in the Remembrancia and 25 April or May in Acts. These are not different
letters, as is stated in Malone Society Collections, part 1, p. 54.
3 Malone Society Collections, part I, pp. 59, 61, 65, 159, 161, 171 for references to
this incident.
& Tudor Revels, p. 62.
## p. 384 (#402) ############################################
384 The Puritán Attack upon the Stage
company ten years before, the city was forced to yield for the
moment, and, by arrangement with the privy council, the royal
company was admitted into the city from the autumn of 1583 till
the following Shrovetide? When, however, her majesty's players
sought re-admission in the autumn of 1584, they were met with the
absolute refusal of the lord mayor. He had been tricked the season
before, for all the playhouses had been filled with men calling
themselves the queen's players. The company could do nothing
beyond appealing to the privy council. The text of this appeal,
together with a detailed answer from the city and certain other
documents connected with it, has been preserved for us among the
Burghley papers? ; but we are completely ignorant of the events that
followed.
In much the same tantalising fashion, we catch a glimpse
of an attempt upon the Theater and the Curtain in the same year.
The lord mayor's letters of 1580 tell us that he was then already
preparing to stretch forth his hand against the impudent Jerichoes
in the fields; and, in 1583, we find him pleading with Walsingham
that they should be closed. In June 1584, he actually seems to
have accomplished his purpose ; for, apparently, by reason of a
brawl outside the Theater entirely unconnected with actors or
their craft, he managed to procure an order from the privy
council for the destruction of the houses. Again the curtain
falls at the most exciting point. We do not even know whether
the order was ever carried out.
The year 1584, evidently, was a very critical one in the history
of the English stage; yet we cannot doubt that the players suc-
cessfully weathered the storm. Certainly, plays did not cease to be
acted in London ; nor do the houses in the fields appear to have
suffered any material damage. Meanwhile, the stage drifted more
and more under the control of the revels' office, until, in 1592, we
find the lord mayor, apparently on the advice of archbishop
Whitgift, proposing that the master, Edmond Tilney, should be
bought over to the city's point of view by an annuity
The third, and, so far as we know, the last, serious crisis in the
relations between the city and the stage occurred in 1597. Thomas
Nashe, writing to a friend in 1596, complains that
i Malone Society Collections, part 1, pp. 66, 67.
Ibid. p. 168.
3 Ibid. pp. 1646. Cf, as to this brawl, ante, chap. x.
• Ibid. pp. 68-70; Tudor Revels, p. 78, for the skirmish between the authorities
and the stage, in 1589, which arose out of the Marprelate controversy, was nothing to
do with the matter in hand. See above, vol. m, of the present work, p. 392; Malone
Society Collections, part 11, p. 180; Acts, vol. XVIII, pp. 214—5; Collier, vol. 1,
pp. 275—7.
## p. 385 (#403) ############################################
The Crisis of 1597
385
the players . . . are piteously persecuted by the Lord Mayor and the Alder-
men; and however in their old Lord's time they thought their estate settled,
it is now so uncertain they cannot build upon it1.
The 'old Lord' here referred to was lord Hunsdon, lord chamber-
lain, a staunch supporter of the players' interests in the privy
council. He died on 22 July 1596 and was succeeded in office
by the puritanically minded lord Cobham? We do not know
to what measure of persecution in 1596 Nashe is here referring ;
but, on 28 July 1597, we find the lord mayor addressing an
interesting letter to the council and enclosing a statement
of the inconveniences that grow by stage playes,' which we
recognise as the basis of many earlier letters. The council was
desired to take measures ‘for the present staie and fynall sup-
pressinge' of plays both within and without the liberties, and it
immediately complied by sending an order to the justices of
Middlesex for the dismantling of the Theater and Curtain 'so
as they maie not be ymploied agayne to suche use". ' Once again,
however, we are left in the dark as to the fate of the houses in the
fields. As a matter of fact, the Theater was closed this very month
and year, but the cause appears to have been nothing more
serious than a difficulty in renewing the lease. Perhaps, the death
of lord Cobham and the influence of the new lord chamberlain,
another lord Hunsdon, may have weakened the force of the
order. In any case, the civic authorities do not seem to have
gained much from a fight of over a quarter of a century. Sunday
performances were abolished, at least in theory; playing was
forbidden in Lent; and certain other restrictions were placed
upon the freedom of the actor. But the enemies of the stage had
aimed at abolition, not regulation
It is now time to turn to the literary side of the puritan
campaign and to speak of the bombardment which the pam-
phleteers kept up, while the city fathers made their repeated
assaults upon the stage. It will be remembered how the players
had nonplussed the corporation by setting up their houses outside
the walls of the city. The question was now as to what could be
| Fleay's Chronicle of Stage, p. 157 ; Collier, vol. I, pp. 292—4.
? Malone Society Collections, part 1, p. 39.
3 Ibid. pp. 78–80.
4 Halliwell-Phillipps, J. O. , Outlines (7th ed. ), vol. I, p. 356 ; Acts, vol. xxvii, p. 313.
5 For the order against the theatres in 1600, which, curiously enough, the city
did not carry out, perhaps because it had some reference to the Essex rising, perhaps
because the lord mayor of the year seems to have been himself in favour of plays, see
Simpson, New Shaksp. Soc. Trans. , 1874, vol. 11, pp. 386–9; Lee, Life of Shakespeare,
pp. 174—6, 212—3; Fleay's Chronicle of Stage, p. 161; Halliwell-Phillipps, J. O. ,
Outlines, vol. I, pp. 307–9.
E. L. VI. CH. XIV.
25
## p. 386 (#404) ############################################
386 The Puritan Attack upon the Stage
accomplished by the voice of the preacher and the pen of the
pamphleteer. The erection of the Theater and the Curtain in
1576 and 1577 acted at once upon the already highly charged
atmosphere and called down a veritable hail of sermons and tracts.
Of the former, only one or two, which are preserved for our
edification in book form, need here be noticed. There is, for
example, the sermon of one Thomas White, delivered at Paul's
cross on 9 December 1576 and, apparently, repeated on 3 November
in the following year, to which we are indebted for the syllogistic
statement of the plague argument already quoted, and which, by
its reference to the sumptuous Theatre houses, a continuall
monument of London's prodigalitie and folly' helps us to deter-
mine the date of their establishment. Another divine who, by
publication, sought a larger congregation than had assembled to
hear him at Paul's cross was John Stockwood; his sermon,
dated 24 August 1578, laments the immorality of playhouses
and the immense gains of players, and gives a very forcible
expression to that feeling of rivalry between stage and pulpit to
which we have referred.
From the printed sermon to the godly treatise is no great step.
The honour of taking it belongs to John Northbrooke, a puritan
clergyman residing near Bristol, who had suffered imprisonment at
the hands of his bishop, apparently for some act of nonconformity.
As his Treatise, wherein Dicing, Dauncing, vain Playes or Enter-
ludes with other idle Pastimes etc. commonly used on the Sabbath
day, are reproved by the Authoritie of the Word of God and
auntient Writers, was entered for publication in the year 1577, it
is natural to suppose that the erection of the playhouses was the
immediate occasion of its appearance. Yet the book was rather
a general arraignment of the 'abuses' of the age than a special
treatise on the subject of stage plays, to which scarcely more than
a sixth of its space was given. Indeed, while its debt to Fenton's
Forme of Christian pollicie is considerable, it became, in its turn,
as regards both contents and dialogue-form, the model for Stubbes's
Anatomie of Abuses. When he addresses himself to the subject
of plays, it is the moral aspect of the question upon which North-
brooke lays especial stress, providing his readers with an appalling
list of the vices which might be learnt at the theatre; while
his remark that ‘it is better to be subject to a magistrate under
whom nothing is lawful than under him to whom all things are
lawful' indicates the remedy which commended itself to him and
to most of his fellow puritans.
9
## p. 387 (#405) ############################################
Gosson's Schoole of Abuse 387
Quaint, simple-minded and long-winded Northbrooke remained
a solitary pioneer. He has his special niche, of course, in Prynne's
pantheon of stage haters, and Stubbes, as we have said, evidently
read him and learnt from him; but his immediate successors either
did not know of him or deliberately ignored his existence? In
1579, the very year when a second edition of his book was ap-
pearing, a new writer was, with considerable ostentation, 'setting
up the Flagge of Defiance' to the prevailing abuses of the day,
and claiming to be the one to 'found the schoole and reade the
first lecture of all’? This fresh arrival in the lists was Stephen
Gosson, one of the most interesting and important of those who
took up arms against the stage. Though not more than twenty-
four years of age when he published The Schoole of Abuse, he had
already, if Meres is to be believed, written pastorals which ranked
among the best of his age, though none of the specimens of his
poetry that have come down to us soars above the commonplace.
In addition to this, the style of his Schoole suggests that he deserves
almost as much credit as Lyly for giving to Euphuism its final and
complete form; both having been bitten with the craze at Oxford,
very possibly in company. Like Lyly, also, Gosson left Oxford for
London, and took to the stage as both actor and playwright. At
least three dramas were produced by him, as he tells us himself:
Catalines Conspiracy, which appeared at the Theater, 'a cast of
Italian devices called The comedie of Captaine Mario' and 'a
moral' entitled Praise at Parting. From certain hints he gives
us, we are led to suppose that his theatrical career was neither
prosperous nor successful. Whether for this reason or, as he would
rather have us think, because the nonconformist conscience was
already beginning to make the playwright discontented with his
surroundings, about the end of 1578 he left London and became
a private tutor in the country, where he prepared his Pleasaunt
invective against Poets, Pipers, Plaiers, Jesters and such like
Caterpillers of a commonwelth, which was entered at Stationer's
Hall on 22 July of the year following.
If The Schoole of Abuse was intended as a puritan palinode, it
| That he was not forgotten altogether is clear from a reference to his book in
A true reporte of the death. . . of M. Campion (1582) which, incidentally, affords a proof
that this topic was interesting to Catholics as well as to puritans. See The Modern
Language Review, vol. iv, p. 485.
? In the same year there appeared a pamphlet by “T. F. ', entitled Newes from the
North, which complains of playhouses, and especially the Theater and Curtain.
Ed. 1585 sig. F 4.
3 See The Schoole of Abuse, ed. Arber, p. 40, and Plays Confuted, Hazlitt, u. 8.
p. 165.
25-2
## p. 388 (#406) ############################################
388 The Puritan Attack upon the Stage
certainly does not read like one. Its worldly, flippant air, very
different from the sober dulness of Northbrooke, suggests that
this assault upon Parnassus was little more than a trick to catch
the public ear and to win something of the success of Euphues,
which had appeared a few months earlier. Doubtless, its author
also hoped that his remarks upon the drama would attract the
favourable notice of London puritans. Among the letters at
the end of the book is one addressed to the lord mayor and
aldermen, applauding their policy with regard to the players, and
touching the root of the matter in the remark that, “if their letters
of commendation were once stayed, it were easie for you to over-
throw them. As Gosson was one of the few anti-dramatic writers
who possessed a first-hand acquaintance of the theatre, it is
interesting to observe that there is very little he can find to
advance against it. He is careful to point out that nothing of an
unseemly nature ever went on within the precincts of the play.
house itself; that actors might even be sober, discreete, properly
learned honest householders'; and that there were several 'good
playes and sweete playes' to be seen in London, among which, of
course, are those by Stephen Gosson himself.
The patron at whose feet Gosson laid this work was none other
than that 'right noble gentleman, Master Philip Sidney Esquier,'
who, as we learn on the authority of Spenser, was anything
but flattered at the tribute! Indeed, there can be little doubt
that the famous Apologie for Poetrie, written in the autumn
of 1581 though not published before 1595, was undertaken, in the
first place, as a reply to Gosson ; the disdainful reference to 'that
kinde of people, who seek a prayse by dispraysing others, that they
doe prodigally spend a great many wandering wordes, in quips and
scoffes? ' being a palpable hit at him and his pamphlet.
Despite its affectation and folly, The Schoole of Abuse gained
its immediate object. It was widely read, and met with a storm
of opposition. Gosson refers to this in the introduction to his
second book, The Ephemerides of Phialo, published in the autumn
of 1579, making special mention of a tract, no longer extant, which
assumed the curious title of Straunge Newes out of Affrick.
Possibly this name, very similar to that of hundreds of news-
pamphlets of the time, was intended to cloak the real nature of
the publication from the eyes of the authorities. The author,
2
1 Three proper and wittie familiar Letters, by Immerito and G. H. , 1580, p. 54.
2 Apologie, Arber's reprint, pp. 48, 49. See ante, vol. II, p 299, for the place of the
controversy in the history of literary criticism.
2
## p. 389 (#407) ############################################
Lodge's Reply to Gosson
389
whose name Gosson knew but did not disclose, has been con-
jectured to be Lyly, but without sufficient foundation? At the
conclusion of The Ephemerides appears An Apologie for the
Schoole of Abuse. Much of a piece with the work it sets out
to defend-being, indeed, little more than a disquisition on the
immorality of the pagan deities—this fresh contribution was under-
taken in answer to a second champion who had come forward in
defence of the arts. Gosson asserts that, after offering rewards at
both universities to anyone who would write for them, the players
had found a writer in London to comply with their needs. He had
put forth a book, of which, at the time of writing, Gosson knew
nothing save its title, Honest Excuses. This, there seems no
reason to doubt, was the pamphlet by Thomas Lodge which has
come down to us without a title-page? .
This tract, the earliest publication of the future author of
Rosalynde, and usually described as A Defence of Poetry, Music
and Stage-Playes, must have been written immediately after
Gosson’s Schoole appeared, and printed in the late summer of 1579.
It appeared surreptitiously, however ; for it was refused a licence
a very striking indication of the power and determination of the
puritan opposition. In other respects, there is nothing in any way
remarkable about the book. A piece of very ordinary Elizabethan
prose, full of classical allusions and, every now and then, attempting
the euphuistic manner, it is yet in no way inferior to the work it
attacks. After the controversial fashion of the age, it contains a
considerable amount of personal insinuation, which, probably, bore
some relation to the truth, since Lodge and Gosson, appar-
ently, had been contemporaries at Oxford and, undoubtedly, were
acquaintances later in London. It is worth noticing, in view of
Gosson’s accusation that Lodge had been hired by the players,
that the defence of poetry and music is quite as lengthy and
serious as that of plays. The last topic is treated in a remarkably
moderate tone. After a discussion of the antiquity and origin of
play making, which anticipates the line of defence taken up later
by Heywood, Lodge proceeds to consider the condition of the
contemporary theatre. Here, he is ready to own, there is much
room for improvement, and he admits that he wishes 'as zealously
as the best that all abuse of playinge were abolished'; but this, he
a
6
1
| Indeed, a favourable reference to The Ephemerides in Euphues and his England
would seem to preclude the possibility altogether. See Bond, R. W. , Lyly, 1902, vol.
II, p. 99.
> See The Modern Language Review, vol. II, pp. 166–8.
## p. 390 (#408) ############################################
390 The Puritan Attack upon the Stage
adds, is no reason for abolishing the stage itself. Such frank
recognition of the claims of reform makes the refusal to license
his book all the more remarkable.
We must turn aside from Gosson and Lodge for the moment, to
notice the entrance of another combatant. The year 1580, which,
as we have seen, was the beginning of the second great struggle
between the city and the court, also marks a new development in
the tactics of the pamphleteer. Up to this point, the stage had been
attacked in company with other abuses’; but, late in 1580, there
appeared for the first time a book which devoted itself exclusively
to the subject of stage plays. It was entitled A Second and third
Blast of retrait from plaies and Theatres, and, lest there should
be any mistake as to the source of its inspiration, it bore the arms
of the corporation of London upon the reverse of its title-page.
No clearer proof than this can be needed of the close connection
between the administrative and literary attacks. The lord mayor
had evidently discovered the usefulness of the pamphlet agitation,
and the sudden increase in the output of tracts during the next
two or three years points unmistakably to encouragement by the
authorities. In addition to all this, the book is instructive as
affording a fresh illustration of the fact that the puritan attack
was largely an echo of the old conflict between the pagan theatre
and the primitive church ; for the Second Blast (the first, of
course, had been sounded by Gosson) was a translation of Salvian's
attack on the iniquities of the Roman stage, which forms a
section of his De Gubernatione Deil. But a greater interest
attaches itself to the work of the other devout trumpeter whom
the title proclaims, 'a worshipful and zealous Gentleman now
alive. ' Like every other writer in the controversy, he borrows
largely from his predecessors, especially from Twynne and Fenton.
Being under the patronage of the city, he is naturally chiefly
concerned with the administrative side of the problem. The root
of the evil, he declares, as Gosson had done, is the support that
players receive from the nobility; and he even goes on to say
that, unable or unwilling to maintain their servants at their own
cost, noblemen allowed them to live at the expense or charity
of the general public. These bold words could scarcely have been
uttered a year or two later when the queen herself had her
company of actors. Yet, curiously enough, violent as the lan-
guage of the tract is, it proposes no drastic measures of reform.
1 The editio princeps of his works was published this same year at Paris.
## p. 391 (#409) ############################################
Gosson attacked on the London Stage 391
The magistrate is advised to go slowly, and to begin by stopping
all Sunday playing.
This tame conclusion, in all probability, may be put down to
half-heartedness, or even insincerity, on the part of the author.
Gosson, two years later, in his Playes Confuted, asserted that,
beside himself, no playwright had written against plays 'but one
who hath changed his coppy and turned himself like ye dog to his
vomit to plays againe ? ' As the author of the Third Blast himself
informs us that he had previously 'bene a great affector of that
vaine art of Plaie-making,' it is natural to suppose that it is
he to whom Gosson refers. The present writer is of opinion
that the apostate playwright in question was that Elizabethan
Jack-of-all-trades, Anthony Munday, who had been deliberately
hired for the purpose by the opponents of the stage? If this
theory, which is supported by a good deal of circumstantial
evidence, be true, it throws a somewhat sinister light upon the
tactics of the puritan party, as having taken out a year's lease
of a scapegrace actor's pen and paraded his sham conversion as a
triumph for the cause of public morality s.
Meanwhile, the players had been seeking to discredit puritans
in general and Gosson in particular. They had revived two of his
plays, which, as he tells us, they'impudently affirmed' to have been
written since the publication of The Schoole of Abuse. Moreover,
on 23 February 1582", a drama in the manner of the old moralities
was produced at the Theater, under the title : The Playe of
Playes and Pastimes, which Prynne, probably erroneously, ascribed
to Lodge'.
? English edition, 1606, bk. vi, chap. I, pp. 645, 646.
3 Bk. I, chap. xv. Cf. , also, his Contra los Juegos Publicos (Obras, vol. II, pp.
413–462).
* Bk. v, chap. VIII.
5 Yet Fenton, in his Tragicall Discourses (1567), employs the same arguments in
support of the novel as were used later by apologists for the drama.
## p. 378 (#396) ############################################
378 The Puritan Attack upon the Stage
before the attack began in England, exercised an appreciable
influence upon Northbrooke and was read and quoted by the
author of the Third Blast. Other examples, also, might be added
to our list, such as a translation from Petrarch by Francis
Twynne', who introduces into his original an unfavourable comment
upon the newly erected Theater and Curtain.
The puritan opposition to the English stage did not burst forth
in any violence until about 1576; but there are indications of its
existence, apart from the translations just noticed, long before
this date. English humanism, for example, though, for reasons
already given, inclined to look favourably upon the drama, was in
this as in many other respects laying down the lines upon which
puritanism developed later. Roger Ascham was no puritan;
yet his famous outburst against the popular romances of the
day is remarkably similar in tone and feeling to the invectives
launched by subsequent writers against plays which, to a large
extent, were nothing but dramatised versions of these very
romances. The connection between the humanistic attack upon
the Italian novel and the puritan attack upon the romantic drama
comes out most clearly in the case of William Alley, bishop
of Exeter, whose condemnation of Wanton Bookes' in The
Poore Man's Librarie (1565) expressly embraces plays. Alley
appears to have been the first in England, since Lollard days,
to take up the pen against the stage; he was the first English-
man, also, to cite with approbation the example of the ancient
city of Marseilles, which ‘kept so greate gravitie' that it would
never allow a player within its walls. A classical precedent
of this kind was so well adapted to the case of the city of
London that it was eagerly seized upon by later writers and
reappears in almost every pamphlet written against the stage.
Another remarkable indication of the prevalence of the anti-
dramatic spirit at this comparatively early period is to be
found in the prologue of Lewis Wager's Life and Repentance
of Marie Magdalene, first printed in 1566 but probably acted
considerably earlier, which shows us a dramatist not only already
on the defensive but employing the same arguments as were used,
afterwards, by Lodge, Gager and Heywood. But perhaps the most
tangible proof of the rising puritan flood was the quiet but
persistent suppression by bishop, preacher and zealous mayor of
local plays and pageants throughout England during the middle
years of the sixteenth century, as no longer seemly in this happie
1 Phisicke against Fortune (v. bibliography).
## p. 379 (#397) ############################################
General Attitude of the Authorities 379
time of the gospell\' London, almost the only city in the kingdom
with its own stage when the cleansing process was completed, was
to be the scene of the great struggle between puritan and player.
The puritan forces advanced against the London stage in three
lines : preachers, pamphleteers and civic authorities. In the
nature of the case, it is impossible to do more than indicate here
the incessant denunciation of the stage from the pulpits, and
especially from the famous rostrum at Paul's cross. The work of
the preachers was to sound the note for battle and to urge the
godly forward in the war; but, save for one or two sermons
which have found their way into print, few traces of their contri-
bution to the controversy have come down to our day. With the
pamphleteer it was different; his weapon was the book, and the
book has a tendency to endure. It will be well, however, to
defer our consideration of this aspect of the campaign until we
have examined the efforts of the corporation of London to drive
players out of the city; for, in its opening phases at any rate,
the literary attack was of secondary importance as compared with
the administrative. Indeed, to some extent, it seems to have been
prompted and controlled by the lord mayor himself.
The city merchant had reasons, other than those already
mentioned, for hating the player. The customary processions
through the streets, before playing, interfered with traffic. Public
performances were a possible source of disturbance. As for the
actor himself, he and his like, as the lord mayor informed the
privy council upon one occasion, were 'a very superfluous sort
of men? ' He was either the retainer of some nobleman, in which
case he was supported by his master, instead of being left to make
his living at the public expense, or he was by law a rogue
and a vagabond and ought to be dealt with accordingly. He
lived for and by pleasure alone, grew rich by beguiling the simple
poor of their money and, hereupon, aped the manners and habits
of gentlefolk, swaggering about the city in dress so extravagant
and costly as to be positively offensive to the eye'. In short,
his profession, as it seemed to the civic mind, represented a definite
and constant drain on the national resources. In the language
of the day, he was a caterpillar of the commonwealth. '
The player, therefore, could expect no mercy from the city
authorities ; but, fortunately for the development of the English
i Chambers, op. cit. vol. 81, pp. 110-113; Laneham's letter, Furnivall, pp. 26–28.
2 Malone Society Collections, part 1, p. 46.
3 A Second and Third Blast, Hazlitt, op. cit. p. 133.
• Schoole of Abuse, Arber, p. 39. Anatomy of Abuses, Furnivall, p. 146.
>
## p. 380 (#398) ############################################
380 The Puritan Attack upon the Stage
а
romantic drama, he found a rock of defence in the queen and her
courtiers Elizabeth liked to be provided every Christmas with
theatrical amusements, but refused to be responsible for the entire
maintenance of a special company. The privy council, accordingly,
was instructed to satisfy both her love of pleasure and her passion
for economy by seeing that the common players' were allowed
full opportunity, not merely of practising for Christmas festivities,
but of earning sufficient to maintain themselves at other seasons.
The privy council was not sorry to have an excuse for interfering
with the city's internal policy; but there was no reason why
without special royal injunctions, it should have lifted a finger
to succour the stage. Throughout its whole career, the Elizabethan
theatre, though essentially popular in origin and character,
depended for its very existence, upon the patronage of the court,
and the quarrel which we are now to consider was an early
trial of strength between the same forces which, later, broke
up England into two hostile camps. Apart from other considera-
tions, the legal status of the actor would have been sufficient of
itself to produce a conflict. It was defined by two regulations :
the proclamation of 16 May 1559, issued to prevent the handling
of religious and political questions upon the stage, which forbade
performances in any town without a licence from the mayor; and
the statute of 1572, which imposed the penalties of vagrancy upon
any player not in the service of some nobleman? . In other words,
acting companies, while placed under the direct protection of
great lords at court, were not allowed to produce plays without
the express permission of the lord mayor. Thus, the stage was
subject to two authorities, not only different in character but
rivals in policy and interest. The lord mayor was perpetually
trying to put his legal powers into force and so to clear the city of
actors; the court party, on the other hand, as perpetually inter-
vened through the privy council, or overrode the mayor's authority
by royal patents and other expedients of a similar nature. In the
end, the stage succeeded in freeing itself from the grip of the city,
but found itself, ipso facto, more than ever dependent upon the
court, and under the particular sway of the master of the revels.
A detailed account of the struggle would be scarcely possible
in the present state of our knowledge—80 meagre, fragmentary
and tantalising is the evidence hitherto brought to light upon the
subject. The normal course of the controversy may, however,
be followed in the correspondence between the privy council and
1 Cf. as to these regulations, ante, chap. x; and see Hazlitt, op. cit. pp. 19, 21,
## p. 381 (#399) ############################################
The City and the Stage 381
the lord mayor, to be found in the council's register and in the
city archives known as Remembrancia! The letters are amusing
.
enough. The city's trump card, played with wearisome monotony,
was the plague, almost as inevitable in Shakespeare's London as
smoke is in ours. While the sickness raged, the privy council
was as ready to close the playhouses as was the corporation? But,
ordinarily, the plague was only a summer visitor. In the autumn,
therefore, the lord mayor would receive a letter from the council
reminding him that the queen must have her Christmas amuse-
ments, and requiring him to allow the actors an opportunity of
practising their art. The city usually resisted these recommenda-
tions with all the power and ingenuity at its command.
Matters remaining in this constant state of tension, an occasional
crisis was inevitable; especially when an unusually severe epidemic
gave the lord mayor an excuse for attempting to suppress the
stage altogether. The documents at our disposal give us the
particulars of three such crises, two of which had an appreciable
influence upon the character and number of the tracts we are to
examine later. We even catch a glimpse of a possible fourth at
the time of the great plague in 1563, when Grindal, then bishop of
London, is found writing to Cecil to advise a year's inhibition of
all plays in the city and for three miles round, adding, significantly,
and if it were for ever it were not amiss' Our records, however,
do not begin till 1572 when, as Harrison tells us, with approval, in
his Chronologie", players were expelled because of the plague ;
and it seems that the lord mayor refused to re-admit them, if we
may judge from the letters of the privy council on their behalf
in 1573 and, again, in the spring of 1574. These letters, evidently,
were of no avail; for, on 7 May 1574, the court party found it
necessary to take out a royal patent in favour of the earl of
Leicester's company, giving it express permission to play within
the city notwithstanding any orders to the contrary, and eluding
the consequences of the proclamation of 1559 by stipulating
that its performances should be licensed by the master of the
revels. This is the beginning of the policy of subordinating the
9
i See Acts of the Privy Council, ed. Dasent, T. R. , and Malone Society Collections,
part 1, the latter of which gives all the letters from the Remembrancia and the
Burghley Papers, dealing with the stage. Unfortunately, there is a gap in the register
from June 1581 to Feb. 1586, and in the Remembrancia, from March 1584 to Jan. 1587.
2 Cf. ante, chap. x.
8 Remains of Grindal, Parker Soc. Publications, pp. 268, 269, Malone Society Col-
lections, part 1, p. 148.
* Furnivall, Harrison's Description of England, New Shaksp. Soc. part 1, p. liv.
cit. vol. VIII, pp. 131, 132, 215.
Hazlitt, op. cit. p. 25.
7
3 Acts, op.
6
## p. 382 (#400) ############################################
382 The Puritan Attack upon the Stage
stage to the revels' office. Its immediate effect was to force the
city to open its gates; but, later in the same year, the lord mayor
retaliated by procuring an order of the common council re-
quiring that all playhouses, companies and plays should be
licensed by the corporation, and enumerating in a preamble all
the 'great disorders and inconvenyances' occasioned by the drama;
which proves beyond doubt that the city's attitude was largely
influenced by puritanical convictions? . At this juncture, our in-
formation becomes insufficient to follow the sequence of events.
But the upshot of the conflict is clear. Certain players, finding
the city obdurate and unwilling to submit to its severe regulations,
began to look about them for some means of carrying on their
business out of reach of the mayor's authority. Thus, while
the innyards of the city continued to be used for dramatic
purposes, in 1575, the foundations of the first permanent playhouse
in London were laid 'in the fields to the North of the City,' and,
in 1576, or the following year, the buildings were completed?
The puritan watched with horror the rise of these “houses of
purpose, built with great charges for the maintenance of them and
that without the liberties, as who shall say: there, let them say
what they will, we will play&'; but he could not do anything save
vent his rage in sermons and tracts.
The second crisis appears to have centred round the great
plague of 1582—3, though there are signs of its approach several
In 1578, we find Fleetwood, the city recorder,
referring to certain standing orders by Burghley for dealing with
plays * ; and, in the correspondence of 1580, it is evident that
a campaign is on foot for the abolition of the stage not only in
the city but also in the fields An earthquake in April that
year, celebrated in a contemporary ballad beginning:
Comme from the plaio, comme from the playe:
the house will fall so people saye:
the earth quakes lett us hast awaye 6,
probably did much to strengthen the city's cause, and the plague
came to its assistance in 1581, so that the playhouses were shut all
through the summer. Then began the customary struggle over the
years earlier.
:
1 Hazlitt, op. cit. p. 27; Malone Society Collections, part 1, p. 175.
2 Cf. ante, chap. X.
3 Stockwood, Sermon, 1578, p. 134.
4 Wright, Elizabeth, vol. 11, p. 88; Malone Society Collections, part 1, p. 157.
• Malone Society Collections, part I, pp. 46–49.
6 Arber, Stationers' Register, vol. 11, p. 167 b. Cf. passage from Gardniers' Doomes-
day Booke, 1606, quoted in Halliwell-Phillipps, J. O. , Outlines, vol. I, p. 343, and
Stubbes's Anatomie, part 1, p. 180.
## p. 383 (#401) ############################################
The Crisis of 1582—3
383
players' re-admission. In December, we find the privy council, in
answer to a pitiful petition from the acting companies, obliged to
renew in a stronger form its usual reminder to the lord mayor that
the Christmas festivities were approaching? And, on 24 December,
the master of the revels was granted by royal patent certain wide,
if vague, powers over the whole stage which seem to have been
intended to counterbalance, if not to override, the powers of the
lord mayor? . It was probably this patent which called forth, as an
answer from the city, the famous undated act of common council
for the permanent prohibition of plays in the city which has been
usually, but, as has now been proved, erroneously, ascribed to the
year 15753. London had followed in the wake of Marseilles; the
filthy player had been expelled. At the beginning of 1582, the
privy council pleaded with the mayor to invoke his late 'in-
hibityon*,' but in vain, and further discussion was stopped for
that year by the plague.
It was not until the autumn of 1583 that the plague abated
sufficiently to allow of a renewal of the dispute. But, in the mean-
time, two events of great importance had taken place; the first prob-
ably doing more than a thousand learned treatises to stamp the stage
as an unholy institution. On Sunday 13 January 1583, great
crowds were gathered to watch the bearbaiting at Paris garden,
a pleasure resort outside the jurisdiction of the city, when a
wooden scaffold on which many were seated collapsed, killing
a few and injuring many more'. It seemed a direct fulfilment of
the prophecies of puritans, a 'judgment' which not even the
most abandoned playgoer could disregard. Yet the court hardened
its heart like Pharaoh, for, on 10 March, it once more stepped
in on the players' behalf. At Walsingham's suggestion and under
the direction of the master of the revels, 'a companie of players
for her Majestie' was formed. This, obviously, was intended as
a move against the lord mayor, though it led, also, to important
consequences for the stage. As in the case of the Leicester
1 Acts, vol. XIII, p. 269.
9 Chambers, Tudor Revels, pp. 62, 72, 75.
3 Orders appointed to be executed (Singleton), Art. 62. For the question of date,
v. Chambers, The Academy, 24 August 1895, and Malone Society Collections, part 1,
pp. 168–9.
• Malone Society Collections, part I, pp. 52—54; Acts, vol. XIII, p. 404. There is
evidently some confusion of dates here. The letter of the privy council is given
11 April in the Remembrancia and 25 April or May in Acts. These are not different
letters, as is stated in Malone Society Collections, part 1, p. 54.
3 Malone Society Collections, part I, pp. 59, 61, 65, 159, 161, 171 for references to
this incident.
& Tudor Revels, p. 62.
## p. 384 (#402) ############################################
384 The Puritán Attack upon the Stage
company ten years before, the city was forced to yield for the
moment, and, by arrangement with the privy council, the royal
company was admitted into the city from the autumn of 1583 till
the following Shrovetide? When, however, her majesty's players
sought re-admission in the autumn of 1584, they were met with the
absolute refusal of the lord mayor. He had been tricked the season
before, for all the playhouses had been filled with men calling
themselves the queen's players. The company could do nothing
beyond appealing to the privy council. The text of this appeal,
together with a detailed answer from the city and certain other
documents connected with it, has been preserved for us among the
Burghley papers? ; but we are completely ignorant of the events that
followed.
In much the same tantalising fashion, we catch a glimpse
of an attempt upon the Theater and the Curtain in the same year.
The lord mayor's letters of 1580 tell us that he was then already
preparing to stretch forth his hand against the impudent Jerichoes
in the fields; and, in 1583, we find him pleading with Walsingham
that they should be closed. In June 1584, he actually seems to
have accomplished his purpose ; for, apparently, by reason of a
brawl outside the Theater entirely unconnected with actors or
their craft, he managed to procure an order from the privy
council for the destruction of the houses. Again the curtain
falls at the most exciting point. We do not even know whether
the order was ever carried out.
The year 1584, evidently, was a very critical one in the history
of the English stage; yet we cannot doubt that the players suc-
cessfully weathered the storm. Certainly, plays did not cease to be
acted in London ; nor do the houses in the fields appear to have
suffered any material damage. Meanwhile, the stage drifted more
and more under the control of the revels' office, until, in 1592, we
find the lord mayor, apparently on the advice of archbishop
Whitgift, proposing that the master, Edmond Tilney, should be
bought over to the city's point of view by an annuity
The third, and, so far as we know, the last, serious crisis in the
relations between the city and the stage occurred in 1597. Thomas
Nashe, writing to a friend in 1596, complains that
i Malone Society Collections, part 1, pp. 66, 67.
Ibid. p. 168.
3 Ibid. pp. 1646. Cf, as to this brawl, ante, chap. x.
• Ibid. pp. 68-70; Tudor Revels, p. 78, for the skirmish between the authorities
and the stage, in 1589, which arose out of the Marprelate controversy, was nothing to
do with the matter in hand. See above, vol. m, of the present work, p. 392; Malone
Society Collections, part 11, p. 180; Acts, vol. XVIII, pp. 214—5; Collier, vol. 1,
pp. 275—7.
## p. 385 (#403) ############################################
The Crisis of 1597
385
the players . . . are piteously persecuted by the Lord Mayor and the Alder-
men; and however in their old Lord's time they thought their estate settled,
it is now so uncertain they cannot build upon it1.
The 'old Lord' here referred to was lord Hunsdon, lord chamber-
lain, a staunch supporter of the players' interests in the privy
council. He died on 22 July 1596 and was succeeded in office
by the puritanically minded lord Cobham? We do not know
to what measure of persecution in 1596 Nashe is here referring ;
but, on 28 July 1597, we find the lord mayor addressing an
interesting letter to the council and enclosing a statement
of the inconveniences that grow by stage playes,' which we
recognise as the basis of many earlier letters. The council was
desired to take measures ‘for the present staie and fynall sup-
pressinge' of plays both within and without the liberties, and it
immediately complied by sending an order to the justices of
Middlesex for the dismantling of the Theater and Curtain 'so
as they maie not be ymploied agayne to suche use". ' Once again,
however, we are left in the dark as to the fate of the houses in the
fields. As a matter of fact, the Theater was closed this very month
and year, but the cause appears to have been nothing more
serious than a difficulty in renewing the lease. Perhaps, the death
of lord Cobham and the influence of the new lord chamberlain,
another lord Hunsdon, may have weakened the force of the
order. In any case, the civic authorities do not seem to have
gained much from a fight of over a quarter of a century. Sunday
performances were abolished, at least in theory; playing was
forbidden in Lent; and certain other restrictions were placed
upon the freedom of the actor. But the enemies of the stage had
aimed at abolition, not regulation
It is now time to turn to the literary side of the puritan
campaign and to speak of the bombardment which the pam-
phleteers kept up, while the city fathers made their repeated
assaults upon the stage. It will be remembered how the players
had nonplussed the corporation by setting up their houses outside
the walls of the city. The question was now as to what could be
| Fleay's Chronicle of Stage, p. 157 ; Collier, vol. I, pp. 292—4.
? Malone Society Collections, part 1, p. 39.
3 Ibid. pp. 78–80.
4 Halliwell-Phillipps, J. O. , Outlines (7th ed. ), vol. I, p. 356 ; Acts, vol. xxvii, p. 313.
5 For the order against the theatres in 1600, which, curiously enough, the city
did not carry out, perhaps because it had some reference to the Essex rising, perhaps
because the lord mayor of the year seems to have been himself in favour of plays, see
Simpson, New Shaksp. Soc. Trans. , 1874, vol. 11, pp. 386–9; Lee, Life of Shakespeare,
pp. 174—6, 212—3; Fleay's Chronicle of Stage, p. 161; Halliwell-Phillipps, J. O. ,
Outlines, vol. I, pp. 307–9.
E. L. VI. CH. XIV.
25
## p. 386 (#404) ############################################
386 The Puritan Attack upon the Stage
accomplished by the voice of the preacher and the pen of the
pamphleteer. The erection of the Theater and the Curtain in
1576 and 1577 acted at once upon the already highly charged
atmosphere and called down a veritable hail of sermons and tracts.
Of the former, only one or two, which are preserved for our
edification in book form, need here be noticed. There is, for
example, the sermon of one Thomas White, delivered at Paul's
cross on 9 December 1576 and, apparently, repeated on 3 November
in the following year, to which we are indebted for the syllogistic
statement of the plague argument already quoted, and which, by
its reference to the sumptuous Theatre houses, a continuall
monument of London's prodigalitie and folly' helps us to deter-
mine the date of their establishment. Another divine who, by
publication, sought a larger congregation than had assembled to
hear him at Paul's cross was John Stockwood; his sermon,
dated 24 August 1578, laments the immorality of playhouses
and the immense gains of players, and gives a very forcible
expression to that feeling of rivalry between stage and pulpit to
which we have referred.
From the printed sermon to the godly treatise is no great step.
The honour of taking it belongs to John Northbrooke, a puritan
clergyman residing near Bristol, who had suffered imprisonment at
the hands of his bishop, apparently for some act of nonconformity.
As his Treatise, wherein Dicing, Dauncing, vain Playes or Enter-
ludes with other idle Pastimes etc. commonly used on the Sabbath
day, are reproved by the Authoritie of the Word of God and
auntient Writers, was entered for publication in the year 1577, it
is natural to suppose that the erection of the playhouses was the
immediate occasion of its appearance. Yet the book was rather
a general arraignment of the 'abuses' of the age than a special
treatise on the subject of stage plays, to which scarcely more than
a sixth of its space was given. Indeed, while its debt to Fenton's
Forme of Christian pollicie is considerable, it became, in its turn,
as regards both contents and dialogue-form, the model for Stubbes's
Anatomie of Abuses. When he addresses himself to the subject
of plays, it is the moral aspect of the question upon which North-
brooke lays especial stress, providing his readers with an appalling
list of the vices which might be learnt at the theatre; while
his remark that ‘it is better to be subject to a magistrate under
whom nothing is lawful than under him to whom all things are
lawful' indicates the remedy which commended itself to him and
to most of his fellow puritans.
9
## p. 387 (#405) ############################################
Gosson's Schoole of Abuse 387
Quaint, simple-minded and long-winded Northbrooke remained
a solitary pioneer. He has his special niche, of course, in Prynne's
pantheon of stage haters, and Stubbes, as we have said, evidently
read him and learnt from him; but his immediate successors either
did not know of him or deliberately ignored his existence? In
1579, the very year when a second edition of his book was ap-
pearing, a new writer was, with considerable ostentation, 'setting
up the Flagge of Defiance' to the prevailing abuses of the day,
and claiming to be the one to 'found the schoole and reade the
first lecture of all’? This fresh arrival in the lists was Stephen
Gosson, one of the most interesting and important of those who
took up arms against the stage. Though not more than twenty-
four years of age when he published The Schoole of Abuse, he had
already, if Meres is to be believed, written pastorals which ranked
among the best of his age, though none of the specimens of his
poetry that have come down to us soars above the commonplace.
In addition to this, the style of his Schoole suggests that he deserves
almost as much credit as Lyly for giving to Euphuism its final and
complete form; both having been bitten with the craze at Oxford,
very possibly in company. Like Lyly, also, Gosson left Oxford for
London, and took to the stage as both actor and playwright. At
least three dramas were produced by him, as he tells us himself:
Catalines Conspiracy, which appeared at the Theater, 'a cast of
Italian devices called The comedie of Captaine Mario' and 'a
moral' entitled Praise at Parting. From certain hints he gives
us, we are led to suppose that his theatrical career was neither
prosperous nor successful. Whether for this reason or, as he would
rather have us think, because the nonconformist conscience was
already beginning to make the playwright discontented with his
surroundings, about the end of 1578 he left London and became
a private tutor in the country, where he prepared his Pleasaunt
invective against Poets, Pipers, Plaiers, Jesters and such like
Caterpillers of a commonwelth, which was entered at Stationer's
Hall on 22 July of the year following.
If The Schoole of Abuse was intended as a puritan palinode, it
| That he was not forgotten altogether is clear from a reference to his book in
A true reporte of the death. . . of M. Campion (1582) which, incidentally, affords a proof
that this topic was interesting to Catholics as well as to puritans. See The Modern
Language Review, vol. iv, p. 485.
? In the same year there appeared a pamphlet by “T. F. ', entitled Newes from the
North, which complains of playhouses, and especially the Theater and Curtain.
Ed. 1585 sig. F 4.
3 See The Schoole of Abuse, ed. Arber, p. 40, and Plays Confuted, Hazlitt, u. 8.
p. 165.
25-2
## p. 388 (#406) ############################################
388 The Puritan Attack upon the Stage
certainly does not read like one. Its worldly, flippant air, very
different from the sober dulness of Northbrooke, suggests that
this assault upon Parnassus was little more than a trick to catch
the public ear and to win something of the success of Euphues,
which had appeared a few months earlier. Doubtless, its author
also hoped that his remarks upon the drama would attract the
favourable notice of London puritans. Among the letters at
the end of the book is one addressed to the lord mayor and
aldermen, applauding their policy with regard to the players, and
touching the root of the matter in the remark that, “if their letters
of commendation were once stayed, it were easie for you to over-
throw them. As Gosson was one of the few anti-dramatic writers
who possessed a first-hand acquaintance of the theatre, it is
interesting to observe that there is very little he can find to
advance against it. He is careful to point out that nothing of an
unseemly nature ever went on within the precincts of the play.
house itself; that actors might even be sober, discreete, properly
learned honest householders'; and that there were several 'good
playes and sweete playes' to be seen in London, among which, of
course, are those by Stephen Gosson himself.
The patron at whose feet Gosson laid this work was none other
than that 'right noble gentleman, Master Philip Sidney Esquier,'
who, as we learn on the authority of Spenser, was anything
but flattered at the tribute! Indeed, there can be little doubt
that the famous Apologie for Poetrie, written in the autumn
of 1581 though not published before 1595, was undertaken, in the
first place, as a reply to Gosson ; the disdainful reference to 'that
kinde of people, who seek a prayse by dispraysing others, that they
doe prodigally spend a great many wandering wordes, in quips and
scoffes? ' being a palpable hit at him and his pamphlet.
Despite its affectation and folly, The Schoole of Abuse gained
its immediate object. It was widely read, and met with a storm
of opposition. Gosson refers to this in the introduction to his
second book, The Ephemerides of Phialo, published in the autumn
of 1579, making special mention of a tract, no longer extant, which
assumed the curious title of Straunge Newes out of Affrick.
Possibly this name, very similar to that of hundreds of news-
pamphlets of the time, was intended to cloak the real nature of
the publication from the eyes of the authorities. The author,
2
1 Three proper and wittie familiar Letters, by Immerito and G. H. , 1580, p. 54.
2 Apologie, Arber's reprint, pp. 48, 49. See ante, vol. II, p 299, for the place of the
controversy in the history of literary criticism.
2
## p. 389 (#407) ############################################
Lodge's Reply to Gosson
389
whose name Gosson knew but did not disclose, has been con-
jectured to be Lyly, but without sufficient foundation? At the
conclusion of The Ephemerides appears An Apologie for the
Schoole of Abuse. Much of a piece with the work it sets out
to defend-being, indeed, little more than a disquisition on the
immorality of the pagan deities—this fresh contribution was under-
taken in answer to a second champion who had come forward in
defence of the arts. Gosson asserts that, after offering rewards at
both universities to anyone who would write for them, the players
had found a writer in London to comply with their needs. He had
put forth a book, of which, at the time of writing, Gosson knew
nothing save its title, Honest Excuses. This, there seems no
reason to doubt, was the pamphlet by Thomas Lodge which has
come down to us without a title-page? .
This tract, the earliest publication of the future author of
Rosalynde, and usually described as A Defence of Poetry, Music
and Stage-Playes, must have been written immediately after
Gosson’s Schoole appeared, and printed in the late summer of 1579.
It appeared surreptitiously, however ; for it was refused a licence
a very striking indication of the power and determination of the
puritan opposition. In other respects, there is nothing in any way
remarkable about the book. A piece of very ordinary Elizabethan
prose, full of classical allusions and, every now and then, attempting
the euphuistic manner, it is yet in no way inferior to the work it
attacks. After the controversial fashion of the age, it contains a
considerable amount of personal insinuation, which, probably, bore
some relation to the truth, since Lodge and Gosson, appar-
ently, had been contemporaries at Oxford and, undoubtedly, were
acquaintances later in London. It is worth noticing, in view of
Gosson’s accusation that Lodge had been hired by the players,
that the defence of poetry and music is quite as lengthy and
serious as that of plays. The last topic is treated in a remarkably
moderate tone. After a discussion of the antiquity and origin of
play making, which anticipates the line of defence taken up later
by Heywood, Lodge proceeds to consider the condition of the
contemporary theatre. Here, he is ready to own, there is much
room for improvement, and he admits that he wishes 'as zealously
as the best that all abuse of playinge were abolished'; but this, he
a
6
1
| Indeed, a favourable reference to The Ephemerides in Euphues and his England
would seem to preclude the possibility altogether. See Bond, R. W. , Lyly, 1902, vol.
II, p. 99.
> See The Modern Language Review, vol. II, pp. 166–8.
## p. 390 (#408) ############################################
390 The Puritan Attack upon the Stage
adds, is no reason for abolishing the stage itself. Such frank
recognition of the claims of reform makes the refusal to license
his book all the more remarkable.
We must turn aside from Gosson and Lodge for the moment, to
notice the entrance of another combatant. The year 1580, which,
as we have seen, was the beginning of the second great struggle
between the city and the court, also marks a new development in
the tactics of the pamphleteer. Up to this point, the stage had been
attacked in company with other abuses’; but, late in 1580, there
appeared for the first time a book which devoted itself exclusively
to the subject of stage plays. It was entitled A Second and third
Blast of retrait from plaies and Theatres, and, lest there should
be any mistake as to the source of its inspiration, it bore the arms
of the corporation of London upon the reverse of its title-page.
No clearer proof than this can be needed of the close connection
between the administrative and literary attacks. The lord mayor
had evidently discovered the usefulness of the pamphlet agitation,
and the sudden increase in the output of tracts during the next
two or three years points unmistakably to encouragement by the
authorities. In addition to all this, the book is instructive as
affording a fresh illustration of the fact that the puritan attack
was largely an echo of the old conflict between the pagan theatre
and the primitive church ; for the Second Blast (the first, of
course, had been sounded by Gosson) was a translation of Salvian's
attack on the iniquities of the Roman stage, which forms a
section of his De Gubernatione Deil. But a greater interest
attaches itself to the work of the other devout trumpeter whom
the title proclaims, 'a worshipful and zealous Gentleman now
alive. ' Like every other writer in the controversy, he borrows
largely from his predecessors, especially from Twynne and Fenton.
Being under the patronage of the city, he is naturally chiefly
concerned with the administrative side of the problem. The root
of the evil, he declares, as Gosson had done, is the support that
players receive from the nobility; and he even goes on to say
that, unable or unwilling to maintain their servants at their own
cost, noblemen allowed them to live at the expense or charity
of the general public. These bold words could scarcely have been
uttered a year or two later when the queen herself had her
company of actors. Yet, curiously enough, violent as the lan-
guage of the tract is, it proposes no drastic measures of reform.
1 The editio princeps of his works was published this same year at Paris.
## p. 391 (#409) ############################################
Gosson attacked on the London Stage 391
The magistrate is advised to go slowly, and to begin by stopping
all Sunday playing.
This tame conclusion, in all probability, may be put down to
half-heartedness, or even insincerity, on the part of the author.
Gosson, two years later, in his Playes Confuted, asserted that,
beside himself, no playwright had written against plays 'but one
who hath changed his coppy and turned himself like ye dog to his
vomit to plays againe ? ' As the author of the Third Blast himself
informs us that he had previously 'bene a great affector of that
vaine art of Plaie-making,' it is natural to suppose that it is
he to whom Gosson refers. The present writer is of opinion
that the apostate playwright in question was that Elizabethan
Jack-of-all-trades, Anthony Munday, who had been deliberately
hired for the purpose by the opponents of the stage? If this
theory, which is supported by a good deal of circumstantial
evidence, be true, it throws a somewhat sinister light upon the
tactics of the puritan party, as having taken out a year's lease
of a scapegrace actor's pen and paraded his sham conversion as a
triumph for the cause of public morality s.
Meanwhile, the players had been seeking to discredit puritans
in general and Gosson in particular. They had revived two of his
plays, which, as he tells us, they'impudently affirmed' to have been
written since the publication of The Schoole of Abuse. Moreover,
on 23 February 1582", a drama in the manner of the old moralities
was produced at the Theater, under the title : The Playe of
Playes and Pastimes, which Prynne, probably erroneously, ascribed
to Lodge'.
