To a great extent, the work was the outcome of
a peculiar personality.
a peculiar personality.
Cambridge History of English Literature - 1908 - v06
.
In William Rankins, who, in 1587, published his pretentious
Mirrour of Monsters, we seem to have a case somewhat similar
to that of Munday. The Third Blast rings weak and hollow beside
Rankins's strident denunciations of the 'spotted enormities that
are caused by the infectious sight of Playes”; yet, in 1598, Henslowe
lent his company £3 in order to purchase one of Rankins's plays*.
So rapid a fall from the heights of virtue creates suspicion.
Despite the violence of its language, the Mirrour does not quite
succeed in striking the note of sincerity. The voice is the voice
of the godly; but the euphuistic style and the elaborate pageant
Of the marriage of Pride and Luxury' with which the book
closes suggest the flesh pots of Egypt*.
1 Furnivall's edition, part 1, pp. 140—6.
George Whetstone's Touchstone for the Time, published with his Mirour for
Magestrates (1584), and Thomas Newton's Treatise, touching Dyce-play and prophane
Gaming (1586), are two books, belonging to this period, which express a desire to see
the stage reformed but not abolished.
* Henslowe's Diary, part 1, p. 96; part 11, p. 198.
* For a curious letter, on the subject of stage plays, of the same date as Rankins's
Mirrour, see Halliwell-Phillipps's Illustrations, part I, app. XVII.
## p. 396 (#414) ############################################
396 The Puritan Attack upon the Stage
The pamphlets we have hitherto considered cover a period of
about ten years, the agitation to which we owe them being directly
traceable to the erection of the playhouses in 1576. But these
houses, in spite of all the efforts of the city authorities, were now
firmly established, and, though puritan feeling against them did
not in any way decrease, the general public, we may suppose,
began to take considerably less interest in the discussion. The
failure, too, of the city's determined attack of 1583—4 probably
took the heart out of the pamphleteers. Moreover, in 1588,
a fresh topic of public interest arose in the famous attack
upon the bishops by Martin Marprelate, which, indeed, made so
large a stir as to throw into the shade for some time to come all
other aspects of puritanism. Nor is it fanciful to suppose that
the great struggle with Spain, which belongs to the same period,
diminished the demand for pamphlets of this nature. Preachers,
we cannot doubt, continued to denounce the stage with unabated
vigour. Theologians, we know, did not cease in the course of their
treatises to warn their readers against it? . But such contributions
to the controversy as possess any importance, in the last fifteen
years of Elizabeth's reign, are almost entirely on the side of the
players. It was, for example, doubtless by way of apology that
Robert Greene penned the “large digression” on “Playes, Play-
makers, and Players” in his Francesco's Fortunes (1590). Again,
his friend, Thomas Nashe, whose satirical pen was the most power-
ful that had yet been wielded against the puritans, in his earliest
work The Anatomie of Absurditie, the title of which, probably,
was intended to recall that of Stubbes's3, who, indeed, is attacked
by name, devotes considerable attention to the writers upon
"abuses,' who make the Presse the dunghill whither they carry
'
all the muck of their melancholicke imaginations. And, in his
Pierce Penilesse, published in 1592, during which year, be it noted,
the theatres had been closed because of a riots, he advances still
further into the enemy's quarters. After a bout' with those who
presumed to attack poetry, he here embarks upon a lengthy defence
of plays. He declares that they are the salvation of idle men
about town, keeping them from worse occupations and giving them
something upon which to sharpen their wits. The playgoer has
Among these may be mentioned bishop Babington's Very Fruitful Exposition of the
Commandments (1583) which drew largely upon Stubbes. See Furnivall, Anatomy of
Abuses, pp. 75*—93* for copious extracts.
2 Grosart's Greene, vol. viii, pp. 129–133.
3 But see McKerrow, Nashe, vol. iv, p. 3.
4 Ibid. vol. 1, p. 20.
5 Acts, vol. XXII, p. 550.
1
## p. 397 (#415) ############################################
The Controversy at the Universities
397
not only an opportunity of learning the history of his country, but
the examples of the great and good of the past are set before his
eyes, while vice, in all its forms, is 'most lively anatomized. ' As
for the attacks of the city, he asserts that they were made solely
in the interest of the
Vintners, Alewives and Victuallers, who surmise, that if there were no
Playes, they would have all the companie that resort to them, lye bowzing
and beere-bathing in their houses every afternoonel,
So telling an argument was not likely to be allowed to rust for
want of use. A few months later, it did service in an enlarged
form as Tarlton's defence of the profession’ in Chettle's Kinde
Hart's Dreame? For any reply to these, however, or, indeed, for
anything in the nature of a definite attack upon the stage, we
may look in vain among the pamphlets published in London at
this periods. One more passage at arms took place before the
end of the century; for this, however, we must turn from the
capital to the universities.
As puritanism, in its origin, was intimately connected with
humanism, it was only natural that the anti-dramatic spirit
should have early penetrated to Oxford and Cambridge. Gosson
asserted that 'many famous men in both Universities have made
open out-cries of the inconveniences bredde by playes. ' It is
probable, however, that the number of these was never very large
at a time. In 1565, we hear of two or three in Trinity College,'
Cambridge, who did not think that Christians ought to countenance
plays*; and, in 1579, there broke out a 'controversy between
Mr Drywood of Trinity, and one Punter a student of St John's,
Cambridge' on the same subject". Four years previously, at the
same university, the privy council had forbidden all 'common
plays, with a view to keeping the youth of the nation undefiled.
This and a similar order, in 1593? , seem to indicate that the
· McKerrow, Nashe, vol. 1, pp. 211—215.
· Shakespeare Allusion Books, part 1, pp. 62—66 (New Shaksp. Soc. ); McKerrow,
op. cit. vol. IV, pp. 133–5.
* Sir John Harington's amusing Treatise of Playe (Nugae Antiquae, 1804, vol. 1,
p. 186), written about 1597, seems to show that the city's third attack revived a certain
amount of public interest in the question.
* Correspondence of Bp. Parker, Parker Soc. , p. 226. This appears to be the earliest
indication we have of the anti-dramatic spirit at the universities. The case of Pam.
machius, in 1545, sometimes cited, is that of a protestant controversial morality con-
demned by Gardiner, and, therefore, not to the point.
5 State Papers, Domestic, 1547--80, p. 638.
o Collier, op. cit. vol. 1, p. 223, quoting Lansdowne MSS, 71.
7 For the order of 1575, and the long correspondence preceding the order of 1593,
see Malone Society Collections, part I, pp. 190—202.
6
6
## p. 398 (#416) ############################################
398 The Puritan Attack upon the Stage
council's real convictions, on these occasions, at any rate, inclined
towards puritanism, and that its support of the stage in London
was largely actuated by the wishes of the queen and, perhaps, by
a desire to interfere with the city's authority. Such orders, of
course, did not touch academic or private plays, which, naturally,
flourished at the seats of classical learning. Most puritans, indeed,
allowed them to be harmless. At Oxford, for example, a certain
John Case, in his Speculum Moralium Quaestionum, published in
1585, while utterly condemning the public or 'common' play, not
only allows, but goes out of his way to defend, the academic play.
Yet Case's defence in itself shows that the matter was already
under discussion in university circles; while his pointed reference
to the Mosaic text, forbidding persons of one sex to wear the
dress of the other, proves that the lines of the later controversy
had been thus early laid down.
When, therefore, William Gager of Christ Church, a well known
Latin dramatist, and John Rainolds, an eminent theologian,
afterwards president of Corpus Christi, crossed swords, in 1592,
on the subject of the propriety of the academic play, they were
fighting over old ground. The duel, however, attracted consider-
able attention at the time owing to the reputation of the
combatants. Never before had the drama a more learned op-
ponent than Rainolds or a more accomplished defender than
Gager. The dispute broke out over the performance of Gager's
Ulysses Redux, a Latin tragedy, to which Rainolds had been
invited by a friend. By way of covering them with ridicule,
Gager, following a common practice among Latin dramatists of
this age, had placed some of the puritan objections to the drama
in the mouth of one of his characters. Unknown to Gager,
Rainolds had used many of these very arguments in the letter
in which he had refused the invitation, and he naturally supposed
that their reproduction was intended as a personal insult to him-
self. A correspondence followed, in the course of which Gager sent
his opponent a printed copy of his Ulysses Redux by way of self-
justification. Rainolds's reply, which forms the first section
of a volume entitled Th’Overthrow of Stage-Playes printed at
Middleburg in 15991, attacks both this and a comedy by Gager
known as Rivales, at the same time setting forth at full length
his objections to all forms of dramatic representation. Gager, like
other stage apologists, had appealed to antiquity; Rainolds refers
Collier, Bibliographical Catalogue, p. 246, suggests that it was printed in view of
the projected erection of the Fortune theatre.
1
## p. 399 (#417) ############################################
Th’Overthrow of Stage-Playes 399
him to a Roman praetor's decree against actors. Gager's per-
formers, moreover, had twice broken the divine law, first in
playing on the Sabbath and, secondly, by donning women's clothes.
The latter point, a stock argument in the puritan portfolio, is
treated with overwhelming fulness. Gager's elaborate reply,
dated 31 July, has never yet been printed and was, indeed,
practically unknown, until attention was called to it two years
ago? . It is claimed as one of the most graceful and convincing
of the treatises in answer to the puritan attack. Every argument
of Rainolds is courteously but firmly met, while, at times,
the learned dramatist waxes eloquent in defence of his art.
Despite this urbanity and the request with which the letter closes,
that the dispute should be dropped, Rainolds was in no mind
to allow his adversary the last word. After a delay occasioned
by sickness, he produced, on 30 May 1593, a very lengthy reply
in which, however, he did little more than recapitulate and
enlarge his previous arguments? Gager received this fresh out-
burst in contemptuous silence, but his friend Alberico Gentili
entered the lists on his behalf and a discussion in Latin followed,
chiefly dealing with the legal aspects of the dispute.
This Oxford controversy, it should be borne in mind, was of
a different nature from the discussion upon the merits of the
public stage which had been proceeding in London. Indeed, one
of the most interesting points about it is Gager's manifest con-
tempt for the professional side of his craft. While valiantly
defending himself and his young actors from the aspersions of
Rainolds, he admits the worst his opponent has to say about
common playes. ' As an occasional recreation for learned gentle-
men, acting received his highest praise; as a regular means of
livelihood, it was regarded with scorn. This contempt of the
gentleman for the rising class of actors, which had only a
remote connection with the loathing and abhorrence of the puritan,
was, undoubtedly, a factor in determining the social status of
Shakespeare and his fellows. The latter were often, it is true, on
terms of familiarity with the noblemen of the day; but, however
great a favourite he might be, and however respectable and
wealthy he might become, the Elizabethan common player was a
‘servant' in the eyes both of the nobleman to whose company
he belonged and of everyone else. Even Shakespeare's main
6
1 By Boas, F. 8. , in The Fortnightly Review for August 1907. The letter itself is
preserved among the manuscripts of Corpus Christi college, Oxford.
This is also to be found in Th’Overthrow of Stage-Playes.
## p. 400 (#418) ############################################
400 The Puritan Attack upon the Stage
1
ambition, apparently, was to become a “gentleman. ' It is not difficult
to understand the disgust of those who amused themselves with
the time-honoured academic play, at this intrusion into their sphere
of persons whom they would deem base-born hirelings.
After Elizabeth's death, and under a new dynasty, a change
came over the character and position of the stage. In 1604, the
right of noblemen to patronise players was virtually withdrawn
by the repeal of the previous statutes exempting the members of
their companies from the penalties of vagrancy? This gave a
formidable weapon into the hands of any provincial corporation
and magistrates that wished to rid their community of the presence
of travelling actors, as Sir Edward Coke carefully explained to
the good people of Norwich on his circuit of 1606. On the other
hand, by extending the policy introduced by Walsingham in 1583
and placing the great companies, one after the other, under the
direct patronage of the crown, the position of the London stage
was rendered practically impregnable. Yet the theatre lost more
than it gained. It ceased to be a national institution and became
a department of the revels' office; while its direct subordination
to the court made it more unpopular than ever with the puritans,
who were rapidly becoming the anti-court party. The actor could
scarcely be anything but royalist. The dramatist could see but
one side to those great questions which were sweeping England
on to civil war. But there was another side to this matter, which
should not be overlooked. While there can be no doubt whatever
that, among the generality of puritans, the detestation of the stage
was steadily on the increase at this period, wealthier citizens now
began to look with more favourable eye upon theatrical perform-
The playhouses, in short, or, at least, the best known
among them, by entering into close relations with the court added
the finishing touches to the reputation for respectability which
they had been slowly acquiring during Elizabeth's last years.
They lost, to a large extent, their popular character and became
fashionable resorts which citizens and, more especially, citizens'
wives found it both pleasant and socially advantageous to attend.
This fact helps to explain the almost complete cessation of the
city's attacks and later pamphleteers, such as Rawlidge, do not
hesitate to compare the more complacent citizens of Stewart
London with the religious senators' of a previous day.
Puritan anti-dramatic literature, with the exception of the
1 Prothero, G. W. , Select Statutes, p. 253.
2 The Lord Coke his speech and charge, Nath. Butter, 1607.
1
ances.
6
## p. 401 (#419) ############################################
>
The Exasperation of both Parties
401
sermon and the theological treatise', was almost as scanty under
James I as it had been during the last decade of Elizabeth's
reign. The first to revive the old controversy was a writer of the
theatrical party. In 1612, Thomas Heywood took upon him to
defend his calling, apparently from some attack on the part of
the authorities of which we have no knowledge? His tract was
entitled An Apology for Actors. The poems by various of the
author's friends with which it opens are not its least interesting
feature. John Webster's name figures among them ; but his con-
tribution is scarcely so entertaining as that by Richard Perkins,
which makes some amusing hits at the hypocritical aspect of
puritanism. Heywood divides his book into three parts, which
set out to display the 'antiquity, the 'ancient dignity' and the
'true use' of his profession. Much of his argument recalls that
of Lodge, whose 'patchte pamphlet,' A Defence of Stage-Playes,
doubtless, he had studied. Among new lines of defence may
be noticed the observation that, though the classical stage was
at its height at the time when Christ and His apostles were
on earth, yet there is not a single text in the whole New
Testament condemning it. Great stress is laid upon the value of
the drama as a moral tonic, and the puritan method of backing
an argument with lists of divine judgments is cleverly adapted to
the actors' purposes by a series of stories illustrating the strange
and wonderful workings of a powerful play upon a guilty conscience.
The inevitable puritan reply appeared three years later and is con-
jectured to have been the work of one John Greene. In A
Refutation of the Apology for Actors, as it is called, Heywood
is laboriously answered point by point. The author borrows
largely, and, at times, almost verbally, from Stubbes, while, in
the methodical arrangement of his argument and in his tedious
list of quotations from the fathers, he anticipates the work of
Prynne
In 1614, a new literary fashion was started by the publication
of Sir Thomas Overbury's Characters, and it was but natural that
the controversy concerning the stage should be reflected in this
and many similar publications. In 1616, for example, the author
of The Rich Cabnit furnished with a Varietie of exquisite
i See above, p. 375.
? Apology, ed. Collier, p. 14.
3 A year after Heywood's Apology, appeared George Wither's Abuses Stript and
Whipt; bat, notwithstanding the familiar ring of its title and the unfavourable
references to the stage which it contains, this slashing satire in verse is of a quite
different order from the ordinary puritan "abuse' pamphlet.
E. L. VI. CH. XIV.
26
## p. 402 (#420) ############################################
402 The Puritan Attack upon the Stage
6
Discriptions devoted a chapter of his book to the character of
a player. He is ready to admit that the actor possesses certain
excellent accomplishments such as 'dancing, song, ellocution, skill
of weapon, pregnancy of wit'-a suggestive list of what was re-
quired of those who trod the Jacobean stage—but he can find
no epithets strong enough to describe the immoral results of
frequenting the theatre.
These character writers, however, hardly belong to the ranks of
the regular combatants. We catch a better glimpse of the real
strength of the feeling against the stage at this period, and of what
the actor frequently had to suffer on its account, from an interest-
ing letter, preserved among the State Papers for 1616, by Nathaniel
Field, actor and playwright, to a certain ‘Mr Sutton, Preacher att
St Mary Overs. ' Stung to the quick by the railings, frequently, it
appears, spiced with personal allusions, which the worthy minister
hurled at the heads of the members of the 'Hope' company who
formed part of his congregation, Field, at length, felt forced to take
up the pen in self-defence. His letter, manly and independent in
tone, protested in almost impassioned language against the puritan
conception of an actor's mode of life, and appealed in pathetic
terms to Heaven in self-justification. As the son of that doughty
opponent of both bishop and stage, whose pamphlet in reference
to the Paris garden disaster we have already noticed, Field was,
doubtless, in a delicate position'. But, having been left an orphan a
year after his birth, he had been brought up as one of the children
of the Chapel Royal, and, if he had ever been troubled by any
scruples about the profession for which fortune had fashioned him,
a diligent study of the Bible, in which he found no 'trade of life
except conjurers, sorcerers and witches, ipso facto, damned' had
long removed them. However, it was a case of mutual irritation;
for if, as Field's letter shows, the pulpits resounded with invectives
against that monster of vice and minister of sensuality, the actor,
the audience at the theatre daily shook its sides over the antics of
that ludicrous compound of nasal piety and furtive hypocrisy, the
puritan. Lucy Hutchinson, writing of the treatment which puritans
suffered at this period, declares that
age, every table and every puppet play belched forth profane scoffs
upon them, the drunkards made them their songs and all fiddlers and mimics
learned to abuse them, as finding it the most graceful way of fooling2.
every
1 John Field's other son Theophilus, it is interesting to notice, became a
bishop.
2 Memoirs of Colonel John Hutchinson, ed. 1885, vol. I, p. 115.
## p. 403 (#421) ############################################
Prynne's Histriomastix
403
The drama of the age is full of references to puritans, and, as time
went on, these became more and more contemptuous and insulting.
Lucy Hutchinson's words and Nathaniel Field's letter, both
brimming over with passionate resentment, give us more insight
into the real exasperation of the two parties than treatises stuffed
with patristic and classical lore.
The foolish and short sighted policy of the first two Stewarts was
not likely to diminish, in any way, this bitter feeling against the
unholy amusement which they favoured and protected. Instead,
it raised up a fresh engine of reform before which both court and
stage, eventually, went down. In 1625, the year of Charles's ac-
cession, an anonymous puritan opened a new, and, in the light of
subsequent events, an ominous, line of attack. It was hopeless
to ask the crown to cleanse the Augean stables, and the city had
long since given up the task in despair ; he, therefore, addressed
himself to parliament, round which the hopes of all reformers were
beginning to cluster. His petition, calling itself A Short Treatise
against Stage-Playes, is a brief and exceedingly businesslike
enumeration of the chief arguments against the drama. In these
twenty-eight pages may be found the whole gist of Histriomastix;
indeed, the tract reads so much like a first draft of its unwieldy
successor that the suspicion is forced upon us that it was either
written by Prynne himself, who as we know, began to collect his
materials in 1624, or taken by him from another writer to be made
the basis of his book.
When we of the twentieth century hold in our hands the
cube of printed matter known as Histriomastix, and turn over its
eleven hundred pages, in which marginal notes and references
to authorities, for the most part, long since forgotten, often take
up more room than the text itself, we find it very difficult to
realise just what the book meant in its own day. To us, it seems
half pathetic and half ridiculous, a gigantic monument of mis-
placed energy and zeal, a pyramid left gaunt and useless on the
sands of time.
To a great extent, the work was the outcome of
a peculiar personality. Prynne was a fanatic of that indomitable
and most intolerant kind—the moral enthusiast. Apparently
i The Brit. Mus. Cat. , on what grounds is not apparent, attributes it to Alexander
Leighton, whose cause and character were very similar to those of Prynne. In 1628,
Richard Rawlidge, in A Monster lately found out and discovered or the Scourging of
Tipplers, wrote unfavourably of the theatre. His bitter language is rendered all the more
remarkable by his obvious commonsense in other matters. His book, which refers
to Whetstone's Mirour, must rank with that as one of the secondary contribu-
tions to the controversy.
26-2
## p. 404 (#422) ############################################
404
The Puritan Attack upon the Stage
with very little of the milk of human kindness in his com-
position, he burned with an internal flame of righteous con-
viction, and this alone could have sustained him, not merely in his
sufferings, but, also, in those untiring labours which his pen pro-
duced, over and above the immense Histriomastix. Yet, at the
same time, he was thoroughly representative, his idiosyncrasies
being extreme developments of, rather than departures from, the
normal characteristics of his fellow reformers. If it be ever
possible for one man to sum up a movement in his own person,
Prynne summed up puritanism. And, since his book epitomises,
likewise, the whole puritan attack upon the stage, a consideration
of author and book together form a suitable close to the present
study.
The story of its publication and of his cruel punishment is too
well known to require lengthy treatment here. Nor is this the
place to go into the vexed question as to whether he was techni-
cally guilty of seditious libel. After more than seven years' labour,
and after several fruitless attempts to procure a licence, he managed
at last, in 1632, to get his great work through the press. About
the time when the last sheets were being worked off, queen
Henrietta Maria and her women were engaged in rehearsing a
pastoral play for a performance at Whitehall, which, apparently,
did not actually take place until the book was in circulation.
The idea of women appearing on the stage was new and shocking
to English spectators. In 1629, a company of French actresses, at
the invitation of the queen, had attempted to give a performance
at Blackfriars and had been ‘hissed, hooted and pippen-pelted from
the stage. ' Prynne referred to this incident in great glee and,
whether in ignorance of the impending pastoral or of set purpose,
inserted in the table of contents at the end of his book an ex-
pression stigmatising women actors as 'notorious whores. ' He
was immediately summoned before the high commission; and,
l
though it is not clear what was the exact charge, there can be
no doubt that his chief offence was the accidental or intentional
application of these words to the queen's person. The upshot
was that he was condemned to stand in the pillory, a penalty he
underwent on two separate occasions, to lose both his ears, to be
branded as a seditious libeller on both cheeks, to pay a fine of
£5000 and to be perpetually imprisoned. Perhaps, the loss of
his Oxford degree and his expulsion from Lincoln's inn were
not the lightest part of the punishment to a man of Prynne's
habits and temperament. His life sentence was afterwards can-
## p. 405 (#423) ############################################
Prynne's Histriomastix
405
celled by parliament; but he suffered the remainder of the sen-
tence in patience and serenity. Prynne was a narrow-minded,
dry-hearted, fierce fanatic; but, could he stand before us now,
with his cropped ears and the letters S. L. burnt into his cheeks
(Stigmata Laudis he interpreted them, in a rare burst of humour),
we should acknowledge that the narrow-mindedness and fanaticism
were not all on one side.
Despite its enormous length, there is nothing new in Histrio-
mastix, The Player's Scourge or Actors Tragedie', except, perhaps,
the extraordinary fierceness of its denunciation. Prynne's know-
ledge of the stage was of the scantiest description. He owns, indeed,
with shame, that, when a ‘novice,' he had been enticed by evil
companions to attend 'foure severall Playes'; but, with these
exceptions, he seems to be completely ignorant of the dramatic
literature of the age, his only reference to our greatest dramatist
being the indignant observation that ‘Shackpeers Plaies are printed
in the best Crowne paper, far better than most Bibles. But, if
Prynne knew little of contemporary drama, his seeming know-
ledge of anti-dramatic literature was astounding. Laud asserted
that, merely to read the works cited by Prynne would take sixty
years of an ordinary man's life. The truth was that Prynne
could not have read a tithe of his authorities; and he quotes,
for the most part, not from the authors themselves, but from
the quotations of previous puritan writers. During a campaign
of over sixty years, carried on by a large number of eager
seekers for chapter and verse, half the accessible writers of
antiquity, and most of those since the beginning of the Christian
era, had been ransacked for even the slightest hint of anti-
dramatic feeling, which, when discovered, was pounced upon and
pigeonholed under its special argument. The same points, too,
were made by puritan after puritan with scarcely a change of word,
and in sublime innocence of the sin of plagiarism. Thus, the stream
of argument and quotation went on swelling from year to year,
until, at last, it emptied itself into Prynne's great reservoir'. In
his case, such a method was extremely dangerous ; for his was the
pursuit of proof, not of truth. A single statement from an author
in dispraise, or apparent dispraise, of plays is allowed to outweigh
the testimony of the writer's whole life and character. Thus,
1 For the full title, which, if given above, would occupy a whole page, see biblio-
graphy. A very useful analysis of the contents of the book is to be found in Ward,
vol. I, pp. 241–3.
2 Thus the Table (40 pp. ), at the end of Histriomastic, forms, perhaps, the
best index to the whole controversy.
## p. 406 (#424) ############################################
406 The Puritan Attack upon the Stage
a
Plutarch, Horace and Cicero are found in company with the early
fathers as abhorrers of stage plays. This must not be taken as an
impeachment of Prynne's honesty. He was honest enough ; but
he often quotes at second hand, and, even when he had the
original before him, he was blinded by the force of zeal to anything
that conflicted with his argument - as what controversialist
is not?
Perhaps the most original thing about the book is its arrange-
ment. It is divided into two parts, and these, in turn, are sub-
divided into acts and scenes with an occasional chorus. This
dramatic setting, curious in a book written against the stage, was
intended to carry out the idea of The Actors Tragedie suggested
on the title-page; but, also, it was an extremely convenient form
for the purposes of the argument. The first act, for example,
naturally deals with the satanic origin of the theatre, while, in the
seventh, Prynne triumphantly marshals his mass of authorities
in seven different squadrons or scenes, according to period or
character, the whole being crowned with a chorus in which he
announces that none can withstand his 'all-conquering troopes. '
This plan of arrangement may owe something to Gosson's Playes
confuted in five Actions; but the execution and the details were
all Prynne's.
His book is the last of the series which we have to note.
Its size and elaboration, the supposed insult to the queen, the
celebrated trial and the sufferings of the author, must have
brought the topic of stage morality very much to the fore and
have greatly increased the bitterness of the puritan party. But
Histriomastix had no imitators. It had completely exhausted
the subject. Besides, it was now dangerous to write against the
theatre, since this involved the risk of offending royalty and of thus
falling into the inexorable hands of the high commission. Further
than this, events were fast drifting towards revolution, and the
minds of men were filled with other and greater matters than the
stage? Whether, as has been suggested, Prynne's attack did any-
thing to reform the stage, it would be extremely difficult to deter-
mine; and, in any case, the question is a somewhat idle one. Of
greater importance is the fact that the theatre was in a far from
prosperous condition immediately before its suppression, as is
clear from a curious little tract printed, in 1641, under the title
The Stage-Players Complaint.
1 This, probably, also accounts for the fact that Prynne's book, apparently, remained
unanswered until 1662, when Sir Richard Baker published his Theatrum Redivitum,
## p. 407 (#425) ############################################
The End of the Controversy
407
Monopolers are down, Projectors are down, the High Commission Court
is downe, the Starre Chamber is downe, and (some think) Bishops will be
downe and why should we then that are farre inferior to any of these not
justely feare that we should be downe too ?
Such is the burden of the author's tale, and the atmosphere of
impending disaster which pervades the tract appropriately culmi-
nates in the concluding words: From Plague, Pestilence and
Famine from Battel, Murder and Suddaine Death Good Lord
deliver us. ' Few contemporary documents give a better picture
of the gloom and sense of coming catastrophe that had come over
a large part of the nation at this juncture in our history. But the
words of the Litany were applicable to present needs and sorrows
as well as to future fears. The plague had been more than usually
violent since 1630, and, in consequence, the playhouses had been
shut for the greater part of each year. The net result of these
various factors in the situation was that the ordinance of
2 September 1642 for the total suppression of stage plays was
received, not only without surprise, but almost without attention.
In estimating parliament's reasons for this step, political consider-
ations should not be left out of account. The actor was now
hated, not only on account of his profession, but, also, as the
minion of the despot, and the passage just quoted shows that he
realised the fact well enough. Moreover, the stage, obviously, was
too dangerous an institution to be tolerated by any anti-royalist
government. Players were ‘malignants' almost to a man, and,
however efficient the censorship might be, the performance of an
apparently harmless play might easily develop into a demonstration
in favour of the king. Yet, for all this, we cannot doubt that the
main intentions of the act were moral. The stage was swept
away by the tide of puritan indignation and hatred, of which
we have been watching the rise.
It was not to be expected, however, that so drastic a measure
could be carried out without difficulty. Parliament found it
necessary in 1647 and, again, in 1648 to pass further and more
stringent ordinances against the stage, ordering all players to be
apprehended and publicly whipped, all playhouses to be pulled
down and any one present at a play to pay a fine of five shillings.
Protests were not wanting against this policy. In 1643, two tracts
appeared : one, The Actors Remonstrance, a humble request for
the restoration of acting rights in return for sweeping reforms,
which, incidentally, gives an interesting glimpse of what went on
behind the scenes of theatrical life; the other, The Players
## p. 408 (#426) ############################################
408 The Puritan Attack upon the Stage
Petition to the Parliament, a piece of satirical verse, which
mocked at the Rump under pretence of appealing to it. The
sauciness of the latter, however, was nothing to that of an un-
known person who, at the beginning of 1649, actually published
a book called Mr William Prynne, his defence of Stage-Playes.
or a Retraction of his former book. Needless to say, the in-
a
dignant victim of this effrontery at once issued a denial of the
charge?
We have now enumerated and described the chief documents
and events relating to the puritan campaign against the stage,
culminating in the victory of 1642. The controversy has never really
died out. It burst forth again in all its old vigour and with all
its characteristic pedantry at the end of the seventeenth century.
Curiously enough it was a high Anglican non-juror, Jeremy Collier,
upon whose shoulders the puritan mantle fell; and his example
was followed, thirty years later, by yet another Jacobite, William
Law, the author of A Serious Call. Even modern writers
have found it difficult to discuss the Elizabethan stage without
ardently defending the puritans who attacked it. Yet the in-
fluence which the early fathers, like distanţ planets, seemed
to exert upon every puritan in turn, the wholesale manner
in which each borrows the arguments and expressions of his pre-
decessor and, above all, the almost complete ignorance displayed
by a large proportion of the assailants as to the real character of
the institution they were attacking, combine to give the whole
discussion an air of academic unreality. This impression, perhaps,
is partly due to controversial methods which appealed forcibly to
the Elizabethan intelligence, but which, by exasperating the
modern reader, blind him to the genuine feeling that lies under
their antiquated and absurd forms. For there can be no doubt
whatever that puritan antipathy amounted to a fierce loathing,
of whose strength a generation living in blander times cannot
have any conception. In a word, the whole movement, from the
outset, was not one for reforming the theatre but for abolishing it.
Proposals for reform came rather from those who wrote in defence
of the theatre, and whose attitude, it may be observed, was, in one
sense, singularly in accord with that of their opponents. In
1 The fortunes of the players under the Commonwealth may be followed in
some detail in James Wright's Historia Histrionica 1699 (reprinted in Hazlitt's
Dodsley (vol. xv), and in Whitelocke's Memorials. It is, perhaps, worth noticing
here that, in 1658, William Cartwright found courage to reprint Heywood's Apology,
under the title an Actor's Vindication.
!
## p. 409 (#427) ############################################
General Aspects of the Controversy 409
the modern sense of the word, at least, they were puritans to
a man. The stage-hater stoutly maintained that the drama did
not and could not fulfil any ethical function. On the other hand,
Bavande, Wager, Lodge, Gager, Nashe and Heywood, one and
all, regarded the drama, first and foremost, as an engine for
moral instruction. That such a man as Heywood should express
himself thus, proves that he had scarcely more understanding than
Stubbes and Prynne of the real nature of the drama which he
represented. No one can pretend that Shakespeare and his fellow
playwrights troubled themselves about theories of conduct. The
defenders of the stage made pitiful attempts to justify their craft
upon moral principles; but, in admitting the subordination of art
to ethics, they had yielded their whole position. Had puritans
only studied the theatre more and the early fathers less, they
might, starting with the premisses which their antagonists gave
them, have made out a much better case for prosecution. They
had all the logic on their side. On the side of the apologists,
.
was all the commonsense-if they could only have seen it !
## p. 410 (#428) ############################################
BIBLIOGRAPHIES
GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY
VOLS. V AND VI
It may be well, without attempting to do over again part of a task
admirably accomplished by Schelling, F. E. , in the Bibliographical Essay con-
tained in vol. 11 of his Elizabethan Drama, 1558-1642, Boston and New York,
1908, to point out that the bibliographies to the several chapters of the present
volume and its predecessor repeatedly refer to certain works which more or
less cover the whole of the period in question. These works will ordinarily
be cited in the separate bibliographies by the abbreviations added in italics to
the titles in the following lists.
I. COLLECTIONS OF PLAYS.
(This does not include series of volumes of which each contains the plays,
or a selection from the plays, of a single author. )
Amyot, T. and others. A Supplement to Dodsley's Old English Plays.
4 vols. 1853. (Amyot's Suppl. to Dodsley. )
Bang, W. Materialien zur Kunde des älteren englischen Dramas. Louvain,
1902, etc. (In progress. ) (Bang's Materialien. )
Brandl, A. Quellen des weltlichen Dramas in England vor Shakespeare.
Vol. Lxxx of Quellen u. Forschungen zur Sprach- u. Culturgesch, d.
German. Völker. Strassburg, 1898. (Brandls Quellen. )
Bullen, A. H. A Collection of Old English Plays. 4 vols. 1882-5. (Bullen's
Old English Plays. )
Old English Plays. New Series. 3 vols. 1887-90. (Bullen's Old
English Plays, N. S. )
Child, F. J. Four Old Plays. Cambridge, Mass. , 1848. (Four Old Plays. )
Collier, J. P. Five Old Plays illustrative of the early Progress of the
English Drama: The Conflict of Conscience; The Three Triumphs of
Love and Fortune; The Three Ladies of London; The Three Lords and
the Three Ladies of London; A Knack to Know a Knave. Ed. for the
Roxburghe Club. 1851. (Five Old Plays. )
Dilke, (Sir) C. W. Old English Plays; being a selection from the early
dramatic writers. 6 vols. 1814-5. (Dilke's 0. E. P. )
Dodsley's Old English Plays. Ed. Hazlitt, W. C. 15 vols. 1874-6. (Hazlitt's
Dodsley. )
Earlier editions:
A Select Collection of Old Plays. [Ed. by R. D. ) 12 vols. 1744.
(Dodsley (1744). )
## p. 411 (#429) ############################################
General Bibliography
411
A Select Collection of Old Plays. [By R. D. ) Ed. Reed, I. 12 vols.
1780. (Reed's Dodsley. )
A Select Collection of Old Plays. [By R. D. ) New ed.
In William Rankins, who, in 1587, published his pretentious
Mirrour of Monsters, we seem to have a case somewhat similar
to that of Munday. The Third Blast rings weak and hollow beside
Rankins's strident denunciations of the 'spotted enormities that
are caused by the infectious sight of Playes”; yet, in 1598, Henslowe
lent his company £3 in order to purchase one of Rankins's plays*.
So rapid a fall from the heights of virtue creates suspicion.
Despite the violence of its language, the Mirrour does not quite
succeed in striking the note of sincerity. The voice is the voice
of the godly; but the euphuistic style and the elaborate pageant
Of the marriage of Pride and Luxury' with which the book
closes suggest the flesh pots of Egypt*.
1 Furnivall's edition, part 1, pp. 140—6.
George Whetstone's Touchstone for the Time, published with his Mirour for
Magestrates (1584), and Thomas Newton's Treatise, touching Dyce-play and prophane
Gaming (1586), are two books, belonging to this period, which express a desire to see
the stage reformed but not abolished.
* Henslowe's Diary, part 1, p. 96; part 11, p. 198.
* For a curious letter, on the subject of stage plays, of the same date as Rankins's
Mirrour, see Halliwell-Phillipps's Illustrations, part I, app. XVII.
## p. 396 (#414) ############################################
396 The Puritan Attack upon the Stage
The pamphlets we have hitherto considered cover a period of
about ten years, the agitation to which we owe them being directly
traceable to the erection of the playhouses in 1576. But these
houses, in spite of all the efforts of the city authorities, were now
firmly established, and, though puritan feeling against them did
not in any way decrease, the general public, we may suppose,
began to take considerably less interest in the discussion. The
failure, too, of the city's determined attack of 1583—4 probably
took the heart out of the pamphleteers. Moreover, in 1588,
a fresh topic of public interest arose in the famous attack
upon the bishops by Martin Marprelate, which, indeed, made so
large a stir as to throw into the shade for some time to come all
other aspects of puritanism. Nor is it fanciful to suppose that
the great struggle with Spain, which belongs to the same period,
diminished the demand for pamphlets of this nature. Preachers,
we cannot doubt, continued to denounce the stage with unabated
vigour. Theologians, we know, did not cease in the course of their
treatises to warn their readers against it? . But such contributions
to the controversy as possess any importance, in the last fifteen
years of Elizabeth's reign, are almost entirely on the side of the
players. It was, for example, doubtless by way of apology that
Robert Greene penned the “large digression” on “Playes, Play-
makers, and Players” in his Francesco's Fortunes (1590). Again,
his friend, Thomas Nashe, whose satirical pen was the most power-
ful that had yet been wielded against the puritans, in his earliest
work The Anatomie of Absurditie, the title of which, probably,
was intended to recall that of Stubbes's3, who, indeed, is attacked
by name, devotes considerable attention to the writers upon
"abuses,' who make the Presse the dunghill whither they carry
'
all the muck of their melancholicke imaginations. And, in his
Pierce Penilesse, published in 1592, during which year, be it noted,
the theatres had been closed because of a riots, he advances still
further into the enemy's quarters. After a bout' with those who
presumed to attack poetry, he here embarks upon a lengthy defence
of plays. He declares that they are the salvation of idle men
about town, keeping them from worse occupations and giving them
something upon which to sharpen their wits. The playgoer has
Among these may be mentioned bishop Babington's Very Fruitful Exposition of the
Commandments (1583) which drew largely upon Stubbes. See Furnivall, Anatomy of
Abuses, pp. 75*—93* for copious extracts.
2 Grosart's Greene, vol. viii, pp. 129–133.
3 But see McKerrow, Nashe, vol. iv, p. 3.
4 Ibid. vol. 1, p. 20.
5 Acts, vol. XXII, p. 550.
1
## p. 397 (#415) ############################################
The Controversy at the Universities
397
not only an opportunity of learning the history of his country, but
the examples of the great and good of the past are set before his
eyes, while vice, in all its forms, is 'most lively anatomized. ' As
for the attacks of the city, he asserts that they were made solely
in the interest of the
Vintners, Alewives and Victuallers, who surmise, that if there were no
Playes, they would have all the companie that resort to them, lye bowzing
and beere-bathing in their houses every afternoonel,
So telling an argument was not likely to be allowed to rust for
want of use. A few months later, it did service in an enlarged
form as Tarlton's defence of the profession’ in Chettle's Kinde
Hart's Dreame? For any reply to these, however, or, indeed, for
anything in the nature of a definite attack upon the stage, we
may look in vain among the pamphlets published in London at
this periods. One more passage at arms took place before the
end of the century; for this, however, we must turn from the
capital to the universities.
As puritanism, in its origin, was intimately connected with
humanism, it was only natural that the anti-dramatic spirit
should have early penetrated to Oxford and Cambridge. Gosson
asserted that 'many famous men in both Universities have made
open out-cries of the inconveniences bredde by playes. ' It is
probable, however, that the number of these was never very large
at a time. In 1565, we hear of two or three in Trinity College,'
Cambridge, who did not think that Christians ought to countenance
plays*; and, in 1579, there broke out a 'controversy between
Mr Drywood of Trinity, and one Punter a student of St John's,
Cambridge' on the same subject". Four years previously, at the
same university, the privy council had forbidden all 'common
plays, with a view to keeping the youth of the nation undefiled.
This and a similar order, in 1593? , seem to indicate that the
· McKerrow, Nashe, vol. 1, pp. 211—215.
· Shakespeare Allusion Books, part 1, pp. 62—66 (New Shaksp. Soc. ); McKerrow,
op. cit. vol. IV, pp. 133–5.
* Sir John Harington's amusing Treatise of Playe (Nugae Antiquae, 1804, vol. 1,
p. 186), written about 1597, seems to show that the city's third attack revived a certain
amount of public interest in the question.
* Correspondence of Bp. Parker, Parker Soc. , p. 226. This appears to be the earliest
indication we have of the anti-dramatic spirit at the universities. The case of Pam.
machius, in 1545, sometimes cited, is that of a protestant controversial morality con-
demned by Gardiner, and, therefore, not to the point.
5 State Papers, Domestic, 1547--80, p. 638.
o Collier, op. cit. vol. 1, p. 223, quoting Lansdowne MSS, 71.
7 For the order of 1575, and the long correspondence preceding the order of 1593,
see Malone Society Collections, part I, pp. 190—202.
6
6
## p. 398 (#416) ############################################
398 The Puritan Attack upon the Stage
council's real convictions, on these occasions, at any rate, inclined
towards puritanism, and that its support of the stage in London
was largely actuated by the wishes of the queen and, perhaps, by
a desire to interfere with the city's authority. Such orders, of
course, did not touch academic or private plays, which, naturally,
flourished at the seats of classical learning. Most puritans, indeed,
allowed them to be harmless. At Oxford, for example, a certain
John Case, in his Speculum Moralium Quaestionum, published in
1585, while utterly condemning the public or 'common' play, not
only allows, but goes out of his way to defend, the academic play.
Yet Case's defence in itself shows that the matter was already
under discussion in university circles; while his pointed reference
to the Mosaic text, forbidding persons of one sex to wear the
dress of the other, proves that the lines of the later controversy
had been thus early laid down.
When, therefore, William Gager of Christ Church, a well known
Latin dramatist, and John Rainolds, an eminent theologian,
afterwards president of Corpus Christi, crossed swords, in 1592,
on the subject of the propriety of the academic play, they were
fighting over old ground. The duel, however, attracted consider-
able attention at the time owing to the reputation of the
combatants. Never before had the drama a more learned op-
ponent than Rainolds or a more accomplished defender than
Gager. The dispute broke out over the performance of Gager's
Ulysses Redux, a Latin tragedy, to which Rainolds had been
invited by a friend. By way of covering them with ridicule,
Gager, following a common practice among Latin dramatists of
this age, had placed some of the puritan objections to the drama
in the mouth of one of his characters. Unknown to Gager,
Rainolds had used many of these very arguments in the letter
in which he had refused the invitation, and he naturally supposed
that their reproduction was intended as a personal insult to him-
self. A correspondence followed, in the course of which Gager sent
his opponent a printed copy of his Ulysses Redux by way of self-
justification. Rainolds's reply, which forms the first section
of a volume entitled Th’Overthrow of Stage-Playes printed at
Middleburg in 15991, attacks both this and a comedy by Gager
known as Rivales, at the same time setting forth at full length
his objections to all forms of dramatic representation. Gager, like
other stage apologists, had appealed to antiquity; Rainolds refers
Collier, Bibliographical Catalogue, p. 246, suggests that it was printed in view of
the projected erection of the Fortune theatre.
1
## p. 399 (#417) ############################################
Th’Overthrow of Stage-Playes 399
him to a Roman praetor's decree against actors. Gager's per-
formers, moreover, had twice broken the divine law, first in
playing on the Sabbath and, secondly, by donning women's clothes.
The latter point, a stock argument in the puritan portfolio, is
treated with overwhelming fulness. Gager's elaborate reply,
dated 31 July, has never yet been printed and was, indeed,
practically unknown, until attention was called to it two years
ago? . It is claimed as one of the most graceful and convincing
of the treatises in answer to the puritan attack. Every argument
of Rainolds is courteously but firmly met, while, at times,
the learned dramatist waxes eloquent in defence of his art.
Despite this urbanity and the request with which the letter closes,
that the dispute should be dropped, Rainolds was in no mind
to allow his adversary the last word. After a delay occasioned
by sickness, he produced, on 30 May 1593, a very lengthy reply
in which, however, he did little more than recapitulate and
enlarge his previous arguments? Gager received this fresh out-
burst in contemptuous silence, but his friend Alberico Gentili
entered the lists on his behalf and a discussion in Latin followed,
chiefly dealing with the legal aspects of the dispute.
This Oxford controversy, it should be borne in mind, was of
a different nature from the discussion upon the merits of the
public stage which had been proceeding in London. Indeed, one
of the most interesting points about it is Gager's manifest con-
tempt for the professional side of his craft. While valiantly
defending himself and his young actors from the aspersions of
Rainolds, he admits the worst his opponent has to say about
common playes. ' As an occasional recreation for learned gentle-
men, acting received his highest praise; as a regular means of
livelihood, it was regarded with scorn. This contempt of the
gentleman for the rising class of actors, which had only a
remote connection with the loathing and abhorrence of the puritan,
was, undoubtedly, a factor in determining the social status of
Shakespeare and his fellows. The latter were often, it is true, on
terms of familiarity with the noblemen of the day; but, however
great a favourite he might be, and however respectable and
wealthy he might become, the Elizabethan common player was a
‘servant' in the eyes both of the nobleman to whose company
he belonged and of everyone else. Even Shakespeare's main
6
1 By Boas, F. 8. , in The Fortnightly Review for August 1907. The letter itself is
preserved among the manuscripts of Corpus Christi college, Oxford.
This is also to be found in Th’Overthrow of Stage-Playes.
## p. 400 (#418) ############################################
400 The Puritan Attack upon the Stage
1
ambition, apparently, was to become a “gentleman. ' It is not difficult
to understand the disgust of those who amused themselves with
the time-honoured academic play, at this intrusion into their sphere
of persons whom they would deem base-born hirelings.
After Elizabeth's death, and under a new dynasty, a change
came over the character and position of the stage. In 1604, the
right of noblemen to patronise players was virtually withdrawn
by the repeal of the previous statutes exempting the members of
their companies from the penalties of vagrancy? This gave a
formidable weapon into the hands of any provincial corporation
and magistrates that wished to rid their community of the presence
of travelling actors, as Sir Edward Coke carefully explained to
the good people of Norwich on his circuit of 1606. On the other
hand, by extending the policy introduced by Walsingham in 1583
and placing the great companies, one after the other, under the
direct patronage of the crown, the position of the London stage
was rendered practically impregnable. Yet the theatre lost more
than it gained. It ceased to be a national institution and became
a department of the revels' office; while its direct subordination
to the court made it more unpopular than ever with the puritans,
who were rapidly becoming the anti-court party. The actor could
scarcely be anything but royalist. The dramatist could see but
one side to those great questions which were sweeping England
on to civil war. But there was another side to this matter, which
should not be overlooked. While there can be no doubt whatever
that, among the generality of puritans, the detestation of the stage
was steadily on the increase at this period, wealthier citizens now
began to look with more favourable eye upon theatrical perform-
The playhouses, in short, or, at least, the best known
among them, by entering into close relations with the court added
the finishing touches to the reputation for respectability which
they had been slowly acquiring during Elizabeth's last years.
They lost, to a large extent, their popular character and became
fashionable resorts which citizens and, more especially, citizens'
wives found it both pleasant and socially advantageous to attend.
This fact helps to explain the almost complete cessation of the
city's attacks and later pamphleteers, such as Rawlidge, do not
hesitate to compare the more complacent citizens of Stewart
London with the religious senators' of a previous day.
Puritan anti-dramatic literature, with the exception of the
1 Prothero, G. W. , Select Statutes, p. 253.
2 The Lord Coke his speech and charge, Nath. Butter, 1607.
1
ances.
6
## p. 401 (#419) ############################################
>
The Exasperation of both Parties
401
sermon and the theological treatise', was almost as scanty under
James I as it had been during the last decade of Elizabeth's
reign. The first to revive the old controversy was a writer of the
theatrical party. In 1612, Thomas Heywood took upon him to
defend his calling, apparently from some attack on the part of
the authorities of which we have no knowledge? His tract was
entitled An Apology for Actors. The poems by various of the
author's friends with which it opens are not its least interesting
feature. John Webster's name figures among them ; but his con-
tribution is scarcely so entertaining as that by Richard Perkins,
which makes some amusing hits at the hypocritical aspect of
puritanism. Heywood divides his book into three parts, which
set out to display the 'antiquity, the 'ancient dignity' and the
'true use' of his profession. Much of his argument recalls that
of Lodge, whose 'patchte pamphlet,' A Defence of Stage-Playes,
doubtless, he had studied. Among new lines of defence may
be noticed the observation that, though the classical stage was
at its height at the time when Christ and His apostles were
on earth, yet there is not a single text in the whole New
Testament condemning it. Great stress is laid upon the value of
the drama as a moral tonic, and the puritan method of backing
an argument with lists of divine judgments is cleverly adapted to
the actors' purposes by a series of stories illustrating the strange
and wonderful workings of a powerful play upon a guilty conscience.
The inevitable puritan reply appeared three years later and is con-
jectured to have been the work of one John Greene. In A
Refutation of the Apology for Actors, as it is called, Heywood
is laboriously answered point by point. The author borrows
largely, and, at times, almost verbally, from Stubbes, while, in
the methodical arrangement of his argument and in his tedious
list of quotations from the fathers, he anticipates the work of
Prynne
In 1614, a new literary fashion was started by the publication
of Sir Thomas Overbury's Characters, and it was but natural that
the controversy concerning the stage should be reflected in this
and many similar publications. In 1616, for example, the author
of The Rich Cabnit furnished with a Varietie of exquisite
i See above, p. 375.
? Apology, ed. Collier, p. 14.
3 A year after Heywood's Apology, appeared George Wither's Abuses Stript and
Whipt; bat, notwithstanding the familiar ring of its title and the unfavourable
references to the stage which it contains, this slashing satire in verse is of a quite
different order from the ordinary puritan "abuse' pamphlet.
E. L. VI. CH. XIV.
26
## p. 402 (#420) ############################################
402 The Puritan Attack upon the Stage
6
Discriptions devoted a chapter of his book to the character of
a player. He is ready to admit that the actor possesses certain
excellent accomplishments such as 'dancing, song, ellocution, skill
of weapon, pregnancy of wit'-a suggestive list of what was re-
quired of those who trod the Jacobean stage—but he can find
no epithets strong enough to describe the immoral results of
frequenting the theatre.
These character writers, however, hardly belong to the ranks of
the regular combatants. We catch a better glimpse of the real
strength of the feeling against the stage at this period, and of what
the actor frequently had to suffer on its account, from an interest-
ing letter, preserved among the State Papers for 1616, by Nathaniel
Field, actor and playwright, to a certain ‘Mr Sutton, Preacher att
St Mary Overs. ' Stung to the quick by the railings, frequently, it
appears, spiced with personal allusions, which the worthy minister
hurled at the heads of the members of the 'Hope' company who
formed part of his congregation, Field, at length, felt forced to take
up the pen in self-defence. His letter, manly and independent in
tone, protested in almost impassioned language against the puritan
conception of an actor's mode of life, and appealed in pathetic
terms to Heaven in self-justification. As the son of that doughty
opponent of both bishop and stage, whose pamphlet in reference
to the Paris garden disaster we have already noticed, Field was,
doubtless, in a delicate position'. But, having been left an orphan a
year after his birth, he had been brought up as one of the children
of the Chapel Royal, and, if he had ever been troubled by any
scruples about the profession for which fortune had fashioned him,
a diligent study of the Bible, in which he found no 'trade of life
except conjurers, sorcerers and witches, ipso facto, damned' had
long removed them. However, it was a case of mutual irritation;
for if, as Field's letter shows, the pulpits resounded with invectives
against that monster of vice and minister of sensuality, the actor,
the audience at the theatre daily shook its sides over the antics of
that ludicrous compound of nasal piety and furtive hypocrisy, the
puritan. Lucy Hutchinson, writing of the treatment which puritans
suffered at this period, declares that
age, every table and every puppet play belched forth profane scoffs
upon them, the drunkards made them their songs and all fiddlers and mimics
learned to abuse them, as finding it the most graceful way of fooling2.
every
1 John Field's other son Theophilus, it is interesting to notice, became a
bishop.
2 Memoirs of Colonel John Hutchinson, ed. 1885, vol. I, p. 115.
## p. 403 (#421) ############################################
Prynne's Histriomastix
403
The drama of the age is full of references to puritans, and, as time
went on, these became more and more contemptuous and insulting.
Lucy Hutchinson's words and Nathaniel Field's letter, both
brimming over with passionate resentment, give us more insight
into the real exasperation of the two parties than treatises stuffed
with patristic and classical lore.
The foolish and short sighted policy of the first two Stewarts was
not likely to diminish, in any way, this bitter feeling against the
unholy amusement which they favoured and protected. Instead,
it raised up a fresh engine of reform before which both court and
stage, eventually, went down. In 1625, the year of Charles's ac-
cession, an anonymous puritan opened a new, and, in the light of
subsequent events, an ominous, line of attack. It was hopeless
to ask the crown to cleanse the Augean stables, and the city had
long since given up the task in despair ; he, therefore, addressed
himself to parliament, round which the hopes of all reformers were
beginning to cluster. His petition, calling itself A Short Treatise
against Stage-Playes, is a brief and exceedingly businesslike
enumeration of the chief arguments against the drama. In these
twenty-eight pages may be found the whole gist of Histriomastix;
indeed, the tract reads so much like a first draft of its unwieldy
successor that the suspicion is forced upon us that it was either
written by Prynne himself, who as we know, began to collect his
materials in 1624, or taken by him from another writer to be made
the basis of his book.
When we of the twentieth century hold in our hands the
cube of printed matter known as Histriomastix, and turn over its
eleven hundred pages, in which marginal notes and references
to authorities, for the most part, long since forgotten, often take
up more room than the text itself, we find it very difficult to
realise just what the book meant in its own day. To us, it seems
half pathetic and half ridiculous, a gigantic monument of mis-
placed energy and zeal, a pyramid left gaunt and useless on the
sands of time.
To a great extent, the work was the outcome of
a peculiar personality. Prynne was a fanatic of that indomitable
and most intolerant kind—the moral enthusiast. Apparently
i The Brit. Mus. Cat. , on what grounds is not apparent, attributes it to Alexander
Leighton, whose cause and character were very similar to those of Prynne. In 1628,
Richard Rawlidge, in A Monster lately found out and discovered or the Scourging of
Tipplers, wrote unfavourably of the theatre. His bitter language is rendered all the more
remarkable by his obvious commonsense in other matters. His book, which refers
to Whetstone's Mirour, must rank with that as one of the secondary contribu-
tions to the controversy.
26-2
## p. 404 (#422) ############################################
404
The Puritan Attack upon the Stage
with very little of the milk of human kindness in his com-
position, he burned with an internal flame of righteous con-
viction, and this alone could have sustained him, not merely in his
sufferings, but, also, in those untiring labours which his pen pro-
duced, over and above the immense Histriomastix. Yet, at the
same time, he was thoroughly representative, his idiosyncrasies
being extreme developments of, rather than departures from, the
normal characteristics of his fellow reformers. If it be ever
possible for one man to sum up a movement in his own person,
Prynne summed up puritanism. And, since his book epitomises,
likewise, the whole puritan attack upon the stage, a consideration
of author and book together form a suitable close to the present
study.
The story of its publication and of his cruel punishment is too
well known to require lengthy treatment here. Nor is this the
place to go into the vexed question as to whether he was techni-
cally guilty of seditious libel. After more than seven years' labour,
and after several fruitless attempts to procure a licence, he managed
at last, in 1632, to get his great work through the press. About
the time when the last sheets were being worked off, queen
Henrietta Maria and her women were engaged in rehearsing a
pastoral play for a performance at Whitehall, which, apparently,
did not actually take place until the book was in circulation.
The idea of women appearing on the stage was new and shocking
to English spectators. In 1629, a company of French actresses, at
the invitation of the queen, had attempted to give a performance
at Blackfriars and had been ‘hissed, hooted and pippen-pelted from
the stage. ' Prynne referred to this incident in great glee and,
whether in ignorance of the impending pastoral or of set purpose,
inserted in the table of contents at the end of his book an ex-
pression stigmatising women actors as 'notorious whores. ' He
was immediately summoned before the high commission; and,
l
though it is not clear what was the exact charge, there can be
no doubt that his chief offence was the accidental or intentional
application of these words to the queen's person. The upshot
was that he was condemned to stand in the pillory, a penalty he
underwent on two separate occasions, to lose both his ears, to be
branded as a seditious libeller on both cheeks, to pay a fine of
£5000 and to be perpetually imprisoned. Perhaps, the loss of
his Oxford degree and his expulsion from Lincoln's inn were
not the lightest part of the punishment to a man of Prynne's
habits and temperament. His life sentence was afterwards can-
## p. 405 (#423) ############################################
Prynne's Histriomastix
405
celled by parliament; but he suffered the remainder of the sen-
tence in patience and serenity. Prynne was a narrow-minded,
dry-hearted, fierce fanatic; but, could he stand before us now,
with his cropped ears and the letters S. L. burnt into his cheeks
(Stigmata Laudis he interpreted them, in a rare burst of humour),
we should acknowledge that the narrow-mindedness and fanaticism
were not all on one side.
Despite its enormous length, there is nothing new in Histrio-
mastix, The Player's Scourge or Actors Tragedie', except, perhaps,
the extraordinary fierceness of its denunciation. Prynne's know-
ledge of the stage was of the scantiest description. He owns, indeed,
with shame, that, when a ‘novice,' he had been enticed by evil
companions to attend 'foure severall Playes'; but, with these
exceptions, he seems to be completely ignorant of the dramatic
literature of the age, his only reference to our greatest dramatist
being the indignant observation that ‘Shackpeers Plaies are printed
in the best Crowne paper, far better than most Bibles. But, if
Prynne knew little of contemporary drama, his seeming know-
ledge of anti-dramatic literature was astounding. Laud asserted
that, merely to read the works cited by Prynne would take sixty
years of an ordinary man's life. The truth was that Prynne
could not have read a tithe of his authorities; and he quotes,
for the most part, not from the authors themselves, but from
the quotations of previous puritan writers. During a campaign
of over sixty years, carried on by a large number of eager
seekers for chapter and verse, half the accessible writers of
antiquity, and most of those since the beginning of the Christian
era, had been ransacked for even the slightest hint of anti-
dramatic feeling, which, when discovered, was pounced upon and
pigeonholed under its special argument. The same points, too,
were made by puritan after puritan with scarcely a change of word,
and in sublime innocence of the sin of plagiarism. Thus, the stream
of argument and quotation went on swelling from year to year,
until, at last, it emptied itself into Prynne's great reservoir'. In
his case, such a method was extremely dangerous ; for his was the
pursuit of proof, not of truth. A single statement from an author
in dispraise, or apparent dispraise, of plays is allowed to outweigh
the testimony of the writer's whole life and character. Thus,
1 For the full title, which, if given above, would occupy a whole page, see biblio-
graphy. A very useful analysis of the contents of the book is to be found in Ward,
vol. I, pp. 241–3.
2 Thus the Table (40 pp. ), at the end of Histriomastic, forms, perhaps, the
best index to the whole controversy.
## p. 406 (#424) ############################################
406 The Puritan Attack upon the Stage
a
Plutarch, Horace and Cicero are found in company with the early
fathers as abhorrers of stage plays. This must not be taken as an
impeachment of Prynne's honesty. He was honest enough ; but
he often quotes at second hand, and, even when he had the
original before him, he was blinded by the force of zeal to anything
that conflicted with his argument - as what controversialist
is not?
Perhaps the most original thing about the book is its arrange-
ment. It is divided into two parts, and these, in turn, are sub-
divided into acts and scenes with an occasional chorus. This
dramatic setting, curious in a book written against the stage, was
intended to carry out the idea of The Actors Tragedie suggested
on the title-page; but, also, it was an extremely convenient form
for the purposes of the argument. The first act, for example,
naturally deals with the satanic origin of the theatre, while, in the
seventh, Prynne triumphantly marshals his mass of authorities
in seven different squadrons or scenes, according to period or
character, the whole being crowned with a chorus in which he
announces that none can withstand his 'all-conquering troopes. '
This plan of arrangement may owe something to Gosson's Playes
confuted in five Actions; but the execution and the details were
all Prynne's.
His book is the last of the series which we have to note.
Its size and elaboration, the supposed insult to the queen, the
celebrated trial and the sufferings of the author, must have
brought the topic of stage morality very much to the fore and
have greatly increased the bitterness of the puritan party. But
Histriomastix had no imitators. It had completely exhausted
the subject. Besides, it was now dangerous to write against the
theatre, since this involved the risk of offending royalty and of thus
falling into the inexorable hands of the high commission. Further
than this, events were fast drifting towards revolution, and the
minds of men were filled with other and greater matters than the
stage? Whether, as has been suggested, Prynne's attack did any-
thing to reform the stage, it would be extremely difficult to deter-
mine; and, in any case, the question is a somewhat idle one. Of
greater importance is the fact that the theatre was in a far from
prosperous condition immediately before its suppression, as is
clear from a curious little tract printed, in 1641, under the title
The Stage-Players Complaint.
1 This, probably, also accounts for the fact that Prynne's book, apparently, remained
unanswered until 1662, when Sir Richard Baker published his Theatrum Redivitum,
## p. 407 (#425) ############################################
The End of the Controversy
407
Monopolers are down, Projectors are down, the High Commission Court
is downe, the Starre Chamber is downe, and (some think) Bishops will be
downe and why should we then that are farre inferior to any of these not
justely feare that we should be downe too ?
Such is the burden of the author's tale, and the atmosphere of
impending disaster which pervades the tract appropriately culmi-
nates in the concluding words: From Plague, Pestilence and
Famine from Battel, Murder and Suddaine Death Good Lord
deliver us. ' Few contemporary documents give a better picture
of the gloom and sense of coming catastrophe that had come over
a large part of the nation at this juncture in our history. But the
words of the Litany were applicable to present needs and sorrows
as well as to future fears. The plague had been more than usually
violent since 1630, and, in consequence, the playhouses had been
shut for the greater part of each year. The net result of these
various factors in the situation was that the ordinance of
2 September 1642 for the total suppression of stage plays was
received, not only without surprise, but almost without attention.
In estimating parliament's reasons for this step, political consider-
ations should not be left out of account. The actor was now
hated, not only on account of his profession, but, also, as the
minion of the despot, and the passage just quoted shows that he
realised the fact well enough. Moreover, the stage, obviously, was
too dangerous an institution to be tolerated by any anti-royalist
government. Players were ‘malignants' almost to a man, and,
however efficient the censorship might be, the performance of an
apparently harmless play might easily develop into a demonstration
in favour of the king. Yet, for all this, we cannot doubt that the
main intentions of the act were moral. The stage was swept
away by the tide of puritan indignation and hatred, of which
we have been watching the rise.
It was not to be expected, however, that so drastic a measure
could be carried out without difficulty. Parliament found it
necessary in 1647 and, again, in 1648 to pass further and more
stringent ordinances against the stage, ordering all players to be
apprehended and publicly whipped, all playhouses to be pulled
down and any one present at a play to pay a fine of five shillings.
Protests were not wanting against this policy. In 1643, two tracts
appeared : one, The Actors Remonstrance, a humble request for
the restoration of acting rights in return for sweeping reforms,
which, incidentally, gives an interesting glimpse of what went on
behind the scenes of theatrical life; the other, The Players
## p. 408 (#426) ############################################
408 The Puritan Attack upon the Stage
Petition to the Parliament, a piece of satirical verse, which
mocked at the Rump under pretence of appealing to it. The
sauciness of the latter, however, was nothing to that of an un-
known person who, at the beginning of 1649, actually published
a book called Mr William Prynne, his defence of Stage-Playes.
or a Retraction of his former book. Needless to say, the in-
a
dignant victim of this effrontery at once issued a denial of the
charge?
We have now enumerated and described the chief documents
and events relating to the puritan campaign against the stage,
culminating in the victory of 1642. The controversy has never really
died out. It burst forth again in all its old vigour and with all
its characteristic pedantry at the end of the seventeenth century.
Curiously enough it was a high Anglican non-juror, Jeremy Collier,
upon whose shoulders the puritan mantle fell; and his example
was followed, thirty years later, by yet another Jacobite, William
Law, the author of A Serious Call. Even modern writers
have found it difficult to discuss the Elizabethan stage without
ardently defending the puritans who attacked it. Yet the in-
fluence which the early fathers, like distanţ planets, seemed
to exert upon every puritan in turn, the wholesale manner
in which each borrows the arguments and expressions of his pre-
decessor and, above all, the almost complete ignorance displayed
by a large proportion of the assailants as to the real character of
the institution they were attacking, combine to give the whole
discussion an air of academic unreality. This impression, perhaps,
is partly due to controversial methods which appealed forcibly to
the Elizabethan intelligence, but which, by exasperating the
modern reader, blind him to the genuine feeling that lies under
their antiquated and absurd forms. For there can be no doubt
whatever that puritan antipathy amounted to a fierce loathing,
of whose strength a generation living in blander times cannot
have any conception. In a word, the whole movement, from the
outset, was not one for reforming the theatre but for abolishing it.
Proposals for reform came rather from those who wrote in defence
of the theatre, and whose attitude, it may be observed, was, in one
sense, singularly in accord with that of their opponents. In
1 The fortunes of the players under the Commonwealth may be followed in
some detail in James Wright's Historia Histrionica 1699 (reprinted in Hazlitt's
Dodsley (vol. xv), and in Whitelocke's Memorials. It is, perhaps, worth noticing
here that, in 1658, William Cartwright found courage to reprint Heywood's Apology,
under the title an Actor's Vindication.
!
## p. 409 (#427) ############################################
General Aspects of the Controversy 409
the modern sense of the word, at least, they were puritans to
a man. The stage-hater stoutly maintained that the drama did
not and could not fulfil any ethical function. On the other hand,
Bavande, Wager, Lodge, Gager, Nashe and Heywood, one and
all, regarded the drama, first and foremost, as an engine for
moral instruction. That such a man as Heywood should express
himself thus, proves that he had scarcely more understanding than
Stubbes and Prynne of the real nature of the drama which he
represented. No one can pretend that Shakespeare and his fellow
playwrights troubled themselves about theories of conduct. The
defenders of the stage made pitiful attempts to justify their craft
upon moral principles; but, in admitting the subordination of art
to ethics, they had yielded their whole position. Had puritans
only studied the theatre more and the early fathers less, they
might, starting with the premisses which their antagonists gave
them, have made out a much better case for prosecution. They
had all the logic on their side. On the side of the apologists,
.
was all the commonsense-if they could only have seen it !
## p. 410 (#428) ############################################
BIBLIOGRAPHIES
GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY
VOLS. V AND VI
It may be well, without attempting to do over again part of a task
admirably accomplished by Schelling, F. E. , in the Bibliographical Essay con-
tained in vol. 11 of his Elizabethan Drama, 1558-1642, Boston and New York,
1908, to point out that the bibliographies to the several chapters of the present
volume and its predecessor repeatedly refer to certain works which more or
less cover the whole of the period in question. These works will ordinarily
be cited in the separate bibliographies by the abbreviations added in italics to
the titles in the following lists.
I. COLLECTIONS OF PLAYS.
(This does not include series of volumes of which each contains the plays,
or a selection from the plays, of a single author. )
Amyot, T. and others. A Supplement to Dodsley's Old English Plays.
4 vols. 1853. (Amyot's Suppl. to Dodsley. )
Bang, W. Materialien zur Kunde des älteren englischen Dramas. Louvain,
1902, etc. (In progress. ) (Bang's Materialien. )
Brandl, A. Quellen des weltlichen Dramas in England vor Shakespeare.
Vol. Lxxx of Quellen u. Forschungen zur Sprach- u. Culturgesch, d.
German. Völker. Strassburg, 1898. (Brandls Quellen. )
Bullen, A. H. A Collection of Old English Plays. 4 vols. 1882-5. (Bullen's
Old English Plays. )
Old English Plays. New Series. 3 vols. 1887-90. (Bullen's Old
English Plays, N. S. )
Child, F. J. Four Old Plays. Cambridge, Mass. , 1848. (Four Old Plays. )
Collier, J. P. Five Old Plays illustrative of the early Progress of the
English Drama: The Conflict of Conscience; The Three Triumphs of
Love and Fortune; The Three Ladies of London; The Three Lords and
the Three Ladies of London; A Knack to Know a Knave. Ed. for the
Roxburghe Club. 1851. (Five Old Plays. )
Dilke, (Sir) C. W. Old English Plays; being a selection from the early
dramatic writers. 6 vols. 1814-5. (Dilke's 0. E. P. )
Dodsley's Old English Plays. Ed. Hazlitt, W. C. 15 vols. 1874-6. (Hazlitt's
Dodsley. )
Earlier editions:
A Select Collection of Old Plays. [Ed. by R. D. ) 12 vols. 1744.
(Dodsley (1744). )
## p. 411 (#429) ############################################
General Bibliography
411
A Select Collection of Old Plays. [By R. D. ) Ed. Reed, I. 12 vols.
1780. (Reed's Dodsley. )
A Select Collection of Old Plays. [By R. D. ) New ed.
