Thus
closed the earliest and most important of those hand to hand
encounters which occasionally enlivened the course of the struggle.
closed the earliest and most important of those hand to hand
encounters which occasionally enlivened the course of the struggle.
Cambridge History of English Literature - 1908 - v06
, 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'. The play is not extant, and was probably never even
printed; but we learn a great deal about it from Gosson who
is ever very liberal in his accounts of his antagonists' movements.
Its object was to show how dangerous Zeal, or puritanism, might
become as the sole guide to Life. Only when 'somewhat pinchte
1 Hazlitt, op. cit. p. 212.
See Fleay's Chronicle of Stage, pp. 51, 52; The Modern Language Review, vol. rv,
pp. 484—7. Cf. however, ante, vol. V, p. 313, note.
: A Treatise of Daunses (1581), usually quoted as one of the pamphlets in the
controversy, contains no reference whatever to the stage, the word 'playes' on the title-
page, which has misled the unwary, meaning games of chance.
* This date is given us by Gosson, Plays Confuted, Hazlitt, p. 189. Halliwell.
Phillipps (Tarlton's Jests, Old Shakesp. Soc. , 1844, p. xx) prints from 'a manuscript in
the possession of Mr Collier' Tarlton's Jigge of a horse loade of Fooles, of. ante, vol. iv,
p. 531, which brings in Gosson as a Puritan-fool, 'for sure a hypocrite. ' If genuine
(which, however, is a very doubtful assumption) the jigge' was probably written about
this time.
• Histriomastix, p. 700. Prynne was evidently confusing The Playe of Playes
with Lodge's Defence. The controversial "morality' was also employed against the
Martinists. See ante, vol. III, pp. 393—4.
.
5
## p. 392 (#410) ############################################
392
The Puritan Attack upon the Stage
in the wast' and in company with Delight and Recreation was
she tolerable, being then ready to allow the use of comedies,
provided, of course, that the matter be purged, deformities blazed,
sinne rebuked, honest mirth intermingled and fit time for the
hearing of the same appointed? '
For a long time, Gosson had been unable to procure a copy of
Lodge's suppressed pamphlet. His rejoinder, therefore, promised
in An Apologie for the Schoole of Abuse, did not make its ap-
pearance until 1582, and included an answer to the players also.
Playes confuted in five Actions, as he calls his book, is unlike
The Schoole of Abuse in every respect, and the complete change
of tone, in all probability, may be attributed to the influence of
the lord mayor, for we have little confidence in the sincerity of
Gosson's sentiments? Like the author of the Second and the
Third Blast, he is now concerned with the stage alone, which
has overshadowed all other "abuses' in his eyes. Plays are not
to be suffered in a Christian commonweale,' for are they not the
doctrine and invention of the Devill'? Even Lodge cannot deny
that they were originally dedicated to idols, or that the first theatre
was erected to facilitate the rape of the Sabine women, And the
style has changed with the matter. Euphuism and the classics
are laid aside, and, in their stead, we are treated to divinity
and the early fathers; there is no longer even a pretence at
pleasantry in Gosson's invective. The book, probably, was written
in haste, for, despite its division into 'five actions, which antici-
pates the acts and scenes of Histriomastix, it has no intelligible
arrangement of topics. Revenge is taken for Lodge's personalities
in the dedication, which, this time, is addressed to Sir Francis
Walsingham? , a scarcely more fortunate choice than Sir Philip
Sidney. Gosson declares that his antagonist had been 'hunted by
the heavy hand of God and become little better than a vagarant. '
Whether these words are merely an outburst of spleen or
actually referred to a discreditable passage in the doctor-
novelist's life, is not known. Lodge, at least, did not consider
them worthy of any immediate reply, and, when, two years later,
he recalled the controversy in the dedication of his Alarum against
Usurers (1584), he charitably excused Gosson for his spiteful
1 Hazlitt, pp. 201—3.
The coarse Pleasant Quippes for Upstart Gentlewomen (1596), almost certainly
by Gosson, could hardly have been written by a genuine puritan.
3 Cf. the lord mayor's letter of 1583 (Malone Society Collections, part 1, p. 63). It
seems that, in spite of bis action on 10 March 1583, puritans had some reason for re-
garding Walsingham, in Gosson's words, as 'a Hercules in the Court to cleanse the
Augean stables.
## p. 393 (#411) ############################################
The Anatomie of Abuses
393
remarks, declaring that he bore him no grudge for them.
Thus
closed the earliest and most important of those hand to hand
encounters which occasionally enlivened the course of the struggle.
The next tract we have to notice deals with the Paris
garden disaster of January 1583, which was too striking not to
evoke something more permanent than the inevitable broadside
ballad. Within a week of its occurrence, a small octavo of forty
pages appeared from the press of the puritan printer, Robert
Waldegrave! It was the work of John Field, part author of the
first Admonition to Parliament and posthumous contributor to the
Marprelate controversy. He had long been known as an opponent
of the stage, and, in a letter, dated 25 November 1581, thanking
Leicester for procuring his release from prison, into which he
had been thrown for nonconformity, he actually takes occasion to
chide his benefactor for his love of these impure interludes and
playes? ' His Godly Exhortation, as he styled it, deals with the
drama chiefly from the Sabbatarian point of view and contains the
usual list of terrible judgments, among which the late disaster at
Paris garden, naturally, took a prominent place. This interesting
little tract is far better written than the majority of the series.
In the same year, 1583, a book was published which has an
importance far beyond that belonging to it as a contribution
to the controversy under discussion. This was The Anatomie of
Abuses, by the foremost of puritan social reformers, Philip Stubbes.
Practically, nothing is known of his life, and it is unfortunate that
the only contemporary testimony extant concerning his character
is a ribald story in the anti-Martinist tract, An Almond for a
Parrat. His literary activity, which covered a period of some
thirteen years, seems to have begun about 1581, when he published
a broadside ballad setting forth the fearful fate that had befallen
'a lewde fellow usually accostomed to sweare by Gods Blood' A
second edition of this, containing another ballad of similar nature,
appeared shortly afterwards. Stubbes continued this practice of
turning the public taste for horror to godly purposes in his fourth
and most important work, by bringing together a formidable
array of examples of divine judgments suddenly executed upon
sinners of various kinds. This book, the famous Anatomie of
Abuses, the title of which, perhaps, was intended to suggest
6
1 Dated on the last page 17 Jan. Fleetwood notes its appearance in an entry
in his diary ander 19 Jan. (Malone Society Collections, part 1, p. 161).
3 Collier, J. P. , vol. 1, pp. 243–6. Another pamphlet on the same topic, Henry
Cave's Narration of the Fall of Paris Garden (1588? ), seems to have disappeared,
## p. 394 (#412) ############################################
394 The Puritan Attack upon the Stage
comparison with the fashionable Anatomy of Wit, was printed on
1 May 1583 and, immediately becoming popular, passed through
four editions in three years. It was followed, a few months later,
by a second part no less interesting, if less well known, than
its predecessor. Both were 'made dialogue-wise' and consist of
descriptions and condemnations, backed by scriptural texts and
the aforesaid terrible examples, of those evils in the commonwealth
which needed abolition or reformation. In all this there was
nothing original. The records of the time are full of references
to tracts against dicing, gaming, sabbath-breaking, usury and so
forth. Excellent as his intentions were, Stubbes's title to fame
rests rather on the vigour and picturesqueness of his style, the
shrewdness of his observations and, above all, the surprising
knowledge he displays as to the manners and customs of his age.
The Anatomie of Abuses and Harrison's Description of England,
which is dealt with elsewhere, are our two chief contemporary
sources of information upon the social and economic conditions
of the Shakespearean period. The lengthy description which
Stubbes gives of the extravagances of Elizabethan fashion is, a
unique storehouse of facts relating to late sixteenth century
costume. But this famous passage has tended unduly to obscure
the merits of the rest. The opening words of The Anatomie give
us to understand that the author had been travelling up and down
the country for 'seven winters and more,' collecting material for
his book. Certainly, nothing but the greatest patience and
industry could have brought together all these details upon a
great variety of subjects. The flippant Nashe, attacking Stubbes
and his like in The Anatomie of Absurditie, declared that they
'extend their invectives so farre against the abuse, that almost
the things remaines not whereof they admitte anie lawfull use"
There is some truth in this; but, had Stubbes been less earnest and
less sweeping, we should have had none of those interesting and
curious allusions to church-ales, barbers, football, astrologers and
a hundred other seemingly trivial matters. Moreover, there is
much sound commonsense behind most that he writes. While
pleading on almost every page for the rights of the poor, he has no
sentimental pity for the idle vagrant. Rackrenting, prison reform
and many other problems that still press for solution, are touched
upon in a manner that would do credit to a modern socialist. The
Anatomie of Abuses is a very remarkable book. It is essentially
the work of an original thinker, and, in fact, is an early attempt to
1 McKerrow's Nashe, vol. 1, p. 20, 1. 7.
## p. 395 (#413) ############################################
Stubbes and Rankins
395
sum up the moral and economic forces of a nation in a fashion far
removed, but not radically different, from that employed by the
sociologists or political economists of the twentieth century.
Though confined to a short section of some five or six pages,
entitled 'Of Stage-Playes and Enterludes, with their wickedness ^,'
Stubbes's condemnation of the theatre is far the most uncompro-
mising and intolerant that had yet appeared in England. Also, he
was unmistakably sincere, which is more than can be said of any
of his predecessors except Northbrooke and the preachers. The
devilish origin of plays and their ghastly moral results are
sharply and effectively driven home in Stubbes's hammerlike
style, weighted by the authority of Scripture and the early
fathers. There is no mincing matters; to patronise the theatre
is 'to worship devils and betray Christ Jesus,' and, as for players
themselves, they can only be earnestly exhorted to repent and so
flee from the wrath to come, which, as Stubbes thought, was to
come speedily. These trenchant observations, in a book which at
once became popular, must have gone to swell the rising puritan
opposition. Stubbes himself, it may be noted, rose with the tide ;
for a conciliatory preface, admitting that some plays were ‘honest
and chaste' and, as such, 'very tollerable exercyses,' was omitted
after the first edition, thus proving that his final opinion on the
matter was one of unqualified condemnation? .
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.
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'. The play is not extant, and was probably never even
printed; but we learn a great deal about it from Gosson who
is ever very liberal in his accounts of his antagonists' movements.
Its object was to show how dangerous Zeal, or puritanism, might
become as the sole guide to Life. Only when 'somewhat pinchte
1 Hazlitt, op. cit. p. 212.
See Fleay's Chronicle of Stage, pp. 51, 52; The Modern Language Review, vol. rv,
pp. 484—7. Cf. however, ante, vol. V, p. 313, note.
: A Treatise of Daunses (1581), usually quoted as one of the pamphlets in the
controversy, contains no reference whatever to the stage, the word 'playes' on the title-
page, which has misled the unwary, meaning games of chance.
* This date is given us by Gosson, Plays Confuted, Hazlitt, p. 189. Halliwell.
Phillipps (Tarlton's Jests, Old Shakesp. Soc. , 1844, p. xx) prints from 'a manuscript in
the possession of Mr Collier' Tarlton's Jigge of a horse loade of Fooles, of. ante, vol. iv,
p. 531, which brings in Gosson as a Puritan-fool, 'for sure a hypocrite. ' If genuine
(which, however, is a very doubtful assumption) the jigge' was probably written about
this time.
• Histriomastix, p. 700. Prynne was evidently confusing The Playe of Playes
with Lodge's Defence. The controversial "morality' was also employed against the
Martinists. See ante, vol. III, pp. 393—4.
.
5
## p. 392 (#410) ############################################
392
The Puritan Attack upon the Stage
in the wast' and in company with Delight and Recreation was
she tolerable, being then ready to allow the use of comedies,
provided, of course, that the matter be purged, deformities blazed,
sinne rebuked, honest mirth intermingled and fit time for the
hearing of the same appointed? '
For a long time, Gosson had been unable to procure a copy of
Lodge's suppressed pamphlet. His rejoinder, therefore, promised
in An Apologie for the Schoole of Abuse, did not make its ap-
pearance until 1582, and included an answer to the players also.
Playes confuted in five Actions, as he calls his book, is unlike
The Schoole of Abuse in every respect, and the complete change
of tone, in all probability, may be attributed to the influence of
the lord mayor, for we have little confidence in the sincerity of
Gosson's sentiments? Like the author of the Second and the
Third Blast, he is now concerned with the stage alone, which
has overshadowed all other "abuses' in his eyes. Plays are not
to be suffered in a Christian commonweale,' for are they not the
doctrine and invention of the Devill'? Even Lodge cannot deny
that they were originally dedicated to idols, or that the first theatre
was erected to facilitate the rape of the Sabine women, And the
style has changed with the matter. Euphuism and the classics
are laid aside, and, in their stead, we are treated to divinity
and the early fathers; there is no longer even a pretence at
pleasantry in Gosson's invective. The book, probably, was written
in haste, for, despite its division into 'five actions, which antici-
pates the acts and scenes of Histriomastix, it has no intelligible
arrangement of topics. Revenge is taken for Lodge's personalities
in the dedication, which, this time, is addressed to Sir Francis
Walsingham? , a scarcely more fortunate choice than Sir Philip
Sidney. Gosson declares that his antagonist had been 'hunted by
the heavy hand of God and become little better than a vagarant. '
Whether these words are merely an outburst of spleen or
actually referred to a discreditable passage in the doctor-
novelist's life, is not known. Lodge, at least, did not consider
them worthy of any immediate reply, and, when, two years later,
he recalled the controversy in the dedication of his Alarum against
Usurers (1584), he charitably excused Gosson for his spiteful
1 Hazlitt, pp. 201—3.
The coarse Pleasant Quippes for Upstart Gentlewomen (1596), almost certainly
by Gosson, could hardly have been written by a genuine puritan.
3 Cf. the lord mayor's letter of 1583 (Malone Society Collections, part 1, p. 63). It
seems that, in spite of bis action on 10 March 1583, puritans had some reason for re-
garding Walsingham, in Gosson's words, as 'a Hercules in the Court to cleanse the
Augean stables.
## p. 393 (#411) ############################################
The Anatomie of Abuses
393
remarks, declaring that he bore him no grudge for them.
Thus
closed the earliest and most important of those hand to hand
encounters which occasionally enlivened the course of the struggle.
The next tract we have to notice deals with the Paris
garden disaster of January 1583, which was too striking not to
evoke something more permanent than the inevitable broadside
ballad. Within a week of its occurrence, a small octavo of forty
pages appeared from the press of the puritan printer, Robert
Waldegrave! It was the work of John Field, part author of the
first Admonition to Parliament and posthumous contributor to the
Marprelate controversy. He had long been known as an opponent
of the stage, and, in a letter, dated 25 November 1581, thanking
Leicester for procuring his release from prison, into which he
had been thrown for nonconformity, he actually takes occasion to
chide his benefactor for his love of these impure interludes and
playes? ' His Godly Exhortation, as he styled it, deals with the
drama chiefly from the Sabbatarian point of view and contains the
usual list of terrible judgments, among which the late disaster at
Paris garden, naturally, took a prominent place. This interesting
little tract is far better written than the majority of the series.
In the same year, 1583, a book was published which has an
importance far beyond that belonging to it as a contribution
to the controversy under discussion. This was The Anatomie of
Abuses, by the foremost of puritan social reformers, Philip Stubbes.
Practically, nothing is known of his life, and it is unfortunate that
the only contemporary testimony extant concerning his character
is a ribald story in the anti-Martinist tract, An Almond for a
Parrat. His literary activity, which covered a period of some
thirteen years, seems to have begun about 1581, when he published
a broadside ballad setting forth the fearful fate that had befallen
'a lewde fellow usually accostomed to sweare by Gods Blood' A
second edition of this, containing another ballad of similar nature,
appeared shortly afterwards. Stubbes continued this practice of
turning the public taste for horror to godly purposes in his fourth
and most important work, by bringing together a formidable
array of examples of divine judgments suddenly executed upon
sinners of various kinds. This book, the famous Anatomie of
Abuses, the title of which, perhaps, was intended to suggest
6
1 Dated on the last page 17 Jan. Fleetwood notes its appearance in an entry
in his diary ander 19 Jan. (Malone Society Collections, part 1, p. 161).
3 Collier, J. P. , vol. 1, pp. 243–6. Another pamphlet on the same topic, Henry
Cave's Narration of the Fall of Paris Garden (1588? ), seems to have disappeared,
## p. 394 (#412) ############################################
394 The Puritan Attack upon the Stage
comparison with the fashionable Anatomy of Wit, was printed on
1 May 1583 and, immediately becoming popular, passed through
four editions in three years. It was followed, a few months later,
by a second part no less interesting, if less well known, than
its predecessor. Both were 'made dialogue-wise' and consist of
descriptions and condemnations, backed by scriptural texts and
the aforesaid terrible examples, of those evils in the commonwealth
which needed abolition or reformation. In all this there was
nothing original. The records of the time are full of references
to tracts against dicing, gaming, sabbath-breaking, usury and so
forth. Excellent as his intentions were, Stubbes's title to fame
rests rather on the vigour and picturesqueness of his style, the
shrewdness of his observations and, above all, the surprising
knowledge he displays as to the manners and customs of his age.
The Anatomie of Abuses and Harrison's Description of England,
which is dealt with elsewhere, are our two chief contemporary
sources of information upon the social and economic conditions
of the Shakespearean period. The lengthy description which
Stubbes gives of the extravagances of Elizabethan fashion is, a
unique storehouse of facts relating to late sixteenth century
costume. But this famous passage has tended unduly to obscure
the merits of the rest. The opening words of The Anatomie give
us to understand that the author had been travelling up and down
the country for 'seven winters and more,' collecting material for
his book. Certainly, nothing but the greatest patience and
industry could have brought together all these details upon a
great variety of subjects. The flippant Nashe, attacking Stubbes
and his like in The Anatomie of Absurditie, declared that they
'extend their invectives so farre against the abuse, that almost
the things remaines not whereof they admitte anie lawfull use"
There is some truth in this; but, had Stubbes been less earnest and
less sweeping, we should have had none of those interesting and
curious allusions to church-ales, barbers, football, astrologers and
a hundred other seemingly trivial matters. Moreover, there is
much sound commonsense behind most that he writes. While
pleading on almost every page for the rights of the poor, he has no
sentimental pity for the idle vagrant. Rackrenting, prison reform
and many other problems that still press for solution, are touched
upon in a manner that would do credit to a modern socialist. The
Anatomie of Abuses is a very remarkable book. It is essentially
the work of an original thinker, and, in fact, is an early attempt to
1 McKerrow's Nashe, vol. 1, p. 20, 1. 7.
## p. 395 (#413) ############################################
Stubbes and Rankins
395
sum up the moral and economic forces of a nation in a fashion far
removed, but not radically different, from that employed by the
sociologists or political economists of the twentieth century.
Though confined to a short section of some five or six pages,
entitled 'Of Stage-Playes and Enterludes, with their wickedness ^,'
Stubbes's condemnation of the theatre is far the most uncompro-
mising and intolerant that had yet appeared in England. Also, he
was unmistakably sincere, which is more than can be said of any
of his predecessors except Northbrooke and the preachers. The
devilish origin of plays and their ghastly moral results are
sharply and effectively driven home in Stubbes's hammerlike
style, weighted by the authority of Scripture and the early
fathers. There is no mincing matters; to patronise the theatre
is 'to worship devils and betray Christ Jesus,' and, as for players
themselves, they can only be earnestly exhorted to repent and so
flee from the wrath to come, which, as Stubbes thought, was to
come speedily. These trenchant observations, in a book which at
once became popular, must have gone to swell the rising puritan
opposition. Stubbes himself, it may be noted, rose with the tide ;
for a conciliatory preface, admitting that some plays were ‘honest
and chaste' and, as such, 'very tollerable exercyses,' was omitted
after the first edition, thus proving that his final opinion on the
matter was one of unqualified condemnation? .
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.
