to iustifie the bounty of your act: To which, though your mere
authority were satisfying, yet it being an age wherein _Poëtry_ and the
Professors of it heare so ill on all sides, there will a reason bee
look’d for in the subject. It is certaine, nor can it with any forehead
be oppos’d, that the too-much licence of _Poëtasters_ in this time
hath much deform’d their _Mistresse_; that euery day their manifold
and manifest ignorance doth stick vnnaturall reproches vpon her. But
for their petulancy, it were an act of the greatest iniustice, either
to let the learned suffer, or so diuine a _skill_ (which indeed should
not be attempted with vncleane hands) to fall vnder the least contempt.
For if men will impartially, and not à-squint, looke toward the offices
and function of a _Poët_, they will easily conclude to themselues
the impossibility of any mans being the good _Poët_, without first
being a good _Man_. He that is sayd to be able to informe _yong-men_
to all good disciplines, inflame _growne-men_ to all great vertues,
keepe _old men_ in their best and supreme state, or as they decline
to child-hood, recouer them to their first strength; that comes forth
the Interpreter and Arbiter of _Nature_, a Teacher of things diuine no
lesse than humane, a Master in manners; and can alone, or with a few,
effect the busines of Mankind. This, I take him, is no subject for
_Pride_ and _Ignorance_ to exercise their railing _rhetorique_ vpon.
But it will here be hastily answer’d, that the _Writers_ of these dayes
are other things; that not onely their manners, but their natures, are
inuerted, and nothing remaining with them of the dignity of _Poët_,
but the abused name, which euery Scribe vsurpes; that now, especially
in _Dramatick_, or (as they terme it) Stage-_Poëtry_, nothing but
Ribaldry, Profanation, Blasphemy, al Licence of offence to God, and
Man, is practisd. I dare not deny a great part of this, and am sory I
dare not: because in some mens abortiue _Features_ (and would they had
neuer boasted the light) it is ouer-true. But that all are embarqu’d
in this bold aduenture for Hell, is a most vncharitable thought, and
vtterd, a more malicious slander. For my particular, I can, and from a
most cleare conscience, affirme, that I haue euer trembled to thinke
toward the least Prophanenesse; haue loathed the vse of such foule and
vn-washd Baudr’y, as is now made the foode of the _Scene_.
lvi. 1608. WILLIAM CRASHAW.
[From _The Sermon preached at the Crosse, Feb. xiiij. 1607_
(1608, 2nd ed. 1609). Crashaw was preacher at the Inner Temple
and father of Richard Crashaw, the poet. The hypocrites,
Nicholas Saint-Tantlings and Simon Saint-Mary-Oueries, are
characters in _The Puritan_ (1607). John Selden says in his
_Table Talk_ (1689; ed. Reynolds, 134), ‘I never converted
but two, the one was Mr. Crashaw from writing against plays, by
telling him a way how to understand that place, of putting on
woman’s apparel, which has nothing to do with the business’; cf.
_infra_, s.v. Selden (1616).]
P. 169. ‘Now there are also besides these two great Babels, certaine
other little pettie Babylons, namely, incurable sinnes amongst vs,
...’ P. 170. ‘2. The vngodly Playes and Enterludes so rife in this
nation: what are they but a bastard of Babylon, a daughter of error
and confusion, a hellish deuice (the diuels owne recreation to mock
at holy things) by him deliuered to the Heathen, from them to the
Papists, and from them to vs? Of this euill and plague, the Church of
God in all ages can say, truly and with a good conscience, _wee would
haue healed her_. [Quotes Tertullian and others.] ... All this they
are daily made to know, but all in vaine, they be children of Babylon
that will not bee healed: nay, they grow worse and worse, for now they
bring religion and holy things vpon the stage: no maruel though the
worthiest and mightiest men escape not, when God himselfe is so abused.
Two hypocrites must be brought foorth; and how shall they be described
but by these names, _Nicolas S. Antlings_, _Simon S. Maryoueries_.
Thus hypocrisie a child of hell must beare the names of two Churches
of God, and two wherein Gods name is called on publikely euery day in
the yeere, and in one of them his blessed word preached euerie day (an
example scarce matchable in the world): yet these two, wherin Gods
name is thus glorified, and our Church and State honoured, shall bee
by these miscreants thus dishonoured, and that not on the stage only,
but euen in print.’ Complains of profaneness, atheism, blasphemy, and
profaning of Sabbath ‘which generally in the countrie is their play
day’. Calls on magistrate, lest God take the matter into his own hand.
lvii. 1608 (?). THOMAS HEYWOOD.
[From _An Apology for Actors. Containing three briefe Treatises.
1. Their Antiquity. 2. Their ancient Dignity. 3. The True Use of
their Quality_ (1612), reprinted by William Cartwright as _The
Actor’s Vindication_ (N.D., but according to Douce 1658) and in
1841 (_Sh. Soc._). I think the treatise was probably written in
1607 and touched up in 1608, since (_a_) the series of actors
named as dead ends with Sly, who died in Aug. 1608; (_b_) the
Revels Office is located at St. John’s, which it lost about
Feb. 1608; (_c_) the frustrated Spanish landing in ‘Perin’ in
Cornwall ‘some 12 yeares ago’ is probably the abortive Spanish
attempt to burn Pendennis Castle on Falmouth Harbour, 3 miles
from Penrhyn, which appears from _S. P. D. Eliz._ cclvi, 21,
40, and Dasent, xxv. 15, to have taken place in the autumn of
1595, probably in connexion with the better-known landing of
22 July 1595 in Mount’s Bay. Here there is a Perranuthnoe, but
this was a successful landing, resulting in serious damage to
Penzance, Mousehole, and Newlyn (_Procl._ 879). There was also
a raid at Cawsand Bay near Plymouth on 14 Mar. 1596 (_S. P.
D. Eliz._ cclvi. 89), in which the invaders fired some houses
and boats, and fled to sea on a shot being fired. But there
is no ‘Perin’ in Cawsand Bay. In _Journal of the Folk-Song
Society_, v. 275, is recorded a tradition that ‘the French once
landed invading troops at Padstow Bay; but on seeing a number
of mummers in red cloaks with their hobby-horse they supposed
that the English army was at hand, and fled’. This raid was at
St. Eval, 3 miles west of Padstow, on 13 July 1595 (_Hatfield
MSS._ v. 285), and no doubt formed part of the same expedition
which reached Mount’s Bay. Of course it was Spanish, not French;
the perversion is characteristic of tradition. Conceivably
this episode was what Heywood had in mind, but the nearest
‘Perin’, Perranporth, is some dozen miles farther west than St.
Evall. Heywood was answered by I. G. in _A Refutation of the
Apology for Actors_ (1615), which contributes nothing new, and
uses material from Gosson’s _Plays Confuted_ (No. xxx), with
references to the long-destroyed Theatre unchanged.]
[Summary and Extracts.] P. 3. _To the Earl of Worcester_. ‘I presumed
to publish this unworthy worke under your gracious patronage ... as
an acknowledgement of the duty I am bound to you in as a servant.’
P. 4. _To my good Friends and Fellowes the Citty-Actors_. ‘That it
[our quality] hath beene esteemed by the best and greatest ... I
need alledge no more than the royall and princely services in which
we now live.... Some over-curious have too liberally taxed us ... we
may as freely (out of our plainnesse) answere, as they (out of their
perversenesse) object, instancing my selfe by famous Scaliger, learned
Doctor Gager, Doctor Gentiles, and others.... So, wishing you judiciall
audiences, honest poets, and true gatherers, I commit you all to the
fulnesse of your best wishes.’ P. 6. _Verses_ by, _inter alios_,
John Webster, and by Richard Perkins, Christopher Beeston and Robert
Pallant to their ‘fellow’. _Book i._ P. 15. The author is ‘mooved by
the sundry exclamations of many seditious sectists in this age.... It
hath pleased the high and mighty princes of this land to limit the use
of certaine publicke theaters, which, since many of those over-curious
heads have lavishly and violently slandered, I hold it not amisse to
lay open some few antiquities to approve the true use of them.’ A
vision of Melpomene. Actors in antiquity. P. 20. The lives of worthies
‘can no way bee so exquisitly demonstrated, nor so lively portrayed,
as by action.... A description is only a shadow, received by the eare,
but not perceived by the eye; so lively portrature is meerely a forme
seene by the eye, but can neither shew action, passion, motion, or any
other gesture to moove the spirits of the beholder to admiration: but
to see a souldier shap’d like a souldier, walke, speake, act like a
souldier; to see a Hector all besmered in blood, trampling upon the
bulkes of kinges; a Troilus returning from the field, in the sight of
his father Priam, as if man and horse, even from the steed’s rough
fetlockes to the plume on the champion’s helmet, had bene together
plunged into a purple ocean; to see a Pompey ride in triumph, then
a Caesar conquer that Pompey; labouring Hannibal alive, hewing his
passage through the Alpes. To see as I have seene, Hercules, in his
owne shape, hunting the boare, knocking downe the bull, taming the
hart, fighting with Hydra, murdering Geryon, slaughtering Diomed,
wounding the Stymphalides, killing the Centaurs, pashing the lion,
squeezing the dragon, dragging Cerberus in chaynes, and lastly, on his
high pyramides waiting _Nil ultra_, Oh, these were sights to make an
Alexander! To turne to our domesticke hystories: what English blood,
seeing the person of any bold Englishman presented, and doth not hugge
his fame, and hunnye at his valor, pursuing him in his enterprise
with his best wishes, and as beeing wrapt in contemplation, offers to
him in his hart all prosperous performance, as if the personator were
the man personated? so bewitching a thing is lively and well-spirited
action, that it hath power to new-mold the harts of the spectators,
and fashion them to the shape of any noble and notable attempt. What
coward, to see his countrymen valiant, would not bee ashamed of his
owne cowardise? What English prince, should hee behold the true
portrature of that famous King Edward the Third, foraging France,
taking so great a king captive in his owne country, quartering the
English lyons with the French flower-delyce, and would not bee suddenly
inflam’d with so royale a spectacle, being made apt and fit for the
like atchievement. So of Henry the Fift.’ The place of actors at Rome.
P. 24. ‘Neither Christ himselfe, nor any of his sanctified apostles,
in any of their sermons, acts, or documents, so much as named them, or
upon any abusive occasion touched them.... Since they (I say) in all
their holy doctrines, bookes, and principles of divinity, were content
to passe them over, as thinges tollerated and indifferent, why should
any nice and over-scrupulous heads, since they cannot ground their
curiousnesse either upon the Old or New Testament, take upon them to
correct, controule, or carpe at that, against which they cannot finde
any text in the sacred scriptures?’ P. 25. ‘Since God hath provided
us of these pastimes, why may we not use them to his glory? Now, if
you aske me why were not the theaters as gorgeously built in all other
cities of Italy as Rome, and why are not playhouses maintained as
well in other cities of England as London? My answere is ... Rome was
a metropolis, a place whither all the nations knowne under the sunne
resorted: so is London, and being to receive all estates, all princes,
all nations, therefore to affoord them all choyce of pastimes, sports,
and recreations.’ Actors in Greece. The scriptural prohibition of
change of sex-costume has no reference to plays. P. 28. ‘To see our
youths attired in the habit of women, who knowes not what their intents
be? who cannot distinguish them by their names, assuredly knowing they
are but to represent such a lady, at such a tyme appoynted? Do not
the Universities, the fountaines and well springs of all good arts,
learning, and documents, admit the like in their colledges? and they
(I assure my selfe) are not ignorant of their true use. In the time of
my residence at Cambridge, I have seen tragedyes, comedyes, historyes,
pastorals, and shewes, publickly acted, in which the graduates of
good place and reputation have bene specially parted.’ Value of such
exercises in teaching audacity in disputation and good enunciation. The
critics of acting ‘a sorte of finde-faults’. _Book ii._ Antiquities
of the theatre, and distribution of theatres in ancient and modern
states. P. 40. ‘The King of Denmarke, father to him that now reigneth,
entertained into his service a company of English comedians, commended
unto him by the honourable the Earle of Leicester: the Duke of
Brunswicke and the Landgrave of Hessen retaine in their courts certaine
of ours of the same quality.... And amongst us one of our best English
Chroniclers [in margin, ‘Stowe’] records, that when Edward the Fourth
would shew himselfe in publicke state to the view of the people, hee
repaired to his palace at S. Johnes, where he accustomed to see the
citty actors: and since then that house, by the prince’s free gift,
hath belonged to the Office of the Revels, where our court playes have
beene in late daies yearely rehersed, perfected, and corrected before
they come to the publike view of the prince and the nobility.’ Famous
classical actors. P. 43. ‘According to the occasion offered to do some
right to our English actors, as Knell, Bentley, Mils, Wilson, Crosse,
Lanam, and others, these, since I never saw them, as being before my
time, I cannot (as an eye-witnesse of their desert) give them that
applause, which no doubt they worthily merit; yet by the report of
many juditiall auditors their performances of many parts have been
so absolute, that it were a kinde of sinne to drowne their worths in
Lethe, and not commit their (almost forgotten) names to eternity.
Here I must needs remember Tarleton, in his time gratious with the
queene, his soveraigne, and in the people’s generall applause, whom
succeeded Wil. Kemp, as wel in the favour of her majesty, as in the
opinion and good thoughts of the generall audience. Gabriel, Singer,
Pope, Phillips, Sly, all the right I can do them is but this, that,
though they be dead, their deserts yet live in the remembrance of
many. Among so many dead, let me not forget one yet alive, in his
time the most worthy, famous Maister Edward Allen.... I also could
wish, that such as are condemned for their licentiousnesse, might by
a generall consent bee quite excluded our society; for, as we are
men that stand in the broad eye of the world, so should our manners,
gestures, and behaviours, savour of such government and modesty, to
deserve the good thoughts and reports of all men, and to abide the
sharpest censures even of those that are the greatest opposites to the
quality. Many amongst us I know to be of substance, of government, of
sober lives, and temperate carriages, house-keepers, and contributory
to all duties enjoyned them, equally with them that are rank’t with
the most bountifull; and if amongst so many of sort, there be any few
degenerate from the rest in that good demeanor which is both requisite
and expected at their hands, let me entreat you not to censure hardly
of all for the misdeeds of some.’ On royal actors, quoting (p. 45)
‘M. Kid, in his Spanish Tragedy’. _Book iii._ The quality not to be
condemned because of its abuses. P. 52. ‘Playing is an ornament to the
citty.’ It refines the language, instructs the ignorant, and teaches
moral lessons. P. 54. ‘Briefly, there is neither tragedy, history,
comedy, morall, or pastorall, from which an infinite use cannot be
gathered. I speake not in the defence of any lascivious shewes,
scurrelous jests, or scandalous invectives. If there be any such I
banish them quite from my patronage.’ Plays have discovered murders. P.
57. ‘We will prove it by a domestike and home-borne truth, which within
these few years happened. At Lin, in Norfolke, the then Earl of Sussex
players acting the old History of Feyer Francis’ drove a townswoman to
confess the murder of her husband in circumstances parallel to those
of the play. P. 58. Relates rout of Spanish raiders ‘at a place called
Perin in Cornwall’, though their alarm at the drum and trumpets of ‘a
company of the same quality some 12 yeares ago, or not so much ...
playing late in the night’. Another story of a woman who had driven a
nail into her husband’s brain, urged to remorse by a similar incident
in ‘the last part of the Four Sons of Aymon’ played by ‘a company of
our English comedians (well knowne)’ at Amsterdam. Summarizes the
favour of many sovereigns to players. P. 60. ‘The cardinal at Bruxels
hath at this time in pay a company of our English comedians.... But
in no country they are of that eminence that our’s are: so our most
royall and ever renouned soveraigne hath licenced us in London: so
did his predecessor, the thrice vertuous virgin, Queen Elizabeth;
and before her, her sister, Queene Mary, Edward the sixth, and their
father, Henry the eighth.’ P. 61. ‘Moreover, to this day in divers
places of England there be townes that held the priviledge of their
faires, and other charters by yearely stage-playes, as at Manningtree
in Suffolke, Kendall in the north, and others.... Now, to speake of
some abuse lately crept into the quality, as an inveighing against the
state, the court, the law, the citty, and their governements, with
the particularizing of private men’s humors (yet alive) noblemen, and
others: I know it distastes many; neither do I any way approve it,
nor dare I by any meanes excuse it. The liberty which some arrogate
to themselves, committing their bitternesse, and liberall invectives
against all estates, to the mouthes of children, supposing their
juniority to be a priviledge for any rayling, be it never so violent,
I could advise all such to curbe and limit this presumed liberty
within the bands of discretion and government. But wise and juditiall
censurers, before whom such complaints shall at any time hereafter
come, wil not (I hope) impute these abuses to any transgression in
us, who have ever been carefull and provident to shun the like.’ P.
162. _Epistle to the publisher._ Notes the printer’s faults in his
_Britain’s Troy_, and the pirating of his two epistles of Paris to
Helen, and Helen to Paris by Jaggard [in _The Passionate Pilgrim_].
lviii. 1610. WILLIAM CRASHAW.
[From _A Sermon Preached in London before the right honorable
the Lord Lawarre, Lord Gouernour and Captaine Generall of
Virginea ... Feb. 21, 1609_ (1610).]
P. 57. ‘We confesse this action hath three great enemies: but who
be they? euen the Diuell, Papists, and Players.’ P. 62. ‘3. As for
Plaiers: (pardon me right Honourable and beloued, for wronging this
place and your patience with so base a subiect) they play with Princes
and Potentates, Magistrates and Ministers, nay with God and Religion,
and all holy things: nothing that is good, excellent or holy can escape
them: how then can this action?... But why are the Players enemies to
this Plantation and doe abuse it? I will tell you the causes: First,
for that they are so multiplied here, that one cannot liue by another,
and they see that wee send of all trades to Virginea, but will send no
Players, which if wee would doe, they that remaine would gaine the more
at home. Secondly ... because wee resolue to suffer no Idle persons
in Virginea, which course if it were taken in England, they know they
might turne to new occupations.’
lix. 1615. I. H.
[From _This World’s Folly. Or A Warning-Peece discharged vpon
the Wickednesse thereof_. By I. H. (1615).]
B^v-B2. ‘What voice is heard in our streetes? Nought but the squeaking
out of those τερετίσματα, obscaene and light Iigges, stuft with
loathsome and vnheard-of Ribauldry, suckt from the poysonous dugs
of Sinne-sweld Theaters.... More haue recourse to Playing houses,
then to Praying houses.... I will not particularize those _Blitea
dramata_ (as _Laberius_ termes another sort) those _Fortune_-fatted
fooles, and Times Ideots, whose garbe is the Tooth-ache of witte, the
Plague-sore of Iudgement, the Common-sewer of Obscaenities, and the
very Traine-powder that dischargeth the roaring _Meg_ (not _Mol_) of
all scurrile villanies vpon the Cities face; who are faine to produce
blinde _Impudence_ [_in margin_, ‘Garlicke’], to personate himselfe
vpon their stage, behung with chaynes of Garlicke, as an Antidote
against their owne infectious breaths, lest it should kill their
Oyster-crying Audience. _Vos quoque_ [_in margin_, ‘Or _Tu quoque_’],
and you also, who with _Scylla_-barking, _Stentor_-throated bellowings,
flash choaking squibbes of absurd vanities into the nosthrils of your
spectators, barbarously diuerting _Nature_, and defacing Gods owne
image, by metamorphising humane [_in margin_, ‘_Greenes_ Baboone’]
shape into bestiall forme. Those also stand within the stroke of my
penne, who were wont to _Curtaine_ ouer their defects with knauish
conueyances, and scum off the froth of all wanton vanity, to qualifie
the eager appetite of their slapping Fauorites.’
lx. 1615. J. COCKE.
[The variant texts of this character are here given from the
two editions of John Stephens’ essays, in each of which it is
Bk. ii, char. 4, viz. (A) _Satyrical Essayes Characters and
Others_ (1615) and (B) _Essayes and Characters, Ironical and
Instructive. The second impression_ (1615), of which a reprint
is in J. O. Halliwell, _Old Books of Characters_ (1857), 131.
Between A and B had appeared the sixth edition of _The Wife_,
with the character of _An Excellent Actor_ and the reference to
a rival as ‘the imitating Characterist’ (v. No. lxi). To this
the additions in B are a rejoinder, and they are reinforced
by two epistles. One is ‘To the namelesse Rayler: who hath
lenghthened his Excellent Actor, a most needy Caracter following
the wife with a peece of dog-skin witt; dressed ouer with oyle
of sweaty Posthorse’. Here the writer, I. S., says he did
‘admit a friends Satyre’. The other epistle, ‘To the nameles
Author of a late Character entituled, an _Excellent Actor_,
following _The Wife_’, is signed by ‘I. Cocke’, who says,
‘witnes your gross mistaking of approued and authorised actors
for counterfeit Runagates, or country Players, inueighed against
by the Characterist’. Some appended verses claim for Cocke the
authorship of the _Tinker_, _Apparator_, and _Almanac-maker_ in
_The Wife_. It seems clear that Cocke and not Stephens wrote the
present character, and that _An Excellent Actor_ was a reply to
it. It is true that Stephens only speaks of it as ‘lenghthened’
by the attack on himself, but ‘lenghthened’ may mean ‘pieced
out’, and there is no version, long or short, in any of the five
first editions of _The Wife_, while a reference to ‘the sixt
impression of S. Thomas Overburyes wife’ on p. 434 of B shows
this was before its writers. John Stephens (cf. ch. xxiii) was
a Lincoln’s Inn dramatist. I cannot find a likely Cocke in the
_Lincoln’s Inn Admission Books_; there is an Isaac Cox, admitted
10 Jan. 1611 (i. 154), and a John Cookes on 6 June 1614 (i.
166). Can the satirist be the John Cooke (cf. ch. xxiii) who
wrote _Greene’s Tu Quoque_?]
_A common Player_