When Elizabeth came to the throne she was perhaps more able than her

predecessor to rely upon the municipalities in carrying out her

ecclesiastical policy. It is true that the _Act of Uniformity_, like

Edward's before her, forbade any words in the derogation, depraving or

despising of the Book of Common Prayer, and committed the enforcement of

this prohibition to the ecclesiastical ordinary as well as to the

justices of assize and the civic mayors. It is true also that the

general powers of jurisdiction in cases of sedition given to the High

Commission by the patent of 19 July 1559 are wide enough to cover 'words

or showings' as well as 'books'. But the elaborate provisions for a

literary censorship under the Commission contained in the ecclesiastical

_Injunctions_ of the same year extend to printed matter only, and for

the detailed supervision of plays the Government was at first content to

look to the magistrates.[853] There seem to have been two proclamations.

The first, which is not extant, is said to have been made on 7 April

1559 and to have restrained plays for a stated period. The second, of

the following 16 May, was intended as a permanent regulation. After

noting that the usual season for interludes was now over until 1

November, and the inconvenience of some recently given, it goes on to

forbid any, whether in public or private, which have not been licensed

by the Mayor in a town, or in a shire by the Lord Lieutenant or two

justices for the immediate locality. The licensing authorities are

enjoined to allow no handling of matters of religion or state in plays,

and the nobility and gentry are warned to take order that 'their

seruantes being players' shall respect the proclamation. It will be

observed that only the licensing of plays and not the status of players

was covered. Status was left as the Act of 1531, which was still in

force and was explicitly confirmed in 1563, had left it. The position

was then as follows. Players, at any rate when they performed away from

home, must have a licence either from their lord or possibly from the

local magistrates. Whether at home or abroad, they were subject to the

regulation of the magistrates as to times and places, and the

precautions needed to secure public health and order. In addition, the

magistrates had a special responsibility under the proclamation for

allowing their individual plays, but this, in rural areas where there

were many Justice Shallows, might alternatively be exercised by the Lord

Lieutenant for the county as a whole. It is, I suppose, a licence for

their repertory rather than for their travelling that Lord Robert Dudley

asked for his men from the Earl of Shrewsbury, who as President of the

North stood in the place of a Lord Lieutenant for Yorkshire, about a

month after the issue of the proclamation. He calls it, indeed, a

licence to play, but he dwells on the 'tollerable and convenient'

character of their pieces, and it is easy to see how one conception of

the purpose for which a licence was required would slip into another.

The history of play-licensing in London, which must now be followed in

detail, really turns upon an attempt of the Corporation, goaded by the

preachers, to convert their power of regulating plays into a power of

suppressing plays, as the ultimate result of which even the power of

regulation was lost to them, and the central government, acting through

the Privy Council and the system of patents, with the Master of the

Revels as a licenser, took the supervision of the stage into its own

hands. The issue does not define itself very clearly until the

'seventies, perhaps partly because the Puritan sentiment took some time

to grow, and partly because the earlier years are much less fully

documented than the later ones.

As with all narratives pieced together out of fragmentary records, care

must be taken not to lay too much stress on merely negative evidence

with regard to any particular point. The two chief sources of

information are the _Register_ of the Privy Council, which contains

minutes of letters written to the City Corporation or the Justices of

Middlesex and Surrey and of other action taken by the Council with

regard to plays, and the City _Remembrancia_, a book containing copies

of letters passing between the Corporation and the Council or other

persons of importance. But neither record is continuous during the whole

controversy, and although the two frequently help each other out, some

of the gaps unfortunately synchronize. In particular there is a

comparative absence of information upon the first part of the reign,

since the _Register_ only begins to help in 1573 and the _Remembrancia_

in 1580. It is possible, therefore, that the Court and the City may have

come to grips on the vexed question of stage-control in London somewhat

earlier than is now apparent.

It is certain, indeed, that some negotiations had taken place between

the two authorities before the period to which the documents mainly

relate. These are appealed to in a City letter of 1574, and it is

claimed that, in view of the objections of the Corporation, the Council

had 'long since' refrained from pressing a proposal that some private

person should be nominated to license playing-places within the City.

This is the first mention of a new type of 'licence', distinct from

those of companies as such, or of plays as such, and presumably owing

its origin to the general local regulative powers of the magistrates.

The date of the proposal is not given, and as regards the years 1558-71,

there is only occasional evidence of any serious interference, other

than such as was necessitated by plague, with the activities of the

players, although it is clear that the rulers of the City were

exercising the powers of supervision with which the proclamation of 1559

invested them. There is an indication that plays were suspended by a

precept from the Lord Mayor in the September of the first and greatest

of the Elizabethan plague-years, 1563; and in the following February

Edmund Grindal, the Bishop of London, wrote to Sir William Cecil,

pointing out that the players set up their bills daily, and especially

on holidays, and that the excessive resort of young people to their

performances could only be a cause of infection. Both on religious and

on hygienic grounds, he urged the desirability of inhibiting plays by

proclamation, either permanently or at least for a complete year, and

not only within the City, but for a circuit of three miles outside its

boundaries. Penalties should, he thought, be imposed for disobedience,

not only upon the players, but also upon the owners of the houses where

they played. The cessation of the plague probably made it unnecessary

for Cecil to entertain the suggestion seriously; but it is interesting

to observe that the policy of the Puritans, with whom Grindal was in

sympathy, was already in 1564 one of complete suppression, and also that

the comparative inefficacy of measures limited to the City, in view of

the populous suburbs outside the London jurisdiction and subject only to

the Middlesex or Surrey Justices and to the Privy Council, had been

already realized.

During the next few years there is little to record, although if _The

Children of the Chapel Stript and Whipt_, alleged to have been printed

in 1569, were ever recovered, it might throw more light upon the growing

flood of Puritan sentiment than is afforded by Warton's scanty

quotations. There was some plague in each of the three years 1568, 1569,

and 1570, and in the summer of 1569 the City suspended plays, as a

precautionary measure, from the last day of May to the last day of

September. There was another suspension on 27 November 1571, for which

plague is not alleged as a reason, but a few days later the Corporation

appear to have changed their minds and licences were issued during this

winter for performances by Leicester's and Abergavenny's men.

The year 1572 is marked by two measures of government, each of which had

its reaction on the _status_ of players throughout the country. The

first entailed some regularization of the position of noblemen's

companies. The fifteenth-century struggle between the power of the Crown

and that of the great feudal houses had led to enactments forbidding

subjects to attach to themselves, by the giving and taking of a livery

or badge, retainers who were not in some bona-fide sense their own

household servants or officers. The Acts against retainers had been

continued up to the reign of Henry VII, who had confirmed them in 1487;

and had then, upon the firm establishment of the royal supremacy by the

Tudors, largely fallen into desuetude, in spite of a proclamation of

1545, already noticed, which was intended to call renewed attention to

them. They were, however, still technically operative, and a

proclamation of 3 January 1572 announced an intention to enforce them

from the following 20 February. Their relation to the players is shown

by the fact that the company which had been performing under the Earl of

Leicester's name immediately wrote to their lord, and, while making it

clear that they did not expect any wages beyond the livery to which they

had been accustomed, begged for a definite appointment as his household

servants and for a licence to certify the same as a security against

interference under the revived statutes during their annual travels in

the provinces. A second proclamation of the same character was issued on

19 April 1583. More important than the proclamation, but probably

representing the same policy, was the repeal by Parliament of the

Vagabond Act of 1531 and the substitution of a new statute, which came

into force upon 24 August. This included in a definition of vagabonds,

not only 'juglers, pedlars, tynkers and petye chapmen', but also

'fencers, bearewardes, comon players in enterludes, and minstrels, not

belonging to any baron of this realme, or towardes any other honorable

personage of greater degree'. Specific power was, however, given for the

issue of local travelling licences by mayors and county justices. So far

as noblemen's players were concerned, the Act was presumably no more

than declaratory of their existing position. But the knight or plain

gentleman lost his privilege of protection altogether; and in future, if

his servants wished to travel as players, they had to get their licence

from the magistrates. As a matter of fact, with the exception of those

forming part of the royal household itself, practically all the

companies of professional players which appeared in London during

Elizabeth's reign were noblemen's servants. A few performances were

given at Court in early years by Sir Robert Lane's men, but these

disappeared or transferred their services to a more honourable personage

upon the legislation of 1572.[854] The most important of the provincial

companies which did not come to London also bore the names of noblemen,

and although many others were entertained by mere knights and gentlemen,

it is probable that, at any rate after 1572, these did not range very

widely from their head-quarters.[855] The necessity of procuring a fresh

licence for every shire would doubtless, as was its intention, afford an

obstacle to free circulation.[856] Apart from its defining clause, the

main object of the Act of 1572 was to try once more the experiment,

which had failed under Edward VI, of treating vagabondage with an

increased severity. The summary whipping by individual magistrates was

abolished except for children. An adult offender was to be committed to

gaol until the next quarter sessions, and then, unless he could find a

master to take him for a year's service, to be whipped and branded as a

rogue by boring through the ear. On a second offence he was to be

adjudged a felon, unless he could secure service for two years, and a

third offence was to be treated as felony without benefit of clergy. The

classification of unlicensed minstrels as rogues led to the insertion of

a clause confirming the ancient privilege of the house of Dutton to

issue licences within the county of Chester;[857] and another qualifying

provision, the importance of which in connexion with players has been

overlooked, safeguarded the validity, as overriding the statute, of

licences passed under the Great Seal of England. It is in 1572 also that

symptoms of a conflict of judgement between the City and the Privy

Council first declare themselves. The annalist Harrison records that in

this year plays were 'banished' out of London for fear of infection, and

on 20 May a minute of the Court of Aldermen records that letters had

been received from the Council for renewed allowance under reasonable

conditions, and that, in place of immediate compliance, a letter of

protest, based on the peril of assemblies during a hot summer, was to be

sent to Lord Burghley. A somewhat similar situation seems to have

developed in 1573, which made it necessary in July for the Council to

write two letters to the Corporation, of which the second had a

peremptory note about it, in order to obtain permission for some Italian

players to exhibit an 'instrument of strange motions', or puppet-show.

The following year was evidently one of considerable friction. On 2

March the Corporation wrote to the Lord Chamberlain with reference to a

suggestion that the licensing of playing-places within the City should

be put in the hands of one Holmes. They maintained their earlier

refusal, already mentioned, to commit such a matter to any private

person, and added that they had other offers for the licensing rights on

terms that would be profitable 'to the relefe of the poore in the

hospitalles'. The terms of the letter make it clear that they regarded

the plan as one which, besides being practically inconvenient, would

entail a precedent 'farre extending to the hart of our liberties'. In

the meantime plays were apparently inhibited, for on 22 March the

Council wrote to inquire the causes of the restraint, 'to thintent their

Lordships may the better aunswer suche as desyre to have libertye for

the same'. It may be conjectured that the reply was unsatisfactory, for

in May a remedy for which provision had been made by anticipation in the

Vagabond Act of 1572 was resorted to, and a patent under the Great Seal

was issued to the Earl of Leicester's men, which over-ruled the

proclamation of 1559 and ignored the position of the Corporation

altogether. By this the company received permission to play during the

royal pleasure either within London itself or within or without any

other town throughout the country. The licence was only subject to two

provisions. One was that there should be no performance during common

prayer or during plague times in London; the other that all plays should

be seen and allowed by the Master of the Revels. As the Master of the

Revels was an officer of the royal household, subordinate to the Lord

Chamberlain, the action taken practically amounted to a transference of

control, so far as this particular company was concerned, from the

Corporation to the Court itself. Nothing specific was said in the patent

about the allowing of playing-places as distinct from the allowing of

plays, and it may have left the Corporation with some reasonable

discretion on this point. It is not known that a similar licence was

issued to any other Elizabethan company besides Leicester's men,

although this could hardly be definitely asserted without a complete

examination of the Patent Rolls for the reign. My own impression is that

the issue of the patent served its purpose by bringing the Corporation

to a more reasonable frame of mind, and that it was not found necessary

to repeat the experiment, at any rate exactly in the same form. On 22

July the Council issued a passport to 'the comedie plaiers' to go to

London, and also wrote to the Corporation requiring their admission and

favourable usage. I feel little doubt that the company in question were

the Italians who had been at Windsor and Reading during the progress. In

any case it may be taken for granted from the events of the following

winter that the Corporation were now beaten, and yielded. But it can

only have been with reluctance. The enforced toleration of the Italian

players, who seem to have brought with them some female acrobats, had

added strength to the Puritan criticisms. Thomas Norton, the City

Remembrancer, writing a preface to a summary of City customs for the use

of the new Lord Mayor, James Hawes, and dwelling on the need for better

regulations against the contagion of the plague, lays special stress on

the danger of 'the unnecessarie and scarslie honeste resorts to plaies'

and of such assemblies as those attracted by 'the unchaste, shamelesse

and unnaturall tomblinge of the Italion weomen'. With a characteristic

touch of Puritan logic he adds, 'To offend God and honestie, is not to

cease a plague'. In fact, the increase of plague gave London a respite

from plays during the winter. On 15 November the Privy Council wrote to

the Justices of Middlesex, Essex, and Surrey to inhibit assemblies

within ten miles of London until Easter; and the City hardly needed the

stimulus of an 'admonition' from their lordships to persuade them to

adopt a similar course. They used the interval to enact an elaborate

code for the regulation of plays, whose continuance in their midst,

whether they liked it or not, they now saw to be inevitable. This took

the form of an Act of Common Council, which is dated on 6 December 1574.

The preamble sets out the various 'disorders and inconvenyences' which

from the civic point of view had arisen from plays in the past, the

unchaste and seditious speeches, the waste of money and interference

with divine service, the accidents due to the fall of wooden structures

and to the use of firearms upon the stage, the opportunities afforded by

the performances for frays and quarrels, for purse-cutting, for the

corruption of youth by 'previe and unmete contractes', for incontinency

in the inner chambers of the 'greate innes' to which the stages were

adjacent. It then proceeds to recite the recent inhibition for plague,

and the need to provide against the renewal of such 'enormyties' upon

the expected withdrawal of God's hand of sickness by securing that 'the

laweful, honest and comelye use of plaies, pastymes and recreacions'

should alone be permitted. The actual regulations are six in number. No

unchaste, seditious, or otherwise improper plays were to be performed,

upon a penalty of fourteen days' imprisonment and a fine of £5 for each

offence. No play was to be shown which had not first been perused and

allowed by such persons as the Lord Mayor and Aldermen might appoint.

All playing-places and the persons in control of them were to be

licensed by the Lord Mayor and Aldermen. All licensees were to be bound

to the City Chamberlain for the keeping of good order. No licence was to

be operative during a restraint for sickness or other good reason, nor

were plays to be given or spectators received during the usual times for

divine service on Sundays and holidays. Every licensee was to make such

contributions to the poor and sick of the City as might be agreed upon

with the Lord Mayor and Aldermen. Machinery was provided for the

recovery of penalties, which were also to be for the benefit of the poor

and sick, and an exception was made for plays in private houses for

which no money was taken. The only regulation to which these were to be

subject was that against the introduction of unchaste and seditious

matters.

It is often stated that the regulations of 1574 were followed in 1575 by

a decree of the Corporation banishing players totally and finally from

the confines of the City. This is, however, a mistake due to an

erroneous endorsement of date upon some documents which belong in

reality to about 1584. The regulations remained operative for a

considerable number of years. It is true that, reasonable and moderate

as they were, they were not accepted as satisfactory either by the

players or by their critics. After all, they left a good deal in working

to the discretion of the Lord Mayor and Aldermen for the time being; and

the players seem to have come to the conclusion that it would be better

to be independent, as far as possible, of the risks attaching to this

discretion. They turned to the easier conditions afforded by the lax

county government of the suburbs. Within two or three years after the

issue of the regulations two houses had been built expressly for playing

in the liberty of Halliwell, which was within the jurisdiction of

Middlesex; the Theatre in 1576 and the Curtain either in the same year

or early in 1577. A third house, at Newington Butts on the Surrey side,

was already obsolete about 1592, and seems to have been in existence by

1580. Exactly upon what considerations the private house in the

Blackfriars was established, also in 1576, is less certain. But at any

rate, as a result of the action of the Corporation in 1574, the main

locality of the popular drama was shifted from the courtyards of the

London inns to the specialized suburban theatres. It must not, of

course, be supposed that the inns fell altogether into disuse. The new

arrangement was not without its inconveniences for the players. During

the summer months it was no hardship for pleasure-seekers to cross the

river or the fields in search of a spectacle. But the short evenings and

dirty lanes of winter left an advantage to the inns in the heart of the

City, which was not lightly to be forgone. It was still, therefore, a

matter of importance for the companies to maintain their footing in the

City, even if this meant compliance with harassing restrictions, and

they were ready to use all their influence with the masters whose

liveries they wore, with the Lord Chamberlain, and with the Privy

Council, in opposition to any further limitation of their privileges. So

far as the summer was concerned, the building of the suburban theatres

was a serious check to the policy of the Corporation. It was still the

young folk of the City who crowded the audiences; nor could the greater

distance diminish the danger of infection, the neglect of divine

service, the waste of time and money, or the likelihood of falling into

bad company by the way. In future it was not sufficient to make salutary

regulations for London; it was necessary to secure, by invoking the

goodwill of the county justices, or in default of that even the aid of

the Privy Council itself, that similar order should be taken outside

the liberties. In this direction the City never met with more than very

partial success. The county government was naturally not as closely

organized as their own, and it was in the hands of officials and local

gentlemen to whom the business considerations and the growing Puritan

instincts of the City tradesmen did not appeal. Richard Young, in

particular, who was a prominent member of the Middlesex bench for many

years, earned an evil reputation as a persecutor of Puritans.[858] On

the other hand, the Corporation might look for the co-operation of his

colleague William Fleetwood, who was their own Recorder,[859] and

machinery had been established between the two areas in the form of a

joint committee or court of assistants for dealing with the control of

plays and other matters of 'good order'.[860]

And if the players needed a refuge from the regulations of 1574, these

must have been far from satisfactory to the Puritans. They fell very far

short of the wholesome Genevan model. There was still toleration for the

infamous _histriones_. Plays were not even wholly forbidden on Sundays

and holy days, and the crowd flocked to the inn-yard gates, already open

in spite of the regulation, while the bells were still ringing for

divine service in the empty churches. And although the Corporation

certainly did not mean to commit the licensing of plays to the Master of

the Revels or to any court nominee, there is nothing to show that they

had any intention of leaving it to the ministers. The rise of the

'sumptuous' theatres, monuments of triumphant wickedness, in the fields,

could only add fuel to the wrath of the moralists. With Thomas White's

Paul's Cross sermon and John Northbrooke's _Treatise_ of 1577 begins a

period of active diatribe in pulpit and pamphlet, the deliberate

intention of which was to stir the 'magistrate' to a stronger sense of

the moral responsibilities of government, so that in London at least

the letters of commendation furnished by godlessly-minded nobles for

their servants might be disregarded and the accursed thing driven from

the gates. And if only, through a Sidney or a Walsingham or a Leicester

or a Burghley, the heart of the Council could be touched, it might

perhaps even be driven from the suburbs also.

For some time after 1574 the relations between Whitehall and Guildhall

were comparatively peaceful. Such plague as prevailed in 1575 and 1576

seems to have affected Westminster rather than the City. In 1577,

however, an outbreak led the Corporation to suspend plays, and the

Council ordered the Middlesex Justices to do the same from August to

Michaelmas. The Theatre may have been open again by 5 October, although

plague seems to have been still prevalent in November. It was over by

January, and on the 13th of that month the Council instructed the Lord

Mayor to let the famous Italian actor Drusiano Martinelli and his

company perform in the City until the beginning of Lent. The autumn of

1578 again proved plaguesome, and on 10 November the Council ordered the

Surrey Justices to inhibit plays in Southwark. On 23 December, however,

a further order was issued to London, Middlesex, and Surrey, permitting

the exercise of plays, subject to certain orders appointed against

infection. This was followed on the next day by another letter to the

Lord Mayor, specifying six companies who were summoned to Court and to

whom therefore the privilege of exercising in public was to be limited.

In the spring of the following year the Council appear to have been

disturbed at the neglect of Lent, and on 13 March they wrote both to the

Lord Mayor and to the Middlesex Justices, to direct that no plays should

be allowed during the penitential season, either in that or in any

subsequent year. By 1580 the battery of 'the preachers dayly cryeng

against the Lord Maior and his bretheren' seems to have had its effect

upon the civic conscience. Naturally most of the sermons against the

stage were never printed, but an example, in addition to that of Thomas

White, is to be found in the Paul's Cross sermon of John Stockwood on 24

August 1578. Gosson's _Schoole of Abuse_ had followed Northbrooke's

_Treatise_ in 1579, and in 1580 itself appeared the _Second and Third

Blast of Retrait_, the conspicuous civic arms upon which are perhaps

significant of the attitude now adopted by the Corporation. On 6 April

there was an earthquake, which was seized upon by the controversialists

as a sign of God's wrath against plays. The series of civic letters

contained in the _Remembrancia_ begins in this year, and shows a spirit

of hostility towards the stage far more pronounced than was indicated

by the regulations of 1574. Under the stimulus of further pamphlets,

Gosson's _Playes Confuted_ in 1582 and Stubbes's _Anatomy of Abuses_ in

1583, this tendency continued to grow, and finally landed the

Corporation in a state of acute conflict with the Council. The earliest

letter preserved is from the Lord Mayor to the Lord Chancellor, Sir

Thomas Bromley, on 12 April 1580. In this he took occasion, on the

strength of a recent disturbance at the Theatre, of the admonition of

the hand of God in the earthquake, and of a charge from the Council to

avoid uncleanness and pestering of the city, to point out that players

were 'a very superfluous sort of men and of such facultie as the lawes

have disalowed', and to suggest the desirability of an order by which

they should be 'wholy stayed and forbidden', both within and without the

liberties. The disturbance at the Theatre was probably a fray between

the Inns of Court and Oxford's men, which led to the imprisonment of

some of the latter by the Council. Some months before John Brayne and

James Burbage had been indicted for bringing about a breach of the peace

by causing unlawful assemblies. There was not in fact much plague this

summer, but the Council assented to a temporary inhibition until

Michaelmas and called upon the Middlesex and Surrey Justices to extend

it to Newington Butts and other places in their jurisdictions. Perhaps

emboldened by his success, the Lord Mayor wrote a second letter on 17

June to Lord Burghley, in which he expressed the opinion that the

haunting of unchaste plays in the suburbs was a serious danger to the

City, and again proposed their restraint as part of a series of measures

in the interests of the public health. Burghley's answer is not upon

record. Presumably plays went on as usual during the winter of 1580. An

incident of the following year makes it apparent that, at some uncertain

but probably recent date, the Corporation had attempted to render the

code of 1574 more stringent by forbidding performances upon Sundays.

Lord Berkeley's men, who claimed to be ignorant of this, performed upon

Sunday, 9 July 1581, and became involved in a fray with some Inns of

Court men, which led to the committal of both parties to the Counter. On

the very next day the Privy Council wrote to London and to Middlesex,

and directed an inhibition of plays on the ground of plague until

Michaelmas. The City responded by a suspension for an indefinite period

on 13 July. They seem to have taken advantage of this to press their

point about Sundays. On 14 November the Mayor issued a precept against

the setting up of bills for plays within the ward jurisdictions of the

aldermen. On 18 November a letter was received from the Council pointing

out that the infection had ceased, and that 'theis poore men the

players' should now be permitted to exercise within the City for their

'releife' and 'redinesse with convenient matters for her highnes solace

this next Christmas'. Nothing is here said about Sundays, but the

Council Register contains a minute for a letter of 3 December to the

Mayor, distinct, unless there is some confusion of date, from that of 18

November, of which there is no entry in the Register, and referring to a

petition from the players, and a stipulation made with them that Sundays

should be excluded, and performances limited to holy days and other

week-days. This looks as if the Corporation had questioned the first

mandate and had secured a concession as the price of submission. It must

count as a victory for the Puritans, but they were not content, and one

of the London ministers, John Field, took occasion to address a letter

of reproach to the Earl of Leicester for yielding to the players, 'to

the great greife of all the godly'.

It is difficult to resist the belief that a measure taken during this

same December arose from a desire of the Council to counteract the

growing recalcitrancy of the Corporation by a device similar to that

which had been successful in 1574. The precedent set in the issue of a

patent to Leicester's men was not, however, exactly followed. The

position was now dealt with in a more comprehensive fashion, by the

issue of a commission under a patent to the Master of the Revels

himself. The object of this commission was in part to invest the Master

with authority to press workmen and wares for the service of the Revels.

But it also empowered him to call upon players and playmakers to appear

before him and recite their pieces, presumably with a view to their

consideration for performance at Court. And, as it were incidentally to

the exercise of such a power, the patent went on to declare in the most

general terms that the Master of the Revels was thereby appointed 'of

all suche showes plaies plaiers and playmakers together with their

playing places to order and reforme auctorise and put downe as shalbe

thought meete or unmeete unto himselfe or his said deputie in that

behalfe'. Like the licence of 1574, the commission of 1581 is expressed

as being 'any acte statute ordynance or provision' to the contrary

notwithstanding.

The functions thus assigned to the Master of the Revels came to be of

the first importance in the history of the stage. But for the moment the

result of their stroke can hardly have satisfied the expectations of the

Council. The Corporation were not so ready to retreat from an untenable

position as they had been seven years before. Either in ignorance of the

Master's commission, or with the deliberate intention of asserting the

privileges ignored therein, they seem to have definitely committed

themselves, in the course of 1582, to the policy, long advocated by

their spiritual advisers, of a complete suppression of the stage. The

method of attack adopted was, so far as any records yet published

disclose, a new one. Instead of relying upon their licensing powers, now

very doubtful and in any case of no validity in the suburbs, they issued

on 3 April a precept to the City guilds, enjoining them to charge all

freemen with the responsibility of keeping their servants and other

dependants from repairing to any play, whether in city or in suburbs,

upon penalty of punishment both for the offending servant and for his

master. This is presumably the 'late inhibition' against playing after

evening prayer on holidays, which the Privy Council asked the Lord Mayor

to revoke by a letter of 11 April, in which they expressed the opinion

that in the absence of infection such playing might be used 'without

impeachment of the service of God whereof we have a speciall care',

provided always that Sundays should be excepted, and that fit persons

should be appointed by the Corporation to 'consider and allowe of such

playes onely as be fitt to yeld honest recreacion and no example of

euell'. It is to be observed that the Council do not suggest that the

allowance shall be done by the Master of the Revels or make any allusion

to the powers conferred by his patent. Perhaps this indicates some

willingness to come to a compromise. The Lord Mayor's reply, written two

days later, is in its turn not otherwise than conciliatory. He suggests

that the Council may perhaps not be fully aware of the difficulties

entailed by plays on holidays. He has found that either he has to

tolerate the admission of the audience during the times of prayer, or

else the plays must continue until a very inconvenient time of night for

servants and children to be abroad. He also calls attention to the

growth of the plague, which seems to him to justify the continuance of

the restraint for the present, and finally hints that later on he will

fall in with the views of the Council and duly appoint suitable

licensers. Plague was in fact rife during 1582, and perhaps left the

Council no choice but to drop the question for a time. In July the Lord

Mayor apologized on the ground of infection for refusing a request from

the Earl of Warwick that a servant of his might be allowed to give a

public display of fencing at the Bull in Bishopsgate. All that he could

promise was to let the man pass through the City with his company and

drum on the way to the Theatre or some other place in the suburbs.

Possibly the correspondence of April was only a cloak for the real

intentions of the Corporation; or possibly they miscalculated the

Council's reasons for not carrying it further. At any rate, still

profiting by the continuance of the plague, they determined in the

course of the autumn to risk another step in advance. The plan for

working through the guilds was ill-conceived, and had probably failed;

obviously masters could not effectively prevent their apprentices from

slipping off to Finsbury or Southwark on holiday afternoons. At any rate

nothing more is heard of it. To this date probably belongs an Act of

Common Council, which after dealing with other matters of civic

government, briefly enacted that public plays should 'wholly be

prohibited as ungodly', and that suit should be made to the Council for

a like prohibition 'in places near unto the city'.

It was not long before an opportunity for opening the projected campaign

against the outside houses presented itself. On Sunday, 13 January 1583,

eight persons were killed by the fall of a scaffold during a

bear-baiting at Paris Garden in Surrey. John Field, Leicester's

correspondent of 1581, was quick to point the Puritan moral in _A Godly

Exhortation_ dedicated to the Corporation. But already, on the day after

the accident, the Lord Mayor, Sir Thomas Blank, had written to Lord

Burghley to urge that this interposition of the hand of God called for

redress of the abuse of the Sabbath day, and to beg for Burghley's good

offices with the Surrey Justices, some of whom were willing to take

action but alleged that they lacked commission. Burghley promised that

the Council would consider the matter, and suggested that it was within

the scope of the Corporation's authority to make a general order against

the attendance of Londoners at Sunday entertainments. The previous

year's experience, however, had probably impressed the Corporation with

the difficulty of securing that such an order should not be a dead

letter outside their own jurisdiction; and although the Council

_Register_ is deficient at this point, it is certain that the event at

Paris Garden did in fact result in the extension by the Council itself

of the prohibition against Sunday performances from the City to the

counties. But this was not until after the Lord Mayor had again pressed

the question in a letter to the Council of 3 July, in which he alleged

the attractions of unlawful spectacles as a reason for the decay of

archery, of which the Council had complained, and declared that Paris

Garden was rebuilt and the Sunday bear-baitings in full swing, and that

blame was thrown upon the City authorities in Paul's Cross sermons and

elsewhere, 'to our shame and greif, when we cannot remedie it'. If the

Council yielded on this point, they remained quite firm on the general

question of the toleration of plays, on all days other than Sundays,

within the City as well as without. We do not know what steps, if any,

they took to enforce the licensing powers of the Master of the Revels.

But it is likely that the formation from the existing companies of the

Queen's men in the March of 1583 was a deliberate and to some extent a

successful attempt to overawe the City by the use of the royal name. It

may be inferred from letters of the Lord Mayor to Richard Young of

Middlesex and to Sir Francis Walsingham in April and May that plague

prevented plays during the greater part of the year. But on 26 November

the Council wrote that there was now no infection, and that Her

Majesty's players were to be suffered to play as usual until the

following Shrovetide. The Corporation, for all their Act of Common

Council, made no open resistance, but they qualified the permission by

limiting it to holy days, and it took a further letter from Sir Francis

Walsingham on 1 December to get it extended to ordinary working days.

The struggle, however, was only deferred, and the real crisis came in

1584. During Whit-week there were frays amongst the knots of serving-men

and prentices who hung about the doors of the Theatre and Curtain. The

Corporation approached the Council and, although there seems to have

been no plague, obtained sanction, in spite of the opposition of the

Lord Chamberlain and Vice-Chamberlain, to the suppression of both

houses. When the winter came round the Queen's men brought their case

before the Council, and pointed out that the time of their service was

at hand, that for the sake thereof as well as of their living they

needed to exercise, and that the season of the year was past to play at

any of the theatres outside the City. They petitioned for letters to the

Lord Mayor to admit them to London, and also for an order to the

Middlesex Justices, doubtless to revoke the suppression of the previous

summer. Their case was set out more fully in a body of annexed articles.

Unfortunately these are lost, but their tenor can be gathered from the

City rejoinder. This took the form partly of an historical summary and

partly of a detailed reply to the contentions of the players. The

Corporation recited the reluctant toleration granted in 1574, the

disregard of the rule against receiving spectators during divine

service, the continued prevalence of abuses and the agitation of the

preachers, the Act of Common Council conjecturally assigned to 1582,

and finally the ruin of Paris Garden and the abolition of Sunday plays

to which it led. The analysis of the arguments of the Queen's men is in

a mercilessly critical vein, very different to the reasonable

regulations of 1574, and may perhaps be ascribed to the malicious wit of

Recorder Fleetwood. The writer deals first with the alleged need for

exercise before playing at Court, and suggests that exercise in private

houses might suffice, as it was unsuitable, let alone the danger of

bringing infection into the royal presence, to offer to Her Majesty

pieces already produced before the basest assemblies of London and

Middlesex. As to the stay of the players' living, the view, which must

surely have gone back some decades for its justification, is put forward

that in times past it had not been thought meet that players should look

to playing for a living, 'but men for their lyvings using other honest

and lawfull artes, or reteyned in honest services, have by companies

learned some enterludes for some encreasce to their profit by other mens

pleasures in vacant time of recreation'. The players had claimed in

their first article that the Lord Mayor's order of toleration on holy

days should continue; but the Act of Common Council had cancelled this,

and moreover the provision against the reception of audiences before the

end of common prayer had been disregarded. Nor was it comely for youth

to run 'streight from prayer to playes, from Gods service to the

Deuells'. The second article had dwelt on the difficulty in a dark and

foul season of either going into the fields for plays, or deferring them

until after evening prayer; but the true remedy was 'to leave of that

unnecessarie expense of time, wherunto God himself geveth so many

impediments'. The third article had proposed to make plays permissible,

so long as the deaths from plague were below fifty a week. The reply is

that 'to play in plagetime is to encrease the plage by infection: to

play out of plagetime is to draw the plage by offendinges of God upon

occasion of such playes'. But if the number of deaths from plague were

to be taken as the basis of toleration, it must be remembered that this

number was an inadequate measure of the danger of infection amongst the

living, and to wait until it rose to fifty would be to run too great a

risk for the sake of a few 'whoe if they were not her Maiesties servants

shold by their profession be rogues'. The normal weekly number of deaths

out of plague-time was between forty and fifty, and commonly under

forty; surely it would be enough to allow plays when the rate from all

causes had been for two or three weeks together under fifty. Toleration

was only claimed for the Queen's players. But this had been so in the

previous winter, and all the playing-places had been filled with players

calling themselves the Queen's men. Any letters or warrants for

toleration should set out the number and names of the company. Much of

this dialectic could hardly be taken seriously; it was accompanied by

some suggested remedies of a practical character. The City still thought

the limitation to private houses the better course. Failing that, the

regulations of 1574 should be revived, subject to the conditions that

playing should only be allowed when the total deaths had been under

fifty a week for twenty days together, that no plays should be given on

the Sabbath or before the close of evening prayer on holy days, that the

audience should not be received during prayer-time, that the

performances should be short enough to let the audience get home before

dark, and that the Queen's men alone should be tolerated and should not

be allowed to divide themselves into several companies. It was

apparently contemplated that these conditions should apply to city and

county alike.

I have described these arguments in some detail, because of the

clearness with which they set out the divergent views. Unfortunately the

documents from which they are drawn do not record any decision upon

them. But whether the remedies were accepted, wholly or in part, or not,

there can be no doubt whatever that the attempt to enforce an absolute

prohibition had utterly failed, and that for several years afterwards

the companies continued to find their winter quarters within London

itself. Henceforward it became the settled policy of the Corporation to

defer to the authority of the Privy Council, and to content themselves

with doing their best to influence that body in the direction of their

own ideals. There came a day when they were destined to reach some

measure of success along these lines. For the time, however, events

followed a quiet course. During two or three years there is a blank in

the correspondence. Plays were suspended in London and Surrey during the

summer of 1586, at the Lord Mayor's request, on the ground that the

growing heat might breed a plague, and a similar measure in 1587 had an

additional provocation in disturbances which had taken place at the

play-houses. In both years the inhibition was declared early in May, and

in 1587 it was fixed to terminate at the end of August. On 29 October

the Council had to call the attention of both the Surrey and the

Middlesex Justices to the imperfect observance of the order against

Sunday plays. There was, of course, an undercurrent of Puritan

discontent during these years at the lame issue of the anti-stage

agitation. This is well shown by a grumbling letter from a correspondent

of Walsingham's in January 1587, in which 'the daily abuse of

stage-plays' is represented as still 'an offence to the godly'. The

redress of Sabbath-breaking is acknowledged, but still 'two hundred

proud players jet in their silks' under the protection of various lords,

as well as of Her Majesty. The writer proposes that every stage shall be

required to pay a weekly subsidy in aid of the poor. The flood of

pamphlets had, however, subsided. The _Mirror of Monsters_, published by

William Rankins in 1587, is of markedly less importance than its

predecessors. In November 1587 the City sent a deputation to the Privy

Council in the hope of securing the suppression of plays within their

boundaries; so far as is known, they were unsuccessful. A year or two

later new combative relations were established between the players and

the Puritans as an outcome of the Martin Marprelate controversy, which

began with a series of anonymous pamphlets attacking the principles of

episcopacy, and continued throughout 1589 and 1590. The players were not

at first particularly concerned against their hereditary enemies.

Tarlton, who died on 3 September 1588, is said himself to have satirized

the existing ecclesiastical order in a mock discovery of Simony 'in Don

John of Londons cellar'. And indeed the ribald style in which Martin

Marprelate canvassed the bishops was held to be modelled on the manners

of the theatre. 'The stage is brought into the church; and vices make

play of church matters', said one episcopalian writer, and described

Martin as declaring on his death-bed, 'All my foolery I bequeath to my

good friend Lanam and his consort, from whom I had it'. Bacon also

condemned 'this immodest and deformed manner of writing lately

entertained, whereby matters of religion are handled in the style of the

stage'.[861] But before long the vigour of the attack drove the bishops

to seek on their side for an equally effective literary retort. They

hired writers, including John Lyly and Thomas Nashe; and these not only

answered Martin in his own vein, but also made use of the theatres for

what must have been the congenial task of producing scurrilous plays

against him. To this campaign there are many allusions in the pamphlets

belonging to the controversy. The Puritans hit back with all their old

contempt of the rogues and vagabonds dressed in the Queen's liveries;

but the laugh was on the other side when Martin was brought dressed like

a monstrous ape on the stage, and wormed and lanced to let the blood and

evil humours out of him, or when Divinity appeared with a scratched

face, complaining of the assaults received in the hideous creature's

attacks upon her honour. _Vetus Comoedia_, the savage Aristophanic

invective, was assuredly in full swing upon the English boards. Nashe

professed to have another device ready, in which Martin was to figure in

a grotesque pageant called the _May-Game of Martinism_; but the scandal

was now getting too great, and the Government was obliged to disavow its

own instruments. According to Nashe, it was by 'sly practice' that the

comedies which had been penned were not allowed to be played. However

this may have been, we find the Lord Mayor writing to Lord Burghley on 6

November 1589 that, in accordance with what he understood from a letter

of his lordship to Mr. Young of Middlesex to be his desire, he had

stayed plays in the City, in that the Master of the Revels 'did utterly

mislike the same'. Almost immediately afterwards, on 12 November, the

Privy Council issued three letters from 'the Starre Chamber' to the

Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Mayor, and the Master of the Revels,

directing the Master to join with a divine and with a person 'learned

and of judgement' nominated by the other two, and form a commission for

allowing the books of plays and striking out or reforming 'suche partes

and matters as they shall fynde unfytt and undecent to be handled in

playes, both for Divinitie and State'. Perpetual disabilities are

threatened to players who produce any pieces not so allowed.

There are indications that in the next year or two a considerable

increase took place in the number of plays given during each week. Other

kinds of amusement, no less than more serious occupations, suffered, and

in a letter of 25 July 1591 to London, Middlesex, and Surrey, the Privy

Council had not merely to insist once more upon the due observance of

Sunday, but also to forbid plays on Thursdays, on the ground that on

this day bear-baiting and other like pastimes, maintained for the royal

pleasure if occasion should require, had 'ben allwayes accustomed and

practized'. In the following year the Corporation were moved to approach

Archbishop Whitgift with a view to obtaining some redress of their

grievances through his influence. By a letter of 25 February they set

out the evils of plays in the familiar terms, expressing themselves as

moved by the 'earnest continuall complaint' of the preachers and

declaring that by no one thing was the government of the City 'so

greatly annoyed and disquieted'. They explained the difficulty in which

they were put by the authority conferred upon the Master of the Revels,

who had licensed the playing-houses, 'which before that time lay open

to all the statutes for the punishing of these and such lyke disorders',

and begged the Archbishop to confer with the Master as to the

possibility of providing for the Queen's recreation without the

necessity of public performances. A second letter of 6 March thanks the

Archbishop for his advice, which apparently was, quite frankly, to bribe

the Master. A committee of the Corporation was appointed on 18 March to

treat with Tilney, but the scheme fell through for financial reasons. On

22 March the Court of the Merchant Taylors Company discussed a

'precepte' from the Lord Mayor, which called attention to the evils of

plays and suggested 'the payment of one anuytie to one Mr. Tylney,

mayster of the revelles of the Queenes house, in whose hands the

redresse of this inconveniency doeth rest, and that those playes might

be abandoned out of this citie'. The Court sympathized, but 'wayinge the

damage of the president and enovacion of raysinge of anuyties upon the

Companies of London', declined to unloose their purse-strings. On 12

June the Lord Mayor reported to Lord Burghley a disturbance in

Southwark, the pretence for which had been furnished by a gathering at a

play, held in defiance of orders on a Sunday. Anticipation of a renewal

of disorder on Midsummer Day led the Council on 23 June to impose an

inhibition on plays until the following Michaelmas. Three undated papers

in the Henslowe-Alleyn collection at Dulwich may perhaps suggest that

later in the summer they became willing to relax their severity. The

first of these is a petition to the Council from Lord Strange's men,

begging to be allowed to use their play-house on the Bankside, both for

their own sake, as otherwise they would have to travel at considerable

charge, and for that of the watermen who 'nowe in this long vacation'

look for relief through ferrying spectators to and from the plays. The

second is a petition from the watermen themselves to the same effect.

The third is a copy of a warrant from the Council, setting out that not

long since they had restrained Lord Strange's men from playing at the

Rose and enjoined them to play at Newington Butts, and removing the

injunction, 'by reason of the tediousness of the waie and that of longe

tyme plaies have not there bene used on working daies'. If these

documents really belong to 1592, which must remain doubtful, the

permission to resume playing was almost certainly rendered nugatory by a

plague more serious than any that had devastated London since 1563. In

fact Henslowe's _Diary_ shows no performances at the Rose between 22

June and 29 December, and the short winter season that followed was

abruptly broken off by a renewed outbreak and an order from the Privy

Council on 28 January for the suppression of all assemblies for purposes

of amusement within seven miles of London. This was probably renewed in

April, and the companies, who had waited for some months in hopes of

relaxation, had perforce to travel. On 29 April and 6 May the Council

itself issued warrants of authorization to Lord Sussex's and Lord

Strange's men respectively to assist them in taking this course.

Probably the theatres remained closed during the greater part of the

next eighteen months. Henslowe's _Diary_ only indicates performances

from 27 December 1593 to 6 February 1594, evidently interrupted by

another restraint within five miles of London under a Council order of 3

February, and then a few more in April and in May. The Countess of

Warwick's men seem to have been negotiating with the City for toleration

on 10 May. Regular playing, however, was not resumed on Bankside until 3

June. The plague was now fairly over, and the shattered companies began

to reconstruct themselves. In October Lord Hunsdon wrote to the Lord

Mayor begging permission for his men to use the Cross Keys in

Gracechurch Street. In November Francis Langley, one of the alnagers for

London, was planning a new theatre, the Swan, on the Bankside, and the

Lord Mayor once more detailed the objections to plays in a letter of

protest to Lord Burghley. This was followed up on 13 September 1595 by a

formal petition from the Corporation for 'the present stay and finall

suppressing' of plays in Middlesex and Surrey. Herein the origin of yet

another prentice riot was traced to the obnoxious performances.

Obviously the request was not acceded to. Henslowe's _Diary_ shows no

break in the sequence of plays, except for Lent, until the July of 1596,

when plague once more called for an inhibition. At about the same time

the balance of parties on the Privy Council was seriously disturbed by

the death of Henry Lord Hunsdon, who had been Lord Chamberlain since

1585. His successor, Lord Cobham, was less favourable to the players. In

the course of the long vacation Thomas Nashe wrote of them as 'piteously

persecuted by the Lord Maior and the Aldermen: and however in their old

Lord's tyme they thought there state setled it is now so uncertayne they

cannot build upon it'. In November there was a petition from inhabitants

of the Blackfriars against the erection of a theatre in the precinct,

which recited how 'all players being banished by the Lord Mayor from

playing within the city by reason of the great inconveniences and ill

rule that followeth them, they now think to plant themselves in

liberties.' At last the City had gained the point denied them in 1574

and again in 1584. Their importunity, in season and out of season, had

moved the hearts of the autocratic body at Whitehall. Hence-forward,

although play-houses might stand thick enough within the rapidly growing

suburbs beyond the gates, there were to be none, or at any rate none but

'private' houses, within the closely guarded circuit of the liberties. A

fuller account of the transaction, without any clear indication of its

date, is given many years later by Richard Rawlidge in _A Monster Lately

Found Out, or The Scourging of Tipplers_ (1628), and five play-houses

are enumerated as pulled down and suppressed under authority from the

Queen and Council by the 'religious senators'.[862]

The events of the next year must have given the Corporation high hopes

of making an equally clean sweep in the suburbs. They had by now learnt

that, although there were many abuses of the stage to which the Council

would turn a blind eye, any interference in politics or encouragement,

direct or indirect, to civil commotion, was not one of them. On 28 July

1597 they were able, in renewing their appeal for a 'present staie and

fynall suppressinge' of the Middlesex and Surrey theatres, to add to

their summary of 'inconveniences' a definite statement of a recent

confession by some unruly apprentices that plays had served as the

'randevous' of their 'mutinus attemptes'. On the same day the Council

wrote to the Middlesex and Surrey Justices, ordering not merely that

there should be a restraint of plays within three miles of the City

until Allhallowtide, but also that the owners of the theatres should be

required 'to pluck downe quite the stages, gallories and roomes that are

made for people to stand in, and so to deface the same as they maie not

be ymploied agayne to suche use'. As their reason they cited the

disorders, due partly to the 'confluence of bad people' at the

play-houses, and partly to the handling of 'lewd matters' on the stage.

There is reason to suppose that their action was not altogether

determined by the representations of the City. A 'seditious' play called

_The Isle of Dogs_ had been shown on one of the Bankside stages.[863]

This had been brought to their notice by the famous heretic-hunter and

informer, Richard Topcliffe, and was, according to Henslowe's _Diary_,

the cause of the restraint. The players and one of the makers of the

play had been committed to prison; the other, Thomas Nashe, had fled to

Yarmouth, leaving incriminating papers in his lodgings. On 15 August a

commission was issued to Topcliffe and others to examine further into

the matter and ascertain how far the 'lewd' play had been spread abroad.

The second writer has recently been found to be Benjamin Jonson, who

thus makes his stormy entry into a field of activity which he was

destined, more than any other save one, to illustrate and adorn. It is

natural to suppose that, in ordering the complete gutting of the

theatres, the Council contemplated the continuance of the restraint even

beyond Allhallowtide. But if so, they again changed their minds, and the

City were disappointed. On 3 October a warrant was sent to the Keeper of

the Marshalsea for the release of Jonson and of the offending players,

and Henslowe's _Diary_ notes the resumption of playing a week later.

Evidently the Council had satisfied themselves, perhaps under the

influence of another new Lord Chamberlain, George Lord Hunsdon, who had

succeeded Lord Cobham in the course of the year, that it was after all

impossible, in view of the amenities of the royal Christmas, wholly to

dispense with plays.

This winter of 1597-8 is really an important turning-point in the

history of stage-control. The events of the past two years, following

upon a long period of vexatious conflict, seem to have brought the

Government to the conclusion that the method of regulation through the

magistrates had now broken down, and that the time had come for the

resettlement of the matter upon the more centralized basis already

foreshadowed by the commission to the Master of the Revels in 1581. Of

this there are two indications. And first, for the county as a whole, a

new Vagabond Act, replacing that of 1572, had been called for by the

progressive development of the Elizabethan poor-law policy on the humane

lines of a local rate, and the consequent possibility of discriminating

more closely between the deserving poor and the idle vagrants. The

latter class were again to be treated with greater severity. Summary

whipping was reinstated and might be inflicted in future by local

constables as well as justices. The more dangerous rogues were to be

transported, and treated as felons if they returned. These were the main

objects of the statute, but incidentally the status of players and

minstrels was affected. The power of justices to license travelling was

taken away. Before long even John Dutton had to prove his claim to his

Cheshire privilege. The right of noblemen to protect their servants was

not interfered with, and indeed must now have become even more

important, as they acquired a monopoly; but it must be exercised under

hand and seal and, although this point is not dealt with in the statute,

must presumably be endorsed by the Master of the Revels. As regards

London and its suburbs in particular, the Privy Council, with the Master

of the Revels as an adviser and agent, took the control into its own

hands, and decided that the companies to be licensed should be limited

to two. It seems likely that this policy took shape in a solemn order in

Star Chamber, although the document itself has not reached us.[864] At

any rate the rule is set out and confirmed in a letter written by the

Lord Chamberlain and the Lord Admiral to the Justices and the Master of

the Revels on 19 February 1598, in which complaint is made of the

intrusion of a third company, not included in the Council's sanction and

not bound to the Master of the Revels for observance of the conditions

imposed. In principle it continued to prevail until the end of the

reign, although in practice it was not found very easy to restrict the

number of companies, and still less that of theatres. On the Surrey

side, indeed, an element of local feeling adverse to the stage began to

show itself, which perhaps owed its origin to little more than a dispute

about the liability of the players to contribute to local assessments.

It took shape in a petition from the vestry of St. Saviour's, Southwark,

to the Council on 19 July 1598 for the closing of the play-houses in the

parish, on account of the enormities that came thereby. But on 28 March

1600 the vestry were content that the churchwardens should 'talk with

the players for tithes for their playhouses and for money for the poor,

according to the order taken before my lords of Canterbury and London

and the Master of the Revels'. In Middlesex, on the other hand, the

growth of the western suburbs and their convenience for theatrical

purposes led to divers new enterprises. The most important of these was

the erection of the Fortune in St. Giles's, Cripplegate, by Edward

Alleyn during 1600. The Council seem to have been in two minds about the

desirability of the scheme. In January the project had been encouraged

by a personal letter from the Lord Admiral to the Middlesex Justices.

Some of the inhabitants, however, raised a protest, and in March the

Council ordered the Justices in nowise to permit the building, as that

would be inconsistent with the order for the plucking down of theatres

given them 'not longe sithence'. If this means the order of 28 July

1597, the Council seem to have forgotten that their own action later in

the same year had rendered it nugatory; nor were they very consistent

when, on 15 May 1600, they allowed the use of the Swan, which certainly

should have been plucked down in 1597, for feats of activity by Peter

Bromvill, an acrobat specially recommended to Elizabeth by the French

king. Ultimately the question of the Fortune received a final

reconsideration. The inhabitants, just as in Southwark, were squared by

the promise of liberal contributions towards poor relief. Possibly,

also, the Queen herself intervened in Alleyn's favour, and on 8 April

the consent of the Council was signified by a further letter to the

justices. On 22 June the allowance was explained and the principle

adopted in 1597 reaffirmed by an Order in Council, which was not,

however, passed without some 'question and debate'. There were to be two

houses and no more, the Fortune in Middlesex for the Admiral's men and

the Globe in Surrey for the Chamberlain's. In addition to the old

prohibitions of plays on Sunday, in Lent or during infection, two new

restrictions make their appearance. No plays were in future to be given

in any 'common inn', and neither of the privileged companies was to play

more than twice a week. A few months before, on 1 April 1600, the

Middlesex Justices had stopped a contemplated play-house in East

Smithfield on the strength of the Star Chamber order. But the

twice-repeated limitation of the Privy Council, for all the formality of

its expression, seems to have had the shortest of lives. By October 1600

it had already been broken by Pembroke's men, who began to play in that

month as a third company at the Rose. During the same year the Chapel

boys and those of St. Paul's were also performing, although no doubt

these were technically located in 'private' houses. Blackfriars, where

the Chapel plays were given, was not yet in the full sense part of the

City; it was, however, to the Lord Mayor that the Council gave

instructions on 11 March 1601 to stop plays in the Blackfriars, as well

as at St. Paul's, during Lent. In May the Curtain was open, and although

the Council suppressed a particular play there, they did not suppress

the house. By the end of 1601 the order of the previous year had fallen

into complete disregard. There were a 'multitude of play-howses' and a

daily concourse of people to the plays. The Corporation complained and

were informed by the Council on 31 December that the fault lay largely

with themselves and their predecessors, as they had failed to see to the

execution of their lordships' directions. These were renewed, and a

reminder was also sent to the county Justices. It has been suggested

that the attitudes of the Corporation and the Council had now been

reversed, and that the former had become favourably disposed towards the

players.[865] I find no evidence of this. Probably the City policy was

to show that the Council's attempt at regulation had broken down, and

that complete prohibition had become the only remedy. On 31 March 1602

the Council wrote again to the Lord Mayor, who had reported some

amendment of the abuses, and announced that, 'upon noteice of her

Maiesties pleasure at the suit of the Earle of Oxford', a third company,

made up of the Earl's servants and of those of the Earl of Worcester,

were to be tolerated, and were to have the Boar's Head as their sole

playing-place.

Plays were suspended by the Council on 19 March 1603 during the illness

of the Queen, which terminated fatally on 24 March. Their resumption was

anticipated on the coming of James, one of whose first acts was to issue

on 7 May a proclamation against plays or bear-baiting on Sundays. But

plague intervened, a plague more deadly even than that of 1592-4; and it

was not until after the Lent of 1604 that on 9 April the Council

authorized the three companies of players to the King, Queen, and Prince

to perform at the Globe, Curtain, and Fortune, so long as the weekly

plague-deaths should not exceed thirty. These were the former companies

of the Chamberlain's, Worcester's, and the Admiral's men, now taken

directly into the royal service. By a piece of generosity not paralleled

during the late reign, the King's men had received a payment of £30 from

the Treasurer of the Chamber in February for their 'maintenance and

relief', in view of the prohibition of performances during the plague.

The attachment of the three companies to the royal households is to be

regarded as something a little more than a mere honour bestowed upon

them. It signified a further advance on the lines already laid down in

1597 and 1600 of direct royal control in affairs theatrical. In favour

of the King's men, the precedent set for Leicester's men in 1574 was

revived, and their privileges, formerly dependent upon orders of the

Privy Council, were conferred upon them by a licence under letters

patent. A similar patent was drafted for Queen Anne's men, but was not

at the time executed. In 1606 a provincial detachment of these men was

using a letter of recommendation from the Queen herself as a warrant;

they did not receive a licence under letters patent until 1609.

Gradually, however, the issue of a patent became the normal Jacobean

method of licensing the privileged London players. The Children of the

Queen's Revels received theirs in 1604 and a new one in 1610, the

Prince's men in 1606, the Duke of York's in 1610, the Lady Elizabeth's

in 1611, and the Elector Palatine's in 1613. In 1615 a patent of an

exceptional type was issued to Philip Rosseter and his partners for a

new theatre at Porter's Hall in the Blackfriars. In the patents for

companies the model of the 1574 patent is in the main followed, but as a

rule the 'usual howse' in which the company will play is named. This,

however, does not seem to be meant to fetter their discretion to use

some other convenient house, and a general authority to play in the

provinces is, except in the case of the Revels Children, always added.

There is no such limitation on playing to two days a week as was imposed

on the companies by the Council order of 1600. Most of the patents

contain a clause reserving 'all auctoritie power priuiledges and

profittes' appertaining to the Master of the Revels under his patent or

commission. This is omitted in the licence for the King's men and in

both of those for the Revels Children, whose 1604 patent contains a

special clause requiring their plays to have the 'approbacion and

allowaunce' of Samuel Daniel, whom Queen Anne had appointed for that

purpose.[866] It became the duty of the Master to scrutinize the

phraseology of plays in the light of an _Act to Restrain Abuses of

Players_, passed in May 1606, which imposed a penalty of £10 for any

profane or jesting use of the names of God, Christ Jesus, the Holy

Ghost, or the Trinity, in any stage-play, interlude, show, May-game, or

pageant. This statute, even if not always literally observed, entailed

much revision of existing dramatic texts.

If the system of patents did not render the London players independent

of the Master of the Revels, still less did it abrogate from the

ultimate authority of the King in Council. There is evidence that the

theatres were closed in the autumn of 1605, during which plague was

prevalent, and in this matter the responsibility for action still rested

with the Council.[867] Unfortunately the full Register for the period

1603-13 is missing. A letter of 12 April 1607 from the City asking for a

restraint is addressed to the Lord Chamberlain, whose function it would

no doubt be to move the Council. In this or some later year the

Whitefriars vestry seem also to have made a protest against the dumping

of a play-house in their precinct.[868] That plague interfered with

plays in 1608-9, and 1609-10 also, is indicated by payments made to the

King's men 'for their private practice' during these years. After 1610

London was no more troubled by the plague until 1625. Other reasons for

inhibiting plays sometimes presented themselves. Some bad political

indiscretions of 1608, which will require consideration in the next

chapter, led to a temporary suspension of performances and a royal

threat of permanent suppression. The untimely death of Prince Henry on 7

November 1612 threw a shadow upon all mirth, and the Council declared

that 'these tymes doe not suite with such playes and idle shewes, as are

daily to be seene in and neere the cittie of London, to the scandall of

order and good governement at all occasions when they are most

tollerable'. On 29 March 1615 the Council summoned representatives of

all the London companies before them, to answer for playing in Lent,

contrary to the express direction of the Lord Chamberlain given through

the Master of the Revels. The records of suburban administration show

the Middlesex Justices trying William Claiton, an East Smithfield

victualler, on 20 December 1608, for suffering plays to be performed in

his house during the night season, and on 1 October 1612 making an Order

for Suppressing Jigs at the End of Plays, on the ground that the lewd

jigs, songs, and dances so used at the Fortune led to the resort of

cutpurses and other ill-disposed persons and to consequent breaches of

the peace. Generally speaking, the problem of metropolitan stage-control

may be said, during the reign of James I, to have reached a condition of

comparative stability.

As regards the provinces there has been some misapprehension. The royal

patents of course ran there, and there is one example of a patent issued

to a company which actually had its head-quarters in a provincial town,

that to the Children of the Queen's Chamber of Bristol, granted through

the influence of Queen Anne, who had visited Bristol on her progress in

1613. But in the provinces the patented companies had no monopoly; side

by side with them still wandered both unlicensed vagrants and the

protected servants of noblemen. It is true that a Vagabond Act of 1604,

which in the main and with certain exceptions, such as dropping the

experiment of transportation, continued the policy of that of 1597, has

been supposed to have withdrawn the privilege of protection.[869] But

the provincial records show that in fact the noblemen's companies were

still afoot, and the provision of the statute itself, when carefully

read, bears quite another interpretation.[870] It professes to be

declaratory of that of Elizabeth on which 'divers doubtes and questions'

had arisen, and after reciting the catalogue of persons who were to be

classed as vagrants, which includes not only players of interludes, but

also fencers, bearwards, minstrels, begging scholars and sailors,

palmists, fortune-tellers, proctors, and others, it lays down that no

authority shall be given by noblemen to 'any other person or persons';

that is surely, to any of the persons named in the catalogue, other than

the players of interludes belonging to the noblemen and authorized under

their hands and seals, for whom exception is specifically made

therein.[871] The system of patents lent itself to certain abuses by

travelling companies. Exemplifications were taken out in duplicate, and

while the regular company remained in London, a quite distinct one would

go on tour with one of the duplicates and, if necessary, an instrument

of deputation from the man named in the patent of which it was a

copy.[872] This practice was condemned in 1616 by a warrant of the Lord

Chamberlain, to whose department the supervision of the issue of playing

patents, as well as the general supervision of the Master of the Revels,

appears to have been entrusted. The same document also condemns a

company which had been travelling under a 'warrant,' by which is

apparently meant a licence under the royal sign manual or signet, used

instead of an elaborate and doubtless expensive patent.[873] The signet

licences were, however, such an obvious convenience that it was not long

before they came to be regularly issued to players under the

administration of the Lord Chamberlain himself.[874] This is a topic

which lies rather beyond my purview. Nor can I dwell at any length on

the evidence which shows that the licences given to players, like other

assumptions of the royal prerogative, did not pass altogether without

criticism from contemporary constitutionalists. I do not know whether it

was a weak point that the statutory sanction taken for the patents in

1572 was not re-enacted in 1597. Their wording purported clearly enough

to give the holders an authority to play both within and without the

liberties and freedoms of any cities, towns, and boroughs. But Chief

Justice Sir Edward Coke, charging a Norwich jury on 4 August 1606,

appears to have told the justices that the remedy of the abuses due to

players was entirely in their hands--'they hauing no commission to play

in any place without leaue: and therefore, if by your willingnesse they

be not entertained, you may soone be rid of them'.[875] Too much stress

must not be laid upon this, for Coke vigorously repudiated the accuracy

of the printed edition of his charge from which the passage is

taken.[876] But Prynne seems to insinuate a very similar argument in his

_Histriomastix_ of 1633,[877] and in any event the validity of the

patents was terminated by the final ordinance for the suppression of

plays passed by the Long Parliament on 9 February 1648, which enacted

that 'all stage-players, and players of interludes, and common playes,

are hereby declared to be, and are, and shall be taken to be, rogues,

... whether they be wanderers or no, and notwithstanding any license

whatsoever from the King or any person or persons to that purpose'.[878]

We, however, are now concerned, not with the decadence of the stage, but

with its palmy days under Elizabeth and James.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 839: Aydelotte, 58, misrepresents the Act of 1531 on this

point. The clearest proof that the unprotected player was a vagabond is

in a Privy Council letter of 30 April 1556 to Lord Shrewsbury (Lodge, i.

260), which, after directing that Sir Francis Leek shall not let his

servants travel as players, adds, 'And in case any person shall attempt

to set forth these sort of games or pastimes at any time hereafter,

contrary to this order; and do wander, for that purpose, abroad in the

country; your Lordship shall do well to give the Justices of the Peace

in charge to see them apprehended out of hand, and punished as

vagabonds, by virtue of the statute made against loitering and idle

persons'.]

[Footnote 840: Cf. App. C, s.vv. Gosson (1582), 215; Cox (1591); App. D,

No. lxxv (2) (_b_). An Act of 1552 (_5 & 6 Edw. VI_, c. 21) required

every travelling 'Pedler, Tynker, or Pety Chapman' to have a licence

from two justices of the shire in which he resided (_Statutes_, iv.

155). This was merged in the Act of 1572 (App. D, No. xxiv), but not

formally repealed until _1 Jac. I_, c. 25, in 1604 (_Statutes_, iv.

1052).]

[Footnote 841: _Procl._ 455; cf. Dasent, v. 73; Machyn, 69.]

[Footnote 842: Cf. _M. S. C._ i. 350; Aydelotte, 14. _Procl._ 273 laid

down (1545) 'that noe person of what estate, degree or condicion soever

he be, doe in any wise hereafter name or avowe any man to be his

servant, unles he be his houshold servant, or his bailiffe or keeper, or

such other as he may keepe and retayne by the lawes and statutes of this

realme, or be retayned by the kings maiestys licence' (Hazlitt, _E. D.

S._ 7). But the laws against retainers had fallen into desuetude again

by 1572; cf. App. D, No. xix.]

[Footnote 843: Scargill-Bird³, 80; W. R. Anson, _Law and Custom of the

Constitution_, ii. 1. 55; H. Hall, _Studies in English Official

Historical Documents_, 263; _M. S. C._ i. 260. The stages of a patent,

as settled by _27 Hen. VIII_, c. 11 (1535), were (_a_) a Petition

setting out the grant desired, and (_b_) a direction by the Sovereign

for the preparation of (_c_) a King's Bill. In this the wording of the

intended patent was settled, and this wording was followed, with varying

initial and final _formulae_, in the subsequent instruments. The King's

Bill received the royal Sign Manual and became the authority for the

issue by a Clerk to the Signet of (_d_) a Signet Bill. This was sent to

the Lord Privy Seal, who based upon it (_e_) a Writ of Privy Seal, which

was addressed to the Lord Chancellor, and became in its turn the

authority for the issue of (_f_) the actual Letters Patent under the

Great Seal. These were handed to the recipient, while the Writ of Privy

Seal passed on to the Six Clerks in Chancery, for (_g_) an Enrolment of

its contents upon the Patent Roll.]

[Footnote 844: Cf. ch. ii.]

[Footnote 845: _Mediaeval Stage_, ii. 216.]

[Footnote 846: Cf. App. D, Nos. ii-v.]

[Footnote 847: Dasent, iii. 307.]

[Footnote 848: _S. P. D. Edw. VI_, xv. 33. By _5 & 6 Edw. VI_ of 1552

(_Statutes_, iv. 155) travelling tinkers and pedlars could hold a

licence from two justices of the peace. This arrangement is continued by

the Act of 1572 (_vide infra_), and tinkers and pedlars are there

grouped with players. Possibly therefore such local licences had also

been issued to players who were not 'servants', even before 1572.]

[Footnote 849: Dasent, i. 104, 109, 110, 122. The nature of the joiners'

offence is clear; three of those imprisoned were named Hawtrell, Lucke,

and Lucas. They had played 'wythowt respect ether off the day or the

ordre whiche was knowen openlye the Kinges Highnes intended to take for

repressinge off playes'. At the same time the Lord Warden's men were

committed 'for playing contrary to an ordre taken by the Mayour'.]

[Footnote 850: P. F. Tytler, _England under the Reigns of Edward VI and

Mary_, i. 21, from _S. P. D. Edw. VI_, i. 5.]

[Footnote 851: Gildersleeve, 5, points out that I was misled by Collier,

i. 119, into citing the Marian proclamation in _Mediaeval Stage_, ii.

220, under 1533 as well as 1553. I regret the error.]

[Footnote 852: Dasent, vi. 102. The Lord Mayor is to send offending

players 'to the Commissioners for Religion to be by them further

ordered, and also to take ordre that no playe be made hencefourthe

within the Citie except the same be first seen and allowed and the

players aucthorised'.]

[Footnote 853: Cf. ch. xxii and App. D, Nos. ix, xii, xiii. The

Commission had also an authority over vagrants in or near London, which

apparently disappeared after the legislation of 1572 (_vide infra_).]

[Footnote 854: There is a doubtful notice of a Court play by the

servants of George Evelyn of Wotton in 1588. Sir Percival Hart's sons

played in 1565.]

[Footnote 855: The list of small travelling companies in Murray, ii. 77,

113, includes 14 belonging to knights and 3 to gentlemen in 1558-72, and

8 belonging to knights and 2 to gentlemen in 1573-97; also 7 companies

under the names of their towns only in 1558-72 and 11 in 1573-97.

Alexander Houghton of Lea in Lancashire wrote on 3 Aug. 1581 (G. J.

Piccope, _Lancashire and Cheshire Wills_, ii. 238), 'Yt ys my wyll that

Thomas Houghton of Brynescoules my brother shall have all my

instrumentes belonginge to mewsyckes and all maner of playe clothes yf

he be mynded to keppe and doe keppe players. And yf he wyll not keppe

and maynteyne playeres then yt ys my wyll that Sir Thomas Heskethe

Knyghte shall haue the same instrumentes and playe clothes. And I moste

hertelye requyre the said Syr Thomas to be ffrendlye unto Foke Gyllome

and William Shakshafte now dwellynge with me and ether to take theym

unto his servyce or els to helpe theym to some good master'. Was then

William Shakshafte a player in 1581?]

[Footnote 856: _S. P. D. Eliz._ clx. 48; clxiii. 44, record a dispute in

1583 between Sir Walter Waller and Mr. Potter, a J.P. of Kent. Waller,

summoned before the Council, denies that his servants played an

interlude at Brasted, and is confirmed by the constable and

parishioners, who assert that Mr. Potter factiously sent the men to gaol

as rogues. Lord Cobham made a vain attempt to reconcile the parties.]

[Footnote 857: Cf. _Mediaeval Stage_, ii. 259, on the history of this

privilege. The reservation was continued by _39 Eliz._ c. 4, § 10

(1598). By _43 Eliz._ c. 9, § 2 (1601), it was made dependent on a

certificate by the Lords Justices to the validity of Dutton's claim.

Presumably this was obtained as the privilege was reserved

unconditionally by _1 Jac. I_, c. 7, § 8 (1604). There were several

Elizabethan actors of the name of Dutton (cf. ch. xv), but it is not

known whether they belonged to the Cheshire house.]

[Footnote 858: For documents addressed to Richard Young or mentions of

him, cf. App. D, Nos. lxviii, lxxiv, xc. He is often referred to in the

_Hatfield MSS._, in connexion with a monopoly of starch which he held,

and otherwise. In 1593 (iv. 393) he writes 'from my house, Stratford the

Bowe'. On 30 Nov. 1594 (v. 25) he wrote to the Queen, 'in these my aged

and extreme or last days' with notes of many examinations, chiefly of

papists, taken by him. On the other hand, Carter, _Shakespeare Puritan

and Recusant_, 145, quotes an inscription on the coffin of Roger Rippon,

who died in Newgate in 1592, 'his blood crieth for speedy vengeance

against ... Mʳ. Richard Young, a justice of the peace in London, who in

this and many like points hath abused his power for the upholding of the

Romish Antichrist, Prelacy and Priesthood'.]

[Footnote 859: Cf. p. 265. Collier, i. 254, quotes an epigram calling

Fleetwood 'the enemy of all poor players'. John Field dedicates his

_Godly Exhortation_ (1583) to him as a Middlesex and Surrey Justice.]

[Footnote 860: Cf. App. D, Nos. xxxvii, lxviii.]

[Footnote 861: Bacon, _On the Controversies of the Church_ (Spedding,

viii. 76).]

[Footnote 862: Cf. ch. xvi, introduction.]

[Footnote 863: Cf. ch. xxiii, s.vv. Jonson, Nashe.]

[Footnote 864: Cf. App. D, No. cxx.]

[Footnote 865: Wallace, ii. 162.]

[Footnote 866: There is no reference to licensing in the later Queen's

Revels patent of 1610. That for the Queen's men in 1609 has the usual

provision for licensing by the Master of the Revels. This was, however,

not inconsistent with 'a kind of gouernment and suruey ouer the said

players' by the Chamberlain of the Queen's Household (cf. ch. xiii).]

[Footnote 867: Philip Gawdy (_Letters_, 160) writes on 28 Oct. 1605 of

his nephew in London, 'Playes he was never at any, for they are all put

downe'; cf. App. D, Nos. cxxxix, cxl.]

[Footnote 868: Cf. ch. xvii.]

[Footnote 869: Some interesting light is thrown on the workings of the

Vagabond Acts in the North Riding of Yorkshire by the presentations in

_Quarter Sessions Records_ (_North Riding Record Soc._), i. 204, 260;

ii. 110, 119, 197. At Topcliffe on 2 Oct. 1610 Thomas Pant, apprentice

to Christopher Simpson of Egton, shoemaker and recusant, was released

from his indentures on complaining that he had been 'trayned up for

these three yeres in wandering in the country and playing of

interludes'. At Helmesley on 8 July 1612 Christopher Simpson, late of

Egton, was presented and fined as a player, and Richard Dawson, tanner

and constable of Stokesley, for allowing Christopher and also Robert

Simpson of Staythes, shoemaker, Richard Hudson of Hutton Bushell,

weaver, and Edward Lister of Allerston, weaver, to wander as common

players of interludes. A similar charge was made against William

Blackborne, labourer and constable of Marton, as regards Robert Simpson,

Richard Knagges of Moorsham, William Fetherston of Danby, and James

Pickering of Bowlby, mason. At Helmesley on 9 Jan. 1616 a number of

gentlemen and yeomen were presented for receiving players in their

houses and giving them bread and drink. John, Richard, and Cuthbert

Simpson, recusants, of Egton, Robert Simpson, of Staythes, and four

other players were fined 10_s._ each. There were similar cases at Hutton

Bushell on 4 April 1616, at Thirsk on 10 April 1616 and 7 April 1619,

and at Helmesley on 9 July 1616. Presumably the Simpsons were the same

men who brought Sir John Yorke into trouble with the Star Chamber in

1614 (cf. p. 328).]

[Footnote 870: Gildersleeve, 28, 35, 38. The origin of the error is

probably in the shoulder-note 'No Licence by any Noblemen shall exempt

Players' to _1 Jac. I_, c. 7, § 1, in the R. O. edition of the

_Statutes_.]

[Footnote 871: The players of Lords Berkeley, Chandos, Dudley, Evers,

Huntingdon, and Mounteagle (Murray, ii. 28, 32, 43, 45, 49, 57), as well

as those of the Duke of Lennox (cf. ch. xiii), are still traceable after

1604.]

[Footnote 872: Cf. App. D, No. clviii, and ch. xiii, s.v. Anne's.]

[Footnote 873: Cf. ch. xii, s.v. King's Revels. A later warrant of 20

Nov. 1622 deals with the same abuse of players and others who 'without

the knowledge and approbacon of his maiesties office of the Revels'

travel 'by reason of certaine grants comissions and lycences which they

haue by secret meanes procured both from the Kings Maiestie and also

from diuerse noblemen' (Murray, ii. 351).]

[Footnote 874: _M. S. C._ i. 284; Murray, ii. 192.]

[Footnote 875: _The Lord Coke his Speech and Charge. With a Discouerie

of the Abuses and Corruption of Officers_ (1607) H₂. There is an

epistle to the Earl of Exeter signed R. P., said (_D. N. B._) to be

Robert Pricket.]

[Footnote 876: Coke, _Preface to 7th Report_, 'libellum quendam ...

rudem et inconcinnum ... quem sane contestor non solum me omnino

insciente fuisse divulgatum, sed ... ne unam quidem sententiolam eo

sensu et significatione, prout dicta erat, fuisse enarratam'; cf.

Gildersleeve, 40; J. Haslewood in _Gentleman's Magazine_, lxxxvi. 1.

205; _1 N. Q._ vii. 376, 433.]

[Footnote 877: Prynne, 492, 497.]

[Footnote 878: Hazlitt, _E. D. S._ 67.]

X

THE ACTOR'S QUALITY

[_Bibliographical Note._--This chapter mainly rests upon the

official documents in Appendix D, the plague-data in Appendix

E, and the detailed accounts of individual companies in Book

III. To the books and dissertations cited for those sections

and for chapter viii may be added, as studies of the stage in

its political aspect, R. Simpson, _The Political Use of the

Stage in Shakespeare's Time_ and _The Politics of Shakespere's

Historical Plays_ (1874, _N. S. S. Trans._ 371, 396), S. R.

Gardiner, _The Political Element in Massinger_ (1875-6, _N. S.

S. Trans._ 314), S. Lee, _The Topical Side of the Elizabethan

Drama_ and _Elizabethan England and the Jews_ (1887-92, _N. S.

S._ 1, 143), J. A. de Rothschild, _Shakespeare and his Day_

(1906), T. S. Graves, _Some Allusions to Religious and

Political Plays_ (1912, _M. P._ ix. 545), and _The Political

Use of the Stage during the Reign of James I_ (1914, _Anglia_,

xxxviii. 137). The fragments of Sir Henry Herbert's

office-book, showing the working of the censorship from 1623 to

1642, usually cited from the _Shakespeare Variorum_ (1821), and

G. Chalmers, _Supplemental Apology_ (1799), are now

conveniently collected in J. Q. Adams, _The Dramatic Records of

Sir Henry Herbert_ (1917). A useful study has recently appeared

in A. Thaler, _The Travelling Players in Shakespeare's England_

(1920, _M. P._ xvii. 489).]

The history detailed in the foregoing chapter represents, from the point

of view of the playing companies, a vexed progress towards that state of

regulative security which, in the case of any industry dependent upon a

permanent habitation and the outlay of capital, is the first condition

of economic stability. More than once in the course of the struggle was

an approach made to a settlement before it was actually reached. The

rather obscure period of the first attempts of the companies to

establish themselves in London was closed by the experimental patent to

Leicester's men and the fairly reasonable City regulations of 1574. But

the building of the suburban theatres on the one hand and the

aggressiveness of the preachers on the other broke down the equilibrium;

and there followed a period of acute conflict, of which the commission

to the Master of the Revels in 1581, the City prohibition of 1582, the

appointment of the Queen's men in 1583, and the controversy before the

Privy Council in 1584 formed the final stages. The players were

victorious, and the result of their victory was an assured position

under the Council and the Master of the Revels, which was not indeed

wholly accepted by the City, and was seriously threatened in 1596 and

1597, but only to be the more firmly established in the latter year

when the central government assumed direct responsibility for the

regulation of the stage throughout the London area. I think that 1597

must be regarded as the critical moment at which complete stability was

attained; the substitution under James I of letters patent for Star

Chamber orders as the licensing machinery was of comparatively slight

importance. From 1597 onwards it was definitely the Crown and not the

local authorities which determined the companies to whom, subject to the

detailed administrative control of the Privy Council, the Lord

Chamberlain, and his subordinate the Master of the Revels, the privilege

of playing within the neighbourhood of London should be conceded. And

the policy of the Crown, alike under Elizabeth and under the Stuarts,

was consistently in favour of such solace and recreation for the

Sovereign and the subjects as the players ministered.

And so, tentatively up to 1584, and thereafter with a security which

received final confirmation in 1597, the actor's occupation began to

take its place as a regular profession, in which money might with

reasonable safety be invested, to which a man might look for the career

of a lifetime, and in which he might venture to bring up his children.

As early as 1574 the patent to Leicester's men refers to playing as an

'arte and facultye'. In 1581 the Privy Council call it a 'trade'; in

1582 a 'profession'; in 1593 a 'qualitie'. The order of 1600 explicitly

recognizes that it 'may with a good order and moderacion be suffered in

a well gouerned estate'. So that when Fleetwood takes occasion in 1584

to recall that originally interludes were merely the by-work of 'men for

their lyvings using other honest and lawfull artes, or reteyned in

honest services', his argument has already become anachronistic, not

wholly justified even as an antiquarian quibble, and still less as a

serious appreciation of the administrative facts with which the writer

had to deal. The player of the seventeenth century is in fact as

necessary a member of the polity as the minstrel of the twelfth or the

fourteenth; with this distinction that, in London at least, he is a

householder and not a vagrant, and is therefore able to perform his

function on a larger scale and with a fuller use of the methods and

advantages of co-operation.

Obviously the player's status, like any other status in a civilized

community, depended upon the observance on his side of certain

obligations. He had to get his formal authority or licence for the

exercise of his art. He had to respect certain prescribed limitations of

times and seasons. He had to shoulder certain responsibilities imposed

upon him as a subject and a citizen. To each of these aspects of his

calling some measure of detailed consideration is due.

A company of players was not in form, like a company of merchants, a

guild or association of independent men. Its constitution had a

mediaeval element, by which the derivation of playing from minstrelsy is

strongly recalled. The nature of the licence which it must hold, at any

rate if it desired to secure itself from the arbitrary discretion of

local justices, was determined by statute. And this licence, whether it

took the form of a warrant from a nobleman with the confirmation of the

Master of the Revels, or of a royal licence by patent, was always such

as to set up a relation of service between the company and a 'lord'. Nor

is this relation to be dismissed as a mere empty formality. Probably the

players of many country nobles and gentlemen continued to the end to

consist of their ordinary household servants, who played only at

Christmas and other times of recreation, and mainly at their lord's

expense.[879] With the regular travelling companies, and particularly

with the London companies, it was different. Financially, at least, they

were independent. But even of these the 'service', though largely a

legal fiction, was not wholly so. The Statutes of Retainers, kept alive

by the proclamations of 1572 and 1583, forbade the maintenance of

retainers who were not in some real sense household servants. The

consequent application made by his players to the Earl of Leicester in

1572 does not suggest that the distinction was a very vital one.

Certainly they guard themselves against being supposed to be asking

their lord for a fee. But I think it is clear that the lord was expected

to take some responsibility for the conduct of those who used his name,

and to exercise some discipline in cases of misdemeanour. It was so in

1559, when the proclamation against unlicensed plays expressly called

upon noblemen and gentlemen having players to see that it received

attention from their servants. And it must still have been so in 1583,

when the ill behaviour of Worcester's men at Norwich was effectively

checked by a threat to certify their lord of their contempt. On the

other hand there is abundant evidence that the lord might be looked to,

in time of need, to intervene for the active furtherance of the

interests of his players, over and above the general recommendation to

favour for his sake, which is common form in the warrants of protection

and even in the royal patents. Thus Leicester is found writing to the

President of the North on behalf of his men in 1559, Berkeley and

Hunsdon to the City in 1581 and 1594 respectively, Nottingham to

Middlesex in 1600, Lennox for his men in 1604; while the toleration of

Oxford's and Worcester's men as a third London company in 1602 is

expressly stated by the Privy Council to be due to the suit of the Earl

of Oxford to the Queen. On their side the players no doubt had

reciprocal courtesies, if no more, to pay. They wore the lord's livery

and bore his badge.[880] Leicester's men refer to their livery in their

letter of 1572, and in 1588 they had occasion to make their complaint to

the Norwich Corporation of a local cobbler 'for lewd woords uttered

ageynst the ragged staff'. A practice of offering up a prayer for the

lord's well-being at the end of a performance was probably of ancient

derivation, although whether it survived in the public theatres may

perhaps be doubted.[881] There are instances, moreover, which suggest

that, if the lord had need of players for the celebration of a wedding

or other festivity, it was to his own servants that he would naturally

turn. Thus Leicester had his company with him on his expedition to the

Netherlands in 1585, and it was the Chamberlain's men who were called

upon to play _Henry IV_ at Hunsdon's house in the Blackfriars when he

entertained the Flemish ambassador Verreyken in 1600. Similarly the

royal companies, under both Elizabeth and James, formed integral parts

of the royal household. They were attached to the Lord Chamberlain's

department, and ranked as Grooms of the Chamber. And on one occasion at

least, the visit of the Constable of Castile in 1604, the King's and

Queen's men were actually assigned, in their capacity as Grooms, to the

service of the distinguished strangers. Their exact status is, however,

a matter of some difficulty. The old interlude players had held an

independent position as such, with fees charged originally on the

Exchequer and afterwards on the Chamber, at higher rates than those of

Grooms of the Chamber, and the liveries not of Grooms but of Yeomen.

When they died out, they were replaced by the Queen's men of 1583. Howes

tells us that these 'were sworn the queen's servants and were allowed

wages and liveries as grooms of the chamber'. Howes is not quite a

contemporary authority, and makes at least a technical mistake when he

adds that until 1583 'the queene had no players'. If by 'wages' he means

such annual fees as the interlude players had received, his statement is

not confirmed by the Chamber Accounts, and it is not very likely that

such payments were put back upon the Exchequer. It is true that

fee-lists, not only Elizabethan but Jacobean, continue to include eight

players of interludes at £3 6_s._ 8_d._ each, but I doubt whether this

can be safely taken as evidence that the vacancies were filled.[882] No

doubt, however, Howes was accurate on the main point, for Tarlton is

described in a document of 1587 as an 'ordenary grome off her majestes

chamber', and both Tarlton and Johnson as 'groomes of her majesties

chamber' in another of 1588. I may add that in a list of the sixteen

ordinary grooms who received allowances at Elizabeth's funeral are to be

found the names of George Brian and John Singer.[883] These had been

respectively a Chamberlain's and an Admiral's man, but both seem to have

left playing before the date of the list, and I suspect that they

retired on taking up these active Household appointments. For the King's

players there is fuller testimony, although most of it is Caroline

rather than Jacobean. The players are not called Grooms of the Chamber

in their patents of appointment; but this proves nothing, as most of the

Household posts were conferred, not by patent, but by swearing-in before

the Lord Chamberlain or other high officer. But they received payment as

'his Maiesties Groomes of the Chamber and Players', when they waited

upon the Spanish ambassador in 1604, and are entered in the Chamber

Accounts for this payment as a distinct group, apart from the seven

ordinary and four extraordinary grooms who were also assigned to the

ambassador's service. The Queen's men, who waited upon the Flemish

commissioners, are similarly described as being 'Groomes of the Chamber

and the Queenes Players'. A few months before the King's, Queen's, and

Prince's players had all received 4½ yards of red cloth each as a

livery at the time of James's coronation procession.[884] Nearly a

quarter of a century later we find very similar liveries furnished for

both the King's and the Queen's men by a series of Lord Chamberlain's

warrants to his Wardrobe, which begin in 1622.[885] These liveries were

renewed every two years and consisted at first of three, and afterwards

of four, yards of bastard scarlet for a cloak, and a quarter of a yard

of crimson velvet for a cap. These were of course state liveries, not

the 'watching' liveries of medley-coloured cloth, at 5_s._ a yard as

against the 26_s._ 8_d._ paid for the scarlet.[886] The Chamberlain's

books of the same period also contain warrants for the swearing-in of

new members of the King's and other companies, and in these the players

are directed to be sworn as 'grooms of the chamber in ordinary without

fee'.[887] These are, as I say, Caroline records, but if we may assume

that the procedure which they disclose was no novelty, and that the

royal players from 1583 onwards held this intermediate position as

'grooms in ordinary without fee' between the ordinary and the

extraordinary Grooms of the Chamber, we get an explanation of their

status which, on the assumption that Howes was not quite well informed,

is at least consistent with all the few known facts.

The times and seasons at which plays might be given formed, of course,

one of the chief battle-grounds in the controversy with the preachers;

and it was here that the Puritans, routed on the main issue of the

campaign, were able to secure their principal victory. From the

beginning it was an understood thing that plays must not be given during

the hours of divine service, either on Sundays, or on the Saints' days,

which continued long after the Reformation to be observed as public

holidays. This, however, did not prevent the audiences from gathering,

so that the play-houses were already full, while the bells were still

ringing in the empty services.[888] The City regulations of 1574

attempted to remedy this scandal by extending the prohibition to the

opening of the doors. The same point is made in the 'Remedies' put

forward by the City advocates in 1584. But there was a practical

difficulty, which increased when the theatres in the distant fields or

over the water came into use. Afternoon prayer did not begin until 2

p.m., and if the theatres waited until 4 p.m., the performances were not

over, except in the height of summer, before dark, and the audiences

must make their way home as best they could. The City 'Remedy' for this

was a shortening of the plays; but in 1594 Lord Hunsdon suggested that

to begin at 2 instead of 4 p.m. might after all be the least of two

evils, and this seems to have been the solution ultimately adopted.[889]

The proviso against playing in time of common prayer, which finds a

place in the licence to Leicester's men of 1574, is not repeated in any

of the Jacobean licences, with the exception of Queen Anne's personal

warrant to her provincial company in 1606.

Obviously the clash with divine service became of minor importance when

the Puritans had made good their protest against plays on Sundays, and

when, on the other hand, the theatres came to be open on every week-day,

instead of principally on holidays. Both of these processes were

complete before the final settlement of the status of players was

arrived at.[890] It was the failure to exclude Sundays that above all

things made the City regulations of 1574 inadequate in the eyes of the

preachers, and formed the leading topic of their railings against the

lukewarmness of the 'magistrates'. In the City itself they had gained

this point at least by 1581, with the assent of the Privy Council, who,

while pressing for the toleration of plays both on ordinary week-days

and on holidays, was quite prepared to concede the sanctity of the

Sabbath. With the potent aid afforded by the ruin of Paris Garden at a

Sunday baiting, the City were able about 1583 to get the principle

extended to the suburbs, although both in 1587 and in 1591 the Privy

Council had to call the attention of the county justices to the neglect

of the regulation.[891] In Southwark there is mention of a disturbance

at a play on Sunday as late as 11 June 1592, but as the Lord Mayor

intervened, this can hardly have been at a regular theatre, for there

was only the Rose, which was outside his jurisdiction. On the other

hand, the evidence of Henslowe's _Diary_, as interpreted by Dr. Greg,

shows that the prohibition was strictly observed at the theatres under

his control between 1592 and 1597, and also that the Sunday abstinence

was fully compensated for by continuous playing on every other day of

the week.[892] It is probable that the proclamation against Sunday

plays, issued by James I as one of the first acts of his reign, did no

more, so far as London was concerned, than reaffirm an already accepted

practice. More puzzling is the provision in the Council order of 1600,

whereby each of the two privileged companies was limited to performances

on two days in each week. It must be exceedingly doubtful whether this

limitation was ever in fact observed. There is no evidence in Henslowe's

_Diary_ of any slackening in the output of new plays by the Admiral's

men after 1600. And there is no corresponding limitation in the Jacobean

patents. Moreover, an agreement entered into by Queen Anne's men in June

1615 specifically contemplates performances upon six days a week.

The companies were also expected not to play during Lent. This

limitation may have been traditional. It first becomes explicit in the

Privy Council's permit of 1578 to the Italian company of Martinelli

Drusiano, which is expressed as lasting to the first week in Lent. In

the following year a general inhibition for the coming and all

subsequent Lents was decreed by the Council. The entries in Henslowe's

_Diary_ show some observance of the rule during the last decade of the

sixteenth century. Strange's men in 1592 played right through Lent, with

the exception of Good Friday. The Admiral's men, on the other hand,

during 1595 to 1600, seem regularly to have broken off for some weeks

during Lent. In 1595 and 1596 the interval covered all but the first few

days; in 1597 it was less than three weeks, and thereafter the company

played three days a week up to Easter. A reservation was made for Lent

by the Council order of 1600, and in 1601 the Council sent a special

instruction to the Lord Mayor to stop plays at St. Paul's and the

Blackfriars during the penitential season. Presumably the same practice

prevailed under James I, for the permission to resume playing in April

1604 is expressed as motived by 'the time of Lent being now passt',

while on 29 March 1615 representatives of the London companies were

summoned before the Privy Council, to answer for playing in Lent

contrary to an express direction given them by the Lord Chamberlain

through the Master of the Revels.[893] Some light is thrown on this

proceeding by the fact that two years later each of the companies

undertook to pay the Master of the Revels 44_s._ 'for a Lenten

dispensation'.[894]

A Privy Council letter of 1591 imposes one other curious limitation,

with which the Puritans at any rate can have had nothing to do, upon the

players. They are to lie idle upon Thursdays and leave that day free for

bear-baitings and similar pastimes, which were 'allwayes accustomed and

practized upon it'. I am not sure whether the claim of the bearwards to

Thursday really went back beyond 1583, when it seems to have become

desirable, owing to the impulse to Puritan sentiment given by the Paris

Garden accident, to substitute some other day for the Sunday upon which

baitings had formerly been usual. Nor does it seem that the attempt to

give a special protection to the royal 'game' permanently maintained

itself. The Admiral's men, in spite of Edward Alleyn's interest in the

Bear Garden, certainly did not yield the Thursdays from 1594 to 1597,

and when about 1614 Henslowe and Jacob Meade had occasion to combine

playing and baiting in the Hope, they had to insert special stipulations

in their agreements with the actors, in order to secure one day a

fortnight for the bears.[895]

Obviously the privileges given to players were not intended to exempt

them from the ordinary duties and responsibilities of citizenship. In

the first place, they were called upon to make their contributions to

local burdens in the districts in which they set up their play-houses.

To this they had probably no objection; on the contrary, they more than

once found that a readiness to pay their tithes for the use of the poor

was an effective method of smoothing away difficulties with local

officials.[896] Nor had they less to gain than others from a reasonable

expenditure of money on the repair of the highways.[897]