xii. 1569. Henry Cornelius Agrippa.
[From Henry Cornelius Agrippa, of the Vanitie and uncertaintie of Artes and Sciences, Englished by Ja[mes] San[ford] Gent. (1569), a translation of De incertitudine et vanitate scientiarium et artium atque excellentia Verbi Dei declamatio (1530), written in 1526 (Opera, ii. 1).]
‘Cap. 4. Of Poetrie’ condemns it as lying. ‘Cap. 20. Of the Science of stage Plaiers.’ After defining the player’s art and citing the discussion between Cicero and Roscius recorded by Macrobius (cf. no. xliii and ch. xi) and the banishment of players by the City of Marseilles (cf. Mediaeval Stage, i. 7), Agrippa concludes, ‘And therefore to exercise this Arte, is not onely a dishonest and wicked occupation, but also to behold it, and therein to delite is a shameful thinge, bicause that the delite of a wanton minde is an offence. And to conclude, there was in times paste no name more infamous then stage players, and moreouer, al they that had plaide an Enterlude in the Theater, were by the lawes depriued from all honour.’ Plays are briefly referred to in ‘Cap. 59. Of Holy daies’ and ‘Cap. 63. Of the whoorishe Arte’.