CHAPTER XXI.
THE DRAMA UNDER DIFFICULTIES.
For such a triumph as fanaticism enjoyed over the fine arts in England during and for some time after the great Civil War, no parallel can be found in the history of any other nation. And it was not, be it remembered, the work of a capricious and cruel despot; it was the tyranny of a solemn legislative assembly. Hypocrisy had some share in the proceeding, very likely; but in the main the Puritanism of the time was sincere even to its frenzies of intolerance. Good men and true held that they were doing only what was sound, and wise, and right, when they made ruthless war upon poetry, and painting, and all the refinements and graces of life, denouncing them as scandals and sins, ungodly devices, pernicious wiles of the author of all evil; when they peremptorily closed the doors of the theatres, and dismissed actors, authors, managers, and all concerned, to absolute starvation.
In the England of that time, no doubt, Puritanism obtained supporters out of respect for superior power; just as in France, at a later date, Republicanism gained converts by means of terror. The prudent, when conflict and tumult are at hand, will usually side with the stronger combatant. Thus it was with little resistance that there passed through both Houses of Parliament, in 1647, the ordinance by virtue of which the theatres were to be dismantled and suppressed; all actors of plays to be publicly whipped; and all spectators and playgoers, for every offence, condemned to forfeit five shillings. This was
the coup de grâce; for the stage had already undergone many and severe assaults. The player's tenure of his art had become more and more precarious, until acting seemed to be as a service of danger. The ordinance of 1647 closed the theatres for nearly fourteen years; but for some sixteen years before the stage had been in a more or less depressed condition. Scarcely any new dramatists of distinction had appeared after 1630. The theatres were considerably reduced in number by the time 1636 was arrived at. Then came the arbitrary closing of the playhouses—professedly but for a season. Thus in 1636 they were closed for ten months; in 1642 for eighteen months. In truth Puritanism carried on its victorious campaign against the drama for something like thirty years; while even at an earlier date there had been certain skirmishing attacks upon the stage. With the first Puritan began the quarrel with the players. As Isaac Disraeli has observed, "we must go back to the reign of Elizabeth to comprehend an event which occurred in that of Charles I." A sanctimonious sect urged extravagant reforms—at first, perhaps, in all simplicity—founding their opinions upon cramped and literal interpretations of divine precepts, and forming views of human nature "more practicable in a desert than a city, and rather suited to a monastic order than to a polished people." Still, these fanatics could scarcely have dreamed that power would ever be given them to carry their peculiar theories into practice, and to govern a nation as though it were composed entirely of precisians and bigots. For two generations—from the Reformation to the Civil War—the Puritans had been the butt of the satirical, the jest of the wits—ridiculed and laughed at on all sides. Then came a time, "when," in the words of Macaulay, "the laughers began to look grave in their turn. The rigid ungainly zealots ... rose up in arms, conquered, ruled, and, grimly smiling, trod down under their feet the whole crowd of mockers."
Yet from the first the Puritans had not neglected the pen as a weapon of offence. In 1579 Stephen Gosson published his curious pamphlet bearing the lengthy title of "The Schoole of Abuse, containing a pleasant Invective against Poets, Pipers, Jesters, and such like Catterpillars of a Commonwealth; setting up the Flag of Defiance to their mischievous exercise, and overthrowing their Bulwarks, by Profane Writers, natural reason,
and common experience: A Discourse as pleasant for gentlemen that favour learning as profitable for all that will follow virtue." Gosson expresses himself with much quaint force, but he is not absolutely intolerant. He was a student of Oxford University, had in his youth written poems and plays, and even appeared upon the scene as an actor. Although he had repented of these follies, he still viewed them without acrimony. To his pamphlet we are indebted for certain interesting details in regard to the manners and customs of the Elizabethan playgoers. A further attack upon the theatre was led by Dr. Reynolds, of Queen's College, who was greatly troubled by the performance of a play at Christchurch, and who published, in 1593, "The Overthrow of Stage Plays," described by Disraeli as "a tedious invective, foaming at the mouth of its text with quotations and authorities." Reynolds was especially severe upon "the sin of boys wearing the dress and affecting the airs of women;" and thus unconsciously helped on a change he would have regarded as still more deplorable—the appearance of actresses upon the stage. But a fiercer far than Reynolds was to arise. In 1633 Prynne produced his "Histriomastix; or, The Player's Scourge," a monstrous work of more than a thousand closely-printed quarto pages, devoted to the most searching indictment of the stage and its votaries. The author has been described as a man of great learning, but little judgment; of sour and austere principles, but wholly deficient in candour. His book was judged libellous, for he had unwittingly aspersed the Queen in his attack upon the masques performed at Court. He was cited in the Star Chamber, and sentenced to stand in the pillory, to lose both ears, to pay a heavy fine, and to undergo imprisonment for life. This severe punishment probably stimulated the Puritans, when opportunity came to them, to deal mercilessly with the actors by way of avenging Prynne's wrongs, or of expressing sympathy with his sufferings.
And it is to be noted that early legislation in regard to the players had been far from lenient. For such actors as had obtained the countenance of "any Baron of this Realme," or "any other honourable personage of greater degree," exception was to be made; otherwise, all common players in interludes, all fencers, bearwards, and minstrels, were declared by an Act passed in the 14th year of Elizabeth to be rogues and vaga
bonds, and, whether male or female, liable on a first conviction "to be grievously whipped and burned through the gristle of the right ear with an hot iron of the compass of an inch about, manifesting his or her roguish kind of life;" a second offence was adjudged to be felony; a third entailed death without benefit of clergy or privilege of sanctuary. Meanwhile, the regular companies of players to whom this harsh Act did not apply, were not left unmolested. The Court might encourage them, but the City would have none of them. They had long been accustomed to perform in the yards of the City inns, but an order of the Common Council, dated December, 1575, expelled the players from the City. Thereupon public playhouses were erected outside the "liberties" or boundaries of the City. The first was probably the theatre in Shoreditch; the second, opened in its immediate neighbourhood, was known as the Curtain; the third, built by John Burbadge and other of the Earl of Leicester's company of players, was the famous Blackfriars Theatre. These were all erected about 1576, and other playhouses were opened soon afterwards. Probably to avoid the penalties of the Act of Elizabeth, all strolling and unattached players made haste to join regular companies, or to shelter themselves under noble patronage. And now the Church raised its voice, and a controversy which still possesses some vitality touching the morality or immorality of playhouses, plays and players, was fairly and formally entered upon. A sermon preached at Paul's Cross, November, 1577, "in the time of the plague," by the Rev. T. Wilcocks, denounced in strong language the "common plays" in London, and the multitude that flocked to them and followed them, and described "the sumptuous theatre houses" as a continual monument of London's prodigality and folly. Performances, it seems, had for a while been forbidden because of the plague. "I like the policy well if it hold still," said the preacher; "for a disease is but bodged and patched up that is not cured in the cause, and the cause of plague is sin, if you look to it well; and the cause of sin are playes; therefore, the cause of plagues are playes." It is clear, too, that the clergy had become affected by a certain jealousy of the players, the sound of whose trumpet attracted more attention than the ringing of the church-bells, and brought together a