Coursers to ride on through the gazing streetes,
Sooping it in their glaring satten sutes,
And pages to attend their maisterships:
With mouthing words that better wits haue framed,
They purchase lands, and now esquiers are namde.
It is the old burden of Robert Greene and Thomas Nashe once more.[1069]
The disturbance of theatrical conditions due to the revival of the boy companies became in time less acute. No doubt, the novelty of their performances wore off. Moreover, the companies were not very successful in holding together, partly because of the indiscretions of their managers and the inadequacy of their finance to stand the strain of plague years, but more because the boys, as might perhaps have been expected, grew up and ceased to be boys. Already about 1608 the Blackfriars boys 'were masters themselves' of their own company, and when this arrangement broke down, they began to be drafted into the adult associations. Other boy companies followed, but these were subject to the same difficulties, and the vogue of the original 'little eyases' was never quite recaptured.[1070] But, after all, the competition had not disappeared, but had merely taken another form. The younger generation was knocking at the gates; Field and Taylor waiting in eager rivalry for Burbadge's shoes, and meanwhile forming new combinations of their own which, however unstable, at least cut at the profits of their more firmly established rivals. The 'monopoly' offered by Jonson in jest would no doubt have been welcomed by the principal companies in earnest. The policy of the Privy Council from 1597 to 1600 pointed in this direction, but for whatever reason was not brought into effective operation. There are several indications of the pressure of competition during the earlier part of the seventeenth century. In 1609 it was worth the while of the Queen's Revels and the King's men to unite in buying off the Paul's boys at the cost of £20 a year. Dekker in the same year prophesies that the contention of the two houses of York and Lancaster will be as nothing to that of the three houses, by which he means the Globe, the Fortune, and the Red Bull.[1071] Finally, in 1610, the preacher William Crashaw, commenting upon the hostility shown by the players to the plantation of Virginia, declares explicitly that it was motived by the fact that they were so multiplied in England that one could not live by another, and by the refusal of the promoters of the colony to give any of them a chance of trying their fortunes in the new world.[1072]
The palmy days of playing lasted beyond the formal limits set to this investigation. But they did not last for ever. The coming of the end can here only be adumbrated. It perhaps shows itself first in an increasing unwillingness amongst the provincial corporations to hear the players. It was in 1623, the year of the publication of the First Folio, that the City of Norwich took the step of making a representation to the Privy Council and obtaining leave not to suffer any players within their liberties. It is true that the inhibition was not strictly carried out and that the authority was renewed in 1640. Nevertheless it is a sign of the times. Other cities, Chester in 1615, Southampton in 1623, Worcester in 1627, closed their public buildings to performances.[1073] From this time onwards the entries of payments to players in municipal accounts tend more and more to take the form of 'gratuities' given them 'because they should not play' or 'to dismiss them', or 'to put them off', or in more emphatic terms still 'to rid the town of them'.[1074] Meanwhile the Puritan controversy breaks out again, winding up to that alarming compilation of learning and argument in Prynne's Histriomastix of 1633, which indeed cost its author his ears, but must none the less have hung like a shadow of fate upon the doomed stage for ever after. And in 1642 the shadow moved, and on the outbreak of war came that dignified ordinance of 2 September, which waved frivolity aside, what time the nation girded itself for matters of moment:[1075]
An Order of the Lords and Commons concerning Stage-playes.
Whereas the distressed Estate of Ireland, steeped in her own Blood, and the distracted Estate of England, threatned with a Cloud of Blood, by a Civill Warre, call for all possible meanes to appease and avert the Wrath of God appearing in these Judgements; amongst which, Fasting and Prayer having bin often tryed to be very effectuall; have bin lately, and are still enjoyned; and whereas publike Sports doe not well agree with publike Calamities, nor publike Stage-playes with the Seasons of Humiliation, this being an Exercise of sad and pious solemnity, and the other being Spectacles of pleasure, too commonly expressing laciuious Mirth and Levitie: It is therefore thought fit, and Ordeined by the Lords and Commons in this Parliament Assembled, that while these sad Causes and set times of Humiliation doe continue, publike Stage-Playes shall cease, and bee forborne. Instead of which, are recommended to the people of this Land, the profitable and seasonable Considerations of Repentance, Reconciliation, and peace with God, which probably may produce outward peace and prosperity, and bring againe Times of Joy and Gladnesse to these Nations.