Die Veneris Septemb. 2. 1642.
I need not here attempt to trace the faint flutterings of the mimetic instinct which survived this ordinance and even that, final and more detailed, of 9 February 1648, 'for the utter suppression and abolishing of all stage-playes and interludes', whereby players were made amenable to the statutes against vagabonds 'notwithstanding any license whatsoever from the King or any person or persons to that purpose', and the justices were ordered to demolish the houses, and to subject the players, if found, to a whipping.[1076] It is sufficient that from 1642 to 1660 there was substantially no public stage in London. Some of the King's men, we are told, went into the army, 'and, like good men and true, served the King their master, though in a different, yet more honourable capacity'. Under the Commonwealth they were 'reduced to a necessitous condition', and we have one glimpse of the last of Shakespeare's fellows, John Lowin, keeping an inn, the Three Pigeons, at Brentford, where he died very old, 'and his poverty was as great as his age'.[1077]
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FOOTNOTES
[1] Francis to Sir Thomas Chaloner (Dec. 1563) in Froude, vii. 92; cf. Sp. P. i. 10, 127; V. P. vii. 80, 101.
[2] Camden (tr.), 179; Bohun, 345, from R. Johnston, Hist. rerum Brit. (1655), 353; Carey, 2.
[3] Sp. P. iii. 91.
[4] Sp. P. iv. 650; Chamberlain, 99, 126; Hatfield MSS. xii. 253; Boissise, i. 415; Beaumont, 21; Goodman, i. 17.
[5] Carleton to Chamberlain, Jan. 15, 1604 (S. P. D., Jac. I, vi. 21): 'The first holy dayes we had every night a publicke play in the great hale, at which the king was ever present, and liked or disliked as he saw cause; but it seems he takes no extraordinary pleasure in them. The Queen and Prince were more the players frends, for on other nights they had them privately, and hath since taken them to theyr protection.'