The changing stage of 1605 was obviously an advance from the Elizabethan methods of twenty years before. But it can hardly be assumed that the new principles were regularly adopted in the Jacobean Court. In 1614-15 the Revels office was still buying 'canvas for the boothes and other necessaries for a play called Bartholmewe Faire', and the entry seems to suggest 'houses' of the old type.[756] Possibly Inigo Jones was not sufficiently successful with his Oxford mechanism to inspire confidence. It is not until much later, in Caroline days, that we can clearly discern him beginning to apply to the presentation of Court plays the proscenium arch and the other perfected results of his studies in the mask.[757] There is no obvious trace of the new methods even in his interesting design for the new Cockpit at Court, which may date from about 1632. This shows a building 58 feet square without and octagonal within. Five sides of the octagon are occupied by the auditorium, which contains a pit with balconies above, and apparently a royal box at the back; the other three by a stage 35 feet wide and 16 deep, which stands 4½ feet above the pit level, and has a 5-foot apron and a semicircular back wall of a 15-foot radius. This does not appear to be adapted either for hangings or for shifting scenes, but is a Palladian façade of two stories in solid architecture adorned with niches and busts and a tablet inscribed 'Prodesse et delectare'. It is pierced below by a large archway and four other doors, and above the archway is a single window.[758]
BOOK II
THE CONTROL OF THE STAGE
´Αλλὰ μὰ Δί´, ἔφη, οὐκ επι τούτω μέγα φρονω. ´Αλλ´ ὲπὶ τῴ μήν· ´Επι νὴ Δία τοἲς αφροσιν. οἲτοι γὰρ τὰ ὲμὰ νευρόπαστα θεώμενοι τρέφουσί με, Symposium.
VIII
HUMANISM AND PURITANISM
[Bibliographical Note.—Most of the material for the present chapter, including extracts from a few pre-Elizabethan writers, is collected in Appendix C; the more official documents in Appendix D are occasionally drawn upon. The Puritan controversy has been studied by C. H. Herford, A Sketch of the History of the English Drama in its Social Aspects (1881), and E. N. S. Thompson, The Controversy between the Puritans and the Stage (1903), from the academic point of view in F. S. Boas, University Drama in the Tudor Age (1914), and in relation to the theory of dramatic criticism by H. S. Symmes, Les Débuts de la Critique dramatique en Angleterre jusqu'à la Mort de Shakespeare (1903), and Renaissance criticism in general by J. E. Spingarn, History of Literary Criticism in the Renaissance (1899), and G. Saintsbury, History of Criticism, vol. ii (1902). Useful collections of contemporary treatises are G. Gregory Smith, Elizabethan Critical Essays (1904), and J. E. Spingarn, Critical Essays of the Seventeenth Century (1908).]
THE investigations of my opening book have shown clearly enough that in the Tudor, as in the mediaeval, scheme of things there was ample room for the stage and its players. The revelling instinct survived, and the old native love of mimesis and spectacle had been reinforced by a literary delight in the revival of classical drama and in every form of the give and take of dialogue. Nor was the appreciation of the folk for the ruder forms of sensational and farcical entertainment less keen; and a period of general acceptance of the stage as an element in social life might have been anticipated, in which it stood greatly to gain by the more settled and less migratory habits of the royal household and the possibilities of building up a permanent head-quarters for itself in London which resulted from the change. Unfortunately, however, events moved otherwise. A new factor emerged, which militated against anything like general acceptance; and the period of the greatest literary vitality in the development of the English drama proved to be also a period of embittered conflict with widespread ethical and religious tendencies, which in fact ranged over the whole of social life and was ultimately destined to shatter, not only the stage, but the Tudor scheme of things itself. In its main outlines the issue was that which had been set ever since the decadent theatre of Greece and Rome came face to face with Semitic asceticism and barbarian indifference. The traditional dislike and contempt of the moralist for the mime had still to find their last expression. But it is a noteworthy aspect of this new revival of the secular struggle, that the attack came less from official churchmanship than from those extreme champions of reformation principles, whose zeal against abuses, and in particular against abuses countenanced by official churchmanship, won them the name of Puritans. The rise of Puritanism was coincident with the beginnings of the agitation against the stage, and the growth of Puritanism in London was the chief feature in a process which stirred the local magistracy, as represented by the Lord Mayor and Corporation of the City, to try its strength, with the stage as a bone of contention, against the central authority of the Privy Council. The controversy is so important a one, from the point of view of the history of the stage and of civilization, that even at the risk of retraversing ground already trod, it is desirable to consider at some length the forces that were at work.[759]