xiii. 1574. Geoffrey Fenton.
[From A Forme of Christian Pollicie gathered out of French (1574). No single source has been traced and the treatise is probably a compilation.]
Book iii, ch. 7. ‘Players ... corrupt good moralities by wanton shewes and playes: they ought not to be suffred to prophane the Sabboth day in such sportes, and much lesse to lose time on the dayes of trauayle. All dissolute playes ought to be forbidden: All comicall and tragicall showes of schollers in morall doctrines, and declamations in causes made to reprooue and accuse vice and extoll vertue are very profitable.’ The 7 Chapter expands the foregoing.... ‘Great then is the errour of the magistrate to geue sufferance to these players, whether they bee minstrels, or enterludours who on a scaffold, babling vaine newes to the sclander of the world, put there in scoffing the vertues of honest men.... There often times are blowen abroade the publike and secreete vices of men, sometimes shrowded under honourable personage, withe infinite other offences.... How often is the maiestie of God offended in those twoo or three howres that those playes endure, both by wicked wordes, and blasphemye, impudent jestures, doubtful sclaunders, unchaste songes, and also by corruption of the willes of the players and the assistauntes. Let no man obiect heare that by these publike plaies, many forbeare to doo euill, for feare to bee publikely reprehended ... for it may be aunswered first, that in such disguised plaiers geuen over to all sortes of dissolucion, is not found a wil to do good, seeing they care for nothing lesse than vertue: secondlye that is not the meane to correct sinne.... Heare I reprooue not the plaies of scollers ... Ch. 6. I wish that in place of daunses at mariage, the time were supplied with some comical or historical show of the auncient manages of Abraham and Sara, of Isaac and Rebecca, and of the two Tobies and theyr wiues, matters honest and tending much to edify the assistauntes.’
xiv. 1575. George Gascoigne.
[Prologue to The Glasse of Governement (cf. ch. xxiii).]
What man hath minde to heare a worthie Jest,
Or seekes to feede his eye with vayne delight:
That man is much unmeete to be a guest,
At such a feaste as I prepare this night.
Who list laye out some pence in such a Marte,