xxxv. 1584. Thomas Lodge.
[From An Alarum against Usurers (1584; S. R. 4 Nov. 1583), edited with Defence of Poetry by D. Laing (1853, Sh. Soc.).]
[Extract from Epistle to Inns of Court.] ‘About three yeres ago, one Stephen Gosson published a booke, intituled The Schoole of Abuse, in which having escaped in many and sundry conclusions, I, as the occasion then fitted me, shapt him such an answere as beseemed his discourse; which by reason of the slendernes of the subject, (because it was in defence of plaies and play makers) the godly and reverent that had to deale in the cause, misliking it, forbad the publishing: notwithstanding he, comming by a private unperfect coppye, about two yeres since made a reply, dividing it into five sections, and in his Epistle dedicatory, to the right honorable, Sir Frances Walsingham, he impugneth me with these reproches, that I am become a vagarant person, visited by the hevy hand of God, lighter than libertie, and looser than vanitie.’ He proceeds to call Gosson an ‘untamed curtail’ and an ‘injurious Asinius’.
xxxvi. 1584. George Whetstone.
[From A Touchstone for the Time, printed as an ‘Addition’ to A Mirour for Magestrates of Cyties (1584).]
The tract is mainly on gaming. P. 24. ‘The godly Divines, in public sermons, and others in printed books, have (of late) very sharply inveighed against Stage-plays (unproperly called, Tragedies, Comedies, and Morals), as the springs of many vices, and the stumbling-blocks of godliness and virtue. Truly the use of them upon the Sabbath day, and the abuse of them at all times, with scurrility and unchaste conveyance, ministred matter sufficient for them to blame, and the Magistrate to reforme.’
xxxvii. 1586. William Webbe.
[From A Discourse of English Poetrie (1586), ed. Arber, 27; also in Gregory Smith, i. 226. The promised expression of opinion (p. 42) is on humanist lines.]
The profitte or discommoditie which aryseth by the vse of these Comedies and Tragedies, which is most, hath beene long in controversie, and is sore urged among us at these dayes: what I think of the same, perhaps I shall breefely declare anon.