It is necessary, however, to record an event in dramatic history, which, coming into operation just previous to the entrance of our poet into the theatric arena as an author, no doubt contributed powerfully not only to chasten his muse, but, through him, universally the national taste. In 1589 commissioners were appointed by the Queen for the purpose of reviewing and revising the productions of all writers for the stage, with full powers to reject and strike out all which they might deem unmannerly, licentious, and irreverent; a censureship which, it is evident, if properly and temperately executed, could not fail of conferring almost incalculable benefit on a department of literature at that time not much advanced in its career, and but too apt to transgress the limits of a just decorum.
This regulation ushers in, indeed, by many degrees the most important period in the annals of our theatre, when Shakspeare, starting into dramatic life, came boldly forward on the eye, leaving at an immeasurable distance behind him, and in groupes more or less darkly shaded, his immediate predecessors, and his earliest contemporaries in the art.
FOOTNOTES:
[227:A] Warton's Hist. of English Poetry, vol. iii. p. 355.
[227:B] Vide Historia Histrionica.
[227:C] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. iii. p. 6. 11. See, also, Percy and Warton.
[227:D] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. iii. p. 29; and Warton's Hist. of English Poetry, vol. ii. p. 199.
[228:A] See Ancient British Drama, vol. i. both for this play and Gammer Gurton's Needle, as edited by Walter Scott.
[229:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. iii. p. 404.