The Bewdley chapel-wardens’ accounts for the year 1572, includes a disbursement as follows:
| “Paid unto the quenes plaiers in the church | 6s. 8d.” |
The Corporation of Lyme, in 1558, paid 4s. 5d. to the Queen’s players, who performed in the parish church. “We may suppose,” says Mr. George Roberts in his “Social History,” “that money was taken at the doors by some official of the mayor, who ascertained the deficiency to be as above.” The Syston registers state:
| “1602. Paid to Lord Morden’s players, because they should not play in the church | xij.d.” |
Prior to this period, not a few attempts had been made to stop acting in churches. Bonner, Bishop of London, issued, in 1542, a proclamation to the clergy in his diocese, prohibiting “all manner of common plays, games, or interludes to be played, set forth, or declared within their churches or chapels.” The author of a tract, published in 1572, writes strongly respecting the clergy neglecting their duty, and adverts to acting in churches. Speaking of the clergyman conducting the service, the writer says: “He againe posteth it over as fast as he can gallop; for he either hath two places to serve, or else there are some games to be played in the afternoon, as lying the whetstone, heathenish dancing of the ring, a beare or bull to be bayted, or else jack-an-apes to ryde on horse back, or an enterlude to be played; and if no place else can be gotten, it must be done in the church.”
Two companies of players, in 1539, visited Knowsley; one was the Queen’s players, and the other the Earl of Essex’s players. On the Sunday after their arrival, the rector of Standish preached in the morning, the Queen’s players acted in the afternoon, and the Earl’s players at night. Other Sunday performances were given in the district by the actors at this time.
Before 1579, Sunday appears to have been the only day upon which plays were performed, but after that year they were acted on other days as well as on Sunday. It was not the fashion for females to visit theatres, but at Oxford we find that Queen Elizabeth witnessed a Sunday theatrical exhibition. James I., at his Court on a Sunday, had plays provided. The Bishop of Lincoln, on Sunday night, September 27th, 1631, had performed, in his London house, the play of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” and for this he was indicted by the Puritans. Masques on a Sunday night at this period were extremely popular.
During a visit of James I. to Oxford, in 1621, on a Sunday in August, the university men produced a piece called the “Marriage of Arts.” It was not a successful entertainment, the king and his friends failing to appreciate the wit of the undergraduates. Says an epigram of the period:
“At Christ Church, ‘Marriage’ done before the King,
Least that some mates should want an offering,
The King himself did offer—what, I pray?
He offered twice or thrice to go away.”
In the town of Hull, the player, about this period, does not appear to have been regarded with much esteem. The earliest notice of theatres in Hull occurs in the year 1598, and we learn from Mr. Sheahan, the local historian: “That the Mayor issued an order, in which ‘divers idle, lewd persons, players, or setters of plays, tragedies, comedies, and interludes,’ who were in the habit of coming to the town, were denounced.” In this document, it was further set forth that persons patronising their performances would have to forfeit 2s. 6d. for every offence.