increase, far more than other influences did to diminish, hostility to the stage.

It was therefore in accordance with public desire that in 1642 the strongly Puritan Parliament ordered the total suppression of all stage-plays, This order was the voice of Puritan sentiment, yet other things lent their influence to make suppression easier. During the five preceding years, especially in 1636, the plague had closed the theaters for long periods, and somewhat prepared the way for the final measure. Then, since Parliament had good reason to fear the actors, who sided almost to a man with the other party, self-defense alone would have prompted the action. And even from those who enjoyed the drama, less disapproval was to be expected than in England's happier days. Compared with the great questions of civil and religious liberty for which the Puritans were battling, the stage question had shrunk to small importance. The chroniclers of these years, Baker and others, say almost nothing of the theaters and their assailants. Yet however great these side-influences were, it was essentially the old-time Puritan spirit, grown deep and universal, that supported the order:1 "Whereas public sports do not well agree with public calamities, nor public stage-plays with the seasons of humiliation, this being an exercise of sad and pious solemnity, and the others being spectacles of pleasure, too commonly expressing lascivious mirth and levity: it is therefore thought fitt and ordained by the Lords and Commons in this Parliament assembled, that while these sad causes and set-times of humiliation do continue, public stage-plays shall cease and be forborne."

It must not be supposed, however, that play lovers were to give up their amusement, and authors their livelihood, without protest. In October, 1647, and again in February, 1648, this order had to be renewed. In the meantime, the actors, who now occupied the seat of the humble, complained of cheerless days, or mockingly petitioned an inexorable 1 English Drama and Stage reprints the three acts of Parliament, from which we quote in part the first.

Parliament for redress. In 1641 appeared The StagePlayers Complaint. In a pleasant Dialogue betweene Cane of the Fortune and Reed of the Friers. Deploring their sad and solitary conditions for want of Imployment.1 One of the complainants had no hope for better days, "For Monopolers are downe, Projectors are downe, the High Commission Court is downe, the Starre-Chamber is down, & (some think) Bishops will downe, and why should we then that are farre inferior to any of those not justly feare, least we should be downe too." But the other, more sanguine, thought plays so necessary to persons of quality as an honest recreation, and to the ignorant as an instruction, that they could not be dispensed with; and both joined in the prayer from their "letany," "From Plague, Pestilence and Famine, from Battell, Murder, and suddaine Death: Good Lord deliver us."

In 1643 there appeared a satirical poem offering certain propositions for Parliament's consideration, and ridiculing "King Pym" and his Parliament's "soaring Plots" and "strange Votes," and promising to reform if favored once more. A pamphlet of the same year, entitled The Actors Remonstrance, or Complaint, in a more serious spirit made similar promises. In it the actors protested that they had purged their comedies of all evil jests; that they had perfected themselves in the art of acting; and that if allowed to play once more they would reform the abuses of the play-houses and the scandal of their own lives, and would ridicule no longer things or persons sacred. But we have passed by the point to which we have been advancing, and need only glance at these new petitions from the other side. In promising to reform, actors virtually admitted the validity of the charges long urged by the Puritans; and thus at the end we see again that the public opinion that led up to Prynne's Histrio-Mastix, and that culminated in the Long Parliament's orders of closure, had been both just and persuasive.

This and the other tracts here mentioned reprinted in English Drama and Stage.

CHAPTER 17.

CONCLUSION.

With the year 1642 ends the Puritan attack on the stage. Preparatory to investigating the course of its development, we looked to antiquity and to the early days of Christianity for a display of similar hostility. There we found what was essentially a Puritan demonstration of feeling, when the desire to satisfy Christian ideals of truth and purity led to distrust and abhorrence of the ancient art. Similar though the spirit was to that of England, it of course had its differences. The Church Fathers had idolatry as well as worldliness and immorality to fear in the pagan games-a dread which was real to no large body of Englishmen. Naturally, therefore, the Fathers were less ready to recognize a well-trod stage. That the Roman plays were morally worse than the English was little realized by the Puritan, to whom the English drama stood as the acme of all evil; nor indeed was there a vital distinction in the fact. In both countries attack was inspired by the same vices. Yet in spite of these differences, the spirit of the Fathers and of the Puritans was essentially the same. Great Romans like Cicero and Horace, though despising the actor and his craft, cared not enough for morality to sacrifice art to it. It was the Christian spirit that gave up everything to attain the one great end of life, and in this, Plato, the Fathers and the men of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were one.

To support their cause in its immaturity, and to express the debt which they owed to the early churchmen, the English Puritans sought to rest their crusade on the old. That, however, did not prevent their cause from taking on a definitely English color. The needs of the agrarian population and the overcrowding of London roused feeling against wandering actors till they became rogues and vagabonds in

the eyes of the law and of society. At the other extreme, also, the extravagance of the gentlemen and ladies created an aversion against ruffs and Spanish hose that played no small part in the movement. The plague, too, the dreaded scourge of the day, and the consequent fear of crowded assemblies, gave great impetus to the feeling. All these influences were felt by the solid middle classes of English society, which was deeply Christian, so that the movement became more popular in its character and leadership than the earlier movement had been. For the middle class in England had influence and power, and cared to use it. Again, the stage controversy soon allied itself with the other quarrels of the time; and the feeling aroused elsewhere, especially when actors came to give back the insults which they received, rushed the question to its conclusion. To offset these reasons for an irresistible march of the Puritan cause, there was the vital fact that in the early days of Shakspere and Marlowe there was art of the highest order on the English stage, whereas in Rome naught but the dregs of art survived. Therefore many Christians were ready to put up with the evils in England, and never joined the Puritan faction till the theater was rapidly on the wane, and till they saw the necessity for a sacrifice of pleasure. But there was almost no other condition which did not add its impetus to oppose rather than to aid the English stage. The growth of this quarrel we have endeavored to trace from the time when a genuinely sincere and conscious realization of the evil of the miracle-play first arose. To be sure, it has been impossible to mark off any absolutely defined steps in its progress. We have seen that the attendance at the theaters signifies but little in regard to their status in the community. Even the laws themselves do not serve as definite milestones. The question of Sabbath desecration, for example, which earliest roused solid opposition even in the actors' own party, was in spite of all orders, early and late, never wholly settled. The author of the Third Blast said that in spite of almost universal resistance

Sunday plays still continued in 1582. In 1591 the Council itself complained of disregard of its orders on this matter; in 1599 Rainoldes uttered the same complaint; and even after the laws of James and Charles, we have found Crashaw in 1607, Prynne in 1633, and lastly Pierce in 1640 still protesting against the violation of the Sabbath by stage-plays. This will illustrate the danger of trying to mark the growth of opposition by reference to definite laws. It was a steady development among the middle classes especially, rising therefore by gradual incline rather than by steps. Yet we feel that we have traced this gradual rise with certainty. Sunday plays may often have been given; but Henslowe's Diary, by its intermissions every seventh day, shows that in the later period they were not common, at least at the public places. We have indicated the increase in the intensity of the attack, both in literature and in the pulpit, an intensity that spread steadily and even rapidly throughout the country. And this development, we hope, has been marked by clearly defined, but not arbitrarily chosen, periods.

It has been our endeavor to show from what a widespread opposition the orders of 1642 culminated. One may almost hesitate to call it a Puritan demonstration. For a large share of the movement came, as we have seen, from men whose aim was purely social, and in the early days, and occasionally in even the later periods, from ministers high in the Episcopal church-Babington, Hall and Andrewes. Nevertheless, we call it a Puritan attack, because its main strength came from men who formed, or were enrolled in, the genuine Puritan body, and because the parties eventually divided quite evenly on the question. Bacon, for example, though he regarded masks and triumphs as toys wasteful of time, nevertheless allowed princes their pleasure, and marked no deficiency in dramatic poetry. One of the leaders in the church of that time, John Donne, while reminding his hearers that God was present even in their amusements-music, mirth, drink, comedies, and "other

1

1 Masques and Triumphs. Advancement of Learning, Book II.