CHAPTER 1.

THE ACTORS AND THE MARTINISTS.

In the face of Puritan opposition the actors had not always shown the extreme humility and readiness to please that is revealed in the petitions of their days of want. It was an age of give and take, and recognizing, as they did, in Puritanism the bitter foe of their art, dramatists and players alike joined in a fierce counter-attack on their enemies. Every stage, said Mrs. Hutchinson, belched forth its jests against them; and, undaunted by the growing opposition, its devotees threw back insult against argument, and scoffing in answer to serious reproof. For the attack and counter-attack were in nature diametrically opposed. The Puritans carried on their opposition, on the whole, in a very creditable spirit; their motive was serious, and though they may have gone to the extreme, and though some, undoubtedly, were far too intolerant, their main position was fair and just. This can not be said of the actors' reply. Their words, whatever were their convictions, were of course not serious. There were certain points of the Puritan character which were legitimate objects of ridicule, and which all at the present day find amusing. But unfortunately the actors went too far; making no attempt to understand Puritan ideals of life, they exaggerated grossly the actually existing foibles, and foisted the vices of the few black sheep upon the class. This was the characteristic spirit of the age in its private, political and even religious controversies, and it is not surprising that it marred the side of the question now under consideration.

Undoubtedly the stage saw its foe in the early days of the public theater; it had, perhaps, even a deeper bred hostility to Puritanism than a mere spirit of retaliation; yet for several reasons it did not take the initiative. In the repertoire of the newly secularized drama, humour comedy was un

known. Then, since the early objections brought against the drama were not particularly combative in tendency, and attracted probably less notice than those that followed, attack may have seemed to the players somewhat uncalled for. Furthermore, the lines of the controversy had not yet been drawn to coincide with those of the greater religious questions of the day. The greatest patrons of the early theater, Leicester and Essex, were themselves of the Puritan party, and out of respect for them their protégés may have kept silent. The early attack, moreover, came from those so high in the English church that it would have been rash to withstand them. For from the days of Henry VIII all meddling with affairs of religion and state was strictly prohibited from the stage. All these reasons kept the players from beginning the quarrel, or from accepting at once the gauntlet of their enemies.

In making this statement, however, it should be borne in mind that a play was never given just as the author wrote it. The comic part, especially, of the old plays was largely left to the inspiration of the clowns on the boards, who improvised whatever suited their fancy, and as much as the audiences were willing to stand. Shakspere made two complaints against such usurpation by clowns of too great prominence in the action; and a similar complaint by Brome in the closing days of the drama shows how the custom prevailed through the whole period. It is fair, therefore, to assume that although a certain sense of dignity, and a determination not to lose court favor restrained the dramatists from noticing the first criticisms of their opponents, many a clown, who saw his way clear, gave a sly dig at the scruples of the growing Puritan party.

One such bit of rebuttal from the early clowns has been preserved in Tarleton's Jigge of a horse loade of Fooles, which was written before 1588.2 There, as is supposed, that famous clown introduced a number of puppets to the audi

1 Brome, Antipodes, II, 2.

2 Tarleton's Jests, ed. Halliwell, pp. xx-xxi.

ence, and among them a Puritan, whom he, playing with the name of Stephen Gosson, the author of the School of Abuse, called "Goose son," and whom he thus described:

Squaking, gibbering of everie degree;

A most notorious pied balde foole,

For sure a hippocrite;

Of a verie numerous familie.

Only a few years later, evidence of even more extended satire of the class was betrayed in Nashe's assertion that a certain set of men objected to poetry through fear lest, after their death, they would not "be brought vpon the stage for any goodnes, but in a merriment of the Vsurer and the Diuel, or buying armes of the Herald." Since in later comedies, Puritans were gulled and ridiculed in this very way, we conclude that dramatic satire turned to them earlier than extant literature would indicate. Yet since the authors of early attacks on the stage do not seem to be smarting so keenly under the lash of the actors as do later reformers, we can scarcely infer that their efforts received much attention from their opponents.

It was not long, however, before a controversy arose which widened greatly the breach between the two factions of the church. In the late months of 1588, the unseen and unknown Martin Mar-Prelate, as he called himself, began his attack on the unlawful exercise by bishops of their temporal power. His little Epistle called forth from both sides many tracts, whose only point of similarity was the extreme scurrility and venom of their spirit. It may be that the ecclesiastical authorities, smarting under this scathing ridicule of scurrilous old Martin, thought that no more suitable reply could be given their hidden foe than by opening the sluice-gates of theatrical ribaldry against him; and it may be that they made known their desires to the London companies. Or, if not quite that, it certainly had then become sufficiently clear from what quarter of the church opposition to the drama was to come; indeed, Martin

1 Pierce Penilesse, 1592, II, 88-92.

himself expressed his hostility to the stage, and the actors may have presumed enough on their own authority to join the church party against the common enemy.

There can be no doubt that the stage entered willingly and even zealously into the warfare; but, though one or two? anti-Martinist plays still exist, here again we can get only indirectly a sense of the acrimony of its contribution to the defense. For the authorities, whether or not at the start they had favored this mode of retaliation, were frightened at their ally's zeal, and as soon as possible reinforced, with new proclamations and more stringent provisions for a board of licensers, the old restrictive measures against the stage.1 The vigor of these plays, however, may be surmised from several tracts written in 1589. Some believe the words of Hay Any Work for Cooper, "Yea and he saw martins picture drawn when he was a yong man,' "2 to refer to the caricatures of him on the stage. In Martins Months Mind Nashe wrote, "these ligges and Rimes, haue nipt the father [Martin] in the head & kild him cleane, seeing that hee is ouertaken in his owne foolerie"; and then added, in defense of his craft, that the players against whom Martin's sons were fretting most were his superiors in wit; honesty and all other respects, and that the Martinists, who had played the fools without license, were by law the real rogues. This attack on Martin was made by clowns, but according to the marginal note, every player made a jest of him, till whipped and beaten, wormed and lanced, he knew not whither to flee. The same thought Nashe repeated in A Counter Cuffe to Martin Junior, where again he apparently referred to a play in ridicule of Martin. At any rate, such a play is described at length in The Returne of the renowned Caualiero Pasquille of England. Lyly, also, in Pappe with an Hatchet had in mind at least a similar piece 1 See Part I, chap. 10, p. 119.

3

2 Hay Any Work for Cooper, Puritan Discipline Tracts, p. 74.

p. 166, Grossart's edit. See also Death and Buriall of Martin Marprelate, p. 173. 5 Huth Lib'y. edit., p. 123.

4 p. 77.