Volume 1 / Book 2 — IX THE STRUGGLE OF COURT AND CITY

[Bibliographical Note.—Most of the material for the present chapter is collected in Appendix D. An outline of the subject was given in Tudor Revels (1906), and it is well and fully treated in V. C. Gildersleeve, Government Regulation of the Elizabethan Drama (1908). G. M. G., The Stage Censor (1908), and F. Fowell and F. Palmer, Censorship in England (1913), are perhaps more valuable on later periods. Vagabond life and legislation may be studied in G. Nicholls, History of the English Poor Law² (1898), C. J. Ribton-Turner, History of Vagrants and Vagrancy (1887), E. M. Leonard, Early History of English Poor Relief (1900), and F. Aydelotte, Elizabethan Rogues and Vagabonds (1913), and the working of local government in C. A. Beard, The Office of Justice of the Peace in England (1904), and E. Trotter, Seventeenth Century Life in the Country Parish (1919).]

THE foregoing chapter has endeavoured to define the practical and spiritual forces which underlay the controversy between Puritanism and the stage; it remains to study the working of the constitutional forms through which, as a resultant of those forces, the 'quality' of the player ultimately established itself as a recognized constituent of the polity. And first, for the social status of the players. The wittier Puritans were fond of twitting them, on the ground that, if all men had their rights, they would count as no better than vagabonds. There is little more than a verbal truth in the taunt. No doubt, in certain circumstances, players, like minstrels before them, might fall within the danger of a series of statutes which, in the course of formulating the provisions of a nascent poor-law, attempted also to regulate the wandering elements of society. It was part of the mediaeval conception of things to assign to every individual a definite function in the social organism and to expect from him the regular fulfilment of that function. To such a theory the migratory beggar and the masterless man were naturally repugnant. But it was primarily a shortage of labour towards the end of the fourteenth century which brought about the first serious endeavour to check vagabondage by legislation, and to compel the able-bodied vagrant, through the machinery of local government, to return to the village of his domicile and there take up again the service which he had abandoned. This policy was continued and developed by the Tudors. The principal act which was operative, when Elizabeth came to the throne, had been passed under Henry VIII in 1531. It provided that any able-bodied beggar or idle vagrant, having no land or master, and using no lawful merchandise, craft, or mystery for his living, should be brought before a justice of the peace, or in a corporate town the mayor, who should see him whipped at the cart-tail, and then, if a beggar, returned to his place of birth or residence, there to work as a true man ought to do, or if an idle person but no beggar, either put to labour or set in the stocks until he found surety to go to service. This statute was replaced by one of greater severity in 1547, under which vagabonds were to be branded and put to forced labour as slaves. But it was revived in 1550 and kept in force by frequent renewals, of which the last was under Elizabeth herself in 1563. In these Acts there is no mention by name either of players or of minstrels.[839] It may, however, be assumed that the quality of a player would no more be regarded than that of a tinker or a pedlar as a merchandise, craft or mystery, and the fact that some of the early companies were composed of men for whom playing had originally been subsidiary to a regular craft would hardly serve them, after they had obviously deserted that craft and were travelling abroad to make a living by the arts of migratory entertainment.[840] Their actual safeguard was quite a different one. By definition the vagabond was a masterless man, and with the exception of a few bodies of town players, who probably did not wander far from their settled habitations, the Tudor companies were not masterless. They were all under the protection of some nobleman or gentleman of position, as whose 'servants' they passed, bearing with them, no doubt, at any rate after this was required by a proclamation of 1554, a 'certificate' or letter of recommendation as proof of identity.[841] No doubt the relation in the larger companies of lord and servants was little more than a nominal one. The strict regulations of Henry VII against retainers who were not household servants had become relaxed with the disappearance of the conditions which necessitated them.[842] The players would wear a livery or badge, and would do some courtesy of attendance on festival occasions. The lord might intervene to help them if they got into an undeserved difficulty, and would see to it that they did not bring his name into bad repute. There was no economic dependence; the players lived by their earnings, not by wages. But they were not reckoned as masterless men.

A secure status, however, did not mean complete absence of control. The players had no free hand to play just when and where and what they liked. They were subject to certain conveniences as to times and seasons and localities, to precautions against breaches of the peace and dangers to public health and safety. Above all, in a time of political and ecclesiastical ferment, the sentiments of their plays had to be such as would stand the scrutiny of a government by no means tolerant of criticism. On these matters it was not, except in so far as heresy was constituted by Acts of Uniformity and the like, with statutes that they had to deal, but with the administrative regulations of the local and central executives. All over the country there were bodies charged with a general responsibility for public order, public safety, and public decency, as the Elizabethans conceived it. In the rural districts there were the justices of the peace, with powers more considerable than clearly defined; in the towns there were mayors and corporations, also acting as justices, but armed with a further authority derived both from custom and from charters, and with a very clear intention to use this authority to the full in the government of their communities. The regulation of amusements had always been regarded as falling within the scope of municipal activity, and in the end it proved a fortunate thing for the players, in London at any rate, that the central authority found itself driven by the pressure of circumstances to take over a large measure of the responsibility for stage control from the hands of the corporations.

For it need hardly be said that in the Tudor scheme of things the power of the local authorities was an immediate rather than an ultimate one. Both the justices of the peace and, for all their charters, the corporations had to reckon with a considerable and growing measure of central control, resting upon the royal prerogative, and claiming not merely to further define, but also in some respects to replace, dispense with, or override legislative enactments. This development of regulation from the centre is, of course, an established feature of sixteenth-century history. It arose out of many convergent causes, the strength of the monarchy in face of the great houses weakened by civil contention, the personal qualities of the Tudor sovereigns, the urgent need of fresh machinery to deal with problems created by ecclesiastical changes, by the growth of the press, by the growth of the stage itself, for which the legal and administrative traditions of the Middle Ages provided no solution. And if it was largely unconstitutional and destined ultimately to bring the prerogative to perdition, this did not in the meantime affect the position of the actor, who would certainly be fined and imprisoned if he did not obey, or to any great extent that of the justices or corporations, who might prove recalcitrant or at least argumentative, but in the long run found it profitable to obey also. There were three main avenues through which the royal prerogative found exercise. The first of these was the ancient procedure of Chancery. The will of the sovereign might be expressed in a writ or mandate, directed to the subject, and stamped for greater solemnity with the impression of the Great Seal of England. Such a writ was generally used in granting licences, in conferring offices, or in issuing commissions to execute functions on behalf of the Crown. It took the form of letters patent, so called because they were intended as open communications to all whom they might concern. These were handed to the recipient after an elaborate diplomatic process during which they passed successively under the royal Sign Manual, the Signet, the Privy Seal, and the Great Seal itself, while a copy was enrolled in the Court of Chancery, and thus became matter of public record.[843] Secondly, there was the proclamation. This was in theory the formal announcement either of an executive act, or of the royal intention as to the enforcement or interpretation of a statute. In practice it tended more and more, during the Tudor period, itself to take the place of a statutory enactment. Proclamations were made by direction of the sovereign in council, and were enrolled, like the patents, in Chancery. Both proclamations and, at a comparatively late stage, patents were made use of in the process of regulating players. But they were largely supplemented by the third method through which the royal prerogative expressed itself, namely that day-by-day activity of the Privy Council in the general co-ordination and supervision of affairs, which has already been described.[844] The Council Register itself and the local archives, especially those of London, are full of letters from head-quarters to justices and corporations, directing them as to the allowance or inhibition of plays in general, or calling for special action in cases in which a company of players had provoked a breach of the peace or had brought themselves under suspicion of heresy or sedition. No doubt the corporations, in particular, would often have preferred to act upon their own discretion. Sometimes they argued or protested or deferred compliance. But the Council had the powers of the Star Chamber behind them; and if in the end they resorted to more direct ways of control, this was probably rather for the sake of avoiding administrative friction than because they found any ultimate difficulty in imposing their will by means of correspondence upon reluctant magistrates.

It was, of course, until plague and Puritanism became serious preoccupations, with the subject-matter of plays, rather than the details of times and places, that the central government mainly concerned itself; and it was apparently the disturbed ecclesiastical position of the later years of Henry VIII that directed attention to the drama as a subject of state instead of merely local concern. I have dealt elsewhere with the encouragement given to controversial interludes by Cromwell and Cranmer, with the swing of the pendulum when the controversialists began to apply themselves, not merely to points of church government which Henry desired to alter, but with heresies which he was not prepared to adopt, and with the proclamations and counter-proclamations and the interventions by the Privy Council to which the problem gave rise under Edward VI and Mary.[845] Some additional material which has more recently been published throws light upon the regulative functions of the City of London in particular during 1549 and 1550.[846] More than once the prevalence of 'lewd' and 'naughty' plays on this side or that led to the complete inhibition of all performances for a season. There is also some trace of a system of licences for particular companies. It is not clear why Lord Dorset should have thought it necessary to obtain a special authorization from the Council for his men to play in his presence only in 1551.[847] A forged licence taken from some players and sent to Sir William Cecil in 1552 may perhaps have purported to have been nothing more than such a certificate from a lord as was required by the proclamation of 1554.[848] Two general conclusions may be drawn from these early records. One is that, although the local authorities were certainly responsible for the regulation of plays as a matter of public order, they were not always in a position to make their control effective without an appeal to head-quarters. The performances were popular and the players had inherited from the minstrels a prescriptive right to municipal encouragement and reward, rather than interference. And if they bore the badge of some great personage, himself perhaps a privy councillor, one may be sure that Dogberry and Verges would think twice before they ventured on a rebuff. Even in London the Lord Mayor had to appeal to the Privy Council in 1543 to get certain joiners imprisoned and reprimanded for playing on a Sunday.[849] And if this was so in London, where the Lord Mayor had certainly a firm seat in his saddle, it was naturally still more so in the county areas, whose looser methods of government ultimately proved to have a very marked significance for the history of the London theatres. The weak position of the Surrey justices, for example, is illustrated by a letter from Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, to Sir William Paget, Secretary of State, written on 5 February 1547, shortly after the death of Henry VIII. He asks that Paget or the Protector will intervene to prevent Lord Oxford's men, who have threatened 'to try who shall have most resort, they in game or I in earnest', from giving a play in Southwark at the moment when he sings his Dirige for the dead king; and he reports that one Master Acton, a justice of the peace, has attempted to stop the assembly, but the players 'smally regard' him, and 'press him to a peremptory answer, whether he dare lett them play or not; whereunto he answereth neither yea nor nay as to the playing'.[850]

The second point is that, although the Privy Council might intervene to help the magistrates, their own primary interest at this time was in the exclusion of heresy and sedition from plays. This shows itself in two ways. Individual plays are brought before the Council itself, and lead to disciplinary measures. But there is also the germ of a censorship. At first it is exercised through the local authorities. The London aldermen in 1549 appoint two of the Corporation officers, known as the Secondaries of the Compters, who are bound under recognizances to 'peruse' plays and report upon them to the Lord Mayor. But in the following year the London players themselves are bound only to perform plays licensed by the King himself or the Privy Council, and this too is the basis of Edward's proclamation of 1551 and Mary's of 1553.[851] The former requires a licence 'in writing vnder his maiesties signe, or signed by vj of his highnes priuie counsail'; the latter 'her graces speciall licence in writynge for the same'. By 1557, however, another change has taken place, and the duty of licensing is apparently delegated to the ecclesiastical authorities, that is to say the Commissioners for Religion.[852] These licences are of course for individual plays, and distinct from any general licences needed by a company in order to enable it to play at all.

When Elizabeth came to the throne she was perhaps more able than her predecessor to rely upon the municipalities in carrying out her ecclesiastical policy. It is true that the Act of Uniformity, like Edward's before her, forbade any words in the derogation, depraving or despising of the Book of Common Prayer, and committed the enforcement of this prohibition to the ecclesiastical ordinary as well as to the justices of assize and the civic mayors. It is true also that the general powers of jurisdiction in cases of sedition given to the High Commission by the patent of 19 July 1559 are wide enough to cover 'words or showings' as well as 'books'. But the elaborate provisions for a literary censorship under the Commission contained in the ecclesiastical Injunctions of the same year extend to printed matter only, and for the detailed supervision of plays the Government was at first content to look to the magistrates.[853] There seem to have been two proclamations. The first, which is not extant, is said to have been made on 7 April 1559 and to have restrained plays for a stated period. The second, of the following 16 May, was intended as a permanent regulation. After noting that the usual season for interludes was now over until 1 November, and the inconvenience of some recently given, it goes on to forbid any, whether in public or private, which have not been licensed by the Mayor in a town, or in a shire by the Lord Lieutenant or two justices for the immediate locality. The licensing authorities are enjoined to allow no handling of matters of religion or state in plays, and the nobility and gentry are warned to take order that 'their seruantes being players' shall respect the proclamation. It will be observed that only the licensing of plays and not the status of players was covered. Status was left as the Act of 1531, which was still in force and was explicitly confirmed in 1563, had left it. The position was then as follows. Players, at any rate when they performed away from home, must have a licence either from their lord or possibly from the local magistrates. Whether at home or abroad, they were subject to the regulation of the magistrates as to times and places, and the precautions needed to secure public health and order. In addition, the magistrates had a special responsibility under the proclamation for allowing their individual plays, but this, in rural areas where there were many Justice Shallows, might alternatively be exercised by the Lord Lieutenant for the county as a whole. It is, I suppose, a licence for their repertory rather than for their travelling that Lord Robert Dudley asked for his men from the Earl of Shrewsbury, who as President of the North stood in the place of a Lord Lieutenant for Yorkshire, about a month after the issue of the proclamation. He calls it, indeed, a licence to play, but he dwells on the 'tollerable and convenient' character of their pieces, and it is easy to see how one conception of the purpose for which a licence was required would slip into another.

The history of play-licensing in London, which must now be followed in detail, really turns upon an attempt of the Corporation, goaded by the preachers, to convert their power of regulating plays into a power of suppressing plays, as the ultimate result of which even the power of regulation was lost to them, and the central government, acting through the Privy Council and the system of patents, with the Master of the Revels as a licenser, took the supervision of the stage into its own hands. The issue does not define itself very clearly until the 'seventies, perhaps partly because the Puritan sentiment took some time to grow, and partly because the earlier years are much less fully documented than the later ones.

As with all narratives pieced together out of fragmentary records, care must be taken not to lay too much stress on merely negative evidence with regard to any particular point. The two chief sources of information are the Register of the Privy Council, which contains minutes of letters written to the City Corporation or the Justices of Middlesex and Surrey and of other action taken by the Council with regard to plays, and the City Remembrancia, a book containing copies of letters passing between the Corporation and the Council or other persons of importance. But neither record is continuous during the whole controversy, and although the two frequently help each other out, some of the gaps unfortunately synchronize. In particular there is a comparative absence of information upon the first part of the reign, since the Register only begins to help in 1573 and the Remembrancia in 1580. It is possible, therefore, that the Court and the City may have come to grips on the vexed question of stage-control in London somewhat earlier than is now apparent.

It is certain, indeed, that some negotiations had taken place between the two authorities before the period to which the documents mainly relate. These are appealed to in a City letter of 1574, and it is claimed that, in view of the objections of the Corporation, the Council had 'long since' refrained from pressing a proposal that some private person should be nominated to license playing-places within the City. This is the first mention of a new type of 'licence', distinct from those of companies as such, or of plays as such, and presumably owing its origin to the general local regulative powers of the magistrates. The date of the proposal is not given, and as regards the years 1558-71, there is only occasional evidence of any serious interference, other than such as was necessitated by plague, with the activities of the players, although it is clear that the rulers of the City were exercising the powers of supervision with which the proclamation of 1559 invested them. There is an indication that plays were suspended by a precept from the Lord Mayor in the September of the first and greatest of the Elizabethan plague-years, 1563; and in the following February Edmund Grindal, the Bishop of London, wrote to Sir William Cecil, pointing out that the players set up their bills daily, and especially on holidays, and that the excessive resort of young people to their performances could only be a cause of infection. Both on religious and on hygienic grounds, he urged the desirability of inhibiting plays by proclamation, either permanently or at least for a complete year, and not only within the City, but for a circuit of three miles outside its boundaries. Penalties should, he thought, be imposed for disobedience, not only upon the players, but also upon the owners of the houses where they played. The cessation of the plague probably made it unnecessary for Cecil to entertain the suggestion seriously; but it is interesting to observe that the policy of the Puritans, with whom Grindal was in sympathy, was already in 1564 one of complete suppression, and also that the comparative inefficacy of measures limited to the City, in view of the populous suburbs outside the London jurisdiction and subject only to the Middlesex or Surrey Justices and to the Privy Council, had been already realized.

During the next few years there is little to record, although if The Children of the Chapel Stript and Whipt, alleged to have been printed in 1569, were ever recovered, it might throw more light upon the growing flood of Puritan sentiment than is afforded by Warton's scanty quotations. There was some plague in each of the three years 1568, 1569, and 1570, and in the summer of 1569 the City suspended plays, as a precautionary measure, from the last day of May to the last day of September. There was another suspension on 27 November 1571, for which plague is not alleged as a reason, but a few days later the Corporation appear to have changed their minds and licences were issued during this winter for performances by Leicester's and Abergavenny's men.

The year 1572 is marked by two measures of government, each of which had its reaction on the status of players throughout the country. The first entailed some regularization of the position of noblemen's companies. The fifteenth-century struggle between the power of the Crown and that of the great feudal houses had led to enactments forbidding subjects to attach to themselves, by the giving and taking of a livery or badge, retainers who were not in some bona-fide sense their own household servants or officers. The Acts against retainers had been continued up to the reign of Henry VII, who had confirmed them in 1487; and had then, upon the firm establishment of the royal supremacy by the Tudors, largely fallen into desuetude, in spite of a proclamation of 1545, already noticed, which was intended to call renewed attention to them. They were, however, still technically operative, and a proclamation of 3 January 1572 announced an intention to enforce them from the following 20 February. Their relation to the players is shown by the fact that the company which had been performing under the Earl of Leicester's name immediately wrote to their lord, and, while making it clear that they did not expect any wages beyond the livery to which they had been accustomed, begged for a definite appointment as his household servants and for a licence to certify the same as a security against interference under the revived statutes during their annual travels in the provinces. A second proclamation of the same character was issued on 19 April 1583. More important than the proclamation, but probably representing the same policy, was the repeal by Parliament of the Vagabond Act of 1531 and the substitution of a new statute, which came into force upon 24 August. This included in a definition of vagabonds, not only 'juglers, pedlars, tynkers and petye chapmen', but also 'fencers, bearewardes, comon players in enterludes, and minstrels, not belonging to any baron of this realme, or towardes any other honorable personage of greater degree'. Specific power was, however, given for the issue of local travelling licences by mayors and county justices. So far as noblemen's players were concerned, the Act was presumably no more than declaratory of their existing position. But the knight or plain gentleman lost his privilege of protection altogether; and in future, if his servants wished to travel as players, they had to get their licence from the magistrates. As a matter of fact, with the exception of those forming part of the royal household itself, practically all the companies of professional players which appeared in London during Elizabeth's reign were noblemen's servants. A few performances were given at Court in early years by Sir Robert Lane's men, but these disappeared or transferred their services to a more honourable personage upon the legislation of 1572.[854] The most important of the provincial companies which did not come to London also bore the names of noblemen, and although many others were entertained by mere knights and gentlemen, it is probable that, at any rate after 1572, these did not range very widely from their head-quarters.[855] The necessity of procuring a fresh licence for every shire would doubtless, as was its intention, afford an obstacle to free circulation.[856] Apart from its defining clause, the main object of the Act of 1572 was to try once more the experiment, which had failed under Edward VI, of treating vagabondage with an increased severity. The summary whipping by individual magistrates was abolished except for children. An adult offender was to be committed to gaol until the next quarter sessions, and then, unless he could find a master to take him for a year's service, to be whipped and branded as a rogue by boring through the ear. On a second offence he was to be adjudged a felon, unless he could secure service for two years, and a third offence was to be treated as felony without benefit of clergy. The classification of unlicensed minstrels as rogues led to the insertion of a clause confirming the ancient privilege of the house of Dutton to issue licences within the county of Chester;[857] and another qualifying provision, the importance of which in connexion with players has been overlooked, safeguarded the validity, as overriding the statute, of licences passed under the Great Seal of England. It is in 1572 also that symptoms of a conflict of judgement between the City and the Privy Council first declare themselves. The annalist Harrison records that in this year plays were 'banished' out of London for fear of infection, and on 20 May a minute of the Court of Aldermen records that letters had been received from the Council for renewed allowance under reasonable conditions, and that, in place of immediate compliance, a letter of protest, based on the peril of assemblies during a hot summer, was to be sent to Lord Burghley. A somewhat similar situation seems to have developed in 1573, which made it necessary in July for the Council to write two letters to the Corporation, of which the second had a peremptory note about it, in order to obtain permission for some Italian players to exhibit an 'instrument of strange motions', or puppet-show. The following year was evidently one of considerable friction. On 2 March the Corporation wrote to the Lord Chamberlain with reference to a suggestion that the licensing of playing-places within the City should be put in the hands of one Holmes. They maintained their earlier refusal, already mentioned, to commit such a matter to any private person, and added that they had other offers for the licensing rights on terms that would be profitable 'to the relefe of the poore in the hospitalles'. The terms of the letter make it clear that they regarded the plan as one which, besides being practically inconvenient, would entail a precedent 'farre extending to the hart of our liberties'. In the meantime plays were apparently inhibited, for on 22 March the Council wrote to inquire the causes of the restraint, 'to thintent their Lordships may the better aunswer suche as desyre to have libertye for the same'. It may be conjectured that the reply was unsatisfactory, for in May a remedy for which provision had been made by anticipation in the Vagabond Act of 1572 was resorted to, and a patent under the Great Seal was issued to the Earl of Leicester's men, which over-ruled the proclamation of 1559 and ignored the position of the Corporation altogether. By this the company received permission to play during the royal pleasure either within London itself or within or without any other town throughout the country. The licence was only subject to two provisions. One was that there should be no performance during common prayer or during plague times in London; the other that all plays should be seen and allowed by the Master of the Revels. As the Master of the Revels was an officer of the royal household, subordinate to the Lord Chamberlain, the action taken practically amounted to a transference of control, so far as this particular company was concerned, from the Corporation to the Court itself. Nothing specific was said in the patent about the allowing of playing-places as distinct from the allowing of plays, and it may have left the Corporation with some reasonable discretion on this point. It is not known that a similar licence was issued to any other Elizabethan company besides Leicester's men, although this could hardly be definitely asserted without a complete examination of the Patent Rolls for the reign. My own impression is that the issue of the patent served its purpose by bringing the Corporation to a more reasonable frame of mind, and that it was not found necessary to repeat the experiment, at any rate exactly in the same form. On 22 July the Council issued a passport to 'the comedie plaiers' to go to London, and also wrote to the Corporation requiring their admission and favourable usage. I feel little doubt that the company in question were the Italians who had been at Windsor and Reading during the progress. In any case it may be taken for granted from the events of the following winter that the Corporation were now beaten, and yielded. But it can only have been with reluctance. The enforced toleration of the Italian players, who seem to have brought with them some female acrobats, had added strength to the Puritan criticisms. Thomas Norton, the City Remembrancer, writing a preface to a summary of City customs for the use of the new Lord Mayor, James Hawes, and dwelling on the need for better regulations against the contagion of the plague, lays special stress on the danger of 'the unnecessarie and scarslie honeste resorts to plaies' and of such assemblies as those attracted by 'the unchaste, shamelesse and unnaturall tomblinge of the Italion weomen'. With a characteristic touch of Puritan logic he adds, 'To offend God and honestie, is not to cease a plague'. In fact, the increase of plague gave London a respite from plays during the winter. On 15 November the Privy Council wrote to the Justices of Middlesex, Essex, and Surrey to inhibit assemblies within ten miles of London until Easter; and the City hardly needed the stimulus of an 'admonition' from their lordships to persuade them to adopt a similar course. They used the interval to enact an elaborate code for the regulation of plays, whose continuance in their midst, whether they liked it or not, they now saw to be inevitable. This took the form of an Act of Common Council, which is dated on 6 December 1574. The preamble sets out the various 'disorders and inconvenyences' which from the civic point of view had arisen from plays in the past, the unchaste and seditious speeches, the waste of money and interference with divine service, the accidents due to the fall of wooden structures and to the use of firearms upon the stage, the opportunities afforded by the performances for frays and quarrels, for purse-cutting, for the corruption of youth by 'previe and unmete contractes', for incontinency in the inner chambers of the 'greate innes' to which the stages were adjacent. It then proceeds to recite the recent inhibition for plague, and the need to provide against the renewal of such 'enormyties' upon the expected withdrawal of God's hand of sickness by securing that 'the laweful, honest and comelye use of plaies, pastymes and recreacions' should alone be permitted. The actual regulations are six in number. No unchaste, seditious, or otherwise improper plays were to be performed, upon a penalty of fourteen days' imprisonment and a fine of £5 for each offence. No play was to be shown which had not first been perused and allowed by such persons as the Lord Mayor and Aldermen might appoint. All playing-places and the persons in control of them were to be licensed by the Lord Mayor and Aldermen. All licensees were to be bound to the City Chamberlain for the keeping of good order. No licence was to be operative during a restraint for sickness or other good reason, nor were plays to be given or spectators received during the usual times for divine service on Sundays and holidays. Every licensee was to make such contributions to the poor and sick of the City as might be agreed upon with the Lord Mayor and Aldermen. Machinery was provided for the recovery of penalties, which were also to be for the benefit of the poor and sick, and an exception was made for plays in private houses for which no money was taken. The only regulation to which these were to be subject was that against the introduction of unchaste and seditious matters.

It is often stated that the regulations of 1574 were followed in 1575 by a decree of the Corporation banishing players totally and finally from the confines of the City. This is, however, a mistake due to an erroneous endorsement of date upon some documents which belong in reality to about 1584. The regulations remained operative for a considerable number of years. It is true that, reasonable and moderate as they were, they were not accepted as satisfactory either by the players or by their critics. After all, they left a good deal in working to the discretion of the Lord Mayor and Aldermen for the time being; and the players seem to have come to the conclusion that it would be better to be independent, as far as possible, of the risks attaching to this discretion. They turned to the easier conditions afforded by the lax county government of the suburbs. Within two or three years after the issue of the regulations two houses had been built expressly for playing in the liberty of Halliwell, which was within the jurisdiction of Middlesex; the Theatre in 1576 and the Curtain either in the same year or early in 1577. A third house, at Newington Butts on the Surrey side, was already obsolete about 1592, and seems to have been in existence by 1580. Exactly upon what considerations the private house in the Blackfriars was established, also in 1576, is less certain. But at any rate, as a result of the action of the Corporation in 1574, the main locality of the popular drama was shifted from the courtyards of the London inns to the specialized suburban theatres. It must not, of course, be supposed that the inns fell altogether into disuse. The new arrangement was not without its inconveniences for the players. During the summer months it was no hardship for pleasure-seekers to cross the river or the fields in search of a spectacle. But the short evenings and dirty lanes of winter left an advantage to the inns in the heart of the City, which was not lightly to be forgone. It was still, therefore, a matter of importance for the companies to maintain their footing in the City, even if this meant compliance with harassing restrictions, and they were ready to use all their influence with the masters whose liveries they wore, with the Lord Chamberlain, and with the Privy Council, in opposition to any further limitation of their privileges. So far as the summer was concerned, the building of the suburban theatres was a serious check to the policy of the Corporation. It was still the young folk of the City who crowded the audiences; nor could the greater distance diminish the danger of infection, the neglect of divine service, the waste of time and money, or the likelihood of falling into bad company by the way. In future it was not sufficient to make salutary regulations for London; it was necessary to secure, by invoking the goodwill of the county justices, or in default of that even the aid of the Privy Council itself, that similar order should be taken outside the liberties. In this direction the City never met with more than very partial success. The county government was naturally not as closely organized as their own, and it was in the hands of officials and local gentlemen to whom the business considerations and the growing Puritan instincts of the City tradesmen did not appeal. Richard Young, in particular, who was a prominent member of the Middlesex bench for many years, earned an evil reputation as a persecutor of Puritans.[858] On the other hand, the Corporation might look for the co-operation of his colleague William Fleetwood, who was their own Recorder,[859] and machinery had been established between the two areas in the form of a joint committee or court of assistants for dealing with the control of plays and other matters of 'good order'.[860]

And if the players needed a refuge from the regulations of 1574, these must have been far from satisfactory to the Puritans. They fell very far short of the wholesome Genevan model. There was still toleration for the infamous histriones. Plays were not even wholly forbidden on Sundays and holy days, and the crowd flocked to the inn-yard gates, already open in spite of the regulation, while the bells were still ringing for divine service in the empty churches. And although the Corporation certainly did not mean to commit the licensing of plays to the Master of the Revels or to any court nominee, there is nothing to show that they had any intention of leaving it to the ministers. The rise of the 'sumptuous' theatres, monuments of triumphant wickedness, in the fields, could only add fuel to the wrath of the moralists. With Thomas White's Paul's Cross sermon and John Northbrooke's Treatise of 1577 begins a period of active diatribe in pulpit and pamphlet, the deliberate intention of which was to stir the 'magistrate' to a stronger sense of the moral responsibilities of government, so that in London at least the letters of commendation furnished by godlessly-minded nobles for their servants might be disregarded and the accursed thing driven from the gates. And if only, through a Sidney or a Walsingham or a Leicester or a Burghley, the heart of the Council could be touched, it might perhaps even be driven from the suburbs also.

For some time after 1574 the relations between Whitehall and Guildhall were comparatively peaceful. Such plague as prevailed in 1575 and 1576 seems to have affected Westminster rather than the City. In 1577, however, an outbreak led the Corporation to suspend plays, and the Council ordered the Middlesex Justices to do the same from August to Michaelmas. The Theatre may have been open again by 5 October, although plague seems to have been still prevalent in November. It was over by January, and on the 13th of that month the Council instructed the Lord Mayor to let the famous Italian actor Drusiano Martinelli and his company perform in the City until the beginning of Lent. The autumn of 1578 again proved plaguesome, and on 10 November the Council ordered the Surrey Justices to inhibit plays in Southwark. On 23 December, however, a further order was issued to London, Middlesex, and Surrey, permitting the exercise of plays, subject to certain orders appointed against infection. This was followed on the next day by another letter to the Lord Mayor, specifying six companies who were summoned to Court and to whom therefore the privilege of exercising in public was to be limited. In the spring of the following year the Council appear to have been disturbed at the neglect of Lent, and on 13 March they wrote both to the Lord Mayor and to the Middlesex Justices, to direct that no plays should be allowed during the penitential season, either in that or in any subsequent year. By 1580 the battery of 'the preachers dayly cryeng against the Lord Maior and his bretheren' seems to have had its effect upon the civic conscience. Naturally most of the sermons against the stage were never printed, but an example, in addition to that of Thomas White, is to be found in the Paul's Cross sermon of John Stockwood on 24 August 1578. Gosson's Schoole of Abuse had followed Northbrooke's Treatise in 1579, and in 1580 itself appeared the Second and Third Blast of Retrait, the conspicuous civic arms upon which are perhaps significant of the attitude now adopted by the Corporation. On 6 April there was an earthquake, which was seized upon by the controversialists as a sign of God's wrath against plays. The series of civic letters contained in the Remembrancia begins in this year, and shows a spirit of hostility towards the stage far more pronounced than was indicated by the regulations of 1574. Under the stimulus of further pamphlets, Gosson's Playes Confuted in 1582 and Stubbes's Anatomy of Abuses in 1583, this tendency continued to grow, and finally landed the Corporation in a state of acute conflict with the Council. The earliest letter preserved is from the Lord Mayor to the Lord Chancellor, Sir Thomas Bromley, on 12 April 1580. In this he took occasion, on the strength of a recent disturbance at the Theatre, of the admonition of the hand of God in the earthquake, and of a charge from the Council to avoid uncleanness and pestering of the city, to point out that players were 'a very superfluous sort of men and of such facultie as the lawes have disalowed', and to suggest the desirability of an order by which they should be 'wholy stayed and forbidden', both within and without the liberties. The disturbance at the Theatre was probably a fray between the Inns of Court and Oxford's men, which led to the imprisonment of some of the latter by the Council. Some months before John Brayne and James Burbage had been indicted for bringing about a breach of the peace by causing unlawful assemblies. There was not in fact much plague this summer, but the Council assented to a temporary inhibition until Michaelmas and called upon the Middlesex and Surrey Justices to extend it to Newington Butts and other places in their jurisdictions. Perhaps emboldened by his success, the Lord Mayor wrote a second letter on 17 June to Lord Burghley, in which he expressed the opinion that the haunting of unchaste plays in the suburbs was a serious danger to the City, and again proposed their restraint as part of a series of measures in the interests of the public health. Burghley's answer is not upon record. Presumably plays went on as usual during the winter of 1580. An incident of the following year makes it apparent that, at some uncertain but probably recent date, the Corporation had attempted to render the code of 1574 more stringent by forbidding performances upon Sundays. Lord Berkeley's men, who claimed to be ignorant of this, performed upon Sunday, 9 July 1581, and became involved in a fray with some Inns of Court men, which led to the committal of both parties to the Counter. On the very next day the Privy Council wrote to London and to Middlesex, and directed an inhibition of plays on the ground of plague until Michaelmas. The City responded by a suspension for an indefinite period on 13 July. They seem to have taken advantage of this to press their point about Sundays. On 14 November the Mayor issued a precept against the setting up of bills for plays within the ward jurisdictions of the aldermen. On 18 November a letter was received from the Council pointing out that the infection had ceased, and that 'theis poore men the players' should now be permitted to exercise within the City for their 'releife' and 'redinesse with convenient matters for her highnes solace this next Christmas'. Nothing is here said about Sundays, but the Council Register contains a minute for a letter of 3 December to the Mayor, distinct, unless there is some confusion of date, from that of 18 November, of which there is no entry in the Register, and referring to a petition from the players, and a stipulation made with them that Sundays should be excluded, and performances limited to holy days and other week-days. This looks as if the Corporation had questioned the first mandate and had secured a concession as the price of submission. It must count as a victory for the Puritans, but they were not content, and one of the London ministers, John Field, took occasion to address a letter of reproach to the Earl of Leicester for yielding to the players, 'to the great greife of all the godly'.

It is difficult to resist the belief that a measure taken during this same December arose from a desire of the Council to counteract the growing recalcitrancy of the Corporation by a device similar to that which had been successful in 1574. The precedent set in the issue of a patent to Leicester's men was not, however, exactly followed. The position was now dealt with in a more comprehensive fashion, by the issue of a commission under a patent to the Master of the Revels himself. The object of this commission was in part to invest the Master with authority to press workmen and wares for the service of the Revels. But it also empowered him to call upon players and playmakers to appear before him and recite their pieces, presumably with a view to their consideration for performance at Court. And, as it were incidentally to the exercise of such a power, the patent went on to declare in the most general terms that the Master of the Revels was thereby appointed 'of all suche showes plaies plaiers and playmakers together with their playing places to order and reforme auctorise and put downe as shalbe thought meete or unmeete unto himselfe or his said deputie in that behalfe'. Like the licence of 1574, the commission of 1581 is expressed as being 'any acte statute ordynance or provision' to the contrary notwithstanding.

The functions thus assigned to the Master of the Revels came to be of the first importance in the history of the stage. But for the moment the result of their stroke can hardly have satisfied the expectations of the Council. The Corporation were not so ready to retreat from an untenable position as they had been seven years before. Either in ignorance of the Master's commission, or with the deliberate intention of asserting the privileges ignored therein, they seem to have definitely committed themselves, in the course of 1582, to the policy, long advocated by their spiritual advisers, of a complete suppression of the stage. The method of attack adopted was, so far as any records yet published disclose, a new one. Instead of relying upon their licensing powers, now very doubtful and in any case of no validity in the suburbs, they issued on 3 April a precept to the City guilds, enjoining them to charge all freemen with the responsibility of keeping their servants and other dependants from repairing to any play, whether in city or in suburbs, upon penalty of punishment both for the offending servant and for his master. This is presumably the 'late inhibition' against playing after evening prayer on holidays, which the Privy Council asked the Lord Mayor to revoke by a letter of 11 April, in which they expressed the opinion that in the absence of infection such playing might be used 'without impeachment of the service of God whereof we have a speciall care', provided always that Sundays should be excepted, and that fit persons should be appointed by the Corporation to 'consider and allowe of such playes onely as be fitt to yeld honest recreacion and no example of euell'. It is to be observed that the Council do not suggest that the allowance shall be done by the Master of the Revels or make any allusion to the powers conferred by his patent. Perhaps this indicates some willingness to come to a compromise. The Lord Mayor's reply, written two days later, is in its turn not otherwise than conciliatory. He suggests that the Council may perhaps not be fully aware of the difficulties entailed by plays on holidays. He has found that either he has to tolerate the admission of the audience during the times of prayer, or else the plays must continue until a very inconvenient time of night for servants and children to be abroad. He also calls attention to the growth of the plague, which seems to him to justify the continuance of the restraint for the present, and finally hints that later on he will fall in with the views of the Council and duly appoint suitable licensers. Plague was in fact rife during 1582, and perhaps left the Council no choice but to drop the question for a time. In July the Lord Mayor apologized on the ground of infection for refusing a request from the Earl of Warwick that a servant of his might be allowed to give a public display of fencing at the Bull in Bishopsgate. All that he could promise was to let the man pass through the City with his company and drum on the way to the Theatre or some other place in the suburbs. Possibly the correspondence of April was only a cloak for the real intentions of the Corporation; or possibly they miscalculated the Council's reasons for not carrying it further. At any rate, still profiting by the continuance of the plague, they determined in the course of the autumn to risk another step in advance. The plan for working through the guilds was ill-conceived, and had probably failed; obviously masters could not effectively prevent their apprentices from slipping off to Finsbury or Southwark on holiday afternoons. At any rate nothing more is heard of it. To this date probably belongs an Act of Common Council, which after dealing with other matters of civic government, briefly enacted that public plays should 'wholly be prohibited as ungodly', and that suit should be made to the Council for a like prohibition 'in places near unto the city'.

It was not long before an opportunity for opening the projected campaign against the outside houses presented itself. On Sunday, 13 January 1583, eight persons were killed by the fall of a scaffold during a bear-baiting at Paris Garden in Surrey. John Field, Leicester's correspondent of 1581, was quick to point the Puritan moral in A Godly Exhortation dedicated to the Corporation. But already, on the day after the accident, the Lord Mayor, Sir Thomas Blank, had written to Lord Burghley to urge that this interposition of the hand of God called for redress of the abuse of the Sabbath day, and to beg for Burghley's good offices with the Surrey Justices, some of whom were willing to take action but alleged that they lacked commission. Burghley promised that the Council would consider the matter, and suggested that it was within the scope of the Corporation's authority to make a general order against the attendance of Londoners at Sunday entertainments. The previous year's experience, however, had probably impressed the Corporation with the difficulty of securing that such an order should not be a dead letter outside their own jurisdiction; and although the Council Register is deficient at this point, it is certain that the event at Paris Garden did in fact result in the extension by the Council itself of the prohibition against Sunday performances from the City to the counties. But this was not until after the Lord Mayor had again pressed the question in a letter to the Council of 3 July, in which he alleged the attractions of unlawful spectacles as a reason for the decay of archery, of which the Council had complained, and declared that Paris Garden was rebuilt and the Sunday bear-baitings in full swing, and that blame was thrown upon the City authorities in Paul's Cross sermons and elsewhere, 'to our shame and greif, when we cannot remedie it'. If the Council yielded on this point, they remained quite firm on the general question of the toleration of plays, on all days other than Sundays, within the City as well as without. We do not know what steps, if any, they took to enforce the licensing powers of the Master of the Revels. But it is likely that the formation from the existing companies of the Queen's men in the March of 1583 was a deliberate and to some extent a successful attempt to overawe the City by the use of the royal name. It may be inferred from letters of the Lord Mayor to Richard Young of Middlesex and to Sir Francis Walsingham in April and May that plague prevented plays during the greater part of the year. But on 26 November the Council wrote that there was now no infection, and that Her Majesty's players were to be suffered to play as usual until the following Shrovetide. The Corporation, for all their Act of Common Council, made no open resistance, but they qualified the permission by limiting it to holy days, and it took a further letter from Sir Francis Walsingham on 1 December to get it extended to ordinary working days.

The struggle, however, was only deferred, and the real crisis came in 1584. During Whit-week there were frays amongst the knots of serving-men and prentices who hung about the doors of the Theatre and Curtain. The Corporation approached the Council and, although there seems to have been no plague, obtained sanction, in spite of the opposition of the Lord Chamberlain and Vice-Chamberlain, to the suppression of both houses. When the winter came round the Queen's men brought their case before the Council, and pointed out that the time of their service was at hand, that for the sake thereof as well as of their living they needed to exercise, and that the season of the year was past to play at any of the theatres outside the City. They petitioned for letters to the Lord Mayor to admit them to London, and also for an order to the Middlesex Justices, doubtless to revoke the suppression of the previous summer. Their case was set out more fully in a body of annexed articles. Unfortunately these are lost, but their tenor can be gathered from the City rejoinder. This took the form partly of an historical summary and partly of a detailed reply to the contentions of the players. The Corporation recited the reluctant toleration granted in 1574, the disregard of the rule against receiving spectators during divine service, the continued prevalence of abuses and the agitation of the preachers, the Act of Common Council conjecturally assigned to 1582, and finally the ruin of Paris Garden and the abolition of Sunday plays to which it led. The analysis of the arguments of the Queen's men is in a mercilessly critical vein, very different to the reasonable regulations of 1574, and may perhaps be ascribed to the malicious wit of Recorder Fleetwood. The writer deals first with the alleged need for exercise before playing at Court, and suggests that exercise in private houses might suffice, as it was unsuitable, let alone the danger of bringing infection into the royal presence, to offer to Her Majesty pieces already produced before the basest assemblies of London and Middlesex. As to the stay of the players' living, the view, which must surely have gone back some decades for its justification, is put forward that in times past it had not been thought meet that players should look to playing for a living, 'but men for their lyvings using other honest and lawfull artes, or reteyned in honest services, have by companies learned some enterludes for some encreasce to their profit by other mens pleasures in vacant time of recreation'. The players had claimed in their first article that the Lord Mayor's order of toleration on holy days should continue; but the Act of Common Council had cancelled this, and moreover the provision against the reception of audiences before the end of common prayer had been disregarded. Nor was it comely for youth to run 'streight from prayer to playes, from Gods service to the Deuells'. The second article had dwelt on the difficulty in a dark and foul season of either going into the fields for plays, or deferring them until after evening prayer; but the true remedy was 'to leave of that unnecessarie expense of time, wherunto God himself geveth so many impediments'. The third article had proposed to make plays permissible, so long as the deaths from plague were below fifty a week. The reply is that 'to play in plagetime is to encrease the plage by infection: to play out of plagetime is to draw the plage by offendinges of God upon occasion of such playes'. But if the number of deaths from plague were to be taken as the basis of toleration, it must be remembered that this number was an inadequate measure of the danger of infection amongst the living, and to wait until it rose to fifty would be to run too great a risk for the sake of a few 'whoe if they were not her Maiesties servants shold by their profession be rogues'. The normal weekly number of deaths out of plague-time was between forty and fifty, and commonly under forty; surely it would be enough to allow plays when the rate from all causes had been for two or three weeks together under fifty. Toleration was only claimed for the Queen's players. But this had been so in the previous winter, and all the playing-places had been filled with players calling themselves the Queen's men. Any letters or warrants for toleration should set out the number and names of the company. Much of this dialectic could hardly be taken seriously; it was accompanied by some suggested remedies of a practical character. The City still thought the limitation to private houses the better course. Failing that, the regulations of 1574 should be revived, subject to the conditions that playing should only be allowed when the total deaths had been under fifty a week for twenty days together, that no plays should be given on the Sabbath or before the close of evening prayer on holy days, that the audience should not be received during prayer-time, that the performances should be short enough to let the audience get home before dark, and that the Queen's men alone should be tolerated and should not be allowed to divide themselves into several companies. It was apparently contemplated that these conditions should apply to city and county alike.

I have described these arguments in some detail, because of the clearness with which they set out the divergent views. Unfortunately the documents from which they are drawn do not record any decision upon them. But whether the remedies were accepted, wholly or in part, or not, there can be no doubt whatever that the attempt to enforce an absolute prohibition had utterly failed, and that for several years afterwards the companies continued to find their winter quarters within London itself. Henceforward it became the settled policy of the Corporation to defer to the authority of the Privy Council, and to content themselves with doing their best to influence that body in the direction of their own ideals. There came a day when they were destined to reach some measure of success along these lines. For the time, however, events followed a quiet course. During two or three years there is a blank in the correspondence. Plays were suspended in London and Surrey during the summer of 1586, at the Lord Mayor's request, on the ground that the growing heat might breed a plague, and a similar measure in 1587 had an additional provocation in disturbances which had taken place at the play-houses. In both years the inhibition was declared early in May, and in 1587 it was fixed to terminate at the end of August. On 29 October the Council had to call the attention of both the Surrey and the Middlesex Justices to the imperfect observance of the order against Sunday plays. There was, of course, an undercurrent of Puritan discontent during these years at the lame issue of the anti-stage agitation. This is well shown by a grumbling letter from a correspondent of Walsingham's in January 1587, in which 'the daily abuse of stage-plays' is represented as still 'an offence to the godly'. The redress of Sabbath-breaking is acknowledged, but still 'two hundred proud players jet in their silks' under the protection of various lords, as well as of Her Majesty. The writer proposes that every stage shall be required to pay a weekly subsidy in aid of the poor. The flood of pamphlets had, however, subsided. The Mirror of Monsters, published by William Rankins in 1587, is of markedly less importance than its predecessors. In November 1587 the City sent a deputation to the Privy Council in the hope of securing the suppression of plays within their boundaries; so far as is known, they were unsuccessful. A year or two later new combative relations were established between the players and the Puritans as an outcome of the Martin Marprelate controversy, which began with a series of anonymous pamphlets attacking the principles of episcopacy, and continued throughout 1589 and 1590. The players were not at first particularly concerned against their hereditary enemies. Tarlton, who died on 3 September 1588, is said himself to have satirized the existing ecclesiastical order in a mock discovery of Simony 'in Don John of Londons cellar'. And indeed the ribald style in which Martin Marprelate canvassed the bishops was held to be modelled on the manners of the theatre. 'The stage is brought into the church; and vices make play of church matters', said one episcopalian writer, and described Martin as declaring on his death-bed, 'All my foolery I bequeath to my good friend Lanam and his consort, from whom I had it'. Bacon also condemned 'this immodest and deformed manner of writing lately entertained, whereby matters of religion are handled in the style of the stage'.[861] But before long the vigour of the attack drove the bishops to seek on their side for an equally effective literary retort. They hired writers, including John Lyly and Thomas Nashe; and these not only answered Martin in his own vein, but also made use of the theatres for what must have been the congenial task of producing scurrilous plays against him. To this campaign there are many allusions in the pamphlets belonging to the controversy. The Puritans hit back with all their old contempt of the rogues and vagabonds dressed in the Queen's liveries; but the laugh was on the other side when Martin was brought dressed like a monstrous ape on the stage, and wormed and lanced to let the blood and evil humours out of him, or when Divinity appeared with a scratched face, complaining of the assaults received in the hideous creature's attacks upon her honour. Vetus Comoedia, the savage Aristophanic invective, was assuredly in full swing upon the English boards. Nashe professed to have another device ready, in which Martin was to figure in a grotesque pageant called the May-Game of Martinism; but the scandal was now getting too great, and the Government was obliged to disavow its own instruments. According to Nashe, it was by 'sly practice' that the comedies which had been penned were not allowed to be played. However this may have been, we find the Lord Mayor writing to Lord Burghley on 6 November 1589 that, in accordance with what he understood from a letter of his lordship to Mr. Young of Middlesex to be his desire, he had stayed plays in the City, in that the Master of the Revels 'did utterly mislike the same'. Almost immediately afterwards, on 12 November, the Privy Council issued three letters from 'the Starre Chamber' to the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Mayor, and the Master of the Revels, directing the Master to join with a divine and with a person 'learned and of judgement' nominated by the other two, and form a commission for allowing the books of plays and striking out or reforming 'suche partes and matters as they shall fynde unfytt and undecent to be handled in playes, both for Divinitie and State'. Perpetual disabilities are threatened to players who produce any pieces not so allowed.

There are indications that in the next year or two a considerable increase took place in the number of plays given during each week. Other kinds of amusement, no less than more serious occupations, suffered, and in a letter of 25 July 1591 to London, Middlesex, and Surrey, the Privy Council had not merely to insist once more upon the due observance of Sunday, but also to forbid plays on Thursdays, on the ground that on this day bear-baiting and other like pastimes, maintained for the royal pleasure if occasion should require, had 'ben allwayes accustomed and practized'. In the following year the Corporation were moved to approach Archbishop Whitgift with a view to obtaining some redress of their grievances through his influence. By a letter of 25 February they set out the evils of plays in the familiar terms, expressing themselves as moved by the 'earnest continuall complaint' of the preachers and declaring that by no one thing was the government of the City 'so greatly annoyed and disquieted'. They explained the difficulty in which they were put by the authority conferred upon the Master of the Revels, who had licensed the playing-houses, 'which before that time lay open to all the statutes for the punishing of these and such lyke disorders', and begged the Archbishop to confer with the Master as to the possibility of providing for the Queen's recreation without the necessity of public performances. A second letter of 6 March thanks the Archbishop for his advice, which apparently was, quite frankly, to bribe the Master. A committee of the Corporation was appointed on 18 March to treat with Tilney, but the scheme fell through for financial reasons. On 22 March the Court of the Merchant Taylors Company discussed a 'precepte' from the Lord Mayor, which called attention to the evils of plays and suggested 'the payment of one anuytie to one Mr. Tylney, mayster of the revelles of the Queenes house, in whose hands the redresse of this inconveniency doeth rest, and that those playes might be abandoned out of this citie'. The Court sympathized, but 'wayinge the damage of the president and enovacion of raysinge of anuyties upon the Companies of London', declined to unloose their purse-strings. On 12 June the Lord Mayor reported to Lord Burghley a disturbance in Southwark, the pretence for which had been furnished by a gathering at a play, held in defiance of orders on a Sunday. Anticipation of a renewal of disorder on Midsummer Day led the Council on 23 June to impose an inhibition on plays until the following Michaelmas. Three undated papers in the Henslowe-Alleyn collection at Dulwich may perhaps suggest that later in the summer they became willing to relax their severity. The first of these is a petition to the Council from Lord Strange's men, begging to be allowed to use their play-house on the Bankside, both for their own sake, as otherwise they would have to travel at considerable charge, and for that of the watermen who 'nowe in this long vacation' look for relief through ferrying spectators to and from the plays. The second is a petition from the watermen themselves to the same effect. The third is a copy of a warrant from the Council, setting out that not long since they had restrained Lord Strange's men from playing at the Rose and enjoined them to play at Newington Butts, and removing the injunction, 'by reason of the tediousness of the waie and that of longe tyme plaies have not there bene used on working daies'. If these documents really belong to 1592, which must remain doubtful, the permission to resume playing was almost certainly rendered nugatory by a plague more serious than any that had devastated London since 1563. In fact Henslowe's Diary shows no performances at the Rose between 22 June and 29 December, and the short winter season that followed was abruptly broken off by a renewed outbreak and an order from the Privy Council on 28 January for the suppression of all assemblies for purposes of amusement within seven miles of London. This was probably renewed in April, and the companies, who had waited for some months in hopes of relaxation, had perforce to travel. On 29 April and 6 May the Council itself issued warrants of authorization to Lord Sussex's and Lord Strange's men respectively to assist them in taking this course. Probably the theatres remained closed during the greater part of the next eighteen months. Henslowe's Diary only indicates performances from 27 December 1593 to 6 February 1594, evidently interrupted by another restraint within five miles of London under a Council order of 3 February, and then a few more in April and in May. The Countess of Warwick's men seem to have been negotiating with the City for toleration on 10 May. Regular playing, however, was not resumed on Bankside until 3 June. The plague was now fairly over, and the shattered companies began to reconstruct themselves. In October Lord Hunsdon wrote to the Lord Mayor begging permission for his men to use the Cross Keys in Gracechurch Street. In November Francis Langley, one of the alnagers for London, was planning a new theatre, the Swan, on the Bankside, and the Lord Mayor once more detailed the objections to plays in a letter of protest to Lord Burghley. This was followed up on 13 September 1595 by a formal petition from the Corporation for 'the present stay and finall suppressing' of plays in Middlesex and Surrey. Herein the origin of yet another prentice riot was traced to the obnoxious performances. Obviously the request was not acceded to. Henslowe's Diary shows no break in the sequence of plays, except for Lent, until the July of 1596, when plague once more called for an inhibition. At about the same time the balance of parties on the Privy Council was seriously disturbed by the death of Henry Lord Hunsdon, who had been Lord Chamberlain since 1585. His successor, Lord Cobham, was less favourable to the players. In the course of the long vacation Thomas Nashe wrote of them as 'piteously persecuted by the Lord Maior and the Aldermen: and however in their old Lord's tyme they thought there state setled it is now so uncertayne they cannot build upon it'. In November there was a petition from inhabitants of the Blackfriars against the erection of a theatre in the precinct, which recited how 'all players being banished by the Lord Mayor from playing within the city by reason of the great inconveniences and ill rule that followeth them, they now think to plant themselves in liberties.' At last the City had gained the point denied them in 1574 and again in 1584. Their importunity, in season and out of season, had moved the hearts of the autocratic body at Whitehall. Hence-forward, although play-houses might stand thick enough within the rapidly growing suburbs beyond the gates, there were to be none, or at any rate none but 'private' houses, within the closely guarded circuit of the liberties. A fuller account of the transaction, without any clear indication of its date, is given many years later by Richard Rawlidge in A Monster Lately Found Out, or The Scourging of Tipplers (1628), and five play-houses are enumerated as pulled down and suppressed under authority from the Queen and Council by the 'religious senators'.[862]

The events of the next year must have given the Corporation high hopes of making an equally clean sweep in the suburbs. They had by now learnt that, although there were many abuses of the stage to which the Council would turn a blind eye, any interference in politics or encouragement, direct or indirect, to civil commotion, was not one of them. On 28 July 1597 they were able, in renewing their appeal for a 'present staie and fynall suppressinge' of the Middlesex and Surrey theatres, to add to their summary of 'inconveniences' a definite statement of a recent confession by some unruly apprentices that plays had served as the 'randevous' of their 'mutinus attemptes'. On the same day the Council wrote to the Middlesex and Surrey Justices, ordering not merely that there should be a restraint of plays within three miles of the City until Allhallowtide, but also that the owners of the theatres should be required 'to pluck downe quite the stages, gallories and roomes that are made for people to stand in, and so to deface the same as they maie not be ymploied agayne to suche use'. As their reason they cited the disorders, due partly to the 'confluence of bad people' at the play-houses, and partly to the handling of 'lewd matters' on the stage. There is reason to suppose that their action was not altogether determined by the representations of the City. A 'seditious' play called The Isle of Dogs had been shown on one of the Bankside stages.[863] This had been brought to their notice by the famous heretic-hunter and informer, Richard Topcliffe, and was, according to Henslowe's Diary, the cause of the restraint. The players and one of the makers of the play had been committed to prison; the other, Thomas Nashe, had fled to Yarmouth, leaving incriminating papers in his lodgings. On 15 August a commission was issued to Topcliffe and others to examine further into the matter and ascertain how far the 'lewd' play had been spread abroad. The second writer has recently been found to be Benjamin Jonson, who thus makes his stormy entry into a field of activity which he was destined, more than any other save one, to illustrate and adorn. It is natural to suppose that, in ordering the complete gutting of the theatres, the Council contemplated the continuance of the restraint even beyond Allhallowtide. But if so, they again changed their minds, and the City were disappointed. On 3 October a warrant was sent to the Keeper of the Marshalsea for the release of Jonson and of the offending players, and Henslowe's Diary notes the resumption of playing a week later. Evidently the Council had satisfied themselves, perhaps under the influence of another new Lord Chamberlain, George Lord Hunsdon, who had succeeded Lord Cobham in the course of the year, that it was after all impossible, in view of the amenities of the royal Christmas, wholly to dispense with plays.

This winter of 1597-8 is really an important turning-point in the history of stage-control. The events of the past two years, following upon a long period of vexatious conflict, seem to have brought the Government to the conclusion that the method of regulation through the magistrates had now broken down, and that the time had come for the resettlement of the matter upon the more centralized basis already foreshadowed by the commission to the Master of the Revels in 1581. Of this there are two indications. And first, for the county as a whole, a new Vagabond Act, replacing that of 1572, had been called for by the progressive development of the Elizabethan poor-law policy on the humane lines of a local rate, and the consequent possibility of discriminating more closely between the deserving poor and the idle vagrants. The latter class were again to be treated with greater severity. Summary whipping was reinstated and might be inflicted in future by local constables as well as justices. The more dangerous rogues were to be transported, and treated as felons if they returned. These were the main objects of the statute, but incidentally the status of players and minstrels was affected. The power of justices to license travelling was taken away. Before long even John Dutton had to prove his claim to his Cheshire privilege. The right of noblemen to protect their servants was not interfered with, and indeed must now have become even more important, as they acquired a monopoly; but it must be exercised under hand and seal and, although this point is not dealt with in the statute, must presumably be endorsed by the Master of the Revels. As regards London and its suburbs in particular, the Privy Council, with the Master of the Revels as an adviser and agent, took the control into its own hands, and decided that the companies to be licensed should be limited to two. It seems likely that this policy took shape in a solemn order in Star Chamber, although the document itself has not reached us.[864] At any rate the rule is set out and confirmed in a letter written by the Lord Chamberlain and the Lord Admiral to the Justices and the Master of the Revels on 19 February 1598, in which complaint is made of the intrusion of a third company, not included in the Council's sanction and not bound to the Master of the Revels for observance of the conditions imposed. In principle it continued to prevail until the end of the reign, although in practice it was not found very easy to restrict the number of companies, and still less that of theatres. On the Surrey side, indeed, an element of local feeling adverse to the stage began to show itself, which perhaps owed its origin to little more than a dispute about the liability of the players to contribute to local assessments. It took shape in a petition from the vestry of St. Saviour's, Southwark, to the Council on 19 July 1598 for the closing of the play-houses in the parish, on account of the enormities that came thereby. But on 28 March 1600 the vestry were content that the churchwardens should 'talk with the players for tithes for their playhouses and for money for the poor, according to the order taken before my lords of Canterbury and London and the Master of the Revels'. In Middlesex, on the other hand, the growth of the western suburbs and their convenience for theatrical purposes led to divers new enterprises. The most important of these was the erection of the Fortune in St. Giles's, Cripplegate, by Edward Alleyn during 1600. The Council seem to have been in two minds about the desirability of the scheme. In January the project had been encouraged by a personal letter from the Lord Admiral to the Middlesex Justices. Some of the inhabitants, however, raised a protest, and in March the Council ordered the Justices in nowise to permit the building, as that would be inconsistent with the order for the plucking down of theatres given them 'not longe sithence'. If this means the order of 28 July 1597, the Council seem to have forgotten that their own action later in the same year had rendered it nugatory; nor were they very consistent when, on 15 May 1600, they allowed the use of the Swan, which certainly should have been plucked down in 1597, for feats of activity by Peter Bromvill, an acrobat specially recommended to Elizabeth by the French king. Ultimately the question of the Fortune received a final reconsideration. The inhabitants, just as in Southwark, were squared by the promise of liberal contributions towards poor relief. Possibly, also, the Queen herself intervened in Alleyn's favour, and on 8 April the consent of the Council was signified by a further letter to the justices. On 22 June the allowance was explained and the principle adopted in 1597 reaffirmed by an Order in Council, which was not, however, passed without some 'question and debate'. There were to be two houses and no more, the Fortune in Middlesex for the Admiral's men and the Globe in Surrey for the Chamberlain's. In addition to the old prohibitions of plays on Sunday, in Lent or during infection, two new restrictions make their appearance. No plays were in future to be given in any 'common inn', and neither of the privileged companies was to play more than twice a week. A few months before, on 1 April 1600, the Middlesex Justices had stopped a contemplated play-house in East Smithfield on the strength of the Star Chamber order. But the twice-repeated limitation of the Privy Council, for all the formality of its expression, seems to have had the shortest of lives. By October 1600 it had already been broken by Pembroke's men, who began to play in that month as a third company at the Rose. During the same year the Chapel boys and those of St. Paul's were also performing, although no doubt these were technically located in 'private' houses. Blackfriars, where the Chapel plays were given, was not yet in the full sense part of the City; it was, however, to the Lord Mayor that the Council gave instructions on 11 March 1601 to stop plays in the Blackfriars, as well as at St. Paul's, during Lent. In May the Curtain was open, and although the Council suppressed a particular play there, they did not suppress the house. By the end of 1601 the order of the previous year had fallen into complete disregard. There were a 'multitude of play-howses' and a daily concourse of people to the plays. The Corporation complained and were informed by the Council on 31 December that the fault lay largely with themselves and their predecessors, as they had failed to see to the execution of their lordships' directions. These were renewed, and a reminder was also sent to the county Justices. It has been suggested that the attitudes of the Corporation and the Council had now been reversed, and that the former had become favourably disposed towards the players.[865] I find no evidence of this. Probably the City policy was to show that the Council's attempt at regulation had broken down, and that complete prohibition had become the only remedy. On 31 March 1602 the Council wrote again to the Lord Mayor, who had reported some amendment of the abuses, and announced that, 'upon noteice of her Maiesties pleasure at the suit of the Earle of Oxford', a third company, made up of the Earl's servants and of those of the Earl of Worcester, were to be tolerated, and were to have the Boar's Head as their sole playing-place.

Plays were suspended by the Council on 19 March 1603 during the illness of the Queen, which terminated fatally on 24 March. Their resumption was anticipated on the coming of James, one of whose first acts was to issue on 7 May a proclamation against plays or bear-baiting on Sundays. But plague intervened, a plague more deadly even than that of 1592-4; and it was not until after the Lent of 1604 that on 9 April the Council authorized the three companies of players to the King, Queen, and Prince to perform at the Globe, Curtain, and Fortune, so long as the weekly plague-deaths should not exceed thirty. These were the former companies of the Chamberlain's, Worcester's, and the Admiral's men, now taken directly into the royal service. By a piece of generosity not paralleled during the late reign, the King's men had received a payment of £30 from the Treasurer of the Chamber in February for their 'maintenance and relief', in view of the prohibition of performances during the plague. The attachment of the three companies to the royal households is to be regarded as something a little more than a mere honour bestowed upon them. It signified a further advance on the lines already laid down in 1597 and 1600 of direct royal control in affairs theatrical. In favour of the King's men, the precedent set for Leicester's men in 1574 was revived, and their privileges, formerly dependent upon orders of the Privy Council, were conferred upon them by a licence under letters patent. A similar patent was drafted for Queen Anne's men, but was not at the time executed. In 1606 a provincial detachment of these men was using a letter of recommendation from the Queen herself as a warrant; they did not receive a licence under letters patent until 1609. Gradually, however, the issue of a patent became the normal Jacobean method of licensing the privileged London players. The Children of the Queen's Revels received theirs in 1604 and a new one in 1610, the Prince's men in 1606, the Duke of York's in 1610, the Lady Elizabeth's in 1611, and the Elector Palatine's in 1613. In 1615 a patent of an exceptional type was issued to Philip Rosseter and his partners for a new theatre at Porter's Hall in the Blackfriars. In the patents for companies the model of the 1574 patent is in the main followed, but as a rule the 'usual howse' in which the company will play is named. This, however, does not seem to be meant to fetter their discretion to use some other convenient house, and a general authority to play in the provinces is, except in the case of the Revels Children, always added. There is no such limitation on playing to two days a week as was imposed on the companies by the Council order of 1600. Most of the patents contain a clause reserving 'all auctoritie power priuiledges and profittes' appertaining to the Master of the Revels under his patent or commission. This is omitted in the licence for the King's men and in both of those for the Revels Children, whose 1604 patent contains a special clause requiring their plays to have the 'approbacion and allowaunce' of Samuel Daniel, whom Queen Anne had appointed for that purpose.[866] It became the duty of the Master to scrutinize the phraseology of plays in the light of an Act to Restrain Abuses of Players, passed in May 1606, which imposed a penalty of £10 for any profane or jesting use of the names of God, Christ Jesus, the Holy Ghost, or the Trinity, in any stage-play, interlude, show, May-game, or pageant. This statute, even if not always literally observed, entailed much revision of existing dramatic texts.

If the system of patents did not render the London players independent of the Master of the Revels, still less did it abrogate from the ultimate authority of the King in Council. There is evidence that the theatres were closed in the autumn of 1605, during which plague was prevalent, and in this matter the responsibility for action still rested with the Council.[867] Unfortunately the full Register for the period 1603-13 is missing. A letter of 12 April 1607 from the City asking for a restraint is addressed to the Lord Chamberlain, whose function it would no doubt be to move the Council. In this or some later year the Whitefriars vestry seem also to have made a protest against the dumping of a play-house in their precinct.[868] That plague interfered with plays in 1608-9, and 1609-10 also, is indicated by payments made to the King's men 'for their private practice' during these years. After 1610 London was no more troubled by the plague until 1625. Other reasons for inhibiting plays sometimes presented themselves. Some bad political indiscretions of 1608, which will require consideration in the next chapter, led to a temporary suspension of performances and a royal threat of permanent suppression. The untimely death of Prince Henry on 7 November 1612 threw a shadow upon all mirth, and the Council declared that 'these tymes doe not suite with such playes and idle shewes, as are daily to be seene in and neere the cittie of London, to the scandall of order and good governement at all occasions when they are most tollerable'. On 29 March 1615 the Council summoned representatives of all the London companies before them, to answer for playing in Lent, contrary to the express direction of the Lord Chamberlain given through the Master of the Revels. The records of suburban administration show the Middlesex Justices trying William Claiton, an East Smithfield victualler, on 20 December 1608, for suffering plays to be performed in his house during the night season, and on 1 October 1612 making an Order for Suppressing Jigs at the End of Plays, on the ground that the lewd jigs, songs, and dances so used at the Fortune led to the resort of cutpurses and other ill-disposed persons and to consequent breaches of the peace. Generally speaking, the problem of metropolitan stage-control may be said, during the reign of James I, to have reached a condition of comparative stability.

As regards the provinces there has been some misapprehension. The royal patents of course ran there, and there is one example of a patent issued to a company which actually had its head-quarters in a provincial town, that to the Children of the Queen's Chamber of Bristol, granted through the influence of Queen Anne, who had visited Bristol on her progress in 1613. But in the provinces the patented companies had no monopoly; side by side with them still wandered both unlicensed vagrants and the protected servants of noblemen. It is true that a Vagabond Act of 1604, which in the main and with certain exceptions, such as dropping the experiment of transportation, continued the policy of that of 1597, has been supposed to have withdrawn the privilege of protection.[869] But the provincial records show that in fact the noblemen's companies were still afoot, and the provision of the statute itself, when carefully read, bears quite another interpretation.[870] It professes to be declaratory of that of Elizabeth on which 'divers doubtes and questions' had arisen, and after reciting the catalogue of persons who were to be classed as vagrants, which includes not only players of interludes, but also fencers, bearwards, minstrels, begging scholars and sailors, palmists, fortune-tellers, proctors, and others, it lays down that no authority shall be given by noblemen to 'any other person or persons'; that is surely, to any of the persons named in the catalogue, other than the players of interludes belonging to the noblemen and authorized under their hands and seals, for whom exception is specifically made therein.[871] The system of patents lent itself to certain abuses by travelling companies. Exemplifications were taken out in duplicate, and while the regular company remained in London, a quite distinct one would go on tour with one of the duplicates and, if necessary, an instrument of deputation from the man named in the patent of which it was a copy.[872] This practice was condemned in 1616 by a warrant of the Lord Chamberlain, to whose department the supervision of the issue of playing patents, as well as the general supervision of the Master of the Revels, appears to have been entrusted. The same document also condemns a company which had been travelling under a 'warrant,' by which is apparently meant a licence under the royal sign manual or signet, used instead of an elaborate and doubtless expensive patent.[873] The signet licences were, however, such an obvious convenience that it was not long before they came to be regularly issued to players under the administration of the Lord Chamberlain himself.[874] This is a topic which lies rather beyond my purview. Nor can I dwell at any length on the evidence which shows that the licences given to players, like other assumptions of the royal prerogative, did not pass altogether without criticism from contemporary constitutionalists. I do not know whether it was a weak point that the statutory sanction taken for the patents in 1572 was not re-enacted in 1597. Their wording purported clearly enough to give the holders an authority to play both within and without the liberties and freedoms of any cities, towns, and boroughs. But Chief Justice Sir Edward Coke, charging a Norwich jury on 4 August 1606, appears to have told the justices that the remedy of the abuses due to players was entirely in their hands—'they hauing no commission to play in any place without leaue: and therefore, if by your willingnesse they be not entertained, you may soone be rid of them'.[875] Too much stress must not be laid upon this, for Coke vigorously repudiated the accuracy of the printed edition of his charge from which the passage is taken.[876] But Prynne seems to insinuate a very similar argument in his Histriomastix of 1633,[877] and in any event the validity of the patents was terminated by the final ordinance for the suppression of plays passed by the Long Parliament on 9 February 1648, which enacted that 'all stage-players, and players of interludes, and common playes, are hereby declared to be, and are, and shall be taken to be, rogues, ... whether they be wanderers or no, and notwithstanding any license whatsoever from the King or any person or persons to that purpose'.[878] We, however, are now concerned, not with the decadence of the stage, but with its palmy days under Elizabeth and James.