256

GAMING.

[1593. them from godliness. They were wiser in their denunciations of gaming and gaming-houses, which were amongst the corruptions of the town at this period. Sir John Harrington wrote "A Treatise on Playe," in which he endeavours to purify its abuses rather than banish it from the houses of princes, and out of their dominions, as "holy and wise preachers" desired. If he were to show no indulgence to such recreations, he says, "I should

have all our young lords, our fair ladies, our gallant gentlemen, and the flower of all England against me." But he nevertheless draws a picture of "one that spends his whole life in play, of which there is too great choice," that sufficiently illustrates the prevailing madness: "In the morning, perhaps, at chess, and after his belly is full then at cards; and when his spirits wax dull at that, then for some exercise of his arms at dice; and being weary thereof, for a little motion of his body, to tennis; and having warmed him at that, then, to cool himself a little, play at tables; and, being disquieted in his patience for overseeing cinque and quatre, or missing two or three foul blots, then to an interlude; and so, as one well compared it, like to a mill-horse treading always in the same steps, be ever as far from a worthy and wise man as the circle is from the centre." +

Drinking, dicing, bear-baiting, cock-fighting,-the coarsest temptations to profligacy, were not such abominations in the eyes of the Puritans, as "stage-plays, interludes, and comedies." The aversion which the early Reformers entertained towards the Mysteries and Miracle Plays, were poured forth in fuller measure upon the plays of profane subjects, which had now become the universal amusement. The more it was said that some good example might be learned out of them, the more furious were those who * "Tables," backgammon. "Nuga Antique," vol. i. p. 198.

1593.]

STAGE PLAYS.

257

would suppress them altogether. This was the great controversy of a century. It began when the drama was in its puling infancy; it grew more violent during its erratic youth; it ceased not when its glorious manhood had supplied the best answer to its enemies; it triumphed in that drama's licentious decline. The history of the stage is an interesting chapter of our social history, through several generations. In the latter years of the reign of Elizabeth, when the Puritans, zealous, persevering, and united, had possessed themselves of much of the municipal power of the larger cities and towns, there was frequent warfare between the civic authorities and the performers of plays. The severe moralists called them "caterpillars of the commonwealth;" the law defined them as "vagabonds." But the law, which mixed together in one common opprobrium "all fencers, bearwards, common players in interludes, minstrels, jugglers, pedlars, and petty chapmen," who wander abroad and have not licence of two justices of the peace, in what shire they shall happen to wander,*-that same law excepted the established companies of players, by making those only vagabonds who were "not belonging to any baron of this realm, or towards any other honourable person of greater degree." The number of honourable persons who gave their sanction to companies of players was sufficient to secure a sanction for dramatic performances, wherever there was a demand for such amusements. But, notwithstanding these privileges, there was frequent opposition to the acting of plays, especially in London; and thus the earl of Leicester's players, of which company James Burbage was the chief shareholder, being refused a license to perform within the walls of the city, erected a theatre in the Blackfriars, in 1576. The original theatrical performances were in the inn-yards of the city, such as the Belle-Savage. The better sort of spectators sat in the gallery which connected the inn-chambers; the

larger number of the audience stood in the open yard. Gradually, hostelries were converted into theatres, and new buildings were erected for dramatic representations. They were multiplied in various parts of the town, and especially in Southwark. The company of the Lord Chamberlain, who were the queen's household servants, had two theatres -the Blackfriars and the Globethe one for winter, the other for summer performances. Of this company Richard Burbage was the chief actor, and William Shakspere was a shareholder in 1589. This we know from a document, in which the "poor players address lord Burleigh, affirming that they "have never given any cause of displeasure,

Richard Burbage.

in that they have brought into their plays matters of state and religion, unfit to

VOL. III.

* 14 Eliz. c. D.

8

258

STAGE PLAYS.

[1593. be handled by them, or presented to lewd spectators." A commission had been issued to inquire what companies of players had thus offended. This was the period of the Marprelate controversy; and the stage was made an instrument for attacking the Puritans. Nash boasted that "Vetus Comoedia had brought forth Divinity with a scratched face, holding her heart as if she were sick." Spenser has described this period of license as one of ugly barbarism and brutish ignorance, of scoffing scurrility and scornful folly; and he asks why "the man whom Nature self had made to mock herself"-" our pleasant Willy" chooses "to sit in idle cell" rather "than so himself to mockery to sell." There can be little doubt that "the gentle spirit," thus alluded to by the greatest poet of that time-a poet of enduring greatness-was Shakspere. He had, we are assured, already written two or three of his comedies, of which "unhurtful sport, delight, and laughter" were the characteristics. A grander labour was before him-the labour of preserving for all ages and all nations the influences of what has been truly called "great Eliza's golden time;" a time of free thought and heroic action, when individual prosperity had not deadened the sympathy for national greatness; when men lived for their country as much as for themselves; a time of security and comparative peace, born out of a long period of unrest. Of the great interpreter of the spirit of that age we shall have again to speak, in a brief notice of the Elizabethan Literature.