The English drama in the age of Shakespeare

Front matter

in the Age of Shakespeare

Translated from c Geschichte des neueren

Dramas' of Wilhelm Creizenach formerly Professor in the University of Cracow

Book II

CHARACTERISTICS OF DRAMATIC POETRY DURING THE SHAKESPEAREAN PERIOD. THE VOCATION AND POSITION OF THE DRAMATIST 58-99

Introductory, 58 — Professional and occasional dramatic poets, 59 — Social position of the dramatists, 63 — Their earnings, 65 — Collaboration, 67 — Fresh work upon old pieces, 71 — Complaints of the dramatists as to the commercial side of their work, 72 — Classical culture of popular dramatists, 73 — Echoes of the Latin poets, 74 — Insertion of Latin quotations, 75 — Supposed acquaintance with the Greek tragedians, 76 — Knowledge of French and Italian, 78 — Absence of literary pretensions, 79 — Ben Jonson an exception, 80 x THE ENGLISH DRAMA

PAGES

—Prolificacy of productions, 81— Shakespeare's method of work, 82 — Utterances of other dramatists as to these methods, 83 — Particular actions borne in mind by dramatists in writing, 84.

Manner in which the old quartos came into being, 84 — Their characteristics, 85— Their circulation, 88 — Lost editions, 89 — Prefaces, dedications, and commendatory verses, 90 — Spirit of exclusiveness there displayed, 91 — Collected editions, 93 — Contemporary attitude towards the popular drama in England, 94 — Ditto, abroad, 97.

Book III The Moral And Social Ideas Of The Dramatists

RELIGION AND POLITICS 100-151

Patriotism and Protestantism, 100 — Leanings towards Catholicism, 101 — Shakespeare's alleged Catholicism, 102 — Puritan opposition, 104 — Anti-Puritan plays, 106 — The Jews in English drama, 109.

The dramatists' conception of the universe, 110 — The supernatural in English drama, 113— Alchemy and astrology, 114 — Magic and witchcraft, 115.

Small part played by the religious element, 120 — Poetic justice, 121— Immorality in the English drama, 125 — Moralisations and reflections, 127.

Political views, 129— Loyalty, 131— Love of country, 132— Attitude towards Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, 134 — Towards the population of London, 136 — Prejudice against the citizen class, 139— Cavaliers' morality, 141— Cavaliers and citizens, 142— Yeomen, 145— Humble folk, 146— The people, 149— Shakespeare's aristocratic temperament, 150.

Book IV The Dramatic Materials .... 152-234

The choice of material, 152— Fiction and truth, 154— Anachronisms, 155— Lack of local colour, 158.

Biblical dramas, 161— Dramas from classical history, 162— Mythological dramas, 167— Plays from English history, 169— Authors of patriotic plays, 170— The historians principally made use of, 171— Holinshed, 172— Hall, 173— Dramas from the mythical early history of Britain, 174— Plays on Anglo-Saxon and later history, 176— Alleged lack of a true historical sense, 176— Attitude towards parliamentary government, 177— Favourite materials for historical drama, 178— Amorous adventures of the kings— Dramatic concentration on individual kings, 179-The title-role furnished

CONTENTS xi

PAGES

by various statesmen, 180 — Maritime conquests, 183 — Travellers and adventurers, 183 — Native folk-legends, 184 — Robin Hood plays, 184 — English magicians, 185 — Plays from popular ballads, 186 — Famous handicraftsmen, 187 — Plays from foreign history, 188 — Plays based on contemporary events, 189 — Attitude of the authorities thereto, 191 — Plays on the history of the Mohammedan powers, 192 — Plays from the Italian novels: Boccaccio, 193 — Bandello, 194 — Other Italian novelists, 195 — Isolated features from the novels utilised, 195 — English collections of Italian tales, 197 — Spanish tales, 199 — Romances of chivalry, 199 — Mediaeval narrative literature, 202 — English narrative authors, 202 — Gower, Chaucer, 203 — Sidney's Arcadia, 204 — Tales by Greene and Lodge, 206— The pastoral element, 206— Dramas of crime, 208— Plays on magicians and devils, 212 — Moralities, 213 — Adaptations of Latin comedies, 214 — Utilisation of motifs from Italian comedy, 215.

Plots borrowed and original, 216 — Free invention in tragic plots, 218 — In comic, 220 — The motif of disguise, 221 — Other motifs, 223 — Plots transplanted on -to Italian soil, 224 — Depiction of English life in comedy, 225 — Setting of Ben Jonson's comedies, 228— Middleton, 230— Marston, Webster, and Heywood, 231.

Appendix. Dramas based on English history arranged in the chronological order of the events dramatised.

Book V Arrangement And Construction .... 235-277

Classification of dramatic works, 235 — Blending of comic and tragic elements, 238 — Division into acts, 247 — Duration of performances, 248 — Plays divided into two parts, 249 — Unity of time, 250 — Condemnation of action, 252 — ' Plotting,' 253 — Composite plots, 254 — Allegorical framework, 257 — Plays within plays, 258 — Overloaded action, 259 — Arrangement of material in the historical plays, 260 — Improbabilities, 262 — Surprises, 264 — Quiet scenes, 266 — Concluding scenes, 304 — Technical dexterity, 272 — Isolated traces of clumsiness remaining from an earlier period, 273 — Soliloquies, 274 — Asides, 275 — Prologues and Epilogues, 275 — Conclusion with a prayer, 277.

Book VI Types Of Character— Serious And Comic . . 278-314

Art of characterisation, 278 — Copies taken from real life, 279 — Portrayal of a change of character, 280 — Shakespeare, 282 — Ben Jonson, 284 — Inconsistencies in character-drawing, 285 — Stereotyped character, 289 — Female character, 292.

xii THE ENGLISH DRAMA

Farcical characters, 294— Native tradition, Tarlton, 295 — Influence of the commedia deW arte, 296— Clowneries, 297— The clown as a musician, 302 — Original interpolations by the clown, 302— Clown and Vice, 303— Kemp as a clown, 304— The clown's costume, 305 — Variations of type in the clown, 306 — The fool, 307— The miles gloriosus, 308— The pedant, 309— Pages, nurses, comical old gentlemen, 310 — ' Gules,' 311 — Servants of the law, 311 — Conclusion of performances by clown-scenes, 312.

Book VII Versification And Style 315-352

Connection with the Renaissance drama, 315 — Blank verse, 316 — Stichomythia in blank verse, 316 — Carelessness of many dramatists in handling blank verse, 316 — Intermixture of rhyme, 318 — Rhyme less frequent in the later period, 321 — Other forms of verse, 322 — Alliteration, 322 — Verse and prose, 323 — Dialect, 325 — Broken English, 325 — Prose conversation of the upper classes, 326 — Other applications of prose, 328 — Sometimes used arbitrarily, 329 — Passionate prose, 330.

Tropes and figures, 331 — Hyperbole, 332 — 'A5iWoi>, 334 — Periphrasis, 335— Simile, 335 — Metaphor, 338 — Mythological comparisons, 340 — Unsuccessful imagery, 341 — Euphuistic similes, 342— Maxims, 342— Anaphora and Epiphora, 344 — Antithesis, Oxymoron, Epanorthosis, 345 — Other figures, 346 — The play on words, 347— Applied in tragedy, 348— Echo, 349 — Rule of tragic gravity disregarded, 350.

Book VIII Staging And Histrionic Art 353-430

Earlier systems of staging, 353 — Staging at Court, 354 — Staging in popular theatres, 355 — Details left to the imagination, 355 — Vocalised scenes, 358 — Shift of locality during a scene, 358 — Absence of curtain, 362— Stage directions in modern editions, 363 — English and Italian staging, 364— Stage lighting, 366.

The background, 367— The back stage, 370— The three doors or openings, 372— The upper stage, 375— The roof over the stage, 378— Curtains and hangings, 379— Stage furniture and properties, 381— Movable scenery, 382— Machines and traps, 384— Open and closed theatres, 385— Costumes, 386— Display of finery, 387— Dumb-shows, 388— Painted scenery, 390— Musical accompaniment, 391— Instrumental music, 391— Songs, 392— Dances, 393 — Tumbling and sword-playing, 394.

CONTENTS xiii

PAGES

The actor's art, 394— His versatility. 396— Celebrated actors, 397— Alleyn and Burbage, 397— Shakespeare's roles, 399— Doubled parts, 400 — Strongly emphasised effects, 401 — Traditional expression of emotion, 401 — Realistic effects, 403.

Theatrical companies, 405 — James i.'s protection, 410 — Troops of boys, 411.

The playhouses, 415 — The audience, 418 — Prices of admittance, 418 — Playbills, 420 — Behaviour of the gallants, 422 — Actors and city authorities, 423 — Royal patronage, 424 — The Master of the Revels, 425 — Tours in the provinces, 427 — Professional and amateur acting, 428 — Social position of the actor, 429.

LIST OF ABBREVIATED REFERENCES .... 431 INDEX 434

ILLUSTRATIONS

PAOB

THE SWAN THEATRE 369

From the Transactions of the New Shakspere Society, 1887-1890, p. 214, by kind permission of Messrs. Chatto and "Windus.

THEATRE OF THE REDERIJKER AT ANTWERP, 1561 . to face 374

THEATRE OF THE REDERIJKER AT GHENT, 1539 . „ 378

Both from photographs specially taken for this edition by courtesy of the Librarian, Bibliotheque Royale, Brussels.

THE ENGLISH DRAMA IN THE AGE OF SHAKESPEARE

Book I The English Theatre From 1570 To 1587

DURING the sixteenth century a tendency had shown itself, practically all over Europe, to call into being a new dramatic art modelled on antiquity. It is, however, noticeable that among all the poetic works written to satisfy this instinct, not one was composed in the grand manner ; nor were signs wanting that the future of the drama did not lie in the direction of classicism. In studying the period about to be dealt with, it becomes every moment more apparent that the drama was at all points being deflected from such a course. Even when we are in face of the learned drama, written in Latin, we are compelled to recognise the dramatic work of the Jesuits, in which the baroque style found such characteristic expression, as the most important new phenomenon. It is true that, in Italy, comedy and tragedy written in the classical manner lingered feebly on. But side by side with these there were being developed new tendencies by means of which Italy was able to retain her prominent position in the dramatic art of Europe. These tendencies were embodied in forms such as the commedia delV arte, the opera, and the new type of pastoral comedy which had been raised to pre-eminence by Tasso's Aminta. In Spain isolated attempts at classicism were being crowded into the background by the brilliant expansion of the Romantic drama. Kindred romantic tendencies showed themselves in France, but their exponents were less successful ; and it was thus all the more possible for a fresh classical spirit to arise1 ihere in the middle of the seventeenth century and conquer the world.

A deep cleavage runs at this period through Germany and the Netherlands. So much of these countries as adhered to the older religion possessed a culture marked by the same characteristics as those of the Latin nations during the Counter-Reformation, though, apart from the brilliant apparition of Rubens, the Germanic world took a passive rather than an independently active part in propagating the baroque and Jesuitic culture. But if we consider the Protestant portions of these nations, while in Germany we find poetry in a sad state of petrifaction and decay, in Holland, on the other hand, there appears a remarkable recrudescence of Senecan tragedy, in contradistinction to the almost general reaction in progress in other countries against the slavish imitation of Greek and Roman models. This recrudescence cannot, however, be compared from the point of view of international influence with the classicist movement which at a later date proceeded from France. Nor was this characteristic tendency of Dutch literature comparable in importance with the political and other achievements with which this little country sought to stem the mighty influence of the Counter- Reformation.

But if we turn to England, the brilliant ally of Holland in this combat, we find there the first great poetic efflorescence in a Protestant country. And in the drama more especially there appears a remarkable analogy with Spain — that is to say, with a country in which the opposite temper of mind found in every department of life its most complete expression. In spite of the manifold energy latent in the Romantic form of the drama, it had hitherto received a treatment at once mechanical, slavish, and feeble whenever it had appeared. But in England and Spain this form of art was now raised and borne aloft by great poetic artists who were the first to recognise, some hundred years after the rise of the type, that it offered the most excellent opportunities for free development to the individuality of genius. The drama thus became a field for the reconciliation of the two tendencies towards the learned and the popular respectively which, ever since the beginning of the Renaissance, had been struggling further and further asunder.

Except for the early dramatic efforts of the genius of

Cervantes, which occupy a place apart, the renewed vigour of the drama began at about the same time in Spain and England. The date of its origin may be fixed somewhere between 1585 and 1590, when the great contest between the two nations had reached its culmination in the campaign of the Armada, in which the young poet Lope de Vega took part. Owing to the greater solidarity of intellectual interests in the Catholic world, the Spanish drama of this epoch began earlier than that of the rival country to exercise an international influence. On the other hand, the English drama of the great period, though, owing to difficulties of language, it was slower in obtaining recognition on the Continent, was the first to reach its highest development, and ran its course with greater swiftness.1

While contemplating the English drama during the seventies of the sixteenth century, one begins by thinking that everything was working along the same groove as during the earlier years of Elizabeth's reign. The only difference appears to lie in the existence of a constantly increasing love for the theatre counterbalanced by a Puritan opposition to it which grew year by year more determined. Appreciation of the drama shows itself especially at Court and among the nobility, as well as among the pleasure-loving population of the capital. The opposite tendency appears in the solid bourgeoisie officially represented by the municipal bodies. The great gentlemen belonging to the entourage of the Queen, who was herself a friend of the theatre, had long been accustomed to take companies of actors under their patronage, and thus secure them from the consequences of a law which classed actors standing in no such relation to a great person with rogues and vagabonds.2 It was the constant aim of these patrons, supported by the Privy Council, to compel the Lord Mayor and the Corporation to grant their proteges permission to give regular dramatic performances in London. The Corporation obstinately re-

1 References to the more important works dealing especially with this period will be found on later pages. I must here refer the reader to the more general works by Ward and Schelling, and to vols. iv. and v. of the Cambridge History of English Literature, as well as to the excellent biographies collected in the Dictionary of National Biography.

1 The restrictions in question were again reinforced in an order of Elizabeth in 1571-2 (Hazlitt, English Drama, p. 21 seq.).

sisted this pressure. In the objections which it raised, although here and there a Puritanical hatred of the stage on principle peeps through, by far the most prominence was generally given to other arguments more likely, it was hoped, to prove convincing to the authorities. These were the danger of raising tumults and of creating obstructions, and, more especially, the fear of plague being propagated by great concourses of persons in the theatre. And as the plague was a very frequent danger, each time it arose the Corporation welcomed it as an argument against the players. This species of friction never ceased during the Shakespearean period, but it was especially violent between 1570 and 1580. A stop had been put to all acting in 1572 on account of the plague, to the great joy of Harrison, who confessed that he would like to see all playhouses pulled down inasmuch as they were but 'seminaries of impiety.'1 Two years later, however, in March 1574, the Earl of Sussex (the Lord Chamberlain) demanded from the city magistrates the grant of a site on which his company might perform. The request was denied. But in May of the same year letterspatent were issued granting the Queen's favourite, Leicester, the right to hold dramatic performances in every town, including ' our city of London.' In December the city authorities issued an ordinance laying down the conditions on which permission to act within their jurisdiction would be granted. All their scruples against the drama are summed up in this extraordinary document. From it there transpires the fact that the actors performed in the courtyards of inns, and reiterated complaints are made that the rooms opening on to the galleries round the enclosure were used for immoral purposes. It is further stated that on Sundays and holy days the people were drawn away from Divine service by the performances ; that pocket-picking and other misdemeanours were facilitated by the crowding together of so many persons ; and that accidents often occurred owing to the falling of stands and the use of gunpowder during the play, and so on. It was finally urged that the pieces frequently contained ' enormities ' calculated to lead youth astray. Permission to act was there-

1 The passage from Harrison's Description of London (1577)* is quoted by Ordish, p. 31.

fore hedged about with many restrictions, especially in the matter of performances on Sundays and holy days. A censor- j ship of the text was also established, a tax for the poor in hospitals imposed, and the breach of these bye-laws was declared punishable by certain fines and terms of imprison-! ment.1 These new injunctions were, apparently, at first' enforced with great severity, so that in many instances actors found it impossible to carry on their profession in the capital.

These circumstances led the players in 1576 to aim a decisive blow at the city magistrates. The prime mover in the matter was James Burbage, father of the Richard who afterwards took the chief parts in Shakespeare's company. James had originally been a carpenter by trade, but as early as 1574 his name appears in the royal privilege granted to Leicester's company. He is described as one of the six members of this company, and with him is mentioned the famous clown and playwright Robert Wilson. Burbage hired a piece of land to the north of the city in Finsbury fields, where the recreation grounds of the London citizens lay, and there he erected a large wooden playhouse of which the interior was open to the sky. The usual courtyard in which performances had hitherto been held evidently served him as a model. This house, simply called ' The Theatre/ was, as the Burbage family was later proud to point out,2 the first building to be erected for theatrical purposes on English soil ; and it is highly probable that Shakespeare here began his career as actor and playwright. Not long afterwards, a second playhouse was erected by an unknown person, not far from the Theatre, on a piece of ground known as ' the Curtain ' ; the name of this Curtain theatre has therefore nothing to do with a stage curtain.8

Thanks to these two buildings, dramatic art had now a fixed abode outside the gates of London and the jurisdiction of the city magistrates, yet within the county of Middlesex. The

1 These documents, as well as those about to be cited, will be found in Hazlitt's English Drama, p. 23 seqq.

* Cf. the document in Halliwell, Outlines, i. 317.

8 Cf. the detailed history of these two theatres in Halliwell, Outlines, i. 345 seqq. It is probable that the Curtain theatre was also built in 1576 ; otherwise Thomas Wilcox would hardly have been able to speak of London's ' sumptuous theatre houses ' in the plural, in his sermon at Paul's Cross on December 9 of that year. (See below, p. 8.) The first express mention of both theatres occurs in Northbrooke's treatise. (See below, p. 9.)

magistrates were now in a difficult position. They could not prevent the crowd from pouring out of the town gate into the temple of Satan whenever the commencement of a performance was notified there by the blowing of trumpets and the hoisting of a flag ; they could no longer issue Draconic edicts against the opportunities thus afforded for scandalous behaviour and for propagation of the plague. On the contrary, when they wished to intervene, the only course open to them was the tedious and circuitous one of presenting a petition to the Privy Council. Further, on many occasions, pressure from influential quarters made it impossible for them to refuse permission for performances in the courtyards of inns within the city. And so for several decades there dragged on a series of prohibitions, ordinances, precautionary measures, correspondences with the Privy Council, and explanations with great nobles and with privileged companies. The latter were now reinforced by the formation, in 1583, of a new troupe recruited from among the most noteworthy actors and placed under the immediate protection of the Queen.1

A particularly characteristic exchange of documents took place in 1584, when the city magistrates attempted to put a stop to the London performances of this company. The ' poor players ' declare in their petition to the Privy Council 2 that the time is approaching, that is to say, Christmastide, when they are commanded to act before the Queen ; and that therefore they must be given opportunities of practising their art and also of earning a sufficient livelihood. This peculiar argument as to the necessity of acting before the London populace in order that the actors might prepare themselves by experimenta in corpore vili for the performances at Court, recurs again and again in the course of these quarrels.3 The city magistrates state in their reply that they deem it highly unsuitable to give performances before the Queen which have

1 Several documents from the correspondence of the Lord Mayor were extracted from the Remembrancia collection and published by Chambers in Part I. of the Collections of the Malone Society, 1907, p. 43 seqq.

1 The original MS. is undated, but is placed by Collier, Hazlitt, and others in 1575. This date cannot, however, be correct in any case, because the petition contains allusions to performances in the houses ' without the city of London.' Chambers gives the right date in The Academy, Aug. 24, 1895. Cf. also his Tudor Revels, p. 75. For the newly constituted troupe, see Remembrancia, xvi.

* ?Ufor examPle the ^tter of Sir Francis Walsingham to the Lord Mayor, dated Dec. 1, 1583, and printed in Ordish, p. 62, and elsewhere.

already been held before the common people. The actors may, it is added, prepare themselves by rehearsing in private houses ; and so far as their livelihood is concerned, acting as a profession and as an exclusive means of earning one's living has no justification. It can only be tolerated when practised together with 'other honest and lawful arts.' But the real ground of their objection is not revealed by the City Fathers until they touch upon the question of the plague. They say that acting during an epidemic of the plague increases the danger of infection ; and that acting during periods of freedom from plague is apt to draw down the disease as a punishment from Heaven. They further think it dangerous that players who have acted in public during a time of plague should approach the Queen's person. All these disputes need not, however, be followed up here. Suffice it to say that the players had obtained a firm footing to the great displeasure of the city authorities, and that they were now able to practise their art with regularity.

Side by side with the professional actors, there existed certain troupes of boys which acquired an ever-growing importance in the theatrical life of the capital. The scholars of Westminster School, and of the celebrated Merchant Taylors' School (at that time under the great pedagogue Mulcaster) were often invited to take part in the customary performances held at Court at Christmas and during times of festivity from 1570 to 1580. A pupil of Mulcaster 's tells us that this appearance at Court was of great service in fostering ' good behaviour and audacity.' 1 But dramatic art was chiefly cultivated in the two schools at which the choristers of St. Paul's Cathedral and the Chapel-Royal were trained. The latter was presided over by William Hunnis from the accession of Elizabeth until his death in 1596.2 He was well known as a writer of Interludes, and was undoubtedly the author of many of the gorgeously mounted pieces acted by the choir-boys at the Court festivities, though, in common with many others who contributed to the glory of the Elizabethan Court, he complains of receiving but scanty payment. The titles of the plays indicate that pious moralists had every reason to lament afresh the custom which led the pupils of

1 This statement of Whitelocke's is quoted by Klahr, among others, in hia Leben und Werke Mulcasters (Dresden, 1893), p. 26.

8 See the exhaustive monograph upon Hunnis, by Mrs. C. C. Stopes (Bang's Materialien, xxix., 1910).

an institution originally ecclesiastical to represent the immoral fables of heathen poets. The same objection appears to have been applicable to the pieces in which Farrant the musician allowed his pupils of the Chapel-Royal at Windsor to perform. It became, moreover, plain that the objections on moral grounds to these juvenile performances were in some measure justified, when, apparently in the year 1780 or thereabouts, the boys began to give regular performances in the city. In 1576 Farrant obtained a site in Blackfriars (then a fashionable quarter) for the establishment of a theatre for his choir-boys.1 This, like ' The Curtain ' and ' The Theatre,' lay outside the City jurisdiction. On Farrant 's death Hunnis succeeded to its management, and in 1584 we find Lyly, the most famous of pre-Shakespearean dramatists, in Blackfriars as manager of a troop of boy-actors under the Earl of Oxford's protection ; we learn from the prologues that Lyly's charming Cupid and Campaspe and Sappho and Phao were produced at Blackfriars. Gosson, in Plays confuted, mentions both this theatre and that in the neighbourhood of St. Paul's where the Cathedral choristers gave their performances.

Now that the Puritan opponents of the drama no longer had the machinery of the law at their disposal, they were constrained to seize the pen as a weapon of offence ; and this they were not backward in doing. The first in the field were the preachers with their public appeals to the people at Paul's Cross. Among them were the fanatical Puritan Wilcox, who preached there in December 1576 and November 1577, and the theologian and schoolmaster Stockwood, who preached in August 1578. They inveighed against the crowds for pouring into the theatres, those monuments of London's folly, and declared that thereby the wrath of God was being incurred.2 But

1 See Feuillerat's account (Shakespeare- Jahrbuch, xlviii., 81 eeqq). As to Farrant, see below, p. 27.

2 Hazlitt, English Drama, p. 168 seqq. Extracts from the sermons in Arber's Reprints of Gosson's School of Abuse (1896), p. 8 seqq. ; cf. Symmes, p. 69 seqq. When Stockwood says «I know not how I might with the godly learned especially more discommend the gorgeous playing-place erected in the fields, than to term it, as they please to Have it called, a " Theatre," ' he is evidently thinking of the definition of the word given in several mediaeval encyclopeedias, and also in later works such as Reuchlin's Vocabularius breviloquus : « Theatrum dicitur prostibulum et lupanar, quod post ludos exactos meretrices prostituebantur ibi.'

imprecations and laments of this sort were so often heard from the pulpit that they ceased to make any impression. In Plays confuted it is noted with regret that the same might be said of these warning voices as philosophers say of the music of the spheres : We never hear it, because we never cease to hear it. John Northbrooke was the first to attempt a more thorough and exhaustive presentment of the evils occasioned by playacting. His views are contained in a tract in the form of a dialogue against dicing, dancing, and idle plays or Interludes.1 Stephen Gosson, who had gone to London after completing his studies at Oxford, at first tried his hand as a playwright ; but when only twenty-four he became a bitter enemy of the drama and of worldly vanity, and was thus able to make all the more stir with his School of Abuse (1579).2

He was seconded by a writer behind whose pseudonym ' Anglophile Eutheo ' there probably lurks Anthony Munday. This author had, notwithstanding his youth, already lived a very eventful life. It is also probable that he had already had some connection with the stage ; that he later re-entered theatrical life is at all events an established fact.3 In 1580 there appeared ' Eutheo 's ' work, consisting of two pamphlets against the theatre.4 Of these one was merely a translation of the anti -theatrical declamation of Salvianus, one of the Fathers of the Church, while the other has direct reference to the condition of the stage in England. The supporters of the theatre were, however, not silent on their side, and Gosson was soon obliged to adopt a defensive attitude in face of enemies

1 Reprinted by Collier for the Shakespeare Society, 1843.

8 Quoted below from the reprint in Arbor's Reprints, No. 3 (1895).

8 According to a writer of Catholic bias (see post, p. 25), Munday, on trying to play extempore, had been « hissed from his stage. . . . Then being thereby discouraged he set forth a balet against playes [evidently the first ballad mentioned in the next note], but yet (O constant youth) he now begins again to ruffle upon the stage.' — A true report on the death of M. Campion.

4 A second and third Blast of Retrait from Plaies and Theaters. Reprint, Hazlitt, English Drama, p. 99 seqq. The First Blast was, as Fleay (Chronicle, ii. 110) probably rightly conjectures, a work now lost but entered in the Register on November 10, 1580. The entry runs as follows: 'A Ringinge Retraite Couragiouslie sounded, wherein Playes and players are fytlie Confounded.' Fleay concluded — probably from this rhymed title — that the work was a ballad. On April 8, 1580, there is entered a 'Ballad intituled comme from the plaie, comme from the plaie : the house will fall so people saye, the earth quakes lett us haste awaye.' The title gives one reason to suspect that the ballad was composed in derision of the opponents of the stage; two days before the entry in the Register there had been an earthquake in London.