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In that theatre Marlowe's 'Jew of Malta, Massinger's 'New Way to Pay Old Debts, and other pieces of good literature, were first produced. Its players under James I. were 'the Queen's servants. In 1656 Davenant broke through the restriction upon stage-plays, and took actors and musicians to 'the Cockpit, from Aldersgate Street.
In the reign of Charles I. the Puritans had raised a violent clamour against the drama, which they considered as an entertainment not lawful to Christians, an opinion held by them in common with the Church of Rome; and Prynne published "Histriomastix," a huge volume in which stage-plays were censured.
Do not think your grazier's cloak will bear you out, captain- -no, nor your scraps of stage-plays." "Why, what would you have me to do?" said the captain "Would you have me starve? If I am to fly, you must eke my wings with a few feathers. You can spare them, I think." "You had means already you have had ten pieces What is become of them?"
She was no longer the parent of arts and letters, of wholesome knowledge, of innocent pleasures, of blessed household smiles. In their place came sour faces, whining voices, the chattering of fools, the yells of madmen. Then men fasted from meat and drink, who fasted not from bribes and blood. Then men frowned at stage-plays, who smiled at massacres.
When the constable, Joseph Herrick, brought in Dulcibel, he stated that having made "diligent search for images and such like," they had found a "yellow bird," of the kind that witches were known to affect; a wicked book of stage-plays, which seemed to be about witches, especially one called "he-cat"; and a couple of rag dolls with pins stuck into them.
So often have the features of Chinatown been described its incense-scented joss-houses, its interminable stage-plays, its opium-joints, its drug-stores with their extraordinary remedies, its curiosity shops, and its restaurants that no repetition need be attempted here.
So was Rome destroyed by the disorders of continual elections, though those of Rome were sober disorders. They had nothing but faction, bribery, bread, and stage-plays, to debauch them: we have the inflammation of liquor superadded, a fury hotter than any of them. Yet Rome was destroyed by the frequency and charge of elections, and the monstrous expense of an unremitted courtship to the people.
It was not left for our age to discover that the wages of sin is death: but Charles, his players and his courtiers, refused to see what the very heathen had seen, and so had to be taught the truth over again by another and a more literal lesson; and what neither stage-plays nor sermons could teach them, sharp shot and cold steel did.
It is said that many of these stage-plays were of questionable decency, with more than a suggestion of the garden of Eden in them; but this is an aspersion which Madame de Rietz indignantly repudiates in her "Memoirs."
* Rush. vol. ii. p. 202, 203. Rush, vol. ii. p. 215, 216, etc. Prynne, a barrister of Lincoln's Inn, had written an enormous quarto of a thousand pages, which he called Histrio-Mastyx. Its professed purpose was to decry stage-plays, comedies, interludes, music, dancing; but the author likewise took occasion to declaim against hunting, public festivals, Christmas-keeping, bonfires, and may-poles.
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