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All these must have belonged to the earliest répertoire of The Theatre, for Gosson's School of Abuse appeared in 1579. It is of more interest that Thomas Lodge mentions the original pre-Shakespearean Hamlet as having been acted in The Theatre. He speaks of one who "looks as pale as the visard of the ghost which cries so miserably at The Theatre, like an oister-wife, 'Hamlet revenge."
In Stephen Gosson's School of Abuse, a tract directed against the stage and published about four months later than the first part of Euphues, the language is directly Euphuistic. The dramatist, Robert Greene, published, in 1587, his Menaphon; Camilla's Alarum to Slumbering Euphues, and his Euphues's Censure to Philautus.
Later critics can hardly be said to have yet filled out the design that he laid. They have certainly not gone beyond it. The Apologie was probably written about 1580; Gosson's pamphlet, which clearly suggested it, having appeared in 1579. Nothing need here be added to what has been said in the Introduction.
He was a student of Lincoln's Inn, but abandoned law for literature, ultimately studied medicine, and took M.D. at Oxf. 1603; having become a Roman Catholic, he had a large practice, chiefly among his co-religionists. In 1580 he pub. A Defence of Plays in reply to Gosson's School of Abuse; and he wrote poems, dramas, and romances.
It was during the ten years preceding the publication of Webbe's Discourse that this controversy seems to have been hottest. From the first, perhaps, it bulked more largely with the critics than with the poets themselves. Gosson's School of Abuse, 1579. Webbe's Discourse of English Poetrie, 1586. Puttenham's Arte of English Poesie, 1589. Harington's Apologie of Poetrie, 1591.
Criticism arose, with Gosson's School of Abuse, as an attack upon the ethics of the poet by the puritan, who had cut himself off from the joys of sense. In the criticism of Sidney, himself a poet, one does find implied a recognition of the twofold significance of the poet's powers.
Thus in accord with the mediseval tradition he analyzes poetry into profitable subject matter and style. The Influence of Aristotle In 1579 the Puritan attack on poetry and the stage began with Gosson's School of Abuse. and was answered by Lodge's Defence of Poetry in the same year. The attack and defense both rested on moral, not aesthetic, sanctions and will be discussed in a later section.
It was soon joined by the men of letters. And the essay of Sidney was an answer neither to a town councillor, nor to a preacher, but to a former dramatist and actor. This was Stephen Gosson, author of the School of Abuse. The style of Gosson's pamphlet is nothing if not literary.
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