Plays and Puritans | Page 7

of history contradict Mr. Gifford?
We believe that, so far from the triumph of dramatic poetry terminating
with Massinger, dramatic art had been steadily growing worse from the
first years of James; that instead of the arts advancing to perfection
under Charles the First, they steadily deteriorated in quality, though the
supply became more abundant; that so far from there having been a

sudden change for the worse in the drama after the Restoration, the
taste of the courts of Charles the First and of Charles the Second are
indistinguishable; that the court poets, and probably the actors also, of
the early part of Charles the Second's reign had many of them belonged
to the court of Charles the First, as did Davenant, the Duke and
Duchess of Newcastle, Fanshaw, and Shirley himself; that the common
notion of a 'new manner' having been introduced from France after the
Restoration, or indeed having come in at all, is not founded on fact, the
only change being that the plays of Charles the Second's time were
somewhat more stupid, and that while five of the seven deadly sins had
always had free licence on the stage, blasphemy and profane swearing
were now enfranchised to fill up the seven. As for the assertion that the
new manner (supposing it to have existed) was imported from France,
there is far more reason to believe that the French copied us than we
them, and that if they did not learn from Charles the First's poets the
superstition of 'the three unities,' they at least learnt to make ancient
kings and heroes talk and act like seventeenth century courtiers, and to
exchange their old clumsy masques and translations of Italian and
Spanish farces for a comedy depicting native scoundrelism. Probably
enough, indeed, the great and sudden development of the French stage,
which took place in the middle of the seventeenth century under
Corneille and Moliere, was excited by the English cavalier playwrights
who took refuge in France.
No doubt, as Mr. Gifford says, the Puritans were exasperated against
the stage-players by the insults heaped on them; but the cause of
quarrel lay far deeper than any such personal soreness. The Puritans
had attacked the players before the players meddled with them, and that
on principle; with what justification must be considered hereafter. But
the fact is (and this seems to have been, like many other facts,
conveniently forgotten), that the Puritans were by no means alone in
their protest against the stage, and that the war was not begun
exclusively by them. As early as the latter half of the sixteenth century,
not merely Northbrooke, Gosson, Stubs, and Reynolds had lifted up
their voices against them, but Archbishop Parker, Bishop Babington,
Bishop Hall, and the author of the Mirror for Magistrates. The
University of Oxford, in 1584, had passed a statute forbidding common
plays and players in the university, on the very same moral grounds on

which the Puritans objected to them. The city of London, in 1580, had
obtained from the Queen the suppression of plays on Sundays; and not
long after, 'considering that play- houses and dicing-houses were traps
for young gentlemen and others,' obtained leave from the Queen and
Privy Council to thrust the players out of the city, and to pull down the
play-houses, five in number; and, paradoxical as it may seem, there is
little doubt that, by the letter of the law, 'stage plays and enterludes'
were, even to the end of Charles the First's reign, 'unlawful pastime,'
being forbidden by 14 Eliz., 39 Eliz., 1 Jacobi, 3 Jacobi, and 1 Caroli,
and the players subject to severe punishment as 'rogues and vagabonds.'
The Act of 1 Jacobi seems even to have gone so far as to repeal the
clauses which, in Elizabeth's reign, had allowed companies of players
the protection of a 'baron or honourable person of greater degree,' who
might 'authorise them to play under his hand and seal of arms.' So that
the Puritans were only demanding of the sovereigns that they should
enforce the very laws which they themselves had made, and which they
and their nobles were setting at defiance. Whether the plays ought to
have been put down, and whether the laws were necessary, is a
different question; but certainly the court and the aristocracy stood in
the questionable, though too common, position of men who made laws
which prohibited to the poor amusements in which they themselves
indulged without restraint.
But were these plays objectionable? As far as the comedies are
concerned, that will depend on the answer to the question, Are plays
objectionable, the staple subject of which is adultery? Now, we cannot
but agree with the Puritans, that adultery is not a subject for comedy at
all. It may be for tragedy; but