that the arguments were given to the players by none other than Sir William Cecil.[1] The Elizabethan methods of government were tortuous, and it is a little difficult to say how long the licence of the stage to deal with matters of religion lasted. Ostensibly the proclamation of 16 May 1559, presumably issued in deference to De Feria's complaints, brought it to a very definite stop. But it was one thing to issue a proclamation and another to see that it was enforced; and as late as the June of 1562 we find De Feria's successor, the Bishop of Aquila, still protesting against Elizabeth's failure to carry out her perpetual promises, by suppressing the books, farces, and songs which were written in dishonour of his royal master.[2] The burden of these, however, may have been political rather than strictly religious. Certainly, when Elizabeth considered that she had 'settled' the affairs of the Church, it in no way remained part of her intention that they should continue to be matter for public debate. Nor is it likely that the extreme vulgarities of Protestant controversy were altogether to her private taste. Already during the Christmas of 1559 a play at court had been broken off for some unknown offence, and when some Cambridge students pursued the queen to Hinchinbrook in the autumn of 1564 with a scandalous dramatic parody of Catholic ritual, the royal displeasure was unmistakable.[3] Meanwhile the pulpit attacks upon the 'fleshly and filthy' sayings and doings of players begin with Bishop Alley's St. Paul's sermon delivered in 1561, and it is natural to suppose that the temporary alliance between Church and Stage was already dissolved and the normal hostility restored, before Bishop Grindal came to pen his vehement outburst to Cecil on 23 February 1564 in favour of the permanent inhibition of the 'histriones, common playours', that 'idle sorte off people, which have ben infamouse in all goode common weales'. The theory that the first controversial phase of the
- ↑ Sp. P. i. 62 (29 April 1559), 'She was very emphatic in saying that she wished to punish severely certain persons who had represented some comedies in which your Majesty was taken off. I passed it by, and said that these were matter of less importance than the others, although both in jest and earnest more respect ought to be paid to so great a prince as your Majesty, and I knew that a member of her Council had given the arguments to construct these comedies, which is true, for Cecil gave them, as indeed she partly admitted to me.'
- ↑ Sp. P. i. 247. England and Protestantism got as good as they gave. Bohun, 99, records how, about 1560-2, Sir Nicholas Throgmorton was made the butt of French court jesters and comedians. Mary of Scotland was hardly persuaded, in 1565, to punish some Catholics who had made a play against the ministers, with a mock baptism of a cat in it (Randolph to Cecil, in Wright, Eliz. i. 190).
- ↑ Cf. ch. v.
