recreation. In reply the aged reformer anticipated the probable future destiny of the frequenters of plays in terms which recall the worst ferocities of Tertullian on this subject.[1] Something more may be gathered as to Calvin's personal attitude towards plays from a sermon preached in 1556, in which he expounds the prohibition of the change of sex-costume in Deuteronomy xxii. 5 as an absolute one, and as applying particularly to the wearing of men's dresses by women and of women's dresses by men in masks and mummeries.[2] This is an exegesis which counted for a good deal in the Puritan criticism of a stage in which boys habitually took the female parts. Abel Poupin's much-discussed Acts of the Apostles was duly given, and the council ordered themselves loges at the public expense to see the show, and decreed a four days' suspension of arrest for debt in honour of the occasion. Shortly afterwards the ministers approached the council as a body in order to urge that the money devoted to plays might be better bestowed on the poor, and it was thereupon resolved that no more ystoyres should be given jusque lon voye le temps plus propre.[3] This determination must, I think, have been motived by some temporary conditions of special economic distress, for it was far from being the end of plays in Geneva. In the following year, 1547, Richard Chaultemps and his wife and children were refused permission for a jeu de passe-temps, which was thought contrary to Christianity, and were given a teston to go on their way. On the other hand, the council attended officially in the same year at a performance of a Latin dialogue du livre de Joseph by the scholars of the college. In 1548 a wandering tragechieur
- ↑ Calvin, Ep. 802 (Opera, xii. 351) 'Farellus Calvino . . . Isti qui tam delectantur ludis, utinam non serio dolore torqueantur. Timendum est, ne qui alienis personis oblectantur quum propriam in Christo debeant sustinere in omni genere officiorum, ne ferre cogantur non personatos, qui fingunt nocere, sed qui nimis vere afflictent et angant. Sed quis tandem perfectam . . . habebit plebem? Utinam in malis personati tandem essent, nec aliquid ipsi facerent, tantum aliorum peccata repraesentarent . . . omnes ea vitarent, in bonis veri essent actores, imo factores. . . . 16 Iunii, 1546.'
- ↑ Calvin, Sermo, cxxvi (Opera, xxviii. 18), 'Ainsi donc ce n'est point sans cause que ceste loy a esté mise; et ceux qui prennent plaisir à se desguiser, despittent Dieu: comme en ces masques, et en ces momons, quand les femmes s'accoustrent en hommes, et les hommes en femmes, ainsi qu'on en fait: et qu'adviendra-t-il? Encores qu'il n'y eust point nulle mauvaise queue, la chose en soy est desplaisante à Dieu: nous oyons ce qui en est ici prononcé: Quiconques le fait, est en abomination.' Other sermons, e.g. Sermo lvii, condemn dances and jeux generally, without any special stress on plays; cf. P. Lobstein, Die Ethik Calvins, 113.
- ↑ Calvin, Opera, xxi. 385.
