by sometime playwrights who had embraced conversion, and had the advantage of speaking from inner knowledge of the profession they were attacking. Of these two, The Schoole of Abuse (1579) and Playes Confuted in Five Actions (1582) were by Stephen Gosson, who became the vicar of St. Botolph's in the City, and the third was by Anthony Munday, who, as Gosson put it, returned to his own vomit again, and resumed play-writing. Munday's contribution was the Third Blast of a composite publication issued under the title of A Second and Third Blast of Retrait from Plaies and Theaters (1580). The Second Blast was a translation of the chapter against spectacula from Salvian's fifth-century De Gubernatione Dei.[1] These five books form the main indictment of the stage, as it developed itself at Puritan hands or under Puritan influences. In addition there were many minor onslaughts, in sermons by Thomas White (1577), John Stockwood (1578), and others at the famous City pulpit of Paul's Cross, in works of devotional theology, such as Gervase Babington's Exposition of the Commandements (1583), and in many examples of the miscellaneous literature that stood for modern journalism. The arguments used in support of the attack are naturally various. Some of them coincide with those used later by Rainolds at Oxford. Calvin's objection, based on Deuteronomy, to the wearing of women's clothes by boys makes its appearance.[2] The condemnations of histriones by the Fathers and by the austerer pagans are applied without discrimination to their Elizabethan successors, and there is a deliberate attempt to brand these alike with the Roman note of infamia and with the more recent stigma of vagabondage. The historical disquisitions lay much stress on the origin of pagan plays in idolatry. Gosson, who in his second book affects a methodical treatment of the subject, and draws upon his recollection of Aristotle for analysis of the efficient, material, formal, final causes and effects of plays, justifies himself from Tertullian in finding the efficient cause of plays in none other than the incarnate Devil.[3] He also derives from Aristotle, although he knew less of Aristotle than did John Case, a theory that acting, being essentially the simulation of what is not, is by its very nature 'with in the compasse of a lye, which by Aristotles judgment is naught of it selfe and to be fledde'.[4] A similar doctrine is readily applied to the imaginations of poets which give actors their opportunity.[5] As Touchstone puts it, poetry is not 'honest in deed and word' nor 'a true thing', for 'the truest poetry is the most feigning'.[6]
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