would doubtless have been brought into effective operation. But it did not rest wholly with them. Not only were the most important theatres, from 1576, outside the limits of their jurisdiction, but also account had to be taken of an authority greater even than that of the City of London, the authority, ill-defined but imperative, of the Privy Council. And the Privy Council was, as a rule, swayed by principles and personalities by no means enamoured of prohibition. Of this the anti-stage pamphleteers show themselves fully conscious. Gosson, addressing his Schoole of Abuse to the Lord Mayor for the time being, acknowledges the difficulties which the 'letters of commendations' held by the companies put in the way of reform, and laments that players share the natures of the cuttle-fish and the torpedo, so that 'how many nets so euer ther be layde to take them, or hookes to choke them, they haue ynke in their bowels to darken the water, and sleights in their budgets, to dry up the arme of euery magistrate'. In Playes Confuted, he prayed for 'some noble Scipio in the courte' to drive the 'daunsing chaplines of Bacchus' out of England, and in a prefatory epistle to Sir Francis Walsingham he declared that the cleansing of the Augean stable was only possible for 'some Hercules in the court, whom the roare of the enimy can never daunt'. No doubt he hoped that the combined functions of a Scipio and of a Hercules would be undertaken by Walsingham himself.[1] Anthony Munday is even more explicit. He urges the city not to be daunted by 'particular men of auctoritie', and inveighs against the nobility who 'restraine the magistrates from executing their office', in order to pleasure servants whom they are unwilling to maintain themselves, and therefore license to roam throughout the country, publishing their 'mametree' in every temple of God, and begging alms in their masters' names from house to house.[2] The Council, however, were by no means disposed to give the City a free hand, and with themselves the policy of prohibition made little headway. They had, indeed, to reconcile conflicting considerations. They too, like the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, feared the opportunities for riots and seditions which the theatres afforded;[3] and the danger of the spread of plague was their constant preoccupation. Moreover, they were especially concerned to see that the players did not touch upon matters of state or religion, and to visit with sharp
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