of lord and servants was little more than a nominal one. The strict regulations of Henry VII against retainers who were not household servants had become relaxed with the disappearance of the conditions which necessitated them.[1] The players would wear a livery or badge, and would do some courtesy of attendance on festival occasions. The lord might intervene to help them if they got into an undeserved difficulty, and would see to it that they did not bring his name into bad repute. There was no economic dependence; the players lived by their earnings, not by wages. But they were not reckoned as masterless men.
A secure status, however, did not mean complete absence of control. The players had no free hand to play just when and where and what they liked. They were subject to certain conveniences as to times and seasons and localities, to precautions against breaches of the peace and dangers to public health and safety. Above all, in a time of political and ecclesiastical ferment, the sentiments of their plays had to be such as would stand the scrutiny of a government by no means tolerant of criticism. On these matters it was not, except in so far as heresy was constituted by Acts of Uniformity and the like, with statutes that they had to deal, but with the administrative regulations of the local and central executives. All over the country there were bodies charged with a general responsibility for public order, public safety, and public decency, as the Elizabethans conceived it. In the rural districts there were the justices of the peace, with powers more considerable than clearly defined; in the towns there were mayors and corporations, also acting as justices, but armed with a further authority derived both from custom and from charters, and with a very clear intention to use this authority to the full in the government of their communities. The regulation of amusements had always been regarded as falling within the scope of municipal activity, and in the end it proved a fortunate thing for the players, in London at any rate, that the central authority found itself driven by the pressure of circumstances to take over a large measure of the responsibility for stage control from the hands of the corporations.
For it need hardly be said that in the Tudor scheme of
- ↑ Cf. M. S. C. i. 350; Aydelotte, 14. Procl. 273 laid down (1545) 'that noe person of what estate, degree or condicion soever he be, doe in any wise hereafter name or avowe any man to be his servant, unles he be his houshold servant, or his bailiffe or keeper, or such other as he may keepe and retayne by the lawes and statutes of this realme, or be retayned by the kings maiestys licence' (Hazlitt, E. D. S. 7). But the laws against retainers had fallen into desuetude again by 1572; cf. App. D, No. xix.
