to adopt, and with the proclamations and counter-proclamations and the interventions by the Privy Council to which the problem gave rise under Edward VI and Mary.[1] Some additional material which has more recently been published throws light upon the regulative functions of the City of London in particular during 1549 and 1550.[2] More than once the prevalence of 'lewd' and 'naughty' plays on this side or that led to the complete inhibition of all performances for a season. There is also some trace of a system of licences for particular companies. It is not clear why Lord Dorset should have thought it necessary to obtain a special authorization from the Council for his men to play in his presence only in 1551.[3] A forged licence taken from some players and sent to Sir William Cecil in 1552 may perhaps have purported to have been nothing more than such a certificate from a lord as was required by the proclamation of 1554.[4] Two general conclusions may be drawn from these early records. One is that, although the local authorities were certainly responsible for the regulation of plays as a matter of public order, they were not always in a position to make their control effective without an appeal to head-quarters. The performances were popular and the players had inherited from the minstrels a prescriptive right to municipal encouragement and reward, rather than interference. And if they bore the badge of some great personage, himself perhaps a privy councillor, one may be sure that Dogberry and Verges would think twice before they ventured on a rebuff. Even in London the Lord Mayor had to appeal to the Privy Council in 1543 to get certain joiners imprisoned and reprimanded for playing on a Sunday.[5] And if this was so in London, where the Lord Mayor had certainly a firm seat in his saddle, it was naturally still more so in the county areas, whose looser methods of government ultimately proved to have a very marked significance for the history of the London theatres. The
- ↑ Mediaeval Stage, ii. 216.
- ↑ Cf. App. D, Nos. ii-v.
- ↑ Dasent, iii. 307.
- ↑ S. P. D. Edw. VI, xv. 33. By 5 & 6 Edw. VI of 1552 (Statutes, iv. 155) travelling tinkers and pedlars could hold a licence from two justices of the peace. This arrangement is continued by the Act of 1572 (vide infra), and tinkers and pedlars are there grouped with players. Possibly therefore such local licences had also been issued to players who were not 'servants', even before 1572.
- ↑ Dasent, i. 104, 109, 110, 122. The nature of the joiners' offence is clear; three of those imprisoned were named Hawtrell, Lucke, and Lucas. They had played 'wythowt respect ether off the day or the ordre whiche was knowen openlye the Kinges Highnes intended to take for repressinge off playes'. At the same time the Lord Warden's men were committed 'for playing contrary to an ordre taken by the Mayour'.
