claimed for the Queen's players. But this had been so in the previous winter, and all the playing-places had been filled with players calling themselves the Queen's men. Any letters or warrants for toleration should set out the number and names of the company. Much of this dialectic could hardly be taken seriously; it was accompanied by some suggested remedies of a practical character. The City still thought the limitation to private houses the better course. Failing that, the regulations of 1574 should be revived, subject to the conditions that playing should only be allowed when the total deaths had been under fifty a week for twenty days together, that no plays should be given on the Sabbath or before the close of evening prayer on holy days, that the audience should not be received during prayer-time, that the performances should be short enough to let the audience get home before dark, and that the Queen's men alone should be tolerated and should not be allowed to divide themselves into several companies. It was apparently contemplated that these conditions should apply to city and county alike.
I have described these arguments in some detail, because of the clearness with which they set out the divergent views. Unfortunately the documents from which they are drawn do not record any decision upon them. But whether the remedies were accepted, wholly or in part, or not, there can be no doubt whatever that the attempt to enforce an absolute prohibition had utterly failed, and that for several years afterwards the companies continued to find their winter quarters within London itself. Henceforward it became the settled policy of the Corporation to defer to the authority of the Privy Council, and to content themselves with doing their best to influence that body in the direction of their own ideals. There came a day when they were destined to reach some measure of success along these lines. For the time, however, events followed a quiet course. During two or three years there is a blank in the correspondence. Plays were suspended in London and Surrey during the summer of 1586, at the Lord Mayor's request, on the ground that the growing heat might breed a plague, and a similar measure in 1587 had an additional provocation in disturbances which had taken place at the play-houses. In both years the inhibition was declared early in May, and in 1587 it was fixed to terminate at the end of August. On 29 October the Council had to call the attention of both the Surrey and the Middlesex Justices to the imperfect observance of the order against Sunday plays. There was, of course, an undercurrent of Puritan discontent during these years at the lame issue of the
