over, except in the height of summer, before dark, and the audiences must make their way home as best they could. The City 'Remedy' for this was a shortening of the plays; but in 1594 Lord Hunsdon suggested that to begin at 2 instead of 4 p.m. might after all be the least of two evils, and this seems to have been the solution ultimately adopted.[1] The proviso against playing in time of common prayer, which finds a place in the licence to Leicester's men of 1574, is not repeated in any of the Jacobean licences, with the exception of Queen Anne's personal warrant to her provincial company in 1606.
Obviously the clash with divine service became of minor importance when the Puritans had made good their protest against plays on Sundays, and when, on the other hand, the theatres came to be open on every week-day, instead of principally on holidays. Both of these processes were complete before the final settlement of the status of players was arrived at.[2] It was the failure to exclude Sundays that above all things made the City regulations of 1574 inadequate in the eyes of the preachers, and formed the leading topic of their railings against the lukewarmness of the 'magistrates'. In the City itself they had gained this point at least by 1581, with the assent of the Privy Council, who, while pressing for the toleration of plays both on ordinary week-days and on holidays, was quite prepared to concede the sanctity of the Sabbath. With the potent aid afforded by the ruin of Paris Garden at a Sunday baiting, the City were able about 1583 to get the principle extended to the suburbs, although both in 1587 and
- ↑ Platter in 1599 (cf. ch. xvi, introd.) says that plays were given 'alle tag vmb 2 vhren nach mittag'. T. S. Graves, in E. S. xlvii. 66, argues in favour of occasional night performances, and is answered by W. J. Lawrence in E. S. xlviii. 213. Whatever may have been done before 1574 or thereabouts, I find no later evidence which is not to be explained either by private performances or by a loose use of 'night' for the evening hour at which plays terminated in winter. Nor can I go with Lawrence in supposing an exception for Sunday. The Southwark play at 8 p.m. on Sunday, 12 June 1592, cannot have been at a regular theatre, for there was none within the Lord Mayor's jurisdiction. The allusion in Crosse's Vertue's Commonwealth (1603) can quite well be to private plays (cf. App. C), and Henslowe's entry (i. 83) of a loan of 30s. 'when they fyrst played Dido at nyght', on Sunday, 8 Jan. 1598, only suggests to me the payment by Henslowe of the shot for a supper after the first performance. Or it may have been a private performance, for Henslowe does not appear (vide infra) to have opened the Rose on Sundays.
- ↑ Cf. App. D, No. xv (1564), 'now daylye, but speciallye on holydayes'; No. xvi (1569), 'on the Saboth dayes and other solempne feastes commaunded by the church to be kept holy'; No. xvii (1571), 'vpon sondaies, holly daies, or other daie of the weke, or ells at night'; No. xxxii (1574), 'on sonndaies and holly dayes, at which tymes such playes weare chefelye vsed'; App. C, No. xxii (1579), 'These because they are allowed to play euery Sunday, make iiii or v Sundayes at least euery weeke'.
