1603 when the Admiral's men visited Canterbury, 'it was thought fit they should not play at all in regard that our late Queen was then ether very sick or dead as they supposed'. Or even if the public playing was allowed, the corporation might be too busy for a Mayor's play to be appropriate. In either event the players generally got their fee all the same, and the Chamberlain, if punctilious, entered it not as a 'reward' but as a 'gratuity', and noted in his book that the company 'did not playe'.[1] Certain indications show themselves here and there that the Puritan controversy had spread to the provinces, and even that the desire to have done with plays altogether was not wholly confined to London. As early as 1590 there was a dispute in the corporation of Maldon between an ex-bailiff of the town and certain colleagues whom he abused as 'a sort of precisians and Brownists' because they forbade a performance on a Sunday evening.[2] In 1596 the Chester corporation made an order for the suppression of plays, and fixed a 'gratuity' of 20s. for the Queen's men, and 6s. 8d. for those of any noble. But it does not seem that the resolution was persisted in, and in 1615 the city was still suffering from 'the common brute and scandal' of 'obscene and unlawfull plaies or tragedies', and did no more than bar them out from the Common Hall and confine them to the day-time.[3] At Hull too fines were enacted against citizens resorting to plays and landlords harbouring them in 1598.[4] The players did not always prove conformable to municipal discipline. Several cases are recorded at Norwich, in which companies played contrary to orders, and were punished by committal to prison, or by threats that their lord should be certified of their contempt, and that they should never more
- ↑ I think there is a clear distinction in municipal accounts between a 'reward' for playing and a 'gratuity' for not playing; cf. the Norwich orders in Murray, ii. 339, 341, 'beinge demaunded wherefore their comeing was, sayd they came not to ask leaue to play but to aske the gratuetie of the Cytty' (1614), 'he was desired to desist from playing & offered a benevolence in money which he refused to accept' (1616), 'this house offered him a gratuitie to desist' (1616).
- ↑ A. Clark, Shirburn Ballads, 48. He complained that 'Before tyme noble-mens menn hadd such entertaynement when they came to the towne that the towne hadd the favour of noble-men, but now noble-mens menn hadd such entertaynement that the towne was brought into contempt with noble-menn'. The players were probably Essex's men, as their performance on Sunday was contrary to his 'lettre'. He was, however, also High Steward of Maldon.
- ↑ Cf. p. 336.
- ↑ T. Gent, Hist. of Hull, 128.
Privy Council did not, however, often interfere directly with provincial plays; another example is the letter of 23 June 1592 to the Earl of Derby (cf. App. D, No. xci), forbidding plays on Sundays and holidays in his lieutenancy.
