[T. Warton, History of Poetry, iii (1781) 288 (ed. Hazlitt, iv. 217), ascribes to this year a 'Puritanical pamphlet without name', The Children of the Chapel stript and whipt, which he says was 'among Bishop Tanner's books at Oxford'. It is not, however, now traceable in the Bodleian. Warton's extracts are quoted in ch. xii, s.v. Chapel.]
xii. 1569. Henry Cornelius Agrippa.
[From Henry Cornelius Agrippa, of the Vanitie and uncertaintie of Artes
and Sciences, Englished by Ja[mes] San[ford] Gent. (1569), a translation
of De incertitudine et vanitate scientiarium et artium atque excellentia Verbi
Dei declamatio (1530), written in 1526 (Opera, ii. 1).]
'Cap. 4. Of Poetrie' condemns it as lying. 'Cap. 20. Of the
Science of stage Plaiers.' After defining the player's art and citing
the discussion between Cicero and Roscius recorded by Macrobius
(cf. no. xliii and ch. xi) and the banishment of players by the City of
Marseilles (cf. Mediaeval Stage, i. 7), Agrippa concludes, 'And therefore
to exercise this Arte, is not onely a dishonest and wicked occupation,
but also to behold it, and therein to delite is a shameful thinge,
bicause that the delite of a wanton minde is an offence. And to
conclude, there was in times paste no name more infamous then stage
players, and moreouer, al they that had plaide an Enterlude in the
Theater, were by the lawes depriued from all honour.' Plays are
briefly referred to in 'Cap. 59. Of Holy daies' and 'Cap. 63. Of the
whoorishe Arte'.
xiii. 1574. Geoffrey Fenton.
[From A Forme of Christian Pollicie gathered out of French (1574). No
single source has been traced and the treatise is probably a compilation.]
Book iii, ch. 7. 'Players . . . corrupt good moralities by wanton shewes
and playes: they ought not to be suffred to prophane the Sabboth
day in such sportes, and much lesse to lose time on the dayes of
trauayle. All dissolute playes ought to be forbidden: All comicall
and tragicall showes of schollers in morall doctrines, and declamations
in causes made to reprooue and accuse vice and extoll vertue are
very profitable.' The 7 Chapter expands the foregoing. . . . 'Great
then is the errour of the magistrate to geue sufferance to these players,
whether they bee minstrels, or enterludours who on a scaffold, babling
vaine newes to the sclander of the world, put there in scoffing the
vertues of honest men. . . . There often times are blowen abroade
the publike and secreete vices of men, sometimes shrowded under
honourable personage, withe infinite other offences. . . . How often
is the maiestie of God offended in those twoo or three howres that
those playes endure, both by wicked wordes, and blasphemye, impudent
jestures, doubtful sclaunders, unchaste songes, and also by
corruption of the willes of the players and the assistauntes. Let no
man obiect heare that by these publike plaies, many forbeare to
doo euill, for feare to bee publikely reprehended . . . for it may be
