nothing but pitie or detestation. The Comicall, whatsoeuer foolish playmakers make it offend in this kind, yet being rightly vsed, it represents them so as to make the vice scorned and not embraced. . . . And for Tragedies, to omit other famous Tragedies, that that was played at S. Iohns in Cambridge, of Richard the 3, would moue (I thinke) Phalaris the tyraunt, and terrifie all tyrannous minded men from following their foolish ambitious humors, seeing how his ambition made him kill his brother, his nephews, his wife, beside infinit others, and, last of all, after a short and troublesome raigne, to end his miserable life, and to haue his body harried after his death. Then, for Comedies, how full of harmeles myrth is our Cambridge Pedantius? and the Oxford Bellum Grammaticale? or, to speake of a London Comedie, how much good matter, yea and matter of state, is there in that Comedie cald the play of the Cards, in which it is showed how foure Parasiticall knaues robbe the foure principall vocations of the Realme, videl, the vocation of Souldiers, Schollers, Marchants, and Husbandmen? Of which Comedie I cannot forget the saying of a notable wise counseller that is now dead, who when some (to sing Placebo) aduised that it should be forbidden, because it was somewhat too plaine, and indeed as the old saying is, sooth boord is no boord, yet he would haue it allowed, adding it was fit that They which doe that they should not should heare that they would not.'
xlvi. 1592. Thomas Nashe.
[From Pierce Penilesse his Supplication to the Diuell (1592; S. R. 8 Aug.
1592), reprinted in McKerrow, i. 149.]
[Extracts.] P. 211. 'There is a certaine waste of the people
for whome there is no vse, but warre: and these men must haue
some employment still to cut them off. . . . To this effect, the pollicie
of Playes is very necessary, howsoeuer some shallow-braind censurers
(not the deepest serchers into the secrets of gouernment) mightily
oppugne them. For whereas the after-noone beeing the idlest time
of the day; wherein men that are their owne masters (as Gentlemen
of the Court, the Innes of the Courte, and the number of Captaines
and Souldiers about London) do wholy bestow themselues vpon
pleasure, and that pleasure they deuide (howe vertuously it skils not)
either into gameing, following of harlots, drinking, or seeing a Playe:
is it not then better (since of foure extreames all the world cannot
keepe them but they will choose one) that they should betake them
to the least, which is Playes? Nay, what if I prooue Playes to be
no extreame; but a rare exercise of vertue? First, for the subiect
of them (for the most part) it is borrowed out of our English Chronicles,
wherein our forefathers valiant acts (that haue line long buried in
rustie brasse and worme-eaten bookes) are reuiued, and they themselues
raised from the Graue of Obliuion, and brought to pleade their
aged Honours in open presence: than which, what can be a sharper
reproofe to these degenerate effeminate dayes of ours? How would
it haue ioyed braue Talbot (the terror of the French) to thinke that
