[From An Apology for Actors. Containing three briefe Treatises. 1. Their Antiquity. 2. Their ancient Dignity. 3. The True Use of their Quality (1612), reprinted by William Cartwright as The Actor's Vindication (N.D., but according to Douce 1658) and in 1841 (Sh. Soc.). I think the treatise was probably written in 1607 and touched up in 1608, since (a) the series of actors named as dead ends with Sly, who died in Aug. 1608; (b) the Revels Office is located at St. John's, which it lost about Feb. 1608; (c) the frustrated Spanish landing in 'Perin' in Cornwall 'some 12 yeares ago' is probably the abortive Spanish attempt to burn Pendennis Castle on Falmouth Harbour, 3 miles from Penrhyn, which appears from S. P. D. Eliz. cclvi, 21, 40, and Dasent, xxv. 15, to have taken place in the autumn of 1595, probably in connexion with the better-known landing of 22 July 1595 in Mount's Bay. Here there is a Perranuthnoe, but this was a successful landing, resulting in serious damage to Penzance, Mousehole, and Newlyn (Procl. 879). There was also a raid at Cawsand Bay near Plymouth on 14 Mar. 1596 (S. P. D. Eliz. cclvi. 89), in which the invaders fired some houses and boats, and fled to sea on a shot being fired. But there is no 'Perin' in Cawsand Bay. In Journal of the Folk-Song Society, v. 275, is recorded a tradition that 'the French once landed invading troops at Padstow Bay; but on seeing a number of mummers in red cloaks with their hobby-horse they supposed that the English army was at hand, and fled'. This raid was at St. Eval, 3 miles west of Padstow, on 13 July 1595 (Hatfield MSS. v. 285), and no doubt formed part of the same expedition which reached Mount's Bay. Of course it was Spanish, not French; the perversion is characteristic of tradition. Conceivably this episode was what Heywood had in mind, but the nearest 'Perin', Perranporth, is some dozen miles farther west than St. Evall. Heywood was answered by I. G. in A Refutation of the Apology for Actors (1615), which contributes nothing new, and uses material from Gosson's Plays Confuted (No. xxx), with references to the long-destroyed Theatre unchanged.]
[Summary and Extracts.] P. 3. To the Earl of Worcester. 'I
presumed to publish this unworthy worke under your gracious
patronage . . . as an acknowledgement of the duty I am bound to
you in as a servant.' P. 4. To my good Friends and Fellowes the
Citty-Actors. 'That it [our quality] hath beene esteemed by the
best and greatest . . . I need alledge no more than the royall and
princely services in which we now live. . . . Some over-curious have
too liberally taxed us . . . we may as freely (out of our plainnesse)
answere, as they (out of their perversenesse) object, instancing my
selfe by famous Scaliger, learned Doctor Gager, Doctor Gentiles, and
others. . . . So, wishing you judiciall audiences, honest poets, and true
gatherers, I commit you all to the fulnesse of your best wishes.'
P. 6. Verses by, inter alios, John Webster, and by Richard Perkins,
Christopher Beeston and Robert Pallant to their 'fellow'. Book i.
P. 15. The author is 'mooved by the sundry exclamations of many
seditious sectists in this age. . . . It hath pleased the high and mighty
princes of this land to limit the use of certaine publicke theaters,
which, since many of those over-curious heads have lavishly and
violently slandered, I hold it not amisse to lay open some few
antiquities to approve the true use of them.' A vision of Melpomene.
Actors in antiquity. P. 20. The lives of worthies 'can no
