worth while? It was not for mirth merely that the old professors and
teachers countenanced the drama. To the editors of _David's Harp_
I have sent this passage from Milton, noblest among the Puritans,
and have besought them to lay it before their consistory: "Whether
eloquent and graceful incitements, instructing and bettering the
nation at all opportunities, not only in pulpits, but after another
persuasive method, in theatres, porches, or whatever place or way, may
not win upon the people to receive both recreation and instruction,
let them in authority consult." The German schoolmasters and
professors superintended their boys in the representation of
religious plays to instruct them in the theology which they thought
all-important; in the performance of Aristophanes and Lucian, Plautus
and Terence, mainly in the hope of improving them in Greek and Latin:
and when the plays were in the vernacular, it was often to train their
taste, manners, and elocution. Erasmus and the Oxford and Cambridge
authorities certainly had the same ideas as the Continental scholars.
So the English schoolmasters in general, who also managed in the plays
to give useful hints in all ways. For instance, Nicholas Udal, in
the ingenious letter in _Ralph Roister Doister_, which is either
loving or insulting according to the position of a few commas or
periods, must have meant to enforce the doctrine of Chaucer's couplet:

"He that pointeth ill,
A good sentence may oft spill."

Madame de Maintenon was persuaded that amusements of this sort have
a value, "imparting grace, teaching a polite pronunciation, and
cultivating the memory"; and Racine commends the management of St.
Cyr, where "the hours of recreation, so to speak, are put to profit by
making the pupils recite the finest passages of the best poets." Here