quarrel lay far deeper than any such personal soreness. The Puritans
had attacked the players before the players meddled with them, and
that on principle; with what justification must be considered
hereafter. But the fact is (and this seems to have been, like many
other facts, conveniently forgotten), that the Puritans were by no
means alone in their protest against the stage, and that the war was
not begun exclusively by them. As early as the latter half of the
sixteenth century, not merely Northbrooke, Gosson, Stubs, and
Reynolds had lifted up their voices against them, but Archbishop
Parker, Bishop Babington, Bishop Hall, and the author of the Mirror
for Magistrates. The University of Oxford, in 1584, had passed a
statute forbidding common plays and players in the university, on the
very same moral grounds on which the Puritans objected to them. The
city of London, in 1580, had obtained from the Queen the suppression
of plays on Sundays; and not long after, 'considering that play-
houses and dicing-houses were traps for young gentlemen and others,'
obtained leave from the Queen and Privy Council to thrust the players
out of the city, and to pull down the play-houses, five in number;
and, paradoxical as it may seem, there is little doubt that, by the
letter of the law, 'stage plays and enterludes' were, even to the end
of Charles the First's reign, 'unlawful pastime,' being forbidden by
14 Eliz., 39 Eliz., 1 Jacobi, 3 Jacobi, and 1 Caroli, and the players
subject to severe punishment as 'rogues and vagabonds.' The Act of 1
Jacobi seems even to have gone so far as to repeal the clauses which,
in Elizabeth's reign, had allowed companies of players the protection
of a 'baron or honourable person of greater degree,' who might
'authorise them to play under his hand and seal of arms.' So that
the Puritans were only demanding of the sovereigns that they should
enforce the very laws which they themselves had made, and which they
and their nobles were setting at defiance. Whether the plays ought