in them which could be made to justify their own system, though
perhaps it had really even less to do therewith than the Roman
pantomimes had with the Globe Theatre: but the Church of England had
retained in her Catechism the old Roman word 'pomps,' as one of the
things which were to be renounced; and as 'pomps' confessedly meant
at first those very spectacles of the heathen circus and theatre,
Prynne could not be very illogical in believing that, as it had been
retained, it was retained to testify against something, and probably
against the thing in England most like the 'pomps' of heathen Rome.
Meanwhile, let Churchmen decide whether of the two was the better
Churchman--Prynne, who tried to make the baptismal covenant mean
something, or Laud, who allowed such a play as 'The Ordinary' to be
written by his especial protege, Cartwright, the Oxford scholar, and
acted before him probably by Oxford scholars, certainly by christened
boys. We do not pretend to pry into the counsels of the Most High;
but if unfaithfulness to a high and holy trust, when combined with
lofty professions and pretensions, does (as all history tells us that
it does) draw down the vengeance of Almighty God, then we need look
no further than this one neglect of the seventeenth century prelates
(whether its cause was stupidity, insincerity, or fear of the
monarchs to whose tyranny they pandered), to discover full reason why
it pleased God to sweep them out awhile with the besom of
destruction.

There is another feature in the plays of the seventeenth century,
new, as far as we know, alike to English literature and manners; and
that is, the apotheosis of Rakes. Let the faults of the Middle Age,
or of the Tudors, have been what they may, that class of person was
in their time simply an object of disgust. The word which then
signified a Rake is, in the 'Morte d'Arthur' (temp. Ed. IV.), the