From the first dawn of the Elizabethan drama, the stricter Protestants
had declared war upon the stage. Intrenched within the city they were
at once able to drive the theatres beyond the walls (1575); just as
seventy years later, when it had seized the reins of central government,
the same party, embittered by a thousand insults and brutalities,
hastened to close the theatres altogether. It would be an evident
mistake to suppose that this was merely a municipal prejudice, or to
forget that the city council was backed by a large body of serious
opinion throughout the country. A proof of this, if proof were needed,
is to be found in the circumstances that gave rise to the _Apologie_
of Sidney.

The attack on the stage had been opened by the corporation and the
clergy. It was soon joined by the men of letters. And the essay of
Sidney was an answer neither to a town councillor, nor to a preacher,
but to a former dramatist and actor. This was Stephen Gosson, author
of the _School of Abuse_. The style of Gosson's pamphlet is nothing
if not literary. It is full of the glittering conceits and the fluent
rhetoric which the ready talent of Lyly had just brought into currency.
It is euphuism of the purest water, with all the merits and all the
drawbacks of the euphuistic manner. For that very reason the blow was
felt the more keenly. It was violently resented as treason by the
playwrights and journalists who still professed to reckon Gosson among
their ranks. [Footnote: Lodge writes, "I should blush from a Player
to become an enviouse Preacher".--_Ancient Critical Essays_, ed.
Haslewood, ii. 7.]

A war of pamphlets followed, conducted with the usual fury of literary
men. Gosson on the one side, Lodge, the dramatist, upon the other,