The Corporation of the City of London was among those most hostile to
all theatrical representations. It exerted itself to the utmost in
order to render them impossible in the centre of the capital; issuing,
with that object, the most whimsical decrees. Trying, on their part,
to escape from the despotic restrictions, the various players'
companies settled down beyond the boundary of the Lord Mayor's
jurisdiction. The citizens of London, wishing to have their share
of an amusement which had become a national one, eagerly flocked
to Bankside, to Blackfriars, to Shoreditch, or across green fields
to the more distant Newington Butts.

Comparatively speaking, very little has come down to us from the
hey-day of the English drama. That which we possess is but an
exceedingly small portion of the productions of that epoch. Henslowe's
'Diary' tells us that a single theatre (Newington Butts) in about
two years (June 3, 1594, to July 18, 1596) brought out not less than
forty new pieces; and London, at that time, had already more than a
dozen play-houses. The dramas handed down to us are mostly purged
of those passages which threatened to give offence in print.
The dramatists did not mean to write books. When they went to the
press at all, they often excused themselves that 'scenes invented
merely to be spoken, should be inforcibly published to be read.'
They were well aware that this could not afford to the reader the
same pleasure he felt 'when it was presented with the soule
of living action.' [13]

The stage was the forum of the people, on which everything was expressed
that created interest amidst a great nation rising to new life. The
path towards political freedom of speech was not yet opened in