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Best Puritaines are so ore-zeal'd, but should I terme

the rest,

Inhospitalous, Mutinous, and Hypocrites the best; Insociable, Maleparte, foxing their priuate good, Exiling hence wel-neere all Troth, meet Sports and Neighbourhood;

Learnings foes, contemptuously by them be Lawes withstood.

Selfe-pleasers, Skorners, Harlots, Crones, against the Haire in all:

Of their extreme, whence Atheisme breeds, bee warning Hackets fall!

If euer England will in aught preuent her owne

Mishap,

Against these skorns (no terme too grosse) let England shut the gap."

ELLIOT. You did right to call it a heavy hit, for the lines are monstrously lumbering. The censure they contain is, notwithstanding, severe, and, I dare say, generally true. Well then, if we are to hear no more of attacks on the stage by the way, in works not professing to treat of that subject, with what tract especially devoted to plays and amusements of the same class will you commence your examination?

BOURNE. That question is certainly not so easily answered. I might, perhaps, begin with the most rare tract, printed, as is supposed, by Pynson, in 1509, and called "The chirche of euyl men and women,

wherof Lucyfer is the head, and the members is all players dyssolute and synners reproued." Mr. Dibdin, in his edition of Ames, does not profess to have seen a copy of it, and gives merely the account he found in Herbert's Appendix, and an extract from the Bodleian catalogue. It was valued in the library of Bryan Fairfax, in 1756, at £2 8s., but the sum cannot be named that a copy would now produce if brought to the hammer.

MORTON. I was the other day looking over a priced catalogue of the books belonging to Topham Beauclerc, which were sold in 1781, and I found the subsequent article connected with our present inquiry, and showing the astonishingly low price at which some, I believe, of the most valuable tracts on the stage sold at that date.

BOURNE. Read it by all means.

MORTON. The following were knocked down in one lot for only £3 6s.

"Gosson (Steph.) Playes confuted in five actions

proving that they are not to be suffred in a Christian common weale, b. 1. dedicated to Sir Fr. Walsingham. No date.

A second and third blast of Retreate from Plaies and Theatres, showing the filthiness of Plaies in Times past and the abomination of them in the time present. Set forth by Anglo-phile Eutheo-impr. by Hen. Denham, 1580.

A manifest detection of the most vyle and detestable use of dyce-play by Gilb. Walker. b. 1. impr. by Abr. Vele no date.

A dialogue between custome and Veritie concerning dauncing and minstrelsie. b. 1. impr. by Io. Alde. No date.

Maister Tho. Lodge his reply to Steph. Gosson touching Playes. b. 1. no title.

The wyll of the Deuyll with his ten detestable commandments, by Geo. Gascoyne: impr. by Rich. Jones. no date.

Tho. Salter his contention between three bretheren, that is to say the Whoremonger, the Dronkard and the Dyce player. b. 1. impr. for Tho. Gosson, 1580.”

BOURNE. A most rare assemblage of tracts, any one of which would probably now sell for twice the sum that was then given for the whole, and several of them for much more. Gosson's and Lodge's pieces are among the most rare. Of Gascoyne's production what you have read is the only existing register, and from that it does not appear whether it did or did not include stage plays.

MORTON. He was himself a writer of plays: it would rather therefore be directed against some other horrible vice than that of visiting theatres.

BOURNE. Such literary tergiversation would by no means be without a parallel, and that in the instance of a writer just enumerated.

VOL. II.

P

ELLIOT. Which of them?

BOURNE. Stephen Gosson, who, according to his own confession as I will show you presently, wrote several plays, and afterwards in the most violent terms abused theatrical representations.

ELLIOT. What were the names of the plays he wrote? Have any of them reached our time?

BOURNE. Nothing but their titles; it is stated that they were never printed: he wrote "Catilines Conspiracies," a Tragedy," Captain Mario," a Comedy, and "Praise at parting," a Morality.

MORTON. And what were the titles of the pieces he published afterwards against stage-plays?

BOURNE. They were three; but the first, and the most notorious, is his "Schoole of Abuse containing a pleasant Inuectiue against Poets, Pipers, Players, Iesters, and such like Caterpillers of the Commonwealth."

ELLIOT. When did that "pleasant invective," if it be so, make its appearance?

BOURNE. The earliest edition I have seen is dated in 1579, but I am not sure that it was not before printed. Prynne, who is generally tolerably accurate as to dates, says in his Histriomastix, that it was printed" by allowance" in 1578, and this is rendered the more probable because it is certain that in 1579 "a short Apologie of the Schoole of Abuse" was written by the same pen: to this we shall advert presently, and in the mean time I will

read you a brief passage or two from the "Schoole of Abuse" itself, that you may see how " pleasant" this "Invective" is. I advise you not to promise yourselves too much entertainment. The tract opens by adverting at some length to the estimation of poets in former ages.

MORTON. Has it no dedication, or did the author think the protection of a patron unnecessary to so laudable an undertaking?

BOURNE. I am obliged to you for reminding me of a circumstance I should otherwise have omitted. He ventured to dedicate it to Sir Philip Sidney, but Spenser, in one of his letters to his friend Gabriel Harvey, under date of 1580, tells him how it was received by "the president of nobleness and chivalry;" "New bookes (he says) I heare of none, but onely of one that writing a certaine booke called the Schoole of Abuse, and dedicating it to Maister Sidney was for his labour scorned; if at leaste it be in the goodnesse of that nature to scorne. Suche follie is it not to regarde aforehande the inclination and qualitie of him to whom we dedicate our bookes."

ELLIOT. That is just as it should have been;

"Poor Curio runs his labours to inscribe
To one who scorns the low detracting tribe,"

are lines very applicable to Gosson's predicament. BOURNE. Yet notwithstanding he was "scorned,"

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