Romans, those Aristotles and Senecas, remained, in spite of the Renaissance, foreign people in the eyes of the many. Englishmen looked at them with curiosity, but they did not acknowledge them as kinsmen, or ancestors. Their art was looked upon as a singularity; the crowd took little interest in it, and the crowd's opinion was the more important that its passion for theatrical performances was becoming irrepressible. The common people were about to fill, day after day, as many playhouses in London alone as there were, at the same period, in all the capitals of Europe put together. The multitude it was that paid its money and filled the precincts; its desires were the ones to be obeyed; its tastes the ones to be flattered. The only chance for the English drama to develop fully was to submit to the will of these varietyloving audiences, fond of surprises and adventures, of glaring colours and strong condiments. The public on whom Shakespeare's success depended was this same vulgar public, so powerful and self-willed that Jonson himself, testy and obstinate as he was, and proud of his learning, Jonson who complained that "Shakspeer wanted arte," would have to yield; he would make concessions though ashamed of making them, but must, as there was no other means for him to keep an audience.

In England the "Cleopatra" of Daniel remained a curiosity; in France, the "Tyr et Sidon" of Schélandre.

II.

Companies of actors giving performances in London and in the provinces were numerous from the first part of the sixteenth century. Even in the fifteenth, players had begun largely to replace the minstrels forming part of noblemen's households. But the tie between the nobleman and his players was soon loosened; and while minstrels

had been, and still continued to be in certain families salaried servants, players came to be only nominally their patron's men. This greatly helped towards the diffusion of the drama. Much more than the others, such troupes were bound to go about, "to live at the devotion or almes of other men," censors said, "passing from countrie to countrie, from one gentleman's house to another, offering their service, which is a kind of beggerie.""

England in this again did not differ from other lands: such troupes existed in all the countries strongly influenced by the Renaissance, France, Italy, Spain. Some were attached to the persons of such great people as the Earl of Sussex, or Thomas Cromwell, or the King himself; others, "sans aveu," formed and dissolved according to circumstances, cast discredit on dramatic art by their misbehaviour and incurred periodically the harsh penalties provided by the laws of the time. Henry VIII., remembering that "ydlenes [is] the mother and roote of all mischiefes," that "detestable vices and fashions" are "commonly used at the Banke [Bankside], and such like naughtie places," decided, in 1545, to provide employment for "all such ruffyns, vagabonds, masterles men, comon

The change from minstrels to players is well shown in certain books of accounts: "1453. To the Mynstrallis of my lord Bourghcher . . . 5s. 2d.— 1469... Lusoribus domini comitis Essex ludentibus coram burgensibus infra burgum hoc anno vs. Et solut. istoribus [histrionibus] domine Regine Anglie venientibus ad ballivos, hoc anno, iis. . . . Et datum lusoribus ejusdem comitis ad domum frumenti [corn market] ludentibus, hoc anno, iiiis. et in potu, iiid.- 1540. Item in money geven that yere to my lord of Sussex players 14d.-Item in money gevyne to my lord Cromewellis players . . . 16d.—. . . 1546. iis. geven to the Queen's players. 35. 4d. to the King's players. 25. 8d. to the King's mynstrells—. 5s. 2d. geven to my lord Marques of Northampton's players."—" Maldon Records and the Drama," by A. Clark; Notes and Queries, March 9, June 1, 1907, pp. 181, 422. Cf. Alwin Thaler, "Travelling Players," "Modern Philology," XVII, 489.

..-1547. 1552.

"A second and third Blast of retrait from Plaies. . . by Anglo-phile Eutheo," 1580, reprinted in Hazlitt, "The English Drama and Stage," 1869, 4to, p. 134.

players and evill disposed persons." The employment would consist in serving his Majesty "in certain gallies and other like vessells." Elizabeth ordered that "rogues, vagabonds and sturdy beggars" be " grievously whipped"; that they be "stripped naked from the middle upwards; and be openly whipped until his or her body be bloody," explaining that, by these same rogues, etc., must be understood "all fencers, bearwards, common players in interludes and minstrels." Exception is made in 1572, and renewed in 1597, for those, "belonging to any baron of this realme or any other personage of greater degree," who are "auctoryzed to play, under the hand and seale of armes of such baron or personage." 2 Mediæval ordinances had made similar exemptions for "chiens gentils," dogs belonging to gentle people; they were allowed to go about freely.3

The first care of a troupe in process of formation was therefore to secure, as its protector, some "baron of the realm," and it found one, as a rule, very easily. The nobleman incurred usually neither trouble nor expense; he allowed the troupe to bear his name, and the players to be known as his "men" or "servants"; he gave them a letter which was their passport and safeguard. A fashionable peer would have his actors, and he would occasionally reprimand authorities so bold as to interfere with their performances under pretence of morality, hygiene, or public safety. "Sir, I am geven to understand that you have forbidden the companye of players that call themselves myne the exercise of their playes; I pray you to forbear any such course against them, and seeing they have my license, to suffer them to continue

▪ Hazlitt, "The English Drama and Stage," 1869, p. 6.

14 Eliz. ch. v. ; 39-40 Eliz. ch. iv.; Prothero, "Select Statutes," pp. 68, 101; Hazlitt, ibid. p. 38.

3 "Liber Albus," ed. Riley, " Rolls," 1859, p. 453.

the use of their playes. . . . And so I bidd you hartely farewell." So wrote the Duke of Lennox "to all Maiors, Justeses of peas, Shreefes," etc., of the realm, in 1604.1

A most instructive and amusing comedy has come down to us, and allows us to follow, from its birth to its catastrophe, one of those second-rate companies which overran the country, composed of craftsmen tired of their craft, patronised by a nobleman of doubtful nobility and even uncertain existence, and accompanied by their poet, a poor fellow with no talent, but able to improvise at need a dialogue, a prologue, a scene and even a whole play. The first thing for them is to choose the indispensable patron:

But whose men are we all this while?—

-Whose, but the merry knight's, Sir Oliver Owlet's?
There was never a better man to players.3

"Henslowe Papers," ed. Greg, 1907, p. 62. At such interventions, censors were indignant: "Alas that private affection should so raigne in the nobilitie that to pleasure, as they thinke, their servants, and to uphold them in their vanitie, they should restraine the magistrates from executing their office! What credite can returne to the noble to countenance his men to exercise that qualitie which is not sufferable in anie common-weale ?"—"A second and third Blast of retrait from Plaies," by Anglo-phile Eutheo, 1580, in Hazlitt, "English Drama and Stage," p. 133. Some commoners also had their troupe.

In "Ratseis Ghoaste," entered 1605, the hero, a highwayman, meets a company of strolling players and cautions them against such doings: "Abuse not honorable personages in using their names and countenance without their consent and privitie; and because you are now destitute of a maister, I will give you leave to play under my protection for a sennights space" (in HalliwellPhillipps, "Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare," 1898, i. p. 326). All these practices were imitated from minstrels by players, their continuators: see Edward IV.'s charter condemning those "workmen of different trades who give themselves for the King's minstrels and are so bold as to wear his livery; "English Wayfaring Life," p. 202.

3 "Histrio-Mastix or the Player Whipt, printed for Th. Thorpe," 1610, reprinted by Simpson in his so-called "School of Shakspere," 1878, 2 vols. vol. ii. Though some allusions, most likely inserted later, refer to Jacobean times, the general tone and the main facts certainly point to a much earlier date, probably the first part of Elizabeth's reign. What seems to be a direct allusion to this play (which has been for no convincing reasons

During the greater part of the century, such troupes played where they could: in castle halls, where, like the jugglers and minstrels of old, they were always welcome; in town halls or on public squares, in tennis courts, barns and inn yards. Sir Oliver Owlet's players go about the provinces, and one of them, ascending the steps of the cross on the market place, announces the intended performance :

Come to the towne-house and see a play;

At three a clocke it shall beginne,

The finest play that ever was seene.

Yet there is one thing more in my minde:
Take heed you leave not your purses behinde.

When all is settled, however, the lord of the place sends his steward to the players, and the temptation is too great for them to resist.

"Steward. My maisters, my lord Mavortius is disposed to hear what you can do.

"Belch. What! fellows, shall we refuse the town play? "Post Haste (the poet). Why, his reward is worth the mayor and all the town.

"Omnes. Weele make him merry i'faith; weele be there." They go indeed, and before treating their audience to the performance of a ridiculous "Troilus and Cressida" (which makes an Italian nobleman, the guest of the castle, sick with disgust), they describe in a song the fate of itinerant players:

... We that travel, with pumps full of gravell,
Made all of such running leather

That once in a week, new masters we seek,
And never can hold together.

attributed to Marston) is to be found in Jonson's "Every Man out of his Humour," printed 1600: "As you may read in Plato's Histrio-Mastix," iii. 1, 1. 2098 of Bang and Greg's reprint. The play is a strange mixture of excellent scenes from real life and of dull ones in the style of the old moralities, with Plenty, daughter of Peace, Fortitude, Religion, etc.