the advice and consent of his dearest uncle Edward duke of Somerset, and the rest of his highnesse Privie Councell, straightly chargeth and commandeth all and everie his Majes ties subjects, of whatsoever state, order, or degree they be, that from the ninth day of this present month of August untill the feast of All-saints next comming, they nor any of them, openly or secretly PLAY IN THE ENGLISH TONGUE, any kind of ENTERLUDE, PLAY, DIALOGUE, or other matter set forth in form of PLAY, in any place publick or private within this realm, upon pain, that whosoever shall PLAY in ENGLISH any such PLAY, ENTERLUDE, DIALOGUE, or other MATTER, shall suffer imprisonment, or other punishment at the pleasure of his Majestie." But when the short date of this proclamation expired, the reformers, availing themselves of the stratagems of an enemy, attacked the papists with their own weapons. One of the co→ medies on the side of reformation still remains'. But the writer, while his own religion from its simple and impalpable form was much less exposed to the ridicule of scenic exhibition, has not taken advantage of that opportunity which the papistic ceremonies so obviously afforded to burlesque and drollery, from their visible pomp, their number, and their absurdities: nor did he It was a good world, when we had sech And to our Lady of Grace: And other holye place. Then had we chyldren plentye; Now is there not one to twentye. is ridiculed. SIGNAT. E. v. Where HYPOCRISY says, And I wyll rays up in the unyversitees As Dorbel, and Duns, Durande, and Henricus de Gandavo: and these shall Aristotle, and Albert de secretis muli erum : With the commentaryes of Avicen and Fuller, ibid. p. 391. See also Stat. 2, 3. Edw. vi. A.D. 1548. Gibs. Cod. i. p. 261. edit. 1761. See supr. vol. ii. 74. iii. 205. 222. In another place, the old philosophy And Gibs. CoD. i. p. 191. edit. 1761. holidays. Bury Saint Edmunds. perceive an effect which he might have turned to his own use, suggested by the practice of his catholic antagonists in the drama, who, by way of recommending their own superstitious solemnities, often made them contemptible by theatrical representation. This piece is entitled, An Enterlude called LUSTY JuvenTUS: lively describing the Frailtie of youth: of Nature prone to Vyce: by Grace and Good Councell traynable to vertues. The author, of whom nothing more is known, was one R. Wever, as appears from the colophon. "Finis, quod R. Wever. Imprinted at London in Paules churche yarde by Abraham Vele at the signe of the Lambe." Hypocrisy is its best character: who laments the loss of her superstitions to the devil, and recites a long catalogue of the trumpery of the popish worship in the metre and manner of Skelton'. The chapter and verse of Scripture are often announced: and in one scene, a personage, called GOD'S MERCYFULL PROMISES, cites Ezekiel as from the pulpit. The Lord by his prophet Ezekiel sayeth in this wise playnlye, As in the xxiii chapter it doth appere: Be converted, O ye children, &c. " From this interlude we learn, that the young men, which was natural, were eager to embrace the new religion, and that the old were unwilling to give up those doctrines and modes of worship, to which they had been habitually attached, and had paid the most implicit and reverential obedience, from their childhood. To this circumstance the devil, who is made to represent the Scripture as a novelty, attributes the destruction of his spiritual kingdom. The old people would beleve stil in my lawes, * See Hawkins's OLD PLAYS, i. p. 135. From Bale's THREE LAWES above mentioned, SIGN. B. v. Here have I pratye gynnes, Both brouches, beades, and pynnes, " Ibid. p. 159, But the yonger sort lead them a contrary way; In old traditions as made by men, But they wyll llyve as the Scripture teacheth them.▾ The devil then, in order to recover his interest, applies to his son Hypocrisy, who attempts to convert a young man to the antient faith, and says that the Scripture can teach no more than that God is a good man", a phrase which Shakespeare with great humour has put into the mouth of Dogberry*. But he adds an argument in jest, which the papists sometimes seriously used against the protestants, and which, if we consider the poet's ultimate intention, had better been suppressed. The world was never mery, The father a foole, and the chyld a preacher." It was among the reproaches of protestantism, that the inexperienced and the unlearned thought themselves at liberty to explain the Scriptures, and to debate the most abstruse and metaphysical topics of theological speculation. The two songs in the character of YOUTH, at the opening and close of this interlude, are flowery and not inelegant". The protestants continued their plays in Mary's reign: for Strype has exhibited a remonstrance from the Privy-council to the lord President of the North, representing, that "certain lewd [ignorant*] persons, to the number of six or seven in a company, naming themselves to be servants of sir Frauncis Lake, and wearing his livery or badge on their sleeves, have wandered about those north parts, and representing certain Plays and Enterludes," reflecting on her majesty and king "Bale's THREE LAWES, p. 133.' w Ibid. 141. [This phrase is from "Lusty Juventus," and might even be a popular expression prior to that play.— ASHBY.] * MUCH ADO, iii. 8. y Bale's THREE LAWES, p. 143. * [So in Puttenham's Arte of Poesie, "makingthe lewd well learned.”—PARK.] These were family Philip, and the formalities of the massa. minstrels or players, who were constantly distinguished by their master's livery or badge. When the English liturgy was restored at the accession of Elisabeth, after its suppression under Mary, the papists renewed their hostilities from the stage; and again tried the intelligible mode of attack by ballads, farces, and interludes. A new injunction was then necessary, and it was again enacted in 1559, that no person, but under heavy forfeitures, should abuse the Common Prayer in "any Enterludes, Plays, songs or rimes"." But under Henry the Eighth, so early as the year 1542, before the reformation was fixed or even intended on its present liberal establishment, yet when men had begun to discern and to reprobate many of the impostures of popery, it became an object of the legislature to curb the bold and seditious spirit of popular poetry. No sooner were the Scriptures translated and permitted in English, than they were brought upon the stage: they were not only misinterpreted and misunderstood by the multitude, but profaned or burlesqued in comedies and mummeries. Effectually to restrain these abuses, Henry, who loved to create a subject for persecution, who commonly proceeded to disannul what he had just confirmed, and who found that a freedom of enquiry tended to shake his ecclesiastical supremacy, framed a law, that not only Tyndale's English Bible, and all the printed English commentaries, expositions, annotations, defences, replies, and sermons, whether orthodox or heretical, which it had occasioned, should be utterly abolished; but that the kingdom should also be purged and cleansed of all religious plays, inter * ECCL. MEM. iii. APPEND. lii. p. 185. Dat. 1556. Sir Francis Lake is ordered to correct his servants so offending. One Henry Nicholas a native of Amsterdam, who imported his own translations of many enthusiastic German books into England, about the year 1550, translated and published, "COMOEDIA, a worke in rhyme, conteyning an interlude of Myndes witnessing man's fall from God and Cryst, set forth by H. N. and by him newly perused and amended. Translated out of base Almayne into Englysh." Without date, in duodecimo. It seems to have been printed abroad. Our author was the founder of one of the numerous offsets of calvinistic fanaticism, called the FAMILY OF Love. b Ann. i. Eliz. ludes, rhymes, ballads, and songs, which are equally pestiferous and noysome to the peace of the church. Henry appears to have been piqued as an author and a theologist in adding the clause concerning his own INSTITUTION OF A CHRISTIAN MAN, which had been treated with the same sort of ridicule. Yet under the general injunction of suppressing all English books on religious subjects, he formally excepts, among others, some not properly belonging to that class, such as the CANTERBURY TALES, the works of Chaucer and Gower, CRONICLES, and STORIES OF MENS LIVES. There is also an exception added about plays, and those only are allowed which were called MORALITIES, or perhaps interludes of real character and action, “for the rebuking and reproaching of vices and the setting forth of virtue." MYSTERIES are totally rejected. The reservations which follow, concerning the use of a corrected English Bible, which was permitted, are curious for their quaint partiality, and they shew the embarrassment of administration, in the difficult business of confining that benefit to a few, from which all might reap advantage, but which threatened to become a general evil, without some degrees of restriction. It is absolutely forbidden to be read or expounded in the church. The lord chancellor, the speaker of the house of commons, captaines of the wars, justices of the peace, and recorders of cities, may quote passages to enforce their public harangues, as has been accustomed. A nobleman or gentleman may read it, in his house, orchards, or garden, yet quietly, and without disturbance "of good order." A merchant also may read it to himself privately. But the common people, who had already abused this liberty to the purpose of division and dissentions, and under the denomination of women, artificers, apprentices, journeymen, and servingmen, are to be punished with one month's imprisonment, as often as they are detected in reading the Bible either privately or openly. STAT. Ann. 34, 35. Henr. VIII. Cap. i. Tyndale's Bible was printed at Paris 1536. [I know not of any such. Mr. Warton must mean Mathews's in 1537.-HERBERT.] d Ibid. Artic. vii. e Ibid. Artic. ix. |