A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume 15Dodsley, Robert
General
A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume 15
Dodsley, Robert
English drama
+True.+ He that told you so strained a point of truth. I
never met with any law wholly to suppress them: sometimes,
indeed, they have been prohibited for a season; as in times of
Lent, general mourning, or public calamities, or upon other
occasions, when the government saw fit. Thus, by proclamation
7th of April, in the first year of Queen Elizabeth, plays and
interludes were forbid until All-hallow-tide next following.
Hollinshed, p. 1184.[93] Some statutes have been made for
their regulation or information, not general suppression.
By the stat. 39 Eliz. cap. 4[94] (which was made for the
suppression of rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy beggars) it is
enacted "_That all persons that be, or utter themselves to be,
proctors, procurers, patent gatherers, or collectors for goals,
prisons, or hospitals, or fencers, bearwards, common players of
interludes and minstrels, wandering abroad (other than players
of interludes belonging to any baron of this realm, or any
other honourable personage of greater degree, to be authoris'd
to play under the hand and seal of arms of such baron or
personage) all juglers, tinkers, pedlars, and petty chapmen,
wand'ring abroad, all wand'ring persons, &c., able in body,
using loytering, and refusing to work for such reasonable wages
as is commonly given, &c. These shall be adjudged and deemed
rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy beggars, and punished as such_."
+Love.+ But this privilege of authorising or licensing is taken
away by the stat. Jac. I., ch. 7, s. 1., and therefore all of
them, as Mr Collier says, p. 242, are expressly brought under
the aforesaid penalty without distinction.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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