freedom of fancy, more certainly encouraged the extreme licence of expression cherished by the dramatists. The arrangement of the stage, which facilitated a rapid succession of scenes without any necessity for their being organically connected with one another, remained essentially what it had been in Shakespeare's days; though the primitive expedients for indicating locality had begun to be occasionally exchanged for scenery more or less appropriate to the place of action. Costume was apparently cultivated with much greater care; and the English stage of this period had probably gone a not inconsiderable way in a direction to which it is obviously in the interests of the dramatic art to set some bounds, if it is to depend for its popular success upon its qualities as such, and upon the interpretation of its agents upon the stage. At the same time, the drama had begun largely to avail itself of adventitious aids to favour. The system of prologues and epilogues, and of dedications to published plays, was more uniformly employed than it had been by Shakespeare as the conventional method of recommending authors and actors to the favour of individual patrons, and to that of their chief patron, the public. The drama and Puritanism. Closing of the theatres. Up to the outbreak of the Civil War the drama in all its forms continued to enjoy the favour or good-will of the court, although a close supervision was exercised over all attempts to make the stage the vehicle of political references or allusions. The regular official agent of this supervision was the master of the revels; but under James I. a special ordinance, in harmony with the king's ideas concerning the dignity of the throne, was passed "against representing any modern Christian king in plays on the stage." The theatre could hardly expect to be allowed a liberty of speech in reference to matters of state denied to the public at large; and occasional attempts to indulge in the freedom of criticism dear to the spirit of comedy met with more or less decisive repression and punishment.[204] But the sympathies of the dramatists were so entirely on the side of the court that the real difficulties against which the theatre had to contend came from a directly opposite quarter. With the growth of Puritanism the feeling of hostility to the stage increased in a large part of the population, well represented by the civic authorities of the capital. This hostility found many ways of expressing itself. The attempts to suppress the Blackfriars theatre (1619, 1631, 1633) proved abortive; but the representation of stage-plays continued to be prohibited on Sundays, and during the prevalence of the plague in London in 1637 was temporarily suspended altogether. The desire of the Puritans of the more pronounced type openly aimed at a permanent closing of the theatres. The war between them and the dramatists was accordingly of a life-and-death kind.