Among the many quaint specimens of the ways and doings of the ancient respectable denizens of this present sober-minded city, that have been rescued from the dim and dusty obscurity of the municipal record chamber, has been found a curious minute of the proceedings of a solemn court held on the Sabbath day of the feast of St. Matthew the Apostle, in the nineteenth year of King Henry VIII., when a petition was presented to the mayor, sheriffs and common council of the city of Norwich, by the aldermen and brethren of the guild of St. Luke, praying to be relieved from the burthen of being sole purveyors of plays and pageants for the people on Whitsun Monday and Tuesday; and it may safely serve as a text for a few rambling sketches of the entertainments that were wont to gratify the taste of the lovers of the drama, in the age before the stream of imperishable philosophy had been poured forth from the waters of Avon, or its banks had resounded to the harmony that was destined to sweep over the length and breadth of the earth, vibrating through the chords of every living heart that felt its breath. Deep in the human mind lies the yearning for amusement, great have been those who, laying hold of this inherent principle of our nature, could make it a means for enlightening and ennobling it; nor must we judge of the sincerity of the attempts that were made in this work, by their impotency or failure. In dark and barbarous times, what may seem gross buffoonery to our refined senses, may have had power to convey a moral lesson or excite a worthy impulse; and we may scarcely with any justice withhold our meed of praise and admiration of the philosophy of those old monks, who, seeing the immorality that characterized the exhibitions provided by strolling players, jugglers, tumblers, dancers, and jesters, journeying from town to town, and castle to castle, and filling the large square court-yards provided for their express accommodation by every house of any pretensions to rank, set their inventive powers to work, to find a substitute for these recreations of dubious tendency, and endeavoured to supersede the secular by the religious drama. Appolonarius, and Gregory, Archbishop of Constantinople, had done likewise, and dramatised scenes both from the Old and New Testament, as substitutes for Euripides and Sophocles, when the study of Greek philosophy was deemed heresy, and to have read Virgil required from St. Augustine penitence and prayer for pardon. Hence priests turned playwrights and actors, and instead of profane mummeries presented scriptural stories, or legendary tales, which they at least deemed improving and instructive. Most old cities present traces, more or less distinct, of these specimens of clerical ingenuity.