But though the drama was occupying an increasingly prominent place in the life of the time the professional actors and playwrights were in decided ill-repute. With the managers and with the actors the returns from the stage were sufficient to salve the hurt of the odium under which their profession rested. Richard Burbage died a rich man, and Alleyn, who played in at least one of Greene's plays, became so wealthy that he could found a college. So also, as we learn from the slighting references to them by the dramatists, the actors were well able to line their pockets with the returns of their calling. But the pamphlet literature of the time reveals the extraordinary hostility with which all connected with the theatre were viewed. Gosson's _School of Abuse_ (1579), _A Second and Third Blast of Retrait from Plays and Theatres_ (1580), Stubb's _Anatomy of Abuses_ (1583), and Babington's _Exposition of the Commandments_ (1583) contain vigorous attacks on the stage as an institution and on all who follow its fortunes. Distrust and jealousy were common within the ranks of the actors and playwrights. So Chettle does not know Marlowe and does not wish to know him; Nash, though he defends Greene against Harvey, expressly disclaims any intimacy; and we shall learn that Greene was jealous of Marlowe during a large portion of his period of dramatic authorship. But the playwrights abominated the actors even more than they distrusted each other. Frequently they refer to actors as puppets and apes dressed up in another's feathers. Greene, in _Never too Late_, calls the actor "Esop's crow," and in _A Groatsworth of Wit_, in the famous passage referring to Shakespeare, he calls the actors "burrs," "puppets that speak from our mouths," and "antics garnished in our colours." The author of _The Return from Parnassus_ (1602) calls them "mimic apes," and Florio, in his preface to _Montaigne's Essays_ (translated 1603) refers to actors as "base rascals, vagabond abjects, and porterly hirelings." Though proud of their calling as literary men the dramatists looked with shame on their writing for the stage. Lodge, who in 1580 had defended poetry and plays against Gosson, in _Scillæ's Metamorphosis_ of 1589 declared his determination "to write no more of that whence shame doth grow." If Greene refers to plays at all he calls them "vanities"; connects their composition with the basest efforts of life, and arraigns dependence on "so mean a stay." Even Shakespeare "in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes" beweeps alone his "outcast state" (Sonnet XXIX), and exclaims "For I am shamed by that which I bring forth" (Sonnet LXXII). Conditions like these are not likely to bring the better social adjustments into play, or to call into a profession those who value name and fame supremely. Schelling[1] calls attention to the fact that playwriting took a higher position at the beginning of the seventeenth century than it had taken at the end of the previous