The profession of actor in a time when the Puritanic spirit was rapidly growing stronger could not possibly be held in good repute. There was dancing in it: music: mockery: merriment: satire: low comedy: all these things the misguided flock enjoyed and the shepherd deplored. The Mayor, long before the Theatres were suppressed, would never allow a theatre to be set up within his jurisdiction: had that jurisdiction extended beyond the various Bars: had there not, fortunately, happened to exist certain illogical and absurd Liberties and Precincts, in which the Mayor had no authority, there would have been no theatres in the neighbourhood of London, and therefore no Elizabethan drama, no Shakespeare, no Ben Jonson, no Massinger, no Fletcher. As things happened, we have to note the very remarkable fact that while the popular love for the theatre increased year by year; while the theatre became the teacher of history, the satirist of manners, the home of music and of poetry; the ministers and preachers thundered perpetually against it, yet prevailed not at all, until the Civil War broke out, and the power fell into the hands of the Puritans. For instance, one John Field, the father of one of the most famous players, Nathan Field, wrote to the Earl of Leicester as early as 1585 reviling him for having interfered 'on the behalf of evil men as of late you did for players, to the great griefe of all the godly,' and adjuring him not to encourage their wickedness, and 'the abuses that are wont to be nourished by those impure interludes and plays.' And the same divine, two years later, wrote an attack upon the theatre in consequence of the accident at Paris Gardens which has been already mentioned. The theatre was forcibly suppressed in the Civil War, but it was never forgotten, and the moment that the Restoration allowed it was opened again. But to our day the old Puritanism continues, in a now feeble and impotent way, to consider the Theatre as the chosen home of the Devil. [Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE OLD SWAN THEATRE] Nathan Field, though the son of such a father, was ready to meet all comers in defence of the stage. In 1616 one Sutton, Preacher at St. Mary Overies, denounced the Theatre and all connected with it. Field answered him manfully, telling him plainly that he, the preacher, is disloyal, in preaching from his pulpit against people who are licensed and patronised by the King. The players were at all times equal to the task of covering the preacher with derision; but derision seldom convinces or converts.