opening of her reign by a temporary inhibition of plays[678]; and her privy council assumed a jurisdiction, by no means nominal, over things theatrical. In their censorship they had the assistance of the bishop of London, as ‘ordinary.’ The lesser companies may have suffered from the statute of 1572 which confined the privilege of maintaining either minstrels or players of interludes to barons and personages of higher degree[679]. But the greater ones which had succeeded in establishing themselves in London, grew and flourished. They lived down the competition of the amateurs which during the greater part of the century threatened to become dangerous, by their profitable system of double performances, at court and in the inn yards. Thus they secured the future of the drama by making it economically independent; and the copestone of their edifice was the building of the permanent theatres. But for courtesy and a legal fiction, they were vagabonds and liable to whipping: yet the time was at hand when one player was to claim coat armour and entertain preachers to sack and supper at New Place, while another was to marry the daughter of a dean and to endow an irony for all time in the splendid College of God’s Gift at Dulwich. APPENDICES A THE TRIBUNUS VOLUPTATUM [The _tribunus voluptatum_ was a municipal officer of the later Empire charged with the superintendence of the _spectacula_. He seems to have been appointed for life by the Emperor, and to have taken over functions formerly discharged by the praetors and quaestors. Mommsen, _Ostgothische Studien_ (_Neues Archiv_, xiv. 495), says that he first appears in the fifth century. Possibly, therefore, Suetonius, _Tiberius_, 42, ‘novum denique officium instituit a voluptatibus, praeposito equite R. T. Caesonio Prisco’ refers to some other post. A _titulus_, ‘de officio tribuni voluptatū qd a temelicis et scenariis,’ which should be _C. Th._ i. 19, is missing from the text. _C. Th._ xv. 7, 13 (413), is addressed to the _tribunus voluptatum_ of Carthage. The office was maintained in Italy under Theodoric (493-526). The _formula_ of appointment here given is preserved by Cassiodorus, _Variae_, vii. 10; cf. _Var._ vi. 19 ‘cum lascivae voluptates recipiant tribunum.’ The Senate is informed by _Var._ i. 43 (†509) of the promotion of Artemidorus, who had held the office, to be _praefectus urbanus_. The _tribunus voluptatum_ of Rome is referred to in two inscriptions of 522 and 526 (Rossi, _Inscr. Christ._ i. Nos. 989, 1005). One Bacauda is appointed _tribunus voluptatum_ in Milan by _Var._ v. 25 (523-6). Constantine Porphyrogenitus _de Caer._ i. 83 mentions an ἄρχων τῆς θυμέλης in the tenth-century court of Byzantium, who may be the same officer.] _Formula Tribuni Voluptatum._