The middle of the seventeenth century, when women first began to appear on the stage in England, was a period of unexampled laxity. It was not simply that morality was at a low ebb, and that the passions reigned uppermost. That was the case in feudal times when the intellectual side of humanity was only half awakened, and the range of interests and ideas, of taste and knowledge, was limited by physical obstacles. The world was a sealed book to mediæval men and women. But the seventeenth century had no such excuse. It had opened the clasps; it had the power of choice, but it hugged the sins of past ages to its breast. Seeing the good, it chose the evil. It was an unfortunate moment for the introduction of actresses, and their presence gave rise to many scandals, but abuses had long been rife on the stage, and dramatic performances had been occasionally suspended even in the reign of Elizabeth. The blame cannot be attributed to the pernicious example of France as far as the plays themselves are concerned, for it is agreed that French comedy in the reign of Charles II. was not in the least coarse. This was the period of Molière’s fame. Two or three years after the accession of Anne, who did not countenance playhouses by her presence, the Puritan party of that day earnestly hoped that the Queen might be induced to interdict stage performances, or at least to prohibit certain pieces. There is not the slightest doubt that the complaints made of obscene language and manners were well founded. The plays remain as witnesses, and the record of the scenes enacted in the green-room and the general licence indulged in by the players furnish condemnatory evidence. But the purists were not content with trying to uphold morality and public decency. At that time natural phenomena were still regarded by many people with superstitious terror. Sickness, storms, and other calamities were looked upon as the visitations of wrathful Providence. Now it happened that a disastrous tempest had been raging, a tempest fiercer than any known for many years. A day of fasting and humiliation had been appointed, and in the face of that public acknowledgment of national sin the irreverent players chose to produce _Macbeth_ and _The Tempest_, with as faithful a representation of real storms as they could contrive. “Surely,” writes one shocked contemporary, “the Players have little reason to expect that they shall still go on in their abominable Outrages; who, ’tis to be observed with Indignation, did, as we are assured, within a few days after we felt the late dreadful storm, entertain their audience with the ridiculous Representation of what had filled us with so great Horror in their Plays called _Macbeth_ and _The Tempest_, as if they designed to Mock the Almighty Power of God, _who alone commands the Winds and the Seas, and they obey him_.”[57]