f certain "great
inns" to the use of actors and to the entertainment of the
pleasure-loving element of the city created new and serious problems
for those charged with the preservation of civic law and order. The
presence in these inns of private rooms adjoining the yard and
balconies gave opportunity for immorality, gambling, fleecing, and
various other "evil practices"--an opportunity which, if we may
believe the Common Council, was not wasted. Moreover, the proprietors
of these inns made a large share of their profits from the beer, ale,
and other drinks dispensed to the crowds before, during, and after
performances (the proprietor of the Cross Keys, it will be recalled,
was described as "citizen and brewer of London"); and the resultant
intemperance among "such as frequented the said plays, being the
ordinary place of meeting for all vagrant persons, and masterless men
that hang about the city, theeves, horse-stealers, whoremongers,
cozeners, cony-catching persons, practicers of treason, and such other
like,"[25] led to drunkenness, frays, bloodshed, and often to general
disorder. Sometimes, as we know, turbulent apprentices and other
factions met by appointment at plays for the sole purpose of starting
riots or breaking open jails. "Upon Whitsunday," writes the Recorder
to Lord Burghley, "by reason no plays were the same day, all the city
was quiet."[26]

[Footnote 25: So the Lord Mayor characterized playgoers; see _The
Remembrancia_, in The Malone Society's _Collections_, I, 75.]

[Footnote 26: The Malone Society's _Collections_, I, 164.]

Trouble of an entirely different kind arose when in the hot months of
the summer the plague was threatening. The meeting together at plays
of "great multitudes of the basest sort of people" served to spread
the infection throughout the city more quickly and effectively than
could anything else. On such occasions it was exceedingly difficult
for the municipal authorities to control the actors, who were at best
a stubborn and unruly lot; and often the pestilence had secured a full
start before acting could be suppressed.

These troubles, and others which cannot here be mentioned, made one of
the Lord Mayors exclaim in despair: "The Politique State and
Government of this City by no one thing is so greatly annoyed and
disquieted as by players and plays, and the disorders which follow
thereupon."[27]

[Footnote 27: _The Remembrancia_, in The Malone Society's
_Collections_, I,