ance in 1698 of Jeremy
Collier's 'A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English
Stage', the bitter exchanges of reply and counter-reply to the charges
of gross licentiousness in the London theaters had subsided. The
controversy, however, was by no means ended, and around 1704 it flared
again in a resurgence of attacks upon the stage. Among the tracts
opposing the theaters was an anonymous pamphlet entitled 'A
Representation of the Impiety and Immorality of the English Stage', a
piece which was published early in 1704 and which appeared in three
editions before the end of that year.

The author reveals within his tract some of the reasons for its
appearance at that time. He remarks upon the obvious failure of the
opponents of the theater to end "the outragious and insufferable
Disorders of the STAGE." He stresses the brazenness of the players in
presenting, soon after the devastating storm of the night of November
26-27, 1703, two plays, 'Macbeth' and 'The Tempest', "as if they
design'd to Mock the Almighty Power of God, _who alone commands the
Winds and the Seas_." ('Macbeth' was acted at Drury Lane on Saturday,
November 27, as the storm was subsiding, but, because it was advertised
in the 'Daily Courant' on Friday, November 26, for the following
evening, it would appear that, unless the players possessed the even
more formidable power of foreseeing the storm, their presentation of
'Macbeth' at that time was pure coincidence. No performance of 'The
Tempest' in late November appears in the extant records, but there was
probably one at Lincoln's Inn Fields, which was not regularly
advertising its offerings.) The author also emphasizes the propriety,
before the approaching Fast Day of January 19, 1704, of noting once more
the Impiety of the stage and the desirability of either suppressing it
wholly or suspending its operations for a considerable period.
Apparently the author hoped to arouse in religious persons a renewed
zeal for closing the theaters, for the tract was distributed at the
churches as a means of giving it wider circulation among the populace.
('The Critical Works of John Dennis' [Baltimore, 1939], I, 501, refers
to a copy listed in Magga catalogue. No. 563, Item 102, with a note:
"19th Janry, Fast Day. This Book was given me at ye Church dore, and was
distributed at most Churches.")

Except for the author's ingenuity in seizing upon the fortuitous
circumstances of the storm, the acting of '