and forming views of human nature "more practicable in a
desert than a city, and rather suited to a monastic order than to a
polished people." Still, these fanatics could scarcely have dreamed
that power would ever be given them to carry their peculiar theories
into practice, and to govern a nation as though it were composed
entirely of precisians and bigots. For two generations--from the
Reformation to the Civil War--the Puritans had been the butt of the
satirical, the jest of the wits--ridiculed and laughed at on all
sides. Then came a time, "when," in the words of Macaulay, "the
laughers began to look grave in their turn. The rigid ungainly zealots
... rose up in arms, conquered, ruled, and, grimly smiling, trod down
under their feet the whole crowd of mockers."

Yet from the first the Puritans had not neglected the pen as a weapon
of offence. In 1579 Stephen Gosson published his curious pamphlet
bearing the lengthy title of "The Schoole of Abuse, containing a
pleasant Invective against Poets, Pipers, Jesters, and such like
Catterpillars of a Commonwealth; setting up the Flag of Defiance to
their mischievous exercise, and overthrowing their Bulwarks, by
Profane Writers, natural reason, and common experience: A Discourse
as pleasant for gentlemen that favour learning as profitable for all
that will follow virtue." Gosson expresses himself with much quaint
force, but he is not absolutely intolerant. He was a student of Oxford
University, had in his youth written poems and plays, and even
appeared upon the scene as an actor. Although he had repented of these
follies, he still viewed them without acrimony. To his pamphlet we are
indebted for certain interesting details in regard to the manners and
customs of the Elizabethan playgoers. A further attack upon the
theatre was led by Dr. Reynolds, of Queen's College, who was greatly
troubled by the performance of a play at Christchurch, and who
published, in 1593, "The Overthrow of Stage Plays," described by
Disraeli as "a tedious invective, foaming at the mouth of its text
with quotations and authorities." Reynolds was especially severe upon
"the sin of boys wearing the dress and affecting the airs of women;"
and thus unconsciously helped on a change he would have regarded as
still more deplorable--the appearance of actresses upon the stage. But
a fiercer far than Reynolds was to arise. In 1633 Prynne produced his
"Histriomastix; or, The Player's Scourge," a monstrous work o