t on their own ground, and so, after all, they
were only tolerated. Secondly, it must have been very difficult for them
to keep to regular prices, and especially to secure the payment of the
entrance fee, as they had probably to collect the money during or after
the performance, thus depending on the liberality of the public for
their remuneration. And finally, worst of all, they were led into
quarrels with the lord mayor and with the citizens.

Indeed, it is not unlikely that these performances in the inns caused a
good deal of noise and disturbance in the quarters where they took
place, and that the joyous, but by no means refined or quiet, "pit,"
when going home, excited by one of Tarlton's jigs and by the strong ale
of the inn, was not animated by very respectful feelings toward their
sour Puritan fellow-citizens, who were scandalized as they watched
"merry London" crowding past their windows. Nor is it improbable that
these anything but respectful feelings vented themselves in some of the
coarse expressions in which the plays of those times abound, where
Puritanism, the sworn enemy, is concerned; "this barbarous sect," as it
is called by a modern English author, "from whose inherited and
contagious tyranny this nation is as yet but imperfectly released."

It is certain, at any rate, that the Puritan citizens entertained a deep
and sincere hatred of anything connected with plays and actors, and if
it had been in their power to do what they liked, the world would once
for all have been relieved of such pernicious and wicked vagabonds as
William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, and Ben Jonson.

Fortunately, however, this power did not lie with the Puritans only.

Luckily, this sect, which like a malicious growth seemed to have
gathered to itself all the stubbornness, insensibility, and rude
obstinacy of the nation, was counterbalanced by a refined and
intellectual nobility, which was inspired by the new artistic and
philosophical thought of the Renaissance, and seemed to foresee, if not
fully to recognize, what a mine of poetry the English theatre of those
times was destined to be. Thanks to men like Sir Francis Walsingham,
Lords Leicester, Nottingham, Strange, and Sussex, the drama resisted for
a time the violent and unwearied attacks of the Puritans. Most
fortunately for the actors also, Queen Elizabeth, as well as her
successors, James I and Charles I, was fond of plays and favorably
inclined toward their perfo