rmers.

Elizabeth rendered a great service to the actors by placing them under
the patronage of the nobility. The municipal authorities, who were
frequently Puritan, considered neither dramatic art nor dramatic poetry
as an acceptable means of livelihood; consequently, those who cultivated
these noble arts easily exposed themselves to being treated as
"masterless men," unless they could give a reference to some
distinguished aristocratic name.

The Queen ordered by law--in a statute which has often been
misunderstood--"that all common players of interludes wandering abroad,
other than players of interludes belonging to any baron of this realme,
or any other honorable personage of greater degree, to be authorized to
play under the hand and seale of arms of such baron or personage, shall
be adjudged and deemed rogues and vagabonds"; in other words, the Queen
urged all actors, for their own sakes, to place themselves under the
patronage of some nobleman, in order to protect them against the
persecution of the Puritan citizens.

But even such mighty protection could not entirely shield them, and it
was this very power of the London corporation to injure the actors that
caused the establishment of the first London theatre.

In the year 1572 the plague broke out in London; it killed many
thousands of people, and kept recurring at certain intervals during the
next twenty or thirty years, carrying horror and death with it. Under
these circumstances all dramatic performances were prohibited for a time
in London, a precaution which was reasonable enough, as the dense
crowding of people might have helped to spread the disease. But the
magistrate seems to have caught eagerly at this opportunity of
interfering.

In Harrison's _Description of England_ the event is reported as follows:
"Plaies are banished for a time out of London, lest the resort unto them
should ingender a plague, or rather disperse it, being already begonne.
Would to God these comon plaies were exiled for altogether as seminaries
of impiety, and their theatres pulled downe as no better than houses of
baudrie. It is an evident token of a wicked time when plaiers wexe so
rich that they can build suche houses. As moche I wish also to our comon
beare baitinges used on the Sabaothe daies."

We cannot help noticing the predilection of the Puritans for the coarse
bear-fights, which in their opinion were only displeasing to God when
performed on a Sabbath, whereas t