the principal legal enactments of Elizabeth
respecting the conduct of the theatre, some of which are remarkable.
During the early part of her reign, Sunday being still regarded
principally in the light of a holiday, her majesty not only selected
that day, more frequently than any other, for the representation of
plays at court for her own amusement, but by her license granted to
Burbage in 1574 authorized the performance of them at the public
theatre, _on Sundays only_ out of the hours of prayer. Five years after,
however, Gosson in his School of Abuse complains that the players,
"because they are allowed to play every Sunday, make four or five
Sundays at least every week." To limit this abuse, an order was issued
by the privy-council in July 1591, purporting that no plays should be
publicly exhibited on Thursdays, because on that day bear-baiting and
similar pastimes had usually been practised; and in an injunction to the
lord mayor four days after, the representation of plays on Sunday (or
the Sabbath as it now began to be called among the stricter sort of
people) was utterly condemned; and it was further complained that on
"all other days of the week in divers places the players do use to
recite their plays, to the great hurt and destruction of the game of
bear-baiting, and like pastimes, which are maintained for her majesty's
pleasure."

In the year 1589 her majesty thought proper to appoint commissioners to
inspect all performances of writers for the stage, with full powers to
reject and obliterate whatever they might esteem unmannerly, licentious,
or irreverent:--a regulation which might seem to claim the applause of
every friend to public decency, were not the state in which the dramas
of this age have come down to posterity sufficient evidence, that to
render these impressive appeals to the passions of assembled multitudes
politically and not morally inoffensive, was the genuine or principal
motive of this act of power.

In illustration of this remark the following passage may be quoted: "At
supper" the queen "would divert herself with her friends and attendants;
and if they made her no answer, she would put them upon mirth and
pleasant discourse with great civility. She would then admit Tarleton, a
famous comedian and pleasant talker, and other such men, to divert her
with stories of the town, and the common jests and accidents. Tarleton,
who was then the best comedian in England, had made a pleasant play; and