plays.' Thereupon the King summoned the Sessions before him in Council
and threatened them with the full rigour of the law. Obdurate at first,
the ministers subsequently agreed to moderate their hostile references to
the actors. Finally, Nicolson adds, 'the King this day by proclamation
with sound of trumpet hath commanded the players liberty to play, and
forbidden their hinder or impeachment therein.' _MS. State Papers_, Dom.
Scotland, P. R. O. vol. lxv. No. 64.

{41b} Fleay, _Stage_, pp. 126-44.

{41c} Cf. Duncan's speech (on arriving at Macbeth's castle of
Inverness):

This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air
Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself
Unto our gentle senses.
_Banquo_. This guest of summer,
The temple-haunting martlet, does approve,
By his lov'd mansionry, that the heaven's breath
Smells wooingly here. (_Macbeth_, 1. vi. 1-6).

{42a} Cf. Cohn, _Shakespeare in Germany_, 1865; Meissner, _Die
englischen Comodianten zur Zeit Shakespeare's in Oesterreich_, Vienna,
1884; Jon Stefansson on 'Shakespeare at Elsinore' in _Contemporary
Review_, January 1896; _Notes and Queries_, 5th ser. ix. 43, and xi. 520;
and M. Jusserand's article in the _Nineteenth Century_, April 1898, on
English actors in France.

{42b} Cf. _As you like it_, IV. i. 22-40.

{43a} Cf. Elze, _Essays_, 1874, pp. 254 seq.

{43b} 'Quality' in Elizabethan English was the technical term for the
'actor's profession.'

{43c} Aubrey's _Lives_, ed. Andrew Clark, ii. 226.

{44a} Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 121; Mrs. Stopes in _Jahrbuck der
deutschen Shakespeare-Gesellschaft_, 1896, xxxii. 182 seq.

{44b} _Scourge of Folly_, 1610, epigr. 159.

{47} One of the many crimes laid to the charge of the dramatist Robert
Greene was that of fraudulently disposing of the same play to two
companies. 'Ask the Queen's players,' his accuser bade him in Cuthbert
Cony-Catcher's _Defence of Cony-Catching_, 1592, 'if you sold them not
_Orlando Furioso_ for twenty nobles [_i.e._ about 7 pounds], and when
they were in the country sold the same play to the Lord Admiral's men for
as many more.'

{48} The playhouse authorities deprecated the publishing of plays in the
belief that their dissemination in print was injurious to the receipts of
the theatre. A very small proportion of plays acted in Elizabeth's and
James I's reign consequently reached the printing press, and most of them
are now lost. B