Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 23.djvu/247

Rh hands and seals of four or more justices. The licence may be granted for music or dancing or both. Public notice of the licence is to be given by affixing over the door the inscription "Licensed pursuant to Act of Parliament of the twenty-fifth of King George the Second." The penalty for keeping an unlicensed music hall is 100. Music halls beyond the radius of 20 miles from London and Westminster are usually governed by local legislation, which in most cases follows, mutatis mutandis, the lines of the Act of 1752. The music hall, like the theatre, must generally fulfil certain structural requirements. In one important respect the law is more lenient to the music hall than to the theatre. A licence is neces sary for a single performance of a stage play, but it is only habitual music or dancing that requires a music hall licence.

Scotland.—In Scotland the theatre has always exercised a smaller amount of influence than in England, and there has been little exclusively Scotch legislation on the subject. An Act of 1555, c. 40, discountenanced certain amusements of a semi-theatrical kind by enacting that no one was to be chosen Robert Hude (sic), Little John, abbot of Unreason, or queen of May. A proclamation of James VI. in 1574, and an Act of 1579, c. 12, followed the lines of English legislation by making persons using unlawful plays, such as jugglery or fast and loose, punishable as vagabonds. In 1574 the General Assembly claimed to license plays, and forbade represen tations on Sunday. As in England, the licensing power seems then to have passed from the church to the crown, for in 1599 James VI. licensed a theatre at Edinburgh. The Act 1672, c, 21, exempted comedians while upon the stage from the sumptuary provisions of the Act respecting apparel. The chamberlain of Scotland, while such an office existed, appears to have exercised a certain police jurisdiction over theatres. The Theatre Act of 1843 extends to Scotland, as did also the previous Act of 1737.

Ireland.—Theatrical legislation, as far as it went, was based upon English models. Thus ridicule of the liturgy was forbidden by 2 Eliz. c. 2 (Ir. ); common players of interludes and wandering minstrels were deemed vagabonds, 10 and 11 Car. I. c. 4 (Ir. ). In 1786 an Act was passed to enable the crown to grant letters patent for one or more theatres in Dublin city and county, 26 Geo. ill. c. 57 (Ir.). The preamble alleges that the establishing of a well-regulated theatre at the seat of government will be productive of public advantage and tend to improve the morals of the people. Exceptions from the restrictions of the Act were made in favour of entertainments for the benefit of the Dublin lying-in hospital and exhibitions of horsemanship or puppet-shows.

United States.—Public entertainments, dramatic or otherwise, are usually under the control of the municipal authorities. In some States, such as New York and Massachusetts, there is State legislation, requiring places of public entertainment to be licensed by the proper authority. In many States it is a condition of the licence that intoxicating liquors shall not be sold in such places. Other conditions, more or less usual, are that there shall be no Sunday or dangerous performances, that acrobats shall be properly protected, and that female waiters shall not be employed. Struc tural qualifications are in some cases made necessary. Thus in 1885 the New York legislature passed an Act containing many minute provisions for ensuring the safety of theatres against fire. A characteristic piece of legislation is the New York Act of 1873, c. 186, enacting that no citizen is to be excluded from a theatre by reason of race, colour, or previous condition of servitude. This Act of course merely carries out the important principle affirmed in art. xiv. of the amendments to the constitution of the United States. See.

The most recent if not the only work on the law relating to theatres is Geary's Law of Theatres and Music Halls, 1885.

 THEBES. See, sq.  THEBES (anciently rjp&amp;lt;u, Thebæ, or in poetry sometimes (3a, in modern Greek Phiva, or, according to the corrected pronunciation, Thivæ), one of the most interest ing towns in Greece, is situated on low hilly ground of gentle slope a little north of the range of Cithasron, which divides Boeotia from Attica, and on the edge of the Boeotian plain, about 44 miles from Athens, whence it is now reached by two carriage-roads. It has about 3500 inhabitants, and is the seat of a bishop. The present town occupies the site of the ancient citadel, the Cadmea; two fragments of ancient wall are visible on the north, and another, belonging either to the citadel or the outer wall, on the south. Two streams, rising a little south of the town, and separated by an average distance of about half a mile, flow on the two sides, and are lost in the plain. These are the ancient Ismenus on the east and Dirce (A 1/3/07) on the west, which gave to the town its name The Dirce, now Platziótissa, has several springs. From the west side of the Cadmea another copious fountain (Paraporti) falls to the Dirce. In a suburb to the east is another (Fountain of St Theodore), and north-west are two more. The Cadmea itself is supplied with water brought from an unknown source to the south by works supposed of prehistoric antiquity. It now enters the town by an aqueduct of twenty arches of Prankish construction. The "waters" of Thebes are celebrated both by Pindar and by the Athenian poets, and the site is still, as described by Dicsearchus (3d century B.C.), "all springs," Ka.Qv8po&amp;lt;; Traa-a. One, from which a pasha of Negroponte (Eubcea) is said to have supplied his table, is still called "the spring of the cadi." Some of the marble basins, seats, &c., remain, and, with the frag ments of wall above mentioned, are the only relics of the classic time. The most curious of later buildings is the church of St Luke, south-east of the Cadmea, believed to contain the tomb of the evangelist. From the abundance of water the place is favourable to gardens, and the neigh bouring plain is extremely fertile. But the population is scanty, and the town at present of no importance.

In prehistoric times the Cadmea, with the enlarged city of Thebes into which it developed, was a power of the first rank, as is shown by its unrivalled legends. More parti cularly the mythical wars with Argos (see below) point to a time when the " Hellenes " of North Greece were still contending unequally against the "Achaeans" of the Peloponnesus. In the legend as given by ^Eschylus these names are accurately preserved. At the beginning of continuous history (6th century ) Thebes had long been possessed by immigrants from Thessaly, who knew the previous inhabitants as Cadmeans (Ka8/moi).

The history of the town to the end of the 4th century is part of the general history of the nation (see ). It had an aristocratic constitution, and claimed a contested sovereignty over the other towns of Boeotia. Down to 371 this status was not essentially changed. The battle of Coronea (394) showed the increasing military strength of the Thebans, and in 371 the genius of Epaminondas raised them by the victory of Leuctra for a brief period to the leading position in Hellas. Philip of Macedon spent part of his youth as a hostage at Thebes, and probably learnt there important lessons in war. By him and his successor the state was destroyed. In 338 the Thebans shared with the Athenians the defeat of Chaeronea, and received a Macedonian garrison; the lion-monument erected by them on the field of battle, and still existing there, though in fragments, is a more impressive memorial of their greatness than anything now visible at the town itself. In 335, after the death of Philip, they revolted, and were punished by Alexander with a fearful ven geance. It is said that 6000 Thebans were slain at the capture and 30,000 taken prisoners. The population was dispersed, and the town entirely razed (except, according to tradition, the house of the poet Pindar); and, though it was soon restored by the Macedonian Cassander (315), it never again played a leading part in history. In 86, having sided against the Romans in the Mithradatic war, it was plundered by Sulla, and fell into such decay that Strabo describes it as little better than a village. In the 2d century the traveller Pausanias, who gives a full account of it (ix. 5 sq.), found only the citadel inhabited. In 395, however, it had some strength, for Alaric, on his way to the capture of Athens, did not think fit to attack it. In the later times of the Eastern empire (10th to 12th century) it again became wealthy and important, being specially celebrated for the manufacture of silk and cloth. In 1143 it was plundered by the Normans of Sicily (who transferred thither the chief artisans of the silk trade), and, after the capture of Constantinople by