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investigations of my opening book have shown clearly enough that in the Tudor, as in the mediaeval, scheme of things there was ample room for the stage and its players. The revelling instinct survived, and the old native love of mimesis and spectacle had been reinforced by a literary delight in the revival of classical drama and in every form of the give and take of dialogue. Nor was the appreciation of the folk for the ruder forms of sensational and farcical entertainment less keen; and a period of general acceptance of the stage as an element in social life might have been anticipated, in which it stood greatly to gain by the more settled and less migratory habits of the royal household and the possibilities of building up a permanent head-quarters for itself in London which resulted from the change. Unfortunately, however, events moved otherwise. A new factor emerged, which militated against anything like general acceptance; and the period of the greatest literary vitality in the development of the English drama proved to be also a period of embittered conflict with widespread ethical and religious tendencies, which in fact ranged over the whole of social life and was