Page:The Elizabethan stage (Volume 1).pdf/294

 the service of heretical controversy. Both the Christian Terence and the vernacular morality contained elements which could be readily adapted to the purposes of polemic, no less than to those of edification; and Bale appears to have been the principal agent of Cromwell's statecraft in what was probably a deliberate attempt to capture so powerful an engine as the stage in the interests of Protestantism. And it is to be observed that this movement was not confined to those academic branches of the drama in which it may be supposed to have had its origin. For once the theologian and the histrio laid aside their ancient antagonism, and not in school and college refectories only, but in every inn-yard and on every village green, the praises of the pure Gospel were sung, and Pope and priests were derided in play, at the bidding of the wily Privy Seal. Of this there is sufficient evidence in the passionate protest of Bale after Cromwell had fallen, and the players' mouths had been shut by the Act for the Advancement of true Religion in 1543.

None leave ye unvexed and untrobled, no, not so much as the poore minstrels, and players of enterludes, but ye are doing with them. So long as they played lyes, and sange baudy songes, blasphemed God, and corrupted men's consciences, ye never blamed them, but were verye well contented. But sens they persuaded the people to worship theyr Lorde God aryght, accordyng to hys holie lawes and not yours, and to acknoledge Jesus Chryst for their onely redeemer and Saviour without your lowsie legerdemains, ye never were pleased with them.

No doubt many things were changed in English Protestantism after the days of the Marian exile; and a ready explanation of the active Puritan hostility to the stage is afforded by the substitution of a Calvinist for a Lutheran bias in the conduct of the Reformation. But the antithesis must not be pressed too far. Assuredly the returning preachers brought with them a new seriousness in their view of life and a haunting mistrust of the moral evils lurking even in innocent modes of recreation. The 'merry England' of tradition formed no part of their ideal. Moreover, they were less in bondage than their predecessors of Henry's reign to the prestige of secular learning, and less likely to be impressed, therefore, by the