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264 even their honesty. They were dignitaries, and were not invariably treated with respect upon the boards. They were the health-authority, and even if plays did not stir the divine wrath to send a plague or an earthquake, the crowded assemblies certainly helped to spread infection, and the rickety structures brought hazard to life and limb. They were responsible for the maintenance of law and order, and plays were not only the occasions for frays and riots, but also brought bad characters together, and were suspected of affording secret opportunities for the hatching of sedition. It must be borne in mind that, so far as the external abuses of theatres go, the complaints of their bitterest enemies are fairly well supported by independent evidence. The presence of improper persons in the theatres is amply testified to by the satirists, and by references in the plays themselves. Intrigues and other nefarious transactions were carried on there ; and careful mothers, such as Lady Bacon, anxiously entreated their sons to choose more salutary neighbourhoods for their lodgings. Some serious disturbances of the peace of which theatres were the centres will require attention in the next chapter, while law-court and other records preserve the memory of both grave crimes and minor misdemeanours of which they were the scenes. Like the bawdy-houses, they