Page:The Elizabethan stage (Volume 1).pdf/319

 chastisement any offences in these directions. They frequently, therefore, thought it well to intervene with temporary inhibitions of plays, particularly during hot summers when the anticipations of plague were at their greatest. But they were never prepared to assent to the chronic request of the City that these inhibitions should be made permanent. After all, the people must have their recreation, and, what was more, the Queen must have hers. And if her majesty's 'solace' at Christmas was to be provided upon economical terms, it was necessary that the players should be allowed facilities for 'exercise', and incidentally for earning their living, through public performances. In a sense, therefore, it was really the Court play which saved the popular stage, and enabled the companies to establish themselves in a position which neither preachers nor aldermen could shake. One may suppose that the members of the Privy Council did not all quite see eye to eye on the theatrical question; and there were occasional fluctuations of policy which caused alarm in the tiring-rooms. Even in the high quarters where the natural attitude to the drama was that of humanism, Puritan sympathies were sometimes to be found. Leicester, indeed, who frequently curried favour with the Puritans, failed them in this respect, as may be seen from a letter written in 1581 by John Field, minister of the word of God, and author of an Exhortation on the fall of Paris Garden, in which he rebukes Leicester for his patronage of plays 'to the great greife of all the godly'. Burghley may have been personally inclined to the views of his friend and correspondent William Fleetwood, although even at the end of his long life he had not forgotten the services of the stage to his earlier statecraft. It was to Walsingham that Gosson*