Page:The Elizabethan stage (Volume 1).pdf/335

Rh persuade them to adopt a similar course. They used the interval to enact an elaborate code for the regulation of plays, whose continuance in their midst, whether they liked it or not, they now saw to be inevitable. This took the form of an Act of Common Council, which is dated on 6 December 1574. The preamble sets out the various 'disorders and inconvenyences' which from the civic point of view had arisen from plays in the past, the unchaste and seditious speeches, the waste of money and interference with divine service, the accidents due to the fall of wooden structures and to the use of firearms upon the stage, the opportunities afforded by the performances for frays and quarrels, for purse-cutting, for the corruption of youth by 'previe and unmete contractes', for incontinency in the inner chambers of the 'greate innes' to which the stages were adjacent. It then proceeds to recite the recent inhibition for plague, and the need to provide against the renewal of such 'enormyties' upon the expected withdrawal of God's hand of sickness by securing that 'the laweful, honest and comelye use of plaies, pastymes and recreacions' should alone be permitted. The actual regulations are six in number. No unchaste, seditious, or otherwise improper plays were to be performed, upon a penalty of fourteen days' imprisonment and a fine of £5 for each offence. No play was to be shown which had not first been perused and allowed by such persons as the Lord Mayor and Aldermen might appoint. All playing-places and the persons in control of them were to be licensed by the Lord Mayor and Aldermen. All licensees were to be bound to the City Chamberlain for the keeping of good order. No licence was to be operative during a restraint for sickness or other good reason, nor were plays to be given or spectators received during the usual times for divine service on Sundays and holidays. Every licensee was to make such contributions to the poor and sick of the City as might be agreed upon with the Lord Mayor and Aldermen. Machinery was provided for the recovery of penalties, which were also to be for the benefit of the poor and sick, and an exception was made for plays in private houses for which no money was taken. The only regulation to which these were to be subject was that against the introduction of unchaste and seditious matters.

It is often stated that the regulations of 1574 were followed in 1575 by a decree of the Corporation banishing players totally and finally from the confines of the City. This is, however, a mistake due to an erroneous endorsement of date upon some documents which belong in reality to about 1584.