Page:The Elizabethan stage (Volume 1).pdf/382

330 life until 1625. The greatest developments of the Elizabethan drama thus coincide with the longest periods of exemption, and perhaps this simple physical fact has something to do with the break-down of the Puritan opposition and the settlement of theatrical conditions in 1597. Certainly the plaguesome years 1564-87 are marked by a series of inhibitions of plays on account of plague, some of which seem to be hardly justified by the actual state of things prevailing, and suggest that the Privy Council occasionally found it convenient to avoid controversy with the City by acquiescing in an inhibition for which the dread of infection was little more than the ostensible reason. This tendency seems to have come very near to bringing about a regular autumnal close season for plays. Ultimately, however, a different principle of regulation was adopted. This was based upon the showings of the plague-bill, a weekly summary of deaths from plague and from other causes respectively, prepared from returns rendered on behalf of each of the 109 parishes within the City area and a few of those in the suburbs. The first indication of an appeal to this criterion is to be found in the documents belonging to the inquiry of 1584, to which the players appear to have contributed the proposal that their activities should continue to be tolerated so long as the deaths from plague in any one week did not exceed fifty. The City questioned the security afforded by this figure, and as an alternative offered toleration whenever the deaths from all causes should have remained below fifty for three weeks together. It is difficult to say whether this reply was intended to be taken seriously. Probably not, in view of the general attitude adopted in the argument of which it forms part. If it had been applied to the years 1578-82, for which plague-bills are extant, there would have been only fifteen weeks of playing during the five years, six weeks in 1580, and nine weeks in 1581. The precise issue of the discussion of 1584 is unknown; but the principle then mooted is found in effective operation during the seventeenth century. Most of the patents do not make any specific reservation for times of plague, but that for the King's men, issued during the plague of 1603, and the unexecuted draft for the Queen's men are expressed as coming into operation 'when the infection of the plague shall decrease', and more precisely in the case of the Queen's men 'when the infeccion of the plague shall decrease to the nomber of thirtie weekly within our Citie of London and the liberties therof'. Similarly the Privy Council letter of 9 April 1604 in allowance