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[T. Warton, History of Poetry, iii (1781) 288 (ed. Hazlitt, iv. 217), ascribes to this year a 'Puritanical pamphlet without name', ''The Children of the Chapel stript and whipt'', which he says was 'among Bishop Tanner's books at Oxford'. It is not, however, now traceable in the Bodleian. Warton's extracts are quoted in ch. xii, s.v. Chapel.]

xii. 1569..

[From ''Henry Cornelius Agrippa, of the Vanitie and uncertaintie of Artes and Sciences'', Englished by Ja[mes] San[ford] Gent. (1569), a translation of ''De incertitudine et vanitate scientiarium et artium atque excellentia Verbi Dei declamatio (1530), written in 1526 (Opera'', ii. 1).]

'Cap. 4. Of Poetrie' condemns it as lying. 'Cap. 20. Of the Science of stage Plaiers.' After defining the player's art and citing the discussion between Cicero and Roscius recorded by Macrobius (cf. no. xliii and ch. xi) and the banishment of players by the City of Marseilles (cf. Mediaeval Stage, i. 7), Agrippa concludes, 'And therefore to exercise this Arte, is not onely a dishonest and wicked occupation, but also to behold it, and therein to delite is a shameful thinge, bicause that the delite of a wanton minde is an offence. And to conclude, there was in times paste no name more infamous then stage players, and moreouer, al they that had plaide an Enterlude in the Theater, were by the lawes depriued from all honour.' Plays are briefly referred to in 'Cap. 59. Of Holy daies' and 'Cap. 63. Of the whoorishe Arte'.

xiii. 1574..

[From A Forme of Christian Pollicie gathered out of French (1574). No single source has been traced and the treatise is probably a compilation.]

Book iii, ch. 7. 'Players corrupt good moralities by wanton shewes and playes: they ought not to be suffred to prophane the Sabboth day in such sportes, and much lesse to lose time on the dayes of trauayle. All dissolute playes ought to be forbidden: All comicall and tragicall showes of schollers in morall doctrines, and declamations in causes made to reprooue and accuse vice and extoll vertue are very profitable.' The 7 Chapter expands the foregoing 'Great then is the errour of the magistrate to geue sufferance to these players, whether they bee minstrels, or enterludours who on a scaffold, babling vaine newes to the sclander of the world, put there in scoffing the vertues of honest men There often times are blowen abroade the publike and secreete vices of men, sometimes shrowded under honourable personage, withe infinite other offences How often is the maiestie of God offended in those twoo or three howres that those playes endure, both by wicked wordes, and blasphemye, impudent jestures, doubtful sclaunders, unchaste songes, and also by corruption of the willes of the players and the assistauntes. Let no man obiect heare that by these publike plaies, many forbeare to doo euill, for feare to bee publikely reprehended for it may be