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 l. 1592-9.

[A controversy arising out of criticism by Rainolds on the legitimacy of academic drama is contained in (a) Gager's Momus and Epilogus Responsiuus, written c. Jan. 1592, spoken 8 Feb., printed with additional matter c. May (cf. ch. xxiii, s.v. Gager, Ulysses Redux; (b) Rainolds to Thomas Thornton, 6 Feb. 1592; (c) Rainolds to Gager, 10 July 1592; (d) Gager to Rainolds, 31 July 1592; (e) Rainolds to Gager, 30 May 1593; (f) Gentili, Commentatio de Professoribus et Medicis, printed with Ad Titulum de Maleficis et Mathematicis Commentarius (1593, with epistle of 26 June 1593; 1604); (g) Gentili to Rainolds, 7 July 1593; (h) Rainolds to Gentili, 10 July 1593; (i) Gentili to Rainolds, 14 July 1593; (k) Rainolds to Gentili, 5 Aug. 1593; (l) two further letters by Gentili and two by Rainolds, who ends the correspondence on 12 Mar. 1594; (m) Gentili, De Actoribus et Spectatoribus Fabularum non Notandis Disputatio (1599, with epistle of 14 Oct. 1597; reprinted in Gronovius, Thesaurus Antiquitatum, viii); (n) Th' Overthrow of Stage-Players (1599, no imprint, with epistle from Printer to Reader; 1600; 1629). This is a print of (c), (e), (g), (h), (i), (k). All the twelve letters are in Oxon. C.C.C. MS. 352 and some in Queen's Coll. MS. 359; a collection in Univ. Coll. MS. 157 is lost, but probably added no more. Rainolds is satirized in the Queen's College, Cambridge, play of Fucus Histriomastix (1623, ed. G. C. Moore Smith, 1909), probably by Robert Ward.]

The academic controversy is fully summarized by F. S. Boas in Fortnightly Review for August 1907 and University Drama in the Tudor Age (1914), 229, together with the analysis of Gager's defence by K. Young in An Elizabethan Defence of the Stage (1916, Wisconsin Shakespeare Studies, 103). I only quote the reference in the Epistle to Th' Overthrow of 1599 to 'Men that haue not been afraied of late dayes to bring vpon the Stage the very sober countenances, graue attire, modest and matronelike gestures, and speaches of men & women to be laughed at as a scorne and reproch to the world'.

li. 1597 (?).

[From A Treatise on Playe, printed in Nugae, i. 191. I retain Park's date of 'circa 1597', although I doubt whether it is based on anything but a conjecture that 'this deere yeer' (204) may be 1595 or 1597, and the latest definite event referred to is the death of Hatton on 20 Nov. 1591. The treatise deals mainly with gambling.]

One sayd merely that 'enterludes weare the divells sarmons, and jesters the divells confessors; thease for the most part disgracing of vertue, and those not a little gracinge of vices'. But, for my part, I commend not such sowere censurers, but I thinke in stage-playes may bee much good, in well-penned comedies, and specially tragedies; and I remember, in Cambridge, howsoever the presyser sort have banisht them, the wyser sort did, and still doe mayntayn them.