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reformations we were by authority (to which we in all humility submit) restrained from the practice of our profession; that profession which had before maintained us in comely and convenient equipage, some of us by it merely being enabled to keep horses (though not whores) is now condemned to a perpetual, at least a very long temporary, silence, and we left to live upon our shifts or the expense of our former gettings, to the great impoverishment and utter undoing of ourselves, wives, children and dependants, besides which it is of all other our extremest grievance, that plays being put down under the name of public recreations, other public recreations of far more harmful consequences [are] permitted still to stand in statu quo prius, namely that nurse of barbarism and beastliness, the Bear-Garden, where upon their usual days those demi-monsters are baited by bandogs; the gentlemen of stave and tail, namely boisterous butchers, cutting cobblers, hard-handed masons and the like rioting companions, resorting thither with as much freedom as formerly, making with their sweat and crowding a far worse stink than the ill-formed beasts they persecute with their dogs and whips; pick-pockets, which in an age are not heard of in any of our houses, repairing thither, and other disturbers of the public peace which dare not be seen in our civil and wellgoverned theatres, where none use to come but the best of the nobility and gentry; and though some have taxed our houses unjustly for being the receptacles of harlots, the exchanges where they meet and make their bargains with their frank chapmen of the country and city, yet we may justly excuse ourselves of either knowledge or consent in these lewd practices, we having no prophetic souls to know women's honesty by instinct, nor commission to examine them; and if we had, worthy were these wretches of Bridewell, that out of their own mouths would convince themselves of lasciviousness. Puppet-plays, which are not so much valuable as the very music between each act at ours, are still up with uncontrolled allowance, witness the famous motion of Bell and the Dragon, so frequently visited at Holborn Bridge these past Christmas holidays, whither citizens of all sorts repair with far more detriment to themselves than [they] ever did to plays, comedies and tragedies, being the lively representations of men's actions in which vice is always sharply glanced at and punished, and virtue rewarded

and encouraged, the most exact and natural eloquence of our English language expressed and daily amplified. And yet for all this we suffer and are enforced, ourselves and our dependants, to tender our complaint in doleful manner to you great Phoebus and you inspired Heliconian Virgins. First our house-keepers that grew wealthy by our endeavours complain that they are enforced to pay the grand landlords rents during this long vacation out of their former gettings; instead of ten, twenty, nay thirty shillings shares which used nightly to adorn and comfort with their harmonious music their large and well-stuffed pockets, they have shares in nothing with us now but our misfortunes, living merely out of the stock, out of the interest and principal of their former gotten moneys, which daily is exhausted by the maintenance of themselves and families.

For ourselves, such as were sharers are so impoverished that, were it not for some slender helps afforded us in this time of calamity by our former providence, we might be enforced to act our tragedies. Our hired-men are dispersed, some turned soldiers and trumpeters, others destin'd to meaner courses, or depending upon us, whom in courtesy we cannot see want for old acquaintance sakes. Their friends, young gentlemen that used to feast and frolick with them at taverns, having either quitted the kin in these times of distraction, or their money having quitted them, they are ashamed to look upon their old expensive friends. Nay, their very mistresses, those buxom and bountiful lasses that usually were enamoured on the persons the younger sort of actors, for the good clothes they wore upon the stage, believing them really to be the persons they did only represent, are quite out of sorts themselves and so disabled for supplying their poor friends' necessities. Our fools who had wont to allure and excite laughter with their very countenances, at their first appearance on the stage (hard shifts are better than none) are enforced, some of them at least, to maintain themselves by virtue of their baubles. Our boys, ere we shall have liberty to act again, will be grown out of use, like cracked organ-pipes, and have faces as old as our flags.

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Nay our very door-keepers, men and women, most grievously complain that by this cessation they are robbed of the privilege of stealing from us with licence: they cannot now, as in King Agamemnon's days, seem to scratch their heads where they itch

not, and drop shillings and half-crown-pieces in at their collars. Our music that was held so delectable and precious, that they scorned to come to a tavern under twenty shillings' salary for two hours, now wander with their instruments under their cloaks, I mean such as have any, into all houses of good fellowship, saluting every room where there is company with, "Will you have any music, gentlemen?" For our tire-men, and others that belonged formerly to our ward-robe, with the rest, they are out of service: our stock of clothes, such as are not in tribulation for the general use, being a sacrifice to moths. The tobacco-men, that used to walk up and down, selling for a penny-pipe, that which was not worth twelve pence an horseload, being now bound under tapsters in inns and tipplinghouses. Nay such a terrible distress and dissolution hath befallen us and all those that had dependence on the stage, that it hath quite unmade our hopes of future recovery; for some of our ablest ordinary poets instead of their annual stipends and beneficial second-days, being for mere necessity compelled to get a living by writing contemptible penny-pamphlets in which they have not so much as poetical licence to use any attribute of their profession but that of Quid libet audiendi? and feigning miraculous stories and relations of unheard of battles. Nay, it is to be feared that shortly some of them (if they have not been enforced to do it already) will be incited to enter themselves into Martin Parker's society, and write ballads. And what a shame this is, great Phoebus and you sacred Sisters, for your own priests thus to be degraded of their ancient dignities. Be yourselves righteous judges, when those who formerly have sung with such elegance the acts of kings and potentates, charming like Orpheus the dull and brutish multitude, scarce a degree above stones and forests, into admiration though not into understanding with their divine raptures, shall be by that tyrant Necessity reduced to such abject exigents, wandering like grandchildren of old Erra Paters, those learned almanac-makers, without any Maecenas to cherish their lofty conceptions, prostituted by the misfortune of our silence to inexplicable miseries, having no heavenly Castalian sack to actuate and inform their spirits almost confounded with stupidity and coldness by their frequent drinking (and glad too they can get it) of fulsome ale and heretical beer as their usual beverage.

To conclude this our humble complaint, great Phoebus and you nine sacred Sisters, the patronesses of wit and protectresses of us poor disrespected comedians, if for the present by your powerful intercessions we may be reinvested in our former houses, and settled in our former calling, we shall for the future promise never to admit into our sixpenny-rooms those unwholesome enticing harlots that sit there merely to be taken up by prentices or lawyers' clerks, nor any female of what degree soever, except they come lawfully with their husbands or near allies. The abuses in tobacco shall be reformed, none vended, nor so much as in threepenny galleries, unless of the pure Spanish leaf. For ribaldry or any such paltry stuff as may scandal the pious and provoke the wicked to looseness, we will utterly expel it, with the bawdy and ungracious poets the authors, to the Antipodes. Finally we shall hereafter so demean ourselves as none shall esteem us of the ungodly, or have cause to repine at our action or interludes: we will not entertain any comedian that shall speak his part in a tone, as if he did it in derision of some of the pious, but reform all our disorders, and amend all our amisses, so prosper us Phoebus and the nine Muses, and be propitious to this our complaint.

The Actors Remonstrance 1643

CHAPTER VIII

THE COURT

What infinite heart's ease

Must kings neglect that private men enjoy!
And what have kings that privates have not too,
Save ceremony, save general ceremony?
And what art thou, thou idle ceremony?
What kind of god art thou, that suffer'st more
Of mortal griefs than do thy worshippers?
What are thy rents? what are thy comings-in?

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'Tis not the balm, the sceptre and the ball,
The sword, the mace, the crown imperial,
The intertissued robe of gold and pearl,
The farced title running 'fore the king,
The throne he sits on, nor the tide of pomp
That beats upon the high shore of this world,
No, not all these, thrice-gorgeous ceremony,
Not all these, laid in bed majestical,

Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave,
Who with a body fill'd and vacant mind
Gets him to rest, cramm'd with distressful bread.

Henry V., IV. i. 256-290
About, about!

Search Windsor castle, elves, within and out:
Strew good luck, ouphs, on every sacred room,
That it may stand till the perpetual doom,
In seat as wholesome as in state 'tis fit,
Worthy the owner, and the owner it.
The several chairs of order look you scour
With juice of balm and every precious flower:
Each fair instalment, coat, and several crest,
With loyal blazon, ever more be blest!

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