This was the
_coup de grace;_ for the stage had already undergone many and severe
assaults. The player's tenure of his art had become more and more
precarious, until acting seemed to be as a service of danger. The
ordinance of 1647 closed the theatres for nearly fourteen years; but
for some sixteen years before the stage had been in a more or less
depressed condition. Scarcely any new dramatists of distinction had
appeared after 1630. The theatres were considerably reduced in number
by the time 1636 was arrived at. Then came the arbitrary closing of
the playhouses--professedly but for a season. Thus in 1636 they were
closed for ten months; in 1642 for eighteen months. In truth
Puritanism carried on its victorious campaign against the drama for
something like thirty years; while even at an earlier date there had
been certain skirmishing attacks upon the stage. With the first
Puritan began the quarrel with the players. As Isaac Disraeli has
observed, "we must go back to the reign of Elizabeth to comprehend an
event which occurred in that of Charles I." A sanctimonious sect urged
extravagant reforms--at first, perhaps, in all simplicity--founding
their opinions upon cramped and literal interpretations of divine
precepts, and forming views of human nature "more practicable in a
desert than a city, and rather suited to a monastic order than to a
polished people.
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