The English Moral Plays 373 
pageant-like. The Lords’ retainers, their escutcheons, and their display 
of costume, would be especially suitable in a civic show. The clash 
between the Lords of London and the Lords of Spain, which clear- 
ly typifies the defeat of the Armada and the glory of London, 
has the statuesque nature of a charade.! Here again is a marked 
departure from the typical religious play. 
But already in these two long Elizabethan plays a point has been 
reached well beyond the heat of the controversy. The plays handle 
public matters, but without the bitterness of the controversialist ; 
and poor Simplicity’s humorous plea for the three absurd reforms 
apparently travesties such characters as Pauper and John Common- 
wealth. It is therefore time to close this chapter with a brief ac- 
count of the attitude of the government toward these plays of 
reform.” 
It must not be supposed that Tudor sovereigns let pass unnoticed 
this interference of the dramatists in the management of church 
and state; there was the doctrine of the divine nght of kings to 
be maintained. Henry still stood ready to sanction “plays and 
enterludes for the rebukyng and reproching of vices and the setting 
forth of vertue,’ but he soon learned how troublesome those were 
that meddled with “interpretacions of scripture, contrary to the 
doctryne set forth or to be set forth by the kynges maiestie.” ® 
To follow the measures of repression and regulation that were 
authorized by royal proclamation and act of Parliament is not easy. 
Plays of one religious stripe were as useful, the different sovereigns 
felt, as those of the other were obnoxious; Henry at first saw a 
difference between plays that handled religious affairs and those 
that bothered with kingship. Discrimination on the part of the 
rulers was therefore necessary, and evasion, in consequence, was 
accepted by the players as their privilege. History, then, is not 
altogether clear. 
The first repressive measures of which the records bear trace 
were taken by Cardinal Wolsey in 1526 to bring to punishment 
those responsible for the performance at Gray’s Inn of John Roo’s 
morality, Lord Governaunce and Lady Publike-Wele.® Taking it as 
an attack upon his public policy, Wolsey “in a greate furie sent 
for the said master Roo, and toke from hym his Coyfe, and sent 

1 461—75. 
2 Simplicity is one of the few genuinely humorous characters of the 
morality plays. 
3 34 and 35 Henry VIII, c. 1. 1543. “ Chambers, 2. 220. 
* Hall, 719. 
