CHAPTER XII 
THE QUEEN’S PURPOSES.—OPPOSING THEATRICAL AND 
OFFICIAL CONDITIONS, 1597-1603 
WirH 1597 began that attempt at state control of the theatres 
which later under James I put on the novel cloak of exclusive 
royal patronage, and ultimately degenerated into the principle 
of monopoly first granted by Charles II to Killigrew and Dave- 
nant,? whence it passed on down even into the reign of Victoria. 
From 1597 to the close of Elizabeth’s reign more official orders 
.were directed against the public theatres than in all the rest of 
the years together from 1576 to the Puritan suppressions begin- 
ning with the civil war in 1642.° 
No order of permanent suppression emanated from the Queen 
prior to 1597. There had been, however, numerous orders touch- 
ing regulation of the theatres for various causes, especially dur- 
ing periods of infectious disease.* From 1597 to the close of Eliz- 
abeth’s reign, five orders of suppression were issued by the Privy 
Council in her name, besides unimportant temporary regulations. 
The cause for this brief strenuousness has been taken for 
granted to be Puritanism.’ No one has ever given a basis for the 
*See complete work, vol. I. 
* Idem. 
®The facts in this sentence and 
in the following paragraphs in this 
relation are taken from the original 
Registers of the Privy Council, at 
Whitehall Palace.. Only a part of 
these, up to 1602, are as yet avail- 
able in the government publications, 
Acts of the Privy Council. 
“The orders touching the The- 
atre and Curtain are collected by 
J. O. Halliwell-Phillips, Outlines of 
the Life of Shakespeare (9th ed. 
1890), I, 346-75, passim. Numer- 
ous others are in George Chalmers, 
Farther Account of the English 
Stage, published in Malone’s Shake- 
speare Variorum (ed. Boswell, 
1821), III, 414-57. All are avail- 
able in the published Acts of the 
Privy Council (u. s.). 
5J. P. Collier, History of English 
Dramatic Poetry (1831', 1879°), 305, 
329-30, is, so far as I know, the 
first to make the assumption as a 
matter of course. Since then it has 
been accepted as fact by Halliwell- 
Phillips, op. cit., I, 367ff.; Sidney 
Lee, A Life of William Shakespeare 
(5th ed., 1905), 219-20; Karl Mant- 
zius, 4 History of Theatrical Art 
(translated into English by Louise 
von Cossel, 1904), III, 8, 19, 69ff.; 
and nearly every one who has 
touched the field. Recently the as- 
sumption has been used as an in- 
tegral part of a dissertation for the 
262 
: 
