2 a THE QUEEN’S PURPOSES 149 
- theory. Presumably it arises out of attacks of Puritan pam- 
_ phleteers on the theatres, and the general knowledge that Puri- 
_ tanism was a strong and growing element which steadily more 
and more had to be reckoned with in matters of church and state. 
Puritanism was always ascetically opposed to games, plays, and 
_ amusements as ungodly. As early as 1569, for example, a Puri- 
_ tanic pamphlet sharply attacks Elizabeth for using the Children 
_ of the Chapel in theatrical performances.1 The years from that 
time on are strewn with lost waifs of opposition to theatres.’ 
But are these conditions an adequate explanation of the official 
manoeuvers in theatrical regulation from 1597 to 1603? 
The 
Queen was not Puritan, nor were her privy councillors, nor were 
the several Lord Mayors, nor the city council of London. 
these are the sources of the actions. 
evidence of any other. 
Yet 
There is no documentary 
We find, for example, the Lord Mayor and City Council on 
certain occasions asking for general orders of suppression, and 
the Privy Council in the Queen’s name giving, not the general 
orders solicited, but instead very definite and specific orders 
against only the public theatres,* which in turn the same city 
_ officials who made the solicitations refuse to carry out. 
This is not Puritanism. Puritanism would have been quick 
to embrace the opportunity to enforce the slightest restriction 
against any theatre. 
Again, a little over two years after the most drastic of all the 
orders of the Privy Council under Elizabeth, we find that same 
body as constituted under James not merely revoking its own acts 
of 1600 and 1601, but even commanding the City and other offi- 
cials to allow the very conditions they had in the closing years of 
Elizabeth so vigorously attempted to restrict.* 
doctorate by E. N. S. Thompson, 
The Controversy between the Puri- 
tans and the Stage (Yale Studies 
in English, ed. A. S. Cook, 1903, 
XX), particularly on pages 123-27. 
F. G. Fleay, A Chronicle History of 
the London Stage (1890), 161, saw 
the error of this common assump- 
tion, and recognized a conflict of 
City and royal authority, without 
however reaching the cause. 
*The Children of the Chapel 
Siript and Whipt (1569). See su- 
pra, 4". 
*See a collection of these touch- 
ing the Theatre and Curtain to 1607 
in J. O. Halliwell-Phillips, op. cit., 
I, 368-71, 354, 365. See also E. N. 
S. Thompson, op. cit., 40 sqq. 
See the orders of 1597, 1600, 
1601, infra, 152-53, 156, 160-61. 
*See the order of 9 April, 1604. 
263 
