158 
closing all theatres during Lent, with Blackfriars and Paul’s 
specifically named,’ has but one special significance. 
of Essex was to be executed,—his execution occurred March 
25,—and the political state was unquiet. Hence it was well to 
close all places of public gathering, particularly those where in- 
fluential sympathizers of the popular Essex might assemble. This — 
unimportant temporary order of mere expediency,—whether — 
merely for Lent or on account of Essex,—has nothing to do with 
the Queen’s attitude and purposes toward the favored or the less 
favored theatres.’ 
May 13 (signed May 1Io),° 1601, the Privy Council issued a 
restraining order against the company playing at the Curtain on 
account of satirizing persons of prominence, but without attempt- 
ing to enforce against it the order of 1600, by which the Curtain 
should nearly a year ago have been permanently suppressed. The 
present order does not touch the theatre, but merely deals with 
the company in this single offense. It is of present interest 
mainly because in the summer of the same year Jonson at the 
Blackfriars and Dekker at the Globe were waging their con- 
troversy of bitter personal satire without interference by the 
The Earl — 
government.* 
*A part of this order was printed 
by George Chalmers, op. cit., III, 
435. I give here my transcript of 
it from the original records in the 
Privy Council Office :— 
Wednesdaye the xi™ of March 
1600-[1] 
A lettre to the L. Mayo® requir- 
ing him not to faile to take order 
playes w‘"in the Cyttie and the lib- 
erties, especyally at Powles and in 
the Blackfriers, may be suppressed 
during this time of Lent.—Registers 
of the Privy Council, Elizabeth 
(Dec. 7, 1600—Jan. 2, 1602), XVII, 
119. 
*One might be led to suppose so 
from the bare statement in F. G. 
Fleay, op. cit., 160, and Hermann 
Maas, Die Kindertruppen (Diss. 
Gottingen, 1901), 12. 
*In quoting this document, J. P. 
Collier, op. cit., I, 305, and J. O. 
Halliwell-Phillips, op. cit., I, 368, 
give the date as May 10. I find 
May 13 in the original Registers of 
the Privy Council, Elizabeth (Dec. 
7, 1600—Jan. 2, 1602), XVII, 193, at 
Whitehall. May 13 is also given in 
the recent official publication of the 
document in Acts of the Privy 
Council 1600-1601 (ed. J. R. Das- 
ent, New Series, 1906), XXXI, 341, 
346. But see item (idem, 340) from 
the original records that it was 
signed the 10th and bore date the 
13th. Is this significant? 
“In this quarrel Blackfriars is 
regarded as being, through Jonson, 
the aggressor. Shakespeare later in 
the same year, in Hamlet, not only 
administers censure for an unwise 
partisanship in allowing the Chil- 
dren to be made instruments of 
quarrel, but charges more sharply 
that “the nation holds it no sin to 
tarre them to controversy.” See 
further, infra, 171, 174 F;, 180*-81. 
272 
, 
Z 
