594 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 
occurred at Oxford, consisting essentially in an exchange 
of opinion between the Christ Church dramatist, William 
Gager, and the learned Dr. John Rainolds of Queen’s Col¬ 
lege. The purpose of the present article is the publication 
of the one substantial contribution to the debate from the 
pen of Gager. By way of elucidating this document I un¬ 
dertake a brief review of the controversy upon the basis of 
the extant records. 1 
I. A letter, dated February 6, 1591 /2, from Rainolds to 
Dr. Thomas Thornton of Christ Church. 2 
From this letter it appears that Dr. Thornton had invited 
Rainolds to be present at the performances of certain 
Shrovetide plays of William Gager, arranged for presentation 
on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, February 5, 6, and 7. 
After Rainolds had declined orally, Thornton repeated the 
invitation, thus inciting Rainolds to send the written refusal 
now before us. 3 The writer takes the following positions: 
(1) The wearing of woman’s apparel by men is condemned 
by Scripture, by Christian writers, and by Church councils; 
(2) The acting of plays entails an undue waste of time and 
money; (3) Plays have a vicious moral effect upon actors 
and audience; (4) Actors were considered “infamous per¬ 
sons” even by the civil law of “whole common weales of 
heathens”; (5) The performance of plays on the Sabbath is a 
profanation of the c^ay. Thornton did not show the letter to 
Gager, but merely informed him later that Rainolds had 
civilly declined on the ground that it was not his habit to 
attend plays. 4 
1 An admirable account is given by Boas, pp. 229-248. My own review 
rests upon that of Boas, and claims for itself no originality beyond that 
involved in the documenting of certain statements. 
2 This letter is found in Corpus Christi College MS. 352, pp. 11-14, 
and in Bodleian, Tanner MS. 77, fob 35 r -36 v . It has been published from 
C. C. C. MS. 352 by the present writer, in Shakespeare Studies, By Mem¬ 
bers of the Department of English of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, 
1916, pp. 108-111. 
3 Rainolds’ letter begins as follows: 
Syr because your curteous inviting of me yesterdaye againe to your 
plaies dothe shewe you were not satisfied with my answer and reason 
therof before geven, why I might not be at them: I have thought good 
by writinge to open that vnto yow which, if tyme had served to vtter 
them by word of mouthe, I doute not but yow would have rested satisfied 
therwith. [C. C. C. MS. 352, p. 11.] See Shakespeare Studies, p. 108. 
4 This statement rests upon the following passage in Gager’s letter of 
July 31, 1592, quoted in full below: 
