Young—William Gager's Defence of Academic Stage. 603 
Upon receiving a presentation copy of Momus and Gager’s 
accompanying letter, Rainolds composed a letter to Gager, 
bearing the date July 10, 1592, which gives vigorous sup¬ 
port to the strictures uttered by Momus and turned to ridi¬ 
cule in the Epilogus Responsivus. Following, in general, 
the order of Momus , the Queen’s College scholar contends 
as follows: 
1. Stage-players are infamous according to Roman civil 
law. * 1 
2. The law of God forbids man to weare the apparel of 
women. 2 
3. In Gager’s plays young men act the parts of base char¬ 
acters. 3 
4. In such plays time and money are wasted. 4 
5. Such plays profane the Sabbath. 5 
VI. Gager’s reply, 6 dated July 31, 1592, to Rainolds’ 
letter of July 10. 
In the face of Rainolds’ communication of July 10 Gager 
could not remain silent, and his letter of July 31 constitutes 
both a spirited reply to his opponent and a substantial 
is not froward and perverse, may | easelie be satisfied. | Wherein is mani¬ 
festly proved, that it is not onely vnlaw- | full to bee an Actor, but a 
beholder | of those vanities. | Wherevnto are added also and annexed in 
th’ end certeine latine \ Letters betwixt the sayed Maister Rainoldes, and D. | 
Gentiles, Reader of the Civill Law in Oxford, 1 concerning the same matter. | 
1599. 
In 1600 the sheets of this book were reissued, with a new title-page 
naming Middleburgh as the place of publication. In 1629 a new edition 
was published from the press of the University of Oxford. See Boas, 
pp. 247-248. The edition of 1629 differs in no substantial respect from 
that of 1599. The page-numbers are identical. 
1 77?’ overthrow of Stage-Playes, pp. 4-8. 
2 Id., pp. 8-17. 
3 Id., pp. 17-24. 
4 Id., pp. 24-26. 
5 Id., p. 21, where the matter is treated only incidentally. 
6 Corpus Christi College MS. 352, pp. 41-65. The text is written in 
the common Elizabethan cursive. A hand considerably later than that 
of the main text has supplied the following heading: “This is not printed, 
but must come in betweene Dr. Rainolds Answer to Dr. Gagers former 
letters, & Dr. Rainolds reply to this following treatise.” Extracts from 
Gager’s letter are given by F. S. Boas in The Fortnightly Review, August, 
1907, pp. 309-319, and by the present writer in Shakespeare Studies, By 
Members of the Department of English of the University of Wisconsin, 
Madison, 1916, pp. 112-121. In the present article the complete docu¬ 
ment is published for the first time. 
