came to the cradle, when all the court was in the greatest jollity; and then the foremost old man with his mace stroke a fearfull blow upon the cradle; wherewith all the courtiers, with the three ladies, and the vizard, all vanished; and the desolate prince starting up bare-faced, and finding himself thus sent for to judgement, made a lamentable complaint of his miserable case, and so was carried away by wicked spirits. This prince did personate in the Morall, the wicked of the world; the three ladies, Pride, Covetousness, and Luxury; the two old men, the end of the world, and the last judgement. This sight took such impression in me, that when I came towards mans estate, it was as fresh in my memory, as if I had seen it newly acted."3

The writer of this book appears to have been born in the same year with our great poet (1564). Supposing him to have been seven or eight years old when he saw this interlude, the exhibition must have been in 1571 or 1572.

4

I am unable to ascertain when the first Morality appeared, but incline to think not sooner than the reign of King Edward the Fourth (1460). The publick pageants of the reign of King Henry the Sixth were uncommonly splendid; and being then first enlivened by the introduction of speaking allegorical personages properly and characteristically habited, they naturally led the way to those personifications by which Moralities were distinguished from the simpler religious dramas called

› Mount Tabor, &c. 8vo. 1659. pp. 110, et seq. With this curious extract I was favoured, several years ago, by the Rev. Mr. Bowle of Idmiston near Salisbury.

4

• See Warton's History of English Poetry, Vol. II. p. 199.

Mysteries. We must not, however, suppose, that, after Moralities were introduced, Mysteries ceased to be exhibited. We have already seen that a Mystery was represented before King Henry the Seventh, at Winchester, in 1487. Sixteen years afterwards, on the first Sunday after the marriage of his daughter with King James of Scotland, a Morality was performed. In the early part of the

5

Sir James Ware, in his Annales, folio, 1661, after having given an account of the statute, 33 Henry VIII. c. i. by which Henry was declared King of Ireland, and Ireland made a kingdom, informs us, that the new law was proclaimed in St. Patrick's church, in the presence of the Lord Deputy St. Leger, and a great number of Peers, who attended in their parliament robes. "It is needless," he adds, "to mention the feasts, comedies, and sports which followed." "Epulas, comoedias, et certamina ludicra, quæ sequebantur, quid attinet dicere?" The mention of comedies might lead us to suppose that our sister kingdom had gone before us in the cultivation of the drama; but I find from a MS. in the library of Trinity College, Dublin, that what are here called comedies, were nothing more than pageants. "In the parliament of 1541," says the author of the memoir, "wherein Henry VIII. was declared king of Ireland, there were present the earls of Ormond and Desmond, the lord Barry, M'Gilla Phædrig, chieftaine of Ossory, the son of O'Bryan, M'Carthy More, with many Irish lords; and on Corpus Christi day they rode about the streets in their parliament-robes, and the NINE WORTHIES was played, and the Mayor bore the mace before the deputy on horseback."

Two of Bale's Mysteries, God's Promises, and St. John Baptist, we have been lately told, were acted by young men at the market-cross in Kilkenny, on a Sunday, in the year 1552. See Walker's Essay on the Irish Stage, 4to. 1789, and Collect. de Rebus Hiber. Vol. II. p. 388: but there is a slight error in the date. Bale has himself informed us, that he was consecrated Bishop of Ossory, February 2, 1552-3, (not on the 25th of March, as the writer of Bale's Life in Biographia Britannica asserts,) and that he soon afterwards went to his palace in Kilkenny. These Mysteries were exhibited there on the 20th of August, 1553, the day on which Queen Mary was proclaimed, as appears from his own account: "On the xx daye of August was the ladye Marye with us at Kilkennye proclaimed Quene of England, &c. The yonge men in the forenone played a tragedy

reign of King Henry the Eighth, they were perhaps performed indiscriminately; but Mysteries were probably seldom represented after the statute

of Gods Promises in the old Lawe, at the market-crosse, with organe-plainges and songes, very aptely. In the afternone agayne they played a comedie of Sanct Johan Baptistes preachinges, of Christes baptisynge, and of his temptacion in the wildernesse, to the small contentacion of the prestes and other papistes there." The Vocacyon of Johan Bale, 16mo. no date, sign. C 8.

The only theatre in Dublin in the reign of Queen Elizabeth was a booth (if it may be called a theatre) erected in Hoggin Green, now College Green, where Mysteries and Moralities were occasionally performed. It is strange, that so lately as in the year 1600, at a time when many of Shakspeare's plays had been exhibited in England, and Lord Montjoy, the intimate friend of his patrons Lord Essex and Lord Southampton, was Deputy of Ireland, the old play of Gorboduck, written in the infancy of the stage, (for this piece had been originally presented in 1562, under the name of Ferrex and Porrex,) should have been performed at the Castle of Dublin: but such is the fact, if we may believe Chetwood the prompter, who mentions that old Mr. Ashbury had seen a bill dated the 7th of September, 1601, (Queen Elizabeth's birth-day,) "for wax tapers for the play of Gorboduck done at the Castle, one and twenty shillings and two groats." Whether any plays were represented in Dublin in the reign of James the First, I am unable to ascertain. Barnaby Riche, who has given a curious account of Dublin in the year 1610, makes no mention of any theatrical exhibition. In 1635, when Lord Strafford was Lord Lieutenant, a theatre, probably under his patronage, was built in Werbergh Street; which, under the conduct of the well-known John Ogilby, Master of the Revels in Ireland, continued open till October, 1641, when it was shut up by order of the Lords Justices. At this theatre, Shirley's Royal Master was originally represented in 1639, and Burnel's Landgartha in 1641. In 1662 Ogilby was restored to his office, and a new theatre was erected in Orange Street, (since called Smock Alley,) part of which fell down in the year 1671. Agrippa, King of Alba, a tragedy translated from the French of Quinault, was acted there before the Duke of Ormond, in 1675; and it continued open, I believe, till the death of King Charles the Second. The disturbances which followed in Ireland put an end for a time to all theatrical entertainments.

34 and 35 Henry VIII. c. 1, which was made, as the preamble informs us, with a view that the kingdom should be purged and cleansed of all religious plays, interludes, rhymes, ballads, and songs, which are equally pestiferous and noysome to the commonweal. At this time both Moralities and Mysteries were made the vehicle of religious controversy; Bale's Comedy of the three Laws of Nature, printed in 1538, (which in fact is a Mystery,) being a disguised satire against popery; as the Morality of Lusty Juventus was written expressly with the same view in the reign of King Edward the Sixth. In that of his successor Queen Mary, Mysteries were again revived, as appendages to the papistical worship. "In the year 1556," says Mr. Warton, 66 a goodly stage-play of the Passion of Christ was presented at the Grey-friars in London, on Corpus-Christi day, before the Lord-Mayor, the Privy-council, and many great estates of the realm. Strype also mentions, under the year 1577, a stage-play at the Grey-friers, of the Passion of Christ, on the day that war was proclaimed in London against France, and in honour of that occasion. On Saint Olave's day in the same year,

6

6 "This mode of attack" (as Mr. Warton has observed) "was seldom returned by the opposite party: the catholick worship founded on sensible representations afforded a much better hold for ridicule, than the religion of some of the sects of the reformers, which was of a more simple and spiritual nature." History of English Poetry, Vol. II. p. 378, n. The interlude, however, called Every Man, which was written in defence of the church of Rome, in the reign of Henry the Eighth, is an exception. It appears also from a proclamation promulgated early in the reign of his son, of which mention will be made hereafter, that the favourers of popery about that time had levelled several dramatick invectives against Archbishop Cranmer, and the doctrines of the reformers.

8

the holiday of the church in Silver-street, which is dedicated to that saint, was kept with great solemnity. At eight of the clock at night, began a stage-play of goodly matter, being the miraculous history of the life of that saint, which continued four hours, and concluded with many religious songs." No Mysteries, I believe, were represented during the reign of Elizabeth, except such as were occasionally performed by those who were favourers of the popish religion, and those already mentioned, known by the name of the Chester Mysteries, which had been originally composed in 1328, were revived in the time of King Henry the Eighth, (1533,) and again performed at Chester in the year 1600. The last Mystery, I believe, ever represented in England, was that of Christ's Passion, in the reign of King James the First, which Prynne tells us was "performed at Elie-House in Holborne, when Gundomar lay there, on Goodfriday at night, at which there were thousands present.

In France the representation of Mysteries was forbid in the year 1548, when the fraternity associated under the name of The Actors of our Saviour's Passion, who had received letters patent from King

7 History of English Poetry, Vol. III. p. 326.

That Mysteries were occasionally represented in the early part of Queen Elizabeth's reign, appears from the assertions of the controversial writers. 66 They play" says one of them, “and counterfeite the whole Passion so trimly, with all the seven sorrowes of our lady, as though it had been nothing else but a simple and plain enterlude, to make boys laugh at, and a little 10 recreate sorowful harts." Beehive of the Romishe Churche, 1580, p. 207. See also supra, p. 24, n. 6.

9 Histriomastix, quarto, 1633, p. 117, n. VOL. III.

D