ABSTRACT
Another potent influence, both in seeing off much of the amateur drama and in narrowing the gap between what remained and the professional stage, was the rapid change in the conception of playform. The establishment of regular, and eventually purpose-built, playing venues encouraged new attitudes to theatre-going and a longer more free-standing play-form than the older briefer 'interlude'. Except for the Masque, which was clearly marked off as a separate form, and used at least some professional resources, amateur dramatic traditions were in decline as casual and shapeless.1 Queen Elizabeth showed a marked preference for formal plays rather than 'offerings', in a process which is perhaps anticipated in her father's reign by the establishment of the post of Master of Revels, quickly supplanting the older Lord of Misrule.2 In some ways the older forms of drama were more difficult for the authorities to control. However much an institution may perceive festive licence and ritualized inversion as confirming its order and legitimacy, it can never have total confidence in its ability to make them serve a purely positive function. Beneath the whole activity of
institutional drama, and notwithstanding the humanist enthusiasm for reviving classical values, one senses from time to time a much older, amoral, anarchic spirit set to mock anything.
