ABSTRACT
Actors and musicians are one of the more surprising exceptions to the Henrician acts of apparel because, as Richard Morrison noted in the 1530s, ‘into the common people things enter sooner by the eyes than by the ears; [they] remembering more better that they see than that they hear’.1 As such, actors and musicians were sometimes regarded with a degree of suspicion because their craft required them to pretend to be other people and to be itinerant. These suspicions were based on the premise that actors had an influential role in society and the nature of that influence depended upon who wrote their material. For instance, in the 1530s and 1540s reformers used plays inspired by biblical texts to comment on current practice within the church. At this point John Bale noted that actors came under further criticism when he observed:
None leave ye unvexed and untroubled – no, not so much as the poor minstrels, and players of interludes … So long as they played lies, and sang bawdy songs blasphemed God, and corrupted men’s consciences, ye never blamed them … But since they persuaded people to worship their Lord God … ye never were pleased with them.2
