ABSTRACT
In the 'Documents of Control' section of The Elizabethan Stage, E. K. Chambers records a 1574 Act of the Common Council of London which represents an attempt to restrain and regulate public playing within the Liberties. 1 The reasons cited for such restraint are numerous and familiar: the gathering together of playgoers in inns and yards spreads the plague; it creates opportunities for illicit sexual encounters; and it provides the occasion for the dissemination, from the stage, of'unchaste, uncomelye, and unshamefaste speeches and doynges.'2 The document is long, and it contains little that would surprise anyone familiar with Renaissance polemic against the public stage or with the numerous petitions sent by the City to the queen and her council urging the restraint of playing during the next thirty years. What particularly interested me, however, was the way the document concludes, which is thus:
this Act (otherwise than towchinge the publishinge of unchaste, sedycious, and unmete matters:) shall not extend to anie plaies, Enterludes, Comodies, Tragidies, or shewes to be played or shewed in the pryvate hous, dwellinge, or lodginge of anie nobleman, Citizen, or gentleman, which shall or will then have the same thear so played or shewed in his presence for the festyvitie of anie marriage, Assemblye of ffrendes, or otherlyke cawse withowte publique or Commen Collection of money of the Auditorie or behoulders theareot~ reservinge alwaie to the Lorde Maior and Aldermen for the tyme beinge the Judgement and construction Accordinge to equitie what shalbe Counted suche a playenge or shewing in a pryvate place, anie things in this Acte to the Contrarie notwithstanding.
