ABSTRACT
In an often quoted sixteenth-century letter to John Rainolds, the Christ Church playwright and fellow William Gager writes of the value of playing and playmaking for students and scholars at the collegiate level. He argues:
Though some like Rainolds, a fellow at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, objected to the curricular use of the drama, perhaps fearing its secular appeal and power, numerous scholars at both Cambridge and Oxford used a variety of play-texts, both original compositions and classical, to entertain and instruct. As John R. Elliott argues, “[such plays] reflected the humanist conception of the practical value that drama was thought to have in the training of young men for public life, either in the church or the state.”2 This training usually included instruction in Christian ethics, either Protestant or Catholic.3 At several Cambridge colleges, most notably St. John’s and Trinity, fellows considered the experience so valuable that they actually required yearly performances.4
