ABSTRACT
In 1592, Queen Elizabeth I and the Privy Council made a rather audacious request of their intellectuals at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. The Christmas season was fast approaching, and a recent outbreak of the plague prohibited the queen’s professional acting company from performing the season’s customary entertainment. To avoid having a Christmas without revels, the crown sent messengers to both institutions, asking for university men to come to court and perform a comedy in English. Cambridge’s Vice Chancellor, John Still, wished to decline this royal invitation, and for advice on how to do so he wrote to his superior, William Cecil, Lord Burghley, who was not only the Chancellor of Cambridge but also Elizabeth’s chief advisor. In this letter, Vice Chancellor Still implies the impropriety of having academics participate in such a performance:
Finding that the request is “nothing beseeminge our Studentes, specially oute of the Vniuersity” and emphasizing that they “neuer vsed any” English comedies, Still insinuates that the crown has crossed a line by asking university men to perform in the vernacular-especially the lighter fare of a comedy. They are academics, after all, not professional stage-players.
