ABSTRACT
Discord and plots which have undone our age with the same ruin have o'erwhelmed the stage. Our house has suffered in the common woe; we have been troubled with Scotch rebels too: With bonny bluecap there they act all night For Scotch half-crown, in English three-penny hight. The Popish Plot controversy began in October 1678 and continued through 1679. There is evidence that the theatres did badly during the crisis as a result of public anxieties. After dissension in the King's Company a group of the younger players went to Edinburgh in 1679 and acted there, returning in February 1680. Edward Ravenscroft's 'Prologue, Spoken before the Long Vacation' printed in his Titus Andronicus. An Irish company whose patron was the Duke of Ormonde played at the Act in 1677: see the Epilogue spoken then by John Haines.
