When the drama was first introduced in consistency of the same lips uttering the "Amen" of Christian worship and the to England it was under the special pro phrases of an actor: the player, he says, tection of Mother Church, but before long "seeks against the words of Christ to add it outgrew its swaddling bands and became one cubit to his stature by the use of the . the engine for enforcing views, both of a cothurnus : he breaks the divine . law of religious and a political nature, not quite in Deut. XXII. ver. 5, when he puts on a accordance with the orthodoxy of the time. woman's dress." In fact our first authority Henry VIII., to whom his own doxy was will be the Theodosian Code, published alone orthodoxy and every one else's doxy A.D. 438. Here (tit. XV. 5, 6, 7) we find heterodoxy, in 1533 issued a proclamation it provided that the holy sacraments were not prohibiting evil disposed persons preaching to be administered to actors save where death either in public or private, " after their own was imminent, and then only on condition chat brain, and playing of interludes, etc., con the calling should be renounced in case of cerning doctrines in matters in question and recovery. Daughters of actors were not to controversie "; afterwards he passed an act be forced to go on the stage provided that in the thirty-fourth and thirty-fifth years of they lived an honest life: an actress was his reign (ch. 1) which made it a crime to allowed to give up acting in order to be play any interlude contrary to the orthodox faith declared by that monarch, or to be come a nun. Justinian's Code (XI. 40) enacted that declared by him. the statues of actors were not to be placed The preamble states that " divers persons of their perverse, froward and malicious in the public streets, but only in the pro scenium of the theatres. Nowadays statues minds, wills and intents, intending to sub do not abound anywhere, except in mu vert the very true and perfect exposition, seums. Dramatic performances were for doctrine and declaration of the Scripture, bidden by the code (III. 11, 12). In after their perverse fantasies have taken those days amateurs were thought better of upon them to declare and set forth the than professionals; those who acted for same by ballads, plays, rhymes, songs . and money were deemed infamous persons and other fantasies" : and the body of the act so debarred from filling public offices. therefore enacts that no person shall " play (Dig. 3, 2); and by the fifty-first of the in interludes, song or rhyme any matter" Novels of Justinian actresses might break contrary to the doctrines of the Church of their contracts and retire from the stage, Rome: the penalty to be £10, and impris without incurring any penalty. Times have onment for three months for the first changed since then. offence; and forfeiture of all goods and per The Canon Law forbade the clergy acting petual imprisonment for the second. How ever songs, plays and interludes which had plays, or being present thereat, or even con sorting with such wicked people as actors for their object the rebuking and reproach and actresses. It even denied to players ing of vice and the setting forth of virtue, the blessings and comforts of the sacraments, were allowed, so always that they meddled and when the unfortunates yielded up the not with the interpretation of Scripture. ghost refused to them the rites of Christian The air of the theatres in those days was burial. When Moliere, whose name is oft-times laden with profanity. The first greatest in the literature of France, died in thing the government of that precocious 1673, the Bishop of Paris gave orders that youth Edward VI. did was to enact a he should be interred without any cere statute reciting that the most holy and mony. blessed sacrament was named in plays by
