“Of Stage-Plays, and Interludes, with Their Wickedness”:
A Selection from Philip Stubbes’s The Anatomie of Abuses (1583)
A Critical Introduction and Annotated Edition
by Carrie Blais, University of British Columbia-Okanagan
THE LIFE OF PHILIP STUBBES (?1550-?1610)
Philip Stubbes [Stubbs], pamphleteer and poet, was born in or after 1550 and died
sometime during or after 1610 (Walsham). His career as a writer is thought to have
begun in the 1580s, and by 1590 Gabriel Harvey1 and Thomas Nashe2 reckoned Stubbes
as one of the “common Pamfletters of London” (Walsham). It appears that Stubbes
considered himself a “gentleman,” since he called himself this in his published works;
however, it is not certain whether he did so for strictly literary purposes, or out of social
pretensions. It has been said that Stubbes attended Cambridge for a short time but
“having a restless and hot head, left that university, rambled thro-several parts of the
nation, and settle for a time in Oxon [i.e., Oxford]” (Walsham). However, there is no
record stating this is indeed true.
Stubbes is best known for his book The Anatomie of Abuses (1583) in which he
forcefully attacks “public and private English life, exposing the supposed abuses of
Elizabethan society” (Kidnie). This book offers a dialogue between Philoponus, the
educated, worldly traveler, and Spudeus, the country yokel (Kidnie). While taking a walk
the two become deeply engaged in a discussion about Elizabethan society. In the chapter
1
Harvey, Gabriel (1552/3–1631), scholar and writer, was born at Saffron Walden, Essex, the eldest son of
Alice (d. 1613) and John Harvey (d. 1593), a yeoman farmer and master rope maker who was a prominent
member of the town's corporation.
2
Nashe [Nash], Thomas (bap. 1567, d. c.1601), writer. Nashe left Cambridge when he was ‘Batchelor of
the third yere’ (that is, after March 1588), and went to London, where he ‘troubled the presse’ with ‘sundrie
workes & volumes’. His earliest work, The Anatomie of Absurdity, was licensed to the publisher Thomas
Hackett on 19 September 1588, strongly suggesting his presence in London by that date.
“Of Stage-Plays, and Interludes, with Their Wickedness,” Philoponus and Spudeus reveal
an unyielding disapproval of the theatre because “otia dant vitia” (to quote Stubbes):
‘leisure leads to vice.’ Philoponus states that “whosoever abuses this work of our God on
stages in plays and interludes, abuses the majesty of God, in the same, making a mocking
stock of him, and purchases to himself eternal damnation” (Stubbes 141). The Anatomie
of Abuses was an instant success having four editions published before 1595. Because
this book was so popular Stubbes then produced a sequel which was called The Display
of Corruptions, “a taxonomical analysis of the vices of various profession and estates”
(Walsham). These books provided Stubbes with a reputation as “a puritan spoilsport and
killjoy” and Thomas Nashe “accused him of being a ‘holy brother’ and ‘privy
Martinist1’” (Walsham).
Stubbes married Katherine Emmes, daughter of William and Katherine Emmes of
London, when Katherine was just 15 years of age. Katherine’s mother was Dutch, but
her maiden name is not known. Katherine, however, was the youngest of six children.
Katherine’s father died sometime in 1583 and she inherited his property.
Stubbes
referred to Katherine as “a perfect paterne of true Christianitie and a mirrour of
womanhood.
Modest, virtuous, and an avid reader of the scriptures” (Walsham).
Interestingly, Katherine prophesied her own death. She unfortunately died of postnatal
complications after the birth of their first son, John (Kidnie): “The parish registers of St
Modwen’s Burton upon Trent,2 confirm the baptism of John Stubbes on 17
1
A follower of Martin Luther, a Lutheran. In the 16th c. the designation was used by Roman Catholic
writers as coextensive with protestant; applied, e.g., to the reformed Church of England. Now chiefly
applied to doctrinal views held by Luther in opposition to other reformers,
2
St Modwenna [Modwen] of Burton (fl. before 12th cent.), whose bones were enshrined in the abbey of
Burton upon Trent. Conchubranus's version, in the sole surviving manuscript (a copy made at or for Burton
in the early twelfth century), reports that, after the saint had cured Alfred, son of an English king, she came
2
November 1590 and the burial of Katherine on 14 December” (Kidnie).
Within six months of Katherine’s death, Stubbes produced a biography entitled “A
Christal Glasse for Christian Women Containing, A most excellent Discourse, of the
godly life and Christian death of Mistresse Katherine Stubs.” This pamphlet became
more successful than the Abuses, reaching at least “twenty-four editions by 1637.” The
following year Stubbes assembled a collected work of prayers under the title “A perfect
Pathway to Felicitie, Conteining godly Meditations, and praiers, fit for all times.”
Stubbes’s last pamphlet was titled “A motive to good workes,” which contains material
much like that found in The Anatomie of Abuses (Kidnie).
ANTI-THEATRICALISTS AND THEIR DISAPPROVAL OF THE THEATRE
In “Of Stage-Plays, and Interludes, with Their Wickedness,” Stubbes aggressively
condemns the theatre:
All stage-plays, interludes, and comedies are either of
divine or profane matter: If they be of divine matter,
then they are most intolerable, or rather sacrilegious;
for that the blessed word of God, is to be handled
reverently, gravely, and sagely, with veneration to the
glorious majesty of God, which shines therein, and not
scoffingly, floutingly, and jibingly, as it is upon stages
in plays and interludes, without any reverence, worship,
or veneration to the same (140)
Stubbes and his fellow anti-theatricalists had one common, tormenting fear of the theatre,
that it “could structurally transform men into women” (Levine 10). Stubbes believed that
“male actors who wore women’s clothing could literally “‘adulterate’ male gender”
(Levine 10). This fear of transforming genders seems absurd to the twenty-first century
to England and was rewarded by the grant of land in the Forest of Arden. Her bones, according to this
account, lay on the island of Andresey, in the Trent by Burton.
3
reader, but during the Elizabethan period, it plagued the minds of anti-theatricalists. One
of Stubbes’s contemporaries and a fellow hater of the theatre, Stephen Gosson says:
The Law of God very straightly forbids men to put
on women’s garments, garments are set downe for
signes distinctive between sexe and sexe, to take unto
us those garments that are manifest signes of another
sexe, is to falsify, forge and adulterate, contrarie to the
expresse rule of the words of God. Which forbiddeth
it by threatening a curse unto the same. (qtd. in Levine 20)
For these writers, garments then signified that which is male and that which is female,
and thus to “cross-dress” was considered depravity or moral corruption; an evil, immoral,
or wicked habit; or an indulgence in a degrading pleasure.
The antitheatricalists’
vilification of those who confused these signs meant to distinguish man from woman in
turn reveals an acute anxiety about that which lies beneath the garments: “the self.”
HOW ANTI-THEATRICALISTS SAW THE “SELF”
Anti-theatricalists saw the self as “fixed and stable, ‘uniforme’ and ‘distinct’”
(Levine 10). Another of Stubbes’s fellow antitheatricalists, William Prynne, views the
self as something God-given, consisting of “a uniforme, distinct and proper being to
every creature.” This description of the self is, however, rather contradictory, because if
the self is stable and fixed, why then should the antitheatricalists feel threatened by the
theatre? If the self is stable, then a man cannot be transformed into a woman by the
activity of theatrical cross-dressing. Stephen Greenblatt challenges this notion of an
absolute self through what he refers to as Renaissance ‘self-fashioning,’ which
completely rejects the idea that the self is fixed and stable. Rather, Greenblatt argues that
the “fashioning of human identity [is] a manipulable, artful process,” and that there is
4
(and indeed in the Renaissance there was) “‘no inherent self’” (Levine 11). Neither
model of the self really explains Stubbes’s widely held fears of effeminization, and
indeed the anti-theatricalists themselves have a very contradictory model of the self: on
the one hand, they see the self as “inherently monstrous,” but “on the other [hand], [they
see] the self [as] inherently nothing at all” (Levine 12). From this point of view “StagePlays and Actors” become the object of displacement, where “the male actor, dressed in
women’s clothing, seems to lack an inherent gender” (Levine 12) and this is what
transforms him into a monstrous being. In Anatomie of Abuses, Stubbes refers to men
who dress in women’s clothing as “monsters of both kinds, half women, half men”
(Levine 19). Stubbes’s anxiety stems from the idea that this monstrous self has no
“essential nature-because it has no essential gender” (Levine 19). Why is it, then, that
anti-theatricalists fear that acting and watching plays can have the effect of men turning
into women? Why is it only masculinity that needs to be enacted? (Levine 8). Femininity
appears to be the default position, “the otherness one is always in danger of slipping into”
(Levine 8). Why is there so much misplaced anxiety over the “slipping self,” if in the
Renaissance the self was viewed as “fixed,” “stable,” “uniform” and “distinct”? Why do
these tracts so frequently imagine a man being magically transformed into a woman?
PLAYS ARE MAGIC
Anti-theatrical tracts are influenced by both “explicit and implicit claims about
magic” (Levine 12). For these writers, this magic consists of the power to turn men into
beasts (Levine 12). Stubbes and his fellow antitheatricalists represent plays as magic,
because plays can turn men into aggressive beasts, but more importantly because they can
5
turn men into “puppets, passive will-less robots” (Levine 12).
More compelling,
however, is Gosson’s notion that an actor can magically make an audience member into
his “mirror image, a version of himself,” and that “the audience can be made
compulsively to imitate what happens in the play” (Levine 13). If there are male actors
cross-dressing in women’s clothing, the frantic fear is that the spectators will return to
their safe homes where they will covertly transform themselves into the “monstrous
beings” that have lain beneath the actors’ garments. Thus, ultimately there are two
magical anxieties about the self in relation to the theatre, one being that underneath the
costume is a monster, and the other, that underneath the costume there is nothing at all
because the self is pliable, manipulable, and easily unshaped (Levine 14): “In other
words, it is possible for anti-theatricalists to maintain a view of theatre as malignant
magic bent on unshaping and animalizing the self, because they hold the contrary view of
the self as shapless and animal-like to begin with” (Levine 17).
JUDITH BUTLER’S THEORY OF PERFORMATIVITY
If the self is shapeless, then the self is subject to being shaped, formed, and
constructed through what Judith Butler refers to as “repetitious performative acts”
(Sullivan 85). Judith Butler argues that:
[G]ender is neither natural or innate, but rather, is a social
construct which serves particular purposes and institutions.
Gender, she says, is the performative effect of reiterative acts,
that is, acts that can be, and are repeated. These acts which are
repeated in and through a highly rigid regulatory frame, ‘congeal
over time to produce the appearance of a substance, of a natural
sort of being.’ (Sullivan 82)
6
These reiterative acts create the idea of a gender, which is precisely what the antitheatricalists fear. If a man is acting the role of a woman, then he can create the idea that
he is a woman and ultimately engage in sexual acts with another man while performing
the gender role of a woman. Stubbes’s description of the behavior of play-goers when
the play is over reflects his belief in this sequence and its outcome: “every one brings
another homeward of their way very friendly, and in their secret conclaves [i.e., covertly]
they play the sodomites, or worse. And these be the fruits of plays and interludes, for the
most part (145). Therefore, ‘doing,’ which is acting as a woman in stage-plays, leads to
‘being,’ being a monstrous ‘other,’ a woman. This theory then partly explains the antitheatricalists’ anxiety that acting can indeed dissolve a person’s ‘true’ gender, leading to
vice and sin (Levine 14). In “Of Stage-Plays, and Interludes, with Their Wickedness”
Stubbes repetitively condemns the theatre and its actors because “the shameless gestures
of actors serve to nothing so much as to move the self to lust and uncleanness,” stating
that it was for this reason that “it was decreed that no Christian man, or woman should
resort to plays or interludes where is nothing but blasphemy, scurrility, and whoredom
maintained (142).
Stubbes’s claims again bring the modern reader face-to-face with the antitheatricalists’ contradictory notion of the self as stable. According to Stubbes, the self is
“moved” to “lust and uncleanness” through cross-dressing.
If one is repetitiously
performing on stage a gender that is not one’s own, what is created is “the illusion of an
innate and stable (gender) core” (Sullivan 82). A man cross-dressing in woman’s garb
indicates how illusory is the notion of an “innate and stable female gender core.” This is
the magic which anti-theatricalists are referring to as the power to turn men into beasts,
7
into the ‘other’ --- feminine, foreign, satanic (Levine 13).
This is the fear “that
representations can actually alter the things they are merely supposed to represent”
(Levine 5). According to anti-theatricalists the Elizabethan stage was invented by the
“Devil, practiced by the heathen gentiles, and dedicated to their false idols” (Stubbes
143). The stage became a filthy, corrupt and damnable place, where mischief and
unspeakable acts made it “Satan’s synagogue”:
Oh intolerable blasphemy! Are filthy plays and
bawdy interludes comparable to the word of God, the
food of life, and life itself? It is all one, as if they had
said, bawdry, heathenry, paganry, scurrility, and
devilry itself, is equal with the word of God; or that
the Devil is equivalent with the Lord. (Stubbes 143)
CROSS-DRESSING, THE SELF AND SEXUAL DESIRE:
THE ISSUE OF SODOMY
Judith Butler sees gender identity as created through a process of performative
acts, as “constituted in and through relations with others and with a world.” For Butler,
“all action is contextual, uncertain, dispersed, inter-subjective, ‘in-process,’ and so on”
(Sullivan 85). Butler’s theory articulates very well the wellsprings of antitheatrical fear.
If there is no inherent self, as Greenblatt states, and if human identity is the contingent
result of a manipulable, “artful process” (Levine 11), then the antitheatricalists’ anxiety
over theatre’s ability to transform gender is clearly warranted. Those who are opposed to
the theatre are the ones who are most threatened, because as men, as those who stand at
the epitome of their society’s gender hierarchy, they have the most power and thus the
most to lose in a world of gender fulidity. Arguably, the antotheatricalists also seem to
feel most threatened because they are aware (on some level) of the very characteristics of
8
self and identity that Butler has described some 400 years later: that the self is contingent,
fluid, unstable. In this context, how is a modern reader to understand Renaissance
representations of same-sex desire and erotic activities? What was a Renaissance man to
do and how was he represented if he rejected the divine plan for human sexuality:
compulsory heterosexuality? As Alan Bray has noted in his ground-breaking study
Homosexuality in Renaissance England, “[h]omosexual behavior was viewed in terms of
the sexual act and not an individual’s overall identity” (Bray 25). If this is the case, and if
one’s identity is not stable and ‘doing’ becomes ‘being,’ we are further ahead as modern
readers in understanding how and why Stubbes represents the final result of watching
plays as engaging in ‘sodomy,’ to use the Renaissance for men who engaged in sexual
acts with other men. For Stubbes, men who playedg women on the Renaissance stage,
and men who watched other men play women on the stage, might well ‘play’ the
woman’s role sexually off-stage. If gender identity is fluid, then any play-goer, whether
male or female, according to Stubbes and his fellow anti-theatricalists, is subject to acting
as a sodomite.
Ultimately, Stubbes’ representation of play-goers hasting home to homosexual
relations has radical implications, since it makes the naturalness of heterosexuality simply
another “cultural fiction” (Butler, cited in Sullivan 85): “If there is no inner core, there
can be no such thing as hetero/homosexuality” (Sullivan 85). Even though the term
‘homosexual’ was not coined during this period, ‘sodomite’ and ‘tribade’ [i.e., women
who engage in sexual acts with other women] were, and these terms and their use suggest
that homoerotic and homosexual behaviors were viewed as corrupt and sinful, because
they went against God’s divine plan: “they are not of God, who refuse to hear his word
9
(for he that is of God hears God, his word says our savior Christ) but of the Devil, whose
exercises they go to visit” (Stubbes 144). However, homosexual erotic activity also
clearly disturbs Stubbes because it represents the dissolution of the play-goer’s self that
he believes theatre affects.
ANTI-ANTI-THEATRICALITY: SHAKESPEARE
Although William Prynne describes stage plays as part of a “demonic tangle of
obscene practices proliferating like a cancer in the body of society” (Greenblatt et al 36),
Shakespeare’s plays, in particular his comedies and romances that feature cross-dressed
heroines, “[re-]imagine the world the anti-theatricalists feared, one in which men really
could be turned into women” (Levine 4), and they challenge and defend against these
obsessive anti-theatricalist anxieties. Although Shakespeare’s own erotic preferences
remain a matter of debate---his Sonnets suggest he may have been bisexual---his plays
featuring cross-dressed heroines would have been viewed by Stubbes and Prynne as
exactly the sort of dramas that provoke felonious sexual desires, both hetero- and
homosexual in nature. Although stage cross-dressing was a necessity brought about by
the all-male Elizabethan stage (women in England were barred from performing on the
public stage until after 1660), critics have noted that Shakespeare’s use of cross-dressing
in complex, and in fact may question the patriarchal structures of his time. Shakespeare
attempts to undo the policing of gender boundaries and this attempt may perhaps be
partly why the anti-theatricalists were so anxious about “real” gender boundaries.
Elizabethan stage cross-dressing inevitably addresses patriarchal notions of
gender. As a result, the theatre in particular generated confusion, discomfort and anxiety
10
about the self. Gosson states that “theatre effiminates the mind” (Levine 3), while
William Prynne similarly writes:
Effeminate mixed dancing, dicing, stage-plays, lascivious
pictures, wanton fashions, face-painting, health-drinking,
long hair, love-locks, periwigs, women’s curling, powdering
and cutting of their hair, bonfires, New-year’s gifts, Maygames, amorous pastorals, lascivious effeminate music,
excessive laughter, luxurious disorderly Christmaskeeping, mummeris…[are] wicked, unchristian pastimes.
(qtd. in Greenblatt et al 36).
As Stubbes points out, because cross-dressing violated a biblical prohibition, the theatre
itself was Satan’s domain (Greenblatt et al 36). For this and other reasons, Elizabethan
theatres were forced outside city jurisdictions. Many campaigned to shut down the
theatre altogether; however, the resolution of this conflict was to oversee, regulate, and
censor it instead (Greenblatt et al 36). Queen Elizabeth “drafted a proposal that for the
first time envisaged a system for the prior review and regulation of plays throughout her
kingdom”:
The Queen’s Majesty doth straightly forbid all manner
interludes to be played either openly or privately, except
the same be notified beforehand, and licenses within any
city or town corporate, by the mayor or other chief officers
of the same, and within any shire, by such as shall be
lieutenants for the Queen’s Majesty in the same shire, or by
two of the Justices of Peace inhabiting within that part of
the shire where any shall be played. . . . And for instruction to
every of the said officers, her Majesty doth likewise charge
every matters of religion or of the governance of the estate
of the commonweal shal not be handled or treated upon, but
by men of authority, learning and wisdom, nor be handled
before any audience, but of grave and discreet persons.
(qtd. in Greenblatt et al 37)
Moreover, the theatre continued to prosper under this system of regulation, even after
Shakespeare’s death.
Despite the antitheatricalists’ anxieties over the theatre, “the
11
censors knew that audiences and readers were quite adept at applying theatrical
representations distanced in time and space to their own world” (Greenblatt et al 38).
Shakespeare’s productions prospered regardless of anti-theatricalist views, however,
partly because cross-dressing was such a fascinating erotic spectacle to Elizabethan
audiences.
IN CONCLUSION
Stubbes’s anxiety revolving around the theatre and its effects on the self is
merited; however, his essential underlying fear is that every “self” (male or female) under
the shaping influence of the theatre is susceptible to committing the act of sodomy.
Moreover, sodomy was a potential danger not just for an audience member but also for
male actors cross-dressing in female garments. Because the “self” lacks a stable inner
core and can be constructed through performative acts, everyone is thus susceptible to the
temptation of sodomy. If a man can perform as a woman, the consequent threatening
possibility is that he may perform sexual acts typical of a woman. The belief that
“watching leads inevitably to doing-to compulsive imitiation,” that “watching leads to
taking on the identity of the person watched” (Levine 13), implicates the spectator in
sodomitical desires and actions. Not only is the actor subject to such vice and corruption,
so too is the spectator who observes and then imitates him.
After all, the anti-
theatricalists claim “that wearing women’s clothing is wrong because it is a lie, but [it
also] implies that wearing women’s clothing is dangerous because it can become the
truth” (Levine 21). However, according to Butler, the truth of gender is an illusion
because the acts that supposedly demonstrate our gender are:
performative in the sense that the essence or identity
that they otherwise purport to express are fabrications
manufactured and sustained through corporeal signs
12
and discursive means. That the gendered body is
performative suggests that it has no ontological status
apart from the various acts which constitute its reality.
(Sullivan 82).
What is most compelling and thought-provoking about Butler’s theory and the
antieheatricalists’ anxiety is that there seems to be no truth in gender. A man looks down
and sees that ‘he’ is a ‘he’ because ‘he’ has a penis, but it is only through repetitious,
performative acts that ‘he’ learns that ‘he’ is a indeed a ‘he.’ Therefore, what Stubbes and
his fellow anti-theatricalists fear about the stage is that ‘he’ through repetitious
performance as a ‘she’ will then learn and act out what is gender specific to being a
woman. In short, Stubbes fears what Laura Levine has recently noted, that “men are only
men in the performance of their masculinity (or, put more frighteningly, that they are not
men except in the performance, the constant re-enactment of their masculinity). . . .
[T]hey have no way of knowing they are men except in the re-enactment, the relentless
re-enactment of their own masuclinity” (Levine 7). Otherwise, they are in danger of
slipping into the forever-feared, “monstrous other.”
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“Of Stage-Plays, and Interludes, with Their Wickedness” (From The
Anatomie of Abuses [1583])
Philo[ponus].1 All stage-plays, interludes, and comedies are either of divine or
profane matter: If they be of divine matter, then they are most intolerable, or rather
sacrilegious; for that the blessed word of God, is to be handled reverently, gravely, and
sagely, with veneration to the glorious majesty of God, which shines therein, and not
scoffingly, floutingly,2 and jibingly, as it is upon stages in plays and interludes, without
any reverence, worship, or veneration to the same. The word of our salvation, the price
of Christ, his blood, and the merits of his passion, were not given to be derided and jested
at, as they be in these filthy plays and interludes on stages and scaffolds, or to be mixed
and interlaced with bawdry, wanton shows, and uncomely gestures, as is used (every man
knows) in these plays and interludes. In the first of John we are taught that the word is
God, and God is the word: Wherefore, who so ever abuses this word of our God on stages
in plays and interludes, abuses the majesty of God in the same, making a mocking stock
of him, and purchases to himself eternal damnation. And no marvel; for the sacred word
of God, and God himself, is never to be thought of, or once named, but with great fear,
reverence, and obedience to the same. All the holy company of Heaven, Angels,
Archangels, Cherubs, Seraphins, and all other powers whatsoever, yea, the Devils
themselves (as James says) do tremble and quake at the naming of God, and at the
presence of his wrath: and do these mockers and flouters of his majesty, these
dissembling Hypocrites, and flattering Gnatoes,3 think to escape unpunished? Beware,
therefore, you masking players,4 you painted sepulchers,5 you double dealing
ambidexters, be warned betimes,6 and, like good computistes,7 cast your accompts8
before, what will be the reward thereof, in the end, let God destroy you in his wrath:
abuse God no more, corrupt his people no longer with your dregs,9 and intermingle not
his blessed word with such profane vanities. For at no hand it is not lawful to mix
scurrility with divinity, nor divinity with scurrility.
Theopompus10 mingled Moses’ law1 with his writings, and therefore The Lord
stroke him mad. Theodictes2 began the same practice, but the Lord stroke him blind for it;
‘Philoponus’ means ‘lover of labour.’
floutingly: contemptuously, jeeringly
3
Gnatoes: probably from the Latin, “Gnatho, -onis. m., a parasite”
4
players: actors
5
you painted sepulchers: suggestive of the tomb, funeral, gloomy, dismal (OED Feb 01/07). See also Mt.
23.27, where Jesus condemns the Jewish religious authorities of his time: “Woe unto you, scribes and
Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchers, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but
are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.”
6
betimes: early
7
computistes: accountants
8
accompts: accounts
9
dregs: the more solid particles which settle at the bottom of a solution or other liquid; grounds, lees.
1
2
10
Theopompus: Greek historian and rhetorician, he was born at Chios about 380 BC.
14
it; With many others, who, attempting the like devices, were all overthrown, and died
miserably: besides, what is their judgment in the other World, the Lord only knows.
Upon the other side, if their plays be of profane matters, then tend they to the dishonor of
God, and nourishing of vice, both which are damnable. So that whether they be one or the
other, they are quite contrary to the Word of grace, and sucked out of the Devil’s teats 3 to
nourish us in idolatry, heathenry, and sin. And therefore they, carrying the note, or brand
of God, his curse upon their backs, which way soever they go, are to be hissed out of all
Christian Kingdoms, if they will have Christ to dwell amongst them.
Spud[eus]. Are you able to show, that ever any good men, from the beginning,
have resisted plays and interludes?
Philo. Not only the word of God does overthrow them, adjudging them, and,
maintainers of them to Hell, but also all holy counsels, and synods,4 both general,
national, and provincial, together with all writers, both divine and profane, ever since the
beginning, have disallowed them, and wrote (almost) whole volumes against them.
The learned Father Tertullian,5 in his book De Speculo,6 says that plays were
consecrate[ed] to that false idol Bacchus,7 for that he is said to have found out and
invented strong drink.
Augustinus De Civit. Dei,8 says that plays were ordained by the Devil, and
consecrat[ed] to heathen Gods, to draw us from Christianity to idolatry, and gentilism.
And in another place, Pecunias Histrionibus dare vitium est innane, non virtus.9 To give
money to players is a grievous sin.
Christostom10 calls those plays festa Sathani,1 feasts of the Devil. Lactantius,2 an
an ancient learned Father, says, Histrionum, impudissimi gestus, nihil aliud nisi
Many people confuse Moses’s Law with God’s Ten Commandments, but they are very different. Moses’
law was the temporary, ceremonial law of the Old Testament. It regulated the priesthood, sacrifices,
rituals, meat and drink offerings, etc., all of which foreshadowed the cross.
2
Theodictes: Greek rhetorician and tragic poet of Phaselis in Lycia who lived in the period which followed
the Peloponnesian War.
3
teats: breasts, udders (OED Feb 01/07).
4
synod: Eccl. An assembly of the clergy of a particular church, nation, province, or diocese (sometimes
with representatives of the laity) duly convened for discussing and deciding ecclesiastical affairs. In early
use freq. applied to general councils.
5
Tertullian: Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus, anglicized as Tertullian, (ca. 155-230) was a church
leader and prolific early Christian author and apologist. He was born, lived, and died in Carthage, in what
is today Tunisia.
6
De Speculo: i.e., De Spectaculis (On the Games) is one of Tertullian’s extant moral treatises. Written
somewhere between 197-202, De Spectaculis looks at the moral legitimacy and consequences of Christians
attending the circus, theatre, or amphitheatre (“the pleasures of public shows”). He argues that Christians
should not attend these public spectacles.
7
Bacchus: the classical god of wine and revelry, also known as Dionysus, known also as Eleutherios (a.k.a
“the Liberator”).
8
Saint Augustine (354-430) was one of the most important figures in the development of Western
Christianity. In Roman Catholicism and the Anglican Communion, he is a saint and pre-eminent Doctor of
the Church, and the patron of the Augustinian religious order. One of his most famous works remains De
Civitate Dei (The City of God).
9
Latin, “To give money to actors is a foolish vice, not a virtue.”
10
Christostom: John Chrysostom (349-407), archbishop of Constantinople. He is known for his eloquence
in preaching and public speaking, his denunciation of abuse of authority in the Church and Roman Empire,
and for the Liturgy of St. John Chysostom used in the Eastern Orthodox and Greek-Catholic Churches.
1
15
Libidinem movent: The shameless gestures of Players serve to nothing so much as to
move the flesh to lust and uncleanness. And therefore in the .30. Counsel of Carthage &
Synode of Laodicea,3 it was decreed that no Christian man or woman should resort to
plays or interludes, where is nothing but blasphemy, scurrility, and whoredom
maintained. Scipio,4 seeing the Romans bent to erect theatres and places for plays,
dehorted5 them from it with the most prudent reasons and forcible arguments. Valerius
Maximus6 says, plays were never brought up sine regni rubore,7 without shame to the
country. Arist,8 debars youth access to plays and interludes, least they, seeking to quench
the thirst of Venus,9 do quench it with a pottle10 of fire. Augustus,11 banished Ovid12 for
making books of love, interludes and such other amorous trumpery.13
Constantius14ordained that no actor should be admitted to the table of the Lord.
Then, seeing that plays were first invented by the Devil, practiced by the heathen
gentiles, and dedicate[ed] to their false idols, Gods and Goddesses, as the house, stage
and apparel to Venus, the music to Apollo,15 the penning to Minerva16 and the Muses, the
action and pronunciation to Mercury17and the rest, it is more than manifest, that they are
no fit exercises for a Christian man to follow. But if there were no evil in them save this,
Latin, “Feasts of Satan.”
Lactantius: Firmianus Lactantius was an early Christian author (c. 240-c.320), native of North Africa, and
pupil of Arnobius. He taught rhetoric in various cities of the Eastern Roman Empire.
3
Council of Carthage: held in 419 AD, this council asserted that no Christian should be compelled to
attend the theatre or circus, and that such entertainments should not happen on holy days (Canon 61);
Synod of Laodicea: held in 364 AD, this synod forbade members of the clergy from witnessing plays at
weddings or banquets (Cannon 54).
4
Scipio: Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus Major (235-183 BC) was a general in the Second Punic War
and statesman of the Roman Republic. He was best known for defeating Hannibal of Carthage, a feat that
earned him the surname Africanus, the nickname ‘the Roman Hannibal’ and recognition as one of the finest
commanders in military history.
5
dehorted: dissuade them [through exhortation]; advises or counseled them against.
6
Maximus: Valerius Maximus was a Latin writer and author of a collection of historical anecdotes. He
flourished in the reign of Tiberius. Nothing is known of his personal history except that his family was
poor and undistinguished
7
As is the case with most of his Latin, Stubbes translates this phrase immediately (“without shame to the
country”).
8
Arist.: Aristotle.
9
Venus (known as Aphrodite to the Greeks) was a major Roman goddess principally associated with love,
beauty, and erotic desire.
10
pottle: A pot, tankard, or similar container.
11
Augustus: the most important Roman emperor, he ended a century of civil wars and gave Rome an era of
peace, prosperity, and imperial greatness, known as the Pax Romana or Roman peace, which lasted for over
200 years.
12
Ovid: Publius Ovidius Naso, a Roman poet known to the English speaking world as Ovid, wrote on
topics of love, abandoned women, and mythological transformations.
13
trumpery: deceit, fraud, imposture, trickery.
14
Constantius: Flavius Julius Constantius, known in English as Constantius II, he was a Roman emperor
(337-361) of the Constantinian dynasty.
15
Apollo: ancient Greek archer-god of medicine and healing, light, and truth; he was also a bringer of
death-dealing plague; as the leader of the Muses and director of their choir, he is the god of music and
poetry. Apollo was an oracular god; in Classical times, he took the place of Helios as god of the sun.
16
Minerva: Roman goddess of crafts and wisdom.
17
Mercury: Roman god of trade, profit and commerce; he was well-known for his subtle speech and
trickery.
1
2
16
namely, that the arguments of tragedies is anger, wrath, immunity, cruelty, injury, incest,
murder, and such like: the persons or actors are Gods, Goddesses, Furies, Fiends, Hags,
Kings, Queens, or Potentates. Of comedies, the matter and ground is love, bawdry,
cozenage,1 flattery, whoredom, adultery; the persons, or agents, whores, queans, 2 bawds,3
scullions,4 knaves, courtesans, lecherous old men, amorous young men, with such like of
infinite variety. If, I say, there were nothing else but this, it were sufficient to withdraw a
good Christian from the using of them; for so often as they go to those houses where
Players frequent, they go to Venus’ palace, and Satan’s synagogue to worship Devils, and
betray Christ Jesus.
Spud. But, notwithstanding, I have heard some hold opinion that they be as good
as sermons, and that many a good example may be learned out of them.
Philo. Oh blasphemy intolerable! Are filthy plays and bawdy interludes
comparable to the word of God, the food of life, and life itself? It is all one, as if they had
said, bawdry, heathenry, paganry, scurrility, and devilry itself, is equal with the word of
God; or that the Devil is equivalent with the Lord.
The Lord our God has ordained his blessed word, and made it the ordinary means
of our salvation; the Devil has inferred the other, as the ordinary means of our
destruction; and will they yet compare the one with the other? If he be accursed that calls
light darkness and darkness light, truth falsehood, and falsehood truth, sweet sour, and
sour sweet, then, a fortiori,5 is he accursed that says that plays and interludes be
equivalent with sermons. Besides this, there is no mischief which these plays maintain
not. For do they not nourish idleness? and otia dant vitia,6 idleness is the Mother of vice.
Do they not draw the people from hearing the word of God, from godly lectures and
sermons? For you shall have them flock thither, thick and threefold, when the church of
God shall be bare and empty; And those that will never come at sermons will flow thither
apace. The reason is, for that the number of Christ his elect is but few, and the number of
the reprobate is many; the way that leads to life is narrow, and few tread that path; the
way that leads to death is broad, and many find it. This shows that they are not of God,
who refuse to hear his word (for he that is of God hears God his word, says our savior
Christ) but of the Devil, whose exercises they go to visit. Do they not maintain bawdry,
insinuate foolery, and renew the remembrance of heathen idolatry? Do they not induce
whoredom and uncleanness? [N]ay, are they not rather plain devourers of maidenly
virginity and chastity? For proof whereof, but mark the flocking and running to theatres
and curtains,7 daily and hourly, night and day, time and tide, to see plays and interludes;
where such wanton gestures, such bawdy speeches, such laughing and fleering,8 such
kissing and bussing,9 such clipping and culling,1 such winking and glancing of wanton
1
cozenage: cheating, deception, fraud.
quean: a bold, impudent, or ill-behaved woman; a jade, hussy; and spec. a harlot, strumpet.
3
bawd: pimp or pander
4
scullion: a domestic servant of the lowest rank in a household who performed the menial offices of the
kitchen; hence, a person of the lowest order, esp. as an abusive epithet.
5
a fortiori: Latin, ‘So much the more [from a stronger way of thinking].’
6
Latin, ‘Leads to leisure, which leads to vices.’
7
theatres and curtains: referring to the early London theatres, the Theatre (erected c. 1576 ) and the Curtain
(erected c. 1579)
8
fleering: making a wry face; grinning, grimacing.
9
bussing: kissing wantonly or loudly
2
17
eyes, and the like, is used, as is wonderful to behold. Then, these goodly pageants being
done, every mate sorts to his mate, every one brings another homeward of their way very
friendly, and in their secret conclaves (covertly) they play the sodomites, or worse. And
these be the fruits of plays and interludes for the most part. And whereas you say there
are good examples to be learned in them, truly so there are: if you will learn falsehood; if
you will learn cozenage; if you will learn to deceive; if you will learn to play the
hypocrite, to cog,2 lie, and falsify; if you will learn to jest, laugh, and fleer, to grin, to
nod, and mow;3 if you will learn to play the vice, to swear, tear, and blaspheme, both
Heaven and Earth: If you will learn to become a bawd, unclean, and to devirginate4
maids, to deflower honest wives: If you will learn to murder, slay, kill, pick, steal, rob,
and rove: If you will learn to rebel against Princes, to commit treasons, to consume
treasures, to practice idleness, to sing and talk of bawdry, love and venery: If you will
learn to deride, scoff, mock, and flout, to flatter and smooth: If you will learn to play the
whore-master, the glutton, drunkard, or incestuous person: If you will learn to become
proud, haughty, and arrogant; and, finally, if you will learn to contemn5 God and all his
laws, to care neither for heaven nor hell, and to commit all kind[s] of sin and mischief,
you need to go to no other school, for all these good examples may you see painted
before your eyes in interludes and plays: wherefore that man who gives money for the
maintenance of them must needs incur the damage of praemunire,6 that is, eternal
damnation, except they repent. For the Apostle bids us beware, least we communicate
with other men’s sins; and this their doing is not only to communicate with other men’s
sins, and maintain evil to the destruction of themselves and many others, but also a
maintaining of a great sort of idle lubbers,7 and buzzing dronets, to suck up and devour
the good honey, whereupon the poor bees should live.
Therefore, I beseech all players and founders of plays and interludes, in the
bowels of Jesus Christ, as they tender the salvation of their souls, and others, to leave of
that cursed kind of life, and give themselves to such honest exercises and godly mysteries
as God has commanded them in his word to get their livings withal; for who will call him
a wise man, that plays the part of a fool and a vice? Who can call him a Christian, who
plays the part of a devil, the sworn enemy of Christ? Who can call him a just man, that
plays the part of a dissembling hypocrite? And, to be brief, who can call him a straight
dealing man, who plays a cozener’s trick? And so of all the rest. Away therefore with this
so infamous an art! For go they never so brave, yet are they counted and taken but for
beggars. And is it not true? Live they not upon begging of every one that comes? Are
they not taken by the laws of the realm for rogues and vagabonds? I speak of such as
travel the countries with plays and interludes, making an occupation of it, and ought so to
be punished, if they had their deserts. But hoping that they will be warned now at the last,
1
clipping and culling: embracing and fondling
cog: swindle, hoodwink, cheat
3
mow: grimace, jeer
4
devirginate: deprive of virginity, deflower
5
contemn: despise
6
praemunire: a writ charging a sheriff to summon a person accused of asserting or maintaining papal
jurisdiction in England (originally, one accused of prosecuting abroad a suit cognizable by English law), so
denying the ecclesiastical supremacy of the monarch. Also: a statute, esp. 16 Rich. II c. 5, on which such a
writ is based.
7
lubber: a big, clumsy, stupid fellow; esp. one who lives in idleness; a lout.
2
18
I will say no more of them, beseeching them to consider what a fearful thing it is to fall
into the hands of God, and to provoke his wrath and heavy displeasure against themselves
and others; which the Lord of his mercy turn from us!
Spud. Of what sort be the other kind of plays, which you call Lords of Mis-rule?
For, methink, the very name itself carries a taste of some notorious evil.
19
Works Cited and Additional Reading
Bray, Alan. Homosexuality in Renaissance England. 2nd edn. New York: Columbia, UP.
1995.
---. “Homosexuality and the Signs of Male Friendship.” Queering the Renaissance. Ed.
Jonathan Goldberg. Durham: Durham UP, 1993. 40-61.
Greenblatt, Stephen, et. al. Introduction. The Norton Shakespeare. New York: Norton,
1997.
Kidnie, M. J., South Bank University. “Stubbes, Philip.” The Literary Encyclopedia.
http://www.litencyc.com Accessed 17 March 2007.
Levine, Laura. Men in Women’s Clothing: Anti-theatricality and effeminization, 15791642. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994.
Sullivan, Nikki. A Critical Introduction to Queer Theory. New York: New York UP,
2003.
Stubbes, Philip. The Anatomie of Abuses. London, 1583.
Walsham, Alexandra. “Stubbes, Philip.” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
Online. Oxford UP, 2004. http://www.oxforddnb.com Accessed 24 January
2007.
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