and rogues who assembled at the theaters. Some, like Ariste, who felt that a play in itself was no wrong, were forced into opposition by such disorders, convinced by the nature of the audiences of the immorality of the exhibitions. Such was the character of the French theater during the first twenty or thirty years of the seventeenth century, and such were the opinions regarding it. It was a place avoided by great persons, and shunned by respectable women.1 This was largely because of the rudeness of the early theater. Consequently, in France the opposition attempted a different solution than was reached in England. No Puritan party existed there, and those high in authority who perceived the evils of the art did their best to elevate rather than to suppress it.2 The rulers, not the people, determined the drama's destiny. It was Corneille who set his fellows a good example; it was Louis himself who in 1640 passed restrictive measures forbidding things offensive to good morals; and above all it was Richelieu who worked to uplift the drama, and who encouraged his friend, Scudéry, to publish L'Apologie du théâtre-a strong plea for the supremacy of culture and refinement in place of the ignorance and vice that then ruled the national theater.3 But neither the vindications offered by Scudéry and Molière, in the preface to Tartuffe, nor legislative reforms, could silence the opposition to plays. In 1647 Armaud de Conti published his attack, in which were reviewed all the edicts of ancient states and of the early church against the stage. And when in 1694 Bossuet issued the Maximes et Reflexions sur la Comédie, he affirmed, with the greatest possible conviction, that notwithstanding all measures to reform its abuses, the French theater, even in the greatest efforts of Molière, was still unholy and impure.* This sentiment in France against the stage cannot be called Puritan; for among the people at large it had no ? Petit de Julleville, IV, 365. 1 Ibid., p. 214. 8 Especially, pp. 1, 2, 16-27, 89–100. wide acceptance. Puritan feeling did not prevail. But that such a movement arose at all at the same time that it was growing in England; that in France the evil was admitted by kings, statesmen, and men of all ranks; and that there the corrective measures taken by littérateurs to purge the stage of its pollutions and to render it a moral force in the country failed, all goes to show that the Puritan movement in England was no outburst of prejudice or unfounded scruples, and that the absolute measures taken in 1642 were after all not without reason. Of course the English movement was colored with little Puritan scruples. Other peoples would have said less of the sinful ruffs and the vain attire of the players; France, at least, less of the text in Deuteronomy; and in other communities the plague would not have figured as it did in London. Nevertheless, the English movement was founded on solid ground. The remarkable thing about the English attack was its popular character. In early Christian days the leaders of the church worked almost alone against the evil. In Spain, Mariana, backed by church sentiment and by an austere court, revived the Fathers' words; but he won no support from the people. And in France, though similar conditions drew forth similar objections, there was no Puritan class to support them. But in England the actual contest did not begin till in the soundest strata of society there existed a firm religious sentiment, and a love for morality sufficient to support and strengthen the anti-stage leaders who arose together from the ranks of the clergy, the legal profession and the laity. Moreover, the movement came when on other more important issues the Puritan party was being forced to assume a more marked and positive personality, and when religious persecution was driving the sweetness from their souls. Naturally, the dramatic quarrel, strong even of itself, shared these incentives to rapid growth. The inclination is to speculate whether the Puritan party, had it remained in power, would ever have reopened the play-house. Personally we think that it would. To be sure, the Puritan's development was from soberness to severity, as we see in the maturing years of Hutchinson and Milton. But if the party had remained long enough in power to forget the days of its persecution and ridicule, and long enough to grow used to rule, and so strong in it as to feel its power sure over the forces of disorder and lawlessness, its temper might possibly have softened. Under the leadership of such men as Milton, who was ready to plead for a strictly licensed theater, and who himself was able to embody from sacred story high art in dramatic form, the Puritan party might have ventured to reopen once more the play-house, though in a carefully guarded manner, and to return to a merry though chastened England. Such speculation, however, is idle. The Puritans had won their cause; on the whole they had fought for it well, struggling but the harder in the face of slander; and whatever our own feelings may be on the question of tolerating an art, which, in spite of inherent possibilities for good, has ever been a menace to good order and morality, we must admit that the Puritan was led to his position by the sense of public order and morality, and that his just sentence stopped the vileness of a rapidly deteriorating drama. BIBLIOGRAPHY. The Actors Remonstrance or Complaint, 1643. In The English Drama and Stage. Acts of the Privy Council, 1542-1592. Lond. 1890-. Agrippa. De Incertitudine et vanitate scientiarum, Col. 1583. Alexander, Anglus. See Fabricius. Alley, W. The Poore Mans Librarie. Lond. 1571. Ames, W. Conscience, with the Power and Cases thereof. Lond. 1643. Andrewes, L. The Pattern of Cathechistical Doctrine at Large; or A Learned and Pious Exposition of the Ten Commandments. Lond. 1650. Aquinas, Thomas. 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