ll beaten flat until the breath left her body. You will
not be surprised that the heavy hand of these Christian fathers fell
first upon the Theatre: for the actor in Rome was by legal definition an
'infamous' man, even as in England until the other day he was by legal
definition a vagabond and liable to whipping. The policy of religious
reformers has ever been to close the theatres, as our Puritans did in
1642; and a recent pronouncement by the Bishop of Kensington would seem
to show that the instinct survives to this day. Queen Elizabeth--like her
brother, King Edward VI--signalized the opening of a new reign by
inhibiting stage-plays; and I invite you to share with me the pensive
speculation, 'How much of English Literature, had she not relented, would
exist to-day for a King Edward VII Professor to talk about?' Certainly
the works of Shakespeare would not; and that seems to me a thought so
impressive as to deserve the attention of Bishops as well as of Kings.

Apart from this instinct the Christian Fathers, it would appear, had
plenty of provocation. For the actors, who had jested with the Old
Religion on a ground of accepted understanding--much as a good husband
(if you will permit the simile) may gently tease his wife, not loving her
one whit the less, taught by affection to play without offending--had
mocked at the New Religion in a very different way: savagely, as enemies,
holding up to ridicule the Church's most sacred mysteries. Tertullian, in
an uncompromising treatise "De Spectaculis," denounces stage-plays root
and branch; tells of a demon who entered into a woman in a theatre and on
being exorcised pleaded that the mistake might well be excused, since he
had found her in his own demesne. Christians should avoid these shows and
await the greatest _spectaculum_ of all--the Last Judgment. 'Then,' he
promises genially, 'will be the time to listen to the tragedians, whose
lamentations will be more poignant, for their proper pain. Then will the
comedians turn and twist in capers rendered nimbler than ever by the
sting of the fire that is not quenched.' By 400 A.D. Augustine cries
triumphantly that the theatres are falling--the very walls of them
tumbling--throughout the Empire. _'Per omnes paene civitates cadunt
theatra ... cadunt et fora vel moenia in quibus demonia colebantur'_; the
very walls within which these devilments were practised. But the fury is
unabated and goes on stamping down the embers. In the eight