" John
Stephens, writing in 1615, and describing "a common player," observes,
"I prefix the epithet 'common' to distinguish the base and artless
appendants of our City companies, which oftentimes start away into
rustical wanderings, and then, like Proteus, start back again into
the City number." The strollers were of two classes, however. First,
the theatrical companies protected by some great personage, wearing
his badge or crest, and styling themselves his "servants"--just as to
this day the Drury Lane troop, under warrant of Davenant's patent,
still boast the title of "Her Majesty's Servants"--who attended at
country seats, and gave representations at the request or by the
permission of the great people of the neighbourhood; and secondly, the
mere unauthorised itinerants, with no claim to distinction beyond such
as their own merits accorded to them, who played in barns, or in large
inn-yards and rooms, and against whom was especially levelled the Act
of Elizabeth declaring that all players, &c., "not licensed by any
baron or person of high rank, or by two justices of the peace, should
be deemed and treated as rogues and vagabonds."

The suppression of the theatres by the Puritans reduced all the
players to the condition of strollers of the lowest class. Legally
their occupation was gone altogether. Stringent measures were taken to
abolish stage-plays and interludes, and by an Act passed in 1647, all
actors of plays for the time to come were declared rogues within the
meaning of the Act of Elizabeth, and upon conviction were to be
publicly whipped for the first offence, and for the second to be
deemed incorrigible rogues, and dealt with accordingly; all stage
galleries, seats, and boxes were to be pulled down by warrant of two
justices of the peace; all money collected from the spectators was to
be appropriated to the poor of the parish; and all spectators of
plays, for every offence, fined five shillings. Assuredly these were
very hard times for players, playhouses, and playgoers. Still the
theatre was hard to kill. In 1648, a provost-marshal was nominated to
stimulate the vigilance and activity of the lord mayor, justices, and
sheriffs, and among other duties, "to seize all ballad-singers and
sellers of malignant pamphlets, and to send them to the several
militias, and to suppress stage-plays." Yet, all this notwithstanding,
some little show of life stirred now and then in the seeming corpse of
the drama. A few pla