Yes, it has a watermark. I found it on Look and Learn…

Not quite today, perhaps – in fact, the day before yesterday: on 6 September 1642, an act of Parliament shut down all English theatres for good…

Well, no – that wasn’t to be, of course (and we may like to think that you can’t just abolish theatre like that) but such was the intention of those kill-joys, the Puritans. Truth be told, they and their fathers and grandfathers had been harping about it all through Elizabeth’s reign, and James’ as well, and Charles’ – plays, players and playhouses being clearly the devil’s work and the source of all kinds of evils. Still, it seems that taking theatre away from the English was not all that easy, and for decades, theatre-wise, Puritans hadn’t managed much more than to make an egregious nuisance of themselves. By 1642 things had changed, they controlled Parliament and were in a position to obtain a complete ban on playing, ostensibly on the grounds of “unseemliness” – of all things. Continue reading →