fit to allow such public presentations of Tragedies and Comedies as have been formerly permitted by our Royal Predecessors for the harmless recreation and divertisement of such of our good subjects and foreigners as shall be disposed to resort to them; and being well informed of the art and skill of George Jolly, gentleman, for the purposes aforesaid, do hereby give and grant unto the said George Jolly full power and authority to erect one Company, consisting respectively of such persons as he shall chuse and appoint; and to purchase build or hire at his cost and charge one House or Theatre, with all convenient rooms and other necessaries thereunto appertaining, for the representation of Tragedies, Comedies, Plays, Operas, Farces, and all other entertainments of that nature in any convenient place, and likewise to settle and establish such payments, to be paid by those that shall resort to see the said representations performed, as either have been customably given and taken in the like kind, or as shall be reasonable in regard of the great expences of scenes, music, and such new decorations as have been formerly used, with further power to make such allowances, out of that which he shall so receive, to the Actors and other persons employed in the said representations in the said House respectively, as he shall think fit: the said Company to be under the government and authority of him the said George Jolly. And in regard of the extraordinary licenciousness that has been lately used in things of this nature, our pleasure is that you do not at any time hereafter cause to be acted or represented any Play, Enterlude, or Opera containing any matter of profanation, scurrility, or obscenity and this our grant and authority made to the said George Jolly shall be effectual, notwithstanding any former grant made by us to our trusty and well beloved servant Thomas Killigrew, Esq., and Sir William Davenant, Knight, or any other person or persons whatsoever to the contrary. Given under our Signet at the Court at Whitehall, the 24th day of December 1660, in the 12th year of our reign.-By his Majesty's command, : 'EDW. NICHOLAS.' Having thus brought down the historical details regarding VOL. II. E dramatic Representations, Theatres, and Actors, from the earliest times to the period of the Restoration, we proceed to give an account of the pieces themselves, in the various classes to which, as literary productions, they belong. It seems not improbable that more of these have been lost than have been preserved. INTRODUCTION TO MIRACLE-PLAYS. THE dramatic productions of this country exist in no more ancient form than that of plays founded upon the Old and New Testaments, with additions from the apocryphal gospels: the legends of the lives of saints and martyrs appear also to have afforded subjects for exhibitions of the same kind.1 Their proper designation is Miracles, or Plays of Miracles.2 In their earliest state these pieces were of the simplest con1 The history of St. George of Cappadocia seems very frequently to have been employed for this purpose. A Chronicler of the events of the reign of Henry V (see Ann. of the Stage, vol. i, p. 29) gives an account of a representation of St. George, before that King and the Emperor Sigismund at Windsor, in 1416: the description, however, is not very intelligible. The play of St. George was performed in 1511 at Basingbourne, in Cambridgeshire, and the particulars of charge, etc., are given by Warton, Hist. Engl. Poet., iv, 151, edit. 8vo. 2 Warton, Percy, Hawkins, Malone, and others, have concurred in calling them 'Mysteries', a term at a very early date adopted in France, but in any similar sense, we apprehend (until comparatively a recent period), unknown in England. Dodsley, in the preface to the Collection of Old Plays he published in 1744, seems to have been the first to use the word 'Mystery', to denote one of our most ancient dramatic representations. The Latin word commonly employed for this purpose in the infancy of our stage was ludus:-thus Fitzstephen mentions the ludos sanctiores of London, and Matthew Paris, the ludum de Sancta Katherina at Dunstable, adding the further information that such pieces were vulgarly called Miracula. Robert Grossetete, writing his Manuel de Péché, about the same date, terms them in French Miracles; and Robert de Brunne, translating that poem, employs the same word. The author of Piers Ploughman's Crede also calls them 'Miracles', and Chaucer de |