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Document-specific information
Creator: William Fulman
Repository: Corpus Christi College, Oxford, Oxford, UK
Call number and opening: MS 304, fol. 83v - 84r
These last few days the King's stage-players have been here. They have acted with the greatest applause, with the theater full. But they justly struck pious and learned men as impious, because, not content to hit at the alchemists, they most foully besmirched Holy Writ itself. That is, they taunted the Anabaptists, as if improbity hid behind this mask.
Our clergymen, who (I am ashamed to say) most eagerly gathered together…
…our theater never rang with greater applause than when that hypocritical buffoon made his entrance, who, to hold up the false sanctity of the Anabaptists before the spectators as an object of derision, impiously and monstrously sullied Scripture. They also had tragedies, which they acted with decorum and fitness. In these they elicited tears not only with their speaking but also with their physical action.
But that Desdemona, murdered by her husband in our presence, although she always pled her case excellently, yet when killed moved us more, while stretched out on her bed she begged the spectators’ pity with her very facial expression.
Sept. 1610.
[folio 83 verso]
-Postremis his diebus adfuerunt Regis Actores
Scenici. Egerunt cum applausu maximo, pleno the-
atro. Sed viris piis et doctis impii merito visi
sunt, quod non contenti Alcumistas perstringere,
ipsas sanctas Scripturas foedissime violarint. Ana-
baptistas scilicet vellicabant; ut sub hac persona
lateret improbitas.
-Theologos nostros, qui (pudet dicere) avidissime
confluebant.
-nusquam maiori plausu theatra nostra sonuisse,
quam cum intraret personatus ille nebulo, qui, ut
[folio 84 recto]
fictam Anabaptistarum sanctitatem spectatoribus deriden-
dam proponeret, scripturas impie, et prodigiose con-
taminavit. Habuerunt et Tragoedias, quas decore,
et apte agebant. In quibus non solum dicendo, sed
etiam faciendo quaedam lachrymas movebant.-
At vero Desdemona ilia apud nos a marito oc-
cisa, quanquam optime semper causam egit, inter-
fecta tamen magis movebat; cum in lecto decum-
bens spectantium misericordiam ipso vultu implor-
aret.
Sept. 1610.
