ABSTRACT
On 2 September 1642 Parliament passed an ordinance which stated, among other things: ‘It is thought fit, and ordained, by the Lords and Commons in Parliament assembled, that while these sad causes and set times of humiliation do continue, public stage plays shall cease and be forborne’. 1 It is sometimes thought that this was a triumph for a Puritan campaign which had lasted sixty years. It was not. It was a temporary halt, apparently, more like the usual way to mark the death of a monarch than an ideological measure. But the monarch was in arms in Nottingham, and the whole known way of the world seemed to be tumbling upside down.
