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living. In London Dr. Bulleyn was accused by his late patron's brother of the murder of Sir Thomas Hilton, probably because he was seeking marriage with his patron's widow. He did marry her, after he had cleared himself of the false accusation. In 1563 appeared "Bulleyn's Bulwarke of defence againste all Sicknese Sornes and Woundes that dooe daily assaulte mankinde, which Bulwarke is kept with Hilarius the Gardiner, Health the Phisician, with the Chirurgian to helpe the wounded soldiors." Hilarius the Gardiner has care of the simples, which are so fully discussed as to give this book the credit of including among its contents the earliest English Herbal; the Chirurgian, in a Dialogue with Soreness, condemns quackery and gives the names of the best surgeons of the time. But the most striking example given by Bulleyn of the new dramatic spirit showing itself even in a book of medicine, is in the work shortly described as "Bulleyn's Dialogue of Death "" A Dialogue both pleasaunte and pietifull, wherein is a goodly regimente against the feuer Pestilence, with a consolacion and comfort against Death," printed in March, 1564-that is, 1565 -and again in 1573 and 1578. In these dialogues a Medicus-who was called, in the edition of 1575, Antonius Capistrinus-has his name transformed in subsequent editions into Tocrub. This name was got by reversal of the letters of the name of a Dr. Burcot, whom Bulleyn wished to satirise. But the serious theme of Death by Pestilence was seriously treated. Bulleyn died in January, 1576.

"Bulleyn's Dialogue of Death."

Plague
Years.

Pestilence was in those days a very serious theme, that touched also the fortunes of the drama. Until the latter part of the fifteenth century, Plague attacked men generally in the town and country. After that time it fastened upon towns especially, and townspeople fled for safety into country houses, farms, and villages-as Wolsey said, "into clean air." The form of

pestilence known as the English Sweating Sickness first appeared in 1485. There were subsequent great outbreaks in 1508, 1517, 1528, and it disappeared after its last outbreak in 1551. The Sweating Sickness attacked chiefly the rich. Its brother Pestilence, known commonly as the Plague, that began with the Black Death of 1348 and ended with the Plague of 1665-6, fell chiefly on the poor. These two forms of disease had not the same cause, and did not come in the same years. Within the sixty-six years of the existence of the Sweating Sickness in England, the chief Plague years were, before Elizabeth's reign, 1500, 1509, 1513, 1531, 1535, 1543, 1547, after which followed the first great Plague under Elizabeth in 1563. Of this Plague Dr. Bulleyn made a citizen say in his " Dialogue of Death," published in 1564: "Good wife, the daily jangling and ringing of the bells, the coming in of the minister to every house in ministering the communion, the reading of the Homily of Death "--on "The Fear of Death," probably by Cranmer the digging up of graves, the sparring of windows, and the blazing forth of the blue crosses do make my heart tremble and quake." After this great outbreak there remained, of course, the fact reported by the Venetian ambassador in 1554, that "they have some little plague in England well nigh every year." The ambassador then added. that in the years of little plague they were "not accustomed to make sanitary provisions for it, as it does not usually make great progress; the cases for the most part occur among the lower classes." But in 1563 precautions were established, of which some were applied in seasons of slighter danger. One of these precautions forbade the gathering of people together to see plays and interludes in times when there was danger of infection. In the September of that great Plague year 1563 her Majesty shut herself up at Windsor, and Stow records that a gallows was set up there in the

*E, W." viii. 151.

market-place to hang all those who should come into Windsor from London. Any Windsor people who received anything from London were turned out, and had their houses shut up as infected.

After 1563, the next beginning of a more serious outburst of Plague was in October, 1568. It was raging in 1569 in London, but there was not much in 1570, when it was spread over the Continent and 30,000 died of it in Venice. In 1571 it was at Oxford and Cambridge, as it was sometimes deadly in one or more of the larger country towns, though not in London. In 1573 it was so bad in London that the feast on Lord Mayor's Day was omitted by order of the queen. In 1575 it was at Westminster, but not in the City. The next great Plague year in the City was 1578. In four weeks of March, 1578, out of a total of 283 deaths, 36 were from Plague; but in the four weeks from the eighteenth of September to the sixteenth of October the deaths numbered 1,449, of which 887 were from Plague. The lightest Plague week was that ending on the twentieth of March, when of 75 deaths 5 were from Plague; the heaviest was that ending on the ninth of October, when there were 234 deaths from Plague out of a whole mortality. of 388, with 62 christenings. The whole number of deaths from Plague in London in 1578 was 3,568; in 1579 it was 629; in 1580 it was 128. In 1581 it rose again beyond 1,000, and in 1582 it reached 3,000, or 2,976 in fifty-one weeks, the mortality for the omitted week being between 60 and 70.* This longer continuity of

*These figures are taken from abstracts of Burials and Baptisms in London, 1578-1583, which were procured by Lord Burghley from the Lord Mayor of London, and are now in Lord Salisbury's library at Hatfield. They are not included in the published Calendar of the Cecil MSS. The abstracts were first published in A History of Epidemics in Britain from A.D. 664 to the Extinction of Plague. By Charles Creighton M.A., M.D., formerly Demonstrator of Anatomy in the

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Plague, from 1578 to 1583, with special severity in 1578 and 1582, gave rise to a proclamation in 1580 against new buildings within three miles of the City gates. But from 1583 to 1592 there were nine years during which London was comparatively free from Plague, and its population, by addition of some 30,000, rose to 150,000.

This freedom from any great pestilence between 1586 and 1592 removed one great hindrance to the rise of the drama during what may be called Shakespeare's 'prentice years.

The Acci-
dent in
Paris
Garden:
Sunday
Plays
Forbidden.

Another difficulty in the way of the drama had been overcome three or four years before Shakespeare's first going to London. The acting of plays on Sunday had been, as we have seen, the chief cause, and the only reasonable cause, of strong antagonism between the pulpit and the stage. The custom had risen innocently from simple con tinuance of the old fashion of using as times of recreation any hours on Sundays and holy days that were not set apart for divine service. The custom is implied in modern use of the word "holiday." On working days the daylight hours were occupied, and when plays were only acted during daylight there were many people who could only see a play on days of rest. But the Reformation brought with it a quickened sense of the duty of keeping holy the Sabbath Day, and of devoting it, as much as possible, to study of the Word of God. The Puritan section of the Reformed Church insisted very strongly upon this. It resented the success of players' trumpets in summoning often larger congregations than could be gathered by the call of the church bells. But on the

University of Cambridge. Cambridge University Press, 1891." This volume-interesting in many ways-contains much information that is of distinct use to the student of literature.

thirteenth of January, 1583,* which was a Sunday, there was so great a throng in the old galleries at Paris Garden-which had been used for bull and bear baiting since the beginning of Henry VIII.'s reign, but was then used also for the acting

* New Style, to which, for avoidance of confusion, I reduce all year dates open to question. The Julian Calendar prevailed throughout Christendom until the time of which we are now speaking. Its year began on the twenty-fifth of March, which was the day of the vernal equinox in Julius Cæsar's time. In 1582 Pope Gregory XIII. reformed the Calendar, and by suppression of ten days brought the equinox to the twenty-first of March, the day on which it fell at the time of the Council of Nice, A.D. 325. A new year was then held to begin on the first of January. England and other countries that refused the guidance of a Pope in Rome-including followers of the Greek Church, who, as in Russia, hold by the Old Style even now-continued to reckon the legal year from the twenty-fifth of March. They retained the date of the unexpired year until the twenty-fourth of March next following, so that December, 1582, was followed by January, 1582, and the year continued to be 1582 until the twenty-fourth of March; while countries that did not repudiate every act of a Pope of Rome wrote as we should write now-January, February, and March, 1583.

There was also a discrepancy throughout the year of ten days in the day date. Thus the author of "Don Quixote " died in Spain on the twenty-third of April, 1616; Shakespeare died in England on the same date--not on the same day. For in Roman Catholic Spain the cancelling of ten days at the establishment of Pope Gregory's Calendar Reform brought the twenty-third of April to the day we counted as the third of May in England. When we at last accepted the New Style, in 1752, we had to right ourselves by striking eleven days out of the reckoning, and street mobs of good people who thought their lives were shortened then cried, "Give us back our eleven days!" After 1582, therefore, in the future course of our narrative, until 1752, Italian, Spanish, or French day dates have to be brought into accord with English reckoning by giving back to them their ten days, until the year 1700; after that their eleven days, until 1752, after which time both reckonings accord. In Russia, where Old Style has been continued, the difference became twelve days from the first of March, 1800. It will be thirteen days from the first of March, 1900. As in relation to them ours now is the New Style, from which days have been subtracted, when adjustment is required it is to our own day date that the addition of twelve or thirteen has to be made.

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