Sir Thomas Browne protested. "Men," says he in Religio Medici, "commonly set forth the torments of Hell by fire and the extremity of corporeal afflictions, and describe Hell in the same method that Mahomet doth Heaven.... Men speak too popularly who place it in those flaming mountains which to grosser apprehensions represent Hell. The heart of man is the place the devils dwell in. I feel sometimes a Hell within myself. Lucifer keeps his court in my breast. Legion is revived in me...... Every devil is a Hell unto himself a distracted conscience here is a shadow or introduction unto Hell hereafter. " The enlightened and advanced views of Browne were shared in every detail by the dramatists. Divines and dying men may talk of Hell, But in my heart the several torments dwell. MARSTON (Insatiate Countess v.) 1613. Divines and dying men may talk of Hell But in my heart her several torments dwell. SHAKESPEARE (?) (Yorkshire Tragedy) 1608. Divines and dying men may talk of Hell But in my heart her several torments dwell. NASH (Pierce Penniless) 1592. Heaven or Hell... is in thee. Within me is a Hell. PEELE (Edward I.) 1593 SHAKESPEARE (King John Iv. 3.) 1623. I have Hell within me. BEAUMONT & FLETCHER (King and How dost thou ? No King III 3.) 1611-19. I hope thou art, for, to be plain with thee, Are crept in me, and there is no cure. Ibid. Your lordship spoke of purgatory: I am now in it. BACON (Letter to BUCKINGHAM) 1623. He in Hell doth lie, That lives a loathed life, and wishing SPENSER (Fairy Queen Iv. 7.) 1590-1609. Tortured minds and sick souls... make their own Hells. FLETCHER (Wife for a Month 11. 2.) 1624-47. I live in Hell, and several furies vex me. (Ibid). Faustus. (To Mephistophilis). Iachimo. (In Imogen's bedchamber) Though this is a heavenly angel, Hell is here. SHAKESPEARE (Cymbeline 11. 2.) 1623. Here, here about, is Hell. MARSTON (Malcontent v. 2.) 1604. Hell's about me. BEAUMONT & FLETCHER (Little French Lawyer V. I.) 1620-1647. Tormented conscience.... that's the Hell indeed. DEKKER (Old Fortunatus v. 2.) 1600. That's the sting that pricks, My conscience, O that's the Hell my thoughts [abhor.... Hapless man! these thoughts contain thy Hell. GREENE (Orlando) 1594. The Hell of sorrow haunts me up and down... Profound Hell was in my thought. GREENE (Never too late) 1590. My reason abuseth me, and there's the torment, there's the Hell. KYD (Spanish Tragedy III. 13.) 1594. Till man knows Hell, he never has firm faith. There is no pain at all in dying well, 1619-1647. Equally elevated were the dramatists views upon the sexual problem. The Seventh Commandment seems to have sat but lightly on the shoulders of our Elizabethan ancestors; of the stage players few, if any, were otherwise than " notoriously debaucht. The general character of the playhouses is too plainly indicated by contemporary testimony to permit them the smallest benefit of doubt. In 1616-17 the London apprentices -no Puritans-sacked and set fire to the Cockpit theatre. The significance of this incident lies in the fact that Shrovetide was the season when "the flat caps assumed the ancient privilege of their order to destroy brothels and bagnios. When we take into account the ordinary conditions of existence prevailing in even decent society, imagination reels at the enormity of the abuses which raised the offended gorges of the citizens. There exists no better method of gaining an insight into the moral atmosphere of the Elizabethan period than to study the contemporary drama. Many plays are unquestionably transcripts from actual life. Schlegel says without exaggeration that, " the indecencies in which these poets [the Elizabethan dramatists] allowed themselves to indulge, exceed all conception. The licentiousness of the language is the least evil; many scenes, nay, many whole plots, are so contrived that the very idea of them, not to mention the sight, is a gross insult to modesty. Viewed from a modern modern standpoint, this is unquestionable; but as seen by contemporaries, the works in question were monuments of morality and nobleness. The playwrights themselves evidently did not in the least realise their own impropriety. It is quite customary for plays, which modern taste rightly condemns as disgusting, to be prefixed by an array of testimony from public men to the effect that here will be found" wit untainted by obscenity," that "Plautus and Aristophanes were scurrile wits and buffoons in comparison," that so-and-so writes " strong and clear," that herein "No vast uncivil bulk swells any scene, The strength ingenious and the vigour clean.' and so forth. All evidence tends unmistakably to prove that unnatural horrors, from which the modern mind recoils with disgust, were, in the Elizabethan and Jacobean period, matters of commonplace occurrence, and considered as fit themes for dramatisation. The main jest of the period appears to have been to "adhorn or cornute one's neighbour. Chapman in All fools (1605) writes bitterly; "The course of the world (like the life of man) is said to be divided into several ages. As we into infancy, childhood, youth, and so forward to old age, so the world into the Golden Age, the Silver, the Brass, the Iron, the Leaden, the Wooden, and now into this present age, which we term the Horned Age [italics Chapman's], not that but our former ages have enjoyed this benefit as well as our times, but that in ours it is more common. On St Luke's Day (St Luke was the patron saint of Cuckolds !) there was held an orgie known as Horn Fair. Unless the dramatists grossly misrepresent the women of the period, modesty was so rare a virtue as to be almost unknown. It is pathetically funny o observe how, almost invariably in the Elizabethan drama, any woman, who repels an admirer's advances, is hailed in a flowery oration as a miracle of virtue, a very Phoenix of the age, the sole Arabian bird, a Nonpareil at whose name future generations will incredulously wonder. Marston in The Scourge of Villainy (1599) writes ; "O split my heart, lest it do break with rage, |