394	LITERATURE
close the theatres and have actors treated as rogues and vaga-
bonds, by ridiculing them upon the stage. Thus in The Alchem-
ist Ben Jonson introduces Tribulation Wholesome, a pastor from
Amsterdam, where English separatists in exile found a home,
and portrays Ananias as a deacon there. Puritans are painted
as rank hypocrites who under pretence of zeal for the gospel
devoured the estates of widows and orphans. Their real worldli-
ness is exposed by their investing funds of the congregation
with the alchemist, who promises to transmute brass and tin
into gold and silver. This caricature was so popular that
Ananias became the accepted nickname for a puritan. Among
the dramatis personae of Bartholomew Fair is the famous Zeal-
of-the-Land Busy, a Banbury man, who sees the mark of the
Beast in the most innocent diversions at the fair, and could
imagine that a basket of gingerbread was a ^cflasket of idols'. Of
course the picture was vastly overdrawn, but Busy had counter-
parts in real life in such puritans as those members of parliament
who in the spring of 1645 found time to pass an ordinance to
abolish scrambling for cakes on Easter day at Twickenham parish
church. The anxiety of the puritans about their co-religionists
abroad was also ridiculed in court circles* In an unknown play
performed before James I, a puritan having long ass's cars bewails
the levity of the times when the protcstant cause was so afflicted
in Bohemia and Germany. *I will not believe this was enter-
tained with applause*, says a news writer, ^cand yet I am told
so'.^1 It was natural that those connected with the stage should
rejoice at the severe punishment meted out to Prynnc for his
Histrio-Mastix. Shirley wrote a satirical dedication to Prynne
for a play with the title, A Bird in a Gage> alluding to the tragedy
in which Prynnc was taking part and congratulating him on
his retirement—to prison. An opportunity to avenge these and
many other insults came to the puritans during the civil wars.
On the whole there is no sign that the theatre was losing
its popularity during what is usually called the decadence.
From a modern standpoint the plays written between about
1620 and 1640 were markedly inferior to their predecessors, but
contemporaries apparently did not think so. There were only
six theatres in London about 1603, ^1:>ut fi^ve ^were built during
the reign of James I and two during that of Charles I—partly
^1 Newsletter of 17 Feb* x6si, in Godfrey Goodman, The Court of King James
(1839), ii. 1200.