Puritan Interregnum

Puritan Interregnum, name given in English history to the period of Puritan domination in the mid-17th century. Opposition to the building of playhouses and the performing of plays by professional companies had been growing steadily among the Puritans since the beginning of the century, and this culminated in 1642 in a Parliamentary Ordinance which led to the closing of theatres throughout the country and the dispersal of the acting companies. Under Charles I the London theatre, its actors and its dramatists, had become increasingly attached to the Royalist cause, and the assembling of audiences in large playhouses had provided excellent opportunities for subversive activities. The Puritans maintained that they had no objection in principle to drama; under the Commonwealth plays continued to be acted in schools, with the approval of Cromwell himself, and even in private houses, and in 1656 Davenant was allowed to produce publicly at Rutland House his ‘entertainment with music’ The Siege of Rhodes, now regarded as the first English opera. But the Puritans held that there were sound political and social, as well as religious, reasons for the banning of stage-plays, which, as the Ordinance said, did not agree ‘with private calamities … nor with the seasons of humiliation’. As a result, for 18 years actors were deprived of their livelihood and their theatres stood derelict, many of them never to be used again. Some actors joined the army, some returned to their old trades. Only the boldest, or the most desperate, tried to evade the ban. Evidence of surreptitious performances is given by court judgements imposing fines or terms of imprisonment on actors found playing, usually in the smaller theatres such as the Cockpit or the Red Bull. The worst consequence of the closing of the theatres was perhaps that ordinary people lost the habit of playgoing and it took a long time to win them back again: even now the bulk of the population has not been won over.