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II

"Fashion it thus "

It might be objected that Gosson's view of theater as mistrial arises merely from his concern with a topical stage's potential for libel, a concern in fact shared by the state censors in Renaissance England.⁹ But Gosson conceives the injury of theatrical misrepresentation much more broadly, so that even Roman history can be victimized by Elizabethan dramatic adaptations:

If a true history be taken in hand .. . the poets drive it most commonly unto such points, as may best show the majesty of their pen .. . or wring in a show, to furnish the stage, when it is too bare; when the matter of itself comes short of this, they follow the practice of the cobbler, and set their teeth to the leather to pull it out.

So was the history of Caesar and Pompey . . . when the history swelled, and ran too high for the number of the persons that should play it, the...

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1. Introduction
2. Ii
3. Iii
4. Iv
5. V
6. Copyright