The Trip to Jerusalem

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I know not how I shall offend in dedicating my unpolisht lines to your Lordship, nor how the worlde will censure mee for choos ing so strong a proppe to support so weake a burthen, onelye if your Honour seeme but pleased, I account my selfe highly praised, and vowe to take advantage of all idle homes, till I have honoured you with some graver labour.

She was a worthy worn man al hir lyve

Housbondes at chirche dore she hadde fyve

Withouten oother compaignye in youthe--

But thereof nedeth nat to speke as nowthe.

And thrice had she been at Jerusalem.

CHAUCER : The Canterbury Tales

(*)Chapter One

Enemies surrounded them. Though theatre flourished in London as never before, bestowing vivid entertainment upon the nation's capital and earning daily ovations from large audiences, its practitioners were under constant threat. Acting was a perilous enterprise. Players had to walk a tightrope between fame and oblivion--with no net to soften their fall. They faced the official disapproval of the Lord Mayor and the civic worthies, and endured the outright hostility of religious leaders, who spied the hand of the Devil at work on the stage, and the hand of the lecher, the harlot and the pickpocket moving with licensed freedom among the spectators. Voices of protest were raised on all sides.

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