A web-based edition of early seventeenth-century political poetry from manuscript sources. It brings into the public domain over 350 poems, many of which have never before been published.
B20 Bancroft Was for Playes
Notes. This is perhaps the most clearly Puritan and anti-Catholic of the four libellous epitaphs written on the 1610 death of Richard Bancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury.
“Another [epitaph on Archbishop Bancroft]”
Bancroft Was for Playes
Lean Lent and holy-dayes1
But now under-goe’s their Doome:2
Had English Ladies store
Yet kept open a Back dore
5To let in the Strumpet of Rome.
Source. BL MS Harley 3991, fol. 126r
Other known sources. Bodleian MS Ashmole 1463, p. 13; BL Add. MS 70454, fol. 22v
B20
1 Bancroft Was for Playes...holy-dayes: Bancroft’s alleged support for stage plays—a frequent object of Puritan censure—is here conflated with his alleged support for Catholic Lenten fasting and the Catholic calendar of holy days. <back>
2 But now under-goe’s their Doome: the poet’s apparent perception that plays, Lent and holy-days have suffered a “doom” comparable to that of Bancroft himself is a little baffling. It is possible that he might be referring to a (temporary) closure of the theatres, as occasionally happened in times of plague.<back>
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