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The Treatise Writers

Little is known about the majority of antidance treatise writers. According to the Alumni Oxonienses: The Members of the University of Oxford, 1500-1714, Christopher Fetherstone was at Queen's College, Oxford; received his B.A. on 3 February 1583/4; around 1613 was vicar of Appleby St. Michael, Westmoreland; and in 1616 was rector of Bentham, Yorkshire. [7] A dialogue agaynst light, lewde, and lasciuious dauncing is his only known original publication; his other publications are translations of John Calvin’s commentaries and other religious writings. [8] Thomas Lovell offers no biographical information in his introductory epistle to A dialogue between custom and veritie, while “To the Readers of this tretise” by Robert Crawley (the English Protestant theologian and clergyman to whom the treatise is dedicated) describes Lovell only as “a faithful minister of Christe, and disposer of Gods secrets” who has shown learning and authority in the endeavour. [9] Crawley, however, stresses the impressiveness of the dialogue being written in rhyming verse instead of prose; clearly Lovell was a poet as well as a moralist. [10] John Northbrooke describes himself as simple and rude in his introduction to Spiritus est vicarius, which was written from Henbury in Bristol, but he was also a puritan clergyman once imprisoned at the request of his bishop for an act of nonconformity. [11] Phillip Stubbes is the most well known of the treatise writers, but his background is similarly vague. He is believed to have born around 1555, died in 1610, was educated at Cambridge and Oxford although he did not take a degree from either, and according to his introduction to The Anatomie of Abuses, he spent at least seven winters travelling through England collecting material. [12]

The most detailed, as well as the most interesting, biography we possess is for Stephen Gosson (1554-1624). [13] Gosson was born in Canturbury, Kent; graduated from Corpus Christi College, Oxford in 1576; and went to London for two years where he worked as an actor and playwright. However, he left London in 1578 to be a private tutor in the countryside where he wrote The Schoole of Abuse, which was published in 1579. The pamphlet was hugely popular and a financial success. Gosson was ordained in 1584; made lecturer of the parish church at Stepney in 1585, was vicar from 1586-1592 of Sandridge, Hertfordshire; and exchanged Elizabeth I’s presentation of the rectory of Great Wigborough, Essex in either 1592 or 1600 for St Botolph's, Bishopsgate, London. Moreover, “Gosson's last years were spent under the moderate auspices of the Anglican Church, a shift from his earlier Puritanical stance.” [14] From stage-player to stage-decrier to church rector, Gosson’s career was particularly varied and colourful.

While it is unlikely that most antidance treatise writers had professional performance experience like that of Stephen Gosson’s, there are a few characteristics that the above writers have in common. They were well educated, generally at Oxford or Cambridge; they were usually members of the clergy, although not necessarily at the time of writing their antidance treatise; and while their treatises were all printed in London, the authors were from many different regions. Moreover, the ones whom we know more about moved around a fair amount. This was not unusual in early modern England; even for the lower classes; “the population of England was surprisingly mobile...,” [15] and clergy might be presented with appointments far from their birth parishes. Nevertheless, it is important to note the geographic coverage of even these few treatise writers, because it gives some foundation for the assumption that antidance sentiments were held all over England, and were not particular to one town or region. It also validates examining archival records from a variety of counties, as opposed to concentrating on those of just one area.

Footnotes