Th'overthrow of stage-plays, by the way of controversy betwixt D. Gager and D. Rainoldes…Th'overthrow of stage-playes, by the way of controversie betwixt D. Gager and D. Rainoldes…

Hereto would be annexed that, which in the fourth and, last head of reasons, you urge again concerning our Universities judgement for the approbation of your plays in general: if your interlaced defence of wasteful cost in setting forth thereof (the only point remaining besides) were discussed. And this is easily done, considering what hath been already proved against you touching the inconveniences and mischiefs of your plays. For having made Momus object the great charges; which how great they were, you know better then I, who summed them perhaps too much beneath the due when I did mention thirty pound; but having made him say that it should have been bestowed on the poor rather, you take him up with three answers: one, that the money was your own, not his; an other, that the charge, though great to him, was mean to you; the third, that none would give the less to the poor for that, none would have given the more without it. All the which I showed to be of no force for warranting of expenses on things of that quality, because, both unhonest spending of a mans own, is wastefulness & riot, condemned by our Saviour in the prodigal son: and, as Nero giving much to get a Plaudit, was the less able to help the poor by so much, and the less willing too perhaps; in like ⟨p. 144⟩sort may you be. Hereupon you demand of me, What similitude is there, or can there be, between the prodigal son, that in such a sort, as he did, spent all, and brought him self to the extremest misery; and between your expense? A question, which you would not have pressed, as you do; for your unlikeness to him in that he wasted all, and brought him self to extreme misery thereby: if you had considered that ³word in the original text of the Gospel, whereto my quotation for ⁱriot did direct you. For usually it noteth the quality of expenses made by loose & wanton persons on their pleasures, as in foreign writers, ^kAristotle and ^lTully; so in ^mScripture likewise: and, to that effect in the same parable of the prodigal son is it said