The argument of tragedies is wrath, cruelty, incest, murther . . .. The ground work of comedies is love, cosenage, flattery, bawdry, sly conveyance of whoredom. . . . If the common people which resort to theatres being but an assembly of tailors, tinkers, cordwainers, sailors, old men, young men, women, boys, girls, and such like, be the judges of faults there painted out, the rebuking of manners in that place is neither lawful nor convenient, but to be held for a kind of libelling, and defaming.

Stephen Gosson, Plays Confuted in Five Actions (1590), C5r-v

Playes are writ with this ayme, and caryed with this methode, to teach the subjects obedience to their Kings, to shew the people the untimely ends of such as have moved tumults, commotions, and insurrections, to present with the flourishing estate of such as live in obedience, exhorting them to allegeance, dehorting them from all trayterous and fellonious strategems.

Thomas Heywood, An Apologie for Actors (1612), Bk. 3v