Responses
Many Puritan preachers, who hated the theatre in general, were outraged by the use of boy players, which they believed encouraged homosexual lust. In 1583, Philip Stubbes complained that plays were full of "such wanton gestures, such bawdy speeches...such kissing and bussing" that playgoers would go home together "very friendly...and play the sodomites, or worse." John Rainolds warned of the "filthy sparkles of lust to that vice the putting of women's attire on men may kindle in unclean affections."
In response to such comments, the actor-playwright Thomas Heywood protested that audiences were capable of distancing themselves: "To see our youths attired in the habit of women, who knows not what their intents be? Who cannot distinguish them by their names, assuredly knowing they are but to represent such a lady, at such a time appointed?"
Read more about this topic: Boy Player
Famous quotes containing the word responses:
“Research shows clearly that parents who have modeled nurturant, reassuring responses to infants’ fears and distress by soothing words and stroking gentleness have toddlers who already can stroke a crying child’s hair. Toddlers whose special adults model kindliness will even pick up a cookie dropped from a peer’s high chair and return it to the crying peer rather than eat it themselves!”
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“Apathy is one of the characteristic responses of any living organism when it is subjected to stimuli too intense or too complicated to cope with. The cure for apathy is comprehension.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)