2 September 1642 is perhaps the best-known date in the history of the English theatre. On that day, Parliament ordered the theatres closed:

While this has often been taken as the order that ended playing for the eighteen years of the interregnum, in truth it neither accomplished that nor intended to. Parliament in September of 1642 ordered a temporary stay of playing, not unlike those that followed the deaths of Prince Henry or of King James, when it was similarly held ‘that these tymes doe not suit such playes and idle shewes’. No doubt many who voted for it hoped that the injunction would permanently remain in effect, but the explicit intent of the bill before Parliament was to stop playing at a particularly charged moment, one that demanded ‘sad and pious Solemnity’ rather than public sport, and that proposed, ‘instead of playgoing’, determined efforts to effect ‘Repentence, Reconciliation, and Peace with God’.