During a period of something like fifty years, roughly from 1580 to 1630, there developed in France a complete change of attitude toward the theatre as a professional and social institution. This shift in concept was responsible for the growth in the city of Paris of successful dramatic companies who derived their total livelihood from the theatre. It is true that toward the end of the sixteenth century and in the early years of the seventeenth century, as has been pointed out by Trautman, Faber, Rigal, Fransen, Madame Deierkauf-Holsboer, and others, there existed struggling companies of professional actors who gave plays in French in the provinces as well as in Belgium, Holland, and across the German frontier. Such a group was in Strasbourg in 1593, and later went to the Hôtel de Bourgogne in Paris.

First to compose music for the burial service in English was Thomas Morley (1557-1603). The verbal text that he followed was that of the second Book of Common Prayer, pubhshed in 1559, one year after the accession of Queen Elizabeth I. The splendor of this piece of literature exalted Morley's genius to an equally magnificent piece of music.

About a century and a half afterward, his manuscript came to the hands of Doctor Maurice Greene (c. 1695-1755). In 1718 Greene became organist of St. Paul's, a position that Morley once occupied. In 1727 he was elected to the Chapel Royal, of which Morley had been a member. Three years later he was made Doctor of Music at Cambridge; Morley had been Bachelor of Music at Oxford.

For visitors to the historical museums of many English cities, trenchers are familiar objects; a small body of scholarly literature has also grown up concerning them. Those who are interested in the subject may find a convenient summary in Professor Sir Arthur H. Church's chapter on ‘Old English Fruit Trenchers’ (Some Minor Arts as Practised in England [London, 1894], PP. 47-54). The use to which these tablets were put, whether in the serving of fruits and sweetmeats or as a source of entertainment for the guests, is uncertain; certain it is, however, that they were extremely popular in Tudor and Stuart days. In most cases, the trenchers were adorned with mottoes, proverbs, epigrams, Biblical and classical quotations, or bits of English verse.