Nothing seemed left remarkable beneath the visiting moon.

The bright day was done and they were for the dark.

The uprising of Puritanism and the shadow of impending religious strife darkened the temper of the time.
The change affected all literature and particularly the drama, which because it appeals to what all men have in common, commonly reflects soonest a change in the outlook or spirits of a people.

The onslaughts of the dramatists on the Puritans, always implacable enemies of the theatre, became more virulent and envenomed.

What a difference between the sunny satire of Sir Andrew Aguecheek and the dark animosity of _The Atheists' Tragedy_ with its Languebeau Snuffe ready to carry out any villainy proposed to him! "I speak sir," says a lady in the same play to a courtier who played with her in an attempt to carry on a quick witted, "conceited" love passage in the vein of _Much Ado_, "I speak, sir, as the fashion now: is, in earnest." The quick-witted, light-hearted age was gone.