Was there any opposition to Shakespeare's theatre?

Answer 1

The expression "Shakespeare's theatre" is very vague and unclear. Do you mean one of the several buildings he worked in as an actor, or one of the smaller number of buildings he was part owner of, or his particular style of writing plays, or the theatrical company he belonged to for most of his life, or the whole Elizabethan-Jacobean entertainment industry? I suspect the latter. Calling the entire Elizabethan-Jacobean entertainment industry "Shakespeare's Theatre" is entirely misleading in the same way that it would be misleading to describe the entire American movie industry in the last four decades of the twentieth century as "Stanley Kubrick's cinema".

Did people in Shakespeare's day oppose the theatre? Yes, for two reasons. City fathers opposed the theatre because it drew large crowds together, which increased crime and the spread of communicable diseases. Religious extremists opposed the theatre because they disapproved of people having a good time when God clearly wanted them to be miserable.