texts were popular items among Renaissance readers that provided healthy profits for the stationers who printed and sold them. By the turn of the 21st century, the climate of scholarly opinion shifted somewhat on this belief: some contemporary researchers argue that publishing plays was a risky and marginal business—though this conclusion has been disputed by others. Some of the most successful publishers of the English Renaissance, like William Ponsonby or Edward Blount, rarely published plays. A small number of plays from the era survived not in printed texts but in manuscript form. The end of English Renaissance theatre The rising Puritan movement was hostile toward theatre, as they felt that "entertainment" was sinful. Politically, playwrights and actors were clients of the monarchy and aristocracy, and most supported the Royalist cause. The Puritan faction, long powerful in London, gained control of the city early in the First English Civil War, and on 2 September 1642, the Long Parliament, pushed by the Parliamentarian party, under Puritan influence, banned the staging of plays in the London theatres though it did not, contrary to what is commonly stated, order the closure, let alone the destruction, of the theatres themselves: The Act purports the ban to be temporary ("...while these sad causes and set Times of Humiliation do continue, Public Stage Plays shall cease and be forborn") but does not assign a time limit to it. Even after 1642, during the English Civil War and the ensuing Interregnum (English Commonwealth), some English Renaissance theatre continued. For example, short comical plays called Drolls were allowed by the authorities, while full-length plays were banned. The theatre buildings were not closed but rather were used for purposes other than staging plays. The performance of plays remained banned for most of the next eighteen years, becoming allowed again after the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660. The theatres began performing many of the plays of the previous era, though often in adapted forms. New genres of Restoration comedy and spectacle soon evolved, giving English theatre of the later seventeenth century its distinctive character. List of playwrights William Alabaster William Alexander, Earl of Stirling Robert Armin Barnabe Barnes Lording Barry Francis Beaumont William Berkeley Samuel Brandon Antony Brewer Richard Brome Samuel Brooke William Browne (poet) Thomas Campion Lodowick Carlell William Cartwright Elizabeth Cary, Lady Falkland Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury George Chapman Henry Cheke Henry Chettle John Clavell Anthony Chute