The Companies were sponsored/controlled/financed by members of the Aristocracy. They were under an aristocrat's patronage.
However, the Stage was considered "bawdy". The open-air audiences of the ordinary people were often padded with the cut-purse and the common whore.
Approval of a performance was often voiced in ribald, foul-mouthed cries. Disapproval... in the aerial launching of rotten vegetables, even human excrement, at the Players.
The Aristocracy could never be seen to be writing for - never mind profiting from - such a spectacle. Hence, any aristo with artistic leanings had to remain anonymous - and careful. Any public performances of their work must remain strictly anonymous, passed-off as the work of one of the lower-orders. This was known among the aristos as the "stigma of print"...
Secondly
The Question of the Age was the Succession Crisis. Who was to succeed the aging, ailing Virgin Queen, Elizabeth, by Grace of God, Queen of England?
Be careful how you answer, if you wish to keep your head firmly on your shoulders in all weathers!
Or avoid the question altogether, if you know what's good and convenient.
But England's arch-enemies, France and Spain, were certainly thinking, and plotting....to return England to Catholicism. They had several candidates in mind to succeed Elizabeth....
