Why did the puritans wanted to ban the theatre in Elizabethan times?
The theater grew out of the tradition of enacting religious dramas. By the time of the Puritans, it was heavily secular, most of the material had nothing to do with religion. Theaters were seen in the same light as public houses, worldly music and dancing. They were magnets for vice, drunkenness, gambling, and prostitution. And they were fun. All this made them distractions from the pursuit of a higher, moral society pursued by the Puritans.
