Philip Stubbes published The Anatomy of Abuses in 1583, attacking fashions, dancing, theatre, games and popular entertainments in Elizabethan England. The book is severe, moralising and vivid. Its complaints preserve details of everyday festive culture that respectable histories often omit.

Stubbes unintentionally recorded the performative world that fed ballads, drama and popular poetry. His hostility helps modern readers recover the dances, costumes, songs and communal pleasures that Puritan writers tried to suppress.