Barabas, in Marlowe's Jew of Malta,
Tamburlaine
and Dr Faustus
were among the parts he created, and it is probable, also, that
Orlando Furioso in Greene's play of that name was in his réper-
toire.
were among the parts he created, and it is probable, also, that
Orlando Furioso in Greene's play of that name was in his réper-
toire.
Cambridge History of English Literature - 1908 - v06
The plays of Henry Glapthorne are noticeable
from this point of view. His three comedies, at their worst, sink as
low as Cartwright and, at their best, touch the level of Mayne or
Nabbes; but his more serious work, consisting of The Ladies Privi-
ledge, Argalus and Parthenia and Albertus Wallenstein, approaches
more nearly to literature than any of the parallel efforts of Carlell,
Mayne, Cartwright, or Thomas Killigrew. The first of these plays,
which ends as a comedy, belongs to the type of tragicomedy in
which extravagant sentiment insists upon submitting itself to
absurd tasks in the effort to prove its heroism. The second is
a pastoral, also conforming to the tragicomedy type ; and the third
is history treated on the same lines. The plays, therefore, illustrate
the enervating and disintegrating effect of heroic sentiment on all
the chief forms of English drama. But it is William D'Avenant
whose work best enables us to observe the transition to the heroic
drama of Dryden. His first two plays were tragedies in Fletcher's
grimmest style, dated 1626 and 1627, and these were followed by two
able comedies which enjoyed considerable popularity. After 1630,
illness incapacitated him for several years; and, when he resumes
work as a dramatist, his style has altered, and four plays, Love and
Honour, 1634, The Platonick Lovers, 1635, The Fair Favourite,
1638, and The Unfortunate Lover, 1638, show him under French
influences and as the leading exponent of the cult of platonic love,
of which queen Henrietta herself was the patron. The Platonick
Lovers is a budget of speeches and disputations on this unreal
and undramatic theme; it is curious to the student of manners,
but futile as literature. D'Avenant lived to revive the theatre
shortly before the Restoration, and to contribute to its literature
after that date. He will, therefore, receive some further notice
in a later volume.
## p. 241 (#259) ############################################
CHAPTER X
THE ELIZABETHAN THEATRE
WHEN Elizabeth came to the throne, she found attached to
the court not only musicians and minstrels, but eight players of
interludes. This body had been a permanent part of the court
establishment for some reigns; and, in the new theatrical activity
of Elizabeth's reign, it was supplanted by other bodies, but
not dissolved. It accompanied her occasionally on her pro-
gresses, and only gradually died out. Companies of such players
had long been attached to the households of men of wealth and
position, whose 'livery' or badge they wore on their sleeves.
A statement in Heywood's Apology for Actors (1612) may be
taken to mean that some kind of royal licence was considered
necessary or advisable by these companies, so far back as the
reign of Henry VIII.
In many cases, these companies supported themselves by
playing before the public in various parts of the country. The
practice seems to have been for players, on coming to a town,
first to attend the mayor, to inform him whose servants they were
and to receive his licence for public playing. If the mayor liked
the company or wished to honour their master, he would pay them
a sum (which the entrance money charged to the public would
supplement') to give a first performance before the corporation, to
which the public were admitted. Several cases are on record
where players received a fee, though they were forbidden by the
town's bylaws or otherwise to give a performance. Travelling
players appeared frequently, also, at private houses, at weddings
and on other festival occasions; and, occasionally, even in
churches. At Exeter, Yarmouth and Worcester, there seem to
have been regular playhouses ; at other times, the actors played
1 Murray, John Tucker, ‘English Dramatic Companies in the towns outside of
London, 1550-1600,' Modern Philology, vol. 11, p. 539.
E. L. VI.
16
6
CH. X.
## p. 242 (#260) ############################################
242
The Elizabethan Theatre
6
at the guildhall, or in an innyard. Such incidents as the remon-
strance issued by the privy council to the lord president of the
north in 1556, touching the seditious plays acted by 'certain lewd
persons naming themselves to be the servants of Sir Frances
Lake,' suggest that some, at least, of the companies attached to
great houses had received no recognition or licence from the
crown; while 'common players of interludes,' orders for whose
regulation or arrest were occasionally issued, did not belong, either
in fact or in name, to any nobleman's establishment. In addition
to companies bearing the names of patrons, there were still in
existence a large number of wandering troupes of jugglers and
players, descendants of the old minstrels, who owned no kind of
patronage. Certain municipal corporations had their band of
players; and, in Cornwall and elsewhere, local associations of
amateurs still met to perform town or village plays and pageants
which the reformation had shorn of their old glory. The com-
petition of travelling companies was, perhaps, as important an
element in the decadence of these local bodies as was the hostility
of the puritans.
A few months after her accession, Elizabeth issued a proclama-
tion providing that no interlude should be played without being
notified beforehand and licensed by the mayor or chief officer of
a town, or, in the country, by lieutenants or two local justices
of the peace. And, in 1572, the question of these unattached
companies was finally settled by a law providing that common
players in interludes not belonging to a baron or honourable
personage of greater degree, or not having a licence from two
justices of the peace, should be deemed rogues and vagabonds.
This, practically, is the close of the history—so far as their influence
on the progress of the drama is concerned- of any theatrical
bodies except those definitely under patronage. The early part of
Elizabeth's reign saw not only the triumph of the professional
actor over the amateur, but the supplanting of the old player of
interludes by the better equipped companies then newly formed
by nobles anxious to please their sovereign.
In the city of London, jurisdiction over public theatricals
rested, under the proclamation of 1559, in the mayor and cor-
poration, steady foes of the drama. The decay of the feudal
system under the Tudors had increased the importance not only of
the immediate neighbourhood of the court, but of the capital ; and
London was now the centre of theatrical activity. Elizabeth's own
love of the play tended to the same result; and the privy council,
## p. 243 (#261) ############################################
Grounds of Objection
243
on the whole, supported her in defending the acted drama against
the attacks of the city government. The difference between court
and city was the cause of many disputes and much uncertainty,
as is shown at length in a later chapter of this volume, where
it is also related how an unforeseen result of the city's opposition
was the enormous stimulus given to theatrical art by the building
of playhouses outside the common council's jurisdiction but within
easy reach of the citizens of London.
The quarrel' was due to other causes besides the religious
difference, and the inevitable conflict between the feudal privilege
from which companies drew their origin, on the one hand, and, on
the other, the rights of the corporation, which meant the growing
importance of the middle class. A very reasonable objection was
advanced against the overcrowding of narrow streets by people
riding or, later, driving to the playhouses, and by the concourse of
loafers and beggars; furthermore, apprentices and others were
tempted to play truant and occasional tumults or crimes resulted
from the massing of numbers of people in holiday mood. A
theatrical performance, like the performance of a miracle-play in
earlier times, meant a procession through the streets with drums
and trumpets. It would not be fair, however, to ascribe to plays
alone all the disturbances which are on record. Such incidents as
those which took place outside the Theater in 1584, when 'one
Browne, a serving man in a blew coat, a shifting fellowe,' attacked
an apprentice with a sword, were due rather to the fact that the
neighbourhood of this house was the 'ordinary place for all maister-
les men and vagabond persons. . . to meet together and to recreate
themselfes. ' The gravest cause for the corporation's objection to
plays a cause which the privy council readily supported them in
avoiding—was, however, the recurrence of the plague, to the grievous
and prolonged visitations of which full reference is made in the
chapter discussing the conflicts between puritanism and the stage*.
But, in the reigns of Elizabeth, James I and Charles I, every year
was a plague year, and, besides 1582—3, 1558, 1586, 1593, 1603,
1613, 1625 and 1636 were very bad plague years. It was important
to check the spread of infection by preventing the gathering of
crowds, and plays were forbidden whenever it seemed desirable.
Early in the reign of James I, all performances were prohibited
· See post, chap. xiv.
· For an interesting suggestion as to the influence of the Blackfriars playhouse in
and after the year 1597, see Wallace, C. W. , Children of the Chapel, chap. XII.
* Remembrancia, vol. 11, p. 103.
* See post, chap. XIV.
16_2
## p. 244 (#262) ############################################
244
The Elizabethan Theatre
when the number of deaths a week reached 30; and, in or about
1619, 40 was fixed as the limiting number'. This frequently en-
tailed the closing of places of public performance during the whole
of the summer and autumn, when companies sometimes 'broke,
sometimes went on tour in England and sometimes travelled
abroad. The history of these travels is well worth study, but lies
outside the scope of this work.
In the conflict between the drama and the corporation, the
weight of Elizabeth herself was thrown entirely on the side of the
drama. The list of performances at court shows that, while masques
were frequently performed by amateurs at the beginning of her
reign, their place was almost entirely taken later by the per-
formances of professional actors whom her patronage helped to
bring to efficiency. The stock excuse offered by the privy council
for contravention of the prohibitive regulations of the city authori-
ties is that players must be allowed full opportunities of practising
their art in order that they may exercise it fitly before the queen,
during the Christmas holidays or at Shrovetide—the great seasons
of performances at court. In 1583, the queen, at the suggestion
of Walsingham, and probably as a countermove to a decision of
the common council, had her own company selected from the best
actors of the day; and every attempt was made to regard public
performances as mere rehearsals for those at court. It is easily
possible to make too much of the pretext, which, doubtless, was
convenient at the time. The chance of a play being awarded a
place among the few to be performed at court would scarcely have
sufficed to encourage playwrights to produce work of the quantity
or the character left by Elizabethan dramatists. Occasional state
performances, rewarded with a small fee, could not be prize enough
to keep large numbers of men working hard at acting, and at
nothing else, all the year round; and players grew well-to-do and
respectable, not because they played now and then at court, but
because court favour enabled them to meet the ardent desire for
theatrical performances which had been largely thwarted in pre-
vious troubled reigns, but which, when it could be indulged, to a
great extent supplanted the love of athletic or acrobatic exhibi-
tions that had had to suffice for earlier times. Such exhibitions
still survived; but the drama either swept them into its own
a
i Greg's Henslowe's Diary, vol. 11, p. 145.
? See Cohn, A. , Shakespeare in Germany and. The English Comedians in Germany,'
by Harris, C. , in Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, N. S.
Vol. xv, No. 3, and of the opening passages of chap. XI, vol. v, ante.
## p. 245 (#263) ############################################
Effect of Royal Patronage 245
net, or tried to make their separate existence dependent on
its pleasure as regards time and place of performance. The
patronage of the queen and the eagerness of nobles to supply
her with a favourite amusement provided the opportunity, rather
than constituted the cause, of the people's new interest in the
play. It is true that the royal favour first enabled the stage to
stand alone, both as an art and as a business ; but, after 1591,
the queen's own company having by that time lost its prestige,
royal patronage as an active force dwindled until the accession
of James I; and, if the honour of playing at court was still
eagerly sought, it was largely for the sake of the immunity from
molestation by the city which the privy council usually extended
to the companies selected. Nevertheless, the hope of playing
before the queen seldom debarred a company from producing a
satirical or seditious play which would attract the public.
The opposition between the city government and the privy
council was, indirectly, a benefit to the art of the theatre, in that
it led at once to control and to encouragement. The somewhat
complicated history of the various moves on both sides shows
the common council determined, with varying success, to keep
players out of the city, the privy council determined to check
sedition and, while fostering dramatic art, to limit the number of
playhouses and companies, and each party inclined to oppose, or
to neglect, the recommendations of the other. The position of
players was uncertain and sometimes dangerous, as is proved by
their petitions and remonstrances, and by the occasional imprison-
ment of offending companies. In such circumstances, only the
strongest could survive with dignity or comfort. The tendency
was always towards consolidation, though the experiment of the
Queen's company, formed in 1583, was not to prove successful
for long. The path of the Chamberlain's and the Admiral's com-
panies was smooth and profitable on the whole, and the steady
influence of royal favour supported them.
That influence became all important on the accession of
James I. The position of the favoured companies, thenceforth,
was assured by the issue of licences which brought them directly
under royal patronage, and by the statute of March 1604, which
abolished private patronage by forbidding nobles to license men
to go wandering abroad. All public theatricals remained directly
under royal patronage during the reigns of James I and Charles I,
until the ordinance of the lords and commons of September 1642
brought them to an end.
## p. 246 (#264) ############################################
246
The Elizabethan Theatre
He was
Playwrights and players were further subject to the control
of the master of the revels. Originally instituted, as it seems,
.
by Henry VII, for the management of the finances and the
material of performances at court, the office grew constantly in
power. It became the duty of the master of the revels to summon
the companies before him and, after seeing them perform, to
select such actors and such plays as he approved and order
such changes to be made in the plays as, in his opinion, should
render them suitable for performance before the sovereign. At
least so early as 1574, we find him empowered to examine every
play that was to be played in any part of England. No play
might be played or printed without his licence, and he had the
power to alter, to forbid and even as the action of Sir Henry
Herbert, master of the revels under Charles I, would seem to
show) to destroy, any play he found objectionable.
entitled to charge a fee for every play he examined, and for
every play which he licensed for printing, besides a fee which rose
from 58. a week in 1592 to £3 a month in 1602, for licensing each
playhouse? ; and, later in the period, we find the two leading
companies paying him, first the results of two performances, and
then a fixed sum in every year. Sedition, no doubt, was the
offence he principally attempted to check; but profanity and
immorality were also the objects of his attention.
Besides the companies of players under royal or noble patron-
age there were, on Elizabeth's accession, two other classes of
dramatic company, both composed of boys or youths. These were
the children’ of St Paul's and of the chapel royal, and the boys of
the public schools, Eton and Westminster and Merchant Taylors'.
The most important of the companies of men was that which
was originally formed by Robert Dudley earl of Leicester, and which,
in 1574, was the first to receive the royal licence. The numbers of
the company mentioned in the document are five: James Burbage,
John Perkyn, John Laneham, William Johnson and Robert Wilson;
but two or more boys and some minor actors must, also, be supposed
to have been attached to the company. When the first playhouse,
the Theater, was built in 1576, it was occupied by Leicester's com-
pany, who remained there, probably, until in 1583, its place was
taken by the new Queen's company, into which Burbage, Laneham
and Wilson were drafted. In 1585, Leicester took his company
6
i Greg's Henslowe's Diary, vol. 11, pp. 114-118.
? Of these boys' companies a separate account is given in the next chapter (31)
of the present volume.
## p. 247 (#265) ############################################
The Chamberlain's Company 247
abroad with him; in 1587, they were touring in England and acted
at Stratford-on-Avon. Of those who believe that Shakespeare
became a member of this company, some hold that he joined it
during, or shortly after, this visit to his native town. In 1588,
Leicester died, and, not long afterwards, the leading actors of the
company that had gone abroad are found as members of the
company of Ferdinando Stanley, lord Strange. The new company,
which, through some kind of amalgamation with the remains of
the Admiral's men, during these years included Edward Alleyn
himself, played first at the Cross Keys inn in Gracechurch street,
and later, in February 1592, at Philip Henslowe's playhouse, the
Rose in Southwark? . On 3 March 1592, they produced a new play
entered by Henslowe in his diary as ‘harey the vj,' which is be-
lieved by many to have been Shakespeare's King Henry VI, Part I.
If so, the conditions of the time imply that Shakespeare, by that
date, was a member of the company. In April 1594, lord Strange,
who had become earl of Derby in September 1593, died, and
the company passed under the protection of Henry Carey, lord
Hunsdon, then lord chamberlain, to be thenceforth known as the
Chamberlain's servants. In the June of 1594, they played a short
time with the Admiral's men at the playhouse at Newington Butts ;
but, in the same month, the Admiral's men, with Alleyn at their
head, resumed an independent existence. In March 1595, we have
the first documentary evidence that Shakespeare was a member
of the company: the treasurer's accounts show that ‘Wil. Kempe,'
'Wil. Shakespeare' and 'Rich. Burbage' received payment for two
comedies played at court on 26 and 28 December, 1594. Iu 1595
or 1596, the company was at the Theater. The first lord Hunsdon
died in July 1596, and the company descended to his son George
Carey, second lord, who, in March 1597, himself became lord
chamberlain. In July 1597, the Theater was shut up and the
company possibly played at the Curtain, before moving, in 1599,
into the most famous of all Elizabethan playhouses, the newly
erected Globe on the Surrey bank. In this playhouse, Shakespeare
was a shareholder, and at this playhouse and by this company all
Shakespeare's plays written after that date were produced. In
May 1603, the company received a patent, as the King's men, a
title which they retained till the suppression in 1642. Thence-
forward, they were members of the royal household, holding the
rank, as the Queen's company had before them, of grooms of the
chambers, and being entitled, every two years, to four yards of
1 Greg's Henslowe's Diary, vol. 1, pp. 45, 73.
## p. 248 (#266) ############################################
248
The Elizabethan Theatre
scarlet cloth for a cloak, and a quarter of a yard of crimson velvet
for a cape. Their licence permitted them to play at their usual
house, the Globe, and within the liberties and freedom of any other
city, university, town or borough whatsoever. In 1608', the Black-
friars playhouse was occupied by this company, who, thenceforth,
continued to use both houses till all the playhouses were closed
by the ordinance of 1642. The company's career was uneventful
in the sense that it was seldom in trouble; though, in 1601, it was
under suspicion of implication in the Essex conspiracy; in 1615,
it was summoned before the privy council, in the persons of Burbage
and Heminge, then its leaders, for playing in Lent; and, in 1624,
Middleton's Game at Chesse, which attacked the Spaniards, caused
the players, at the instance of Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador,
to be inhibited for a fortnight. Many lists of actors are extant to
show the composition of the company, and among its principal
members at various times were Shakespeare, Richard Burbage,
Augustine Phillipps, John Heminge and Henry Condell (afterwards
the editors of the first folio Shakespeare), Slye, Pope, William
Kemp and John Lowin. Richard Burbage died in March 1619;
Shakespeare retired in 1610; Condell in 1619; Pope died in 1604,
and Slye in 1608. Concerning the parts played by the principal
actors, information is scanty. Shakespeare is known to have acted
in Ben Jonson's Every Man in His Humour (tradition assigns him
the part of old Nowell) and Sejanus; Rowe, making enquiries
about his acting early in the eighteenth century, 'could never
meet with any further account of him this way than' (what he
heard, possibly, from Betterton) that the top of his performance
was the ghost in his own Hamlet'; Oldys records that 'one of
Shakespeare's younger brothers' had seen him play Adam in As
You Like It; and, in 1610, John Davies of Hereford states that
Shakespeare “plaid some kingly parts in sport,' which is open to
the interpretation that he acted the parts of kings on the stage.
Of Richard Burbage, as an actor, more is known. His name
appears as early as 1592. There is good evidence that he was
the original Richard III, Hamlet, Othello and Lear in Shake-
speare's plays, and it is probable that he also played Romeo. It
is supposed, with reason, that he was the creator of all the leading
parts in the plays which Shakespeare wrote for the company; and
there is evidence that he played, also, the leading parts in all the
most successful of Beaumont and Fletcher's plays produced in his
6
>
1 Wallace, op. cit. pp. 44-45.
## p. 249 (#267) ############################################
The Queen's and Admiral's Companies 249
lifetime, as well as in the plays of Ben Jonson produced by his
company. In fact, he was the leading man, especially in tragedy,
of the company-a position in which Taylor succeeded him. Malone
had read in some tract, of which I have forgot to preserve the
title' that Heminge was the original Falstaff, a part which is soon
found in the hands of Lowin; and Condell is supposed by Collier
to have played Bobadill.
The Queen's company, as we have seen, was formed in 1583 at
the suggestion of Sir Francis Walsingham. Its members were
selected by the master of the revels, then Edmund Tilney, from
the best companies of the day, including Leicester's and the
earl of Warwick's, and it was licensed by the privy council. It
played frequently at court between 1584 and 1591, and its public
house was, probably, the Theater; but in, or about the end of,
1592, it had left London, and it is not heard of after Easter 1594.
The original members included James Burbage, John Laneham,
Robert Wilson and Richard Tarlton from Leicester's company,
and Laurence and John Dutton from Warwick's. James Burbage,
originally a joiner by trade, had been the chief of Leicester's
company. Of Laneham, as an actor, nothing is known, and Wilson
is more famous as a playwright'. Tarlton is a famous figure in the
theatrical history of the time. A clown, who took to the stage, as
it appears, comparatively late in life, he achieved a popularity
that long outlasted his death. His extemporal riming and his
'jiggs' were the delight of the groundlings, and he left some
volumes of verse and jests, besides the play of The Seven Deadly
Sins, the 'platt' or scheme of which survives in manuscript at
Dulwich? Among the authors whose plays this company acted
were the university wits, Greene, Lodge and Peele; and, possibly,
Marlowe's Jew of Malta was in their répertoire.
A company under the patronage of Charles second lord Howard
of Effingham is found acting at court between 1576 and 1578,
and probably continued to exist until 1585. Soon after Howard's
appointment as lord high admiral, a company appears as the
Admirals, playing at court and evidently, also, at some innyard.
The partial dispersal of this company and its loose combination
with that of lord Strange have already been mentioned. In
October 1592, Edward Alleyn, who is first heard of in January
1 That is, supposing him to be the R. W. who wrote The Three Ladies of London,
and The Three Lords and Three Ladies of London. On Wilson, see Ward, vol. I, p. 140,
and Fleay's English Drama, vol. 11, 8. 0. Wilson, Robert, senior.
2 As to Tarlton, cf. ante, vol. v, chap. XIII, and vol. IV, p. 360 and bibl.
## p. 250 (#268) ############################################
250
The Elizabethan Theatre
1583, as a member of the earl of Worcester's company, and joined,
in or about 1589', that of the Admiral, married Joan Woodward,
step-daughter of Philip Henslowe, who, in the previous spring,
had put in order his playhouse, the Rose in Southwark. By
1594, the Admiral's men had severed their connection with
Strange's (then the Chamberlain's) company, and started in-
dependently at the Rose with Alleyn as their leading actor.
Barabas, in Marlowe's Jew of Malta, Tamburlaine and Dr Faustus
were among the parts he created, and it is probable, also, that
Orlando Furioso in Greene's play of that name was in his réper-
toire. By 1592, Nashe is found comparing him with Roscius and
Aesop to their disadvantage ; Ben Jonson has left a tribute to him
as one who gave so many Poets life. ' In 1597, he ‘left playing':
whether for good or only temporarily is not certain. There is no
direct evidence that he ever acted again, and his only recorded
public appearance in a similar capacity is his delivery of an address
to James I at his reception by the city on 15 March 1604. In 1597,
Howard was created earl of Nottingham, and his company is
sometimes called by that name. Though deprived of its leading
actor, it continued, with the usual interruptions, to perform at
the Rose, until the building of the Fortune by Henslowe and
Alleyn in 1600. This remained the company's house, except for
a few years in its latest period. Early in the new reign, the com-
pany was transferred to the patronage of prince Henry, James's
eldest son ; after prince Henry's death in 1612, it was taken up,
for a time at any rate, by Frederick V, elector palatine, who
married James's daughter Elizabeth in February 1613, and was
known as the Palsgrave's company; and, in 1632, prince Charles,
afterwards Charles II, became its youthful patron. It was for this
.
company that Marlowe wrote The Jew of Malta and Dr Faustus;
and Lodge, Greene, Ben Jonson, Dekker, Chapman, Drayton and
Middleton, were, at one time or another, in its employ as
authors.
Besides the three of whose history a slight sketch is here
given, there were, of course, many other companies of players.
In spite of the privy council's restraining supervision and the
enmity of the city, there were seldom less than four or five
companies, besides usually two companies of boys, acting in and
about London at the same time. The amount of competition,
therefore, though not excessive as in the present day, was sufficient
1 Greg's Henslowe's Diary, vol. II, p. 83.
2 Greg, op. cit. vol. II, pp. 40–48.
## p. 251 (#269) ############################################
Innyards. The Theater
251
to maintain a healthy rivalry, which may be contrasted in its re-
sults with the evils that followed upon the establishment of two,
and only two, ‘patent' houses after the Restoration.
When Elizabeth came to the throne, the usual places of public
theatrical performance in London were certain innyards. An ac-
count written in 1628 enumerates five of these yards, where plays
were publicly performed : one in Gracechurch street (the Bell),
one in Bishopsgate street (the Bull), one on Ludgate Hill (the Bell
Savage), one in Whitefriars and one ‘nigh Paul's. ' Plays were
also performed at an inn in Blackfriars, and at the Cross Keys in
Gracechurch street. The exact arrangement or appliances of a
play in an innyard it is now impossible to establish. Whether the
platform stage stood in the centre of the yard or against one end
is not known; or whether a price was charged for admission, or
whether the performers depended for reward on the goodwill of
the audience. The galleries which surrounded the yard on three
sides were, obviously, good positions for spectators, and we may
imagine a crowd standing round the stage, on three, or even
on all four, sides of it, in the 'yard,' a name which was ap-
plied also to the ground level of the playhouses proper when
these came to be built. A statement made by Flecknoe, in his
Short Discourse of the English Stage (1664), that some remains
of these theatres were, at that day, to be seen at the Cross Keys
and the Bull, would imply, if it is to be trusted, that some kind of
permanent structure was erected; but the evidence is too slight
and too late in date to be made a foundation for conjecture.
The opposition to playing in the city led to the erection,
in 1576, of the first Elizabethan playhouse, the Theater. It was
built by James Burbage, formerly a joiner by trade, and a member
of the earl of Leicester's company. Just outside the city walls on
the north lay Finsbury fields, an open holiday ground where archery,
fencing, swordplay and other sports were practised, and where the
trained bands drilled. At the edge of these fields, on land that had
but recently belonged to the priory of Holywell, and close to the
road leading from Bishopsgate to Shoreditch church (the site is now
in the triangular patch between Curtain road, Holywell lane and
Great Eastern street) James Burbage put up his playhouse. It
was outside the city, but on the edge of a neighbourhood inhabited
by noblemen and strangers born’(i. e. both foreigners and English
people not of London birth and citizenship), and easily accessible
from Bishopsgate, or through Cripplegate or Moorgate and across
6
## p. 252 (#270) ############################################
252
The Elizabethan Theatre
the fields. Burbage acquired the land by lease from Giles Allen
for 21 years from 13 April 1576, and borrowed 1000 marks
(£666. 138. 4d. ) from his father-in-law, Brayne, with which to
build his playhouse.
The word 'theater' had been in use before for the platform on
which shows were given, and Burbage probably named his play-
house the Theater on that account. In shape, as we know from
several indications, as well as from the account left by de Witt,
a Dutchman who visited London, probably about two years before
its demolition, the Theater was an amphitheatre. Much has been
written on the various influences which may have combined to
cause the adoption of this shape. The Roman amphitheatres at
Dorchester, Banbury and Shrewsbury, which were still in use for
sports or dramatic exhibitions; the Cornish rounds,' where the
guirimir or miracle-plays were acted; the arrangement of stage and
scaffold at a London performance of miracle or morality; even the
disposition of the churches during a religious play-all these have
been called in ; while, for the internal arrangement of the building,
the innyard is supposed to be largely responsible. It seems hardly
necessary to go so far afield to account for what was the natural
and simple plan. It must be remembered that already, on the
south of the Thames, there were 'rings,' 'scaffolded about,' in
existence within which bears or bulls were baited, and fencing
or swordplay matches took place. For a spectacle which can be
watched equally well from any point, the circle is the formation
into which spectators naturally gather; and, just as naturally,
there is one point of the circle that is left free for the convenience
of ingress and egress by the performers to and from the ring.
When James Burbage built his playhouse on the edge of Finsbury
fields, a common meeting ground for sports, the drama, though it
was rapidly absorbing these sports, had not taken their place, and
the Theater was not confined to dramatic performances. To make
his playhouse round, with the platform stage occupying a large
part of the groundspace, but touching at one point the edge of the
circle, was only to do what all constructors of amphitheatres had
done before—the easiest thing. The erection of a room or building
in which the actors could dress, and from which they could make
their entrances, would naturally follow. The stage was a movable
platform on trestles. When some sport for which it was not
wanted was to take place, it was taken to pieces and packed
away; and Burbage's innovation, reduced to its fundamental
principle, was merely the building of a high wall all round his
## p. 253 (#271) ############################################
The Theater and the Curtain
253
ring, so that his spectators should be compelled to pay for ad-
mission. The innyard, doubtless, was responsible for the galleries
round the inside of that wooden wall, which increased the housing
accommodation and gave a measure of privacy to those who de-
sired it Neither to indoor performances at court, nor to those
which may be supposed to have taken place in the courtyards of
noblemen's houses, can any debt be traced in the plan of the
Theater.
The lease from Giles Allen to Burbage contained a clause by
which, if the lessee, within ten years of the date of the lease, spent
£200 in buildings, he should be entitled to an extension of the
term to 1607 and to take down the buildings he might erect. In
1585, a new lease was prepared, but not executed. Early in 1597,
negotiations began again for an extension of the lease, and it
appears that Allen consented to execute it, on condition that the
yearly rent was raised by £10, and that the Theater should be used
as a playhouse for five more years only. James Burbage died in
1597, and was succeeded in the property by his sons Richard and
Cuthbert. The lease expired, and the Theater was closed. The
company probably moved to the Curtain; and, in the winter of
1598-99, availing themselves of the clause in the lease, the
Burbages forestalled Allen by pulling the Theater down, to erect
it on the other side of the river as the Globe.
The history of the Curtain is obscure. There is evidence
that the Theater was the first playhouse to be built; but the
Curtain is mentioned very shortly afterwards, and its opening may
be dated in 1577. It stood near Finsbury fields, not far to the
south of the Theater, within the precinct of the same priory of
Holywell, and took its name from Curtain close, a meadow once in
the possession of the priory on which, later, was built a house called
Curtain house. The name survives in Curtain road, Shoreditch.
Who built it and what it cost are points yet to be discovered ; but
that, like the Theater, it was round in shape and built of wood are
suppositions that can hardly be controverted, even if reliance be
not placed on the argument that Shakespeare's King Henry V
(the prologue of which refers to this wooden 0') was acted here
in the summer of 1599. It would be unsafe to deduce from the
word 'cockpit' in the same passage that the Curtain was unusually
small. Its history was uneventful. On the closing of the Theater,
the Chamberlain's company seems to have removed there, and they
kept it open during the early days of the Globe. When leave was
sought to open the Fortune in Cripplegate, it was granted by the
## p. 254 (#272) ############################################
254
The Elizabethan Theatre
privy council on the understanding that the Curtain was to be
closed; nevertheless, it remained open, and, after the accession of
James I, became the home of queen Anne's (lately the earl of
Worcester’s) company. It is mentioned as in use in 1623, and as
standing in 1627.
Little is known of the playhouse at Newington Butts. The
direct evidence consists of, first, an entry in the privy council
register for 1586, stating that the council had desired the lord
mayor to prohibit plays in the city, and had taken the like order
for the prohibiting of plays at the Theater ‘and th' other places
about Newington’; secondly, an undated warrant from the privy
council, now referred to August 1592', rescinding an order which
had restrained lord Strange's servants from playing at the Rose,
and had enjoined them to play three days (? a week) at Newington
Butts ; thirdly, an entry in the accounts of Philip Henslowe, the
theatrical manager, at the head of a list of receipts from per-
formances : 'In the name of God Amen begininge at Newington
my Lord Admeralle men and my Lorde Chamberlen men, As
ffolowethe 1594'; and, last, an enumeration by Howes, in his
continuation of Stow's Annals (1631), of the London playhouses
built within the last sixty years, which concludes with: 'besides
one in former time at Newington Buts. ' Indirect evidence has
been drawn from analogy? The warrant of the privy council
above mentioned implies that the house had then been standing
for some years. Nothing further is known of its history.
Philip Henslowe, by trade a dyer, and an acute man of business
interested in undertakings of various kinds, leased an estate in
the Clink liberty, Southwark, in 1585, and, in 1587, was con-
templating the building upon it of a playhouse, of which, if it was
built at all, we hear nothing till some years later. In his diary
or book of accounts, which is one of the chief authorities for the
dramatic history of the period, he is found in February 1592
sharing the receipts of lord Strange's men—nothing being said of
the playhouse at which they were acting. Another entry (in a
book which must be admitted to be one of the most confused
accountbooks ever kept, besides having suffered from neglect and
unscrupulous treatment) is a statement of the money he spent
'a bowte my playe howsse' (the Rose) ‘in the yeare of op lord
1592. ' Nothing is said in the account about repairs, and it bears
6
i Greg's Henslowe's Diary, vol. 11, pp. 45 and 52–53. For the text, see eund. ,
Henslowe Papers, p. 43.
9 By Ordish, p. 144.
## p. 255 (#273) ############################################
The Rose and the
Globe
255
all the marks of a building account; while Henslowe's want of
regularity in following the Marian or the popular system of dating
by the year-or, indeed, any system at all—makes the confusion
still greater. It seems pretty certain, however, that 1592 here
means 1592; that the account is not for building, but for extensive
repairs amounting almost to rebuilding; and that the work was
completed in the early part of the year, in time for lord Strange's
men to occupy the house in February. This implies that the play-
house contemplated in 1587 had been built and, therefore, used?
In June 1594, the Rose on the Bankside in Southwark was the play-
house of the Admiral's company, with Edward Alleyn at its head.
Alleyne 'left playing' in 1597; and, in 1598, the Chamberlain's
company moved across the water from the Curtain, and built the
Globe. The prosperity of the Rose began to decline, perhaps
through unequal competition. By 1600, it had fallen into a bad
state of repair, and its situation was considered inconvenient in
winter. When the Admiral's company moved to the Fortune, in
1600, other companies occasionally occupied the Rose till 1603.
After the accession of James I, it was used sometimes for sports.
The Rose was built mainly of timber, lath and plaster, though
entries in Henslowe's accounts for bricks and bricklaying seem
to imply a brick foundation for the wooden walls. The stage was
painted ; there was a tirehouse, or actors' dressingroom, behind
it, with a room over it, and a flagstaff.
Though the Blackfriars was the next playhouse to be built,
it is more convenient to consider first the most important of
Elizabethan playhouses, the Globe. The reason why the Chamber-
lain's men left the Curtain for the other side of the river is not
clear. There may have been some decline in the attractiveness of
Finsbury fields as a holiday ground; or the common council may
have protested with effect against the usual procession through the
city. Bankside was certainly a popular resort, and Southwark
the district where pleasureseekers went to see bullbaiting and
bearbaiting, to the public gardens and to the stews. Unable
to come to terms with the landlord of the Theater, Richard and
Cuthbert Burbage, as we have seen, pulled down their old play-
house and used the materials in building the Globe, which stood, as
is commonly supposed, to the south-west of Paris garden and to the
south of what was then Maiden lane and is now the east-to-west part
1 The account of the Newington Butts house and the Rose given above follows that
of Greg, Henslowe's Diary, vol. 11, pp. 43—48 and 73. For another view, which must
be held to be superseded, see Ordish,
pp. 149–155.
## p. 256 (#274) ############################################
256
The Elizabethan Theatre
of Park street, on ground at present occupied by a brewery? This
was the house, from its opening till 1642, of the Chamberlain's and
King's company; here Richard Burbage acted, and here Shakes-
peare's greatest plays were produced. Our knowledge of the ap-
pearance and construction of the Globe is chiefly derived from the
contract for the building of the Fortune, which was to be made like
it, specifically in certain details, as well as generally, with certain
minor exceptions. The contract will be quoted in connection with
the Fortune theatre. Shops, stews and playhouses all had signs
at that time, and the earliest Globe was so called from its sign of
Atlas bearing the globe on his shoulders. It appears in a drawing
of 1610 as a round structure, rising above a larger round sub-
structure of some considerable height, which, it has been suggested,
enclosed a passage leading from the entrance door (or doors) to
various entrances to the 'yard. ' Structure and substructure were,
almost certainly, of wood, resting on a foundation of bricks and
cement. Its interior arrangements will be discussed later. On
Tuesday 29 June 1613, a new play on the history of Henry VIII
called AU is True was being performed, and, when the king
entered the masque at cardinal Wolsey's, certain ‘chambers' were
shot off. 'Some of the paper or other stuff,' is Sir Henry Wotton's
account, 'wherewith one of them was stopped, did light on the
thatch' (on the roof over the galleries). The house was burned
to the ground within less than an hour. “Yet nothing did perish
but wood and straw, and a few forsaken cloaks. ' Another con-
temporary statement says that the escape of the audience was
marvellous, 'having but two narrow doors to get out. ' Whether
these two include the door by which the players entered the
tiringhouse, or whether they were both for the use of the audience,
cannot now be determined. The usual practice appears to have
been to have one entrance door only to the body of the house.
A contemporary ballad advises 'stage-strutters' to give up their
dissipations and spend their money on tiles for the roof. This
advice, or the latter part of it, seems to have been taken when
the playhouse was rebuilt in the following year, more handsomely
than before, its 'thatched hide' being then a thing of the past.
The cost of the new playhouse was £1400, and it was the ‘fayrest
that was in England. ' Its shape on rebuilding was octagonal
outside, and, apparently, inside also.
1
i On the situation of the Globe, however, see Wallace, C. W. , in The Times of
2 October 1909, p. 9, col. 4, and subsequent correspondence in The Times and The
Athenæum.
## p. 257 (#275) ############################################
a
The Blackfriars
257
It has been supposed that, after the King's company began to
act at the Blackfriars, the Globe became their summer playhouse,
the Blackfriars being used in winter. Further evidence is needed
before this question can be determined, though we have seen that
the situation of the Rose was considered inconvenient in winter;
the Globe is found in use in February.
In February 1596, James Burbage, already in difficulties with
the landlord of the Theater, bought of the executor of Sir Thomas
Cawarden, late master of the revels, for £600, the freehold of
a complicated collection of rooms, great and small, stairs, cellars
and yards (including 'seven great upper rooms' all on one floor,
formerly one great and entire room), which lay in Blackfriars,
near the Pipe office, adjoining the house of Sir George Cary. The
buildings, which had been in the occupation of Cawarden, were in
the old precinct of the ‘Blackfriars preachers,' or Dominican monks,
and had formed part of their monastic dwelling. Blackfriars, in
those days, was a popular resort, not, like Finsbury fields, for the
people, but for nobles and gentry, who went there to play tennis ;
there were also a few aristocratic houses on a small portion of the
site of the monastery. In making up his mind to establish a play-
house, in defiance of the law, within the city walls, Burbage must
have counted for support less on the people than on the nobility; and,
to some extent, the proceeding is an argument in favour of the view
that royal and aristocratic support was the chief encouragement of
the drama. These seven rooms Burbage turned into an indoor or
“private' playhouse, spending on it a larger sum than had hitherto
been spent on any playhouse in London, and constructing a build-
ing which recent discoveries have shown to be much larger than
was commonly supposed? The term 'private' does not imply that
the public were excluded; the corporation, in an order for the
suppression of the Blackfriars in 1619, refer to it explicitly as a
publique playhowse. ' Burbage's intention, however, was, doubt-
less, to construct a playhouse which should attract aristocratic
patrons by greater seclusion and comfort, the auditorium being
completely roofed over, and, perhaps (though this is thorny
ground), by a stage which might reproduce to some extent the
scenic completeness attained in the indoor performances at court.
In November 1596, the inhabitants petitioned against the es-
tablishment of a playhouse in their midst, but ineffectually. In
July 1597, letters patent were issued to Nathaniel Giles, master
1 See, in The Times, 11 September 1906, p. 6, cols. 1 and 2, Old Blackfriars
Theatre,' by Wallace, C. W. , and eund. , Children of the Chapel, chap. I.
E. L. VI.
17
>
6
1
CH, X.
## p. 258 (#276) ############################################
258
The Elizabethan Theatre
of the chapel children, to impress boys for the Queen's service;
and, about this time, the chapel children are found occupying
Burbage's new playhouse. In 1600, Richard Burbage leased the
Blackfriars to one Henry Evans for 21 years at a yearly rent of
£40, and Evans continued the children's performances. Later,
came trouble over Evans's too drastic exercise of the powers
granted to Giles under the patent; the playhouse ceased to pay;
the lease was assigned; the chapel children, who, after James's
accession, had been reconstituted as the children of queen Anne's
revels, lost the royal patronage after their performance of East-
ward Hoe in 1605, and were again obnoxious in their production
of Biron. In August 1608, Richard Burbage took back the lease
to Evans, and, a little later, the King's company began to use the
house themselves. In January 1619, the corporation tried to close
the Blackfriars, but the privy council stepped in and confirmed its
use; and the King's company continued to play there without
interruption till 1642. )
The move of the Chamberlain's men to Bankside left the north
bank of the Thames without any strong theatrical attraction, and
Henslowe and Alleyn endeavoured (not without strenuous but in-
effectual opposition from local and municipal authorities) to cater
for the population of that part of the town by building the Fortune
playhouse off Golding (now Golden) lane in the parish of St Giles
without, Cripplegate. The extant contract for the building, made
by Henslowe and Alleyn with Peter Street, carpenter, is so in-
teresting, in the light it throws on the material and structure
of the Globe and the Fortune, and, indirectly, of Elizabethan
playhouses in general, that part of it deserves quoting verbatim.
The frame of the saide howse to be sett square and to conteine ffowerscore
foote of lawfull assize everye waie square wihoutt and fiftie five foote of like
assize square everye waie win with a good suer and stronge foundacõn of
pyles brick lyme and sand bothe whoat & win to be wroughte one foote of
assize att the leiste above the grounde And the saide fframe to conteine
Three Stories in heighth The first or lower Storie to Conteine Twelve foote
of lawfull assize in heighth The second Storie Eleaven foote of lawfull assize
in heigth And the Third or upper Storie to conteine Nyne foote of lawfull
assize in height all which Stories shall conteine Twelve foote and a halfe
of lawfull assize in breadth througheoute besides a Juttey forwardes in
either of the saide Twoe upper Stories of Tenne ynches of lawfull assize with
ffower convenient divisions for gentlemens roomes and other sufficient and
convenient divisions for Twoe pennie roomes wth necessarie Seates to be
placed and sett Aswell in those roomes as througheoute all the rest of the
galleries of the saide howse and wth suchelike steares Conveyances & divisions
woute & wthin as are made & Contryved in and to the late erected Plaie-
howse On the Banck in the saide pishe of gro Savio's Called the Globe Wth a
Stadge and Tyreinge howse to be made erected & settup wthin the saide iframe
## p. 259 (#277) ############################################
The Fortune
259
with a shadows or cover over the saide Stadge. . . . And weh Stadge shall con-
teine in length ffortie and Three foote of lawfall assize and in breadth to
extende to the middle of the yarde of the saide howse The same Stadge to be
paled in belowe wth good stronge and sufficyent newe oken bourdes And like-
wise the lower Storie of the saide fframe w'hinside, and the same lower storie
to be alsoe laide over and fenced wih stronge yron pykes And the saide Stadge
to be in all other proporcons Contryved and fashioned like unto the Stadge of
the saide Plaie howse Called the Globe Wth convenient windowes and lightes
glazed to the saide Tyreinge howse And the saide fframe Stadge and Steare-
cases to be covered wth Tyle and to have a sufficient gutter of lead to Carrie &
convey the water frome the Coveringe of the saide Stadge to fall backwardes
And also all the saide fframe and the Stairecases thereof to be sufficyently
enclosed woute wth lathe lyme & haire and the gentlemens roomes and Twoe
pennie roomes to be seeled woh lathe lyme & haire and all the flowers of the
saide Galleries Stories and Stadge to be bourded wth good & sufficyent newe
deale bourdes of the whole thicknes wheare need shalbe and the saide howse
and other thinges beforemencõed to be made & doen To be in all other
Contrivitions Conveyances fashions thinge and thinges effected finished and
doen accordinge to the manner and fashion of the saide bowse Called the
Globe Sareinge only that all the princypall and maine postes of the saide
fframe and Stadge forwarde shalbe square and wroughte palasterwise wth
carved proporcons Called Satiers to be placed & sett on the Topp of every of
the same postes 1.
The contract is dated 8 January 1599/1600, and the work, which
was to cost £440, was to be finished by 25 July. The actual cost
worked out at £520, and the playhouse appears to have been
opened in November or December 1600, by the Admiral's men, who
occupied it throughout the remainder of the period. It is notice-
able that the outside was square. The Fortune was burned down
in 1621, and all the wardrobe and playbooks were destroyed; it
was rebuilt, some two years later, round in shape and of brick.
It appears, in its later years, to have become a popular house,
rather despised by the more refined.
The Rose fell out of use in 1603, and the importance of the
Blackfriars and the Fortune robbed Bankside of much of the
patronage of playgoers. When the Globe was burned in 1613, it
seems to have been feared that the King's men would move back
to the north of the river; and a petition was addressed to the
king by the company of Watermen, praying that the players might
not be allowed to have a playhouse in London or Middlesex within
five miles of the city-which petition was not granted.
In 1589, Francis Langley, who held a small office at court,
purchased the manor of Paris garden. In November 1594, we
find the lord mayor protesting against his intention to build a
playhouse on his property. The project was not dismissed; but
it is not certain when the Swan playhouse was built. It may
| Transcribed from Greg, Henslowe Papers, pp. 5 and 6.
17-2
## p. 260 (#278) ############################################
260
The Elizabethan Theatre
have been open in 1596. The Swan was used for plays, at any
rate until 1620, and was still standing, though in a dilapidated
state, in 1632. Dramatically, its history is unimportant; but
the house has acquired notoriety from the fact that a con-
temporary drawing, or copy of a drawing, of its interior—the
earliest view known of the interior of a playhouse—is in existence,
Probably in or about the summer of 1596, John de Witt, a
Dutchman, visited London. (It may be noted here that much of
our information concerning the London playhouses of the day
comes from foreigners, to whom they were objects of great
interest and surprise. ) The drawing in question was discovered
in the library at Utrecht, in the commonplace book of another
Dutchman, Arend von Buchell, accompanied by a descriptive
passage headed Ex observationibus Londinensibus Johannis De
Witt. The passage, with the drawing, may have been copied
from a now lost letter or journal written by de Witt. The
drawing, a rough sketch, must be used, therefore, with caution ;
but so many of its details correspond with the details of the
Swan found in the contract for the building of the Hope, which was
to be like it in many respects, that it may be taken as giving a
rough idea of the general plan of an Elizabethan public playhouse!
The drawing is made from a point which, roughly speaking, would
correspond to the position of a man sitting in the middle of the
front row of the upper circle of a large modern theatre, or the
gallery of a small one.
The main features of the playhouse are clear enough. It is a
tall, round (or, possibly, oval) 2 structure some fifty feet high”, with
three roofed galleries, divided into 'rooms,' or boxes, running right
round it and interrupted only by the tirehouse behind the stage.
The yard is open to the sky; there are no seats in it, and the
audience can stand close to the stage on three sides, finding it
1 All reproductions of this drawing (e. g. in Ordish, Early London Theatres, p. 265)
having beneath them the words Ex observationibus Londinensibus Johannis De Witt,
taken from the manuscript, are made, not from the original, but from the engraving pub-
lished by Gaedertz in his Zur Kenntnis der altenglischen Bühne, Bremen, 1888. For a full-
sized reproduction direct from the original, see Wheatley, On a contemporary drawing
of the Interior of the Swan Theatre, N. 8.
from this point of view. His three comedies, at their worst, sink as
low as Cartwright and, at their best, touch the level of Mayne or
Nabbes; but his more serious work, consisting of The Ladies Privi-
ledge, Argalus and Parthenia and Albertus Wallenstein, approaches
more nearly to literature than any of the parallel efforts of Carlell,
Mayne, Cartwright, or Thomas Killigrew. The first of these plays,
which ends as a comedy, belongs to the type of tragicomedy in
which extravagant sentiment insists upon submitting itself to
absurd tasks in the effort to prove its heroism. The second is
a pastoral, also conforming to the tragicomedy type ; and the third
is history treated on the same lines. The plays, therefore, illustrate
the enervating and disintegrating effect of heroic sentiment on all
the chief forms of English drama. But it is William D'Avenant
whose work best enables us to observe the transition to the heroic
drama of Dryden. His first two plays were tragedies in Fletcher's
grimmest style, dated 1626 and 1627, and these were followed by two
able comedies which enjoyed considerable popularity. After 1630,
illness incapacitated him for several years; and, when he resumes
work as a dramatist, his style has altered, and four plays, Love and
Honour, 1634, The Platonick Lovers, 1635, The Fair Favourite,
1638, and The Unfortunate Lover, 1638, show him under French
influences and as the leading exponent of the cult of platonic love,
of which queen Henrietta herself was the patron. The Platonick
Lovers is a budget of speeches and disputations on this unreal
and undramatic theme; it is curious to the student of manners,
but futile as literature. D'Avenant lived to revive the theatre
shortly before the Restoration, and to contribute to its literature
after that date. He will, therefore, receive some further notice
in a later volume.
## p. 241 (#259) ############################################
CHAPTER X
THE ELIZABETHAN THEATRE
WHEN Elizabeth came to the throne, she found attached to
the court not only musicians and minstrels, but eight players of
interludes. This body had been a permanent part of the court
establishment for some reigns; and, in the new theatrical activity
of Elizabeth's reign, it was supplanted by other bodies, but
not dissolved. It accompanied her occasionally on her pro-
gresses, and only gradually died out. Companies of such players
had long been attached to the households of men of wealth and
position, whose 'livery' or badge they wore on their sleeves.
A statement in Heywood's Apology for Actors (1612) may be
taken to mean that some kind of royal licence was considered
necessary or advisable by these companies, so far back as the
reign of Henry VIII.
In many cases, these companies supported themselves by
playing before the public in various parts of the country. The
practice seems to have been for players, on coming to a town,
first to attend the mayor, to inform him whose servants they were
and to receive his licence for public playing. If the mayor liked
the company or wished to honour their master, he would pay them
a sum (which the entrance money charged to the public would
supplement') to give a first performance before the corporation, to
which the public were admitted. Several cases are on record
where players received a fee, though they were forbidden by the
town's bylaws or otherwise to give a performance. Travelling
players appeared frequently, also, at private houses, at weddings
and on other festival occasions; and, occasionally, even in
churches. At Exeter, Yarmouth and Worcester, there seem to
have been regular playhouses ; at other times, the actors played
1 Murray, John Tucker, ‘English Dramatic Companies in the towns outside of
London, 1550-1600,' Modern Philology, vol. 11, p. 539.
E. L. VI.
16
6
CH. X.
## p. 242 (#260) ############################################
242
The Elizabethan Theatre
6
at the guildhall, or in an innyard. Such incidents as the remon-
strance issued by the privy council to the lord president of the
north in 1556, touching the seditious plays acted by 'certain lewd
persons naming themselves to be the servants of Sir Frances
Lake,' suggest that some, at least, of the companies attached to
great houses had received no recognition or licence from the
crown; while 'common players of interludes,' orders for whose
regulation or arrest were occasionally issued, did not belong, either
in fact or in name, to any nobleman's establishment. In addition
to companies bearing the names of patrons, there were still in
existence a large number of wandering troupes of jugglers and
players, descendants of the old minstrels, who owned no kind of
patronage. Certain municipal corporations had their band of
players; and, in Cornwall and elsewhere, local associations of
amateurs still met to perform town or village plays and pageants
which the reformation had shorn of their old glory. The com-
petition of travelling companies was, perhaps, as important an
element in the decadence of these local bodies as was the hostility
of the puritans.
A few months after her accession, Elizabeth issued a proclama-
tion providing that no interlude should be played without being
notified beforehand and licensed by the mayor or chief officer of
a town, or, in the country, by lieutenants or two local justices
of the peace. And, in 1572, the question of these unattached
companies was finally settled by a law providing that common
players in interludes not belonging to a baron or honourable
personage of greater degree, or not having a licence from two
justices of the peace, should be deemed rogues and vagabonds.
This, practically, is the close of the history—so far as their influence
on the progress of the drama is concerned- of any theatrical
bodies except those definitely under patronage. The early part of
Elizabeth's reign saw not only the triumph of the professional
actor over the amateur, but the supplanting of the old player of
interludes by the better equipped companies then newly formed
by nobles anxious to please their sovereign.
In the city of London, jurisdiction over public theatricals
rested, under the proclamation of 1559, in the mayor and cor-
poration, steady foes of the drama. The decay of the feudal
system under the Tudors had increased the importance not only of
the immediate neighbourhood of the court, but of the capital ; and
London was now the centre of theatrical activity. Elizabeth's own
love of the play tended to the same result; and the privy council,
## p. 243 (#261) ############################################
Grounds of Objection
243
on the whole, supported her in defending the acted drama against
the attacks of the city government. The difference between court
and city was the cause of many disputes and much uncertainty,
as is shown at length in a later chapter of this volume, where
it is also related how an unforeseen result of the city's opposition
was the enormous stimulus given to theatrical art by the building
of playhouses outside the common council's jurisdiction but within
easy reach of the citizens of London.
The quarrel' was due to other causes besides the religious
difference, and the inevitable conflict between the feudal privilege
from which companies drew their origin, on the one hand, and, on
the other, the rights of the corporation, which meant the growing
importance of the middle class. A very reasonable objection was
advanced against the overcrowding of narrow streets by people
riding or, later, driving to the playhouses, and by the concourse of
loafers and beggars; furthermore, apprentices and others were
tempted to play truant and occasional tumults or crimes resulted
from the massing of numbers of people in holiday mood. A
theatrical performance, like the performance of a miracle-play in
earlier times, meant a procession through the streets with drums
and trumpets. It would not be fair, however, to ascribe to plays
alone all the disturbances which are on record. Such incidents as
those which took place outside the Theater in 1584, when 'one
Browne, a serving man in a blew coat, a shifting fellowe,' attacked
an apprentice with a sword, were due rather to the fact that the
neighbourhood of this house was the 'ordinary place for all maister-
les men and vagabond persons. . . to meet together and to recreate
themselfes. ' The gravest cause for the corporation's objection to
plays a cause which the privy council readily supported them in
avoiding—was, however, the recurrence of the plague, to the grievous
and prolonged visitations of which full reference is made in the
chapter discussing the conflicts between puritanism and the stage*.
But, in the reigns of Elizabeth, James I and Charles I, every year
was a plague year, and, besides 1582—3, 1558, 1586, 1593, 1603,
1613, 1625 and 1636 were very bad plague years. It was important
to check the spread of infection by preventing the gathering of
crowds, and plays were forbidden whenever it seemed desirable.
Early in the reign of James I, all performances were prohibited
· See post, chap. xiv.
· For an interesting suggestion as to the influence of the Blackfriars playhouse in
and after the year 1597, see Wallace, C. W. , Children of the Chapel, chap. XII.
* Remembrancia, vol. 11, p. 103.
* See post, chap. XIV.
16_2
## p. 244 (#262) ############################################
244
The Elizabethan Theatre
when the number of deaths a week reached 30; and, in or about
1619, 40 was fixed as the limiting number'. This frequently en-
tailed the closing of places of public performance during the whole
of the summer and autumn, when companies sometimes 'broke,
sometimes went on tour in England and sometimes travelled
abroad. The history of these travels is well worth study, but lies
outside the scope of this work.
In the conflict between the drama and the corporation, the
weight of Elizabeth herself was thrown entirely on the side of the
drama. The list of performances at court shows that, while masques
were frequently performed by amateurs at the beginning of her
reign, their place was almost entirely taken later by the per-
formances of professional actors whom her patronage helped to
bring to efficiency. The stock excuse offered by the privy council
for contravention of the prohibitive regulations of the city authori-
ties is that players must be allowed full opportunities of practising
their art in order that they may exercise it fitly before the queen,
during the Christmas holidays or at Shrovetide—the great seasons
of performances at court. In 1583, the queen, at the suggestion
of Walsingham, and probably as a countermove to a decision of
the common council, had her own company selected from the best
actors of the day; and every attempt was made to regard public
performances as mere rehearsals for those at court. It is easily
possible to make too much of the pretext, which, doubtless, was
convenient at the time. The chance of a play being awarded a
place among the few to be performed at court would scarcely have
sufficed to encourage playwrights to produce work of the quantity
or the character left by Elizabethan dramatists. Occasional state
performances, rewarded with a small fee, could not be prize enough
to keep large numbers of men working hard at acting, and at
nothing else, all the year round; and players grew well-to-do and
respectable, not because they played now and then at court, but
because court favour enabled them to meet the ardent desire for
theatrical performances which had been largely thwarted in pre-
vious troubled reigns, but which, when it could be indulged, to a
great extent supplanted the love of athletic or acrobatic exhibi-
tions that had had to suffice for earlier times. Such exhibitions
still survived; but the drama either swept them into its own
a
i Greg's Henslowe's Diary, vol. 11, p. 145.
? See Cohn, A. , Shakespeare in Germany and. The English Comedians in Germany,'
by Harris, C. , in Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, N. S.
Vol. xv, No. 3, and of the opening passages of chap. XI, vol. v, ante.
## p. 245 (#263) ############################################
Effect of Royal Patronage 245
net, or tried to make their separate existence dependent on
its pleasure as regards time and place of performance. The
patronage of the queen and the eagerness of nobles to supply
her with a favourite amusement provided the opportunity, rather
than constituted the cause, of the people's new interest in the
play. It is true that the royal favour first enabled the stage to
stand alone, both as an art and as a business ; but, after 1591,
the queen's own company having by that time lost its prestige,
royal patronage as an active force dwindled until the accession
of James I; and, if the honour of playing at court was still
eagerly sought, it was largely for the sake of the immunity from
molestation by the city which the privy council usually extended
to the companies selected. Nevertheless, the hope of playing
before the queen seldom debarred a company from producing a
satirical or seditious play which would attract the public.
The opposition between the city government and the privy
council was, indirectly, a benefit to the art of the theatre, in that
it led at once to control and to encouragement. The somewhat
complicated history of the various moves on both sides shows
the common council determined, with varying success, to keep
players out of the city, the privy council determined to check
sedition and, while fostering dramatic art, to limit the number of
playhouses and companies, and each party inclined to oppose, or
to neglect, the recommendations of the other. The position of
players was uncertain and sometimes dangerous, as is proved by
their petitions and remonstrances, and by the occasional imprison-
ment of offending companies. In such circumstances, only the
strongest could survive with dignity or comfort. The tendency
was always towards consolidation, though the experiment of the
Queen's company, formed in 1583, was not to prove successful
for long. The path of the Chamberlain's and the Admiral's com-
panies was smooth and profitable on the whole, and the steady
influence of royal favour supported them.
That influence became all important on the accession of
James I. The position of the favoured companies, thenceforth,
was assured by the issue of licences which brought them directly
under royal patronage, and by the statute of March 1604, which
abolished private patronage by forbidding nobles to license men
to go wandering abroad. All public theatricals remained directly
under royal patronage during the reigns of James I and Charles I,
until the ordinance of the lords and commons of September 1642
brought them to an end.
## p. 246 (#264) ############################################
246
The Elizabethan Theatre
He was
Playwrights and players were further subject to the control
of the master of the revels. Originally instituted, as it seems,
.
by Henry VII, for the management of the finances and the
material of performances at court, the office grew constantly in
power. It became the duty of the master of the revels to summon
the companies before him and, after seeing them perform, to
select such actors and such plays as he approved and order
such changes to be made in the plays as, in his opinion, should
render them suitable for performance before the sovereign. At
least so early as 1574, we find him empowered to examine every
play that was to be played in any part of England. No play
might be played or printed without his licence, and he had the
power to alter, to forbid and even as the action of Sir Henry
Herbert, master of the revels under Charles I, would seem to
show) to destroy, any play he found objectionable.
entitled to charge a fee for every play he examined, and for
every play which he licensed for printing, besides a fee which rose
from 58. a week in 1592 to £3 a month in 1602, for licensing each
playhouse? ; and, later in the period, we find the two leading
companies paying him, first the results of two performances, and
then a fixed sum in every year. Sedition, no doubt, was the
offence he principally attempted to check; but profanity and
immorality were also the objects of his attention.
Besides the companies of players under royal or noble patron-
age there were, on Elizabeth's accession, two other classes of
dramatic company, both composed of boys or youths. These were
the children’ of St Paul's and of the chapel royal, and the boys of
the public schools, Eton and Westminster and Merchant Taylors'.
The most important of the companies of men was that which
was originally formed by Robert Dudley earl of Leicester, and which,
in 1574, was the first to receive the royal licence. The numbers of
the company mentioned in the document are five: James Burbage,
John Perkyn, John Laneham, William Johnson and Robert Wilson;
but two or more boys and some minor actors must, also, be supposed
to have been attached to the company. When the first playhouse,
the Theater, was built in 1576, it was occupied by Leicester's com-
pany, who remained there, probably, until in 1583, its place was
taken by the new Queen's company, into which Burbage, Laneham
and Wilson were drafted. In 1585, Leicester took his company
6
i Greg's Henslowe's Diary, vol. 11, pp. 114-118.
? Of these boys' companies a separate account is given in the next chapter (31)
of the present volume.
## p. 247 (#265) ############################################
The Chamberlain's Company 247
abroad with him; in 1587, they were touring in England and acted
at Stratford-on-Avon. Of those who believe that Shakespeare
became a member of this company, some hold that he joined it
during, or shortly after, this visit to his native town. In 1588,
Leicester died, and, not long afterwards, the leading actors of the
company that had gone abroad are found as members of the
company of Ferdinando Stanley, lord Strange. The new company,
which, through some kind of amalgamation with the remains of
the Admiral's men, during these years included Edward Alleyn
himself, played first at the Cross Keys inn in Gracechurch street,
and later, in February 1592, at Philip Henslowe's playhouse, the
Rose in Southwark? . On 3 March 1592, they produced a new play
entered by Henslowe in his diary as ‘harey the vj,' which is be-
lieved by many to have been Shakespeare's King Henry VI, Part I.
If so, the conditions of the time imply that Shakespeare, by that
date, was a member of the company. In April 1594, lord Strange,
who had become earl of Derby in September 1593, died, and
the company passed under the protection of Henry Carey, lord
Hunsdon, then lord chamberlain, to be thenceforth known as the
Chamberlain's servants. In the June of 1594, they played a short
time with the Admiral's men at the playhouse at Newington Butts ;
but, in the same month, the Admiral's men, with Alleyn at their
head, resumed an independent existence. In March 1595, we have
the first documentary evidence that Shakespeare was a member
of the company: the treasurer's accounts show that ‘Wil. Kempe,'
'Wil. Shakespeare' and 'Rich. Burbage' received payment for two
comedies played at court on 26 and 28 December, 1594. Iu 1595
or 1596, the company was at the Theater. The first lord Hunsdon
died in July 1596, and the company descended to his son George
Carey, second lord, who, in March 1597, himself became lord
chamberlain. In July 1597, the Theater was shut up and the
company possibly played at the Curtain, before moving, in 1599,
into the most famous of all Elizabethan playhouses, the newly
erected Globe on the Surrey bank. In this playhouse, Shakespeare
was a shareholder, and at this playhouse and by this company all
Shakespeare's plays written after that date were produced. In
May 1603, the company received a patent, as the King's men, a
title which they retained till the suppression in 1642. Thence-
forward, they were members of the royal household, holding the
rank, as the Queen's company had before them, of grooms of the
chambers, and being entitled, every two years, to four yards of
1 Greg's Henslowe's Diary, vol. 1, pp. 45, 73.
## p. 248 (#266) ############################################
248
The Elizabethan Theatre
scarlet cloth for a cloak, and a quarter of a yard of crimson velvet
for a cape. Their licence permitted them to play at their usual
house, the Globe, and within the liberties and freedom of any other
city, university, town or borough whatsoever. In 1608', the Black-
friars playhouse was occupied by this company, who, thenceforth,
continued to use both houses till all the playhouses were closed
by the ordinance of 1642. The company's career was uneventful
in the sense that it was seldom in trouble; though, in 1601, it was
under suspicion of implication in the Essex conspiracy; in 1615,
it was summoned before the privy council, in the persons of Burbage
and Heminge, then its leaders, for playing in Lent; and, in 1624,
Middleton's Game at Chesse, which attacked the Spaniards, caused
the players, at the instance of Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador,
to be inhibited for a fortnight. Many lists of actors are extant to
show the composition of the company, and among its principal
members at various times were Shakespeare, Richard Burbage,
Augustine Phillipps, John Heminge and Henry Condell (afterwards
the editors of the first folio Shakespeare), Slye, Pope, William
Kemp and John Lowin. Richard Burbage died in March 1619;
Shakespeare retired in 1610; Condell in 1619; Pope died in 1604,
and Slye in 1608. Concerning the parts played by the principal
actors, information is scanty. Shakespeare is known to have acted
in Ben Jonson's Every Man in His Humour (tradition assigns him
the part of old Nowell) and Sejanus; Rowe, making enquiries
about his acting early in the eighteenth century, 'could never
meet with any further account of him this way than' (what he
heard, possibly, from Betterton) that the top of his performance
was the ghost in his own Hamlet'; Oldys records that 'one of
Shakespeare's younger brothers' had seen him play Adam in As
You Like It; and, in 1610, John Davies of Hereford states that
Shakespeare “plaid some kingly parts in sport,' which is open to
the interpretation that he acted the parts of kings on the stage.
Of Richard Burbage, as an actor, more is known. His name
appears as early as 1592. There is good evidence that he was
the original Richard III, Hamlet, Othello and Lear in Shake-
speare's plays, and it is probable that he also played Romeo. It
is supposed, with reason, that he was the creator of all the leading
parts in the plays which Shakespeare wrote for the company; and
there is evidence that he played, also, the leading parts in all the
most successful of Beaumont and Fletcher's plays produced in his
6
>
1 Wallace, op. cit. pp. 44-45.
## p. 249 (#267) ############################################
The Queen's and Admiral's Companies 249
lifetime, as well as in the plays of Ben Jonson produced by his
company. In fact, he was the leading man, especially in tragedy,
of the company-a position in which Taylor succeeded him. Malone
had read in some tract, of which I have forgot to preserve the
title' that Heminge was the original Falstaff, a part which is soon
found in the hands of Lowin; and Condell is supposed by Collier
to have played Bobadill.
The Queen's company, as we have seen, was formed in 1583 at
the suggestion of Sir Francis Walsingham. Its members were
selected by the master of the revels, then Edmund Tilney, from
the best companies of the day, including Leicester's and the
earl of Warwick's, and it was licensed by the privy council. It
played frequently at court between 1584 and 1591, and its public
house was, probably, the Theater; but in, or about the end of,
1592, it had left London, and it is not heard of after Easter 1594.
The original members included James Burbage, John Laneham,
Robert Wilson and Richard Tarlton from Leicester's company,
and Laurence and John Dutton from Warwick's. James Burbage,
originally a joiner by trade, had been the chief of Leicester's
company. Of Laneham, as an actor, nothing is known, and Wilson
is more famous as a playwright'. Tarlton is a famous figure in the
theatrical history of the time. A clown, who took to the stage, as
it appears, comparatively late in life, he achieved a popularity
that long outlasted his death. His extemporal riming and his
'jiggs' were the delight of the groundlings, and he left some
volumes of verse and jests, besides the play of The Seven Deadly
Sins, the 'platt' or scheme of which survives in manuscript at
Dulwich? Among the authors whose plays this company acted
were the university wits, Greene, Lodge and Peele; and, possibly,
Marlowe's Jew of Malta was in their répertoire.
A company under the patronage of Charles second lord Howard
of Effingham is found acting at court between 1576 and 1578,
and probably continued to exist until 1585. Soon after Howard's
appointment as lord high admiral, a company appears as the
Admirals, playing at court and evidently, also, at some innyard.
The partial dispersal of this company and its loose combination
with that of lord Strange have already been mentioned. In
October 1592, Edward Alleyn, who is first heard of in January
1 That is, supposing him to be the R. W. who wrote The Three Ladies of London,
and The Three Lords and Three Ladies of London. On Wilson, see Ward, vol. I, p. 140,
and Fleay's English Drama, vol. 11, 8. 0. Wilson, Robert, senior.
2 As to Tarlton, cf. ante, vol. v, chap. XIII, and vol. IV, p. 360 and bibl.
## p. 250 (#268) ############################################
250
The Elizabethan Theatre
1583, as a member of the earl of Worcester's company, and joined,
in or about 1589', that of the Admiral, married Joan Woodward,
step-daughter of Philip Henslowe, who, in the previous spring,
had put in order his playhouse, the Rose in Southwark. By
1594, the Admiral's men had severed their connection with
Strange's (then the Chamberlain's) company, and started in-
dependently at the Rose with Alleyn as their leading actor.
Barabas, in Marlowe's Jew of Malta, Tamburlaine and Dr Faustus
were among the parts he created, and it is probable, also, that
Orlando Furioso in Greene's play of that name was in his réper-
toire. By 1592, Nashe is found comparing him with Roscius and
Aesop to their disadvantage ; Ben Jonson has left a tribute to him
as one who gave so many Poets life. ' In 1597, he ‘left playing':
whether for good or only temporarily is not certain. There is no
direct evidence that he ever acted again, and his only recorded
public appearance in a similar capacity is his delivery of an address
to James I at his reception by the city on 15 March 1604. In 1597,
Howard was created earl of Nottingham, and his company is
sometimes called by that name. Though deprived of its leading
actor, it continued, with the usual interruptions, to perform at
the Rose, until the building of the Fortune by Henslowe and
Alleyn in 1600. This remained the company's house, except for
a few years in its latest period. Early in the new reign, the com-
pany was transferred to the patronage of prince Henry, James's
eldest son ; after prince Henry's death in 1612, it was taken up,
for a time at any rate, by Frederick V, elector palatine, who
married James's daughter Elizabeth in February 1613, and was
known as the Palsgrave's company; and, in 1632, prince Charles,
afterwards Charles II, became its youthful patron. It was for this
.
company that Marlowe wrote The Jew of Malta and Dr Faustus;
and Lodge, Greene, Ben Jonson, Dekker, Chapman, Drayton and
Middleton, were, at one time or another, in its employ as
authors.
Besides the three of whose history a slight sketch is here
given, there were, of course, many other companies of players.
In spite of the privy council's restraining supervision and the
enmity of the city, there were seldom less than four or five
companies, besides usually two companies of boys, acting in and
about London at the same time. The amount of competition,
therefore, though not excessive as in the present day, was sufficient
1 Greg's Henslowe's Diary, vol. II, p. 83.
2 Greg, op. cit. vol. II, pp. 40–48.
## p. 251 (#269) ############################################
Innyards. The Theater
251
to maintain a healthy rivalry, which may be contrasted in its re-
sults with the evils that followed upon the establishment of two,
and only two, ‘patent' houses after the Restoration.
When Elizabeth came to the throne, the usual places of public
theatrical performance in London were certain innyards. An ac-
count written in 1628 enumerates five of these yards, where plays
were publicly performed : one in Gracechurch street (the Bell),
one in Bishopsgate street (the Bull), one on Ludgate Hill (the Bell
Savage), one in Whitefriars and one ‘nigh Paul's. ' Plays were
also performed at an inn in Blackfriars, and at the Cross Keys in
Gracechurch street. The exact arrangement or appliances of a
play in an innyard it is now impossible to establish. Whether the
platform stage stood in the centre of the yard or against one end
is not known; or whether a price was charged for admission, or
whether the performers depended for reward on the goodwill of
the audience. The galleries which surrounded the yard on three
sides were, obviously, good positions for spectators, and we may
imagine a crowd standing round the stage, on three, or even
on all four, sides of it, in the 'yard,' a name which was ap-
plied also to the ground level of the playhouses proper when
these came to be built. A statement made by Flecknoe, in his
Short Discourse of the English Stage (1664), that some remains
of these theatres were, at that day, to be seen at the Cross Keys
and the Bull, would imply, if it is to be trusted, that some kind of
permanent structure was erected; but the evidence is too slight
and too late in date to be made a foundation for conjecture.
The opposition to playing in the city led to the erection,
in 1576, of the first Elizabethan playhouse, the Theater. It was
built by James Burbage, formerly a joiner by trade, and a member
of the earl of Leicester's company. Just outside the city walls on
the north lay Finsbury fields, an open holiday ground where archery,
fencing, swordplay and other sports were practised, and where the
trained bands drilled. At the edge of these fields, on land that had
but recently belonged to the priory of Holywell, and close to the
road leading from Bishopsgate to Shoreditch church (the site is now
in the triangular patch between Curtain road, Holywell lane and
Great Eastern street) James Burbage put up his playhouse. It
was outside the city, but on the edge of a neighbourhood inhabited
by noblemen and strangers born’(i. e. both foreigners and English
people not of London birth and citizenship), and easily accessible
from Bishopsgate, or through Cripplegate or Moorgate and across
6
## p. 252 (#270) ############################################
252
The Elizabethan Theatre
the fields. Burbage acquired the land by lease from Giles Allen
for 21 years from 13 April 1576, and borrowed 1000 marks
(£666. 138. 4d. ) from his father-in-law, Brayne, with which to
build his playhouse.
The word 'theater' had been in use before for the platform on
which shows were given, and Burbage probably named his play-
house the Theater on that account. In shape, as we know from
several indications, as well as from the account left by de Witt,
a Dutchman who visited London, probably about two years before
its demolition, the Theater was an amphitheatre. Much has been
written on the various influences which may have combined to
cause the adoption of this shape. The Roman amphitheatres at
Dorchester, Banbury and Shrewsbury, which were still in use for
sports or dramatic exhibitions; the Cornish rounds,' where the
guirimir or miracle-plays were acted; the arrangement of stage and
scaffold at a London performance of miracle or morality; even the
disposition of the churches during a religious play-all these have
been called in ; while, for the internal arrangement of the building,
the innyard is supposed to be largely responsible. It seems hardly
necessary to go so far afield to account for what was the natural
and simple plan. It must be remembered that already, on the
south of the Thames, there were 'rings,' 'scaffolded about,' in
existence within which bears or bulls were baited, and fencing
or swordplay matches took place. For a spectacle which can be
watched equally well from any point, the circle is the formation
into which spectators naturally gather; and, just as naturally,
there is one point of the circle that is left free for the convenience
of ingress and egress by the performers to and from the ring.
When James Burbage built his playhouse on the edge of Finsbury
fields, a common meeting ground for sports, the drama, though it
was rapidly absorbing these sports, had not taken their place, and
the Theater was not confined to dramatic performances. To make
his playhouse round, with the platform stage occupying a large
part of the groundspace, but touching at one point the edge of the
circle, was only to do what all constructors of amphitheatres had
done before—the easiest thing. The erection of a room or building
in which the actors could dress, and from which they could make
their entrances, would naturally follow. The stage was a movable
platform on trestles. When some sport for which it was not
wanted was to take place, it was taken to pieces and packed
away; and Burbage's innovation, reduced to its fundamental
principle, was merely the building of a high wall all round his
## p. 253 (#271) ############################################
The Theater and the Curtain
253
ring, so that his spectators should be compelled to pay for ad-
mission. The innyard, doubtless, was responsible for the galleries
round the inside of that wooden wall, which increased the housing
accommodation and gave a measure of privacy to those who de-
sired it Neither to indoor performances at court, nor to those
which may be supposed to have taken place in the courtyards of
noblemen's houses, can any debt be traced in the plan of the
Theater.
The lease from Giles Allen to Burbage contained a clause by
which, if the lessee, within ten years of the date of the lease, spent
£200 in buildings, he should be entitled to an extension of the
term to 1607 and to take down the buildings he might erect. In
1585, a new lease was prepared, but not executed. Early in 1597,
negotiations began again for an extension of the lease, and it
appears that Allen consented to execute it, on condition that the
yearly rent was raised by £10, and that the Theater should be used
as a playhouse for five more years only. James Burbage died in
1597, and was succeeded in the property by his sons Richard and
Cuthbert. The lease expired, and the Theater was closed. The
company probably moved to the Curtain; and, in the winter of
1598-99, availing themselves of the clause in the lease, the
Burbages forestalled Allen by pulling the Theater down, to erect
it on the other side of the river as the Globe.
The history of the Curtain is obscure. There is evidence
that the Theater was the first playhouse to be built; but the
Curtain is mentioned very shortly afterwards, and its opening may
be dated in 1577. It stood near Finsbury fields, not far to the
south of the Theater, within the precinct of the same priory of
Holywell, and took its name from Curtain close, a meadow once in
the possession of the priory on which, later, was built a house called
Curtain house. The name survives in Curtain road, Shoreditch.
Who built it and what it cost are points yet to be discovered ; but
that, like the Theater, it was round in shape and built of wood are
suppositions that can hardly be controverted, even if reliance be
not placed on the argument that Shakespeare's King Henry V
(the prologue of which refers to this wooden 0') was acted here
in the summer of 1599. It would be unsafe to deduce from the
word 'cockpit' in the same passage that the Curtain was unusually
small. Its history was uneventful. On the closing of the Theater,
the Chamberlain's company seems to have removed there, and they
kept it open during the early days of the Globe. When leave was
sought to open the Fortune in Cripplegate, it was granted by the
## p. 254 (#272) ############################################
254
The Elizabethan Theatre
privy council on the understanding that the Curtain was to be
closed; nevertheless, it remained open, and, after the accession of
James I, became the home of queen Anne's (lately the earl of
Worcester’s) company. It is mentioned as in use in 1623, and as
standing in 1627.
Little is known of the playhouse at Newington Butts. The
direct evidence consists of, first, an entry in the privy council
register for 1586, stating that the council had desired the lord
mayor to prohibit plays in the city, and had taken the like order
for the prohibiting of plays at the Theater ‘and th' other places
about Newington’; secondly, an undated warrant from the privy
council, now referred to August 1592', rescinding an order which
had restrained lord Strange's servants from playing at the Rose,
and had enjoined them to play three days (? a week) at Newington
Butts ; thirdly, an entry in the accounts of Philip Henslowe, the
theatrical manager, at the head of a list of receipts from per-
formances : 'In the name of God Amen begininge at Newington
my Lord Admeralle men and my Lorde Chamberlen men, As
ffolowethe 1594'; and, last, an enumeration by Howes, in his
continuation of Stow's Annals (1631), of the London playhouses
built within the last sixty years, which concludes with: 'besides
one in former time at Newington Buts. ' Indirect evidence has
been drawn from analogy? The warrant of the privy council
above mentioned implies that the house had then been standing
for some years. Nothing further is known of its history.
Philip Henslowe, by trade a dyer, and an acute man of business
interested in undertakings of various kinds, leased an estate in
the Clink liberty, Southwark, in 1585, and, in 1587, was con-
templating the building upon it of a playhouse, of which, if it was
built at all, we hear nothing till some years later. In his diary
or book of accounts, which is one of the chief authorities for the
dramatic history of the period, he is found in February 1592
sharing the receipts of lord Strange's men—nothing being said of
the playhouse at which they were acting. Another entry (in a
book which must be admitted to be one of the most confused
accountbooks ever kept, besides having suffered from neglect and
unscrupulous treatment) is a statement of the money he spent
'a bowte my playe howsse' (the Rose) ‘in the yeare of op lord
1592. ' Nothing is said in the account about repairs, and it bears
6
i Greg's Henslowe's Diary, vol. 11, pp. 45 and 52–53. For the text, see eund. ,
Henslowe Papers, p. 43.
9 By Ordish, p. 144.
## p. 255 (#273) ############################################
The Rose and the
Globe
255
all the marks of a building account; while Henslowe's want of
regularity in following the Marian or the popular system of dating
by the year-or, indeed, any system at all—makes the confusion
still greater. It seems pretty certain, however, that 1592 here
means 1592; that the account is not for building, but for extensive
repairs amounting almost to rebuilding; and that the work was
completed in the early part of the year, in time for lord Strange's
men to occupy the house in February. This implies that the play-
house contemplated in 1587 had been built and, therefore, used?
In June 1594, the Rose on the Bankside in Southwark was the play-
house of the Admiral's company, with Edward Alleyn at its head.
Alleyne 'left playing' in 1597; and, in 1598, the Chamberlain's
company moved across the water from the Curtain, and built the
Globe. The prosperity of the Rose began to decline, perhaps
through unequal competition. By 1600, it had fallen into a bad
state of repair, and its situation was considered inconvenient in
winter. When the Admiral's company moved to the Fortune, in
1600, other companies occasionally occupied the Rose till 1603.
After the accession of James I, it was used sometimes for sports.
The Rose was built mainly of timber, lath and plaster, though
entries in Henslowe's accounts for bricks and bricklaying seem
to imply a brick foundation for the wooden walls. The stage was
painted ; there was a tirehouse, or actors' dressingroom, behind
it, with a room over it, and a flagstaff.
Though the Blackfriars was the next playhouse to be built,
it is more convenient to consider first the most important of
Elizabethan playhouses, the Globe. The reason why the Chamber-
lain's men left the Curtain for the other side of the river is not
clear. There may have been some decline in the attractiveness of
Finsbury fields as a holiday ground; or the common council may
have protested with effect against the usual procession through the
city. Bankside was certainly a popular resort, and Southwark
the district where pleasureseekers went to see bullbaiting and
bearbaiting, to the public gardens and to the stews. Unable
to come to terms with the landlord of the Theater, Richard and
Cuthbert Burbage, as we have seen, pulled down their old play-
house and used the materials in building the Globe, which stood, as
is commonly supposed, to the south-west of Paris garden and to the
south of what was then Maiden lane and is now the east-to-west part
1 The account of the Newington Butts house and the Rose given above follows that
of Greg, Henslowe's Diary, vol. 11, pp. 43—48 and 73. For another view, which must
be held to be superseded, see Ordish,
pp. 149–155.
## p. 256 (#274) ############################################
256
The Elizabethan Theatre
of Park street, on ground at present occupied by a brewery? This
was the house, from its opening till 1642, of the Chamberlain's and
King's company; here Richard Burbage acted, and here Shakes-
peare's greatest plays were produced. Our knowledge of the ap-
pearance and construction of the Globe is chiefly derived from the
contract for the building of the Fortune, which was to be made like
it, specifically in certain details, as well as generally, with certain
minor exceptions. The contract will be quoted in connection with
the Fortune theatre. Shops, stews and playhouses all had signs
at that time, and the earliest Globe was so called from its sign of
Atlas bearing the globe on his shoulders. It appears in a drawing
of 1610 as a round structure, rising above a larger round sub-
structure of some considerable height, which, it has been suggested,
enclosed a passage leading from the entrance door (or doors) to
various entrances to the 'yard. ' Structure and substructure were,
almost certainly, of wood, resting on a foundation of bricks and
cement. Its interior arrangements will be discussed later. On
Tuesday 29 June 1613, a new play on the history of Henry VIII
called AU is True was being performed, and, when the king
entered the masque at cardinal Wolsey's, certain ‘chambers' were
shot off. 'Some of the paper or other stuff,' is Sir Henry Wotton's
account, 'wherewith one of them was stopped, did light on the
thatch' (on the roof over the galleries). The house was burned
to the ground within less than an hour. “Yet nothing did perish
but wood and straw, and a few forsaken cloaks. ' Another con-
temporary statement says that the escape of the audience was
marvellous, 'having but two narrow doors to get out. ' Whether
these two include the door by which the players entered the
tiringhouse, or whether they were both for the use of the audience,
cannot now be determined. The usual practice appears to have
been to have one entrance door only to the body of the house.
A contemporary ballad advises 'stage-strutters' to give up their
dissipations and spend their money on tiles for the roof. This
advice, or the latter part of it, seems to have been taken when
the playhouse was rebuilt in the following year, more handsomely
than before, its 'thatched hide' being then a thing of the past.
The cost of the new playhouse was £1400, and it was the ‘fayrest
that was in England. ' Its shape on rebuilding was octagonal
outside, and, apparently, inside also.
1
i On the situation of the Globe, however, see Wallace, C. W. , in The Times of
2 October 1909, p. 9, col. 4, and subsequent correspondence in The Times and The
Athenæum.
## p. 257 (#275) ############################################
a
The Blackfriars
257
It has been supposed that, after the King's company began to
act at the Blackfriars, the Globe became their summer playhouse,
the Blackfriars being used in winter. Further evidence is needed
before this question can be determined, though we have seen that
the situation of the Rose was considered inconvenient in winter;
the Globe is found in use in February.
In February 1596, James Burbage, already in difficulties with
the landlord of the Theater, bought of the executor of Sir Thomas
Cawarden, late master of the revels, for £600, the freehold of
a complicated collection of rooms, great and small, stairs, cellars
and yards (including 'seven great upper rooms' all on one floor,
formerly one great and entire room), which lay in Blackfriars,
near the Pipe office, adjoining the house of Sir George Cary. The
buildings, which had been in the occupation of Cawarden, were in
the old precinct of the ‘Blackfriars preachers,' or Dominican monks,
and had formed part of their monastic dwelling. Blackfriars, in
those days, was a popular resort, not, like Finsbury fields, for the
people, but for nobles and gentry, who went there to play tennis ;
there were also a few aristocratic houses on a small portion of the
site of the monastery. In making up his mind to establish a play-
house, in defiance of the law, within the city walls, Burbage must
have counted for support less on the people than on the nobility; and,
to some extent, the proceeding is an argument in favour of the view
that royal and aristocratic support was the chief encouragement of
the drama. These seven rooms Burbage turned into an indoor or
“private' playhouse, spending on it a larger sum than had hitherto
been spent on any playhouse in London, and constructing a build-
ing which recent discoveries have shown to be much larger than
was commonly supposed? The term 'private' does not imply that
the public were excluded; the corporation, in an order for the
suppression of the Blackfriars in 1619, refer to it explicitly as a
publique playhowse. ' Burbage's intention, however, was, doubt-
less, to construct a playhouse which should attract aristocratic
patrons by greater seclusion and comfort, the auditorium being
completely roofed over, and, perhaps (though this is thorny
ground), by a stage which might reproduce to some extent the
scenic completeness attained in the indoor performances at court.
In November 1596, the inhabitants petitioned against the es-
tablishment of a playhouse in their midst, but ineffectually. In
July 1597, letters patent were issued to Nathaniel Giles, master
1 See, in The Times, 11 September 1906, p. 6, cols. 1 and 2, Old Blackfriars
Theatre,' by Wallace, C. W. , and eund. , Children of the Chapel, chap. I.
E. L. VI.
17
>
6
1
CH, X.
## p. 258 (#276) ############################################
258
The Elizabethan Theatre
of the chapel children, to impress boys for the Queen's service;
and, about this time, the chapel children are found occupying
Burbage's new playhouse. In 1600, Richard Burbage leased the
Blackfriars to one Henry Evans for 21 years at a yearly rent of
£40, and Evans continued the children's performances. Later,
came trouble over Evans's too drastic exercise of the powers
granted to Giles under the patent; the playhouse ceased to pay;
the lease was assigned; the chapel children, who, after James's
accession, had been reconstituted as the children of queen Anne's
revels, lost the royal patronage after their performance of East-
ward Hoe in 1605, and were again obnoxious in their production
of Biron. In August 1608, Richard Burbage took back the lease
to Evans, and, a little later, the King's company began to use the
house themselves. In January 1619, the corporation tried to close
the Blackfriars, but the privy council stepped in and confirmed its
use; and the King's company continued to play there without
interruption till 1642. )
The move of the Chamberlain's men to Bankside left the north
bank of the Thames without any strong theatrical attraction, and
Henslowe and Alleyn endeavoured (not without strenuous but in-
effectual opposition from local and municipal authorities) to cater
for the population of that part of the town by building the Fortune
playhouse off Golding (now Golden) lane in the parish of St Giles
without, Cripplegate. The extant contract for the building, made
by Henslowe and Alleyn with Peter Street, carpenter, is so in-
teresting, in the light it throws on the material and structure
of the Globe and the Fortune, and, indirectly, of Elizabethan
playhouses in general, that part of it deserves quoting verbatim.
The frame of the saide howse to be sett square and to conteine ffowerscore
foote of lawfull assize everye waie square wihoutt and fiftie five foote of like
assize square everye waie win with a good suer and stronge foundacõn of
pyles brick lyme and sand bothe whoat & win to be wroughte one foote of
assize att the leiste above the grounde And the saide fframe to conteine
Three Stories in heighth The first or lower Storie to Conteine Twelve foote
of lawfull assize in heighth The second Storie Eleaven foote of lawfull assize
in heigth And the Third or upper Storie to conteine Nyne foote of lawfull
assize in height all which Stories shall conteine Twelve foote and a halfe
of lawfull assize in breadth througheoute besides a Juttey forwardes in
either of the saide Twoe upper Stories of Tenne ynches of lawfull assize with
ffower convenient divisions for gentlemens roomes and other sufficient and
convenient divisions for Twoe pennie roomes wth necessarie Seates to be
placed and sett Aswell in those roomes as througheoute all the rest of the
galleries of the saide howse and wth suchelike steares Conveyances & divisions
woute & wthin as are made & Contryved in and to the late erected Plaie-
howse On the Banck in the saide pishe of gro Savio's Called the Globe Wth a
Stadge and Tyreinge howse to be made erected & settup wthin the saide iframe
## p. 259 (#277) ############################################
The Fortune
259
with a shadows or cover over the saide Stadge. . . . And weh Stadge shall con-
teine in length ffortie and Three foote of lawfall assize and in breadth to
extende to the middle of the yarde of the saide howse The same Stadge to be
paled in belowe wth good stronge and sufficyent newe oken bourdes And like-
wise the lower Storie of the saide fframe w'hinside, and the same lower storie
to be alsoe laide over and fenced wih stronge yron pykes And the saide Stadge
to be in all other proporcons Contryved and fashioned like unto the Stadge of
the saide Plaie howse Called the Globe Wth convenient windowes and lightes
glazed to the saide Tyreinge howse And the saide fframe Stadge and Steare-
cases to be covered wth Tyle and to have a sufficient gutter of lead to Carrie &
convey the water frome the Coveringe of the saide Stadge to fall backwardes
And also all the saide fframe and the Stairecases thereof to be sufficyently
enclosed woute wth lathe lyme & haire and the gentlemens roomes and Twoe
pennie roomes to be seeled woh lathe lyme & haire and all the flowers of the
saide Galleries Stories and Stadge to be bourded wth good & sufficyent newe
deale bourdes of the whole thicknes wheare need shalbe and the saide howse
and other thinges beforemencõed to be made & doen To be in all other
Contrivitions Conveyances fashions thinge and thinges effected finished and
doen accordinge to the manner and fashion of the saide bowse Called the
Globe Sareinge only that all the princypall and maine postes of the saide
fframe and Stadge forwarde shalbe square and wroughte palasterwise wth
carved proporcons Called Satiers to be placed & sett on the Topp of every of
the same postes 1.
The contract is dated 8 January 1599/1600, and the work, which
was to cost £440, was to be finished by 25 July. The actual cost
worked out at £520, and the playhouse appears to have been
opened in November or December 1600, by the Admiral's men, who
occupied it throughout the remainder of the period. It is notice-
able that the outside was square. The Fortune was burned down
in 1621, and all the wardrobe and playbooks were destroyed; it
was rebuilt, some two years later, round in shape and of brick.
It appears, in its later years, to have become a popular house,
rather despised by the more refined.
The Rose fell out of use in 1603, and the importance of the
Blackfriars and the Fortune robbed Bankside of much of the
patronage of playgoers. When the Globe was burned in 1613, it
seems to have been feared that the King's men would move back
to the north of the river; and a petition was addressed to the
king by the company of Watermen, praying that the players might
not be allowed to have a playhouse in London or Middlesex within
five miles of the city-which petition was not granted.
In 1589, Francis Langley, who held a small office at court,
purchased the manor of Paris garden. In November 1594, we
find the lord mayor protesting against his intention to build a
playhouse on his property. The project was not dismissed; but
it is not certain when the Swan playhouse was built. It may
| Transcribed from Greg, Henslowe Papers, pp. 5 and 6.
17-2
## p. 260 (#278) ############################################
260
The Elizabethan Theatre
have been open in 1596. The Swan was used for plays, at any
rate until 1620, and was still standing, though in a dilapidated
state, in 1632. Dramatically, its history is unimportant; but
the house has acquired notoriety from the fact that a con-
temporary drawing, or copy of a drawing, of its interior—the
earliest view known of the interior of a playhouse—is in existence,
Probably in or about the summer of 1596, John de Witt, a
Dutchman, visited London. (It may be noted here that much of
our information concerning the London playhouses of the day
comes from foreigners, to whom they were objects of great
interest and surprise. ) The drawing in question was discovered
in the library at Utrecht, in the commonplace book of another
Dutchman, Arend von Buchell, accompanied by a descriptive
passage headed Ex observationibus Londinensibus Johannis De
Witt. The passage, with the drawing, may have been copied
from a now lost letter or journal written by de Witt. The
drawing, a rough sketch, must be used, therefore, with caution ;
but so many of its details correspond with the details of the
Swan found in the contract for the building of the Hope, which was
to be like it in many respects, that it may be taken as giving a
rough idea of the general plan of an Elizabethan public playhouse!
The drawing is made from a point which, roughly speaking, would
correspond to the position of a man sitting in the middle of the
front row of the upper circle of a large modern theatre, or the
gallery of a small one.
The main features of the playhouse are clear enough. It is a
tall, round (or, possibly, oval) 2 structure some fifty feet high”, with
three roofed galleries, divided into 'rooms,' or boxes, running right
round it and interrupted only by the tirehouse behind the stage.
The yard is open to the sky; there are no seats in it, and the
audience can stand close to the stage on three sides, finding it
1 All reproductions of this drawing (e. g. in Ordish, Early London Theatres, p. 265)
having beneath them the words Ex observationibus Londinensibus Johannis De Witt,
taken from the manuscript, are made, not from the original, but from the engraving pub-
lished by Gaedertz in his Zur Kenntnis der altenglischen Bühne, Bremen, 1888. For a full-
sized reproduction direct from the original, see Wheatley, On a contemporary drawing
of the Interior of the Swan Theatre, N. 8.
