There was also, in some
playhouses at all events, an appliance by which players could be
let down from above, as if descending from heaven, though it
appears to have been more difficult to draw them up again.
playhouses at all events, an appliance by which players could be
let down from above, as if descending from heaven, though it
appears to have been more difficult to draw them up again.
Cambridge History of English Literature - 1908 - v06
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. 8. 1888; and for a reproduction on a reduced
scale, The Quarterly Review, April 1908, facing p. 450. The engraving is fairly accurate;
but the lines indicating the part of the circumference of the playhouse furthest from
the tire-house have been omitted, to make room for the misplaced words mentioned
above.
2 That is, round, or oval, inside. In Vischer, View of London, 1610, it appears
twelve-sided. See, also, the 1627 map of the manor of old Paris garden in Furnivall's
Harrison's England, vol. 11, facing p. i.
8 For a calculation of the measurements, see Wheatley, 4. 8.
9
## p. 261 (#279) ############################################
The Swan
261
probably between waist-high and shoulder-high. The description
accompanying the drawing states that the building would hold
tres mille homines in sedilibus—three thousand persons in the
sedilia or galleries. Calculations have been made to prove that,
if de Witt is rightly reported and meant what he said, and if the
number of rows in the three galleries be taken to be eleven, a
house two thirds of the size of the present Drury Lane theatre
would be required to afford sitting accommodation for that number
of spectators, if every seat in the entire circle was full; while the
open yard would give standing room to a great many more. The
number 3000, moreover, is not so surprising as appears at first
sight; and that the Swan theatre should provide room for it per
cent. of the total population of London and Westminster does not
seem fantastic, when it is remembered that, according to John
Taylor, three or four thousand persons daily crossed the river
to Bankside in the days when the Globe, Rose and Swan were
all open as playhouses, and bearbaiting, also, was in progress.
A difficulty is caused by de Witt's statement that the Swan was
built of flint-stones heaped together and supported by wooden
columns, painted so like marble as to deceive the shrewdest eye.
In no extant specification, not even that of the Hope, is there
any mention of stone, and another foreigner, who visited London
two years later, expressly states that all the playhouses on Bank-
side were of wood-sometimes, as we know from other sources,
plastered over. Various suggestions have been made for getting
round de Witt's statement. It is simpler to believe him correct
and to suppose that, in this feature (as, perhaps, in another to be
dealt with later) the Swan was exceptional.
The extant contract with the builder shows that the Hope
on Bankside, which had been a bear-house, was newly built as a
playhouse by Henslowe and Jacob Meade in 1613. Possibly, the
burning of the Globe in that year induced Henslowe to try
for the Bankside public once more. The house was occupied
by the lady Elizabeth's and the Prince's companies, and Ben
Jonson's Bartholomew Fayre, which was acted there in 1614,
informs us that it was a dirty and evil-smelling place. In 1616,
apparently, it fell out of use as a playhouse. As the contract
states, it was of the same size as the Swan, and the roof over
the galleries 'was tiled, not thatched. Vischer's View of London
1 In Wheatley, W. 8. But see Greg, Henslowe's Diary, vol. 11, p. 134, note 1.
? E. g. , the contract for the Fortune : ante, pp. 258—9.
3 Printed in Greg, Henslowe Papers, pp. 19 f.
## p. 262 (#280) ############################################
262
The Elizabethan Theatre
(1616) shows it octagonal outside; but Hollar (1647) makes 'it
round. It was of wood, with a brick foundation.
Three other playhouses belonging to this period must be
mentioned. The Red Bull stood at the upper end of St John
street, Clerkenwell, and seems to have been opened about 1599.
In 1633, Prynne's Histrio-Mastix mentions it as recently rebuilt
and enlarged. It was occupied early in James I's reign by the
Queen's company, and remained in use, till 1642, by this and
other companies. Between 1642 and 1660, several attempts were
made to act there ; it was opened at the restoration by Rhodes,
formerly prompter at the Blackfriars ; Samuel Pepys saw a play
wretchedly performed to a poor house there, in 1661; and, by
1663, it was abandoned.
The Cockpit was a 'private' playhouse in Drury Lane, and
seems to have been erected on the site of a cockpit in or about
1615. It was opened by the lady Elizabeth's company, which,
in 1625, passed to queen Henrietta; and it remained in use till
1642. After 1660, it was occupied by the Duke's company under
Sir William D'Avenant, till they moved to the new theatre in
Portugal row, Lincoln's Inn fields in 1662.
Its second name,
the Phoenix, probably came into use when it had been restored
after the sacking of it by the 'prentices in 1617.
The Salisbury court or Whitefriars playhouse was built in
1629 near the hall of the old Whitefriars monastery, which had
previously, at any rate since 1610, been used for plays. It was
occupied first by the children of the King's revels, and then by
the Queen's. It was a 'private' playhouse, and was in use for
a brief time after the restoration.
The capital difference between the pre-rebellion public stage
and the modern stage lies in the fact that the former was a
platform stage, while the latter is a picture stage. The modern
audience sees the drama as a moving picture in a frame, or as in
a room with one wall, and only one, knocked out. The Elizabethan
audience surrounded the stage on three sides, partly encroaching
even on the fourth; they saw the drama as a scene enacted in their
1
midst and—in the case of the groundlings, the spectators standing
in the yard—very close to them. It is practically impossible for
performers on the stage to compose groups that shall show an
equally artistic shape on three sides at once, and the use of
daylight prevented many of the visual effects that have been
practised since the time of Garrick. The eye was appealed to
## p. 263 (#281) ############################################
The Stage
263
less forcibly than the ear. The drama was rhetorical, and the
actor more of a rhetorician than he is today, since the audience
looked to his enunciation of the poet's words for much of the
pleasure that the picture stage supplies through the eye. 'Spec-
tacular' plays, such as England & Joy, produced at the Swan
in 1603, were not unknown; spectacle was aimed at and enjoyed;
but word, voice and action were the chief elements in the drama.
And authors, being free from the modern playwright's necessity to
lead up to a 'situation,' a stage picture, on which the curtain may
fall sharply at the close of each act, made the play, rather than
each division of it, the artistic whole.
The stage begins with the bare platform on trestles, which
could be taken away when the space was needed for sports that
did not require it. Later, the space between the platform and
the ground is found concealed with boarding, and a low rail runs
round the edge of the stage. The rudest performance, whether
in innyard or 'ring,' supposes some place where actors can dress
and wait concealed, and whence they may have access to the
platform when their turn comes. This gives opportunity for a
background-a matter, however, of small importance in a stage
open on three sides
and also develops into the tirehouse. Ques-
tions as to the nature and use of this background and as to the
development of the tirehouse into a somewhat elaborate structure
lie at the root of all the difficulties in the restoration of an idea of
the Elizabethan stage.
It is impossible not to turn back with curiosity to the drawing
of the Swan theatre, the earliest extant view of the stage of the
period. The platform it shows is supported near the front on
two rough, solid beams, concealed by no 'paling. ' Halfway, or
rather more than halfway, towards the back, two very solid
turned pillars, resting on heavy square bases and with capitals
above, stand on the stage, at a distance from each other of
nearly its whole breadth, and support the front edge of a pent-
roof, which seems to project over the stage to a much smaller
distance than the position of the pillars would indicate. This
discrepancy is but one of many difficulties raised by the drawing.
Behind the pillars, under the pentroof and right at the back of
the stage, rises a wall with two large arched doors, each about
halfway between the centre of the back wall and its outer
extremity. On the wall, between the doors, the draughtsman has
written mimorum aedes, indicating that this is the 'actors' house. '
At some distance above the tops of the doors, the wall is broken
## p. 264 (#282) ############################################
264
The Elizabethan Theatre
by a gallery, in which sit what may be musicians, or actors taking
part in the play, but what certainly seem to be spectators; and,
above the gallery again, the wall rises to the point where the upper
edge of the pentroof starts. Above the level of the pentroof,
there appears another story, of equal or nearly equal width with
the wall of the tirehouse. There are two windows in it, facing
the auditorium, and, in a little doorway open in the side, on the
(spectator's) right, a man, either holding a flag or blowing a
trumpet, stands on the upper edge of the pentroof (which must
be supposed to turn the corner of the building on both sides).
The roof of this upper story, apparently, is thatched, and from
the summit on the (spectator's) right flies the flag bearing the
sign of the house, a swan. Near the front of the stage, an actor
in woman's dress is sitting on a bench; behind the bench stands
another, also in woman's dress; while, from the corner on the
(spectator's) left, an actor, bearing a long spear or staff, is striding
along the front of the stage towards the centre. There are no
hangings of any kind visible in any part of the drawing.
Some features in the drawing may be recognised from other
descriptions as correct—the existence of the tirehouse, the turret,
the waving flag showing that it is a play day, the blowing of the
trumpet showing that the play is about to begin (though the
draughtsman has shown the house as empty). Further examina-
tion raises a number of difficulties.
In the first place, this stage is not movable; or, if it can be
removed, those two heavy pillars supporting the small pentroof
must rest, not on the visible bases on the stage, but on the ground
below. If the stage is moved, the pillars will be in the way of any
exhibition that is taking place, and it is difficult to imagine that
these pretentious bases are shams. We are forced to conclude
that the stage of the Swan was not movable. Again, how far are
these pillars intended to be from the back wall of the stage, the
front wall of the tirehouse? The drawing shows them at the very
least a third of the way down the stage; yet the perspective is so
faulty that the pentroof seems to project at the most a few feet
forward from the wall. Granted that the pillars are right and the
pentroof wrong, the latter still does not correspond at all closely
with the 'heavens' or roof, which, in the Hope, as we know from
the contract, was to extend all over the stage, and which is known
to have existed in other playhouses of the period. The matter is
trilling at first sight, but is of importance because, mainly on the
position of the pillars in this drawing, a whole theory of the pro-
а
## p. 265 (#283) ############################################
The Alternation' Theory
·
265
duction of plays has been formed! To clear the ground, it may be
said at once that there is no occurrence before 1640 of anything
which can fairly be considered evidence of a front curtain on a
public stage (though, doubtless, it was in use at court and uni-
versity performances), and that the theory of the common use of
& front curtain is no longer tenable. On the other hand, there
is ample evidence that, somewhere on the stage, there were
hangings of silk, or wool, or 'painted cloth, sometimes, appa-
rently, when tragedies were acted, of black. Of hangings painted
in perspective to represent the scene of the play, there is no
mention in a public or private playhouse, though they were in
use at court and university performances. We hear of actors
peeping through before the play begins, and of an impatient
audience throwing things at the hangings. Stage directions
printed in the playbooks, though rendered an untrustworthy
guide by the impossibility of telling whether they were drawn
up by the author or manager, or by the printer or some other
unauthorised person, and whether they applied to performance at
court, in a public playhouse, a private playhouse, or a provincial
hall or innyard, seem to show that the public stage of the day
required at least three divisions: namely, the front part of the
stage; a back part, commonly used for interiors, which could be
disclosed by the drawing of curtains, and which, when disclosed,
could, of course, absorb the front part and occupy the entire stage;
and, thirdly, a place above to serve for upper chambers, balconies
like Juliet's, galleries, towers and so forth. Arguing from this and
from the position of the pillars in the drawing of the stage of the
Swan, the theory referred to supposes a regular course of 'alterna-
tion' throughout an entire play, much like that which was followed
by each act of an old-fashioned melodrama, in which the front scene
was used while the back scene was being set,' the author's duty,
in the days of Elizabeth as in our own, being to contrive a scene
of some sort, which the plot might or might not require, to fill up
the
time needed by the 'tire-men’ or sceneshifters. Accordingly, the
theory mentioned supposes a curtain or traverse' hung between
the pillars shown in the drawing of the Swan, that is, at about one
third, or half, of the depth of the stage, which should conceal
1 Chiefly by Brodmeier, C. , Die Shakespeare-Bühne nach den alten Bühnenan-
weisungen, Weimar, 1904. It has been exhaustively criticised by Reynolds, G. F. ,
Some principles of Elizabethan staging, Chicago, 1905.
Some confusion might be avoided if the word 'depth' were consistently used for
the measurement from the front of the stage to the back, and width' for that from
side to side.
6
## p. 266 (#284) ############################################
266
The Elizabethan Theatre
7
1
1
1
from spectators the preparations for the next scene going on
behind it.
The attempt to work out this 'alternation' theory by dividing
the extant plays of the period into front and back scenes has not
been successful'. A further difficulty arises from the fact that not
all the spectators were in front of the stage. A traverse between
the pillars would not conceal what was going on behind it from
people on either side of the stage. To block out their view, further
traverses at right angles to that between the pillars would be
necessary. The result, inevitably, would be to conceal not only
the back scene from them, but a great deal of the front scene, too,
on which action would be in progress. An even greater difficulty
attends the suggestion that, since there are notable instances
where it would be absurd for actors to enter the front scene by the
only available entrance, that is, through the traverse, there must
have been hangings all along both sides of the stage so that actors
might enter from the sides. It is to be noted, too, that this theory
supposes the upper stage or balcony to be concealed by the
traverse. This would mean that all scenes in which the balcony
was occupied must be back scenes, which is not easy to establish,
and makes it impossible that the audience should ever have used
the balcony; while three extant illustrations of the stage—the
title-pages to Richards's Messallina (1640) and Alabaster's Roxana
(1632), and the picture of a 'droll' on the stage of the Red Bull
which forms the frontispiece to Kirkman's The Wits (1673)-dis-
tinctly show the traverse hanging from below the balcony, while the
first and the last show a separate curtain for the balcony itself.
This theory seems to lose sight of the simple origin of the stage
-a temporary platform erected in the midst of a crowd and sur-
rounded by spectators regarding it from nearly all the four sides-
and to err from over-anxiety to credit an Elizabethan audience with
a susceptibility to the incongruous. The very naïve tradition of the
miracles and early moralities, in which two or more scenes, some-
times representing localities hundreds of miles apart, were on the
stage simultaneously, had not died out; and the audience may be
fairly supposed to have been no more offended by the conventions
of dramatic space than is a modern audience by those of dramatic
1 See Reynolds, op. cit. , and Wegener, R. , Die Bühneneinrichtung des Shake-
speareschen Theaters, Halle, 1907. For the practical defects of Brodmeier's proposed
reconstruction, see Archer, W. , in The Quarterly Review, no. 415, April 1908. The
*Elizabethan' stage reconstructed at Harvard in 1904 was planned on the alterna-
tion theory. For an illustration and description, see 'Hamlet on an Elizabethan Stage,'
by Baker, G. P. , Shakesp. Jahrbuch, vol. XLI (1905), pp. 296 ff.
6
## p. 267 (#285) ############################################
The Swan and the Hope Stages
267
time, which allow an imaginary half-hour to pass in an actual five
minutes. In his Apologie for Poetrie (written about 1580—1),
Sidney writes:
For where the stage should alwaies represent but one place, . . . there is . . .
many places, inartificially imagined. But if it be so in Gorboduck, how much
more in al the rest, where you shal have Asia of the one side, and Affrick of
the other, and so many other ander-kingdoms, that the Player, when he
commeth in, must ever begin with telling where he is, or els the tale wil not
be conceived ?
His words are borne out by numerous cases in extant plays, where
two or more places are imagined to be on the stage at the same
time; and it scarcely needs the evidence of ascertainable instances
to prove that an Elizabethan audience would not have the least
objection to seeing properties (such as the bench in the drawing
of the Swan) brought on the stage without concealment and left
there after they had served their turn, though it is extremely
likely that susceptibility to the incongruous grew, as time went on,
under the influence of Jonson and the classical playwrights. In
spite of this, it is abundantly clear that there was a back stage,
which could be revealed by drawing a curtain.
The fact is significant that, just as the Hope, though planned on
the lines of the Swan, was to be built of wood, not ilint, so, in the
contract with the builder, it is directly stated that he shall also
builde the Heavens all over the saide stage to be borne or carryed
without any postes or supporters to be fixed or sett uppon the
saide stage. ' It is possible, therefore, that the pillars of the Swan
were as the drawing shows them, and that the pentroof covered
half or nearly half the stage; but that the plan was found incon-
venient, was confined to the Swan and was discarded by Henslowe
when he built the Hope. In that case, the Swan may have had
the front and back scenes divided by the lofty traverse, and have
used them as suggested by the theory summarised above; but it is
at least unfortunate that the draughtsman should have hit on a
playhouse the arrangement of which was unique and discredited.
The construction may well have been different in different
houses; and there are several ways in which the necessary back
stage may be reconstructed and the requirements of stage direc-
tions fulfilled, without imposing a strict ‘alternation theory' or
incurring the difficulties referred to above. According to one
scheme', the pillars supporting the 'heavens' (if pillars there be)
play no part in the division of the stage. The stage proper runs
* This account follows, in the main, that suggested by Chambers, E. K. , 'The Stage
of the Globe,' in the Stratford-on-Avon Shakespeare, vol. 2, pp. 351 f.
6
9
## p. 268 (#286) ############################################
268
The Elizabethan Theatre
right back to the wall of the tirehouse. The gallery either
does not project, or projects only very slightly, in front of
that wall. From the level of its floor, hangings fall to the
stage, occupying, not the whole width of the stage, but most, or
the whole, of that part of it which lies between the two doors, the
doors being left uncovered. For this purpose, it is necessary to
suppose the doors further apart than they are in the drawing
of the Swan. These hangings, when drawn back, reveal the lower
chamber of the tirehouse in use as part of the stage, possibly with
a floor raised slightly above the stage level. Here, the strolling
players in Hamlet would perform, and here, Henry VIII would sit
in his closet. The room would be big enough to hold a fair
number of people; in the Fortune, for instance, an inner chamber
20 feet wide would still leave 114 feet on either side for the doors.
And the scene could always overflow on the stage proper. And,
since a third entrance is frequently mentioned and almost always
necessary, a door in the back of this chamber must also be
supposed, large enough to admit of 'properties' such as beds,
banqueting tables and so forth being brought through it. The
stage proper is thus entirely free of hangings, except those in front
of the chamber under the tirehouse; and the fact that this chamber
must have been low and dark seems of less importance when it
is remembered that plays were acted in unencumbered daylight.
There were hangings, also, in front of the balcony above. The
theory is not without its difficulties, the chief of which are that
many of the audience must have been unable, from their position in
the house, to see into the inner chamber, and that, when there were
actors or spectators in the balcony, they, too, would have been
unable to see into it? This view, to some extent, is borne out by
the title-pages of Messallina and Roxana mentioned above; but,
as neither of these shows the whole width of the stage, no certain
conclusions can be drawn from them. Another scheme makes
the gallery project some feet from the wall of the tirehouse, with
the traverse hanging from its floor and concealing all the doors
when it is drawn. There is, thus, a kind of corridor stage behind
the stage proper ; but, once more, any actors or spectators there
may be in the gallery will be unable to see what is taking place on
the back stage, and it is also necessary to imagine that every scene
in which doors are mentioned must have been a scene in which
1 Wegener's suggestion (op. cit. ), that there was a kind of ekkyklema on which
deathbeds and the like could be wheeled over the back stage and brought forward,
does not seem to be supported by sufficient evidence, though such a contrivance
would certainly have been useful.
## p. 269 (#287) ############################################
6
Stage Appliances and Properties 269
the back stage was used. To obviate these difficulties, a suggestion
has recently been put forward that the two side doors were not
flat in the wall of the tirehouse but set in walls slanting towards
it, while the traverse before the corridor hangs further up the
stage (i. l. nearer the back wall) and, when drawn, conceals only
the third, central door. The same suggestion curves the gallery
forward at each side, at an angle corresponding with that of the
walls containing the side doors, so that its occupants might see the
back stage, and even provides semicircular projections, or bays, in
order to make quite sure? .
The space beneath the stage was sometimes 'paled in' by
boarding, which, though not shown in the drawing of the Swan,
must have been a common feature, because many instances occur of
actors (especially when playing ghosts) appearing and disappearing
through trapdoors, and of dead bodies being thrown down through
them. We read of flames and even of a “brave arbour' appearing
from below. If the stage was strewn with rushes, as it seems to
have been, the use of the trap must, sometimes, have been difficult;
and, in any plays where the trapdoor was needed, the 'matting' on
the stage, which Sir Henry Wotton mentions, apparently as an
unusual thing, in his account of the burning of the Globe in 1613,
must have been out of the question.
There was also, in some
playhouses at all events, an appliance by which players could be
let down from above, as if descending from heaven, though it
appears to have been more difficult to draw them up again.
Whether the appliance worked from the balcony or the heavens'
is not ascertained.
Painted scenery on the public stage there was none, though the
mention in an inventory of the Admiral's men's properties, compiled
by Henslowe in 1598, of 'the clothe of the Sone and Mone,' certainly
seems to imply some attempt of this nature, and though the figures
of men and animals frequently appeared in the woven or painted
hangings. But there is abundant evidence that the properties were
many and elaborate. Houses, beds, rocks, ramparts, wells, property
horses, and even structures serving as shops, are mentioned as being
brought on the stage, and there is strong evidence for the solid
1 By Archer, U. S. See, in particular, the reproduction of a model by an
architect, Walter H. Godfrey, of & stage according to the specification of the Fortune,
illustrating Archer's article. The model itself was on view in the Exposition théâtrale,
Paris, 1908.
One objection to this arrangement is that it would make the drawing of the
traverse (which we know the gallery to have had) a very complicated affair.
## p. 270 (#288) ############################################
270
The Elizabethan Theatre
t
representation of woods and separate treesThough there was no
attempt at creating a picture, considerable care and expense were
incurred in the provision of properties. Yet these attempts at
realism, for which an Elizabethan audience, according to its lights,
had as keen a desire as a modern audience, long went hand in
hand with the simplest devices. The names of the places were
fastened over the doors, especially in cases where the stage re-
presented two scenes at once; and where the presence of specta-
tors on the stage reduced the space, the properties for which there
was not room were sometimes indicated by nuncupative cards, a
practice which prevailed, at this time, also in France. Such cards,
however, must be distinguished from the 'title-boards,' which, in
private theatres, were fastened up, or held up by the speaker of
the prologue, to give the title of the play.
Performances at private playhouses? may be taken to have
approximated to those at universities, inns of court and royal
residences, in aiming at the taste of more refined audiences than
did the public playhouse—though too much stress should not be
laid on the supposition. Noblemen, ambassadors and other great
.
,
people went to the public playhouses; but, while it is on record
that Elizabeth went to the Blackfriars, she is not known to
have ever visited the Globe. Private playhouses were completely
roofed over, and, though performances took place there in the
afternoons as in public playhouses, they were, occasionally at all
events, performed in artificial light, the windows being covered
over. Instead of the 'yard' filled with 'understanding' spectators
or 'groundlings,' there was a pit, with seats.
The evidence shows that a performance at court was very
different from a performance in a public or private playhouse.
It was for this honour, ostensibly, that the company worked all the
year, and, when the master of the revels had selected, after com-
petition, the companies and the plays they should perform, the
author was often called upon to revise his play; and the perform-
ance ended with prayers for the queen. Elizabeth's accounts show
an annual outlay for airing and furbishing up the court stock of
costumes and appliances, besides considerable expense for wires,
lights, properties and mechanical contrivances". The old domus
of the miracles survive in the 'painted houses' of the players at
1 On properties, see Reynolds, op. cit. , and his article, "Trees on the stage of Shake-
speare'in Modern Philology, vol. v, p. 153.
On this question, see Wallace, op. cit.
3 All the evidence has been collected by Feuillerat, A. , Documents relating to the
Office of the Revels.
6
## p. 271 (#289) ############################################
Costumes.
The Audience
271
court; and there can be little question that painted scenery was
not unknown! Under James I, great advances were achieved by
the arts of stage decoration and production through the masques
written by Ben Jonson and mounted by Inigo Jones; but the
public stage was little affected, if at all. Not until the return of
D'Avenant and other adherents of Charles I and II from France
and Italy, to be followed by Betterton's mission to Paris-not
until the drama became more nearly dependent on court favour
than it had been made even by the exclusive royal patronage of
companies on the accession of James I, did the public stage
make a corresponding advance; and then it drew its inspiration
from other sources. The main appeal to the eye in public
playhouses before the rebellion was made by the costumes of
actors. Now and then, as in miracles, a rudimentary attempt
at dramatic propriety in costume was made. For the most part,
players wore the ordinary dress of the day, some, even of the
male characters, appearing in wigs, and some—especially, it would
seem, in cases of disguise and of minor players acting more than
one part-having their faces concealed by masks. Makeshift and
errors of taste were not unknown even in London playhouses ;
but Henslowe's extant accounts show that the costumes were
splendid and costly-velvet, gold lace, copper lace and other
rich materials being freely used. The speaker of the prologue
appeared in a black cloak.
The creation of an atmosphere for the play (which is the aim
that modern stage production is endeavouring, often in strangely
inartistic fashion, to achieve by scenery) was left to the descriptive
words of the poet, the voice of the actor and the imagination of the
audience. The audience of those days must certainly be supposed
to have been more susceptible to the message to the ear, and less
to deficiencies in the message to the eye, than that of our own
time; but, while taking into account the larger part played by
the Elizabethan drama in intellectual life, we must be careful not
to credit the spectators with a much greater earnestness in the
playhouse. Abundant evidence proves that-what with the throng
of groundlings in the yard, intent mainly on the fighting and the
broader humour; what with the gallants making their way through
the tirehouse and lying or sitting on stools on the stage', smoking
the pipes which their pages filled for them, and intent on display-
ing themselves rather than on listening to the play; what with the
1 For distinct evidence of scene shifting in a university performance, see Nichols :
Progresses of King James 1, vol. 1, p. 538.
On this subject, see Wallace, op. cit. chap. XI.
## p. 272 (#290) ############################################
272
The Elizabethan Theatre
women of the town and their admirers in the galleries ; what with
here and there a Bobadill or Tucca ready to brawl at any moment
-the Elizabethan audience, whether in a public or in a private
playhouse, was not the rapt body of enthusiasts which later times
have been tempted to imagine it. It included, however, Walsing-
hams and Southamptons, refined and intellectual admirers of the
drama, and their numbers must have exceeded those of the Sidneys
who scoffed and of the Northbrookes who railed. It is impossible
to reconstruct past acting ; but it is safe to conclude that the
players whose duty it was to embody the creations of Shakespeare,
Marlowe, Beaumont and Fletcher, to the satisfaction of the best
intellects of the reigns of Elizabeth and James, with practically no
scenic illusion to aid them, must have cultivated to a high degree
the arts both of declamation and of expressing character. The
improvement in the drama consequent on the coming of uni-
versity wits probably called forth a corresponding improvement
in the actor's art, and there is some evidence that a decline
in acting followed or accompanied the decline of the drama in
the seventeenth century. That declamation was often attended
by its besetting sin of rant is recorded in Hamlet's advice to the
players (Hamlet, act III, sc. 2) as well as in various passages of other
contemporary writers, which imply that the actors of the Fortune
(in its later days), the Red Bull and the Cockpit were great offenders
in this respect, and that the evil grew during the latter half of the
period. The player's response, however: 'I hope we have reform'd
that indifferently with us, Sir,' coupled with the admonition of
Hamlet, is pretty good evidence that, at the Globe, declamation
was not allowed to degenerate. As to the quality of the character
acting, the elegy on Richard Burbage shows how vivid this was at
its best; though, of course, it is impossible to tell how deeply, even
under Shakespeare's guidance, Burbage penetrated into the signi-
ficance of the characters he played. The evidence of Flecknoe,
who, in his Short Discourse of the English Stage (1664) praises
Burbage for a 'delightful Proteus' that maintained his character
throughout, even in the tyring-house,' must represent a tradition
and an ideal rather than the statement of an eyewitness. That
the female characters were all played in the playhouses by
boys, youths, or young men, generally implies, to modern minds,
incongruity and poor acting; but the popularity of boys'
companies goes to show that boys, when thoroughly trained, can
do better than we give them credit for today'. The spectacle,
1 See Wallace, op. cit. chaps, Iv and ix; and cf. Raleigh, W. , Shakespeare (1907),
pp. 119-120.
>
## p. 273 (#291) ############################################
Variety of Appeal
273
at any rate, must have been pleasanter than that of women
playing male parts, and 'squeaking Cleopatra' may have boyed
her greatness with better artistic effect than some actresses have
achieved
Much of the inequality in the plays of Shakespeare, as well
as of their popularity during his lifetime, can be explained by the
consideration that he wrote for a mixed audience, and succeeded
in pleasing all? . The appeal of his plays to the best intellects of
the time needs no showing. For the more intelligent of the
common spectators, in whose lives the drama filled the place now
occupied by the lending library, the press and, to some extent, the
pulpit, there was not only the strong story but the expression of
comment and criticism on many aspects of life and on facts of
the varied world, some of them only remotely connected with
the actual plot. For lovers of sport and action, there were ex-
hibitions of swordplay, wrestling and so forth, which the drama
had woven into its own texture, besides battles, murders and
other incidents which, as St Évremond noticed a century later, the
English public liked to see on the stage. For all amateurs of
wit, there were exhibitions or contests in punning and jesting-
another form of entertainment which the drama, to a great ex-
tent, absorbed into itself-ranging from the keen wordplay and
literary parody to the gross joke or hint for the groundlings.
That Shakespeare would willingly have dispensed with the latter,
we know from the passage in Hamlet referred to above. The
'gag' of the clown must have been the more annoying because
it was the common practice to conclude a performance, and some-
times to interrupt it, with a 'jig,' performed by Tarlton, Kemp,
Armin, or some other ‘fool'--an indispensable member of every
company_answering to the 'laughable farce' which followed the
tragedy until days within the memory of living men. To the
possible attractions of the playhouse must be added music, played
both during and between the acts. That at Blackfriars was
especially esteemed, as was, naturally, that of the children's com-
panies, and public theatres attempted to emulate their success
in this matter. Where the 'noise,' or orchestra, sat is not certain;
it was not till after the Restoration that it was placed between
the stage and the audience, and, in the period under notice, it
probably occupied in some playhouses the space marked orchestra
in the drawing of the Swan, perhaps on both sides of the stage.
1 On this question, see Bridges, R. , in the Stratford-on-Avon Shakespeare, vol. x,
and contrast Bradley, A. C. , in Oxford Lectures on Poetry, pp. 361 ff.
18
6
E. L. VI.
CH, X
## p. 274 (#292) ############################################
274
The Elizabethan Theatre
The occurrence of songs in plays is well known; and we read that
in the country, at any rate, the music was more popular than the
play itself.
Another fact to be noticed is the intimate connection be-
tween author and company. It was not only actor-authors, like
Shakespeare and Nathan Field, who attached themselves to one
company and wrote their plays for it during life or a term of
years. The tradition that Hamlet was made ‘fat' because Burbage
was fat, and the still less trustworthy tradition that Iago was
written for a comedian, with opportunities introduced into the
part for making the audience laugh, do not go so far to prove the
effect of this practice on Shakespeare's work as does the con-
sideration that any sensible playwright writing for a certain
company will take care that the parts are adapted to its members.
Authors often worked very fast, plays being written sometimes
in the short space of a fortnight; and they looked for very little
reward. The Admiral's company seems to have ordered and
produced more new plays than the Chamberlain's and King's com-
pany', whose plays, possibly, could bear more frequent repetition;
and they only paid sums varying from £5 to £8 for a play until
1602, though as much as £25 seems to have been obtainable later
in the period under notice. The author seems to have received a
fee for altering his play for production at court; but, though the
company received a regular fee of £6. 138. 4d. , with a present of
£3. 68. 8d. for each play performed at court in London, and double
those sums when the performance entailed a journey to Hampton
court or Windsor, the author cannot be proved to have had a share
of this reward. He was present, no doubt, when the company
assembled at an inn to read and consider his new play over re-
freshments paid for by the company, and he had a right to free
admission to the playhouse a privilege which Ben Jonson used
to abuse by sitting in the gallery and making wry faces at the
actors' delivery of his lines. The author received a fee for altering
his play for a revival, 58. for a prologue and epilogue and, some-
times, a bonus at the first performance; and there is good evidence
that, in certain cases, if not regularly, the author had a 'benefit,' as
later times would have phrased it, on the second or third day of
performance. If his play was published, he could gain 40s. by
dedicating it to a patron.
a
a
So Fleay, Stage, p. 117, says that he has not been able to trace. . . more than
four new plays produced by them (the Chamberlain's company) in any one year. '
Greg, Henslowe's Diary, vol. 11, p. 112, n. 1, suggests that the preservation of Henslowe's
and the loss of the King's company's papers may partly account for the disproportion.
## p. 275 (#293) ############################################
Finance
275
The play was bought by the company, though there are scattered
cases in which individual persons exercised the rights of ownership;
the manuscripts formed part of the stock owned in shares by the
company, who could sell the play, if they wished, to another
company, but, naturally, disliked printing it, lest a rival company
should produce it unlawfully. For the same reason, the author
was not encouraged to print his play; the company purchased the
copyright, and it was considered sharp practice for the author to
sell it also to a bookseller. Many plays crept into print in a
a
mangled form through some surreptitious sale by a member of
the company, or through stenographers, who attended the play-
house to take down what they could of a successful play.
The bulk of the profits on a play went, not to the author or
authors, but to the company. Finance was mainly conducted
on the share system. One share or more might be purchased,
or might be allotted instead of salary; and, in the second
half of the period, shares were clearly regarded as property
that could be sold or devised by will. The proceeds of each
performance, after certain deductions had been made, were divided
among the members of the company according to their holdings
of shares. In the case of Henslowe's company, at the Hope, those
deductions, at one time, in 1614, included the money received for
admission to the galleries and through the tiringhouse, half of the
sum going to Henslowe and Meade as owners of the theatre, and
the other half to Henslowe on account of advances made by him
for the stock of costumes, which was also the company's property.
Henslowe has been generally accused of harshness and injustice in
his dealings with the companies under his control. Pawnbroker
and moneylender, he acted, doubtless, to some extent, on the
principle put into his mouth by his players in their Articles of
Grievance and Oppression of 1615: 'should these fellowes Come
out of my debt, I should have noe rule with them. ' Excessive
value placed upon clothes and other property which he pur-
chased for them, bonds for repayment and the not infrequent
'breaking,' or disbanding, of companies which protested, kept
his actors in a state of subjection. The case may have been
different with the Chamberlain's and King's company; but we
are ignorant of its internal arrangements during nearly the whole
period. The recent discovery of documents setting forth the
company's financial arrangements during the years 1598 to 1615
· Made by Wallace, C. W. , and communicated by him to The Times of 2 and 4 Octo.
ber 1909, p. 9. This discovery, with others recently made by the same investigator,
will be dealt with at length in Shakespeare, The Globe and the Blackfriars, a work now
being prepared by him for publication.
1842
## p. 276 (#294) ############################################
276
The Elizabethan Theatre
is entitled to rank among the most important contributions to what
is known in this field. In 1599, a lease of the site of the Globe
was granted for 31 years, one half of the interest in the property
to the brothers Burbage, who paid one half the whole annual rent
of £14. 108. Od. , the other half to Shakespeare, Heminge, Phillipps,
Pope and Kemp, who paid the other half of the rent in equal
shares, i. e. £l. 98. Od. each. In 1610, Shakespeare and the four
,
other holders of tenths admitted Condell to an interest, their
shares thus becoming twelfths; and, in 1612, these twelfths were
further divided into fourteenths by the admission of William
Osteler. This arrangement lasted till 1630, each share, it appears,
being assigned on the death of its owner to the Burbages or the
survivor of them, to be reassigned to some new actor. In the
Blackfriars, Richard Burbage held one seventh share, leaving one
seventh each to Shakespeare, Heminge, Cuthbert Burbage, Condell,
Slye and Thomas Evans, each of the seven paying an annual rental
of £5. 148. 4d. -a total of £40. 08. 4d. This arrangement also lasted
till 1630. In the documents in the suit brought by Thomasin
Osteler against her father Heminge, the purchase value of one
seventh of the Blackfriars is estimated at £300, and the pur-
chase value of one-fourteenth of the Globe at the same sum ; and
a year's profits on each are estimated-no doubt somewhat in
excess, for purposes of the suit-at £300. In return for this, each
—.
actor-sharer not only paid his share of the cost of building and
keeping up the playhouse and of the incidental expenses—ward-
robe, servants and so forth—but gave his services as actor; and
the later passing of the shares by sale or demise into the hands of
persons other than actors led to dispute and litigation. The almost
equally important discovery by Halliwell-Phillipps of papers con-
cerning a dispute of this nature among sharers in the Globe and
Blackfriars playhouses in 1635 bad thrown a light on the later
finances of those houses. The company was then divided into three
classes : housekeepers, sharers and hired men and boys. The
housekeepers' shares in the Globe were sixteen in number, and,
at the date of the dispute, they were held as follows: three
and a half by Cuthbert Burbage, son of James and brother of
Richard, three and a half by the widow of Richard Burbage, now
Mrs Robinson, two by the widow of Henry Condell, three by the
actor John Shankes and two each by the actors Taylor and Lowin.
There were thus, among the housekeepers, three actors holding
seven shares, all of which they had purchased, and the remaining
nine shares were owned by 'neither actors, nor his Majesties
servants,' but the heirs or legatees of actors. The Blackfriars was
## p. 277 (#295) ############################################
Finance
277
a
divided into eight shares, three being in the hands of Cuthbert
Burbage and the widows of Richard Burbage and Condell, the
remaining five in the hands of Shankes, who held two, and Taylor,
Lowin and Underwood (another actor), who had one each. The
housekeepers had to pay the rent of the two houses (which they
put down at £100 yearly, while their opponents reckon it as £65,
less a sum of between £20 and £30 for a sub-let portion of the
premises), and to keep them in repair ; they received one half of
all the money taken except at the outer doors, that is to say, half
of all the fees for galleries, "rooms' and admission through the
tirehouse, for which a fee was charged, and for stools on the stage,
which had to be hired. The shareholders, i. e. actors who were not
housekeepers, bad, in earlier years, received money taken at the
outer doors only; by 1635, they divide exactly with the house-
keepers the fees for galleries, and so forth, and have to deduct out
of their earnings about £3 a day for wages to hired men and boys,
music, lights and the like, and also sums spent for costumes and
for purchase of plays. Considerable though their profits seem
to have been, certain shareholders felt that too much money went
into the hands of the housekeepers and that the existing dis-
tribution among the actor housekeepers was unfair, and their
petition to the lord chamberlain for a compulsory sale to them-
selves of certain shares was, apparently, granted.
The price of shares, doubtless, varied with the company, the
circumstances and the date. In 1593, Francis Henslowe appears
to have paid only £15 for a share in the Queen's company on the
eve of a provincial tour, and, two years later, the same actor paid
£9 for a half share in another company. The values of shares in
the Globe and the Blackfriars in 1615 have been mentioned above.
In 1633, Shankes paid £350 for one housekeepers’ share in the
Blackfriars for a term of five years, and two housekeepers’ shares
in the Globe for a term of one year. The pleadings in the dispute
referred to state that actors who were not housekeepers received
£180 each in the year 1634, while the housekeepers' shares
appear to have brought in something over £100 each share. A
writer in 1643 speaks of housekeepers sharing as much as 308.
a performance. The sums are not surprising when we remember
that, to the price of admission (which varied between one penny
at a public playhouse to six at a private) paid to the single
'gatherer' at the entrance door, were added the extra fees, amount-
ing sometimes to 28. 6d. , demanded by the extra 'gatherers' within,
for the use of the various parts of the galleries. Hired men
were engaged by contract either by the company or the manager,
## p. 278 (#296) ############################################
278
The Elizabethan Theatre
and received a weekly salary, varying from 58. to 88. Boys were
bought as apprentices by individual players, for sums varying
from £2 to something like £15, their masters, presumably, also
maintaining them; and, in some cases, boys appear to have been
bought and maintained by the company. Strict regulations were
made for the behaviour of all members of the company, share-
holders and hired men alike, and fines were exacted for lateness,
drunkenness, absence from rehearsal and other offences.
A man who was at once a sharing actor and a playwright, like
Shakespeare, clearly had it in his power to make fairly large sums
of money'; and Alleyn, who had other sources of income, was in
an even more fortunate position. No surprise need be felt at
Shakespeare's purchase of New Place, nor at Alleyn's heavy outlay
on property at Dulwich and his renowned benevolence. The
fortunate and respectable actor-even though he held no office
under the crown like Alleyn's—was received into good society
and was befriended and admired by the best intellects of his
time; he lived a comfortable and secure existence, and, per-
haps, indulged in the purchase of a coat of arms. Henry Condell
was a sidesman of the parish of St Mary's, Aldermanbury, in
1606: his respectability is unimpeachable. But the besetting sins
of the player-luxury, extravagance and intemperate living—for
which Hazlitt found generous excuses in later years, seem to
have existed then as ever. We read much of the player's love
of fine clothes and display. And there can be no doubt that the
frequent interruptions caused by the plague, the deterrent action
of such managers as Henslowe and the notorious uncertainty of
theatrical affairs, resulted in much poverty and distress among
lesser actors and lesser companies. Those on tour, especially,
suffered hardships, being forced to pawn their wardrobe, to 'pad
the hoof' instead of riding from town to town and to beg, instead
of play, for their keep. The extremes of the profession were as
far apart then as now; but the age of Elizabeth and James un-
doubtedly raised it as a whole into respect as well as popularity;
and the outspoken envy of those—by no means all of puritanical
bent—who railed at the pride and display of actors was the natural
result of the advance which the period witnessed. During the
reign of Charles, the greater prevalence of the plague, the shadow
of coming troubles and the deterioration of the drama itself caused
something of a decline, and the rebellion brought all to a close.
1 Wallace, u. s. , calculates Shakespeare's yearly profits from the Globe as never
exceeding £300, and a similar amount from the Blackfriars.
1
1
## p. 279 (#297) ############################################
CHAPTER XI
THE CHILDREN OF THE CHAPEL ROYAL
AND THEIR MASTERS
THE Chapel Royal and its relations to the history of drama
in England form an extremely puzzling and interesting subject
of enquiry.
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. 8. 1888; and for a reproduction on a reduced
scale, The Quarterly Review, April 1908, facing p. 450. The engraving is fairly accurate;
but the lines indicating the part of the circumference of the playhouse furthest from
the tire-house have been omitted, to make room for the misplaced words mentioned
above.
2 That is, round, or oval, inside. In Vischer, View of London, 1610, it appears
twelve-sided. See, also, the 1627 map of the manor of old Paris garden in Furnivall's
Harrison's England, vol. 11, facing p. i.
8 For a calculation of the measurements, see Wheatley, 4. 8.
9
## p. 261 (#279) ############################################
The Swan
261
probably between waist-high and shoulder-high. The description
accompanying the drawing states that the building would hold
tres mille homines in sedilibus—three thousand persons in the
sedilia or galleries. Calculations have been made to prove that,
if de Witt is rightly reported and meant what he said, and if the
number of rows in the three galleries be taken to be eleven, a
house two thirds of the size of the present Drury Lane theatre
would be required to afford sitting accommodation for that number
of spectators, if every seat in the entire circle was full; while the
open yard would give standing room to a great many more. The
number 3000, moreover, is not so surprising as appears at first
sight; and that the Swan theatre should provide room for it per
cent. of the total population of London and Westminster does not
seem fantastic, when it is remembered that, according to John
Taylor, three or four thousand persons daily crossed the river
to Bankside in the days when the Globe, Rose and Swan were
all open as playhouses, and bearbaiting, also, was in progress.
A difficulty is caused by de Witt's statement that the Swan was
built of flint-stones heaped together and supported by wooden
columns, painted so like marble as to deceive the shrewdest eye.
In no extant specification, not even that of the Hope, is there
any mention of stone, and another foreigner, who visited London
two years later, expressly states that all the playhouses on Bank-
side were of wood-sometimes, as we know from other sources,
plastered over. Various suggestions have been made for getting
round de Witt's statement. It is simpler to believe him correct
and to suppose that, in this feature (as, perhaps, in another to be
dealt with later) the Swan was exceptional.
The extant contract with the builder shows that the Hope
on Bankside, which had been a bear-house, was newly built as a
playhouse by Henslowe and Jacob Meade in 1613. Possibly, the
burning of the Globe in that year induced Henslowe to try
for the Bankside public once more. The house was occupied
by the lady Elizabeth's and the Prince's companies, and Ben
Jonson's Bartholomew Fayre, which was acted there in 1614,
informs us that it was a dirty and evil-smelling place. In 1616,
apparently, it fell out of use as a playhouse. As the contract
states, it was of the same size as the Swan, and the roof over
the galleries 'was tiled, not thatched. Vischer's View of London
1 In Wheatley, W. 8. But see Greg, Henslowe's Diary, vol. 11, p. 134, note 1.
? E. g. , the contract for the Fortune : ante, pp. 258—9.
3 Printed in Greg, Henslowe Papers, pp. 19 f.
## p. 262 (#280) ############################################
262
The Elizabethan Theatre
(1616) shows it octagonal outside; but Hollar (1647) makes 'it
round. It was of wood, with a brick foundation.
Three other playhouses belonging to this period must be
mentioned. The Red Bull stood at the upper end of St John
street, Clerkenwell, and seems to have been opened about 1599.
In 1633, Prynne's Histrio-Mastix mentions it as recently rebuilt
and enlarged. It was occupied early in James I's reign by the
Queen's company, and remained in use, till 1642, by this and
other companies. Between 1642 and 1660, several attempts were
made to act there ; it was opened at the restoration by Rhodes,
formerly prompter at the Blackfriars ; Samuel Pepys saw a play
wretchedly performed to a poor house there, in 1661; and, by
1663, it was abandoned.
The Cockpit was a 'private' playhouse in Drury Lane, and
seems to have been erected on the site of a cockpit in or about
1615. It was opened by the lady Elizabeth's company, which,
in 1625, passed to queen Henrietta; and it remained in use till
1642. After 1660, it was occupied by the Duke's company under
Sir William D'Avenant, till they moved to the new theatre in
Portugal row, Lincoln's Inn fields in 1662.
Its second name,
the Phoenix, probably came into use when it had been restored
after the sacking of it by the 'prentices in 1617.
The Salisbury court or Whitefriars playhouse was built in
1629 near the hall of the old Whitefriars monastery, which had
previously, at any rate since 1610, been used for plays. It was
occupied first by the children of the King's revels, and then by
the Queen's. It was a 'private' playhouse, and was in use for
a brief time after the restoration.
The capital difference between the pre-rebellion public stage
and the modern stage lies in the fact that the former was a
platform stage, while the latter is a picture stage. The modern
audience sees the drama as a moving picture in a frame, or as in
a room with one wall, and only one, knocked out. The Elizabethan
audience surrounded the stage on three sides, partly encroaching
even on the fourth; they saw the drama as a scene enacted in their
1
midst and—in the case of the groundlings, the spectators standing
in the yard—very close to them. It is practically impossible for
performers on the stage to compose groups that shall show an
equally artistic shape on three sides at once, and the use of
daylight prevented many of the visual effects that have been
practised since the time of Garrick. The eye was appealed to
## p. 263 (#281) ############################################
The Stage
263
less forcibly than the ear. The drama was rhetorical, and the
actor more of a rhetorician than he is today, since the audience
looked to his enunciation of the poet's words for much of the
pleasure that the picture stage supplies through the eye. 'Spec-
tacular' plays, such as England & Joy, produced at the Swan
in 1603, were not unknown; spectacle was aimed at and enjoyed;
but word, voice and action were the chief elements in the drama.
And authors, being free from the modern playwright's necessity to
lead up to a 'situation,' a stage picture, on which the curtain may
fall sharply at the close of each act, made the play, rather than
each division of it, the artistic whole.
The stage begins with the bare platform on trestles, which
could be taken away when the space was needed for sports that
did not require it. Later, the space between the platform and
the ground is found concealed with boarding, and a low rail runs
round the edge of the stage. The rudest performance, whether
in innyard or 'ring,' supposes some place where actors can dress
and wait concealed, and whence they may have access to the
platform when their turn comes. This gives opportunity for a
background-a matter, however, of small importance in a stage
open on three sides
and also develops into the tirehouse. Ques-
tions as to the nature and use of this background and as to the
development of the tirehouse into a somewhat elaborate structure
lie at the root of all the difficulties in the restoration of an idea of
the Elizabethan stage.
It is impossible not to turn back with curiosity to the drawing
of the Swan theatre, the earliest extant view of the stage of the
period. The platform it shows is supported near the front on
two rough, solid beams, concealed by no 'paling. ' Halfway, or
rather more than halfway, towards the back, two very solid
turned pillars, resting on heavy square bases and with capitals
above, stand on the stage, at a distance from each other of
nearly its whole breadth, and support the front edge of a pent-
roof, which seems to project over the stage to a much smaller
distance than the position of the pillars would indicate. This
discrepancy is but one of many difficulties raised by the drawing.
Behind the pillars, under the pentroof and right at the back of
the stage, rises a wall with two large arched doors, each about
halfway between the centre of the back wall and its outer
extremity. On the wall, between the doors, the draughtsman has
written mimorum aedes, indicating that this is the 'actors' house. '
At some distance above the tops of the doors, the wall is broken
## p. 264 (#282) ############################################
264
The Elizabethan Theatre
by a gallery, in which sit what may be musicians, or actors taking
part in the play, but what certainly seem to be spectators; and,
above the gallery again, the wall rises to the point where the upper
edge of the pentroof starts. Above the level of the pentroof,
there appears another story, of equal or nearly equal width with
the wall of the tirehouse. There are two windows in it, facing
the auditorium, and, in a little doorway open in the side, on the
(spectator's) right, a man, either holding a flag or blowing a
trumpet, stands on the upper edge of the pentroof (which must
be supposed to turn the corner of the building on both sides).
The roof of this upper story, apparently, is thatched, and from
the summit on the (spectator's) right flies the flag bearing the
sign of the house, a swan. Near the front of the stage, an actor
in woman's dress is sitting on a bench; behind the bench stands
another, also in woman's dress; while, from the corner on the
(spectator's) left, an actor, bearing a long spear or staff, is striding
along the front of the stage towards the centre. There are no
hangings of any kind visible in any part of the drawing.
Some features in the drawing may be recognised from other
descriptions as correct—the existence of the tirehouse, the turret,
the waving flag showing that it is a play day, the blowing of the
trumpet showing that the play is about to begin (though the
draughtsman has shown the house as empty). Further examina-
tion raises a number of difficulties.
In the first place, this stage is not movable; or, if it can be
removed, those two heavy pillars supporting the small pentroof
must rest, not on the visible bases on the stage, but on the ground
below. If the stage is moved, the pillars will be in the way of any
exhibition that is taking place, and it is difficult to imagine that
these pretentious bases are shams. We are forced to conclude
that the stage of the Swan was not movable. Again, how far are
these pillars intended to be from the back wall of the stage, the
front wall of the tirehouse? The drawing shows them at the very
least a third of the way down the stage; yet the perspective is so
faulty that the pentroof seems to project at the most a few feet
forward from the wall. Granted that the pillars are right and the
pentroof wrong, the latter still does not correspond at all closely
with the 'heavens' or roof, which, in the Hope, as we know from
the contract, was to extend all over the stage, and which is known
to have existed in other playhouses of the period. The matter is
trilling at first sight, but is of importance because, mainly on the
position of the pillars in this drawing, a whole theory of the pro-
а
## p. 265 (#283) ############################################
The Alternation' Theory
·
265
duction of plays has been formed! To clear the ground, it may be
said at once that there is no occurrence before 1640 of anything
which can fairly be considered evidence of a front curtain on a
public stage (though, doubtless, it was in use at court and uni-
versity performances), and that the theory of the common use of
& front curtain is no longer tenable. On the other hand, there
is ample evidence that, somewhere on the stage, there were
hangings of silk, or wool, or 'painted cloth, sometimes, appa-
rently, when tragedies were acted, of black. Of hangings painted
in perspective to represent the scene of the play, there is no
mention in a public or private playhouse, though they were in
use at court and university performances. We hear of actors
peeping through before the play begins, and of an impatient
audience throwing things at the hangings. Stage directions
printed in the playbooks, though rendered an untrustworthy
guide by the impossibility of telling whether they were drawn
up by the author or manager, or by the printer or some other
unauthorised person, and whether they applied to performance at
court, in a public playhouse, a private playhouse, or a provincial
hall or innyard, seem to show that the public stage of the day
required at least three divisions: namely, the front part of the
stage; a back part, commonly used for interiors, which could be
disclosed by the drawing of curtains, and which, when disclosed,
could, of course, absorb the front part and occupy the entire stage;
and, thirdly, a place above to serve for upper chambers, balconies
like Juliet's, galleries, towers and so forth. Arguing from this and
from the position of the pillars in the drawing of the stage of the
Swan, the theory referred to supposes a regular course of 'alterna-
tion' throughout an entire play, much like that which was followed
by each act of an old-fashioned melodrama, in which the front scene
was used while the back scene was being set,' the author's duty,
in the days of Elizabeth as in our own, being to contrive a scene
of some sort, which the plot might or might not require, to fill up
the
time needed by the 'tire-men’ or sceneshifters. Accordingly, the
theory mentioned supposes a curtain or traverse' hung between
the pillars shown in the drawing of the Swan, that is, at about one
third, or half, of the depth of the stage, which should conceal
1 Chiefly by Brodmeier, C. , Die Shakespeare-Bühne nach den alten Bühnenan-
weisungen, Weimar, 1904. It has been exhaustively criticised by Reynolds, G. F. ,
Some principles of Elizabethan staging, Chicago, 1905.
Some confusion might be avoided if the word 'depth' were consistently used for
the measurement from the front of the stage to the back, and width' for that from
side to side.
6
## p. 266 (#284) ############################################
266
The Elizabethan Theatre
7
1
1
1
from spectators the preparations for the next scene going on
behind it.
The attempt to work out this 'alternation' theory by dividing
the extant plays of the period into front and back scenes has not
been successful'. A further difficulty arises from the fact that not
all the spectators were in front of the stage. A traverse between
the pillars would not conceal what was going on behind it from
people on either side of the stage. To block out their view, further
traverses at right angles to that between the pillars would be
necessary. The result, inevitably, would be to conceal not only
the back scene from them, but a great deal of the front scene, too,
on which action would be in progress. An even greater difficulty
attends the suggestion that, since there are notable instances
where it would be absurd for actors to enter the front scene by the
only available entrance, that is, through the traverse, there must
have been hangings all along both sides of the stage so that actors
might enter from the sides. It is to be noted, too, that this theory
supposes the upper stage or balcony to be concealed by the
traverse. This would mean that all scenes in which the balcony
was occupied must be back scenes, which is not easy to establish,
and makes it impossible that the audience should ever have used
the balcony; while three extant illustrations of the stage—the
title-pages to Richards's Messallina (1640) and Alabaster's Roxana
(1632), and the picture of a 'droll' on the stage of the Red Bull
which forms the frontispiece to Kirkman's The Wits (1673)-dis-
tinctly show the traverse hanging from below the balcony, while the
first and the last show a separate curtain for the balcony itself.
This theory seems to lose sight of the simple origin of the stage
-a temporary platform erected in the midst of a crowd and sur-
rounded by spectators regarding it from nearly all the four sides-
and to err from over-anxiety to credit an Elizabethan audience with
a susceptibility to the incongruous. The very naïve tradition of the
miracles and early moralities, in which two or more scenes, some-
times representing localities hundreds of miles apart, were on the
stage simultaneously, had not died out; and the audience may be
fairly supposed to have been no more offended by the conventions
of dramatic space than is a modern audience by those of dramatic
1 See Reynolds, op. cit. , and Wegener, R. , Die Bühneneinrichtung des Shake-
speareschen Theaters, Halle, 1907. For the practical defects of Brodmeier's proposed
reconstruction, see Archer, W. , in The Quarterly Review, no. 415, April 1908. The
*Elizabethan' stage reconstructed at Harvard in 1904 was planned on the alterna-
tion theory. For an illustration and description, see 'Hamlet on an Elizabethan Stage,'
by Baker, G. P. , Shakesp. Jahrbuch, vol. XLI (1905), pp. 296 ff.
6
## p. 267 (#285) ############################################
The Swan and the Hope Stages
267
time, which allow an imaginary half-hour to pass in an actual five
minutes. In his Apologie for Poetrie (written about 1580—1),
Sidney writes:
For where the stage should alwaies represent but one place, . . . there is . . .
many places, inartificially imagined. But if it be so in Gorboduck, how much
more in al the rest, where you shal have Asia of the one side, and Affrick of
the other, and so many other ander-kingdoms, that the Player, when he
commeth in, must ever begin with telling where he is, or els the tale wil not
be conceived ?
His words are borne out by numerous cases in extant plays, where
two or more places are imagined to be on the stage at the same
time; and it scarcely needs the evidence of ascertainable instances
to prove that an Elizabethan audience would not have the least
objection to seeing properties (such as the bench in the drawing
of the Swan) brought on the stage without concealment and left
there after they had served their turn, though it is extremely
likely that susceptibility to the incongruous grew, as time went on,
under the influence of Jonson and the classical playwrights. In
spite of this, it is abundantly clear that there was a back stage,
which could be revealed by drawing a curtain.
The fact is significant that, just as the Hope, though planned on
the lines of the Swan, was to be built of wood, not ilint, so, in the
contract with the builder, it is directly stated that he shall also
builde the Heavens all over the saide stage to be borne or carryed
without any postes or supporters to be fixed or sett uppon the
saide stage. ' It is possible, therefore, that the pillars of the Swan
were as the drawing shows them, and that the pentroof covered
half or nearly half the stage; but that the plan was found incon-
venient, was confined to the Swan and was discarded by Henslowe
when he built the Hope. In that case, the Swan may have had
the front and back scenes divided by the lofty traverse, and have
used them as suggested by the theory summarised above; but it is
at least unfortunate that the draughtsman should have hit on a
playhouse the arrangement of which was unique and discredited.
The construction may well have been different in different
houses; and there are several ways in which the necessary back
stage may be reconstructed and the requirements of stage direc-
tions fulfilled, without imposing a strict ‘alternation theory' or
incurring the difficulties referred to above. According to one
scheme', the pillars supporting the 'heavens' (if pillars there be)
play no part in the division of the stage. The stage proper runs
* This account follows, in the main, that suggested by Chambers, E. K. , 'The Stage
of the Globe,' in the Stratford-on-Avon Shakespeare, vol. 2, pp. 351 f.
6
9
## p. 268 (#286) ############################################
268
The Elizabethan Theatre
right back to the wall of the tirehouse. The gallery either
does not project, or projects only very slightly, in front of
that wall. From the level of its floor, hangings fall to the
stage, occupying, not the whole width of the stage, but most, or
the whole, of that part of it which lies between the two doors, the
doors being left uncovered. For this purpose, it is necessary to
suppose the doors further apart than they are in the drawing
of the Swan. These hangings, when drawn back, reveal the lower
chamber of the tirehouse in use as part of the stage, possibly with
a floor raised slightly above the stage level. Here, the strolling
players in Hamlet would perform, and here, Henry VIII would sit
in his closet. The room would be big enough to hold a fair
number of people; in the Fortune, for instance, an inner chamber
20 feet wide would still leave 114 feet on either side for the doors.
And the scene could always overflow on the stage proper. And,
since a third entrance is frequently mentioned and almost always
necessary, a door in the back of this chamber must also be
supposed, large enough to admit of 'properties' such as beds,
banqueting tables and so forth being brought through it. The
stage proper is thus entirely free of hangings, except those in front
of the chamber under the tirehouse; and the fact that this chamber
must have been low and dark seems of less importance when it
is remembered that plays were acted in unencumbered daylight.
There were hangings, also, in front of the balcony above. The
theory is not without its difficulties, the chief of which are that
many of the audience must have been unable, from their position in
the house, to see into the inner chamber, and that, when there were
actors or spectators in the balcony, they, too, would have been
unable to see into it? This view, to some extent, is borne out by
the title-pages of Messallina and Roxana mentioned above; but,
as neither of these shows the whole width of the stage, no certain
conclusions can be drawn from them. Another scheme makes
the gallery project some feet from the wall of the tirehouse, with
the traverse hanging from its floor and concealing all the doors
when it is drawn. There is, thus, a kind of corridor stage behind
the stage proper ; but, once more, any actors or spectators there
may be in the gallery will be unable to see what is taking place on
the back stage, and it is also necessary to imagine that every scene
in which doors are mentioned must have been a scene in which
1 Wegener's suggestion (op. cit. ), that there was a kind of ekkyklema on which
deathbeds and the like could be wheeled over the back stage and brought forward,
does not seem to be supported by sufficient evidence, though such a contrivance
would certainly have been useful.
## p. 269 (#287) ############################################
6
Stage Appliances and Properties 269
the back stage was used. To obviate these difficulties, a suggestion
has recently been put forward that the two side doors were not
flat in the wall of the tirehouse but set in walls slanting towards
it, while the traverse before the corridor hangs further up the
stage (i. l. nearer the back wall) and, when drawn, conceals only
the third, central door. The same suggestion curves the gallery
forward at each side, at an angle corresponding with that of the
walls containing the side doors, so that its occupants might see the
back stage, and even provides semicircular projections, or bays, in
order to make quite sure? .
The space beneath the stage was sometimes 'paled in' by
boarding, which, though not shown in the drawing of the Swan,
must have been a common feature, because many instances occur of
actors (especially when playing ghosts) appearing and disappearing
through trapdoors, and of dead bodies being thrown down through
them. We read of flames and even of a “brave arbour' appearing
from below. If the stage was strewn with rushes, as it seems to
have been, the use of the trap must, sometimes, have been difficult;
and, in any plays where the trapdoor was needed, the 'matting' on
the stage, which Sir Henry Wotton mentions, apparently as an
unusual thing, in his account of the burning of the Globe in 1613,
must have been out of the question.
There was also, in some
playhouses at all events, an appliance by which players could be
let down from above, as if descending from heaven, though it
appears to have been more difficult to draw them up again.
Whether the appliance worked from the balcony or the heavens'
is not ascertained.
Painted scenery on the public stage there was none, though the
mention in an inventory of the Admiral's men's properties, compiled
by Henslowe in 1598, of 'the clothe of the Sone and Mone,' certainly
seems to imply some attempt of this nature, and though the figures
of men and animals frequently appeared in the woven or painted
hangings. But there is abundant evidence that the properties were
many and elaborate. Houses, beds, rocks, ramparts, wells, property
horses, and even structures serving as shops, are mentioned as being
brought on the stage, and there is strong evidence for the solid
1 By Archer, U. S. See, in particular, the reproduction of a model by an
architect, Walter H. Godfrey, of & stage according to the specification of the Fortune,
illustrating Archer's article. The model itself was on view in the Exposition théâtrale,
Paris, 1908.
One objection to this arrangement is that it would make the drawing of the
traverse (which we know the gallery to have had) a very complicated affair.
## p. 270 (#288) ############################################
270
The Elizabethan Theatre
t
representation of woods and separate treesThough there was no
attempt at creating a picture, considerable care and expense were
incurred in the provision of properties. Yet these attempts at
realism, for which an Elizabethan audience, according to its lights,
had as keen a desire as a modern audience, long went hand in
hand with the simplest devices. The names of the places were
fastened over the doors, especially in cases where the stage re-
presented two scenes at once; and where the presence of specta-
tors on the stage reduced the space, the properties for which there
was not room were sometimes indicated by nuncupative cards, a
practice which prevailed, at this time, also in France. Such cards,
however, must be distinguished from the 'title-boards,' which, in
private theatres, were fastened up, or held up by the speaker of
the prologue, to give the title of the play.
Performances at private playhouses? may be taken to have
approximated to those at universities, inns of court and royal
residences, in aiming at the taste of more refined audiences than
did the public playhouse—though too much stress should not be
laid on the supposition. Noblemen, ambassadors and other great
.
,
people went to the public playhouses; but, while it is on record
that Elizabeth went to the Blackfriars, she is not known to
have ever visited the Globe. Private playhouses were completely
roofed over, and, though performances took place there in the
afternoons as in public playhouses, they were, occasionally at all
events, performed in artificial light, the windows being covered
over. Instead of the 'yard' filled with 'understanding' spectators
or 'groundlings,' there was a pit, with seats.
The evidence shows that a performance at court was very
different from a performance in a public or private playhouse.
It was for this honour, ostensibly, that the company worked all the
year, and, when the master of the revels had selected, after com-
petition, the companies and the plays they should perform, the
author was often called upon to revise his play; and the perform-
ance ended with prayers for the queen. Elizabeth's accounts show
an annual outlay for airing and furbishing up the court stock of
costumes and appliances, besides considerable expense for wires,
lights, properties and mechanical contrivances". The old domus
of the miracles survive in the 'painted houses' of the players at
1 On properties, see Reynolds, op. cit. , and his article, "Trees on the stage of Shake-
speare'in Modern Philology, vol. v, p. 153.
On this question, see Wallace, op. cit.
3 All the evidence has been collected by Feuillerat, A. , Documents relating to the
Office of the Revels.
6
## p. 271 (#289) ############################################
Costumes.
The Audience
271
court; and there can be little question that painted scenery was
not unknown! Under James I, great advances were achieved by
the arts of stage decoration and production through the masques
written by Ben Jonson and mounted by Inigo Jones; but the
public stage was little affected, if at all. Not until the return of
D'Avenant and other adherents of Charles I and II from France
and Italy, to be followed by Betterton's mission to Paris-not
until the drama became more nearly dependent on court favour
than it had been made even by the exclusive royal patronage of
companies on the accession of James I, did the public stage
make a corresponding advance; and then it drew its inspiration
from other sources. The main appeal to the eye in public
playhouses before the rebellion was made by the costumes of
actors. Now and then, as in miracles, a rudimentary attempt
at dramatic propriety in costume was made. For the most part,
players wore the ordinary dress of the day, some, even of the
male characters, appearing in wigs, and some—especially, it would
seem, in cases of disguise and of minor players acting more than
one part-having their faces concealed by masks. Makeshift and
errors of taste were not unknown even in London playhouses ;
but Henslowe's extant accounts show that the costumes were
splendid and costly-velvet, gold lace, copper lace and other
rich materials being freely used. The speaker of the prologue
appeared in a black cloak.
The creation of an atmosphere for the play (which is the aim
that modern stage production is endeavouring, often in strangely
inartistic fashion, to achieve by scenery) was left to the descriptive
words of the poet, the voice of the actor and the imagination of the
audience. The audience of those days must certainly be supposed
to have been more susceptible to the message to the ear, and less
to deficiencies in the message to the eye, than that of our own
time; but, while taking into account the larger part played by
the Elizabethan drama in intellectual life, we must be careful not
to credit the spectators with a much greater earnestness in the
playhouse. Abundant evidence proves that-what with the throng
of groundlings in the yard, intent mainly on the fighting and the
broader humour; what with the gallants making their way through
the tirehouse and lying or sitting on stools on the stage', smoking
the pipes which their pages filled for them, and intent on display-
ing themselves rather than on listening to the play; what with the
1 For distinct evidence of scene shifting in a university performance, see Nichols :
Progresses of King James 1, vol. 1, p. 538.
On this subject, see Wallace, op. cit. chap. XI.
## p. 272 (#290) ############################################
272
The Elizabethan Theatre
women of the town and their admirers in the galleries ; what with
here and there a Bobadill or Tucca ready to brawl at any moment
-the Elizabethan audience, whether in a public or in a private
playhouse, was not the rapt body of enthusiasts which later times
have been tempted to imagine it. It included, however, Walsing-
hams and Southamptons, refined and intellectual admirers of the
drama, and their numbers must have exceeded those of the Sidneys
who scoffed and of the Northbrookes who railed. It is impossible
to reconstruct past acting ; but it is safe to conclude that the
players whose duty it was to embody the creations of Shakespeare,
Marlowe, Beaumont and Fletcher, to the satisfaction of the best
intellects of the reigns of Elizabeth and James, with practically no
scenic illusion to aid them, must have cultivated to a high degree
the arts both of declamation and of expressing character. The
improvement in the drama consequent on the coming of uni-
versity wits probably called forth a corresponding improvement
in the actor's art, and there is some evidence that a decline
in acting followed or accompanied the decline of the drama in
the seventeenth century. That declamation was often attended
by its besetting sin of rant is recorded in Hamlet's advice to the
players (Hamlet, act III, sc. 2) as well as in various passages of other
contemporary writers, which imply that the actors of the Fortune
(in its later days), the Red Bull and the Cockpit were great offenders
in this respect, and that the evil grew during the latter half of the
period. The player's response, however: 'I hope we have reform'd
that indifferently with us, Sir,' coupled with the admonition of
Hamlet, is pretty good evidence that, at the Globe, declamation
was not allowed to degenerate. As to the quality of the character
acting, the elegy on Richard Burbage shows how vivid this was at
its best; though, of course, it is impossible to tell how deeply, even
under Shakespeare's guidance, Burbage penetrated into the signi-
ficance of the characters he played. The evidence of Flecknoe,
who, in his Short Discourse of the English Stage (1664) praises
Burbage for a 'delightful Proteus' that maintained his character
throughout, even in the tyring-house,' must represent a tradition
and an ideal rather than the statement of an eyewitness. That
the female characters were all played in the playhouses by
boys, youths, or young men, generally implies, to modern minds,
incongruity and poor acting; but the popularity of boys'
companies goes to show that boys, when thoroughly trained, can
do better than we give them credit for today'. The spectacle,
1 See Wallace, op. cit. chaps, Iv and ix; and cf. Raleigh, W. , Shakespeare (1907),
pp. 119-120.
>
## p. 273 (#291) ############################################
Variety of Appeal
273
at any rate, must have been pleasanter than that of women
playing male parts, and 'squeaking Cleopatra' may have boyed
her greatness with better artistic effect than some actresses have
achieved
Much of the inequality in the plays of Shakespeare, as well
as of their popularity during his lifetime, can be explained by the
consideration that he wrote for a mixed audience, and succeeded
in pleasing all? . The appeal of his plays to the best intellects of
the time needs no showing. For the more intelligent of the
common spectators, in whose lives the drama filled the place now
occupied by the lending library, the press and, to some extent, the
pulpit, there was not only the strong story but the expression of
comment and criticism on many aspects of life and on facts of
the varied world, some of them only remotely connected with
the actual plot. For lovers of sport and action, there were ex-
hibitions of swordplay, wrestling and so forth, which the drama
had woven into its own texture, besides battles, murders and
other incidents which, as St Évremond noticed a century later, the
English public liked to see on the stage. For all amateurs of
wit, there were exhibitions or contests in punning and jesting-
another form of entertainment which the drama, to a great ex-
tent, absorbed into itself-ranging from the keen wordplay and
literary parody to the gross joke or hint for the groundlings.
That Shakespeare would willingly have dispensed with the latter,
we know from the passage in Hamlet referred to above. The
'gag' of the clown must have been the more annoying because
it was the common practice to conclude a performance, and some-
times to interrupt it, with a 'jig,' performed by Tarlton, Kemp,
Armin, or some other ‘fool'--an indispensable member of every
company_answering to the 'laughable farce' which followed the
tragedy until days within the memory of living men. To the
possible attractions of the playhouse must be added music, played
both during and between the acts. That at Blackfriars was
especially esteemed, as was, naturally, that of the children's com-
panies, and public theatres attempted to emulate their success
in this matter. Where the 'noise,' or orchestra, sat is not certain;
it was not till after the Restoration that it was placed between
the stage and the audience, and, in the period under notice, it
probably occupied in some playhouses the space marked orchestra
in the drawing of the Swan, perhaps on both sides of the stage.
1 On this question, see Bridges, R. , in the Stratford-on-Avon Shakespeare, vol. x,
and contrast Bradley, A. C. , in Oxford Lectures on Poetry, pp. 361 ff.
18
6
E. L. VI.
CH, X
## p. 274 (#292) ############################################
274
The Elizabethan Theatre
The occurrence of songs in plays is well known; and we read that
in the country, at any rate, the music was more popular than the
play itself.
Another fact to be noticed is the intimate connection be-
tween author and company. It was not only actor-authors, like
Shakespeare and Nathan Field, who attached themselves to one
company and wrote their plays for it during life or a term of
years. The tradition that Hamlet was made ‘fat' because Burbage
was fat, and the still less trustworthy tradition that Iago was
written for a comedian, with opportunities introduced into the
part for making the audience laugh, do not go so far to prove the
effect of this practice on Shakespeare's work as does the con-
sideration that any sensible playwright writing for a certain
company will take care that the parts are adapted to its members.
Authors often worked very fast, plays being written sometimes
in the short space of a fortnight; and they looked for very little
reward. The Admiral's company seems to have ordered and
produced more new plays than the Chamberlain's and King's com-
pany', whose plays, possibly, could bear more frequent repetition;
and they only paid sums varying from £5 to £8 for a play until
1602, though as much as £25 seems to have been obtainable later
in the period under notice. The author seems to have received a
fee for altering his play for production at court; but, though the
company received a regular fee of £6. 138. 4d. , with a present of
£3. 68. 8d. for each play performed at court in London, and double
those sums when the performance entailed a journey to Hampton
court or Windsor, the author cannot be proved to have had a share
of this reward. He was present, no doubt, when the company
assembled at an inn to read and consider his new play over re-
freshments paid for by the company, and he had a right to free
admission to the playhouse a privilege which Ben Jonson used
to abuse by sitting in the gallery and making wry faces at the
actors' delivery of his lines. The author received a fee for altering
his play for a revival, 58. for a prologue and epilogue and, some-
times, a bonus at the first performance; and there is good evidence
that, in certain cases, if not regularly, the author had a 'benefit,' as
later times would have phrased it, on the second or third day of
performance. If his play was published, he could gain 40s. by
dedicating it to a patron.
a
a
So Fleay, Stage, p. 117, says that he has not been able to trace. . . more than
four new plays produced by them (the Chamberlain's company) in any one year. '
Greg, Henslowe's Diary, vol. 11, p. 112, n. 1, suggests that the preservation of Henslowe's
and the loss of the King's company's papers may partly account for the disproportion.
## p. 275 (#293) ############################################
Finance
275
The play was bought by the company, though there are scattered
cases in which individual persons exercised the rights of ownership;
the manuscripts formed part of the stock owned in shares by the
company, who could sell the play, if they wished, to another
company, but, naturally, disliked printing it, lest a rival company
should produce it unlawfully. For the same reason, the author
was not encouraged to print his play; the company purchased the
copyright, and it was considered sharp practice for the author to
sell it also to a bookseller. Many plays crept into print in a
a
mangled form through some surreptitious sale by a member of
the company, or through stenographers, who attended the play-
house to take down what they could of a successful play.
The bulk of the profits on a play went, not to the author or
authors, but to the company. Finance was mainly conducted
on the share system. One share or more might be purchased,
or might be allotted instead of salary; and, in the second
half of the period, shares were clearly regarded as property
that could be sold or devised by will. The proceeds of each
performance, after certain deductions had been made, were divided
among the members of the company according to their holdings
of shares. In the case of Henslowe's company, at the Hope, those
deductions, at one time, in 1614, included the money received for
admission to the galleries and through the tiringhouse, half of the
sum going to Henslowe and Meade as owners of the theatre, and
the other half to Henslowe on account of advances made by him
for the stock of costumes, which was also the company's property.
Henslowe has been generally accused of harshness and injustice in
his dealings with the companies under his control. Pawnbroker
and moneylender, he acted, doubtless, to some extent, on the
principle put into his mouth by his players in their Articles of
Grievance and Oppression of 1615: 'should these fellowes Come
out of my debt, I should have noe rule with them. ' Excessive
value placed upon clothes and other property which he pur-
chased for them, bonds for repayment and the not infrequent
'breaking,' or disbanding, of companies which protested, kept
his actors in a state of subjection. The case may have been
different with the Chamberlain's and King's company; but we
are ignorant of its internal arrangements during nearly the whole
period. The recent discovery of documents setting forth the
company's financial arrangements during the years 1598 to 1615
· Made by Wallace, C. W. , and communicated by him to The Times of 2 and 4 Octo.
ber 1909, p. 9. This discovery, with others recently made by the same investigator,
will be dealt with at length in Shakespeare, The Globe and the Blackfriars, a work now
being prepared by him for publication.
1842
## p. 276 (#294) ############################################
276
The Elizabethan Theatre
is entitled to rank among the most important contributions to what
is known in this field. In 1599, a lease of the site of the Globe
was granted for 31 years, one half of the interest in the property
to the brothers Burbage, who paid one half the whole annual rent
of £14. 108. Od. , the other half to Shakespeare, Heminge, Phillipps,
Pope and Kemp, who paid the other half of the rent in equal
shares, i. e. £l. 98. Od. each. In 1610, Shakespeare and the four
,
other holders of tenths admitted Condell to an interest, their
shares thus becoming twelfths; and, in 1612, these twelfths were
further divided into fourteenths by the admission of William
Osteler. This arrangement lasted till 1630, each share, it appears,
being assigned on the death of its owner to the Burbages or the
survivor of them, to be reassigned to some new actor. In the
Blackfriars, Richard Burbage held one seventh share, leaving one
seventh each to Shakespeare, Heminge, Cuthbert Burbage, Condell,
Slye and Thomas Evans, each of the seven paying an annual rental
of £5. 148. 4d. -a total of £40. 08. 4d. This arrangement also lasted
till 1630. In the documents in the suit brought by Thomasin
Osteler against her father Heminge, the purchase value of one
seventh of the Blackfriars is estimated at £300, and the pur-
chase value of one-fourteenth of the Globe at the same sum ; and
a year's profits on each are estimated-no doubt somewhat in
excess, for purposes of the suit-at £300. In return for this, each
—.
actor-sharer not only paid his share of the cost of building and
keeping up the playhouse and of the incidental expenses—ward-
robe, servants and so forth—but gave his services as actor; and
the later passing of the shares by sale or demise into the hands of
persons other than actors led to dispute and litigation. The almost
equally important discovery by Halliwell-Phillipps of papers con-
cerning a dispute of this nature among sharers in the Globe and
Blackfriars playhouses in 1635 bad thrown a light on the later
finances of those houses. The company was then divided into three
classes : housekeepers, sharers and hired men and boys. The
housekeepers' shares in the Globe were sixteen in number, and,
at the date of the dispute, they were held as follows: three
and a half by Cuthbert Burbage, son of James and brother of
Richard, three and a half by the widow of Richard Burbage, now
Mrs Robinson, two by the widow of Henry Condell, three by the
actor John Shankes and two each by the actors Taylor and Lowin.
There were thus, among the housekeepers, three actors holding
seven shares, all of which they had purchased, and the remaining
nine shares were owned by 'neither actors, nor his Majesties
servants,' but the heirs or legatees of actors. The Blackfriars was
## p. 277 (#295) ############################################
Finance
277
a
divided into eight shares, three being in the hands of Cuthbert
Burbage and the widows of Richard Burbage and Condell, the
remaining five in the hands of Shankes, who held two, and Taylor,
Lowin and Underwood (another actor), who had one each. The
housekeepers had to pay the rent of the two houses (which they
put down at £100 yearly, while their opponents reckon it as £65,
less a sum of between £20 and £30 for a sub-let portion of the
premises), and to keep them in repair ; they received one half of
all the money taken except at the outer doors, that is to say, half
of all the fees for galleries, "rooms' and admission through the
tirehouse, for which a fee was charged, and for stools on the stage,
which had to be hired. The shareholders, i. e. actors who were not
housekeepers, bad, in earlier years, received money taken at the
outer doors only; by 1635, they divide exactly with the house-
keepers the fees for galleries, and so forth, and have to deduct out
of their earnings about £3 a day for wages to hired men and boys,
music, lights and the like, and also sums spent for costumes and
for purchase of plays. Considerable though their profits seem
to have been, certain shareholders felt that too much money went
into the hands of the housekeepers and that the existing dis-
tribution among the actor housekeepers was unfair, and their
petition to the lord chamberlain for a compulsory sale to them-
selves of certain shares was, apparently, granted.
The price of shares, doubtless, varied with the company, the
circumstances and the date. In 1593, Francis Henslowe appears
to have paid only £15 for a share in the Queen's company on the
eve of a provincial tour, and, two years later, the same actor paid
£9 for a half share in another company. The values of shares in
the Globe and the Blackfriars in 1615 have been mentioned above.
In 1633, Shankes paid £350 for one housekeepers’ share in the
Blackfriars for a term of five years, and two housekeepers’ shares
in the Globe for a term of one year. The pleadings in the dispute
referred to state that actors who were not housekeepers received
£180 each in the year 1634, while the housekeepers' shares
appear to have brought in something over £100 each share. A
writer in 1643 speaks of housekeepers sharing as much as 308.
a performance. The sums are not surprising when we remember
that, to the price of admission (which varied between one penny
at a public playhouse to six at a private) paid to the single
'gatherer' at the entrance door, were added the extra fees, amount-
ing sometimes to 28. 6d. , demanded by the extra 'gatherers' within,
for the use of the various parts of the galleries. Hired men
were engaged by contract either by the company or the manager,
## p. 278 (#296) ############################################
278
The Elizabethan Theatre
and received a weekly salary, varying from 58. to 88. Boys were
bought as apprentices by individual players, for sums varying
from £2 to something like £15, their masters, presumably, also
maintaining them; and, in some cases, boys appear to have been
bought and maintained by the company. Strict regulations were
made for the behaviour of all members of the company, share-
holders and hired men alike, and fines were exacted for lateness,
drunkenness, absence from rehearsal and other offences.
A man who was at once a sharing actor and a playwright, like
Shakespeare, clearly had it in his power to make fairly large sums
of money'; and Alleyn, who had other sources of income, was in
an even more fortunate position. No surprise need be felt at
Shakespeare's purchase of New Place, nor at Alleyn's heavy outlay
on property at Dulwich and his renowned benevolence. The
fortunate and respectable actor-even though he held no office
under the crown like Alleyn's—was received into good society
and was befriended and admired by the best intellects of his
time; he lived a comfortable and secure existence, and, per-
haps, indulged in the purchase of a coat of arms. Henry Condell
was a sidesman of the parish of St Mary's, Aldermanbury, in
1606: his respectability is unimpeachable. But the besetting sins
of the player-luxury, extravagance and intemperate living—for
which Hazlitt found generous excuses in later years, seem to
have existed then as ever. We read much of the player's love
of fine clothes and display. And there can be no doubt that the
frequent interruptions caused by the plague, the deterrent action
of such managers as Henslowe and the notorious uncertainty of
theatrical affairs, resulted in much poverty and distress among
lesser actors and lesser companies. Those on tour, especially,
suffered hardships, being forced to pawn their wardrobe, to 'pad
the hoof' instead of riding from town to town and to beg, instead
of play, for their keep. The extremes of the profession were as
far apart then as now; but the age of Elizabeth and James un-
doubtedly raised it as a whole into respect as well as popularity;
and the outspoken envy of those—by no means all of puritanical
bent—who railed at the pride and display of actors was the natural
result of the advance which the period witnessed. During the
reign of Charles, the greater prevalence of the plague, the shadow
of coming troubles and the deterioration of the drama itself caused
something of a decline, and the rebellion brought all to a close.
1 Wallace, u. s. , calculates Shakespeare's yearly profits from the Globe as never
exceeding £300, and a similar amount from the Blackfriars.
1
1
## p. 279 (#297) ############################################
CHAPTER XI
THE CHILDREN OF THE CHAPEL ROYAL
AND THEIR MASTERS
THE Chapel Royal and its relations to the history of drama
in England form an extremely puzzling and interesting subject
of enquiry.
