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A HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
A History of Theatrical Art
In Ancient and Modern Times by
Karl Mantzius
Authorised Translation by
Louise von Cossel
Volume III
The Shakespearean Period
in England
London
Duckworth & Co.
Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, W.C.
1904
All Rights Reserved.
HER MAJESTY
THE QUEEN
HAS BEEN MOST GRACIOUSLY PLEASED
TO ACCEPT THE
Hutbor's 2>et>ication
OF THIS BOOK.
CONTENTS
PAGE
THE THEATRES
I. Before the Existence of Theatres — Influence of Italian
Stage — Technique — Inns — Attacks of the Puritans —
James Burbage and the Erection of the First Theatre . i
II. "The Theatre" and its History — The Performances merely
a Branch of Sport — The Quarrel between Burbage and
George Allen — The Staff and Repertoire of "The
Theatre"— The Second Theatre— "The Curtain" . 13
III. The Blackfriars' Theatre — Its Comparatively Slight Import-
ance to Shakespeare — Its Situation and Construction —
Private and Public Theatres — The Question of Property
— Children's Plays ..... 29
IV. The Southern Bank of the Thames and its Places of
Amusement — Fights between Animals — Edward Alleyn
and the Lions — The Watermen and their Poet . . 46
V. The Theatres on the Southbank — Henslowe and Alleyn
and their Theatres, "Newington Butts" and "The
Rose" — Competition and Co-operation with Burbage's
Company — The First " Globe Theatre " and its Reper-
toire ....... 56
VI. Building of "The Fortune" Theatre— Its Situation and
Arrangement — Difficulties and Dangers threatening
from the Authorities ..... 65
VII. The Burning of "The Globe"— The new "Globe" and its
Proprietors — Philip Henslowe as Theatrical Manager —
The Burning and Reconstruction of "The Fortune" . 79
vii
viii CONTENTS
PAGB
VIII. Number of Theatres— " The Red Bull"— The Last
Theatres, "The Cockpit" or "The Phoenix" and
"Salisbury Court" ..... 92
GENERAL THEATRICAL CONDITIONS
I. Hours of Performance — Play-bills — Taylor's Rhyming
Matches — Prices of Admission and Gatherers — Pro-
ceeds of the Performances, and Fees Paid by the
Court — Accommodation ..... 103
II. Expenses Then and Now — The Stage and its Equipment —
Spectators on the Stage . . . . 113
III. Authors' Fees— Censorship — Sir Henry Herbert's Notes-
Shakespeare's Fame as an Author . . . 123
IV. Actors' Fees and Profits of the Theatres— Great Theatrical
Celebrities and Minor Actors — What Shakespeare
Earned — Magnificence of Costumes — Actors' Contracts 135
V. A First Performance at "The Globe" . . . 157
HISTRIONIC ART
I. The Old School— Clowns— Richard Tarlton and his Art-
William Kemp . . . . . . 167
II. The Tragedians— " King Cambyses' Vein" and Shake-
speare's Opinion About It — Edward Alleyn as an Artist
and as a Man . . . ... . 190
III. The Shakespearean School — Shakespeare as Actor —
Richard Burbage and his Company — Nathaniel Field
— The Cessation of Plays . . . . . 211
BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . 241
INDEX . ....'.. 245
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FlG. Pacing {>*£«
1. An Old London Inn— Tabard Inn (from an i8th century
illustration) ....... 6
2. London in Shakespeare's time (after Hoefnagel's ground plan) . 20
3. Interior of a private theatre (Title to William Alabaster's
Roxana) ....... 28
4. View of London, with the "Swan," "Fortune" and "Globe"
theatres ....... 46
5. Part of a map of London, 1560 ..... 56
6. The New Globe Theatre ...... 82
7. Interior of the "Red Bull" theatre .... 94
8. Richard Tarlton as a Clown . . . . ija,
9. William Kemp dancing a Morris Dance . . . 180
10. William Shakespeare ...... 194
n. Alleyn as Dr Faustus ...... 198
12. Alleyn as Hieronimo ...... 200
13. Edward Alleyn (after a picture at Dulwich College) . . 210
14. William Shakespeare (from the bust belonging to the Garrick
Club) ..." 214
15. Richard Burbage (after a picture at Dulwich College) . . 232
1 6. Nathaniel Field 238
IX
THE THEATRES
Before the Existence of Theatres — Influence of Italian stage technique
— Inns — Attacks of the Puritans — James Burbage and the Erection of
the First Theatre.
AT the date of Shakespeare's birth (1564) no permanent
theatre as yet existed in England.
But there had long existed a class of professional
actors, descended partly from the mystery and miracle
playing artisans of the Middle Ages, partly from the
strolling players, equilibrists, jugglers and jesters.1
Professional Italian actors (players of the Commedia
dell1 Arte), who in the sixteenth century spread their gay
and varied art all over Europe, also supplied English
players with that touch of professional technique, in
which their somewhat vacillating and half amateurish
art was still wanting.
While, however, as far as France is concerned, the
Italian influence must strike everybody who studies the
1 As early as the ninth year of the reign of Henry VII. we find in a
royal account-book the following among other entries : . . . Item, payed
for two playes in the hall, 265. 8d. Item, to the king's players for a reward,
loos. . . . Item, to the players that begged by the way, 6s. 8d. (quoted by
Malone : Historical Account of the English Stage, p. 43). Here we notice
already an interesting difference between the refined royal actors, who
receive loos, in reward, as much as the king loses at cards, and the poor,
destitute jugglers who beg alms on the high - road of their passing
sovereign.
III. A
2 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
stage-history of the country, the evidence of a fertilisa-
tion of English scenic art by the Commedia deirArte is
scanty. Yet I think it is sufficient to deserve more
attention than has hitherto been bestowed on it.
In any case there is sufficient evidence to prove that
Italian professional actors penetrated into England and
exercised their art there.
In January 1577 an Italian comedian came to London
with his company. The English called him Drou-
siano, but his real name was Drusiano Martinelli, the
same who with his brother Tristano visited the court
of Philip II. ; and there is no reason to suppose that he
was either the first or the last of his countrymen who
tried to carry off good English gold from merry London.
The typical Italian masks are quite well known to the
authors of that period. Thus Thomas Hey wood men-
tions all these Doctors, Zannis, Pantaloons and Harlequins,
in which the French, and still more the Italians, dis-
tinguished themselves.1 In Kyd's Spanish Tragedy, and
in Ben Jonson's The Case is Altered, mention is made
of the Italian improvised comedy, and a few well-known
types of character in the dramatic literature of the time
bear distinct traces of having been influenced by Italian
masks ; e.g. Ralph Roister Doister in Udall's comedy of
1 Thorn. Heywood : An Apology for Actors, 1612 ; reprinted by the
Shakespeare Society, 1841, p. 43. Comp. also the passage in Shakespeare's
As You Like It, ii. 7 :—
" The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side ;
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank ; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound."
that name ; as well as the splendid Captain Bobadill
and his no less amusing companion, Captain Tucca, in
Ben Jonson's Every Man in his Humour and The
Poetaster, all of which are reproductions of the typical
Capitano.
However, it is not these literary testimonies that I
consider the most striking evidence of the influence of
Italian professional technique on English professional
actors. It is a remarkable discovery made by the
highly esteemed Shakespearean archaeologist, Edmond
Malone, about a century ago, in Dulwich College, that
mine of ancient English dramatic research, founded by
the actor Edward Alleyn.
Among the notes left by the old pawnbroker and
theatrical manager, Henslowe, and the various papers,
letters, parts, accounts, etc., of his son-in-law, the famous
and very wealthy actor Alleyn, among these rare docu-
ments, to which we owe a great part of our knowledge
of the Shakespearean stage, Malone found four remark-
able card-board tables, on which the plots of as many
plays were put down, together with the names of the
persons represented, their entrances and exits, cues for
music, sennets, etc.
According to Collier's description,1 these tables — one
of which only is preserved, the three others having
disappeared through the carelessness and disorder which
at that time prevailed in the Dulwich treasury — were
about fifteen inches in length and nine in breadth. They
1 J. P. Collier : English Dramatic Poetry, iii. p. 197 (edit. 1879). In Malone's
Additions to the Historical Account, we find four reprints of these tables,
with explanations partly by Malone himself, partly by Steevens.
4 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
were divided into two columns, and between these, towards
the top of the table, there was a square hole for hanging
it up on a hook or some such thing. They bore the
following titles : —
1. The Plotte of the Deade Man's Fortune ;
2. The Plotte of the First Parte of Tamar Cam ;
3. The Plotte of Frederick and Basilea and
4. The Platte of the Secound Parte of the Seven
Deadlie Sinns.
The last mentioned play is known for certain to
have been composed by the excellent comic actor,
Richard Tarlton. Gabriel Harvey, the astrologist and
the implacable antagonist of Thomas Nash, tells us in
his letters l how Tarlton himself in Oxford invited him
to see his celebrated play on The Seven Deadly Sins ;
Harvey asked him which of the seven was his own
deadly sin, and he instantly replied : " By G — the sinne
of other gentlemen, lechery."
Tarlton died in the year 1 588, and some of the other
plays, especially The Dead Mans Fortune, are con-
sidered to be a good deal older than his. They belong,
therefore, to an early period of the English Renaissance
stage.
These four tables caused considerable trouble to
Malone and his contemporary Steevens, as well as to
later investigators, as they are without equals in the
archaeology of the English stage. If these men had
known that such tables, containing the plot of the piece
which was acted at the time, were always hung up on
the stage of the Italian Commedia delTArte in order to
1 [Gabriel Harvey :] Four letters and certain Sonnets, 1 592, p. 29.
THE THEATRES 5
assist the memory of the improvising actors, they would
have seen instantly that their essential historical impor-
tance to us consists in their showing by documentary
evidence how the early Elizabethan scenic art in its
outer form was influenced and improved by the Italians.
The fact that one of the principal characters in the
oldest scenario (The Dead Mans Fortune] bears the
name of Panteloun further confirms this supposition.
This is not the place to investigate how far the
English were influenced by Italian professional dramatic
art. At any rate, the English national character
differed too much from the Italian to allow it to receive
more than an outward and formal stamp. And even
this superficial effect is much less significant in England
than in France. Still we are certainly not mistaken in
assuming that it helped to strengthen English dramatic
art, which already possessed no small amount of power ;
and we may take it for granted that about the time of
Shakespeare's birth, London possessed a socially and
professionally organised class of actors, in spite of the
fact that they did not yet possess a theatre of their
own.
Before proper theatres were built, and after the time
of the great Mysteries, the actors found a refuge for their
art chiefly in the Inns, those splendid and expensive old
public-houses which convey to our minds the idea of
old-fashioned and picturesque comfort ; where the nobility
and clergy sought their quarters in winter, and where the
carriers unloaded their goods in the large square yards,
which were surrounded on all sides by the walls of the
inn. On these walls there were galleries running all
6 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
round, supported by wooden pillars and with steep
picturesque ladders leading up to them.
It was in these yards— of "The Cross Keys" in
Gracechurch Street, of " The Bull " in Bishopsgate
Street, "La Belle Sauvage"on Ludgate Hill, or the
"Tabard Inn" in South wark — that the actors set up
their stages. Perhaps it was this very circumstance that
became one of the indirect reasons why they were finally
obliged to build a house for themselves.
Certainly the inns offered advantages to the actors ;
they were meeting-places for the public, frequented by
lords and other persons of distinction ; probably the
companies paid next to nothing for the use of them.
In themselves they afforded good room for the audience,
with a natural pit for ordinary people in the yard, and
with more comfortable " boxes " for the more dis-
tinguished part of the audience on the surrounding
balconies and at the windows facing the yard.
On the other hand, these inn -theatres had their
drawbacks. In the first place, the actors were not on
their own ground, and so, after all, they were only
tolerated. Secondly, it must have been very difficult
for them to keep to regular prices, and especially to
secure the payment of the entrance fee, as they had
probably to collect the money during or after the per-
formance, thus depending on the liberality of the public
for their remuneration. And finally, worst of all, they
were led into quarrels with the Lord Mayor and with
the citizens.
Indeed, it is not unlikely that these performances in
the inns caused a good deal of noise and disturbance in
I— An Old London Inn — Tabard Inn (from an i8th century illustration).
THE THEATRES 7
the quarters where they took place, and that the joyous,
but by no means refined or quiet " pit," when going
home, excited by one of Tarlton's jigs and by the strong
ale of the inn, was not animated by very respectful
feelings towards their sour Puritan fellow-citizens, who
were scandalised as they watched "merry London"
crowding past their windows. Nor is it improbable that
these anything but respectful feelings vented themselves
in some of the coarse expressions in which the plays of
those times abound, where Puritanism, the sworn enemy,
is concerned ; " this barbarous sect," as it is called by a
modern English author,1 " from whose inherited and
contagious tyranny this nation is as yet but imperfectly
released."
It is certain, at any rate, that the Puritan citizens
entertained a deep and sincere hatred of anything con-
nected with plays and actors, and if it had been in their
power to do what they liked, the world would once for
all have been relieved of such pernicious and wicked
vagabonds as William Shakespeare, Christopher Mar-
lowe and Ben Jonson.
Fortunately, however, this power did not lie with the
Puritans only.
Luckily, this sect, which like a malicious growth seemed
to have gathered to itself all the stubbornness, insensi-
bility and rude obstinacy of the nation, was counter-
balanced by a refined and intellectual nobility, which was
inspired by the new artistic and philosophical thought of
the Renaissance, and seemed to foresee, if not fully to
recognise, what a mine of poetry the English theatre of
1 A. C. Swinburne : A Study of Ben Jonson, p. 43.
8 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
those times was destined to be. Thanks to men like
Sir Francis Walsingham, Lords Leicester, Nottingham,
Strange and Sussex, the drama resisted for a time the
violent and unwearied attacks of the Puritans. Most
fortunately for the actors also, Queen Elizabeth, as well
as her successors, James I. and Charles I., was fond of
plays, and favourably inclined towards their performers.
Elizabeth rendered a great service to the actors by
placing them under the patronage of the nobility. The
municipal authorities, who were frequently Puritan, con-
sidered neither dramatic art nor dramatic poetry as an
acceptable means of livelihood ; consequently, those who
cultivated these noble arts easily exposed themselves to
being treated as " masterless men," unless they could
give a reference to some distinguished aristocratic name.
The Queen ordered by law — in a statute which has
often been misunderstood — " that all common players of
interludes wandering abroad, other than players of inter-
ludes belonging to any baron of this realme, or any other
honourable personage of greater degree, to be authorised
to play under the hand and scale of arms of such baron
or personage, shall be adjudged and deemed rogues and
vagabonds " ; in other words, the Queen urged all actors,
for their own sakes, to place themselves under the
patronage of some nobleman, in order to protect them
against the persecution of the Puritan citizens.
But even such mighty protection could not entirely
shield them, and it was this very power of the London
Corporation to injure the actors that caused the establish-
ment, of the first London theatre.
In the year 1572 the Plague broke out in London;
THE THEATRES 9
it killed many thousands of people, and kept recurring
at certain intervals during the next twenty or thirty years,
carrying horror and death with it. Under these circum-
stances all dramatic performances were prohibited for a
time in London, a precaution which was reasonable
enough, as the dense crowding of people might have
helped to spread the disease. But the magistrate seems
to have caught eagerly at this opportunity of interfering.
In Harrison's " Description of England " the event
is reported as follows : " Plaies are banished for a time
out of London, lest the resort unto them should ingender
a plague, or rather disperse it, being alredy begonne.
Would to God these comon plaies were exiled for
altogether as semenaries of impiety, and their theatres
pulled downe as no better than houses of baudrie. It
is an evident token of a wicked time when plaiers wesce
so rich that they can build suche houses. As moche I
wish also to our comon beare baitinges used on the
sabaothe daies."1
We cannot help noticing the predilection of the
Puritans for the coarse bear-fights, which in their opinion
were only displeasing to God when performed on a Sab-
bath, whereas the play-houses at any time were no better
than the "ill-famed stews" in South wark. It cannot be
denied, however, that, under the prevailing circumstances,
it was quite right that the play-houses should be tem-
porarily forbidden.
1 Harrison's Description of England, edited by F. J. Furnivall, i. p. 54.
From this report it might seem as if there existed permanent theatres as
early as 1572, but Harrison's annals are continued down to 1592, and, as
Ordish (Early London Theatres, p. 31) justly points out, he may have written
this passage at any period between 1572 and 1592. Harrison has confused
what happened in 1572 with his own reflections about later events.
io HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
But the sudden and unwarranted expulsion of all
dramatic performances from the precincts of London a
few years later (1575) cannot be accounted for other-
wise than by the increasing popularity which these plays
enjoyed among the non- Puritan public, and the envy
with which the clergy saw the people crowding much
more to the places where actors interpreted the rising
poets, than to those where the preachers themselves
enunciated their gloomy doctrine.
In the year 1574 the actor, James Burbage, father
of the afterwards famous Richard Burbage, with four
other actors, all belonging to the retinue of the Earl of
Leicester, had received permission from the Queen to
perform all kinds of plays anywhere in England, "for
the recreation of her beloved subjects as well as for her
own comfort and pleasure, if it should please her to see
them."
Perhaps it was a countermove on the part of the
Puritan community when the Lord Mayor and the
Corporation in the following year straightway forbade
all plays within the precincts of the town. If so, it
proved a failure. James Burbage resolutely hired a
liberty outside the city, and here, in 1576, on the
premises of an ancient Roman Catholic priory, he built
the first English play-house, which he named " The
Theatre."
In the following year "The Theatre" gained an ally
in " The Curtain," which was built in the same neigh-
bourhood, both of course causing great indignation
among the Puritans. In 1577, the year after the first
play-house had been erected, there appeared a furious
THE THEATRES u
pamphlet (by John N orthbrooke l) against "dicing,
dancing, plays and interludes as well as other idle
pastimes."
The treatise is written in the form of a dialogue,
and the colloquists, Youth and Old Age, enter upon
the subject in the following terms : —
Youth. — " Do you speake against those places also, whiche
are made uppe and builded for such playes and
enterludes as the Theatre and Curtaine is, and
other such like places besides ? "
Age. — " Yea, truly ; for I am persuaded that Satan hath
not a more speedie way and fitter schoole to work
and teach his desire, to bring men and women
into his snare of concupiscence and filthie lustes
of wicked whoredome, than those places and plays
and theatres are ; and therefore necessary that
those places and players shoulde be forbidden,
and dissolved, and put downe by authoritie, as
the brothell houses and stewes are."2
And no doubt all possible means were taken to have
plays forbidden and the play-houses pulled down, but
though the attack of the Black Army never ceased for
a moment, the Puritans did not succeed in getting the
better of the theatres till the year 1642, when they
acquired political power through the Civil War ; and,
fortunately for the part of mankind which appreciates
1 Edited by T. P. Collier.
2 The " Stews," houses of ill-fame, were mostly situated in Southwark.
They were not prohibited by the authorities, and stood under the supervision
of the Bishop of Winchester (Northbrooke's Treatise against Dicing, Danc-
ing, Plays and Interludes, etc., edited by T. P. Collier).
12 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
art, this precious flower of culture, one of the richest
and most remarkable periods in the life of dramatic
art had developed into full bloom before the outbreak
of the war.
Now and then in the course of this history we shall
have opportunities of returning to the struggle between
the theatres and the Puritans. At present we will only
quote a further example of the attacks during the time
of the earliest theatres, an example which not only shows
the Puritan hatred of actors, which has been sufficiently
indicated, but also the general favour with which the
new theatrical enterprises were at once received.
In a sermon of 1578 we read the following bitter and
deep-drawn sigh by the clergyman, John Stockwood :
" Wyll not a fylthye playe wyth the blast of a trumpette
sooner call thyther a thousande than an houres tolling
of a bell bring to the sermon a hundred ? — nay, even
heere in the Citie, without it be at this place and some
other certaine ordinarie audience, where shall you finde
a reasonable company ? — whereas, if you resort to the
Theatre, the Curtayne and other places of playes in the
Citie, you shall on the Lords Day have these places,
with many other that I cannot recken, so full as possible
they can throng."
i
1 Quoted by J. A. Halliwell-Phillipps : Outlines of the Life of Shake
peare, 3rd edition, p. 400.
THE THEATRES 13
II
"The Theatre" and its History — The Performances merely a Branch of
Sport — The Quarrel between Burbage and George Allen — The Staff
and Repertoire of "The Theatre"— The Second Theatre, "The
Curtain."
THAT the bold defiance with which James Burbage
and the other actors met the Lord Mayor and the
Corporation should prove so successful, lay almost in
the nature of things. The prohibition of plays within
the bounds of the city of London did not mean that
they were looked upon with animosity by the people,
but merely that a majority in the Corporation was
unfriendly to them. It was soon shown that, though
the wise city fathers could easily forbid the actors to
perform their plays in London, they could not prevent
the enthusiastic public from walking in crowds a mile
out of town in order to see such performances, especially
as people were quite accustomed to the journey.
Burbage, who was a business-like man, had chosen
his ground quite close to the public places, where the
Londoners practised their open air sports, and amused
themselves with tennis and football, stone-throwing,
cock-fights and archery.
Burbage gave his new building the name of "The
Theatre." The title was not intended to mean the theatre
par excellence, for the word theatre was not then com-
monly used to denote a building in which dramatic
representations were performed. It is more probable
that he thought he had succeeded in choosing an elegant
i4 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
name with a certain suggestion of the old classics, which
was euphonious and not quite common.
The usual name for a theatre was the play-house,1
a house intended for all kinds of games and sport, such
as fencing, bear-fights, bull-fights, jigs, morris-dances
and pantomimes, as well as for dramatic performances.
It cannot be sufficiently emphasised that the theatrical
entertainments of those times were something more or
less literary, anyhow something quite apart from the
dramatic performances of the present day. They were
meant to satisfy mixed desires in the nation ; but besides
satisfying its craving for beautiful, picturesque language,
fine spectacles and merry jests, they also gratified its
desire for the display of physical strength, for shallow
rhyming tricks and competitions, graceful exercises of
the body, indeed for all that might be included under
the notion of sport, and give opportunity for betting.
Therefore, the plays, properly so-called, alternated
with fights between animals, in which bears and bulls
were baited by great bloodthirsty bull-dogs, or with
fencing matches fought by celebrated English and
foreign fencing masters, with rope-dancing, acrobatic
tricks and boxing. Even the serious performances
ended with a more or less absurd jig, in which the
clown sang endless songs about the events of the day,
and danced interminable morris-dances.
Shakespeare and his contemporaries, whose works
are now reckoned among the first literature — so much
7 so that they are scarcely read any longer — at the time of
which we are speaking were nothing but practical play-
1 Play-house, from the Anglo-Saxon plegahus; plega. = \Aa.y, game, sport.
THE THEATRES 15
wrights, and Shakespeare was so far from dreaming that
the time would come when his plays would be counted
among the most precious treasures of posterity that, as
we know, he did not even take the trouble to have a
printed edition of his works published.
The many fighting scenes in the plays of the time, in
Shakespeare's among the rest, the wrestling match in As
You Like It, the duel between Macduff and Macbeth,
the fencing scene between Hamlet and Laertes, no
doubt afforded opportunities for magnificent displays of
skill in the use of arms and in physical exercises, and
we may be sure that the spectators followed those scenes
with an interest which was perhaps more of a sporting
than of a literary nature.
It was according to a well-calculated plan, therefore,
that the elder Burbage erected his play-house north of
the city in Finsbury Fields, where from ancient times the
people had been accustomed to see and practise military
exercises and other sports, and where the soldiers were
still in the habit of practising archery and musketry.
And it was with equally sound calculation that he
gave the theatre its particular form, which remained
essentially the same in all the play-houses of the Shakes-
pearean period.
Before the establishment of permanent theatres there
had long existed amphitheatres for the performance of
fights between animals, the so-called " Rings." These
Rings — the auditorium as well as the arena — were open
all round, and the seats, like those of the ancient Greek
theatre, were placed according to the natural formation
of the ground.
16 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
Burbage retained the circular amphitheatrical form.
Being a joiner as well as an actor and manager, he
was no doubt his own architect in his new theatrical
enterprise.
But instead of the roofless, open air auditorium, he
constructed a covered circular wooden building with
storeys or galleries, which was made so as to contain a
number of boxes for the distinguished and well-paying
public, and which entirely enclosed the open uncovered
arena, which, as it recalled the inn-yards, was called
"the yard," or afterwards, perhaps on account of the
high pit-like construction surrounding it, "the pit,"
whence the poorest and humblest spectators enjoyed
the performances.
Finally, he built a covered "tire-house" or "tiring-
house " — as it was called in those times — for the actors,
a place in which also all the requisites and the so-called
" properties " were kept. This tiring-house stood within
the circle, and its roof towered up above the auditorium.
From the tiring-house the stage — a simple wooden
platform resting on rams — was pushed forward, and it
might be removed when the arena was to be used for
fights between animals, etc., instead of dramatic per-
formances.
By this reform of the building — a reform which be-
came epoch-making to the whole Shakespearean period
— James Burbage obtained a threefold advantage : more
comfortable seats for the more distinguished portion of
the audience, where they were sheltered from wind and
weather ; the use of the house both for plays and the
baiting of animals ; and the power to oblige the public
THE THEATRES 17
to pay their admission at certain doors of his building,
which spared him the unpleasant and unsafe collection of
money from spectators, who might not always be very
willing to pay.
But this result was not obtained without considerable
expense.
Though we are not so fortunate as to possess a draw-
ing of the outside or inside of " The Theatre," about the
shape of which, therefore, we must partly draw our con-
clusions from analogy with other play-houses, we are
comparatively well informed as to its outward history
till it was pulled down in 1598-99.
Thus we know that the enterprise cost James Bur-
bage ^666, 133. 4d., a considerable sum in those days,
which would be equal to about eightfold that amount in
our own time.
This money Burbage borrowed of his father-in-law,
John Braynes, to whom he had to pay high interest, and
it represented only the cost of the building itself, for he
did not buy the ground on which it stood. This ground
belonged to one Giles Allen, and in the contract between
him and Burbage it was settled, among other points, that
if, in the course of the first ten years after the drawing up
of the lease, Burbage spent a sum of ^200 or more on
the building, he should have a right to remove it after
the expiration of the lease.
The lease was drawn up in the year 1 576, for a period
of twenty-one years. In spite of many pecuniary diffi-
culties which the heavy rent and high interest naturally
entailed on Burbage — who for some time even seems to
have been obliged to mortgage his entire property — and
III. B
i8 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
innumerable annoyances from the Puritans, Burbage
succeeded in keeping his theatre above water till the
expiration of the lease and till his own death, which
occurred in 1597.
But before this date he had been negotiating with the
proprietor, Giles Allen, about a prolongation of the lease.
Allen, who was evidently as grasping as he was difficult
to deal with, and who may not unjustly be suspected of
having been an instrument in the hands of the Puritan
authorities, had caused him a good deal of trouble in the
course of years. On seeing how people crowded to the
theatre, he had tried, for one thing, to press Burbage for
a higher rent, and, partly for religious, partly for moral
reasons, had threatened to forbid the running of a play-
house on his property. The negotiations about the new
lease had not come to an end when the elder Burbage died,
and left his two sons, Cuthbert, who was a bookseller,
and Richard, who was the leading actor of his time, not
only burdened with the play-house, the long lease of which
had expired, but opposed by a proprietor with whom it
was impossible to come to terms, and by a magistrate who
was more eager than ever to deal a blow at the play-houses.
In the same year, when the two brothers took on
" The Theatre," the Lord Mayor of London actually
succeeded in inducing the Privy Council to issue an
order of suppression against it and other play-houses.
The order begins as follows : "Her Majestic being
informed that there are verie greate disorders committed
in the common playhouses both by lewd matters that are
handled on the stages, and by resorte and confluence of
bad people, hathe given direction that not onlie no playes
THE THEATRES 19
shall be used within London or about the Citty, or in
any public place, during this tyme of sommer, but that
also those playhouses that are erected and built only for
suche purposes shall be plucked downe, namelie the
Curtayne and the Theatre nere to Shorditch, or any
other within that county." l
It is not known whether the order was withdrawn
or whether the disregard of it was winked at — the court
very likely was not particularly inclined to see the
sentence of condemnation carried out — at all events,
neither " The Curtain" nor "The Theatre" was pulled
down at the time. But the order shows how much power
the Puritan citizens possessed, and what difficulties the
brothers Burbage had to contend with.
They seem, however, to have inherited their father's
resolute character. Since it seemed quite impossible to
come to terms with the grasping proprietor, Allen, the
brothers were sensible enough to avail themselves of the
clause in the now expired lease, which permitted them
to pull down and remove the buildings they had erected
on the premises, in case they had spent at least ^200 on
them during the first ten years.
This sum had been much exceeded at the time, and one
day, to the great consternation and anger of the astonished
Giles Allen, they simply removed " The Theatre."
One of the paragraphs in the account of the subse-
quent law-suit between Allen and the Burbages gives
a very vivid idea of this remarkable removal. Allen
accuses Cuthbert Burbage of " unlawfullye combininge
and confederatinge himselfe with the sayd Richard
1 Halliwell-Phillipps : Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare, 3rd ed., p. 403.
20 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
Burbage and one Peeter Streat, William Smyth and
divers other persons, to the number of twelve, to your
subject unknowne, did aboute the eight and twentyth
daye of December in the one and fortyth yeere of your
Highnes raygne [1598] . . . ryoutouslye assemble them-
selves together, and then and there armed themselves
with dyvers and manye unlawfull and offensive weapons,
as, namelye, swordes, daggers, billes, axes and such like,
and so armed, did then repayre unto the sayd Theater,
and then and there, armed as aforesayd, in verye ryotous,
outragious and forcyble manner, and contrarye to the
lawes of your highnes realme, attempted to pull downe
the sayd Theater, whereuppon divers of your subjectes,
servauntes and farmers, then goinge aboute in peaceable
manner to procure them to desist from that their unlaw-
full enterpryse, they the sayd ryotous persons aforesayd
notwithstanding procured then therein with greate
vyolence, not only then and there forcyblye and
ryotouslye resisting your subjectes, servauntes and
farmers, but allso then and there pulling, breaking and
throwing downe the sayd Theater in verye outragious,
violent and riotous sort, to the great disturbance and
terrefyeing not onlye of your subjectes sayd servauntes
and farmers, but of divers others of your Majesties
loving subjectes there neere inhabitinge ; and having so
done, did then alsoe in most forcible and ryotous manner
take and carrye away from thence all the wood and
timber thereof unto the Bancksyde in the parishe of
St Marye Overyes, and there erected a newe playehowse
with the sayd timber and wood."
Such was the precipitate end of the first short-lived
'1
m
THE THEATRES 21
London play-house. But the new house, which was
built out of its materials on the " Bankside," was the
celebrated " Globe," the name of which is inseparably
connected with that of Shakespeare.
As we said above, James Burbage, the creator of
" The Theatre," belonged to the company which played
under the patronage of Lord Leicester, and therefore
went under the name of " Lord Leicester's Servants " or
"Men." The four other actors, who in 1574 received a
royal licence to act from Queen Elizabeth, were John
Perkin,John Lanham, William Jonson, and Robert Wilson.
While James Burbage was no doubt the leader of
the company, Robert Wilson is supposed to have been
its chief actor, at all events of comic parts, and he was
the only one among the five who was also a dramatic
author. Under his name, but after his death, Cuthbert
Burby1 published in 1594 The Prophecy of the Cobbler ;
and among anonymous plays the following are ascribed
to him : Fair Em, the Miller s Daughter from Man-
chester \ The Three Ladies of London, etc.2
Most likely some of Wilson's plays were acted in " The
Theatre." With this exception the internal history
of this play-house is rather obscure, and very little is
known of its repertoire. A few titles may be found
in contemporary literature, such as The Blacksmiths
Daughter, mentioned by the Puritan Gosson3 in his
1 A variant of Burbage. The Danish original does not contain this note,
and I have not been able to find the variant " Burbay " anywhere but on
this page. — L. v. C.
2 Comp. F. G. Fleay : A Biographical Chronicle of the English Drama,
under " Robert Wilson, senior," ii. pp. 278, ff.
3 Gosson : School of Abuse, p. 30. The Conspiracies of Catilina is men-
tioned by Gosson as "a pig of my owne Sowe," as it was written by himself.
22 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
"School of Abuse," as " containing the treachery of Turks,
the honourable bountye of a noble mind, the shining of
vertue in distresse," " The Conspiracy of Catilina,"
"Caesar and Pompey/'and "The Play about the Fabians."
All these must have belonged to the earliest repertoire
of " The Theatre," for Gosson's " School of Abuse "
appeared in 1579.
It is of more interest that Thomas Lodge l mentions
the original pre-Shakespearean Hamlet as having been
acted in " The Theatre." He speaks of one who "looks
as pale as the visard of the ghost which cries so miserably
at the Theater, like an oister-wife, ' Hamlet, revenge.' '
The same company, originally " Lord Leicester's Ser-
vants," continued to act in "The Theatre" till it was
pulled down. But the company several times changed
its patron and consequently its name. In 1588 Lord
Leicester died, and after his death Ferdinando Stanley,
Lord Strange, became the patron of the company ; till
1592, therefore, the actors were called "Lord Strange's
Men." But in 1592 Lord Strange was created Earl of
Derby ; consequently the troupe became for two years
"The Earl of Derby's Men." In 1594 the Earl of
Derby died, and Henry Carey, first Lord Hunsdon and
Lord Chamberlain, undertook to become patron of the
company, which, therefore, adopted the name of " The
Lord Chamberlain's Servants." The son of Lord
Hunsdon, George Carey, second Lord Hunsdon, after
his father's death in 1596, also inherited the patronage
of the actors, and for almost a year they had to content
themselves with being called " Lord Hunsdon's Men,"
1 Th. Lodge : Wifs Miserie, 1596.
THE THEATRES 23
until Lord Hunsdon became Lord Chamberlain like his
father, and allowed the company to resume the title of
" The Lord Chamberlain's Servants " (1597). This name
the actors retained till the accession of King James in
1603, after which they were promoted to the title of
" The King's Players" ; this title put them in the first rank,
which indeed they had long held in reality, and which
they kept till the suppression of the play-houses in 1642.
It is no slight task for one who desires to study
theatrical affairs in the time of Shakespeare to make
himself acquainted with the varying names of the com-
panies of actors ; but without such knowledge it would
be very difficult to pursue the thread of the history even
of the leading companies.
About the year 1590 our company received an addi-
tion in the person of a young man, who was not only a
skilled and useful actor, but who also possessed the
accomplishment of being able to adapt older plays to
the taste of the times, and even proved to have the gift
of writing tolerably good plays himself, though older and
jealous colleagues might hint at their not being alto-
gether original. This young man, whose capacities
became of no slight use to the company and " The
Theatre," was named William Shakespeare.1
At this time the leading actors of " The Theatre "
were the great tragedian Richard Burbage, who was then
quite a young man, Henry Condell and John Heminge,
who continued to be the mainstays of the company.
There was also the clown, Augustine Phillips, an excellent
1 It is impossible to give the exact date of Shakespeare's engagement at
Burbage's theatre.
24 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
comic actor of the old school. These four became the
most intimate friends of Shakespeare, and to Condell
and Heminge posterity owes special gratitude, since it
was they who, after the death of Shakespeare, undertook
the publication of the first printed collection of his plays.
It is impossible to decide definitely which of Shake-
speare's plays belonged to the repertoire of " The
Theatre." It is probable that his first plays, Loves
Labour Lost, The Comedy of Errors, The Two Gentle-
men of Verona, and his first tragedy, Romeo and Juliet,
saw the light on this stage between 1589 and I59I.1
Afterwards, between 1594 and 1597, these were possibly
increased by A Midsummer Nighfs Dream, Richard the
Second, King John, The Merchant of Venice and Henry IV.
The repertoire of " The Theatre " also included the
so-called "jigs," merry after-plays, mostly consisting of
songs and dances, with frequent allusions to the events
of the day, sneering at the Puritans, the magistrates
and other enemies of the play-houses. Later, we shall
have an opportunity of entering more closely into the
character of the "jig."
It has been briefly mentioned above that not long
after the establishment of " The Theatre " — at the latest
in the following year — this play-house gained a com-
panion in " The Curtain," which thus became the second
of its kind in London.
The two play-houses were very close to each other,
but for this very reason it seems natural to suppose
1 Fleay : The English Drama, ii. p. 176, and Life of Shakespeare.
Others are of the opinion that no drama of Shakespeare's appeared
before 1591. Comp. Sidney Lee: Life of William Shakespeare,
p. 48.
THE THEATRES 25
that they were rather meant to support than to rival
each other. They were like a kind of double-barrelled
gun directed against the Corporation,1 and they seem
indeed, to an equal extent, to have roused the anger of
the Puritans, for they are generally mentioned together
in the Puritan pamphlets directed against play-houses and
all other wickedness.
However, the history of " The Curtain " is almost
unknown to us. While we know a good deal about
the outward circumstances of " The Theatre " on account
of the constant troubles which the Burbage family had
to endure from the proprietor of the ground and the
municipal authorities, and of the subsequent lawsuit, the
reports we find about " The Curtain " are extremely
meagre. We know neither when 2 nor by whom it was
built, nor when it was pulled down.
By a mistake which is natural enough, its name has
been connected with the front curtain of the stage. We
shall see later that no such curtain existed in the time of
Shakespeare, and we do not know that the background
draperies of that period had the fixed name of " curtain."
Anyhow, the possibility of this derivation is ab-
solutely excluded by the fact that the spot on which
the second London play-house was built, for some un-
known reason bore the name of "Curtayne Close."3 So
the play-house was simply named after the spot on which
it was built.
1 Ordish : Early London Theatres, p. 80.
2 It was probably in 1577, for it is mentioned, together with "The
Theatre," shortly after the erection of this building. However, it may have
been b'-ilt in the same year as the latter (1576), only a little later.
3 Halliwell-Phillipps : Outlines of the Life of Shake spe are > 3rd ed., p. 422.
26 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
As long as " The Theatre" stood close beside it, the
two companions shared almost the same fate. We have
seen that in 1597 an order was issued to pull down
both play-houses ; this order, however, was never carried
out. But after the removal of " The Theatre " to
Bankside, " The Curtain " seems to have gone its own
way. The actors, on the whole, were not afraid of
pleading their cause from the stage, and of retorting on
the attacks of their assailants by lashing them with the
whip of caricature, and it seems that those of " The
Curtain " had gone a little too far in their Aristophanic
parodies of their worthy fellow-citizens and chief magis-
trate. For in May 1601 the justices of the peace for
the county of Middlesex received the following admoni-
tion from the Privy Council : " We doo understand
that certaine players that use to recyte their playes at
the Curtaine in Moorefeilds, do represent upon the stage
in their interludes the persons of some gent of good
desert and quality that are yet alive under obscure
manner, but yet in such sorte as all the hearers may
take notice both of the matter and the persons that are
meant thereby. This beinge a thinge very unfitte, offen-
sive and contrary to such direction as have been hereto-
fore taken, that no plaies should be openly shewed but
such as were first perused and allowed, and that minister
no occasion of offence or scandall, wee do hereby require
you that you do forthwith forbidd those players to
whomsoever they appertaine that do play at the Cour-
taine in Moorefeildes to represent any such play, and that
you will examine them who made that play and to shew
the same unto you, and as you in your discrecions shall
THE THEATRES 27
thincke the same unfitte to be publiquely shewed to
forbidd them from henceforth to play the same eyther
privately or publiquely ; and yf upon veiwe of the said
play you shall finde the subject so odious and inconvenient
as is informed, wee require you to take bond of the
cheifest of them to aunswere their rashe and indiscreete
dealing before us."
We know nothing of the result of this prosecution,
but we may be allowed to assume that it did not result
in very severe measures. We seem to read a certain
concealed sympathy in the writ of the great Lords, and
we cannot help suspecting that it was the Puritan citizens
who felt themselves hit, and who brought the complaint.
If the Lords had been the butt of the mockery, no doubt
the proceeding of the actors would have appeared to them
much worse than "rashe and indiscreete."
Until the Globe Theatre was built, the Burbages
most likely possessed a share in "The Curtain." At
any rate, their company used that building alternately
with their own ; no doubt, for instance, during the period
between the pulling down of " The Theatre " and the
building of "The Globe." During this period they
played (as the "Lord Chamberlain's Men")1 among other
things no less famous a piece than Ben Jonson's Every
Man in his Humour, which, according to old tradition, was
accepted on the recommendation of Shakespeare, after
having been put aside contemptuously by the other lead-
1 The original editions of the plays of this time generally have after their
title a note stating by what company they were acted (" , as acted by
's men "). Thus a knowledge of the varying names of the companies
provides us with a pretty safe means of determining the date of the appear-
ance of the plays.
28 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
ing actors. This splendid play had an enormous success.
Of Shakespeare's plays Much Ado about Nothing and
The Second Part of King Henry IV. were acted.
There is scarcely any reason for assuming with
Halliwell-Phillipps and Ordish, that the first performance
of Henry V. took place at " The Curtain." At the
appearance of this play (in 1599) the Globe Theatre
was built, and we cannot doubt that it was here that
this popular play saw the light. So the frequently
'mentioned "wooden O" in the prologue does not allude
to "The Curtain," but to "The Globe."
The outward shape of "The Curtain" we must imagine
to have been, like that of "The Theatre," circular, and
unroofed in the centre. It is generally supposed to
have been somewhat smaller than Burbage's first theatre.
The last period of the existence of " The Curtain "
is enveloped in obscurity. But there is no reason to
suppose that it did not continue to exist till all play-
houses were put down during the Civil War, 1642-47.
If " The Curtain " was preserved as long as that, its life
was longer than that of any other play-house of the
Shakespearean period.
Interior of a Private Theatre
(Title to William Alabaster's Roxana).
THE THEATRES 29
III
The Blackfriars' Theatre — Its Comparatively Slight Importance to Shake-
speare— Its Situation and Construction — Private and Public Theatres
— The Question of Property — Children's Plays.
BEFORE his death the energetic James Burbage started
another theatrical enterprise, the Blackfriars' Theatre.
In the reading world the name of the Blackfriars'
Theatre has for a long time been connected almost as
closely as that of " The Globe " with the dramatic and
the histrionic work of Shakespeare, but this is correct
only to a certain extent. It is true that Shakespeare
appeared as an actor on this stage, and that some of his
pieces were performed there, but his work at this theatre
was only of very short duration, and the most important
and glorious part of his career belongs exclusively to
" The Globe," which, moreover, was the only theatre
in which he had a pecuniary share as part-proprietor.
Until a few years ago the descriptions of the theatrical
circumstances of the time by Shakespeare's biographers
were chiefly based on the treatment of this subject by
Malone and Collier, as given in the former's " Historical
Account of the English Stage," and the latter's " Annals
of the Stage."
Malone, who was unique in his time as an expert
in theatrical archaeology, brought forward an immense
quantity of material to throw light on the theatrical
circumstances of the time, and his honesty is above
suspicion. However, as he himself confesses, he did
not succeed in gaining a correct knowledge of the
30 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
chronological details -of the theatres themselves ; and
their history, on the whole, was not clear to him.
Of the honesty of Collier, the less said the better.
His account of the history of the ancient theatres is a
model of inaccuracy, even in the last edition of his large
work, which appeared as late as 1879 ; besides which, his
quite erroneous dates are put forth with the authoritative
assurance which his once great name had given him.
No wonder, therefore, that many later literary critics of
Shakespeare have been tempted to adopt his entirely
misleading chronology.
The last twenty or thirty years, however, have
thrown abundant light on this question by the discovery
of documents, which remove all doubt as to the outlines
of the history of the most important theatres, though, so
far as I know, no connected account of their external
and internal history has yet been forthcoming.1
The present attempt to place the various theatres of
the Shakespearean era in their correct relation to each
other is essentially based on such documents as deeds of
purchase, building-agreements, law-reports, petitions, etc.
On the 4th of February 1596 James Burbage bought
a property which stood on ground belonging to the
monastery of the Blackfriars, which is now pulled down,
the " Blackfriars' precinct," as it was called. The site is
now occupied by the imposing offices of " The Times," in
1 T. F. Ordish, an expert in the topography of ancient London, has begun
such a history, and begun it admirably. Unfortunately, he has not con-
tinued the work. The first part was published in 1894, and treats of the
history of some of the theatres lying outside the town. The chapter by H.
Barton Baker on the Elizabethan Theatres, in his London Stage, is too con-
densed and too inaccurate to be taken into serious consideration.
THE THEATRES 31
Queen Victoria Street near Blackfriars' Station. In the
days of Queen Elizabeth the open spaces in the Black-
friars' quarter were in great favour as tennis-courts.
During the preceding reigns tennis had been forbidden
in the Convent grounds, but Elizabeth willingly per-
mitted respectable citizens, as well as strangers, foreign
ambassadors and other noblemen, to practise on this
spot the elegant game, which was as fashionable then as
it is now. But vagabonds, with apprentices and servants,
who played against the will of their masters, were for-
bidden the use of this ground.1
When James Burbage chose this ground for the
construction of a new theatre, he well knew what he
was about, and he acted on the same practical principles
which had guided him in selecting the site for " The
Theatre." It had previously been a pleasure-ground,
not for the lower classes, but for noblemen and wealthy
merchants, and it was a monastic ground with old
" liberties," over which the chief magistrates of London
had no control.
The old monastery had been partly rebuilt, and
private suites of rooms had been arranged in it. One
of these private suites belonged to Sir Thomas More,
and on the second floor there had formerly been a very
large hall, which at the time we are writing of had been
converted into seven spacious rooms, and lately inhabited
by a physician, William de Lawne. This property was
bought by the elder Burbage for £6oo.z What he
1 Two royal licences for playing tennis in the Blackfriars' quarter have
been found by Mr J. Greenstreet and published in The Athenceum, January
7th, 1 883.
2 The deed of purchase has been published by J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps
in his Outlines, pp. 511-522.
32 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
meant to do was to restore the old hall to its original
shape, and then to make a theatre of it.
Burbage probably began converting the private
house into a theatre very soon after the purchase, for
as early as November in the same year thirty-one in-
habitants of the Puritan persuasion, among others,
William de Lawne, the former owner of the building,
brought a complaint before the Privy Council to prevent
the change from taking place.
It is said in this complaint,1 which is very charac-
teristic : ". . . that whereas one Burbage hath lately
bought certaine rooms in the same precinct neere adjoin-
ing unto the dwelling houses of the right honorable the
Lord Chamberlaine and the Lord of Hunsdon, which
romes the said Burbage is now altering, and meaneth
very shortly to convert and turne the same into a
comon playhouse, which will grow to be a very great
annoyance and trouble, not only to all the noblemen
and gentlemen thereabout inhabiting, but allso a generall
inconvenience to all the inhabitants of the same precinct,
both by reason of the great resort and gathering to-
geather of all manner of vagrant and lewde persons that,
under cullor of resorting to the playes, will come thither
and worke all manner of mischiefe, and also to the
greate pestring and filling up of the same precinct, yf it
should please God to send any visitation of sicknesse
as heretofore hath been ; for that the same precinct is
allready grown very populous, and besides that the
same play-house is so neere the church that the
noyse of the drummes and trumpetts will greatly dis-
1 Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines, 3rd edition, pp. 522, 523.
*» THE THEATRES 33
turbe and hinder both the ministers and parishioners in
tyme of devine service and sermons, in tender con-
sideracion whereof, as allso for that there hath not at
any tyme heretofore been used any comon playhouse
within the same precinct, but that now all players being
banished by the Lord Mayor from playing within the
Cittie by reason of the great inconveniences and ill rule
that followeth them, they now thincke to plant themselves
in liberties ; that therefore it would please your honors
to take order that the same roomes may be converted
to some other use, and that no playhouse may be used
or kept there ; and your suppliants as most bounden shall
and will dayly pray for your Lordships in all honor and
happines long to live. . . ."
Of this petition the Privy Council seems not to have
taken the slightest notice. But it was the cause of a
series of forgeries concocted and published by J. P.
Collier, which represent petitions by various actors of
Burbage's company, Shakespeare among the number,
expressing a desire that the Blackfriars' Theatre may
not be prohibited. They also mention Shakespeare's
share in it as being worth ,£933, 6s. 8d. Collier tried to
prove that the Blackfriars' Theatre was already built in
1576, and that Burbage and his company acted in it for
a long time, and it was in support of these assertions
that he produced his forgeries. For the same purpose a
letter was composed purporting to be from the Earl of
Southampton to Sir Thomas Egerton, in which the Earl
desires protection for the actors, mentioning Burbage
and Shakespeare by name. However, as late as 1596
the Blackfriars' Theatre was not yet ready for use, and it
in. c
34 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
was not till many years later that Shakespeare and his
company came to act in it.
Probably in the beginning of 1597 James Burbage
finished his new play-house. It differed very much from
the others ; indeed, it was only a large hall which was
made into a stage and an auditorium. The hall, as
we have seen, was on the second floor, and several
winding flights of stone stairs led up to it. In contrast to
"The Theatre" and "The Curtain," the whole space
was covered — the leaden roof of the house is mentioned
several times in the above-quoted deed of purchase.
Later, these play-halls, which were arranged inside ordi-
nary private houses, were called " private play-houses,"
as distinct from the larger open-air stages out of town,
which were called " public play-houses."
Whether there existed any real difference between
the private and the public play-houses, besides the fact
that the former were smaller in size and under cover,
has never been ascertained.
It may be supposed, however, that at the outset
Burbage meant to collect a small and select aristocratic
public in his new locality, and to exclude the tumultuous
elements, which frequently caused annoyance to the
actors in the pits of the public theatres ; and that for
this reason he called his play-house "private," just as in
English public-houses there is a " private room " for the
more distinguished visitors, while the crowd must be
contented with the "public room." It maybe, indeed,
that during its earliest years " The Blackfriars " had a
more exclusive character, but later there appear distinct
complaints that the owner has converted his theatre
THE THEATRES 35
into a "publique playhowse, into which there is daily
so great resort of people, and soe great multitude of
coaches, whereof many are hackney-coaches bringing
people of all sortes that sometimes all their streetes
cannot conteyne them, that they endanger one the other,
breake downe stalles, throw downe men's goodes from
their shopps, hinder the passage of the inhabitantes there
to and from their howses, lett the bringing in of their
necessary provisions, that the tradesmen and shopp-
keepers cannot utter their wares, nor the passengers go
to the common water staires without danger of their
lives and lyms, whereby manye times quarrells and
effusion of blood hath followed, and the minister and
people disturbed at the administration of the Sacrament of
Baptisme and publique prayers in the afternoones. . . ." 1
The enumeration of all these horrors, which, as we
scarcely need observe, hails from the Puritan camp,
shows what popularity this little theatre enjoyed after
the death of Shakespeare, but it does not give us any
clearer an idea than before of the difference between
private and public theatres.
We must mention one more characteristic feature,
which resulted from the establishment of a private
theatre inside a house ; the effect, that is, that could be
produced by playing sometimes in artificial light and
sometimes in darkness by closing the shutters over the
windows. From this effect the open air theatre was
excluded. A contemporary author2 says: " All the
1 This quotation is taken from an order issued by the Corporation of
London, who in 1619 wished to suppress "The Blackfriars." The order is
quoted entire in Halliwell-Phillipps : Outlines, 3rd edition, p. 538.
2 Thomas Dekker : The Seven Deadly Sins of London, etc., 1606 ; quoted
by Malone, Historical Account of the English Stage, p. 63, n. 7.
36 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
city looked like a private play-house, when the windows
are clapt downe, as if some nocturnal and dismal tragedy
were presently to be acted."
The closed play-houses were probably lighted, in
England as elsewhere, by chandeliers hung above the
stage, to which a row of oil-lamps with double wicks
seem to have been added later. Anyhow, this method
of lighting is shown in an illustration (much more recent,
it is true) of another private theatre " The Red Bull "
(fig. 7). Compared with fig. 3, which may quite well
represent " The Blackfriars," though we do not know
for certain that it does, this drawing clearly shows that
the scenic arrangements in the closed halls were essentially
similar to those of the public play-houses.
It is quite possible that old James Burbage meant to
fall back on Blackfriars, if he did not succeed in coming
to terms with Giles Allen. However, he died, as we
know, in 1597, the very year in which his play-house
was arranged. This hall, therefore, was never used by
the Burbage company, but was let to the well-known
company called " The Children of the Chapel," or
afterwards, "The Children of His Majesty's Revels,"
a company which enjoyed great favour at court in
those times, and thus had particular reason to expect a
large audience in the aristocratic quarter of Blackfriars.
In 1635 tne bookseller Cuthbert Burbage writes the
following lines about this matter to Lord Pembroke1
1 On account of a complaint from some of " the King's players," who
considered themselves prejudiced by C. Burbage, by this time the only
surviving heir of his father James and his brother Richard. The various
documents concerning this affair have been published by Halliwell-Phillipps
(Outlines, pp. 539-551), and offer a most valuable contribution to our know-
ledge of the scenic conditions of the time.
THE THEATRES 37
(p. 549) : . . . " The father of us, Cuthbert and Richard
Burbage, was the first builder of playhowses, and was
himselfe in his younger yeeres a player. ' The
Theater' hee built with many hundred poundes taken
up at interest. . . . Now for the Blackfriars, that is our
inheritance ; our father purchased it at extreame rates,
and made it into a playhouse with great charge and
treble ; which after was leased out to one Evans that
first sett up the boyes commonly called the Queenes
Majesties Children of the Chappell. In processe of
time, the boyes growing up to bee men, which were
Underwood, Field, Ostler, and were taken to strengthen
the King's service ; and the more to strengthen the
service, the boyes dayly wearing out, it was considered
that house would bee as fitt for ourselves, and soe
purchased the lease remaining from Evans with our
money, and placed men players, which were Heminge,
Condell, Shakespeare, etc., and Richard Burbage, who,
for thirty-five yeeres paines, cost and labour, made
meanes to leave his wife and children some estate, and
out of whose estate soe many other players and their
families have been mayntained."
That this statement of C. Burbage about Blackfriars
is correct has been confirmed quite recently by a series
of records1 concerning the lease of the theatre, which
give us also the date, hitherto unknown, at which " The
King's Company " itself began acting at Blackfriars.
Henry Evans of Blackfriars, London, gentleman,
hired the large " Hall," as the play-hall is called in the
1 They are published in full by James Greenstreet in The Athenaeum,
7th and 2ist of April 1888.
38 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
proceedings, with the adjoining room of Richard Burbage,
for twenty-one years at a rent of ^"70 a year.1
During the first few years, while the boy-actors were
still all the fashion, Henry Evans no doubt did good
business with his children-plays. Everybody knows
Shakespeare's complaint of " little eyasses that cry out,"
a passage to which we shall have an opportunity of
returning later.
But after some years taste changed, the cleverest
boys, like Nathaniel Field and the above-mentioned
Underwood and Ostler, grew up, and it was difficult for
Evans to find new actors ; so difficult, indeed, that he
had recourse to the expedient of tempting " gentlemen's
children against their will and employing them as actors,"
for which " disorderly conduct and proceeding" he was
sentenced by the Star Chamber.
Under these circumstances Evans grew tired of
managing the theatre, which no longer brought him the
income which he had expected, and in i6o82 he pre-
vailed on Richard Burbage to cancel the lease of
twenty-one years. Thereupon "The King's Players"
came to occupy "the larger Hall." And, as the record
of the proceedings tells us, here they succeeded in
gaining so much favour with the public that in one
1 The lease for the twenty-one years was not signed till the year 1600,
but it is distinctly mentioned in the proceedings that the hall was constantly
(that is ever since its reconstruction) used for acting. Did not Evans have
it during the three intervening years (1597-1600)? Did the children act
under another manager? Or did another grown-up company act previously
at Blackfriars ? To these questions I have not succeeded in rinding an
answer.
2 This appears from the record of the proceedings, dating from 1612, in
which it is stated that during the last four years Burbage and his companions
had received the proceeds of " The Blackfriars."
THE THEATRES 39
winter they took £1000 more than they were accus-
tomed to get on the Bankside (that is, in " The Globe"
Theatre).
Special mention is made of John Hemminge, a highly
esteemed actor of " The King's Company," as one of the
partners, but not of Shakespeare. Of course it is not
impossible that the latter may have owned a share in
the theatre, but there is nothing to prove it.
After the death of Richard Burbage, which occurred
in 1619, "The Blackfriars" remained in the possession
of the family, and " The King's Company " continued to
act there as well as at " The Globe." There were eight
shares in the small theatre in the City, while the larger
"Globe" was divided into sixteen shares. In the year
^35 we find the eight shares thus divided: the comic
actor, John Shancke, has two; Cuthbert Burbage, one ;
the tragic actor, Richard Robinson, one ; the tragic
actor, Joseph Taylor, one ; John Lowin, an actor of
distinction, one ; the widow of Henry Condell, one ; and
the widow of John Underwood, one.
After that time there is no information about "The
Blackfriars." No doubt it continued to exist till the
Civil War, 1642 ; possibly it was used for acting up to
1647, when plays definitely stopped. But after the
Restoration, in 1660, it was no longer used as a theatre,
and very likely it was pulled down by the Puritans in
the meantime.
As we have seen, the first period of its existence —
from 1597-1608 — was occupied by the acting of the
"Children of the Chapel."
The child-actors were mostly recruited from the
40 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
boy-choristers in the Chapel Royal. They were trained
and instructed by older actors, and they seem to have
cultivated a caricaturing imitation of the real and cele-
brated actors,1 a speciality by which they evidently suc-
ceeded for a time in attracting a large part of the public.
From the allusions in Hamlet it seems that the
actors at "The Globe" suffered great pecuniary loss on
account of these boy-actors, and even that they were
obliged to go touring in order to make their living.
It is in the second scene of the second act, in the
conversation between Hamlet and Rosencrantz about
the actors who are expected at Elsinore, that Shake-
speare finds an opportunity of venting his annoyance at
these troublesome little rivals. He begins thus : —
Hamlet. What players are they ?
Rosencrantz. Even those you were wont to take
delight in, the tragedians of the city.
Ham. How chances it they travel? their residence,
both in reputation and profit, was better
both ways.
Ros. I think their inhibition comes by the means of
the late innovation.
Ham. Do they hold the same estimation they did
when I was in the city ? are they so
followed ?
Ros. No, indeed are they not.
Ham. How comes it ? do they grow rusty?
Ros. Nay, their endeavour keeps in the wonted
pace ; but there is, sir, an aery of children,
1 Comp. for instance Ben Jonson's Poetaster, which was written for and
performed by these boys.
THE THEATRES 41
little eyasses, that cry out on the top of
question, and are most tyrannically clapped
for't ; these are now the fashion. . . .
During this period " The Blackfriars " and its eyasses
provided a particularly powerful attraction by serving
Ben Jonson as a medium in an exceedingly sharp,
literary and personal quarrel which he had to settle with
some of his contemporary actors and authors. The
principal sufferers were John Marston and Thomas
Dekker, and the quarrel included some of the Henslowe-
Alleyn actors (" The Lord-Admiral's Men"), who at this
time mostly acted in "The Fortune" Theatre.
Ben Jonson afterwards maintained, in his well-known
conversations with William Drummond, that the origin
of this not very creditable theatrical quarrel lay with
Marston. "He had," writes Drummond, "many
quarrels with Marston, beat him, and took his pistol
from him, wrote his Poetaster on him ; the beginning of
them were that Marston represented him in the stage." l
If Marston began the quarrel — which is possible,
though there is no evidence to prove that he had
maliciously represented Jonson on the stage2 — Jonson
1 Ben Jonson 's Conversations with William Drummond, edited by David
Laing, London, 1892. In the above quotation a correction of the punctua-
tion has been made by J. H. Penniman ( The War of the Theatres), which
gives a very different sense to the much debated passage. The original
runs as follows : " . . . Marston represented him in the stage, in his youth
given to venerie. He thought the use of a maide nothing in comparison to
the wantonness of a wyfe. ..." Mr Penniman puts a full stop after "the
stage," and makes the words " in his youth ..." begin a new period, thus :
K . . . Marston represented him in the stage. In his youth given to
venerie, he thought the use of a maide nothing in comparison ..." The
correction appears very plausible.
2 F. G. Fleay thinks that Chrysoganus in Histriomastix by Marston is
meant to represent Jonson, but he informs us at the same time that this
42 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
laid on far the more heavily when it came to his turn to
defend himself. In Every Man out of His Humour, in
Cynthia 's Revels, and especially in The Poetaster, he
completely turned the tables on Marston and his other
antagonists. He had the" two last acted by the Chapel-
boys, and they drew dense crowds of people to the
Blackfriars' Theatre, and afforded great amusement to
the public, to whom literary quarrels have always been a
favourite entertainment.
Quite apart from the wonderful Pantilius Tucca, who
probably is not a portrait, but, like his dramatic
kinsman, Captain Bobadill, an imitation of the typical
Italian Capitano, The Poetaster exhibits a unique gallery
of Jonson's friends and enemies, and though the events
of the play are supposed to take place in the time of the
Emperor Augustus in Rome, it gives a better idea of
contemporary literary life in London than many histories
of literature.
Under the mask of Horace, Jonson — with no
inopportune modesty — represents himself, and gives
himself the pleasure of punishing the dull and tedious
Crispinus, that is, Marston, by administering an emetic
to him, which makes him vomit all the crude and stilted
phrases with which he has encumbered his works.
But besides this principal attack he deals several
side-blows at his contemporaries among fellow-authors
and actors. Dekker is very hard hit as Demetrius, and
with the actors of " The Fortune " Theatre Jonson
character is described as very sympathetic (Chronicle of the English
Drama, ii. 71). I have had no access to Marston's Histriomastix — it is not
included in Bullen's edition of his works — so I am unable to express any
personal opinion about the resemblance of the portrait.
THE THEATRES 43
seems at the time to have lived in the most strained
relations, but it is impossible to say, in every case,
against whom the malicious sarcasms, which are
showered down on the heads of his former companions,
are directed.1 No attack on Shakespeare is to be found
in the play ; it has even been suggested that the
refined and noble Virgil was meant to represent
him.
In spite of this Shakespeare retorted on behalf of his
fellows. The Poetaster was brought out in 1601, and in
an anonymous University play of the same year, The
Return from Parnassus, the literary quarrel is mentioned.
In a conversation between Richard Burbage and William
Kemp, the latter says : " Few of the University men
play well ; they smell too much of that writer Ovid and
that writer Metamorphosis, and talke too much of
Proserpina and Juppiter. Why, here's our fellow Shake-
speare puts them all downe, I, and Ben Jonson too. O
that Ben Jonson is a pestilent fellow ! he brought up
Horace giving the gods a pill, but our fellow Shake-
speare hath given him a purge that made him berag his
credit."
Upon which Burbage answers : " It's a shrewd fellow,
indeed."
There has been much debate about the purge which
Shakespeare is said to have given Jonson. It is clear
enough that Shakespeare took up arms against Jonson's
attacks on the actors, the attacks which were performed
1 I suppose jEsop to be the celebrated tragedian Edward Alleyn, who is
also called " Seven-and-a-half-share." More about this in a future chapter.
Possibly Frisker is William Kemp.
44 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
by the boys. In Hamlet his protest against this mode
of fighting appears indeed in a very direct form. He
says of the youthful actors who, as is clear from The
Poetaster, were accustomed to parody their adult fellow-
players : " . . . and so berattle the common stages — so
they call them — that many wearing rapiers are afraid of
goose-quills and dare scarce come thither."
And the dialogue continues as follows : —
Hamlet. What, are they children ? who maintains
'em ? how are they escoted ? Will they pursue the
quality no longer than they can sing ? will they not say
afterwards, if they should grow themselves to common
players — as it is most like, if their means are no better
— their writers do them wrong to make them exclaim
against their own succession.
Ros. 'Faith, there has been much to do on both
sides ; and the nation holds it no sin to tarre them to
controversy ; there was for a while no money bid for
argument, unless the poet and the player went to cuffs
in the question.
The meaning of these words is as clear as possible
and needs no comment. However, there is no "purge"
here which might cast a slur on the reputation of Jonson.
It has been supposed that Shakespeare's real rejoinder
to Jonson was to be found in Troilus and Cressida?
where Ajax was meant to represent Jonson. But,
though this is by no means an absurd suggestion in itself,
it seems improbable that this play was written until long
after the quarrel had been settled.
1 F. G. Fleay : A Biographical Chronicle of the English Drama, ii.
p. 189, f.
THE THEATRES 45
On the other hand, it is not impossible, though it has
not come to our knowledge, that there may be found in
Hamlet or elsewhere a stronger and more direct rejoinder
to Jonson. We only know the scene quoted above from
the folio edition,1 and it is quite natural that in this
edition, which was introduced to the reading world by
Jonson himself, any passages that might be personally
offensive to him were left out. To judge from the
quotation from The Return from Parnassus there seems
not to be the slightest doubt that, somehow or other,
Shakespeare took part in the quarrel. And that the
company to which he belonged sided against Jonson,
appears distinctly from the fact that they acted a strongly
polemical play written by Dekker and Marston against
Jonson. The title of it was Satiromastix, or, as it was
also called, The Untrussing of the Humorous Poet —
that is Jonson.
However this may be, through these quarrels the
little stage of "The Blackfriars" gained a sudden and
sensational notoriety, and its young actors won a tran-
sient fame, as well as probably a basis of artistic skill,
which carried some of them safely through the dangerous
turning-point in their lives, when the beards began to
appear on their chins.
From Jonson's works we know the names of some
of the Chapel-boys. He mentions Nathaniel Field,
Salathiel Pavy, Thomas Day, John Underwood, Robert
Baxter, John Frost, William Ostler, and Thomas
Marston.
Of these Nathaniel Field was, and continued to be,
1 It is not found in the two quarto editions of Hamlet.
46 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
by far the most celebrated. He also became a popular
playwright. But several of the other boys likewise
became actors of note.
IV
The Southern Bank of the Thames and its Places of Amusement — Fights
between Animals — Edward Alleyn and the Lions — The Watermen
and their Poet.
WE have related above how the Burbages, tired of their
ground on Finsbury Fields, north of London, pulled
down " The Theatre " and removed the materials to
Bankside, where they used part of them to build a new
theatre.
The southern bank of the Thames was, and is still,
called Bankside. Behind the part of it which was
covered with buildings there were — to the south
of the City — large commons which were used for all
kinds of sport — target-shooting in Newington Butts,
baiting of wild beasts in the grounds of Paris Garden,
etc. There were also large inns where all kinds of
amusements went on, and two circuses and amphi-
theatres, one for bear-baiting and one for bull-baiting,
to which the citizens of London frequently made
excursions.
In the inhabited part of the south side of London,
called Southwark, the acting of plays, and complaints
thereof, had been common at an early period.
As early as 1547, the Bishop of Winchester, Stephen
Gardiner, complained of the actors' competition with
himself. It was intended, he writes in his petition,
Condon, 1616).
THE THEATRES 47
which was presented to the Privy Council, to celebrate
a solemn funeral mass for the late blessed King Henry
VIII. ; but the South wark actors insisted that they were
also going to perform " a solemn play, to try who would
get the largest audience, they in play or I in earnest,"
and the Bishop requests that this blasphemy may be
prevented.1
The course of theatrical events on the south of the
river was exactly the same as on the north.
When the actors were banished from the precincts of
the town by the Mayor and Corporation, there could be
no question where those who went southward should set
up their theatres. Close to the bank, which at this time
was covered with one or more rows of houses, stood the
two above-mentioned " Rings " for bear and bull-fights,
popular amusements which were then, and long con-
tinued to be, one of the favourite entertainments of the
Londoners, and which were a very characteristic feature
of their public life.
In books of travel by strangers who visited London
at this time, we look in vain for the name of Shakespeare.
Not a line is found even about any of his plays. The
bear-fights, on the other hand, seem to have made a
deep impression on the minds of the travellers, to judge
from the numerous descriptions of them which they
have left. Thus one of the attendants of the Spanish
ambassador, the Duke of Najera, writes about a sojourn
in London in 1544: —
" On the other side of the town we saw seven bears,
some of them very large ; they are driven into a circus,
1 Related by Ordish after State Papers, Domestic, February 5th, 1547.
48 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
where they are enclosed by a long rope. Great fierce
dogs are let loose against them as if to be eaten by them,
and a fight takes place. It is no bad joke to look at this
fight. The great bears fight with three or four dogs ;
sometimes the former, sometimes the latter, get the upper
hand. The bears are savage and very strong, and not
only defend themselves with their teeth, but embrace the
dogs so tightly with their forelegs, that these would be
suffocated if they were not helped by their masters. In
the same place a pony is pushed on with a monkey on
its back, and defends itself against the dogs by kicking
them. The screams of the monkey in seeing the dogs
hanging on to the ears and neck of the pony make this
scene appear very amusing." l
Considering the early period at which this report was
written, we cannot wonder that the Spaniard had nothing
to say about English plays. It is more astonishing that
in 1598, when the drama and the art of its representation
were in their full glory, the German traveller, Paul
Hentzner, should only have a few lines to devote to
the theatres proper, while he gives the following interest-
ing description of the fights between the animals : " There
is still another place, built in form of a theatre, which
serves for the baiting of bulls and bears ; they are
fastened behind, and then worried by great English bull-
dogs, but not without great risque to the dogs, from the
horns of the one and the»teeth of the other ; and it some-
times happens they are killed upon the spot ; fresh ones
are immediately supplied in the places of those that are
1 From a Spanish manuscript in the British Museum, quoted by J. P.
Collier : English Dramatic Poetry, iii. p. 94.
THE THEATRES 49
wounded or tired. To this entertainment there often
follows that of a blinded bear, which is performed by
five or six men, standing circularly with whips, which
they exercise upon him without any mercy, as he cannot
escape from them because of his chain ; he defends him-
self with all his force and skill, throwing down all who
come within his reach and are not active enough to get
out of it, and tearing the whips out of their hands and
breaking them."
Indeed, these excessively brutal sports were not only
an amusement to the people : they were also very much
relished by the higher classes. In a play by Richard
Brome, The Antipodes (1638), there is a scene in which
an old woman reads a programme of a bear-fight. A
young girl warns her against that kind of amusement in
the following words : " Let me ask one thing of you.
Avoid that kind of animal pastime, it is the work of
Satan." But the old woman replies : " Beware what you
are saying, child ; it is the Kings delight." x
And it was the Queen's also at that time. When
foreign princes visited the English court, it was the
fashion to show them the performances of the English
dogs ; 1 there was even a special royal functionary, whose
business it was to see that there should always be a
sufficient supply of animals, so that there might be a
performance ready at short notice for Royalty. This
office of " Master of the Royal Games of Bears, Bulls
and Dogs " was eagerly sought after, among others by
1 A German report of the visit of the Duke of Wiirtemberg to a fight
between dogs and bears, in 1592, informs us that there were at that time
about 1 20 royal dogs. — Rye : England as Seen by Foreigners, p. 45 ; quoted
by Ordish, p. 209.
III. D
50 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
the celebrated actor Edward Alleyn, who indeed finally
succeeded in obtaining it. No doubt he gained a con-
siderable part of his large fortune by these sports. One
of the first things which James I. did after his accession
was to assist at a fight between dogs and a lion in the
Tower under the superintendence of Alleyn. The account
of this, to us, revolting spectacle may be found in John
Stow's " Annales of England" (1603 ).1 As this report
is very little known and throws an interesting light on
the taste of the time, it may not seem unreasonable to
quote it here in spite of its length : —
"Whereupon the king caused Edward Allen, late
servant to the Lord Admirall, now sworne the Prince's
man and Maister of the Beare Garden, to fetch secretly
three of the fellest dogs in the Garden, which being done,
the King, Queene and Prince with 4 or 5 Lords, went to
the Lions Towre, and caused the lustiest lion to be
separated from his mate, and put into the Lions den one
dog alone, who presently flew to the face of the Lion,
but the Lion suddenly shooke him off, and grasped him
fast by the necke, drawing the dog up staires and downe
staires. The King now perceiving the Lion greatly to
exceede the dog in strength, but nothing in noble heart
and courage, caused another dog to be put into the den,
who proved as hotte and lusty as his fellow, and tooke the
Lion by the face, but the Lion began to deale with him
as with the former ; whereupon the King commanded
the third dog to be put in before the second dog was
spoiled, which third dog, more fierce and fell than either
of the former, and in despight either of clawes or strength,
1 It is quoted here from the edition of 1631, pp. 835 f.
THE THEATRES 51
tooke the Lyon by the lip, but the Lion so tore the dog
by the eyes, head and face, that he lost his hold, and
then the Lion took the dog's neck in his mouth, drawing
him up and downe as he did the former, but being
wearied, could not bite so deadly as the first, now
whilest the last dog was thus hand to hand with the Lion
in the upper roome, the other two dogs were fighting
together in the lower roome, whereupon the King caused
the Lion to be driven downe, thinking the lion would
have parted them, but when he saw he must needs come
by them, he leapt cleane over them both, and contrary
to the King's expectation, the lion fled into an inward
den, and would not by any means endure the presence
of the dogs, albeit the last dogge pursued eagerly, but
could not finde the way to the Lion. You shall under-
stand the two last dogs whilst the Lion held them both
under his pawes, did bite the Lion by the belly, whereat
the Lion roared so extreamely that the earth shooke
withall, and the next Lion rampt and roared as if she
would have made rescue. The Lion hath not any
peculiar or proper kind of fight, as hath the dog,
beare or bull, but only a ravenous kinde of surprising
for prey. The 2 first dogs dyed within few dayes,
but the last dog was well recovered of all his hurts,
md the young Prince commanded his servant E. Allen
to bring the dog to him to S. James, where the Prince
charged the said Allen to keepe him and make much
of him, saying, he that had fought with the King of
Beasts, should never after fight with any inferior
creature."
This strong predilection for exciting fights between
52 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
wild beasts, a predilection which in a somewhat modified
form still survives in the English nation, drew crowds to
the southern bank of the Thames, and made the open
parks, the gay riverside and the stately inns favourite
places of excursion, especially in summer-time, when the
grounds offered the additional attractions of lively strolling
musicians, male and female rope-dancers, puppet-shows,
clowns who danced the Morris-dance, and fools who sang
comic songs. Rare foreign animals were also exhibited,
as well as giants, grotesque dwarfs and peculiar mechanical
devices.1
And behind these places of amusement — on the
space now occupied by Lambeth, the most miserable
and dirty quarter of London — we find in those times
fresh and bright green meadows, with cattle grazing and
birds singing. It was a charming place to keep holiday
in for all who belonged to " old merry England " ; here
they might sit down on the turf enjoying the contents of
their well-filled hampers — strong beer and savoury meat
— and consider which performances were to be visited
after the meal, the bear-fight or the rope-dancers, the
fencing matches or the comedians.
The principal means of reaching the southern bank
was the ferry-boats. Only one bridge crossed the
1 Shakespeare also testifies to the taste of the time for all monstrous
curiosities. In The Tempest he makes Trinculo say of Caliban, on meeting
this remarkable creature for the first time : " What have we here ? a man or
a fish ? dead or alive ? A fish : he smells like a fish ; a very ancient and
fish-like smell ; a kind of, not of the newest, poor — John. A strange fish !
Were I in England now, as once I was, and had but this fish painted, not a
holiday fool there would but give a piece of silver; there would this monster
make a man ; any strange beast there makes a man ; when they will not
give a doit to relieve a lame beggar, they will lay out ten to see a dead
Indian." Act ii. Sc. 2.
THE THEATRES 53
Thames within the circuit of the town — old London
Bridge, which was thickly covered with houses and
towers, full of shops and tradespeople. But along both
banks there were a quantity of landing-places, " stairs,"
between which people were rowed or sculled across by
the watermen, a very numerous and rather important
corporation of old disbanded seamen, who in times of
peace gained their livelihood on the river, while in
war-time all who were not disabled had to leave the oar
and go out to serve in the Navy again, and fight for the
honour of Old England.
The watermen were well aware of their responsible
and important task, and their charges were consider-
able ; l but they were popular, and their busy traffic on
the river is a characteristic feature in the physiognomy
of London in those days. It is interesting for its close
connection with stage matters. In the history of the
drama we several times meet with the name of a water-
man, Jacob Mead, as theatrical manager, either in co-
operation with or in opposition to the great managers,
Philip Henslowe and Edward Alleyn. Another, the
well-known John Taylor,2 "the water-poet," as he called
himself, was a friend of actors and dramatic authors,
took his meals with them in the "Cardinal's Hat" and
other public-houses, and even appeared in person on the
stage and as an author. Shakespeare, no doubt, many
times sat in the ferry-boats of Taylor and his comrades,
listening to the tough yarns which were spun there ; and
1 In the very accurate accounts of the actor, Edward Alleyn, I find
several times the sum of one shilling put down for a passage by ferry;
sometimes, however, only 4d. ; for short passages the fare was 3d.
2 Sometimes erroneously confounded with the actor Joseph Taylor.
54 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
all who have wondered at the great poet's skill in sea-
manship, though he is not known to have ever been on
the sea, might perhaps have found the source of his
knowledge in his familiarity with the able seamen of the
Thames.
This John Taylor was a very curious person and
very characteristic of his time ; originally a mariner,
afterwards an invalid, waterman and poet. He made
songs to order for weddings and funerals, wrote pam-
phlets on contemporary people and events, held rhyming
tournaments in the play-houses, and undertook the most
eccentric ' 'travelling- matches, " l which he afterwards
described in humorous pamphlets. Sometimes also he
pleaded as representative of his comrades, the watermen,
and on one occasion he throws a light on the state of the
ferry traffic to the theatres, which is not without interest.
In 1613, at a time when the actors were again begin-
ning to move into the town, in particular deserting
Bankside, south of the Thames, the watermen expe-
rienced considerable decline in their income, and Taylor
sent a petition to the King concerning the actors, to
prevent them from keeping a play-house in London on
1 Of these travelling matches, which even now have not quite gone out
of fashion in England, one consisted in travelling on foot from London to
Edinburgh without a penny in the pocket, and without " begging, borrowing,
or asking for meat, drink, or lodging." Another still more eccentric
journey was the one he undertook, in company with a vintner, from London
to Queenborough. They were to row in a boat of cartridge paper, and
with oars made of two stockfishes tied to sticks. However, before they
had rowed three miles, the boat came to pieces, and the travellers barely
escaped from the venture. John Taylor left in all sixty-three works of great
interest to investigators of the life of those times, and all bearing witness to
high spirits, though not to a very refined mind. He was born in 1580, and
died in 1653.
THE THEATRES 55
the northern side of the Thames. He writes in his
petition : ". . . Afterwards — the players began to play
on the Bankside, and to leave playing in London and
Middlesex, for the most part. Then there went such
great concourse of people by water, that the small
number of watermen remaining at home were not able
to carry them by reason of the court, the tearms, the
players, and other employments. So that we were
enforced and encouraged, hoping that this golden stir-
ring would have lasted ever, to take and entertaine men
and boyes, which boyes are grown men, and keepers of
houses ; so that the number of watermen, and those that
live and are maintained by them, and by the only labour
of the oare and skull, betwixt the bridge of Windsor and
Gravesend, cannot be fewer than forty thousand ; the
cause of the greater halfe of which multitude hath been
the players playing on the Bankside ; for I have known
three companies, besides the bear-baiting, at once there ;
to wit, The Globe, The Rose, and The Swan.
"And now it hath pleased God in this peaceful time
[from 1604-1613] that there is no employment at the
sea, as it hath been accustomed, so that all those great
numbers of men remaines at home ; and the players
have all (except the King's men) left their usual resi-
dence on the Bankside, and doe play in Middlesex, far
remote from the Thames ; so that every day in the
weeke they do draw unto them three or four thousand
people, that were used to spend their monies by
water.
"His Majesties Players did exhibit a petition against
us, in which they said, that our suit was unreasonable,
56 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
and that we might as justly remove the Exchange, the
walkes in Paul's or Moorefields, to the Bankside, for our
profits, as to confine them." l
V
The Theatres on the Southbank — Henslowe and Alleyn and their Theatres,
" Newington Butts " and " The Rose" — Competition and Co-operation
with Burbage's Company — The first "Globe Theatre" and its Re-
pertoire.
THUS, very naturally — we might say necessarily — the
open pleasure-grounds south of the Thames became the
next resort of the actors when banished by the Lord
Mayor from the precincts of the town itself.
Indeed, we know absolutely nothing about the
theatrical matters of the first years after the eviction
from Southwark, which also came under the jurisdiction
of the Lord Mayor. Whether, immediately after the
establishment of "The Theatre" and " The Curtain," a
permanent play-house was built on the Southside, we
do not know ; but, judging from the success of the two
northern theatres, it is probable that an attempt was
made here also, and it is generally supposed that
Newington Butts was the site of the third London
theatre.
Our knowledge of stage-matters on the Southside is
chiefly derived from " Henslowe's Diary," an account-
book kept by the stage-manager, Philip Henslowe, during
the years 1592 to 1609, tne manuscript of which was
found about a hundred years ago by the excellent Shake-
1 John Taylor: Works, edit. 1633, p. 171; quoted by Malone : His-
torical Account, p. 164, n. 7.
THE THEATRES 57
spearean archaeologist, Edmond Malone,1 in Dulwich
College, founded by Edward Alleyn, the son-in-law of
Henslowe.
Like his contemporary, James Burbage, Henslowe,
the builder of " The Theatre," was originally an artisan,
by occupation a dyer. But there is nothing to show
that he ever practised the dramatic art in person. It is
still less probable that he was a dramatic author, for his
accounts and letters bear witness of the most helpless
ignorance of the art of writing, and his orthography is,
even for those times, quite puzzling in its absurd irregu-
larity.2 But if he was not a literary man, he was certainly
a man of business. It appears, to judge from the Diary,3
that from 1577 to 1578 he occupied himself with forest
exploitation and the timber trade. It is difficult to say
whether about that period he had already begun his
theatrical enterprises. His theatrical accounts do not begin
till 1592, but before that time there are entries which prove
that he lent money on interest, a transaction which he con-
tinued assiduously to the end of his life, and by which he
acquired considerable power over the actors in his service.
On October 22nd, 1592, we find the entry in Hens-
1 Malone printed parts of the Diary in an appendix to his Historical
Account of the Rise and Progress of the English Stage, Basil, MDCCC.
Later, in 1845, tne whole manuscript was published by J. P. Collier for the
Shakespeare Society.
2 He writes, for instance, "Troyeless and creasseday" for Troilus and
Cressida; "thus and ondronicous" for Titus Andronicus ; "the venesyon
comodey " for The Venetian Comedy ; " Doctor Fostose" for Doctor Faustus ;
" sesor and pompie " for C&sar and Pompey, etc. Comp. Henslowe 's Diary,
edited by Collier, pp. 149, 33, 41, 42 and 44.
3 Collier questions whether this part of the Diary is Henslowe's own, but
this has been established beyond doubt by G. F. Warner (Catalogue of MSS.
and Monuments of Alleyn' s College of Gods Gift at Dulwich, 1881, p. 157).
58 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
lowe's Diary : " Edward Alleyn was wedded to Jone
Woodward." Though it is more than probable that
Henslowe had been interested in theatrical business for
some years before that time, this short note nevertheless
marks a turning point in his dramatic career. Joan
Woodward was his step-daughter, and her husband was
one of the most distinguished actors of his time, and
perhaps the most active theatrical manager of whom this
epoch can boast. This close family connection with the
popular actor no doubt strengthened Henslowe's resolu-
tion to .build an entirely new theatre, based on the
artistic and financial skill of his son-in-law, and this plan
was carried out in the same year, 1592, when "The
Rose" Theatre was built on a piece of ground behind
the houses for bear-baiting and bull-baiting on Bankside,
and close to the much frequented landing-place of Paris
Garden on the Thames.1
From the very detailed accounts which Henslowe
kept of his expenses for the new theatre, it appears that,
like the former play-houses, "The Rose" was chiefly
built of wood, that it had turned pillars to support the
galleries,2 and that it was thatched with straw or reeds.3
About 1593, therefore, London possessed four per-
1 The theatre is seen distinctly in Norden's map of London of 1593. It
does not follow with absolute certainty from the Diary that "The Rose"
theatre was built precisely in 1 592, as the account does not give the name of
the play-house, but only mentions it as "my play howsse," and it is not
stated whether the item relates to repairs or a new building. But it seems
most probable that the new "Rose" Theatre was meant. Comp. this item
with a later one of 1595, which relates to repairs. — See Henslowe's Diary,
pp. 11-15 and P- 4-
2 As we see also in the somewhat later "Swan" Theatre in the illustra-
tion of the interior, discovered by Dr Gaedertz. — Gaedertz : Zur Kenntniss
der altenglischen Btihne, etc.
3 In the accounts are found several items for the thatcher and his men.
THE THEATRES 59
manent play-houses; two on the north side, "The
Theatre " and " The Curtain," and two on the south
side, " Newington Butts" and "The Rose," all four,
however, outside the proper territory of the town.
Things had developed in a remarkably similar way on
both sides of the Thames ; two plain and quite illiterate
master- workmen, a joiner and a dyer, each build or
invest money in two theatres, and create incomes for
themselves by levying contributions on the acting com-
panies to whom they let their stages.
There was no arrangement confining each company
to its own stage. On the contrary, we see from Hens-
lowe's "Diary" that now one, now another company
appeared on his stage, and that he charged them
different rents. Burbage's actors played on Henslowe's
stage, and the reverse may also have been the case,
though this is not proved.
The company, however, which was more particularly
attached to Henslowe's enterprise was that of " The
Lord Admiral's Men," a company of which Henslowe's
son-in-law, Edward Alleyn, became the stage director,
and unquestionably the leading actor. We can scarcely
be mistaken in assuming that during the earliest period
of permanent theatres " The Lord Admiral's Men " were
the leading company in London. It was for them, above
all, that Christopher Marlowe, the greatest dramatic
author before Shakespeare, shone forth and wrote his
plays, in which he probably acted as well, and that
Alleyn interpreted before an admiring audience his wild
and powerful characters, Tamburlaine, Barabbas (in The
Jew of Malta], and Dr Faustus.
60 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
Noted dramatists, like Thomas Lodge and Thomas
Dekker, added to the repertoire of the same company.
However, the increasing fame of Shakespeare as
an author, and of Richard Burbage as an actor, soon
turned the scales in favour of " The Lord Chamberlain's
Servants," to whom these two magnates devoted their
life-long work. At the same time, " The Lord Admiral's
Men" long continued to maintain their position as the
second of the companies.
A paragraph in Henslowe's "Diary" shows us the
Lord Chamberlain's and the Lord Admiral's men acting
together in brotherly union at Newington Butts. The
old manager notes this event in the history of the stage
in the following words : —
"In the name of God Amen, beginninge at Newing-
ton, my Lord Admiralle and my Lorde chamberlen men,
as followeth, 1594."*
After which, as usual, he puts down the share he
has received for each day of performance and for each
play. We see that he gets very little, much less than
his usual share — it varies between 175. and 45., while on
other occasions he frequently receives several pounds.
1 I happen to notice that Mr Sidney Lee, in his new, large, and excellent
biography of Shakespeare (A Life of William Shakespeare, illustrated library
edition, 1899, P- 35) mentions this joint acting of the companies as having
taken place in 1 592 in " The Rose " Theatre, and as having lasted for " some
months," and that on the same page he confuses some data relating to the
history of the stage. Otherwise, Mr Lee's book is well known for its sound
accuracy, and in this respect compares favourably with the numerous
aesthetical appreciations of Shakespeare, in which theatrical matters are
nearly always neglected. I do not write this note in order to correct the
distinguished English author, but merely as a kind of anticipatory apology
for possible mistakes which I may happen to commit. Where even the
greatest experts can err, it will easily be understood that the ground is
difficult and not much worked.
THE THEATRES 61
This, perhaps, is the reason why the partnership
lasted so short a time, only ten days, from June
3rd to 1 3th. Possibly the shares, having to be divided
between so many distinguished persons, became too
small for the money-loving Henslowe ; possibly it was
simply a case of a rupture. This, at any rate, is certain,
that we never afterwards hear of a co-operation between
the two companies ; the name of Shakespeare is not
even mentioned in the papers left either by Henslowe
or by Alley n.1
The competition between the two leading companies
reached its height when " The Lord Chamberlain's Men "
definitely left the Shoreditch quarter and settled on
Bankside.
We have seen how Richard Burbage and his com-
panions, no doubt including Shakespeare, on a day in
I5982 pulled down their old "Theatre" and removed
the timber to Bankside. There, in the immediate vicinity
of " The Rose " and " The Bear-garden," they made their
builder, the carpenter Peter Street, erect a new play-
house, which they decorated with a splendid sign which,
according to the fashion of the time, was painted on the
outer wall. It represented Atlas3 carrying the globe,
and underneath was written " Totus mundus agit histrio-
nem" The new play-house was no doubt finished in the
1 In the Alleyn Papers and Memoirs of Alleyn, indeed, published by
J. P. Collier, we find Shakespeare occasionally mentioned ; but these
passages are only some of the editor's frequent forgeries, detected too late.
2 Not in 1 593 as stated by Collier.
3 In the literature of the time, and even in modern writings on Shake-
speare, Hercules is generally charged with this heavy task, though it justly
devolves on Atlas. Comp, for instance, Hamlet, ii. 2 (" Hercules and his
burden," even in speaking about " The Globe.") Malone's Historical Ac-
count, p. 69, and Collier, English Dramatic Poetry, iii. p. 113.
62 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
same year in which it had been commenced, at any rate
in 1599, and after its sign it was called " The Globe."
There are several illustrations of " The Globe "
Theatre — among others that reproduced here from
Visscher's " View of London " (fig. 4) — and we should
like to think that the theatre, the octagonal exterior of
which is so well known, was identical with that to which
Shakespeare was attached, for which he wrote his best
plays, and where he made his money.
This, however, is not so. There is no picture of
Shakespeare's " Globe," and we know scarcely anything
about its outward appearance. In 1613, shortly after
Shakespeare had retired, the play-house built by Richard
Burbage was destroyed by fire ; a new one, more suitable
to the requirements of the time, rose in its place, and
this is the building we see represented in the familiar
drawings.
The original "Globe" was constructed — as already
mentioned — of the material of "The Theatre," which
had been pulled down. No doubt, like the latter, it
was circular in shape. This seems to be proved by
Shakespeare's words in the prologue of one of the first
plays which was acted on its stage, viz. in Henry the
Fifth, where we read : —
"... Can this cockpit hold
The vasty fields of France ? or may we cram
Within this wooden O, the very casques
That did affright the air at Agincourt ? "
It is possible, indeed, that only the inside of the
building was circular while the outside was polygonal, but
THE THEATRES 63
there is no proof that it was so, and there is more pro-
bability in favour of the circular form.1
That the first "Globe" was of wood, we gather not
only from this prologue, but also from the above story of
the removal of its material, and from other evidence as
well. The roof was thatched, and the whole house was
probably neither very large nor very splendid. Other
qualities than outward stateliness made " The Globe "
what it became during this short period before it was
burned down ; the workshop where the most precious
jewels of English literature were produced.
During these years, from 1599 to 1613, masterpiece
after masterpiece was represented on this plain wooden
platform, "this unworthy scaffold," as the poet himself
calls his stage.2
Henry V. had already secured the success of the new
theatre. This play, indeed, was not one of the master-
pieces, but it dealt with the most popular national hero
of the English, and served as a patriotic clou which
neither could nor did miss its effect, the victory of the
English over the French at Agincourt. Too modestly
Shakespeare says about the performance : —
"... And so our scene must to the battle fly ;
Where (O for pity !) we shall much disgrace —
With four or five most vile and ragged foils
Right ill disposed in brawl ridiculous, —
1 A passage in Heywood's Apology for Actors (Shakespeare Society's
Reprint, London, 1841, p. 37) also seems to prove the circular shape of the
ancient "Globe." He speaks of the Roman circuses and supposes them to
have differed in shape from theatres and amphitheatres, their frame having
been "globe-like and merely round." Heywood's Apology appeared while
the ancient " Globe" still existed, namely in 1612.
2 Henry V., prologue to Act iv.
64 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
The name of Agincourt : Yet sit and see ;
Minding true things by what their mockeries be."
Even though a representation on the stage must
necessarily be far removed from the picturesque splendour
of reality — a circumstance, by the by, which the prologues
of this play constantly impress upon us — we may be sure
that nothing was neglected to reproduce a battle scene
as magnificently as possible at a period when fighting on
the stage was so common and so popular.
This play, at any rate, was a marvellous success, and
was followed by others which better deserved to be so.
First came a series of splendid comedies, like Much Ado
About Nothing, in which the celebrated comic actor,
William Kemp, delighted the public as the ingenious
constable Dogberry ; The Merry Wives of Windsor, no
doubt with John Heminge as Sir John Falstaff (brought
to life again by order of the Queen) ; As You Like It
and Twelfth Night, in which Malvolio won special
popularity as a caricature of the sour and conceited
Puritans.
Then followed such achievements as Julius C&sar
(1600 or 1601), Hamlet (1601 or 1602), Othello (1604),
King Lear (1605), Macbeth (1606), Timon of Athens
(1606), Antony and Cleopatra (1607), Coriolanus (1608),
Cymbeline ( 1 609), A Winters 7#/<?(i6io), The Tempest^-
(1610); all produced with Richard Burbage in the prin-
cipal parts. The same period saw Ben Jonson's Sejanus
1 The year of performance of some of the plays is perforce only given
approximately. I am chiefly guided by Fleay (Chronicle of the English
Drama). The last pieces — after 1608 — may possibly have been acted at
Blackfriars as well.
THE THEATRES 65
(1603), Volpone (1605), The Alchymist (1610), and The
Conspiracy of Catilina (1611); and Beaumont and
Fletcher's Philaster.
VI
Building of " The Fortune " Theatre — Its Situation and Arrangement-
Difficulties and Dangers threatening from the Authorities.
As a matter of course, a theatre with such cards in its
hand as " The Globe " attracted great attention from the
public. Indeed Henslowe and Alleyn seem to have
understood at once that competition with Burbage's
excellent company was out of the question.
Still they did not give up, and they had no reason
to do so. They were part-owners of " The Bear-garden,"
the arena for bear-fights which has been repeatedly
mentioned, and they made much money by it. Later,
as already stated, they succeeded in obtaining after
several vain attempts the eagerly desired patent as
" Masters of the Royal Games," a function which gave
them very great advantages. In short, they were very
wealthy men.
On seeing that the fame of " The Rose " Theatre
was bound to decline in the immediate vicinity of the
new and rising " Globe," they did not hesitate to leave
it to its fate, and to build a new play-house in a new
quarter. Thither Alleyn went with his company, " The
Lord Admiral's Men," 1 while " The Rose " was let to
companies of minor importance.
1 They were also called " The Earl of Nottingham's Men," and were
under the patronage of Lord Charles Howard, until at the accession of
King James (1603) they were given the title of "The Prince's (Henry's)
Servants."
III. E
66 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
Before this, a somewhat inferior company called
" Lord Sussex's Men " had played here ; now Henslowe
let the building to " The Earl of Worcester's Players,"
who afterwards, in 1603, became "The Queen's (i.e.
Anne of Denmark's) Men." This company, however,
does not seem to have been successful there, and after
1603 we hear very little of "The Rose" Theatre.
Apparently it sank to a lower class of performances-
puppet-shows and displays of fighting. On Visscher's
map of London of 1616, we find no trace of this theatre.
At that time, therefore, it had very likely been pulled
down. " Rose Alley,"1 the name of a street, still exists
as a reminder of Henslowe's old play-house.
As early as the year after "The Globe" had been
built, on January 8th, 1600, Henslowe and Alley n made
a contract with Peter Street, who had built for Burbage,
for the construction of a new, large and fashionable
theatre on a site which the two managers had acquired
in St Giles's Parish near Golden Lane and outside
Cripplegate. They moved, that is, to the north of the
town, far away from Burbage and his dangerous com-
petition, but though the ground chosen lay outside the
gate, and was consequently safe from the persecution
of the Mayor and Corporation, it was still in a densely
crowded and much frequented quarter.
As we learn from the builder's contract,2 this new
i
play-house was to be something hitherto unknown in
shape, size and solidity. In contrast to the earlier
theatres, which had only been of wood, it had a founda-
1 T. F. Ordish : Early London Theatres, p. 200.
2 Published in extenso in Halliwell-Phillipps's Outlines, 3rd ed., pp. 524 ff.
THE THEATRES 67
tion of brick, which was to rise a foot above the
ground ; in shape it was square, while the former theatres
were circular ; its dimensions were spacious for those
times, for it measured 80 feet each way outside, and 55
feet inside. It was built with three storeys, the lowest 12
feet high, the middle n, and the upper 9. Each storey
was 1 2 feet deep ; the floor of each of the two upper
galleries protruded 12 inches. There were four sets of
" Gentlemen rooms " — the best seats, a sufficient number
of " twopenny rooms " for the middle class, and seats in
every part of the galleries. The stairs, passages and
partitions were to be similar to those which Peter Strange
had made in " The Globe," the newly-built play-house on
Bankside. This piece of information, however, does not
make us any the wiser with regard to the construction
of the Shakespearean theatre. On the whole this con-
tract does not — as H alii well- Phillipps and others think
—tell us what "The Globe" was like; it merely states
all the points in which Henslowe's new theatre was to
differ from it.
The stage was to be 43 feet broad, and its length was
to extend to the middle of the pit (the yard1), being
supported below by strong new oak planks. Above it
was to be placed a roof covered with tiles like the
galleries and the tiring-house, and provided with leaden
gutters so arranged as to let the water out at the back-
not over the stage or the spectators. In all other respects
the stage was to be arranged like that of " The Globe,"
1 The contract says the reverse, but evidently the meaning must be as
stated above, as elsewhere in the contract the word breadth is used for
what we should call depth. By length I here understand the distance from
the tiring-room to the end of the platform.
68 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
with suitable windows and glass panes in the tiring-
house. No windows are mentioned in the auditorium,
and there probably were none, as the galleries were
open towards the yard or pit.
" And the saide howse," the contract continues, " and
other thinges before mentioned to be made and doen,
to be in all other contrivitions, conveyances, fashions,
thinge and thinges, effected, finished and doen, accord-
ing to the manner and fashion of the saide house called
the Globe ; saveinge only that all the principall and
maine postes of the saide frame and stadge forward
shall be square and wrought palaster-wise, with carved
proportions called satiers to be placed and sett on the
topp of every of the same postes ; and saveing also that
the same Peter Streete shall not be charged with anie
manner of paynteinge in or about the saide frame, howse
or stadge, or anie parte thereof, etc."
Street was desired to use timber of larger dimensions
and heavier weight than that which had been employed in
" The Globe," and his payment for the building was ^440.
The entire sum, however, for the complete structure
with the decorations and painting was ^520, as appears
from an entry in one of Edward Alleynls note-books,
where we read : —
"What * The Fortune ' cost me, Nov. 1599 : —
•" First for the leas to Brew1 . . ^240
"Then for building the playhous . 520
" For other privat buildings of myn owne 1 20
" So that it hath cost me for the leasse . ^880 "
1 Patrick Brew, a goldsmith in Lombard Street. Among the Alleyn
Papers there are several letters to and from him. J. P. Collier in his
THE THEATRES 69
In front of the theatre was placed a painted statue of
the Goddess of Fortune, and the house was called after
her, " The Fortune." l
The new theatre had probably been opened by the
beginning of the following year (1601). In August, at
any rate, we find it in full activity, for at that date
Henslowe had to pay three pounds in taxes for the past
month 2 to the Master of the Revels.
But even before the building was finished, the ex-
pectations as to this large new theatre had caused a
great sensation in London, and called forth fresh com-
plaints from the Puritans, complaints which this time
threatened to break in a violent storm on the heads of
the actors.
On account of these complaints the Lords of the
Privy Council felt bound, on the 22nd of June 1600, to
issue an order that in future there must be only two
theatres in London. The Privy Council considers " the
exercise of such playes not beinge esvill in ytself, may
with good order and moderation be suffered in a well-
governed state," especially as " her Majestic, beinge
English Dramatic Poetry, iii. 119, calls him Drew, and does not seem to
know who he is ; which is all the more remarkable because it was Collier
himself who discovered and published the letters in the Alleyn Papers.
1 In Thomas Heywood's The English Traveller (iv. 6) we read :
" I'll rather stand here
Like a statue in the forefront of your house
For ever — like the picture of dame Fortune
Before the Fortune Play-house."
It is possible, however, that this refers to the rebuilt " Fortuna," in 1623, and
that the previous one had to content itself with a painted sign like " The
Globe." The English Traveller appeared in 1633, but the date of its
performance is unknown.
- Henslowe's Diary, p. 182.
7o HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
pleased at tymes to take delight and recreation in the
sight and hearinge of them."
It was not expedient, therefore, to suppress them
entirely. But, on the other hand, it was notorious that
" the multitude of the saide houses and the mysgovern-
ment hath been and is dayly occasion of the ydle, ryotous
and dissolute living of great nombers of people, that,
leavinge all such honest and painefull course of life
as they should followe, doe meete and assemble
there."
So the Council had to decide that in future there
must only be two play-houses in or near London, one on
Bankside and one in the county of Middlesex. But
meanwhile their lordships had learned from the Master
of the Revels, Sir Edmund Tylney, who received large
gratuities from Henslowe and Alleyn, " that the house
nowe in hand to be builte by the saide Edward Allen is
not intended to increase the nomber of the playhouses,
but to be insteede of another, namely the Curtayne,
which is either to be ruined and plucked downe or to be
put to some other good use." l Therefore, and because
its situation was altogether suitable for its purpose,
Alleyn's house was allowed to be one of the two
acknowledged theatres, the one in Middlesex, and " The
Lord Admiral's Servants " were permitted to act there.
The other, that on the Surrey side or Bankside, was to
be " The Globe," where " The Lord Chamberlain's
Men " were allowed to perform.
But in no other places in or out of London were
plays to be performed, and it was specially forbidden
1 Halliwell-Phillipps : Outlines, p. 530.
THE THEATRES 71
"that any stage-playes shall be played, as sometymes
they have bin, in any common inne for publique assembly
in or neare about the Cittie."
Further, the two privileged companies were not to
play more than twice a week, " each of them in their
severall house twice a weeke and no oftener, and
especially they shall refrayne to play on the Sabbath
day upon payne of imprysonment and further penaltie."
Finally — " because these orders wil be of little force
and effecte unlesse they be duely putt in execution by those
unto whome it appertayneth to see them executed, it is
ordered that severall copies of these orders shal be sent
to the Lord Maior of London and to the Justices of
Peace of the counties of Middlesex and Surrey, and
that letters shal be written unto them from their Lord-
ships straightly chargeinge them to see to the execution
of the same, as well by commyttinge to prison any
owners of playhouses and players as shall disobey and
resist these orders as by any other good and lawfull
means that in their discretion they shall finde ex-
pedient, and to certifie their Lordships from tyme
to tyme as they shall see cause of their proceedinges
heerein." 1
At that moment there were at least six permanent
theatres in London. The Burbages possessed two,
"The Globe" and "The Blackfriars " ; Henslowe and
Alleyn three, "The Rose," "The Fortune," and ".The
Curtain," the last of which they must have acquired by
1 This order from the Pri^y Council, with certain other documents con-
cerning the same affair, is reproduced in extenso in Halliwell-Phillipps's
Outlines, 3rd ed., pp. 528-531;.
72 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
this time, since they promise to pull it down when they
build " The Fortune " ; finally there was a sixth be-
longing to a certain Francis Langley, " The Swan," the
history of which we shall soon have an opportunity of
relating. It may be also that " The Newington "
Theatre still existed, but it was of scarcely any import-
ance, and its whole history is very obscure.
At any rate the strict orders from the Privy Council
meant the suppression of four large play-houses, three
of which were only a few years old.
Fortunately for the actors and the proprietors, this
order shared the fate of many others : it was never
carried out. A year and a half later, in December 1601,
the Lord Mayor sends in a new complaint of the many
theatres, to which the Privy Council replies as follows :
" Wee have receaved a lettre from yow renewing a com-
plaint of the great abuse and disorder within and about
the cittie of London by reason of the multitude of play-
howses, . . . wee must let yow know that wee did much
rather expect to understand that our order sett downe and
prescribed about a yeare and a half since for reformation
of the said disorders upon the lyke complaint at that
tyme had been duely executed, then to finde the same
disorders and abuses so muche encreased as they are.
The blame whereof, as we cannot but impute in great
part to the Justices of the Peace or some of them in
the counties of Middlesex and Surrey, who had speciall
direction 'and charge from us to see our said Order
executed for the confines of the Cittie, wherein the
most part of those play-howses are scituate. . . . Wee
do therefore once againe renew hereby our directions
THE THEATRES 73
unto you, as wee have donne by our lettres to the
justices of Middlesex and Surrey. . . ,"1
Here follows a repetition of the earlier order, which
winds up with a request to imprison the proprietors of
theatres if, regardless of their duty, they have plays
acted in other places besides the two authorised theatres,
"The Fortune" and "The Globe." And, as before,
a strict injunction is sent to the Justices of the
Peace.
But, just as before, the writs were entirely disre-
garded. It is most astonishing to see how such orders
from the highest authorities are ignored time after time,
and treated as empty menaces in spite of their being
addressed to the Puritan Lord Mayor, the hereditary
enemy of actors.
This would be quite incomprehensible if the Lords
of the Council had not played a double game, secretly
protecting the theatres while publicly censuring them.
Among the councillors of state at that time were men
like Nottingham, Shrewsbury and Worcester, who were
known to be very favourably inclined towards plays and
actors, and who, without openly breaking with the Mayor
and the Corporation, found it amusing to play a few
tricks on the conceited Puritan prigs.
That the actors also considered the grave city fathers
as a good butt for their wit is seen for one thing from
the almost farcical way in which Shakespeare treats the
Lord Mayor and Aldermen in his Richard III., where
he makes Gloster and Buckingham send them off on a
1 The county of Middlesex contained the part of London which lay north
of the Thames, the county of Surrey contained the part south of the river.
74 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
wild goose chace, and exhibits them as foolish victims
of the grossest dissimulation.
At any rate, the theatres were left alone for the
present. It is true that the proprietors had to pay a
considerable sum to the functionaries in whose hands
their welfare lay, and we shall see later how the Master
of the Revels taxed the actors. Still, the theatres which
had to succumb in the struggle for existence perished
by a natural death, and no brute force was exercised
against their development
Not even " The Curtain " disappeared, though
Henslowe and Alley n had engaged themselves to pull
it down when they built " The Fortune." It continued
to exist, as we have seen, probably down to the time
of the Civil War. It is even possible that Henslowe
and Alleyn never owned this theatre, in which case,
indeed, the promise of pulling it down would be the
climax of comic impudence to the Puritan authorities.
This promise, as far as I know, is the only indication of
" The Curtain's " ever having been in the possession of
Henslowe and Alleyn. In their detailed account-books
no mention whatever is made of it.
But a few years previously the two partners had built
" The Rose," which, indeed, they did not show the
slightest intention of pulling down. On the whole, the
last twenty or thirty years of the century had brought
vigorous life into the theatrical world, and, it must be
confessed, had increased the number of theatres slightly
beyond what the town was able to support at the time.
About the year 1596 a large new play-house had been
added, of which we have not yet had an opportunity of
THE THEATRES 75
speaking in greater detail. It was called " The Swan,"
and like "The Rose" and " The Globe," it was situated
on the southern bank of the Thames, but more to the
west than the others.
A Dutch scholar, Johan de Witt, who visited London
about that time, has left not only a description but also
a drawing1 of this theatre, which in 1596 was quite new,
and for that very reason, perhaps, particularly impressed
the foreign traveller by its stately appearance. The
translation of his Latin description runs as follows :
" There are in London four theatres (Amphitheatre?) of
noteworthy beauty, which bear different names according
to their different signs. In each of them a different play
(varia sccena) is daily performed before the people. The
two most magnificent of these are situated across the
Thames on the south side, and are called from the signs
suspended over them : ' The Rose ' 2 and ' The Swan.'
Two others, ' The Theatre ' and ' The Curtain,' are
situated outside the town to the north, on the road which
is entered through ' the episcopal gate,' generally called
' Bishopsgate.' There is also a fifth, but of a different
construction, meant for baiting of wild beasts, in which
many bears, bulls and dogs of an extraordinary size are
fed in separate dens and cages, which are baited to fight,
and thus afford a most delightful spectacle to the people.
Of all the theatres the largest and most magnificent is
the one whose sign is a Swan (generally called ' The
Swan ' Theatre), as it holds three thousand persons, and
1 Both were discovered by Dr K. Th. Gaedertz, who found them in the
Utrecht Library. The descriptions in the text are taken from his work
before mentioned.
2 " The Rose," as we have seen, was also new at the time.
76 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
is built of flint, of which there is a large abundance in
England, supported by wooden pillars. The paint that
covers these pillars produces such an excellent imitation
of marble that it baffles even the sharpest eye. And as
in shape it seems to be an imitation of Roman work,
I have given a drawing of it above." 1
This " Swan Theatre," the magnificence of which
made such a deep impression on the Dutch scholar, is
well known to us from other sources. In the year 1594
the Lord Mayor of London wrote to the Lord Treasurer,
informing him that a certain Francis Langley, licensed
alnager,2 intended to build a new theatre on the Bank
side, which he asked him to forbid his doing.
Evidently the Lord Treasurer did not comply with
the request of the Lord Mayor, for Francis Langley
built his theatre on the ground of Paris Garden, quite
close to the Bear-garden, and to the much frequented
landing-place on the Thames, Paris Gardens Stairs ; and
probably from the many swans which crowded the river
at the time — he chose a swan as the sign of his play-
house, and called it " The Swan Theatre." There is no
evidence to show when " The Swan " was built and
opened for use. If Dr Gaedertz is right in his assertion
that de Witt visited London in the summer of 1596, it
is not likely to have been open for less than a year.
But other circumstances seem to indicate that it was
quite new in I598.3
In other respects we are exceedingly well informed
1 The drawing is reproduced in vol. ii. of the present work : Middle Ages
and Renaissance, facing p. 326.
2 Comp. Ordish: Early London Theatres, p. 253.
3 Comp. Ordish : Early London Theatres, p. 259.
THE THEATRES 77
with regard to this play-house. We possess a drawing
of the interior by de Witt ; its exterior is illustrated in
Visscher's "View of London" (of 1616) ; it is described,
as above, by de Witt, and, finally, we have the fairly
detailed building contract of the later " Hope Theatre,"
the construction of which was to be exactly like that of
"The Swan."
This play-house, therefore, as far as its outward history
is concerned, is probably the best known of all contem-
porary theatres. Unfortunately, its importance to the
dramatic art and dramatic literature of the time was
obviously slight ; in any case its artistic history is as ob-
scure as our knowledge of its architecture is clear. It is
evident that the builder, Francis Langley, who seems to
have selected the place for his fine theatre very judiciously,
could not come up to his shrewd competitor, Philip
Henslowe, who owned "The Rose," "The Newington "
and " The Bear-garden."
When de Witt's drawing appeared, it was thought
for a moment that the three actors represented there
might be meant for Malvolio, Olivia and Maria in
Twelfth Night, and that this would prove that Shake-
speare had written also for " The Swan " Theatre. But
this hypothesis failed on the simple ground that that
comedy cannot have been written before I6OO.1 On the
whole, there is nothing to justify the belief that any play
of Shakespeare's was acted at " The Swan," or that the
company to which the great poet belonged, and for which
1 They might, by the by, be the same persons from an earlier play on
the same subject. Some people consider Twelfth Night to be an adapta-
tion of an earlier comedy.
78 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
he wrote exclusively,1 ever appeared on Langley's
stage.
From a short colloquy in Dekker's Satiromastix we
may conclude that Ben Jonson, whose restless nature
drove him in turn to all companies and all theatres,
acted Zulziman in " The Swan " Theatre. Otherwise
this theatre seems mainly to have been used for per-
formances of a lower kind, the so-called "activities," or
what we should call " music hall entertainments," acrobatic
tricks, fencing matches, and plays of the lowest class.
The once magnificent building soon fell into decay, and,
on the whole, this theatrical enterprise seems to have
been a failure. In the year 1632, in a play by Marmyon,
called Hollands Leaguer? after a house of ill fame in
Paris Garden, mention is made of the things worth
seeing in that neighbourhood, among which occurs
" The Swan." The passage runs as follows : " There
are pleasant walks and a concourse of strangers. Three
famous amphitheatres can be seen from the turret ; one,
the continent of the world [i.e. ' The Globe '], to which
half the year [i.e. in summer] a world of beauties and of
brave spirits resort — a building of excellent Hope for
players, wild beasts and gladiators — and one other, that
the lady of the leaguer or fortress could almost shake
1 The only two of Shakespeare's plays which seem to have been written
for other companies are Titus Andronicus, which we find mentioned in
Henslowe's Diary (p. 33) as having been performed for the first time on the
23rd of January 1593 or 1594 by the inferior company, "The Earl of
Sussex's Men" (Rd at titus and ondronicous, the 23rd of Jenewary . . . iii. li
viii. s.), and Henry VS., which on the title-page of the first edition is stated
to have been acted by " The Earl of Pembroke's Servants." But as we know,
Shakespeare's authorship of both these plays has been contested.
2 Shakerly Marmyon : Hollands Leaguer, 1632 ; quot. by Ordish :
Early London Theatres, p. 275.
THE THEATRES 79
hands with, now fallen to decay, and, like a dying
swanne [i.e. ' The Swan ' play-house], hangs her head
and sings her own dirge."
This melancholy description is the last information
we have about the once proud " Swan."
VII
The Burning of " The Globe " — The new " Globe " and its Proprietors —
Philip Henslowe as Theatrical Manager — The Burning and Recon-
struction of "The Fortune."
ON the 2Qth of June 1613 London saw for the first time
the destruction by fire of one of its theatres, and it was
no other than " The Globe " which was destroyed.
By this time it was more than a year since Shake-
speare had retired from the stage. But a new play in
which he had a share was acted on this fatal day. The
historical play Henry VIII., or All is True, by Shake-
speare and Fletcher,1 was on the play-bill, and this royal
drama was produced with much pomp and splendour.
The Knights of the Garter appeared in their magnificent
robes, and the Knights of St George in theirs ; the Royal
Guard were refulgent in their embroidered surcoats ; even
the stage — contrary to custom — was covered with mats,
while for ordinary use it was only strewn with rushes.
In Act i., Scene 4, the King comes as one of a
company of maskers to the house of Cardinal Wolsey,
and, in accordance with a common custom, on the
entrance of the King a volley of cannon-shots was fired.
The wad of one of these hit the roof, and in a twinkling
1 Henry VIII. is supposed to have been commenced by Shakespeare in
1611, and to have been performed two years later by "The King's Men,"
who had prevailed on Fletcher to finish it.
80 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
the sixteen years' old theatre, which, as we remember, was
built of wood, was in flames. Though there were only two
narrow entrances to the whole theatre, all the people
escaped almost unhurt. " Only one man," says the writer
of a contemporary letter,1 " had his breeches set on fire,
that would perhaps have broyled him, if he had not by
the benefit of a provident wit, put it out with bottle ale."
But the whole theatre and an adjoining house were
burned down in a little over an hour, and of course
among other things part of the expensive wardrobe of
the actors was destroyed.
Naturally the fire created a considerable sensation.
The Puritans considered it as a judgment from God,2 and a
street song appeared, which in graphic words, though in a
humorous way, preserved the memory of the sad event.
The song has the following title : " A Sonnet about
the Sad Fire in the Globe Theatre in London " ; 3 and
with an obvious allusion to the piece which was acted on
the fatal day, each verse ended with this refrain :—
" Oh, sorrow, pittifull sorrow, an yett all this is true."
1 Sir Henry Wotton. In Reliquice Wottoniana, ed. 1685, pp. 425-6,
we find a description of the fire, first quoted by Malone, p. 69, n. 6. A
letter from Mr Chamberlain, dated July 8th, 1613, also discovered by
Malone (ibid.}, and Stow's Chronicle, under the year 1613, also give descrip-
tions of this event in the annals of the theatre. The details given above are
drawn from these three sources.
2 As late as twenty years after, Prynne, in his Histriomastix, mentions
the burning of the two theatres, " The Globe " and " The Fortune," as a
proof that plays are the work of the devil. See the original edition of 1633,
p. 516.
3 Printed for the first time in The Gentlemen 's Magazine of 1816, from
an old manuscript. Afterwards reprinted by Halliwell-Phillipps (Outlines,
pp. 536 ff.) Malone mentions a ballad on the same subject, which is registered
in the bookseller's catalogue of 1613, but which he has never been able to
find. It can scarcely be the same as the above-mentioned sonnet ; the title
at least is different.
THE THEATRES 81
The sonnet begins in a high strain with a summons
to Melpomene to report the last tragedy which was acted
at "The Globe."
" Now sitt the downe, Melpomene,
Wrapt in a sea-cole robe,
And tell the dolefull tragedie
That late was playd at Globe."
Then it describes how the fire began on the roof and
spread over the whole house consuming everything, even
the silk flag ; further, how the knights and noblemen ran
out in great confusion, losing their hats and swords, and
the actors likewise, Burbage, Condell and old Heminge,
who stood with swollen eyes " like a drunken Flemming,"
and looked with sorrow at the burning wigs, costumes
and drum-skins. At last the poet recommends the
actors not to thatch their house, but to go to the expense
of a tile roof.
" Be warned, yow stage strutters all,
Least yow againe be catched,
And such a burneing doe befall,
As to them whose howse was thatched ;
Forbeare your whoreing, breeding biles,
And lay up that expence for tiles.
Oh, sorrow, pittifull sorrow, and yet all this is true."
To this warning Burbage and his companions paid
heed, and when, as early as the following spring,1 " The
1 "... and the next spring it was new builded in far fairer manner than
before." — Stow's Chronicle, under the year 1613.
" As gold is better that's in fire tried,
So is the Bankside Globe that late was burn'd,
For where before it had a thatched hide,
III. F
82 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
Globe " rose again, it was not only much more splendid
in appearance, but it had a tiled roof.
The new " Globe " remained under the management
of Richard Burbage till his death in 1619. After this
event it continued to remain in the hands of the family,
though now, as before, they shared the ownership with
some of the leading actors as partners. No doubt, even
on the establishment of the first " Globe Theatre,"
Shakespeare and others had shares in the enterprise.1
The bookseller, Cuthbert Burbage, the surviving brother
of Richard, writes in the year 1635 on this question,
after mentioning the difficulties which the family had
had with their first enterprise, "The Theatre": "We
then bethought us of altering from thence, and at like
expense built the Globe, with more summes of money
taken up at interest, which lay heavy on us many yeares,
and to ourselves wee joyned those deserving men,
Shakspere, Heminge, Condall, Philips and others,
partners in the profittes of that they call the House, but
makeing the leases for twenty-one yeeres hath beene the
destruction of ourselves and others, for they dyeing at
the expiration of three or four yeeres of their lease,2 the
Now to a stately theatre is turned ;
Which is an emblem, that great things are won
By those that dare through greatest dangers run."
John Taylor : Quatern of new-catched Epigrams, no. xxii.,
quoted by Malone, Historical Account, p. 70.
1 All actors were partners in so far as the entrance fee, which was col-
lected at the doors, was their due. But the proprietors took all that was
paid for the boxes, the galleries, and the seats on the stage. For further
information on this point see the following section, p. 109.
2 All these " deserving men " were alive three or four years after the
building of the Globe. The first to die was Augustine Phillips, the old clown,
whose death occurred in 1605. Condell and Heminge lived respectively to
1627 and 1630. Shakespeare who, as we know, died in 1616, had probably
given up his share some years previously.
6— The New Globe Theatre.
THE THEATRES 83
subsequent yeeres became dissolved to strangers as by
marrying with their widdowes and the like by their
children."1
In 1635 the Burbage family, though none of them
acted any longer, still possessed 3! shares of the 16, into
which " The Globe " was divided ; the remainder were
held by the widow of Condell (2), and by the actors
Robinson (3^), Schanke (3), Taylor and Lewin (each
2).«
While " The Globe " continued to be a sound pay-
ing business, its theatrical reputation had somewhat
declined. The public which frequented it were scarcely
so refined as that which went to Blackfriars, and the
actors, " The King's Men," who were the same in both
places, performed at "The Globe" mainly what we
should call spectacular plays.
James Shirley, in the prologue of his Rosania, or The
Doubtful Heir, gibes at his own public. His plays were
to have been performed at Blackfriars, and his prologue
apologises for the refined fare in these words : —
" Gentlemen, I am only sent to say,
Our author did not calculate his play
For this meridian. The Bankside, he knows,
Is far more skilful at the ebbs and flows
Of water than of wit ; he did not mean
For the elevation of your poles this scene.
1 In the reply above quoted to a complaint from some of the actors.
Comp. above, p. 37.
2 Comp. a complaint from the actors Benfield, Swanston and Pollard to
the Earl of Pembroke (1635), printed in Halliwell-Phillipps's Outlines, pp.
539 *
84 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
No shews, no dance — and what you most delight in,
Grave understanders,1 here's no target-fighting
Upon this stage ; all work for culers barr'd ;
No bawdry nor no ballads ; — this goes hard :
But language clean, and, what affects you not,
Without impossibilities the plot,
No clown, no squibs, no devil in 't. — Oh now,
You squirrels that want 'nuts, what will you do ?
Pray do not crack the benches, and we may
Hereafter fit your palates with a play.
But you that can contract yourselves, and fit,
As you were now in the Blackfriars pit,
And will not deaf us with lewd noise and tongues
Because we have no heart to break our lungs
Will pardon our vast stage, and not disgrace,
This play meant for your persons, not the place." 2
These words were written and spoken in 1640. A
few years later the famous " Globe " had ceased to
exist. The exact date of its destruction was the i5th
of April 1644, when the Puritans pulled it down.
The old home of the art of Shakespeare is now occu-
pied by the large breweries of Barclay & Perkins.
When in 1613 "The Globe" Theatre was entirely
burned down, Henslowe at once profited by the chance
offered him by the temporary incapacitation of his most
dangerous competitors. He entered into partnership with
the waterman, Jacob Meade, who had formerly been a
1 Grave understanders, a very common pun on the populace in the pit,
who stood below the stage. Ben Jonson also called them " the understand-
ing gentlemen of the ground here."
1 This prologue is printed in Malone : Historical Account, pp. 72 ff.
THE THEATRES 85
keeper of the royal animals, and immediately had
his bear-circus transformed into a proper play-house,
but so that it might still be used for fights between
animals.
For the construction of this theatre "The Swan"
was to serve as a model. We read in the contract
between the carpenter and the mason on the one side,
and Henslowe and Meade on the other, that in circum-
ference and height it was to be equal to the play-house
called " The Swan."
The foundation was to be of brick, and the timber
in the lowest storey of oak only ; the pillars likewise of
oak, and turned. The stage was to be surrounded by
a frame and to rest on rams, so that it might be removed
when the theatre had to serve for bull-baiting and bear-
baiting. The stage was to be covered by " heavens " —
that is, a canopy — which was not, however, to rest on
pillars on the floor ; it was to be provided with leaden
gutters for the rain-water to run off. The theatre was
to have three storeys like "The Swan," the lowest of
which was to contain some particularly comfortable
boxes, " convenient and suitable for gentlemen to
sit in." The roof was to be of English tiles, not
thatched like the previous theatres. Finally, a tile-
covered stable was to accommodate six bulls and three
horses.1
The new play-house received the significant name of
" The Hope," and the company which was engaged to
act there obtained the Princess Elizabeth as patroness,
1 The whole building contract is printed by Malone : Variorum Shake-
speare, 343.
86 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
and called itself, after her, " The Lady Elizabeth's
Servants." Its leading actor was Nathaniel Field, a
young star,1 who had already won fame as a child-actor,
and who now rivalled Richard Burbage himself as the
youthful hero.
Field was accompanied by a number of talented
young dramatists, above all, Ben Jonson, and next to him
John Fletcher, Philip Massinger, Robert Daborne, all
of them tempted by old father Henslowe's gold, and all
more or less in the pocket of the wily pawnbroker.
Among the papers left by Edward Alleyn are a
number of letters, complaints and receipts from authors
and actors who stood in business relations with Hens-
lowe.2 A thorough study of these old papers gives a
most vivid and interesting idea of the circumstances
in which dramatic authors lived at that time. It is
sad and painful to see how even distinguished artists
truckle and flatter in order to obtain a loan or an advance
from the plebeian upstart and nouveau riche, as we may
call Henslowe, a man who got his first start in life by
marrying the wealthy woman 3 in whose service he was,
— who afterwards increased his fortune by pawnbroking
1 In 1613 he was 26 years old.
2 These papers were published for the Shakespeare Society by J. P.
Collier, partly in his Memoirs of Alleyn, partly in The Alleyn Papers^ but
unfortunately in a very disorderly and unchronological way. The notes
and explanations, moreover, are to a great extent more misleading than
instructive to anybody who is not thoroughly acquainted with the subject.
Finally, these editions are marred by a number of forgeries, which are so
many pitfalls for any student who has not been warned of them.
3 From a lawsuit over Henslowe's estate after his death we are fur-
nished with a document proving this fact, which, as far as I know, has not
been noticed before : " That Philip Henslow maried Agnes at such tyme
as she was his Mrs and he her servant, being wholy advanced by her . . ."
Memoirs of E. Alleyn^ p. 124.
THE THEATRES 87
and all kinds of more or less surreptitious theatrical
enterprises, and was now a notorious usurer, scarcely
able to write a single consecutive sentence, but never
failing to begin his theatrical accounts with the words :
"In God's name, Amen."
The actors and dramatic authors were probably, as
a rule, a happy-go-lucky careless sort of folks, who were
very free with their money. Celebrated and distin-
guished men like Field and Dekker were continually in
prison arrested for debt, and obliged to turn for help
to their wealthy acquaintances. Robert Daborne, a
third-rate, but rather fertile author, has left a large
number of notes sent to Henslowe, all without exception
treating of loans and advances. We will quote one
which dates from about the time when "The Hope"
Theatre was opened. On August 3rd, 1613, he writes
to Henslowe as follows : " Mr Hinchlow,1 I have ever
since I saw you kept my bed, being so lame that I
cannot stand. I pray, Sr, goe forward with that reason-
able bargain for the Bellman ; 2 we will hav but twelve
pounds and the overplus of the second day, whearof I
hav had ten shillings and desyre but twenty shillings
more, till you have three sheets of my papers. Good Sr,
consyder how for yr sake I have put myself out of the
assured way to get money, and from twenty pounds a
play am come to twelv ; thearfor in my extremyty for-
sake me not, as yu shall ever command me. My wife
can aquaynt yu how infinite great my occation is, and
1 This is one of several ways in which the name of the old stage-
manager is frequently spelt.
2 The Bellman of London, the play at which Daborne was working at
the time
88 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
this shall be sufficient for the receipt till I come to set
my hand to your book.
" Yor at comand,
" ROB. DABORNE.
"Aug. 3, 1613."
Below is added in Henslowe's handwriting : —
"Lent Mr Daborne upon this not the 32 of August
in earnest of a playe called the Bellman of London,
XXs."
Henslowe was very cunning in the way he took
advantage of the difficulties of his authors and actors.
He sells them costumes and ornaments on part-payment,
buys plays of the authors and sells them to the actors,
but keeps the manuscripts for himself. When lending
money to individual actors, he charges the amount to the
account of the whole company, and deducts the instal-
ments and interests due to him from the proceeds of the
performance. He never permits his companies to get
entirely out of debt to him, but as soon as they are on
the point of freeing themselves he stops the performances
by dismissing the hired men of the company, that is, the
inferior actors and functionaries with whom he had a
contract, but whom he did not pay, and without whom
there could be no acting. In the course of three years
he dissolved five companies, for, as he said, "If those
fellows come out of their debt to me, I should never
have any power over them."
And indeed, the discontent with him increased more
and more, and even within two years after the building
of "The Hope," it broke out in a very sharply worded
complaint from the actors, in which they accuse him of
THE THEATRES 89
all the irregularities1 we have mentioned and several
others besides.
Whether the actors reaped any benefit from their
complaint during Henslowe's life-time, we cannot dis-
cover, but it is not likely. However, a short time after
this the old pawnbroker died (in 1616), leaving a
considerable fortune (about ;£ 11,000) and an outstanding
claim of ^400. His son-in-law, Edward Alleyn, took on
his theatrical business, and some months after the death
of Henslowe,2 made a contract with the company,
according to which he released them of ^"200 of the
debt, and allowed them to pay the remainder out of a
fourth part of the proceeds of the galleries,3 a good proof
that the grievances against Henslowe were not un-
founded, for Alleyn, as a rule, was close enough in
money matters.
Among the names of the actors who made this
contract with Alleyn we do not find that of Nathaniel
Field, so at this time he must have left the company and
"The Hope" Theatre, and no doubt had joined "The
King's Men " (Shakespeare's old company) accompanied
by Jonson, Fletcher and Massinger.
" The Globe" Theatre had risen again after the fire,
and the star of "The Hope" was declining. Formerly,
plays had been acted four times a week, and there had
1 The complaint was printed by Malone from a MS. found in Dulwich
College. The MS. is nowhere to be found now, but a reprint of the
complaint is contained in the Alleyn Papers, p. 78 ff. The above
characteristic utterance of Henslowe is copied literally from the complaint.
2 Henslowe died on January gth, 1616, and on the 2oth of March in the
same year Alleyn made the contract with the actors.
3 The contract is reprinted in full in Collier's Memoirs of E. Alleyn^
pp. 127 ff.
90 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
been bear-fights on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but
gradually the bear-fights seem to have once more gained
the upper hand ; " The Hope " lost its fine name and
was commonly called the " Bear-garden," 1 and as such it
was carried on down to 1642, when all entertainments of
the kind were forbidden.
The last news of the Bear-garden is of 1691. Then
it had become a glass factory where " crown window-
glass is made, which in all respects far exceeds French
glass."2
Besides the burning of "The Globe" in 1613,
London had another great conflagration at a theatre to
record during this period. In 1621 the large and
magnificent " Fortune," the first theatre in London, as it
is called by the writer of a contemporary letter,3 was
destroyed by fire. In the course of two hours the whole
of the fine building was converted into a heap of ashes,
and the actors lost their whole wardrobe and other
equipment, as well as their expensive " play-books," that
is, the manuscripts of the plays in their repertoire.
The company which was then acting at " The
Fortune " was the same that had occupied it all along,
viz., " The Prince's Servants," originally " The Lord
1We learn this from Stow's Survey of London^ continued by Howe, in
which we read : "The Hope on the Bankside in Southwark, commonly
called the Beare-Garden, a play-house for Stage playes on Mondayes,
Wednesdayes, Fridayes and Saturdayes ; and for the baiting of the Beares
on Tuesdayes and Thursdayes, the Stage being made to take up and down
when they plesse."
2 Advertisement in The Gazette for June i8th, 1691, quoted by Ordish.
3 John Chamberlain, in a letter of December I5th, 1621, to Sir Dudley
Carleton ; in the collection of MSS. of Dr Birch, Brit. Mus. ; discovered by
Edmond Malone (Historical Account, p. 55, n. 5) ; Stow's Chronicle (1631
edit.) also mentions the fire, but puts it down erroneously to 1617.
THE THEATRES 91
Admiral's Men," hitherto under the leadership of
Edward Alleyn, who, however, had given up acting
several years before.
If " The Fortune " is called the first theatre of the
town, this must be understood to mean the most stately
in appearance. As a home of dramatic art and literature
it never attained the importance of " The Globe " or
" The Blackfriars."
The Henslowe- Alleyn enterprises always kept a touch
of a somewhat rough and business-like popularity, which
certainly brought a good deal of money into the cash-
box of the managers, but no corresponding artistic glory
to their memory.
After the fire and the subsequent reconstruction,
" The Fortune" for some years passed into the hands of
another company called " The Prince Palatine's Men,"
which, however, was entirely dissolved in 1624, after
which the old " Prince's Servants " were reinstalled
under the name of " The Fortune Company," and
continued acting there till the Civil War.
About the year 1630 "The Fortune" and "The
Red Bull," probably used by the same company, seem to
have been considered as rather cheap and common
places of amusement, to judge from a passage in the
introduction to The Careless Shepherdess by Goffe, where
we read : —
" I will hasten to the money-box,
And take my shilling out again —
I'll go to The Bull or Fortune, and there see
A play for twopence, and a jig to boot."
The last news of " The Fortune " Theatre is an
92 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
advertisement in the Mercurius Politicus of February
1 4th, 1 66 1,1 running thus : —
" The Fortune playhouse situate between White-
cross-street and Golding-lane in the parish of Saint
Giles, Cripplegate, with the ground thereto belonging,
is to be lett to be built upon ; where twenty-three
tenements may be erected, with gardens ; and a street
may be cut through for the better accommodation of the
buildings."
So in that year " The Fortune " was probably pulled
down. That it could give place to twenty-three
dwellings with gardens proves what a large area it must
have occupied.
VIII
Number of Theatres—" The Red Bull "—The Last Theatres, " The Cockpit "
or " The Phoenix" and " Salisbury Court."
WE have still to mention a few theatres of no particular
importance, of the history of which very little is known.
We frequently meet with a tendency to exaggerate
the number of theatres in London in the old times.
Some authors mention no less than twenty-three con-
temporary play-houses. One of the causes of this
mistake is ignorance of the fact that several theatres had
double names. For instance, much has been written
about a theatre called "Paris Garden," though nobody
has been able to determine its dates. But " Paris
Garden Theatre " is none other than " The Swan,"
1 Discovered by Steevens and quoted by Malone, Historical Account,
p. 55, n. 5.
THE THEATRES 93
which was situated on the pleasure ground south of the
Thames called " Paris Garden." Thus, as we have
seen above, " The Hope " was the reconstructed Bear-
garden, and was still frequently called by the old name.
A later theatre is called alternately " The Cockpit " and
"The Phoenix," and "Salisbury Court," built in 1629,
is also called "The Whitefriars."1
At the time when Shakespeare made his appearance
in the theatrical world, about 1590, there existed in
reality at most three play-houses properly so-called,
" The Theatre," " The Curtain," and " Newington Butts" ;
and it is even doubtful whether the last-named was a
real theatre. More probably it was a stage in the yard
of an inn, like " The Cross Keys" and " The Red Bull,"
where plays were performed at the same time.
Ten years later, about 1600, "The Theatre" and
" Newington " have disappeared, but five others have
been added, "The Rose," " Blackfriars," "The Globe,"
" The Swan," and " The Fortune " — six theatres in all.
Perhaps at this time " The Red Bull " was converted
into a real play-house ; at any rate, from about this time
(1599) the Company called the "Queen's Revels" Com-
pany acted alternately on this stage and at " The Curtain."
There is not much to be said about the history of the
"Red Bull." It was situated in St John's Street,
Clerkenwell, probably just outside St John's Gate. In
1633 William Prynne mentions it in his Histriomastix
as recently rebuilt and enlarged,2 which proves its grow-
1 In a marginal note to the dedicatory epistle of his Histriomastix (1633),
" a newly-built theatre," which was " Salisbury Court," is called by William
Prynne " Whitefriars' Play-house."
2 Histriomastix. Epistle Dedicatory.
94 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
ing popularity. About this popularity there exists
other evidence as well, but at the same time the reports
speak of the low character of the amusements provided
at this play-house. Thus, in a little complimentary
poem written in 1630 to Davenant on the occasion of
his excellent play, The Just Italian, Carew complains
of the bad taste of the public, and of the bad and
boisterous acting : —
" Now noise prevails ; and he is taxed for drowth
Of wit, that with the cry spends not his mouth —
.... thy strong fancies, raptures of the brain
Dress'd in poetick flames, they entertain
As a bold impious reach ; for they'll still slight
All that exceeds Red Bull and Cockpit flight.
These are the men in crowded heaps that throng
To that adulterate stage, where not a tongue
Of the untun'd kennel can a line repeat
Of serious sense ; but like lips meet like meat :
Whilst the true blood cf actors, that alone
Keep natural unstrain'd action in their throne,
Behold their benches bare, though they rehearse
The terser Beaumont's or great Jonson's verse."
By this " true brood of actors " Carew means " The
King's Men," who, as we know, were acting at the time
at "The Globe" and " Blackfriars." It must be added
that Davenant's play, The Just Italian, was performed
on the latter stage.
" The Red Bull " was one of the few play-houses
which survived the Civil War and the Commonwealth.
Even during the protectorate of Cromwell, when all
7— Interior of the " Red Bull " Theatre.
THE THEATRES 95
plays were prohibited, it seems to have been used for
secret performances. And after the Restoration it was
the first place where the poor and miserable remains of
the once proud and wealthy companies assembled under
the leadership of a certain Rhodes, who was formerly a
prompter at " The Blackfriars."
But these unfortunate men had a pitiful time of it.
Samuel Pepys, the well-known Secretary of the Admiralty,
and playgoer, whose diary is one of the principal sources
for the study of the stage-history of the time of the
Restoration, gives the following report of a visit he paid
to the place on March 23rd, 1661 : — "To the Red Bull
(where I had not been since plays come up again) up to
the tireing-room, where strange confusion and disorder
that there is among them in fitting themselves, especially
here, where the clothes are very poore, and the actors
but common fellows. At last into the pitt, where I think
there was not above ten more than myself, and not one
hundred in the whole house. And the play, which is
called All's Lost by Lust, poorly done ; and with so
much disorder, among others, in the musique-room, the
boy that was to sing a song, not singing it right, his
master fell about his ears and beat him so, that it put
the whole house into an uproar."
The old theatre still existed in 1 663, but at that time
it must have been entirely abandoned, judging by a speech
in Davenant's play, A Theatre to Let, where it is said
to have no other lodgers than the spiders.
Afterwards, as far as I know, we hear no more about
the fate of " The Red Bull."
96 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
About " The Cockpit," which we mentioned together
with " The Red Bull," the information is equally scanty.
As we gather from the name, it was originally a place
used for cock-fights. But as to the date at which it was
rebuilt into a real theatre, there is no more accurate
information than a passage in Camderis " Annals of
James I.," in 1617, where he speaks of it as newly
erected (nuper erectum). l
In Stow's Chronicle of the same year it is spoken of
as "a new play-house."
In this year, on Shrove Tuesday, it was stormed and
pillaged by London apprentices, who set fire to it, so
that it was burned down. Neither " The Cockpit " nor
Drury Lane, the quarter in which it was situated, bore
a good reputation. It was not uncommon, on the whole,
for a number of public-houses of more or less bad repute,
to gather round the theatres, and here the disorderly
element in the pit-audience sought refuge after the per-
formance. And such ill-famed houses the apprentices of
the time considered it their privilege to attack during
Shrovetide, when they had their liberty and were allowed
to kick over the traces.
Whether they fell on the theatre by mistake instead
of on the neighbouring houses of ill-fame, or whether
" The Cockpit " Theatre was really so disorderly that it
deserved no better name than the one which the stage-
manager in Zola's " Nana" gives to his own theatre, we
are unable to tell.
If we are to believe the old enemy of theatres, the
Puritan Prynne, the play-houses of his time were not
1 Comp. Collier : History of English Dramatic Poetry, iii. 136.
THE THEATRES 97
much better than their improper neighbours. In a
passage in his extensive work " Histriomastix," he first
tells us how the theatres of the Greeks and Romans
were the homes of unchastity, and that there young
women were simply trained for houses of ill-fame.
" How farre this usage yet continues I cannot positively
determine ; yet this I have heard by good intelligence
that our common Strumpets and Adulteresses after our
Stage-plays ended, are oft-times prostituted neere our
Play-houses, if not in them ; that our Theaters if they are
not Bawdy-houses (as they may easily be, since many
Players, if reports be true, are common Panders) yet
they are Cosin-germanes, at leastwise neighbours to
them : Witnesse the Cockpit and Drury-lane ; Black-
friers Playhouse, and Duke-Humfries ; the Red-bull,
and Turnbull-street ; the Globe, and Bank-side Brothel-
houses." l
Though certainly we cannot attach much credit to
good Mr Prynne, who, like so many other pretended
"saints," had the foible of indulging too much in gossip
upon sensual matters, there can scarcely be any doubt
that "The Cockpit" neither was nor ever became a
theatre of good reputation. Probably after its destruc-
tion in 1617 it adopted the name of " The Phcenix," but
generally we find it called by its original name. Nor
did the old "Bear-garden" succeed in persuading the
public to adopt the finer name of " The Hope," which
was given it by Henslowe in 1614.
In "The Cockpit" or "The Phcenix," the per-
1 W. Prynne : Histriomastix, or the Players Scourge, 1633, pp. 390 f.
III. G
98 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
formances were mainly given by " The Queen's Men,"
afterwards called " Beeston's Boys." It continued to
exist after the Restoration, but it lost all importance
when in the year 1663 the new Drury Lane Theatre,
called "The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane," — which was
not situated on the same site as " The Cockpit " — was
opened by Sir William Davenant.
There is still one little theatre — the last built during
this period — of which we have a few words to say.
We have mentioned above that " The Whitefriars "
and "The Salisbury Court" Theatre were one and the
same. This, however, means that " The Salisbury
Court," which was built in 1629 close to the old
Whitefriars' monastery or on its site, was now and
then mentioned by the old monastic name, like "The
Blackfriars " Theatre, though the latter had no other
name.
The old Whitefriars monastery of which Shake-
speare speaks in his Richard II I ^ no longer existed as
such in his time. It had given place to a number of
splendid dwellings for noblemen and other rich people.
But the old dilapidated refectory was used now and
then — probably not often — for dramatic performances.
I am inclined to believe that when, in 1608, "The
King's Servant's" drove "The Queen's Children" away
from Blackfriars,2 the latter went to the old refectory of
Whitefriars and tried their fortune there. At any rate,
1 Gloster. Take up the corse, Sirs.
Gentleman. Towards Chertsey, noble lord ?
Gloster. No, to Whitefriars ; there attend my coming.
Richard HI. i. 2.
2 See above, p. 38.
THE THEATRES 99
Nathaniel Field, the principal actor among " The
Queen's Children," acted his play A Woman is a
Weather-cock here about, or rather before, 1610. And
before this period we hear nothing about performances
at "The Whitefriars."
It is not likely that this monastic hall was ever con-
verted into a real theatre. When "Salisbury Court"
was built, it was on another site, though in the imme-
diate vicinity, and, no doubt, it was quite a new building.
The English conservatism, which in this case is highly
praiseworthy, and owing to which the names of the
streets in London are like a hand-book of the history of
the town, has also preserved the names of these two
old theatres in the two streets, Whitefriars Street and
Salisbury Court. They are situated in the central and
the busiest part of the town, both running into Fleet
Street.
We can say, then, in a certain sense that there was
a " Whitefriars' Theatre," the old hall of the monastery,
which was now and then used for dramatic performances,
and the more recent " Salisbury Court," which was a
real theatre, and which, we may be sure, rendered the
monastic hall quite superfluous, so that they did not
exist contemporaneously.
The new theatre seems to have been successful, but
not immediately. There is reason to believe that it was
first hired by a company which at that time bore the
name of "The Children of the King's Revels."1 This
1 The same which had formerly been called " The Queen's Children,"
but which after the death of Queen Anne, the wife of James I., received the
above name.
ioo HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
was scarcely a very distinguished company ; still, in
1632, it had plays written for its performances by so
noted an author as Shirley. In the same year " The
King's Children " — not to be confounded with " The
King's Servants," Shakespeare's old company — had to
leave "Salisbury Court" and go to the less-esteemed
" Fortune," while "Prince Charles's Men" moved into
the new little theatre, and immediately had a success in
Holland's Leaguer, the first amusing play by Marmyon.
Richard Brome also wrote for " Salisbury Court," where
his Antipodes was acted in 1638 by "The Queen's
Men."
On the whole the little theatre, about the exterior or
interior of which we know nothing except that, like
" The Cockpit," it was a private — which means a closed-
in and roofed — theatre, enjoyed a good reputation, and
may be ranked next to "The Blackfriars" and "The
Globe."
It survived the time of the Commonwealth, and was
used for acting after the Restoration, but was then
called " The Theatre in Dorset Court."
A general survey of the London Theatres between
1576 and 1642.
" THE THEATRE."
THE CURTAIN."
Built, 1576; pulled down, 1598; proprietor,
Burbage ; company, the Lord Chamberlain's ;
situation, Shoreditch, north-east of London;
public theatre.
Built, 1576 or 1577; date of destruction,
unknown ; proprietor, unknown ; company, the
Lord Chamberlain's, afterwards the Queen's
and the Prince's ; situation, Shoreditch ;
public theatre.
THE THEATRES
101
NEWINGTON BUTTS."
" THE ROSE."
BLACKFRIARS."
" THE SWAN "
OR
" PARIS GARDEN."
" GLOBE."
" FORTUNE."
RED BULL."
" HOPE "
,OR
" BEAR-GARDEN."
Dates of building and destruction, unknown ;
proprietor, Henslowe; company, the Lord
Admiral's ; situation, Newington (Lambeth),
south side of London, right bank of the
Thames ; public theatre (?).
Built, 1592 ; date of destruction, unknown ;
proprietor, Henslowe ; company, the Lord
Admiral's ; situation, Bankside, southern bank
of the Thames ; public theatre.
Built, 1596; pulled down, 1647 (?); Pro~
prietor, J. Burbage and heirs ; company, the
Chapel Children — after 1608, the King's;
situation, present Queen Victoria Street, City ;
private theatre.
Built, about 1596 (?) ; date of destruction,
unknown ; proprietor, Francis Langley ; com-
pany, unknown ; situation, Paris Garden,
Bankside ; public theatre.
Built, 1598; burned, 1613; rebuilt, 1614;
pulled down, 1644; proprietors, Richard and
Cuthbert Burbage; company, the King's;
situation, Bankside, near St Saviour's ; public
theatre.
Built, 1599; burned, 1621; rebuilt, 1622 (?);
pulled down, about 1661; proprietors,
Henslowe and Alleyn; company, the Lord
Admiral's (the Prince's, the Fortune's) ; situa-
tion, Golden Lane, Middlesex; public
theatre.
Built, about 1 5 99 (?); rebuilt, about i63o(?);
pulled down, about 1663 (?) ; proprietor, un-
known ; company, the Queen's (the Prince's,
Bull Company); situation, St John Street,
Clerkenwell ; private theatre.
Built (as theatre), 1613 ; pulled down, about
1644 (?); proprietors, Henslowe and Alleyn ;
company, the Lady Elizabeth's; situation,
Bankside ; public theatre.
102 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
" COCKPIT "
OR
" PHCENIX."
" SALISBURY COURT "
OR
" WHITEFRIARS."
Built, about 1615 (?); pulled down, after
1663; proprietor, unknown; company, the
Lady Elizabeth's (the Queen's, Beeston's
Boys); situation, Drury Lane; private
theatre.
Built, 1629; pulled down (?), after the
Restoration; proprietor, unknown; company,
Children of the Revels and the Prince's;
situation, Salisbury Court (close to Fleet
Street) ; private theatre.
GENERAL THEATRICAL CONDITIONS
I
Hours of Performance — Play-bills — Taylor's Rhyming Matches — Prices of
Admission and Gatherers — Proceeds of the Performances, and Fees
Paid by the Court — Accommodation.
WHEN the trumpets sent out their shrill blasts over the
roofs of London, and coloured silk flags were hoisted on
the masts of the little garret-like towers which rose from
the top of the circular walls enclosing the theatres, when
the multifarious signs, the Swan, Atlas carrying the globe,
the Goddess of Fortune, and the rest, were swinging in
the wind, everybody knew that the theatrical performances
were going to begin, and playgoers made haste to finish
their dinner in order to secure a good seat in time.
In the earliest times, when the taste for theatrical
entertainments was reaching its height, though the
number of play-houses was small, people frequently
neglected their dinner and took their seats a long time
in advance, waiting patiently for the beginning of the
play ; if they caught sight of an actor peeping out from
behind the draperies in the background to watch the
filling of the house, they would greet him respectfully.1
It was the custom to attend to business early in the
1 " For they to theatres were pleased to come,
Ere they had din'd, to take up the best room ;
There sat on benches not adorn'd with mats,
And graciously did veil their high-crown'd hats
103
104 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
day ; eleven o'clock was the hour for the Exchange, and
twelve was dinner-time. So the play probably com-
menced between one and two. But this was in the
good old times at the close of the sixteenth century ; we
soon hear of the " modern " fashion of dining as late as
two o'clock,1 and the theatre, which has always very
much depended on people's dinner-time, had to put off
the play till three o'clock.
On particular occasions, for instance, when a new
play was to be performed, it became the custom to secure
a place in time by sending a servant who occupied a seat
till his master arrived. On the whole, it was considered
more distinguished to create a little sensation by de-
laying one's entrance till after the beginning of the
performance.
During the earliest period of the theatres there were
performances every day, including Sundays, though not
during the hours of service, and this fashion continued
during the time of Queen Elizabeth, to the great annoy-
ance of the Puritans, who had to endure the reconciliation
by the head of the empire of the duties as Christian
Majesty with her presence at dramatic performances on
holidays. A prohibition from the Lord Mayor in 1580
was not obeyed. Under James I. public performances
on Sundays were indeed forbidden by an Act of Parlia-
ment, but the Court did not comply with this order, and
King James found pleasure in going to plays and masques,
To every half-dress'd player, as he still
Through hangings peep'd to see the galleries fill."
Davenant : Prologue to The Unfortunate Lovers, quoted
by Malone, Historical Account, p. 157, n. 9.
1 Dekker : The Gulfs Horn-book, 1609.
GENERAL THEATRICAL CONDITIONS 105
of which he was very fond, on Sundays as well as on
week days.
Though no daily press existed in the time of Shake-
speare, the public had no great difficulty in learning which
plays were to be acted in the theatres.
The " water-poet," Taylor, in one of his humorous
writings,1 tells us a little " quiblet " about Field, which
shows this very clearly : " Master Field, the player,
riding up Fleet Street a great pace, a gentleman called
to him, and asked him what play was played that day ?
He (being angry to be stayed on so frivolous a demand)
answered that he might see what play was to be played
upon every post. I cry you mercy (said the gentleman) ;
I took you for -a.post, you rode so fast."
So this was the custom. Printed bills were stuck on
posts 2 — just as they are now — on which the title of the
play was announced, but neither the name of the author
nor those of the actors. In another place the same
"water-poet" also informs us of the number of bills
that were usually printed.
Once — it was in 1 6 1 4 — he had challenged the rhymer,
William Fennor, to a competition in the art of impro-
vised rhyming. The match was to take place in " The
Hope " Theatre, but the false rhymer Fennor left the
water-poet in the lurch, and kept away on the day of
performance. The affair created some sensation, and
1 John Taylor : Wit and Mirth ; the anecdote is called " a quiblet."
2 " They use to set up their billes upon posts some certaine days before, to
admonish the people to make resort to their theatres, that they may thereby
be the better furnished and the people prepared to fill their purses with their
treasures." — John Northbrook : Treatise against Idleness, vaine Playes and
Interludes.
io6 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
Taylor wrote an indignant pamphlet in verse about the
disgraceful way in which he had been treated. He says
in the Preface : " Bee it therefore knowne unto all men
that I, John Taylor, Waterman, did agree with William
Fennor (who arrogantly and falsely entitles himselfe the
King's Majesties Riming Poet) to answer me at a triall
of Wit, on the seventh of October last 1614 on the Hope
Stage on the Bankside, and the said Fennor received of
mee ten shillings in earnest of his comming to meet me,
whereupon I caused 1000 bills to be Printed, and divulg'd
my name 1000 wayes and more, giving my Friends and
divers of my acquaintance notice of this Bear Garden
banquet of dainty conceits ; and when the day came that
the Play should have been performed, the hous being
fill'd with a great Audience, who had all spent their
monies extraordinarily : then this Companion for an
Asse, ran away and left me for a Foole, amongst
thousands of critical Censurers, when I was ill thought
of by my friends, scorned by my foes and in conclusion
in a greater puzzell than the blinde Beare in the midst
of all her whipbroth ; Besides the summe of twenty
pounds in money I lost my reputation amongst many
and gained disgrace instead of my better expectations."
From this we see that a thousand printed bills were
put up, at all events on special occasions ; for ordinary
performances this number seems disproportionately large.1
Strange to say, as far as I know, none of the printed
play-bills of the time have been preserved or discovered.
But among the many treasures 2 of Dulwich College we
1 Taylor's Revenge, or the Rimer William Fennor firkt, ferrited, and
finely fetcht over the coales. — Taylor's Works, 1630, pp. 142 ff.
2 Warne's Catalogue, etc., p. 83 (Ordish, 236).
GENERAL THEATRICAL CONDITIONS 107
have discovered a hand-written bill of a bear-fight, pro-
bably the MS. of the printed one. It dates from the
time of James I., and as the only authentic memorial of
the theatrical advertisements of the period, it may find a
place here. It runs as follows : —
" Tomorrowe beinge Thursdaie shalbe seen at the
Beargarden on the banckside a greate mach plaid by the
gamsters of Essex, who hath chalenged all comers what-
soever to plaie V dogges at the single beare for V
pounds, and also to wearie a bull dead at the stake ; and
for your better concent shall have plasant sport with the
horse and ape and wiping of the blind beare. Vivat Rex ! "
We may, however, to a certain extent draw our own
conclusions as to the form of the playbills by reading the
" long-tailed " titles 1 which were given to books by the
printers, e.g. in the earliest quarto editions of some of
Shakespeare's dramas. A few examples will show the
style. Henry IV. receives the following title : " The
History of Henrie the Fourth ; With the battell at
Shrewsburie, between the King and Lord Henry Percy,
surnamed Henrie Hotspur of the North. With the
humorous conceits of Sir John Falstalffe."
The Merchant of Venice starts with a still longer
recommendation : "The Excellent History of the
Merchant of Venice. With the extreme cruelty of
Shylocke the Jew towards the said Merchant, in cut-
ting a just pound of his flesh. And the obtaining of
Portia, by the choyse of three Caskets."
This is how King Lear makes his appearance :
1 This expression is used by Thomas Nash in the Preface of his play,
Pierce Penniless. He writes to his printer : " First of all cut off the long-
tailed title."
io8 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
" Mr William Shakespeare, His True Chronicle History
of the life and death of King Lear, and his three
Daughters. With the unfortunate life of Edgar, sonne
and heir to the Earle of Glocester, and his sullen and
assumed humour of Tom of Bedlam. As it was plaid
before the King's Majesty at White-Hall, upon S.
Stephens night, in Christmas Hollidaies." l
The playbills do not give the names of the persons
represented or of the actors. The custom of doing so
was probably not introduced into England before the
eighteenth century.2
In A Midsummer Nighf s Dream Shakespeare himself
makes fun of the ludicrous playbills by making Philos-
trate read out about: "a tedious brief scene of young
Pyramus, And his love Thisbe ; very tragical mirth."
The prices of admission were not written on the
playbills, but several passages in the dramatic literature
1 These circumstantial programmes went to Germany with the travelling
English companies, and in that country grew to a unique degree of tasteless
length. In a Gotha play-calendar of 1783 I find the following magnificently
florid play-bill of Hamlet : " Indeed Landshut never saw a grander play ! —
What thoughts ! Exalted, stirring, incomparable ! One Shakespear [sic]
has existed in the world, who has written in such a masterly way and
rendered himself immortal in both posterities [!] There is but one Hamlet
who can make the spectator's blood run cold, oppress his heart and make
his senses feel eternity. This tragedy is a true and horrible story from
Denmark, and in a way which makes us shiver it contains the law of retribu-
tion." (Then follows an account of the subject. In its German form the
play ends with these words : " Hamlet mounts on his lawful throne " . . .).
"Where could there be a man who would not like to see and admire Hamlet
and pay his respects to him and tender him his applause." After this we
cannot wonder at the German title given to another Shakespearean tragedy,
Richard III. : " Richard der dritte, oder der grausame Protektor " ; or that
a seventeenth century adaptation of Hamlet bears the title : " Der bestrafte
Brudermord oder Prinz Hamlet aus Danemark."
2 J. P. Collier, indeed, presents us with a playbill of 1663, containing a
complete list of the players and the characters represented, but this docu-
ment must undoubtedly be regarded with great suspicion.
GENERAL THEATRICAL CONDITIONS 109
of the time enable us to form an idea of the usual
entrance fee, though not of the exact prices of the
different places in each theatre ; nor would this be of any
particular interest.
As far as we can judge from illustrations, the theatres
of the Shakespearean period had only one entrance,
probably for the practical purpose of simplifying the
collection of the fees and rendering it difficult for the
public to slip into the theatre without paying.
At the entrance stood the trusted man of the com-
pany, the "gatherer," with his cash-box, in which he
collected the sixpences, which he afterwards delivered
to the leading actor. Inside the theatre were several
gatherers, who claimed the extra prices for the better
seats. These gatherers were sometimes women. To
the inferior actors it was a coveted addition to their
income to have their wives employed as gatherers.1 It
is, as far as I know, the only employment a woman
could obtain at the old English theatres. We are aware
that no woman appeared on the stage either as an actress
or as a super.
Among the Alleyn Papers there is a short letter from
the actor, William Birde, in which he speaks of the
gatherer's functions, and which, we suppose, is the only
direct testimony about these functionaries. As it affords
us a good peep behind the scenes, and as it is very little
known, I do not hesitate to quote it here. It runs as
follows : —
"SIR,
" There is one John Russell, that by your appoynt-
.
1 Comp. Alleyn Papers, p. 51, where the wife of the actor Rose is recom-
mended for such a post.
no HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
ment was made a gatherer with us, but my fellowes
finding [him often] falce to us, have many tymes warnd
him from taking the box ; and he as often, with moste
damnable othes, hath vowde never to touch ; yet, not-
withstanding his excecrable othes, he hath taken the
box, and many tymes moste unconscionablye gathered, for
which we have resolved he shall never more come to the
doore. Yet, for your sake, he shall have his wages, to
be a necessary atendaunt on the stage,1 and if he will
pleasure himself and us to mend our garments, when he
hath leysure, weele pay him for that to. I pray send us
word if this motion will satisfye you ; for him, his dis-
honestye is such we knowe it will not.
" Thus yealding ourselves in that and a farr greater
matter to be comanded by you, I commit you to God.
" Your loving friend to commaund,
"W. BlRDE.
" To his loving frend, Mr Allin, give these."2
With regard to one of the. theatres we happen to
possess minute information about the scale of admission
fees. Bartholomew Fair, a comedy by Ben Jonson,
which was played at "The Hope" in 1614, has an
induction acted by various functionaries — the stage-
keeper, the book-holder, and the scrivener,' in which
Jonson writes very sarcastically of the audience. He
makes a sort of bargain with the spectators, and says,
1 It has been mentioned above, p. 6, that the gatherers also served as
supers.
2 The last line is the usual form of address on the letters of those times.
The MS. of the above was in the possession of Halliwell-Phillipps, the
Shakespeare expert. It is printed in Collier's Alleyn Papers, pp. 32 f.
GENERAL THEATRICAL CONDITIONS TII
among other things : "It is further agreed that every
person here have his or their free-will of censure, to like
or dislike at their own charge, the author having now
departed with his right ; it shall be lawful for any man
to judge his six-pen' worth, his twelve-pen' worth, so to
his eighteen-pence, two shillings, half-a-crown, to the
value of his place ; provided always his place get not
above his wit. And if he pay for half-a-dozen, he may
censure for all them too, so that he will undertake that
they shall be silent. He shall put in for censures here
as they do for lots at the lottery ; marry, if he drops
but sixpence at the door, and will censure a crown's
worth, it is thought there is no conscience or justice in
that."1
From this we gather that the cheapest place cost
sixpence, the dearest half-a-crown. Other passages in
contemporary plays and pamphlets confirm Ben Jonson's
statement ; others again speak of lower prices, even down
to id. However, we have no particular reason to stop
and consider the apparent divergency in the reports
about the admission fees. Of course, they were not
quite stationary in those times, any more than they are
now, nor were they the same in the various theatres.
Thus we know that the prices were doubled, nay, some-
times trebled, at the first performances,2 and, very likely,
1 Ben Jonson : Bartholomew Fair.
2 Scarcely, however, in the proper Shakespearean time. In the prologue
of a play of 1678 we read the following lines : —
" An actress in a cloud's a strange surprise,
And you ne'er paid treble prices to be wise."
There are many testimonies to prove that even in early times the prices
were raised when anything particular was played.
ii2 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
the prices were lowered in bad times, or when the plays
were performed by inferior companies.
>/ There is no reason to think, for instance, that " The
Earl of Sussex's Men" could obtain the same prices as
" The Lord Chamberlain's Company," even if they acted
in the same theatre.
However, in the main, we may safely assume that
the scale of prices mentioned by Ben Jonson was the
normal one for good companies, and, on the whole, was
maintained without much alteration from the earliest days
of the theatres down to the Civil War in 1642.
So the prices were by no means low, if we consider
that the corresponding value in our own days would
make at least eight times the amount.
Twenty pounds seems to have been a good average
result from one performance in a well-filled theatre. It
was, as we see, the sum which John Taylor lost by his
failure in the " Hope," and it was the amount paid by the
Queen to a company when she ordered it to perform at
court in the usual hours of performance in the theatre.
Royal persons, it must be observed, did not go to
the theatres, but the actors were engaged to play at the
palaces, and received a salary for it. As a rule the
performances at court took place in the evening, so that
they did not collide with the public performances. In
these cases only £10 was paid, which thus gave a net
profit. But if a company was ordered to play at the
usual hours of performance in the theatre they received
^20, in order to cover the remuneration which they lost.
If we fix the average price of admission at a shilling,
we get the result that a well-filled house did not hold
GENERAL THEATRICAL CONDITIONS 113
more than about 400 persons, a number which surprises us
by its smallness, and which, indeed, differs widely from the
above-quoted statement by de Witt that " The Swan "
Theatre was able to hold 3000 persons. Nevertheless,
it seems to me nearer the truth than the latter number.
For, as a matter of fact, the theatres were all compara-
tively small, and the stage, which protruded far out, took
up a great part of the pit, whereas a theatre which is
to hold 3000 persons must be of colossal dimensions,
especially if there are only three galleries, and a fourth
part of the floor is occupied by the stage.
We may no doubt safely assume that no theatre of
the Shakespearean period was able to hold more than
600 persons.
II
Expenses Then and Now — The Stage and its Equipment — Spectators on
the Stage.
THOUGH, as we have seen, the English theatres of
those times were not able to hold very large crowds
of people, they were, on the whole, very profitable
enterprises. This was due to the smallness of the
expense connected with them. From many of the
expenses, which now weigh heavily in the manager's
budget, and at any rate make the working of a theatre a
very risky enterprise, the theatres of those times were
entirely or partly exempt. We need only think of such
an item as the lighting of the house, of which most
theatres, where the acting took place by daylight and in
the open air, knew nothing, and which even in the
III. H
n4 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
closed theatres amounted to a very small sum compared
with the weight of this burden nowadays.
We need say nothing of the large and compli-
cated system of scenery and mechanism, which is the
worst impediment to modern dramatic art, exceedingly
expensive, as it always is, but usually without any power
of creating illusion, and very frequently ugly and devoid
of style. With such impediments the old English actors
and managers were not troubled, and much time and
money were thus saved.
We must not fancy, however, that in those times
expensive scenic equipment was quite unknown in
England. At court festivals enormous sums were
spent on decorations imported from Italy and France,
under the auspices of Inigo Jones, the collaborator and
afterwards the bitter enemy1 of Ben Jonson. But the
stage-managers justly reasoned that a public which paid
sixpence or a shilling to see a play could not expect
thousands of pounds to be spent on an equipment, which
would perhaps be useless after a few performances. And
thereby they wisely saved a good deal of money.
They saved also a great deal of time. Probably no
outsider has any idea what a disproportionate amount of
time, trouble and worry is lavished on modern scenic
equipment, with a result which in most cases lacks
artistic refinement and style. Several months' toil is
1 The enmity between Inigo Jones and Ben Jonson partly dated from
the time when Jones claimed to have his name put first on the title-page as
author of the " Masques " of Ben Jonson, which he had equipped, and for
which he had arranged the machinery. Ben Jonson was blamed for having
called Inigo Jones a fool. " I never said so," Jonson positively declared,
" but I have said that he is an arch scoundrel, and this I maintain." (Ben
Jonson' s Conversations with Drummond, Lond. 1842, p. 31.)
GENERAL THEATRICAL CONDITIONS 115
frequently spent on plays which are not performed more
than a few times. But even if justice is done to the
scenery, and the expenses are covered by the number of
times the play is acted, much time is lost in other ways
by the present method of equipment.
A great Shakespearean drama performed in modern
style with many changes of scene, in which all the work-
men in the theatre, painters, joiners, smiths, upholsterers
and scene-shifters, have done their best to render the
scenery as illusive as possible, could not possibly be
acted in its original form within a reasonable space of
time. The old pieces have to be cut down, and the
process has to be conducted so thoroughly that much
which is good and important is necessarily lost.1 In
Shakespeare's time his own plays and those of his
companions were acted all through and without omissions
during two or three hours — the general duration
in those times of what we call a full-length play.
Fortunately the public of the time was able to enjoy fine
and witty speeches well delivered, without demanding
that the actors should be picturesque accessories to the
scenes produced by the scene-shifters and scene-painters.
1 On the whole, I see no sacrilege in omitting passages of the works of
Shakespeare and other classics. Let us recall Ben Jonson's words : " I
remember, the players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare,
that in his writing, whatsoe'er he penned, he never blotted out a line. My
answer hath beene, would he had blotted a thousand ; — which they thought
a malevolent speech. I had not told posterity this, but for their ignorance,
who choose that circumstance to commend their friend by wherein he most
faulted ; and to justify my own candour, — for I lov'd the man, and doe
honour his memory, on this side idolatry, as much as any." Ben Jonson's
Timber or Discoveries, 1641, reprinted by Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines,
p. 649. Those who cannot see spots in Shakespeare may easily be suspected
of being equally unable to measure the highest summits of art to which this
marvellous poet ascended.
n6 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
I have given elsewhere l a connected account of the
development of the stage from the Middle Ages to
the Renaissance, and I have shown that the English
stage did not materially differ from the simple stage-
platforms of the rest of Europe, though there were
several peculiarities in the auditorium and the outward
shape of the theatre. I consider it superfluous to repeat
in detail what has been described already.
Indeed, there is nothing obscure in the arrangement
of the old English stage. The many confused and
erroneous statements which, in spite of this, we find
even in the most recent works on Shakespeare, are
probably due to the fact that the principal stress in
these works is generally laid on the critical appreciation
of the dramatic literature of the period, while the archaeo-
logical side is neglected, so that one writer copies from
another the theories which were current fifty or a hundred
years ago, without investigating the later incidental dis-
coveries of pictures and documents which have now given
us a full and clear idea of the Shakespearean stage.
We do not think it unreasonable, however, to drive
a stake through the heart of the constantly recurring
delusion about a front curtain of that stage, and of that
also about the fantastic borders representing " heaven "
or the blue air, which are still haunting the imagination
of more than one student and casting a shadow over
their idea about the stage.
The stage of Shakespeare had no front curtain, and
could not have had one.
It was a platform projecting into the audience and
open on three sides. If it had been covered before the
1 In vol. ii. of the present work.
GENERAL THEATRICAL CONDITIONS 117
beginning of the performance or between the acts, there
must have been three curtains, which, like other curtains,
must have been suspended on something. That would
have necessitated poles or columns at the corners of the
stage, between which the curtains might be pulled. But
of all this there is no vestige on the Renaissance stage
whether in England or elsewhere.
But the Shakespearean theatre, like all other European
stage-platforms, had a back curtain, that is, a drapery which
separated the stage properly so-called from the tiring-
house. How this drapery was used, and how the room
behind it was sometimes added to the scene of action, are
matters of which I have given a detailed account in the
above-mentioned passage of vol. ii. of the present work.1
A glance at the three drawings of stages, figs. 3 and 7,
and at the illustration discovered by Gaedertz, will give
a very clear idea of the state of things. The small
drawing from the title-page of Alabaster's " Roxana " is
especially instructive.
This illustration, which as yet is not widely known,
shows us also that the stage was sometimes surrounded
by a low railing on the three sides which turned towards
the public, probably in order to serve as protection
against the too indiscreet approaches of the audience.2
1 Middle Ages and Renaissance, pp. 317-323.
2 That in some theatres these balustrades surrounded the stage is shown
also by the two following quotations : —
" And now that I have vaulted up so hye,
Above the stage-rayles of this earthen globe,
I must turn actor." (Black Booke, 1604).
" Monsieur, you may draw up your troop of force
Within the pales."
(Davenant's The Play-house to be let.
Quoted by Malone, Historical Account, p. 123, n. 3.)
n8 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
As to the so-called " heavens," such objects really
existed, but they had certainly as little resemblance to
our modern top-borders as a tester made by an up-
holsterer has to " this most excellent canopy, the air."
The "heavens" were a kind of awning fastened to the
tiring-house, and protecting part of the stage against
rain, for which purpose they were provided with leaden
gutters. In this way, as we have seen, they were
arranged in " The Fortune " theatre (comp. above, p. 67).
Of course it is entirely out of the question that there
should have been any kind of decoration corresponding
to our borders on this stage-platform, which was quite
open and undecorated ; and the space behind it, which
was roofed, generally represented a room, and, therefore,
could not have wanted such decoration.
We see, then, that scarcely any money was spent in
the equipment of the stage, except on the properties
which were needed in the plays, but which can hardly be
called stage furniture. And even these were neither very
numerous nor very expensive. We have an inventory of
Henslowe's of March loth, I598,1 containing a list of all
the properties of " The Lord Admiral's Men," which
contained altogether only thirty-five items. Some of
these are very curious and give an insight into the
theatrical life of the time. I quote a few of them : —
Item, I Rock, I Bow, I Grave, I Mouth of Hell.1
Item, II Marchpanes [artificial loaves] and the City
of Rome.
1 Published by Malone, Historical Account (additions), pp. 377 ff., and
after him by Collier in English Dramatic Poetry, iii. pp. 158 ff. The MS.
is now lost.
GENERAL THEATRICAL CONDITIONS 119
Item, I Lionshide, I Bearshide, and Faeton's limbs,
and Faeton's ear, and Argosses [i.e. Argus's]
head.
Item, I crosses [i.e. Iris's] Head and Rainbow, I little
Alter.
Item, Cupedes Bow and quiver, the Cloth with Sun
and Moon.2
Item, A Boar's Head and Serberosses [i.e. Cerberus's]
III Heads.
Item, Mercury's Wings, Tasso Picture, I Helmet
with a Dragon, I Shield with III Lions,
a Shovel of elmwood.
Item, III Tamburines, I Dragon in Faustes [Dr
Faustus].
Item, III Imperial Crowns, I plain Crown.
Item, I Ghost's Crown, I Crown with a Sun.
Item, I Kettle for the Jew [i.e. The Jew of Malta by
Marlowe].
The scenic equipment, therefore, was anything but
expensive, and the theatre derived even more profit from
the stage than it does at present.
From the beginning of the seventeenth century —
scarcely before, or, at all events, there is nothing to prove
it — places were hired for money on the stage itself. At
the outset nicely furnished boxes were let to distin-
guished gentlemen in the galleries opposite to the stage
(comp. fig. 3) ; but it soon became fashionable for
1 From mediaeval times onwards the entrance into hell had been repre-
sented by a dragon's mouth.
' 2 This little cloth, the object of which we do not know, has caused the
belief that painted scenery was used.
120 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
young gallants and gulls to place themselves on the
very stage, where they entered deliberately from behind
the back curtain, and seated themselves on small
three-legged stools, which were let for this purpose by
the actors for an extra payment of a shilling or
sixpence.
Thomas Dekker in his "Gull's Hornbook" (1609)
has a chapter which he calls "How a gallant is to
behave himself in a theatre,"1 in which he gives an
amusing and graphic description of the conceited way in
which young dandies exhibited themselves on the stage.
He writes : —
" Present not your selfe on the stage (especially at a
new play) until the quaking prologue is ready to enter ;
for then it is time, as though you were one of the pro-
perties, or that you dropt of [i.e. off] the hangings, to
creep from behind the arras, with your tripos or three-
legged stoole in one hand, and a teston 2 mounted between
a fore-finger and a thumb, in the other ; for if you should
bestow your person upon the vulgar, when the belly of
the house is but half full, your apparel is quite eaten up,
the fashion lost, and the proportion of your body in more
danger to be devoured, than if it were served up in the
counter amongst the poultry.3 Avoid this as you would
the baston."
It was still more fashionable to be attended by a
page, who stood behind the stool on which his master
1 Quoted in Malone : Historical Account, p. 80, n. 4.
2 A silver coin worth sixpence.
3 In Shakespeare's time there was a prison in London called the Poultry
Compter, in which the prisoners were fed with remnants from the sheriff's
table.
GENERAL THEATRICAL CONDITIONS 121
was seated smoking his pipe.1 When the pipe was
empty, and his master handed it to him with a lazy
gesture, it was his duty to refill and relight it.
This bad custom of providing seats for spectators on
the stage itself became more and more prevalent ; it was
done partly in order to increase the proceeds, partly to
satisfy the vain desire of the many dandies to display
themselves before the public. As late as the beginning
of the seventeenth century this custom does not seem to
have been quite common, nor generally allowed. In the
Induction of John Marston's " Malcontent " (printed in
1604, performed without the Induction in 1601 at Black-
friars) we find a little scene which enables us to draw
this conclusion. In this Induction — which is of some
interest in theatrical history — the comic actor William Sly
personates such a young dandy who wants to force him-
self on to the stage, and the following dialogue takes
place between him and the tireman, who follows him with
a stool in his hand : —
Tireman. Sir, the gentlemen2 will be angry if you
sit here.
1 " When young Rogero goes to see a play
His pleasure is you place him on the stage,
The better to demonstrate his array,
And how he sits attended by his page."
H. Parrot : Laquei Ridiculosi, or Springes for
Woodcocks, 1613.
" The Globe to-morrow acts a pleasant play ;
In hearing it consume the irksome day ;
Go, take a pipe of To : the crowded stage
Must needs be greced with you and your page."
Henry "Hutton : Folly's Anatomy, 1619, quoted
by Malone, Historical Account, p. 82.
2 The actors had a right to call themselves gentlemen.
122 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
Sly. Why ; we may sit upon the stage at a private
house. Thou dost not take me for a country gentleman,
dost? Dost thou think I fear hissing? I'll hold my life
thou tookest me for one of the players.
Tireman. No, sir.
Sly. By God's slid,1 if you had, I would have given
you but sixpence for your stool.
The spectators who wanted places on the stage did
not pass through the ordinary entrance, but through the
tiring-house, and here they paid the regular fee, while
the sixpence or shilling for the stool was extra. And this
tiring-house due was soon relied upon 2 as a fixed income.
But this custom, though it might considerably increase
the daily proceeds, soon became an intolerable nuisance
to the actors, who were annoyed and disturbed in their
performance by the number of restless gallants. The
latter, however, were not easily driven away from their
time-honoured places, and in the end a royal proclama-
tion was required to restore order on the stage. In
February 1665 an order was issued in which we read:
' ' Whereas complaint hath been made unto us of great
disorders in the Attiring-house of the Theatre of our
dearest brother the Duke of York, under the government
of our trusty and well beloved Sir Wm. Davenant, by
the resort of persons thither, to the hinderance of the
actors and interruption of the scenes. Our will and
1 Senseless oaths of this kind were fashionable among the gallants, and
the plays of the time frequently mock this bad habit. Compare, for instance,
Ben Jonson's Every Man in His Humour.
2 This appears distinctly from an actor's contract of 1614, in which these
tiring-house dues are mentioned several times. Comp. \heAlleynPapers,
P- 76.
GENERAL THEATRICAL CONDITIONS 123
pleasure is, that no person of what quality soever do
presume to enter at the door of the Attiring-house, but
such only as do belong to the Company, and are em-
ployed by them. Requiring the guards attending there
and all whom it may concern to see that obedience be
given hereunto." l
III
Authors' fees — Censorship — Sir Henry Herbert's notes — Shakespeare's fame
as an author.
ANOTHER thing which rendered the position of manager
so profitable was the comparatively small fees paid for
the pieces.
Unfortunately we have no means of ascertaining how \
much Shakespeare received for his plays. He wrote
exclusively for one particular company — "The Lord
Chamberlain's," afterwards "The King's Men" — and
from this company nothing in the way of accounts has
ever come to light. But with regard to the money
matters of other authors, Henslowe's Diary and the
A i 'ley m Papers afford much valuable information.
1 Printed by Collier from a manuscript in the State Paper Office, English
Dramatic Poetry, iii. p. 154, n. 2. In France the same bad habit flourished
at the time of Moliere. Chappuzeau writes (1674) in his Thddtre Franqais
(livre iii. p. 1 53) : " Les Acteurs ont souvent de la peine a se ranger sur le
Theatre, tant les ailes sont remplies de gens de qualit^ qui n'en peuvent faire
qu'un riche ornement." The French stage, however, was not so fortunate
as the English in having the custom abolished. Not till 1759 the Comedie
Fran$aise, by the liberality of a noble playgoer, succeeded in introducing a
reasonable arrangement of the stage, by which spectators were entirely
excluded from it. Comp. Ad. Jullien : Les spectateurs sur le Thtdtre, Paris,
1875-
124 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
Henslowe, as we have seen, was no liberal employer,
and was very eager to take advantage of every oppor-
tunity as it offered, and at a period when there was no
particularly strong competition between the theatres, we
find him paying ridiculously small sums to the companies
employed by him. In fact he did not buy the pieces
himself, but acted as a kind of agent between the
authors and the actors. We see from the complaints
lodged against him by his company (comp. above, p. 88)
that they had "paid him upwards of ^200 for play-
books, and yet he refuses to give us the manuscripts of
any of them."1 He kept them, indeed, as security for
the debt in which the actors stood to him.
By his extensive system of loans Henslowe kept
authors as well as actors in constant dependence on
himself, which enabled him to exercise a considerable
pressure on the price of plays. In 1598 we find him
paying Drayton, Dekker and Chettle ^4 and 5 shillings
in full payment for a piece with the title Fames wares of
Henry the fyrste and the pry nee of Walles? Nor did
the unfortunate Dekker — who, it is true, spent half his
life in the debtor's prison — receive more for his Phaeton,
while he was paid five pounds for his The Triplicity of
Cuckolds. Before the year 1600 the ordinary price seems
to have been six or seven pounds, and in Henslowe's
account-books down to this date it nowhere exceeds
eight pounds.
By the sale of his piece the author entirely gave up
1 Articles of oppression against Mr Hinchlowe, comp. the Alley n
Papers, p. 81.
2 Henslowe's Diary, p. 120.
GENERAL THEATRICAL CONDITIONS 125
his right to the possession of it, and it belonged for ever
to the company. The actors might have it altered if
they found that it no longer suited the taste of the time,
and as the manuscript belonged to them, the author
could not have it printed without the permission of the
company. The many pirated editions which nevertheless
appeared, without the consent of authors and actors,
were picked up through the ear in the theatre and
taken down in shorthand,1 whereby, of course, the text
became utterly defective. Against pirate editors the
authors and actors had no other remedy than to pay
them for omitting to publish the piece. And that
this was really done we see from an entry in Henslowe's
Diary, which runs thus : " Lent unto Robart Shawe,
the 1 8 of marche 1599, to geve unto the printer, to
staye the printing of patient gresell, the some of
xxxxs."2
This piece, by the by, cost the old stage-manager
;£io, xios.,3 and on the whole, about the year 1600, we
notice an increase in the fees. While down to this
period the average payment is £6, it now rises as high
as £11. This was what Ben Jonson and Dekker
received in August 1599 for their sensational play
Page of Plymouth, a tragedy, the plot of which was
taken from a crime recently committed. While Hens-
1 " Some by stenography drew
The plot, put it in print, scarce one word true."
Thorn. Hey wood : Pleasant Dialogues and
Dramas (1637), quoted by Collier;
English Dramatic Poetry, iii. p. 193.
2 Henslowe's Diary, p. 167.
3 Not £9, IDS. as stated by Collier in the introduction to his Diary, p.
xxv. ; comp. Diary, pp. 158 and 162.
126 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
lowe's Diary never shows a higher price than this eleven
pounds, we see from letters written to him by authors-
published among the Alleyn Papers — that about 1613
the price rose again, no doubt on account of the eager
competition between the companies, especially those of
the King and of Prince Henry. From the earlier letter
from Robert Daborne, quoted above (p. 87), we learned
that elsewhere he had received £20 for his pieces, but
that Henslowe beat him down to £12, besides the
surplus of the second day's performance. In another
letter of June 25th, 1613, which is also very charac-
teristic, he writes as follows : —
" Mr Hinchlow, I perceave yu think I will be behind
with my Tragoedy ; if soe, yu might worthely account me
dishonest ; indeed for thear good and myne own I have
took extraordynary payns with the end, and alterd one
other scean in the third act, which they have now in
parts. For ye Arreighnment, if you will please to be my
paym1, as for the other, they shall have it ; if not, try my
Tragoedy first, and as yl proves, so deal with me ; in the
mean, my necessity is such yl I must use other means to
be furnisht upon it. Before God, I can have ^25 for it,
as some of ye company know ; but such is my much debt
to yu, y* so long as my labors may pleasure them, and
yu say ye word, I am wholy yours to be
"ever commaunded,
" ROB. DABORNE.
" I pray, Sr, if yu resolv
to do this curtesy for ye company,
let me have 403 more tell we scale
" 25 June, 1613 pade to Mr Daborne XXs."
GENERAL THEATRICAL CONDITIONS 127
We nowhere find an instance of a higher fee than
the ^25 which is mentioned here, and which, after all,
may not have existed anywhere but in Daborne's poetic
fancy. To this, of course, must sometimes be added
the net proceeds of a performance, which might increase
the profit considerably. If the play was particularly
successful, it seems to have been the custom for the
author to receive a small additional gratuity. At any
rate, we find some — not many — such entries in Hens-
lowe's accounts. Thus Thomas Dekker received ten
shillings "over and above his price" for his play Medi-
cine for a Curst Wife,1 and John Day and others the
same sum, which seems to have been the customary
amount.
But though the authors' fees were but small, the
managers had another item of expense, which was not
inconsiderable, at least compared with the modern state
of things. This was the tribute to the Censor.
King Henry the Eighth had in his time created an
office, the incumbent of which was called " The Master
of the Court Revels," and this functionary was entrusted
with the critical examination of all the plays which were
to be performed. Each play was to be " licensed " by
the Master, and he was at liberty to strike out any
passages according to his own judgment, or to forbid the
performance altogether. For his trouble in perusing the
plays and for striking out scandalous passages, particu-
larly " oaths, profanenesses and obscenities," besides, of
course, political indiscretions and attacks on particular
persons, the Master of the Revels fixed a fee which at
1 Henslowe's Diary, p. 240.
128 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
first does not seem to have been exorbitant. It is clear
that in 1591 Mr Edmund Tylney, who occupied the
post of Censor from 1578 to 1610, received no more than
five shillings for each new or revived play.1 But the
great arbitrary power which he possessed in his relations
with the managers rendered it easy for him to increase
his fees ; already in 1592 we find him charging 6sh. 8d.,
and in 1597 we find in Henslowe's account-book several
consecutive receipts of the following kind : " Received
the daie and yeare [May 3ist, 1597] above written, by
me Robert Johnson, to the use of the Mr- of the Revells,
of Phillippe Henslaye, the fulle and whole some of fortie
shillinges, dew for this presente monthe aforesaide." 2
The Master, then, had gradually managed to get a
monthly tribute of ^2 besides the fee for each play, for
we must not imagine that this remuneration had stopped ;
on the contrary, it had been raised to seven shillings,
which item of expense, however, the cunning Henslowe
seems to have transferred to the actors, judging by the
following entry in his book of the same year : " Lent
unto Thomas Dowton, for the company to paye to the
Mr of the Revells for lysensynge of II boockes, XI 1 1 Is ;
abated to Dawton Vs, so reaste 2."
It must be borne in mind, of course, that the Master
received an equal sum from each of the more important
managers — i.e. of four companies at least — which makes
£12 ; besides seven shillings for at least two plays monthly
of the same four companies, which comes to about ^3.
And all this money the Master received for the service
he rendered to authors and actors for striking out
1 Henslowe's Diary, pp. 18 ff. 2 Ibid., p. 79.
GENERAL THEATRICAL CONDITIONS 129
" oaths and profanenesses " in their plays ; for his court-
function he received a separate fee.
However, this monthly income, which to outsiders
would seem very large in proportion to the work, was
but small compared with the sums which later incum-
bents of the office were enabled to extort from the actors.
One of these, Sir Henry Herbert, Master of the
Revels from 1623 to 1662, has left a number of most
curious accounts, which prove that he "improved" much
upon his predecessors in the way he increased the
profits of the post. He can make money out of every-
thing, and he reckons only in pounds ; we never
read anything about shillings. He charges £2 for
reading a new play, £i for an old one ; ^4 a week
from each company ; besides the net proceeds of one
performance in the summer and one in the winter,
fixed at ,£100 each, and gratuities at Christmas and
at Lent of £3 each. Altogether his profits from the
theatres can scarcely have been less than what in our
time would equal about ^3900 a year. According to
his own calculation, they were even considerably higher
when, in 1662, to his great and very natural annoyance,
the post of Censor was abolished.
At all times this office has had its comic aspect,
though perhaps the holder has often been unconscious
of the fact, and Sir Henry Herbert does not fail to place
himself in an amusing light by his notes, which are both
naive and consequential, and in which the offence he
takes at wicked authors, his veneration of royalty, his
self-satisfaction and his joy at the abundant flow of fees,
are mixed up in the drollest manner,
in. i
i3o HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
We will quote a few passages, which will succeed,
better than any long description, in placing us at once in
the midst of the theatrical life of those times, at all
events in one corner of it.
In the year 1633 he receives for perusal a play
entitled The Young Admiral by James Shirley, a very
productive and popular author. It obtains his gracious
approval, because it is free from "oaths, prophaness or
obsceanes," and he thinks it may " serve for a patterne to
other poetts, not only for the bettring of maners and
language, but for the improvement of the quality, which
has received some brushings of late."
" When," he adds, with the unshakable faith of
literary censors in the importance of their own judg-
ments, " Mr Shirley has read this approbation, I know
it will encourage him to pursue this beneficial and
cleanly way of poetry, and when other poetts heare and
see his good success, I am confident they will imitate
the original for their own credit, and make such copies
in this harmless way, as shall speak them masters in
their art, at the first sight, to all judicious spectators. ..."
" I have entered this allowance, for direction to my
successor, and for example to all poetts, that shall write
after the date hereof." 1
Immediately after, he tells us that "at the old Ex-
change " he has met the leading man of " Queen's com-
pany," the actor Beeston, who has evidently courted
his favour, for Sir Herbert adds : " He gave my wife a
payre of gloves that cost him at least twenty shillings."
In the previous year another play by Shirley, The
1 Malone : Historical Account, p. 293.
GENERAL THEATRICAL CONDITIONS 131
Ball, had been acted ; but this piece had not been to
Herbert's taste at all.for it contained portraits of many lords
and courtiers, which evidently had not been discovered by
the Censor while perusing the play ; he writes : . . . " ther
were divers personated so naturally, both of lords and
others of the court, that I took it ill and would have
forbidden the play, but that Biston promiste many things
which I found faulte withall should be left out, and that
he would not suffer it to be done by the poett any more,
who deserves to be punished ; and the first that offends
in this kind, of poets or players, shall be sure of publique
punishment." x
In Ben Jonson's Tale of a Tub he strikes out the
whole part of Vitruvius Hoop at the instigation of Inigo
Jones, the royal scene-painter, who in this character
saw a satire on himself. His reward for this is £2.
Now and then, nevertheless, we see his literary
verdicts reversed by King Charles I. himself, which
causes him to write the following amusing note : " This
morning, being the 9th of January 1633, the Kinge was
pleasd to call mee into his withdrawinge chamber to the
windowe, wher he went over all that I had croste in
Davenant's play-booke, and allowing of faith and slight
to be asseverations only and no oathes, markt them to
stande, and some other few things, but in the greater
part allowed of my reformations. This was done upon
a complaint of Mr Endymion Porter in December."
"The Kinge is pleased to take faith, death, slight,
for asseverations and no oaths, to which I doe humbly
submit as my master's judgment ; but under favour
1 M alone : Historical Account, p. 292.
132 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
conceive them to be oaths, and enter them here, to
declare my opinion and submission."1
Another time he himself applies to the King about
a play by Massinger, one of the last which this author
wrote. Its title was The King and the Subject, and we
find in it a speech, in which Don Pedro, King of Spain,
addresses his subjects in the following words :—
Monys ? We'le rayse supplies what ways we please
And force you to subscribe to blanks, in which
We'le mulct you as wee shall thinke fitt. The Caesars
In Rome were wise, acknowledginge no lawes
But what their swords did ratifye, the wives
And the daughters of the senators bowinge to
Their wills, as deities. . . .
At a time when King and subjects did not live on
the best of terms with one another, we cannot wonder
that these words caused some alarm to a royal censor,
though he may have been amply paid by the actors for
showing indulgence. Even His Majesty, on perusing
the play, put a mark against the passage, adding in his
own handwriting : " This is too insolent, and to be
changed."
A few years later his subjects were guilty of the still
greater and quite irreparable insolence of decapitating
their King.
In the notes of these Masters of the Revels, though
they treat almost exclusively of dramatic pieces, it
is most interesting to notice how little the name of
Shakespeare predominates over the names of the other
1 M alone, Historical Account, p. 295.
GENERAL THEATRICAL CONDITIONS 133
dramatists. Sir Herbert certainly was no artist, nor can
we suppose him to have been a man of particularly
refined taste ; still, he came almost daily in contact with
all the dramatic celebrities of his time, and his office
obliged him to acquaint himself with the entire dramatic
literature. If, indeed, so shortly after his death, the
fame of Shakespeare as something unique, something
of which the value towered considerably above that of
his contemporaries, had entered into the minds of the
people and been fixed there, as modern biographers try
to make us believe, we should certainly have discovered
it in the way his dramas are mentioned by the censor.
But these records do not give the slightest indication
that he held such a peculiar position, or rather, we
distinctly see that the poet's crown, which we have
bestowed as a humble tribute on Shakespeare, would in
those days have caused the greatest astonishment. Mr
Shakespeare was a clever playwright like so many others,
his comedies pleased like those of so many others.
Cymbeline receives the character " well liked by the
King," but Fletcher's Loyal Subject is "very well liked
by the King." The Taming of the Shrew is only " liked."
A Winters Tale is mentioned in the following terms as
an old half forgotten play.1 ..." An olde playe called
Winter s Tale, formerly allowed of by Sir George Burke,
and likewyse by mee on Mr Heminge his worde that
there was nothing profane added or reformed, thog the
allowed booke was missinge, and therefore I returned it
without a fee, this iQth of August 1623."
Shakespeare's biographers tell us that his plays were
1 Malone, Historical Account, p. 288.
134 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
King Charles the First's " companions in his solitude" —
the expression is taken from Milton1 — but in Herbert's
records we read that the same king says about The
Gamester, by Shirley, that it was the best play he had
seen for seven years, and at that time he had seen many
of Shakespeare's.
It seems clear, not only from this testimony, but from
a great deal of other evidence, and particularly from the
whole tone and manner in which Shakespeare and his
contemporaries are mentioned, that even if his supremacy
was acknowledged by the few, especially among authors
and actors, even if he was both appreciated by experts
and popular among the people at large, he by no means
stood as the one star ; and neither during his life-time
nor shortly afterwards were people aware of the enormous
distance in artistic genius between him and the best of
his contemporaries, a distance which in later times
placed him on an almost supernatural summit of lonely
majesty.
When the Civil War broke out in 1642, and all play-
houses were closed, the office of Censor naturally ceased
to exist. At the accession of Charles II. in 1660, Sir
Henry Herbert still held the office of Master of the
Revels, and when the theatres reopened, he resumed
his high claims on the managers. But they were recal-
citrant and would pay no longer. After a hard struggle,
with many interesting lawsuits, on which, however, we
will not enter more particularly here, since they belong
to another period, the king sided with the actors and
deprived the master of his censorial authority over the
1 IconoclasteS) 1690, pp. 9 ff., quoted in Lee's Life of Shakespeare.
GENERAL THEATRICAL CONDITIONS 135
plays, and thereby of every pecuniary claim on the
theatres.
One of the last items of payment which Sir Henry
entered in his book is £1, which he claimed (in June
1642) for a new play, " which I burnte for the ribaldry
and offense that was in it."
IV
Actors' Fees and Profits of the Theatres — Great Theatrical Celebrities and
Minor Actors — What Shakespeare Earned — Magnificence of Costumes —
Actors' Contracts.
IT is by no means easy to form a clear idea of the
conditions regarding the payment of actors during the
Shakespearean period, and the sources at hand are far
from throwing a full light on the matter. So much, how-
ever, is evident, that the system of payment was the same
which prevailed in Italy and France — where, perhaps, it
originated — the share-holding or socittaire system, which
in an essentially unaltered form is still prevalent in the
Comddie Franfaise in Paris.
N^ The actors were sharers in the theatre, i.e. after
deducting the current expenses they shared the proceeds
among them, at first probably in the simplest way, as in
France, where after the performance the account was
made up at once, and the net proceeds divided. , But
afterwards the distribution was made in a much more
business-like manner.
The sharers in the proceeds were the proprietor of
the theatre, who probably possessed the largest number
of shares, the permanent members of the company, and,
136 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
for a time at all events, the Master of the Court
Revels. No shares were due to the following : the
inferior actors, who, as nowadays, are engaged by
the week ; the gatherers, who served also as supers ;
the book-holder or prompter, who had to look after the
actors' entrances and to give them their cues and pro-
perties, if necessary (" prompting," in our sense of the
word, was out of the question in the time of Shake-
speare); the stage-keeper, who kept the stage in order,
strewed it with rushes before the beginning of the per-
formance, picked up the rotten apples and oranges which
might have been thrown at the actors during the per-
formance, and let stools to the spectators who were
placed on the stage.
All these subordinate functionaries were called by
the one name of hirelings, and were paid either by the
company or by the proprietor.1 What salary they re-
ceived I have not been able to make out. It seems as
if a subordinate actor who, as we remember, was not a
shareholder, received one shilling a day. On the whole,
the position of these third-rate or fourth-rate actors was
no doubt very humble, and to become a sharer was the
aim and end of every young actor. Among the Alleyn
Papers we find a letter from such an actor, who is still
playing for a fixed weekly payment, which he even does
not always receive. Now he has an opportunity of going
to the Continent with a travelling company, and asks his
rich and celebrated comrade, Edward Alleyn, for a loan
to redeem his pawned clothes. This little letter is very
characteristic and full of life. It runs as follows : —
1 Compare above p. 88.
GENERAL THEATRICAL CONDITIONS 137
" Mr Allen, I commend my love and humble duty
to you, geving you thankes for yr great bounty bestoed
upon me in my sicknes, when I was in great want : God
blese you for it. Sir, this it is, I am to go over beyond
the seeas wl Mr Browne and the company, but not by
his meanes, for he is put to half a shaer, and to stay
hear, for they are all against his going ; now, good Sir,
as you have ever byne my worthie frend, so helpe me
nowe. I have a sute of clothes and a cloke at pane for
three pound, and if it shall pleas you to lend me so much
to release them, I shall be bound to pray for you so long
as I leve ; for if I go over, and have no clothes, I shall
not be esteemd of; and, by gods help, the first money
that I gett I will send it over unto you, for hear I get
nothinge, so that I leve in great poverty hear, and so
humbly take my leave, prainge to god, I and my wiffe,
for yr health and mistris Allen's, which god continew. —
Yor poor frend to command, RICHARD JONES." I
The boys who acted the female parts (during this
period, and as far down as 1656, no English woman
mounted the boards) of course were not sharers,
nor were they properly engaged ; they were simply
bought by the manager, received their training — and
probably board and clothes as well — of him, and were
hired out to the company. Thus in Henslowe's accounts
we find the following entries : —
" Bowght my boye, Jeames Bryston, of William
Augustus, player, the i8of desembr 1597, for VIII. li"2;
and three years later : " Antony Jeaffes and the company
doth owe unto me for my boye, Jeames Bristo, wages,
1 Alleyn Papers, p. 19. 2 Henslowe's Diary, p. 259.
138 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
from the 23rd of Aprell 1600; wch Robart Shawe hath
geven his word for the paymente."1
When the boys were grown up and remained at the
theatre acting male parts, of course they might rise to
a higher position like all the others, and become dis-
tinguished sharers. Nathaniel Field is probably the
most celebrated among the child-actors of the time, and
he was just one of those who afterwards rose to high
distinction, and became one of the leading sharers.
About the mutual economical relations between the
sharers there has been hitherto great uncertainty, con-
fusion and contradiction among experts. I will try to
consider the matter in the light of fairly definite facts.
The first question to be settled is the approximate
annual sum to which a share might amount. And we
do, as a matter of fact, possess a document which shows
the average amount of such a share, a scale of fees which
in 1662, by the desire of the Lord Chamberlain, was
delivered to him by Sir Henry Herbert, the Master of the
Court Revels. Sir Herbert in his estimate enumerates
the emoluments of his office — from 1628-1642 — and one
^
item (which both M alone and Collier seem to have over-
looked in their attempts to explain the conditions of
payment of the time) runs thus : " For a share from
each companye four companyes of players (besides the
late Kinge's Companye) valued at £100 a yeare, one
yeare with another, besides the usual fees, by the yeare,
^400 os. od."
Sir Henry therefore reckons a ^100 to be an
average share. Though we cannot altogether rely on
1 Henslowe's Diary > p. 149.
GENERAL THEATRICAL CONDITIONS 139
the estimate of the Master of the Court Revels — he
greatly overrates the proceeds of the two benefits allowed
him by fixing them at ^50, while in reality they did not
amount to more than £9 on an average — in this instance
we have no reason to suppose that he exaggerates the
amount of a full share. To be engaged with a full share
was a thing which commanded some respect,1 and the
more distinguished actors, as a rule, were men of con-
siderable means. There does not seem then to be any
reason for doubting Henry Herbert's statement, especially
as even in 1678 a share was as large as ,£300, 2 and yet
at that time the shares were considerably diminished.
The second question to be asked is : how many shares
were there in the Shakespearean period, and how were
they distributed ?
Malone supposes — though, contrary to his custom, he
does not give any reason for his supposition — that there
were forty shares, which he fancies were distributed in the
following way : the proprietor (the housekeeper as he was
called) received fifteen shares, the actors twenty-two, and
three were spent on the purchase of new plays, costumes,
etc.3 Collier, as usual, repeats Malone's supposition
without being able to throw further light on the matter.
Now, as in another place, Malone estimates the
1 Comp., e.g. , Hamlet, iii. 2 : Hamlet : " Would not this, sir, and a forest
of feathers — if the rest of my fortunes turn Turk with me — with two Pro-
vincial roses on my razed shoes, get me a fellowship in a cry of players, sir ? "
Horatio : " Half a share."
Hamlet : "A whole one, I."
a Comp. the complaint of Charles Killigrew and several of his actors
against Dryden, in which they reproach him with pocketing his share and a
quarter amounting to ^300 or .£400, but writing no plays. — Malone's
Historical Account, p. 191, n. 9.
3 Malone's Historical Account, pp. 188 ff.
140 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
average net proceeds of a performance at .£9, and the
average annual number of performances at 200, the
total annual income of a theatre would not be more
than .£1800, and the salary of a full-share actor not
more than ^45, which undoubtedly is very little, even
considering the high value of money in those days, and
much too little to allow of the leading actors becoming
men of considerable means.
I believe Malone to be in error. Among the Alleyn
Papers we find the draught of a contract (of 1608)
between Thomas Henslowe and Edward Alleyn on the
one side and the distinguished actor Thomas Dowton
on the other, according to which Dowton is engaged to
act in "The Fortune" Theatre, and is to receive "an
eighth part of a quarter of all ... net proceeds in
money " at the said theatre. By " net proceeds " is
understood the profits after deducting the daily ex-
penditure on officers and subordinate members of the
staff, on light, where light was used, in short on the
regular and daily recurring demands on the budget.
These expenses, according to Sir Herbert's accounts,
amounted to about £2, 55. a-day.1 In order to obtain
this thirty-second share Dowton had first to pay down
in ready money ^27, IDS. "in lawful English coin," and,
in addition, los. per annum as long as the contract
lasted. He further engaged himself to undertake a
thirty-second share of the expenses for repairs, etc., at
1 "The kinges company with a generall consent and alacritye have given
mee the benefitt of too dayes in the yeare, the one in summer, thother in
winter, to bee taken out of the second daye of a revived playe, att my owne
choyse. The housekeepers have likewyse given their shares, their dayly
charge only deducted, which comes to some 2\. 55. this 25 May, 1628."
GENERAL THEATRICAL CONDITIONS 141
the theatre. Finally, as a sharer he was not allowed to
discontinue acting unless prevented by illness, and of
course he had to give up every right of acting in any
other theatre in London, or within two miles' distance
from it, without the permission of Henslowe or
Alleyn.
I think I may conclude from this contract that in
Henslowe's and Alleyn's theatres there were thirty- two
shares, and I suppose — for reasons which I shall explain
presently — that of these shares the proprietors them-
selves retained eight, a fourth part of the net proceeds.
Of the remaining twenty-four shares four were probably
put aside as a reserve fund for paying for the repertoire,
etc., and the remaining twenty shares may have been
divided between the actors, not all of whom, however,
received a full share, since we hear both of three quarters
and of halves.
According to this calculation, a London theatre of
the first rank at that time would give average receipts
of ^"3200, in addition to the £2 and 55., which were
the current daily expenses. If we fix the annual
number of performances at 240, which is certainly not
too many, as they went on summer and winter, we get the
average proceeds of about £13 from each performance.
And this is not too much,1 though Malone reckons only
an average of £g. But his average receipts are calculated
on the benefits of the Master of the Revels, which were
all only performances of second-rate value, without a
1 The ^25 which Mr Sidney Lee (Life of W. Shakespeare, p. 161),
without proper calculation, mentions as the daily proceeds of " The Globe "
Theatre, is decidedly too much, and there is not the slightest indication to
show that " The Globe " could hold 2000 people.
142 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
single new play or "first night," which must necessarily
give too low an amount for the average proceeds.
I have calculated from Henslowe's Diary that his
daily receipts were about thirty shillings ;l with an annual
share of ^100 and 240 performances a year, each sharer
would receive daily about eight shillings. It is most
probable, indeed, that Henslowe held four shares out of
the thirty-two, while Alleyn, as fellow-proprietor, held
the other four. But Alleyn was, moreover, a very
popular actor, who played all the chief parts in the
repertoire. As such he may also have had a number of
shares. In Ben Jonson's Poetaster we read of an actor
who is called " Seven shares and a half," and I fancy that
no one but Edward Alleyn can be meant. In the scene
between Tucca, the swaggering captain, and the actor
Histrio, Tucca says: "Well, now fare thee well, my
honest penny-biter. Commend me to seven shares and
a half, and remember to-morrow. — If you lack a service,
you shall play in my name, rascals ; but you shall buy your
own cloth, and I'll ha' two shares for my countenance."1
" Fleay has shown3 that the actors who appear in
The Poetaster belong partly to " The Fortune," partly to
" The Rose " Theatres, both under the management
of Alleyn and Henslowe. The latter, as we know,
possessed four shares, so Seven-and-a-half-share can
only mean Alleyn. Whether Alleyn really was in
1 During one short period, which I leave out of consideration here,
Henslowe evidently had a much smaller share. It was at the time when
his company acted together with the Lord Chamberlain's Servants (comp.
p. 60). During that period his average share was only a little more than
nine shillings.
2 Ben Jonson : The Poetaster, Act iii., Scene 4.
3 Fleay : The English Drama, i. 368.
GENERAL THEATRICAL CONDITIONS 143
possession of so considerable a portion must remain an
open question. The above somewhat uncertain proof
is the only one I have been able to find. At any rate,
Alleyn became a very rich man, and must, therefore,
have had a very large income. The seven-and-a-half
shares represent in modern money about ^4500.
\J It is true that Alleyn was by far the richest of all the
actors of his time. And, on the whole, it must be borne
in mind that this calculation only applies to the best
actors of the best companies. The inferior companies,
of course, gained less, as the shares were necessarily
smaller.1 Only a first-rate actor in a first-rate company
could have a salary of £100 a year, equal to about ^800
in our time. And the very few who rose above this income
only did so on account of particular circumstances, by
being part-proprietors of the theatre, by holding shares in
several theatres and places of amusement simultaneously,
by being both authors and actors, or in some other way.>/
In the theatrical enterprises of Burbage the con-
ditions were arranged in the same way as in Henslowe's,
though we have reason to suppose that in the former the
terms were more profitable to the actors as well as to
the authors ; for, evidently, the brothers Burbage were
1 Mr Lee in his work on Shakespeare quoted above (p. 159 libr. ed.)
asserts that we know of no actor's fee lower than three shillings a day ; but
the reader will have gathered from the above statements that this is a
mistake. On the whole, Mr Lee, as I think, represents the conditions as a
good deal more brilliant than they really were. Because men like Alleyn,
Shakespeare, Burbage, and Condell, who, besides being excellent actors,
were economical and energetic men of business, left a good deal of property,
we must not forget that even men like Ben Jonson and Nathaniel Field were
constantly in money difficulties ; nor must we leave out of consideration the
large number, who stood far beneath the high level of these men, struggling
hard to earn the daily shilling.
144 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
scarcely as skilled as Henslowe and Alley n in the art of
making capital out of the artists who worked for them.
Nevertheless, the celebrated Richard Burbage left a
very considerable fortune, if not quite so large a one as
Alleyn's. It is valued by a contemporary at ^300 in
annual interest on landed property.1
Our knowledge about the conditions of the share
system in the three Burbage theatres, " The Theatre,"
"The Globe" and " Blackfriars," is drawn from a series
of letters which Halliwell-Phillipps brought to light in
1870, letters which date from the year 1635, and give us
some insight into a struggle between the non-sharing
actors Robert Benneld, Heliard Swanston and Thomas
Pollard on the one side, and the sharers in " The
Globe" and "Blackfriars," among them the actors
Shancke, Taylor, Robinson and Lowin on the other.2
What we learn through these letters confirms what
we have gathered from Henslowe's and other papers.
We see that at that time " The Globe" was divided into
sixteen and " Blackfriars " into eight shares — which equals
the thirty-two shares with Henslowe and Alleyn. The
sixteen shares of " The Globe " are distributed among six
hands only, of which, moreover, only four are actors,
whereas the bookseller, Cuthbert Burbage and the
widow, Mrs Condell, have five and a half shares
between them.
1 In a letter from John Chamberlain to Sir Dudley Carlton (State Papers
quoted by Malone) we read : " The funeral [of the Queen] is put off to the
2gth of next month, to the great hinderance of our players, which are
forbidden to play so long as her body is above ground ; one special man
among them is lately dead, and hath left, they say, better than 300 1. land."
2 All these letters are printed in Halliwell-Phillipps's Outlines, 3rd ed.
PP- 539-551-
GENERAL THEATRICAL CONDITIONS 145
The discontented non-sharing actors complain of
these conditions to the Earl of Pembroke, who, at the
time, was Lord Chamberlain at the court of King
Charles I. They wish to become sharers, and think it
unreasonable that so large a number of shares should be
in the hands of men who are not actors themselves, but
merely reap the fruits of their toil and trouble. How
wrong these conditions are they prove by showing that
the sharers in " The Globe " have a daily profit of two
shillings a share, while the actor's part does not exceed
three shillings. This, as we see, harmonises closely
with our above calculation.
These statements, it is true, are contradicted by the
opposing party, who assert that the complaining actors
have gained ^180 each during the last year, which is
admitted to be double of what they have gained
hitherto ; but even half of £ i 80 gives a considerably
larger daily sum than three shillings.
Now, even if both parties exaggerate, it is evident
that the sharer was much better off than the ordinary
actor, for otherwise the latter would not have coveted
this position as eagerly as the former tried to prevent
him from obtaining it.
Cuthbert Burbage's defence of the existing order of
things is very interesting, as it shows us how the
circumstances gradually developed.
His father, he tells us, was the very first builder of
theatres, and "The Theatre" cost him many hundred
pounds, which he borrowed at interest. " The players
that lived in those first times " (that is about sixty years
before Cuthbert writes this), "had only the profitts
in. K
146 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
arising from the dores, but now the players receave all
the commings in at the dores to themselves and halfe
the galleries from the housekepers." l
We see that old James Burbage left to his actors the
regular entrance fee, which was collected at the door ;
but the extra amount which was paid for sitting in the
boxes and the gallery, " the House," as it was called, he
took for himself, for the house was his own and built at
his own expense.
Afterwards, however, this distribution went a little
too much in favour of the owner. The most dis-
tinguished and indispensable actors were included among
the sharers, and, with Burbage, the whole company
received, besides the entrance fees, half of the proceeds
of "the House." But, as the three complaining actors
point out, from this sum were deducted " all expenses for
hirelings, apparel, poets, light and all other expenses of
the play-houses." On the other hand, all repairs of the
building naturally devolved on the owners.
What tempts us most in making these financial
researches is to find out the financial condition of
Shakespeare.
It has always been well known that Shakespeare was
a man of means when he died. That he had honestly
gained his little fortune by means of his art, his
biographers ought to have assumed as a foregone
conclusion, instead of searching for mysterious sources of
income, or inventing supernaturally liberal patrons.
Indeed, it was not as an author — at any rate not in a
direct way — that he enriched himself. If Shakespeare
1 Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines, p. 549.
GENERAL THEATRICAL CONDITIONS 147
were to rise from the grave at this moment and receive
the fees for his plays from all parts of the world,
he would probably take many times more in one
season than the amount which his works brought him
throughout his whole life-time. We have seen that the
author's fees were but small. Ben Jonson, in his
conversations with Drummond, asserts that he did not
gain more than ^200 from his plays altogether,1 and
even if Shakespeare gained a good deal more, the direct
proceeds of his works cannot have been considerable.
But, indirectly, his dramatic works were a capital which
brought him abundant interests as an actor and afterwards
as proprietor, since their great popularity attracted crowds
to the theatre in which he was concerned, and thus pro-
cured for himself and his comrades a large annual profit.
It would be impossible, of course, to give an exact
account of Shakespeare's income ; still, with the informa-
tion we possess about theatrical matters, we can make an
approximate calculation.
That his old fellow-townsmen at Stratford considered
him a man of considerable means as early as 1598
appears from a number of letters concerning loans and
purchases, dating from that time.2 Yet this must have
been his least prosperous period. Between 1590 and
1599, indeed, he wrote nineteen dramatic works, but
before 1600 the price of these plays was but low. Hens-
lowe, as we have heard, at that time did not pay more
than £11. Though Burbage may have given rather
more, and though there may from time to time have been
1 D. Laing : Benjonsotts Conversations with Drummond, p. 35.
2 See Sidney Lee : Life of Shakespeare, pp. 154 ff.
148 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
a benefit and a small extra fee of ten shillings, we cannot
fix the average payment for these nineteen plays at more
than £12, which makes an annual profit of ^25 during
the first nine years of his theatrical career. His actor's
share in the entrance fees of " The Theatre " and other
play-houses may be fixed at ^75, if we allow him a double
share, and suppose a share to have been three shillings a
day, and the days of performance 240 in number. To this
must be added the performances at Court and at the
country seats of the noblemen, which might yield about
;£i5 a year, amounting altogether to a total of ^115.
Though this is no exorbitant sum, it is sufficiently
large to justify his townspeople in calling him a man of
considerable means.
But after 1599 his income must have increased very
much. Higher prices began to be paid for plays, and,
what was more important, " The Globe " Theatre was
built, and Shakespeare became part - owner of this
house, together with Condell, Heminge, Phillipps and
others.1
As we know, the enterprise was divided into sixteen
shares. Of these the brothers Burbage no doubt held
four (in 1635 Cuthbert himself had 3! shares). The
remaining twelve were probably distributed among six
principal actors, two shares to each. A share in " The
Globe" (which was double the value of one in "The
Fortune ") may reasonably be fixed at ^200. Besides
this he may have had his share of the admission fees,
though that does not absolutely follow, and this may not
1 Cuthbert Burbage's letter to the Earl of Pembroke, Halliwell-Phillipps,
Outlines, p. 549.
GENERAL THEATRICAL CONDITIONS 149
have exceeded the amount of one share. Altogether his
profits as an actor may have amounted to about ^450.
During the period from 1599 to 1611 — with the latter
year Shakespeare closed his theatrical career — he wrote
seventeen plays. He certainly did not receive less than
^25 for any of them, as that was the sum which an
insignificant author like Robert Daborne claimed to be
able to earn from " The Globe " Theatre (see above, p.
126) ; this would make ^425 for the seventeen plays, or
during the last twelve years an average sum of ^35 per
annum. To this may be added the proceeds of Court
performances and authors' benefits, which, without the
slightest exaggeration, may be supposed to have brought
him in ^30 a year. According to this calculation Shake-
speare must have earned an annual sum of about ^515
during the best twelve years of his career.1
v It may be said in general that during the Elizabethan
period the English actors as a class were comparatively
well off, and that their economical condition, as well as
the consideration which they enjoyed, went on steadily
improving down to the time of the Civil War. We
possess several pieces of evidence which show that other
classes looked with a certain jealousy on the wealthy
theatrical class, and thought it absurd that these vaga-
bonds, who not many years previously were obliged to
drag themselves along carrying their baggage on their
1 Mr Sidney Lee has made a similar calculation (Life of Shakespeare, pp.
154-162), and has arrived at a similar, if somewhat higher, result. I cannot,
however, agree with him in the details. At all events, we cannot fix an
ordinary actor's share at ^180, as our only source (John Shancke's letter
to Lord Pembroke, Outlines, p. 546) expressly mentions this sum as double
the amount which actors generally received.
i5o HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
backs, were now to be seen riding ostentatiously through
the streets on smart horses and in showy silk clothes.
In an anonymous University play of 1601, The Return
from Parnassus, this anger vents itself in the following
verses by the poor student who wrote them : —
" Vile world that lifts them up to high degree
And treads us down in grovelling misery !
England affords these glorious vagabonds,
That carried erst their fardels on their backs,
Coursers to ride on through the gazing streets,
Sweeping it in their glaring satin suits,
And pages to attend their master-ships :
With mouthing words that better wits have framed
They purchase lands, and now esquires are made."
The last lines most likely allude to Edward Alleyn, who
at this period was probably the only actor who rose beyond
the usual style of theatrical artists by exchanging the title
of gentleman for that of esquire (possessor of an estate).
It is probable that a similar bitter sally against actors,
which is found in a small pamphlet of about 1606,
" Ratsey's Ghost," is also partly directed against Alleyn.
Gamaliel Ratsey was a well-known highwayman, who
had forced a travelling company of actors to play
gratuitously to him. In return he gives the following
rule of life to one of the actors, who is on his way to
London, where Ratsey advises him to seek his fortune :
" There (says he) thou shalt learn to be frugal (for
players were never so thrifty as they are now about
London), and feed upon all men ; to let none feed upon
1 The return from Parnassus, Act. v., Sc. i.
GENERAL THEATRICAL CONDITIONS 151
thee ; to make thy hand a stranger to thy pocket, thy
heart slow to perform thy tongue's promise ; and when
thou feelest thy purse well lined, buy thee some place of
lordship in the country, that, growing weary of playing,
thy money may there bring thee to dignity and reputa-
tion ; then thou needest care for no man ; no, not for
them that before made thee proud with speaking their
words on the stage." x
V The last lines cannot properly apply to Alleyn, who
was born in London ; they are much more appropriate
to Shakespeare, who had indeed come to London poor
and without employment in order to seek his fortune*
and who by this time — about 1606 — was very wealthy. v
Some of the Puritan writings also mention the wealth
and magnificence of the actors, and especially their
extravagance in dress. We mentioned above poor
Richard Jones, who, having to live upon one shilling
a day, which he did not get, attempts to borrow £$ to
redeem his clothes, for " if he has no clothes, he will not
be respected." Clothes, on the whole, were a very im-
portant point with actors. Yet, in the portraits we know
of Elizabethan actors, they appear by no means dressed
with excessive magnificence, though these likenesses
represent the very richest and most distinguished
theatrical personages of the time, such as Edward
Alleyn, Richard Burbage, Shakespeare and Field.
Among these, Burbage (comp. fig. 15), the celebrated
stage-hero and wealthy proprietor, is even modestly
dressed; Alleyn (comp. fig. 13), the circus-manager and
millionaire-actor, is decently but simply dressed, like an
1 The Alleyn Papers, Introduction, p. 10.
152 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
honest citizen. Shakespeare appears in somewhat more
elegant attire, with a touch of the nobleman, especially
in the Droeshout portrait (fig. 10) and in the terra-cotta
bust (fig. 14), yet without the slightest showiness or
extravagance. Finally, Nathaniel Field (fig. 16), who,
though not rich, was a very fashionable and, no doubt,
very smart actor, wore a rather odd but apparently not
very expensive indoor suit.
On the stage, however, we know that there was a
magnificent display of apparel. It is well known that
the stage cgstumes did not differ in cut from the ordinary
dresses of the time. There was no more attempt during
the Renaissance period than there had been during the
Middle Ages to adapt the costumes to historical require-
ments ; all plays alike were acted in contemporary dress.
In this respect, however, distant countries weighed a
little more in the scale than different periods, and, as in the
Middle Ages, clumsy attempts were made to represent
fantastic costumes, Mahometan or Turkish, for instance.
Attention was also paid to the different fashions of
civilised countries; thus in Henslowe and Alleyn's list of
apparel we read of " French hose and Spanish doublet."
This habit of playing everything in the same kind
of costume naturally very much curtailed the wardrobe
expenses. On the other hand, the costumes in them-
selves were exceedingly expensive, so much so that a
fine costume actually cost more than one of Shakespeare's
tragedies.
In the Alleyn Papers (p. 12) we find a long legal
document drawn up in minute detail, which for a pay-
ment of £20, IDS. transfers to the brothers John and
GENERAL THEATRICAL CONDITIONS 153
Edward Alleyn — a cloak ! It is true, this garment was
of velvet, elaborately embroidered in silver and gold,
lined with black and gold striped satin ; still £20 seems
a large sum to pay for a stage-cloak, considering that
this, as we know, was looked upon as an exceedingly
high price for a play.1
And this sum does not even seem to have been
uncommonly high for a costume. Another contract in
the same collection tells us that John Alleyn paid £16 for
" one cloke of velvett with a cape imbrothered with gold,
pearles and red stones, and one roabe of cloth of golde." 2
The Renaissance in England was a period of imitation,
like our own time. The materials in which the actors
appeared were genuine and expensive, not cheap silks and
tinsel. In Henslowe's Diary I find the following little
item : " Lent unto Robert Shawe, the 26th of novembr
:597> to by viii yds of clothe of gowld, the some of fowr
powndes : I saye lent for the usse of the company . . ."3
This would be about equal to ^4 a yard nowa-
days, a price which would make a modern manager
turn pale. And shortly after the same Robart Shawe
borrows sixteen shillings (equal to about £6 nowa-
days) to buy " copper lace of sylver, to lace a payer
of hosse for alles perce [Alice Pierce]." . . .
Between these two items we find the following
entry : " Lent unto Bengemen Johnsone, the 3 of
desembr 1 597, upon a Booke 4 wch he has to writte for
us befor crysmas next after the date hereof, wch he
1 Alleyn Papers, p. 12. 2 Alleyn Papers, p. ri.
3 Henslowe's Diary, p. 104.
4 Perhaps The Fall of Mortimer. Compare Fleay : English Drama,
\. 356.
154 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
showed the plotte unto the company : I saye lente in
Redy money unto hime the some of XXs."
Sometimes figures speak with incisive distinctness.
The draper gets ^"4 for eight yards of stuff, Ben Jonson
receives a loan of twenty shillings for engaging himself
to write a play from the 3rd to the 24th of December.
So, if in other respects the stage equipment was cheap,
large sums were spent in costumes, an expense which
was generally defrayed by the actors themselves.
Whether the costliness and well-known splendour of
the dresses was always in proportion to their taste and
style is another question, which Ben Jonson in his Intro-
duction to his Staple of News tempts us to answer in
the negative. He says there : " O Curiosity, you come
to see who wears the new suit to-day ; whose cloath are
best pen'd, whatever the part be ; which actor has the
best leg and foot ; what king plays without cuffs, and
his queen without gloves ; who rides post in stockings,
and dances in boots •."1
Prynne, the fanatic Puritan, also complains that the
public plays were generally acted in over-expensive,
effeminate, fantastic and gorgeous clothes.2
It only requires a superficial perusal of Alleyn's and
1 Ben Jonson : Staple of News, Introduction. The above quotation, it
seems to me, is no proof whatever that the costumes were poor at " The
Globe" Theatre, as Malone thinks they were (Historical Account, p. 127),
only that they were sometimes negligently arranged and not in harmony
with the character of the part.
2 Prynne : Histriomastix, p. 216. It seems to me that Malone equally
alters the meaning of this passage by saying that the fanatical Prynne, who
thought playgoers little better than incarnated devils, might easily take a
piece of coarse stuff trimmed with tinsel for a magnificent and ungodly
dress. We have seen above that the stuffs as well as the trimming were
genuine and expensive enough.
GENERAL THEATRICAL CONDITIONS 155
Henslowe's lists of apparel and of their account-books
to show us that the Puritan is not quite wrong. Among
these old items of expense there is a rustling of silk and
velvet and a sparkling of gold, silver and precious
stones. Many a good shilling of the actors' fees was
spent on the costly dresses, which afterwards went to
the pawnbroker's shop, whence they had to be redeemed
by " Father Henslowe." He then used to keep them
as pledges for some advance of money.1
About the official relations of the actor with the
manager, i.e. the proprietor, we are pretty well informed
through a contract — the only one of its kind — or the
Articles, as they were still called in theatrical language,
between the actor, Robert Dawes, on the one side, and
the managers, Henslowe and Meade, on the other.2 This
contract probably gives us the general formula of actors'
contracts in those times, and I will here repeat its principal
points, though stripping them of the involved legal attire,
which renders this kind of document almost unreadable.
i. ... the said Robert Dawes shall and will plaie
with such company as the said Phillipp Henslowe and
Jacob Meade shall appoynte, for and during the tyme
and space of three yeares from the date hereof, for and
at the rate of one whole Share, accordinge to the custome
of players ; . . .
1 Lent Thomas Dowton, to featche ii clockes owt of pane, the 2. of novmbr
1597, the some of xii li xs, for wch money these ii clockes were leafte unto
me in pane, the one wasse an embrodered clocke of ashe colerd veil vet,
the other a blacke vellvett clocke layd with sylke laces abowt. I saye lent
unto him in Redy money xii li xs.
2 These Articles were discovered by Malone in Dulwich College, whence,
however, they have since disappeared. Fortunately they were reprinted by
Malone (Shakespeare, by Boswell, xxi. p. 413), and afterwards in Collier's
Alley n Papers, pp. 75 ff.
156 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
2. ... the said Robert Dawes shall and will at all
tymes during the said term duly attend all such re-
hearsall, which shall the night before the rehearsall be
given publickly out, and that if he the saide Robert
Dawes shall at any tyme faile to come at the hower
appoynted, then he shall and will pay to the said
Phillipp Henslowe and Jacob Meade, their executors
or assignes, Twelve pence, and if he come not before
the saide rehearsall is ended, then the said Robert
Dawes is contented to pay twoe shillings.
3. ... if the said R. D. shall not every daie whereon
any play is or ought to be played be ready apparrelled
and — to begyn the play at the hower of three of the
clock in the afternoone unles by sixe of the same
Company he shall be lycensed to the contrary that then
he ... shall and will pay unto the said Phillipp and
Jacob, or their assignes, three [shillings].
4. and if that he the saide Robert Dawes happen to
be overcome with drinck at the tyme when he [ought
to] play, by the Judgment of ffower of the said company,
he shall and will pay Tenne shillings ;
5. and if he [the said R. D.] shall [faile to come]
during any plaie having no lycence or just excuse of
sicknes he is contended to pay Twenty shillings ;
6. the said Robert Dawes . . . doth covenant and
grant to and with the said Phillipp Henslowe and Jacob
Meade ... to receave and take back . . . half parte of
all such moneyes as shall be receaved at the galleries
and tyring howse of such howse or howses wherein the
said Robert Dawes shall play . . . towards the pa[ying]
to them the saide Phillipp Henslowe and Jacob Meade
GENERAL THEATRICAL CONDITIONS 157
of the some of one hundred twenty and fower pounds
[being the] value of the stock of apparell furnished by
the same company by [to ?] the said Phillipp Henslowe
and Jacob Meade . . .
7. ... if the said Robert Dawes shall at any time
after the play is ended depart or go out of the [howse]
with any [of their] apparell on his body, or if the said
Robert Dawes [shall carry away any propertie] belong-
ing to the said Company . . . shall and will forfeit and
pay . . . the some of ffortie pounds . . .
8. ... it shall and will be lawfull to and for the said
Phillipp Henslowe and Jacob Meade ... to have and
use the playhows so appoynted [for the said company
— one day of] every fower daies, the said daie to be
chosen by the said Phillipp and [Jacob] ... on which
it shall be lawful ... to bait their bears and bulls ther,
and to use their accustomed sport . . . allowing to the
saide company for every such daye the some of fforty
shillings. . . .
V
A First Performance at " The Globe."
IT is between two and three o'clock. There is bustle
and excitement within the high wooden walls of " The
Globe " Theatre.
To-day there is a first performance, and great ex-
pectations are entertained with regard to the new play.
In the tiring-house the actors are nervously busy in
putting on their magnificent new clothes and their wigs,
and in painting their cheeks. The boys who play the
158 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
female parts are pinched into tightening stays and
adorned, painted and perfumed like any lady. The
prompter and the stage-keeper run busily about with
lists in their hands, seeing that all the properties are
ready and that the musicians tune their instruments.
The Prologue is ready. He walks solemnly up and
down in his black velvet cloak, a garment which is
always worn by this functionary, mumbling to himself
the introductory verses which he has to recite. He is
a tall stately man of a distinguished appearance : the
black velvet suits him, though it adds to the pallor
which excitement gives to his face. He is not painted
— and he rubs his cheeks to give them a little colour.
From the audience we hear the ever increasing
sounds of humming and buzzing, now and then mixed
with loud cries of female voices. We distinguish the
words : " apples ! nuts ! ale ! canary ! "
The Prologue enters by one of the large gates at the
back of the stage ; the draperies which divide it from the
stage proper are drawn aside, and he looks out into the
house.
There they stand, his judges yonder in the "yard,"
all those apprentices, soldiers and sailors, mixed up with
the worst dregs of London, gamblers, pick-pockets and
women of low repute, the people who, before three hours
have passed, will have pronounced their twopenny ver-
dict on the work in which he has expressed his fine soul's
best feelings and thoughts. For it is he, the Prologue
himself, who has written the new play.
The expensive seats, boxes and galleries, are still
empty. Only a few lackeys sit yawning while occupying
GENERAL THEATRICAL CONDITIONS 159
the places which they have taken for their employers.
But the upper gallery, to which the admission is very
cheap, is quite full, and a lively fire of coarse jokes is
kept up between the gallery and the pit. People are
playing cards ; they drink, shout and cry, and a smell
of food, ale, tobacco, garlic and cheap wine fills the house,
and finds its way out through the opening of the roof,
like smoke mounting through a chimney.
The Prologue turns up his nose contemptuously and
draws back his head. At this moment there is a gentle
touch on his shoulder and a voice asks kindly : " Aye,
Will, how are you?" He turns round. It is the
manager, Richard Burbage, who also is ready to begin.
They shake hands. " I am afraid those fellows will kill
us before our time with their smell of garlic," says the
Prologue, making room for Burbage, who now peeps out
between the curtains.
Burbage too is dressed in black, but in the short
costume of a young nobleman. He is a little shorter
than Will and rather stout ; his bearded face with the
gentle, sensitive features and the large expressive eyes
casts an inquisitive and business-like glance into the
house. " Now the great people begin to come," he
says, looking back over his shoulder at Will, "look
how they pour in ! — Look, there is young Sir Francis ;
he has gone into the pit and glances along the galleries
to find a place near the finest girl. I hope we shall give
him something else to think of to-day ; shan't we, old
Will ? " " We shall see," Will answers quietly.
In the house, boxes and galleries are filling with
stately gentlemen and ladies. The gentlemen in costly
160 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
silk and velvet dresses, with gold chains on their breasts,
stiff Spanish collars, fine lace cuffs, high hats or low caps
with flying ostrich feathers ; the ladies more gorgeous
still, in tight-laced, long-pointed stays, enormous puffed
sleeves, high lace collars, their towering natural, or false,
hair interwoven with pearls — the natural hair was seldom
sufficient for the fashionable head-dresses of the time —
ears and fingers glittering with jewels, gloves with gold
embroidered initials, faces bright with white and red
paint, costly fragrance emanating from their persons.
Not all, however, show their faces, as most of the
well-bred ladies are masked. It is a peculiar and motley
sight to see the boxes filling with all these variegated
masks, wax-yellow, reddish brown, jet-black, grass-green,
cherry, or apple-grey, through which the eyes cast their
mysterious glances, while the bejewelled hands wave the
large ostrich feather fans.
High up in the top-gallery we see the light-living
company of the women of doubtful reputation. They
take great pains to conceal the class to which they belong ;
some of them appear in gloomy black, like mourning
widows ; others in grey linsey-woolsey, as if they were
innocent country-maidens ; others again in lapelled
bodices and aprons like ladies' maids, or in the guise of
respectable matrons, if not in rustling silk and lace like
ladies of rank. But there is a something which betrays
them all, with which they lure thoughtless lovers, who
are to pay for their supper after the play : " those wanton
eyes," which the Puritans dread and curse.
The house is full, the actors ready. Only Burbage
and the Prologue are in black ; most of the other
GENERAL THEATRICAL CONDITIONS 161
performers are as variegated and gorgeous as the
audience in the boxes. Through the tiring-house some
young nobles are still forcing their way to the stage.
They nod all round and greet the actors by their
Christian names : " Good afternoon, Dick ! have you
something good to show us to-day?" "Aye, Will, are
you afraid we shall mew at your play ? " " Do you
think you are a match for old Will Kemp, Bob?"
They stroll on deliberately, followed by the stage-keeper,
who carries their three-legged stools. They sit down,
take their pipes from their pages, light them and begin
smoking, at the same time greeting their acquaintances
all round with grace and elegance.
The actors grumble in their beards at these gallants,
who take up their room and blow tobacco smoke into
their throats, but they dare not complain aloud ; the
young men are too mighty and pay too well. The
Prologue arranges his black velvet cloak and looks up at
the musicians, who are ready holding their trumpets to
their mouths. He gives the signal, and the first flourish
rings through the theatre.
Everybody looks up ; people settle themselves ; the
card-players in the pit make haste to finish their game
before the play begins. Another flourish. The talk
and noise abate. The apple-girls and other hawkers
stop crying. The card-players put down their last
trumps. The light-living women dart their last glance
at the chosen friend. One more flourish, the third and
last. All is quiet ; every eye is turned towards the
curtains.
Behind them stands the Prologue, upright, but with
III. L
162 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
dry lips and trembling hands. He clenches his teeth.
" Shall I be able to-day to tame the many-headed
monster yonder ? " he mutters ; then with a quick
movement pulls aside the curtain, advances with a quiet
smile, and bows to the crowd.
"It is Shakespeare ! look, Shakespeare ! " is the
general whisper, and the S — es of this rare name hiss
through the house. The great lords nod kindly in
acknowledgment, the apprentices and sailors in the pit
roar out a welcome to their " Will," and the ladies in
both the first and the second galleries smile insinuatingly
at their honey-sweet poet, who has written the graceful
Venus and Adonis which stands at home on their shelf
between Beaumont's Salmacis and Hermdphroditus and
Marston's Pygmalion s Image.
With a grace and dignity of his own, Shakespeare
recites the introductory verses and retires slowly,
followed by the applause of his friends.
But he has no sooner disappeared behind the
curtains than his dignity is thrown off. In a great
hurry, and tucking up his richly folded velvet mantle,
he flies to the tiring-room. " Right so, Willy, make
haste ! " Burbage cries after him ; " you have not much
time."
And Shakespeare takes off his velvet cloak and puts
on the heavy armour, which lies ready for him. With
white paint he gives a deadly pallor to his cheeks, he
puts on a long venerable black beard sprinkled with
silver, and with the crowned helmet on his head, he
stands there, awful, yet gentle and dignified, like a dead
man, clothed in steel and plate. He seizes his
GENERAL THEATRICAL CONDITIONS 163
" truncheon," and, proud and majestic, advances a few
steps, practising his voice which he tries to render deep
and husky like a ghost's, and from his mouth come the
following words : —
" I am thy father's spirit,
DoonYd for a certain term to walk the night,
And for the day confined to fast in fires,
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purged away."
Then he walks quickly towards the stage. The
prompter meets him with the book in his hand.
" Presently, Mr Shakespeare," he whispers. Shake-
speare listens. " Yes, indeed." Burbage enters with the
two others. Shakespeare hears his own familiar verses : —
" The air bites shrewdly, it is very cold."
Suddenly a blast of trumpets is heard, and thundering
cannon-shots frighten the spectators. From the stage
the following verses are heard : —
" What does this mean, my lord ? "
And the voice of Burbage replies with bitter
sarcasm : —
"The King does wake to-night and takes his rouse,
Keeps wassail, and the swaggering up-spring reels,
And as he drains his draughts^of Rhenish down,
The kettle-drum and trumpet thus bray out
The triumphs of his pledge."
Shakespeare smiles. He thinks of the merry stories
which his old comrade, William Kemp, has told him of
the drunken Danish king, Frederick II., and the festivals
at Kronberg and Elsinore, . . . but it is time now ; he
must enter.
1 64 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
He walks on, and the house is filled with horror and
midnight awe.
The monster yonder with the many heads opens its
thousand eyes and many mouths, and is seized with
wonder and terror.
The act ends amid breathless calm, through which
are heard the voices of Burbage and Shakespeare, those
of the son and the dead father, low, but strained, like the
trembling tones of the 'cello.
Then the applause bursts forth. The act is ended.
Up from the cellarage whence his " Swear ! " has sounded
gloomily through the theatre comes Shakespeare. He
hurries up to Burbage, who stands there out of breath
after the fatiguing act.
They shake hands in silence, and both feel that this
day they have done something good.
There is an entr'acte. The noise and talk is
resumed. The apple-girls cry again as if Hamlet had
never lost his father. Critics discuss and criticise, the
ladies flirt, and the mob drinks. Here and there
someone sits silently musing on what he has heard
and seen.
Suddenly a shrill cry pierces the din. A man is
seen, who, with a smiling face, swings a bloody ear in
his left hand and a knife in the other, while the original
owner of the ear furiously screams, scolds and threatens.
The crowd throngs round them. But the first man
stands calmly holding the ear in his hand. " Now do
be quiet, dear sir," he says ; " I sha'n't cheat you. Give
me back my purse, and here is your ear. There now,
take it and be off."
GENERAL THEATRICAL CONDITIONS 165
It is a pick-pocket, who has been caught red-handed.
Just as he was sneaking away with his booty, his victim,
discovering him, had drawn his dagger, and with a quick
movement cut off his ear, " in order to get something for
his money," as he says.
The poor pick-pocket is seized amid great noise and
merry exclamations from the mob, and tied to a stake on
the stage, where he remains during the rest of the per-
formance, the laughing-stock of all, but scarcely to the
advantage of the impression produced by the play.
Meanwhile the play pursues its course. The actors
do their best, though they do not all please equally well.
One of them has to endure an unpleasant hissing, which
to his ears sounds like the noise of geese or the fizzing
of a bottle of ale which is being uncorked. Another
rouses such discontent that he is mewed at like a cat ;
while a third can hardly protect himself against the
apples, oranges, and nutshells that are showered down
upon him, and which are afterwards swept away by the
stage-keeper and given to the bears in the adjoining
garden.
But the great Burbage, the favourite of the public,
the English Roscius, as they call him, though Roscius
was a comic actor, and Burbage won his greatest laurels
as a tragic, saves all by his powerful and deeply impres-
sive acting.
And when, moreover, in the last act he shows his
skill in fencing in the scene with Laertes, there is no end
to the cheering. The success of Hamlet is secured. All
leave the house pleased and touched.
" This Burbage is the devil of a fellow, and Shake-
1 66 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
speare too ! Did you see how he fenced ? " Such ex-
clamations are heard while people throng towards the
narrow entrance, hasten down to the river and quarrel
with the sturdy watermen. The ladies declare their
opinion that the young man who played Osric was
charming, and beautifully dressed, and that the play was
very nice.
The actors also are pleased. They gather at a little
festival in " The Cardinal's Hat," where Burbage spends
thirty shillings in wine for them.
But who among them felt that on that day time had
turned a leaf in the book, which is called The Great
Deeds of the Human Mind ?
HISTRIONIC ART
The Old School — Clowns — Richard Tarlton and his Art — William Kemp.
IT would be quite impossible to give anything like a full
description of the art of acting and the individual actors
of the Shakespearean period.
It is always difficult to fix the ephemeral art of the
theatre on paper. In this respect, however, the last two
centuries have afforded great assistance by the publication
of numerous memoirs, appreciations and biographies of
actors, and last, not least, by the issue of many pictorial
representations of actors in their parts. This material
for the historical treatment of histrionic art is ever increas-
ing in value, so that in this new century we shall no doubt
be able, with the assistance of the phonograph and the
kinematograph, to call back to life the stage-heroes who
have passed away, almost as easily as we can now take
down from the shelf our Shakespeare or our Moliere.
But in those old times material is virtually non-
existent. No descriptive criticism*, no autobiography,
no picture of an actor's part — except a few rough wood-
cuts of two clowns — assist us in throwing light on one
of the most interesting periods of histrionic art. We
know the names of a great number of actors ; we know
something about them — where they were born, where
they died and were buried, and how much money they
1 68 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
left behind them. But what places they occupied in the
mighty literature of the time, or what was the character
of their art, these are questions of which we are so hope-
lessly ignorant in every case that, for all we know
of them, they might as well not have been born at
all.
It is tragicomical to think that, while our contem-
porary theatrical statisticians put down and print a note
each time when Mr X. is replaced by Mr G. as a servant
in a quite indifferent piece, so that posterity is perfectly
secured against mistakes about the theatrical careers of
these gentlemen, we are completely cut off from ever
learning which parts Shakespeare chose to represent in
his own plays, and must content ourselves with sup-
posing that he acted the ghost in Hamlet.
Any attempt, therefore, at a real description of the
histrionic art of the time is bound to fail. The following
chapters do not pretend either to offer such a description,
or to give a categorical list of names of the known actors,
which would not agree at all with the plan of the
present work. Their object is to exhibit a few prominent
types which are characteristic of some particular branches
of the histrionic art.
Like the Drama, the earliest Elizabethan art of acting
no doubt stood with one foot in the Middle Ages, with-
out knowing where to put the other. Certainly there
existed in England at a very early period a kind of pro-
fessional actors, but their domain was so limited and so
peculiar that for a long time there did not seem to be any
possibility of their further development. With dramas
properly so called, such as the great Mysteries and
HISTRIONIC ART 169
Moralities, which impressed their stamp upon the Middle
Ages, these artists had nothing to do.
These plays, we know, were performed by amateur
citizens, who undertook the great task and carried it out
to the best of their ability. Only the comic parts, which
were required as a relief from the long strain on the
attention of the audience, were executed by professionals,
who could sing and dance, play the flute, beat the drum,
cut all sorts of capers, crack jokes, or find rhymes at a
moment's notice; in short, who possessed a whole r£-
pertoire of jests and amusing tricks, which all required
practice and training, and perhaps a talent of which,
naturally, the citizen amateurs were destitute.
Thus the professional actors found themselves in a
very isolated position. They stood in no connection
with the serious subject of the play and the deep
influence it exercised on the spectators ; their business
was only to divert the mind by their jokes. But
though they carried these diversions to an extraordinary
degree of perfection, their domain was naturally very
limited. They continued to be "players of interludes."
Actors, according to the modern acceptation of the word,
did not exist till the time when dramatic literature passed
entirely into the hands of professional artists.
But players of interludes continued to flourish through-
out the Shakespearean period. These gay mediaeval
jugglers, half equilibrists, half" instrumentalists " (as they
were called abroad), were comic in every sense of the
word. They were not actors playing comic parts or
representing comic characters ; everything about them
was ludicrous, their appearance, manners, movements and
1 70 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
speech. They were by nature " the clown " or " fool " of
the Renaissance play, closely related to the ancient court-
fool, though with a more athletic training than the latter.
The modern English clown of the music-hall and the
circus is their direct descendant.
Everybody knows the beautiful passage in Hamlet}
where the Prince, holding the old jester's skull in his
hand, philosophises on the vanity of life : " Let me
see. Alas, poor Yorick ! I knew him, Horatio ; a
fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy ; he hath
borne me on his back a thousand times ; and now, how
abhorred in my imagination it is ! my gorge rises at it.
Here hung those lips that I have kissed, I know not how
oft. Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your
songs ? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set
the table on a roar ? Not one now to mask your own
grinning ? quite chop-fallen ? Now get you to my lady's
chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this
favour she must come ; make her laugh at that."
The words are so pathetic and seem to betray such
personal feeling, that we are no doubt justified in believ-
ing that Shakespeare in his little funeral oration meant
to commemorate a certain late comrade. In that case
he could be referring to none other than Richard Tarlton.
Tarlton was an exact type of the kind of actor we
have tried to describe above. He is just the man — the
comedian — who half belongs to the Middle Ages and
cannot find a firm footing in the new literature ; the
jester par excellence, the idolised and mourned, but poor
and humble juggler, who, when Shakespeare wrote his
1 Act v. Sc. i.
HISTRIONIC ART 171
Hamlet, had been dead for a few years. The year of his
death, 1588, was remembered as coinciding with that of
the destruction of the Spanish Armada.
At Tarlton's death Shakespeare was twenty-four years
old, and he may well have acted with him. It is not
even improbable that he may have known him as a boy,
and that Tarlton had really carried little Willy on his
back when, as a travelling actor, he visited Stratford
among other places. Of his many travels we are re-
minded in a collection of anecdotes, which was published
after his death,1 and which, by the by, affords no slight
contribution to a knowledge of the kind of wit he
possessed.
Otherwise we know little about his life. According
to Fuller's " Worthies," 2 he is supposed to have been
born in Shropshire, where he kept his father's swine, and
attracted the attention of a Leicester man by his clever
replies. He came to London and became a water-
carrier,3 a characteristic figure in the daily life of old
London, and a situation which might well afford him
opportunities of exercising his wit, and extend his know-
ledge of human frailties.
1 The date is unknown. In 1611 appeared Tarltorts Jests, Drawn into
three parts : His Court Witty Jests; His Sound City Jests; His Country
Pretty Jests : full of Delight, Wit and honest Mirth, 4to. After this first
and still extant edition, a reprint was undertaken by Halliwell (1844) for
the Shakespeare Society. But the three parts appeared separately at an
earlier date.
2 Thomas Fuller : History of the Worthies of England, London,
MDCLXII. p. 47 (Staffordshire).
3 According to Lord Wilson's play : The Three Lords and Three Ladies of
London, which contains several references to Tarlton, and was performed
shortly after his death. — Compare Fleay : English Drama, ii. 280, and
Halliwell : Tarlton's Jests, p. 9.
i;2 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
He married a woman of somewhat loose habits,
named Kate, and with her kept a tavern in Gracious
(i.e. Gracechurch) Street, and at another period a public-
house in Paternoster Row.1 It is not known when he
became an actor, but there is nothing to prevent its
having been simultaneous with his keeping of a tavern
and his other occupations. As a matter of fact, he was
a qualified fencing master, and an author as well. The
first entirely trustworthy information about him is con-
cerned with his authorship; in 1570 he published a by
no means brilliant ballad on the floods in Bedfordshire,
etc.2 It is scarcely probable, however, that he himself
composed this miserable song ; we should think it more
likely that he lent the printer his name, which, no doubt,
was already celebrated by that time. So much is certain,
however, that he wrote the scenario of the play pre-
viously mentioned, The Seven Deadly Sins, and very
likely he also composed the famous Victories of Henry
V., a forerunner of Shakespeare's royal dramas about the
popular "Prince Hal." We meet with him in 1583 as
one of the twelve distinguished artists from various com-
panies, who are selected to be " The Queen's Players,"
and at the same time he is made groom of the chamber.
In 1587 he took the highest degree in the art of fencing
as " master of the noble syence of deffence," from which
we conclude that he cannot have been very old when he
died. He was probably carried off by the plague, which
ravaged the country in 1588, for on a single day, the 3rd
of September, he made his will, died, and was buried.3
1 Comp. Tarltorfs Jests, pp. 15, 21 and 26.
2 Reprinted in Tarltorfs Jests, pp. 126 ff.
3 Tarltoris Jests, p. 12.
8 — Richard Tarlton as a Clown.
ft
HISTRIONIC ART 173
From the numerous anecdotes about Tarlton we get
the impression of a light-living merry fellow, who felt as
much at ease when at court in the society of the Queen
and the great lords — where he himself was a Lord of
Mirth * — as when surrounded by fiddlers in a public-
house. A man of quick wit, never at a loss for an
answer, and sparing nobody, high or low, man or
woman.
In the theatre he was the great delight of the audience
from the moment when his ludicrous little body with the
large head dived out from behind the back drapery.
His flat nose and squinting eyes, his cap with the button,
his reddish brown clown's dress, his drum and his pipe,
were known to every child in London, and as soon as
he stood up on tiptoe and prepared to speak, the house
roared with laughter.
It was a favourite joke to challenge him to rhyme by
addressing verses to him about his appearance or private
circumstances. But the challengers seldom got the best
of their game, for Tarlton's tongue was as sharp as it
was quick. Thus it happened one day that a spectator,
wishing to make game of him, asked him in tolerably
good verses how he had come by his flat nose. But
Tarlton was not slow, and retorted in a little improvised
poem which ended thus : —
" Though my nose be flat,
My credit to save,
1 Here within this sullen earth
Lies Dick Tarlton, lord of mirth.
(Wits Bedlam, 1617, quoted by Halliwell-
Tarltorts Jests , p. 15.)
174 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
Yet very well I can by the smell
Scent an honest man from a knave." l
Altogether he was a great master in the art of im-
provisation, which he had no doubt studied successfully
after the Italian actors, who by this time were travelling
about England. One of his comic scenes, which is
known to us, reminds us a good deal of the burlesques
of Scaramuccia or Arlecchino : A rich man is lying on
his death-bed, and has called his three sons to him in
order to acquaint them with his last will. All his landed
property is left to his eldest son, who in great emotion
assures his father that he hopes he may live and enjoy
it himself. The second son receives a large sum of
ready money to live on and to buy books with, but he
too is moved to tears and pretends that he does not
want the money, and that he trusts his good father may
live and enjoy it himself. Now conies the last, the
prodigal son, to the death-bed. It is Tarlton. He
appears in a ragged and dirty shirt, a coat with only
one sleeve, stockings without heels, and a headgear of
feathers and straw. "As to you, sirra," his father says
angrily, " you know how many times I have got you out
of Newgate and Bridewell — you have been an ungrateful
scoundrel — all I can leave you is the gallows and a
rope." Tarlton bursts into a deluge of tears, falls on his
knees, and exclaims sobbing : " Oh, my father, that is
much more than I desire ; I hope to God that you may
live and enjoy them yourself."2
However, it was by his "jigs," a merry singing and
1 Tarltoris Jests, p. 29.
2 Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines, pp. 86 ff.
HISTRIONIC ART 175
dancing performance, which, according to the fashion of
the time, closed the dramatic representation, that Tarlton
won his greatest fame.1 The only jig2 which has been
preserved shows us a very long humorous song, not
differing in kind from our modern music-hall songs ; it is
amusing and well written, and has a constantly recurring
refrain, which with a small variation adapted itself to the
contents of each verse. Its title is : " Tarlton's Jigge of
a Horse-loade of Fooles," and the first verse runs as
follows : —
What do you lacke ? what do ye lacke ?
Ive a horse loade of fooles,
Squeaking, gibbering of everie degree ;
I me an excellent workeman
And these are my tooles :
Is not this a fine merie familie ? 3
We can imagine Tarlton entering the stage riding
on one of those ludicrous hobby-horses, which in those
times were a favourite means of producing an effect,
and which even now circus clowns do not disdain to use.
A hobby-horse is the hollow body of a horse through
which the rider sticks his legs, while a pair of artificial
legs are placed astride on the animal, so that he seems
1 The same fashion prevailed during that period in Paris, where the
chansons of Gaultier Garguille enjoyed the same popular favour as Tarlton's
jigs in London.
2 It would be more correct to say, the only text of a jig, for we know the
music of several of them. Compare Halliwell's Cambridge Manuscript
Rarities, p. 8.
3 " What do you lacke ? what do you lacke ? " was in those times the general
cry of the seller to the customer. The jig is reprinted in the Introduction
to Tar/ton's Jests (pp. 20 ff.) after a manuscript which was in Collier's
possession. It is one of the curiosities discovered by him, the authenticity
of which has never been doubted.
i;6 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
to ride while he runs round with the body fastened to
himself. In front of him he probably had a basket full
of dolls representing fools, which he offered for sale
while singing his song.
The first he presents is himself; his name is Dick,
he is a fool-actor, whose portrait hangs on every wall,
so that nobody can mistake the likeness. Moreover, he
has his father's " lovelie visnomie," his two eyes and flat
nose, and "he comes of a rare witty family."
Next, he presents a Puritan fool, whom he calls
" Goose-son," i.e. Stephen Gosson, one of the most
zealous antagonists of actors, whose " School of Abuse "
we have mentioned before. He is very badly treated as
a common hypocrite " of a very numerous family."
Then comes the "fool of state," who is born very
small, but "would fain be very great"; "of a very
ancient family " ; and the poet who drinks sack and
canary in "The Hat" or "The Rose," "of a rare wine-
bibing family " ; the doctor who kills us with such skill
and art that he makes dying quite a pleasure; "of a
marvellously learned family " ; the lover-fool who sings
to his lute about his lost luck ; " of a most melancholy
family " ; the alderman who hates all kinds of wisdom,
but most of all in plays ; " of a very obstinate family " ;
and the country fool, who comes to town to be made a
gentleman, though he is but a "rustic clown"; "of a
Somersetshire family."
Of course, Tarlton, who performed this jig on the
stage of " The Curtain," knew how to characterise each
of these different types by their special gestures and the
peculiarities of class, which in the old time much more
HISTRIONIC ART 177
than nowadays distinguished people from each
other.
Tarlton became the principal exponent of the genuine
unadulterated English humour, untainted with the bigoted
Puritan moroseness, and unawed by the overweening
pride of the court and nobility, the two powers which
have always done their best to crush healthy national
mirth. Tarlton even occupied a peculiar position at
court. Without being in any way a court-fool like the
famous William Sommer of Henry VIII., he was
allowed the privilege of free speech to the Queen, which
nobody else possessed. Fuller relates : 1 " Our Tarlton
was master of his faculty. When Queen Elizabeth was
serious, I dare not say sullen, and out of good humour,
he could undumpish her at his pleasure. Her highest
favourites would, in some cases, go to Tarlton before
they would go to the Queen, and he was their usher
to prepare their advantageous access unto her. In a
word, he told the Queen more of her faults than most
of her chaplains, and cured her melancholy better than
all of her physicians.
" Much of his merriment lay in his very looks and
actions, according to the epitaph written upon him : —
"Hie situs est cujus poterat vox, actio, vultus,
Ex Heraclito reddere Democritum.
" Indeed, the same words, spoken by another, would
hardly move a merry man to smile, which, uttered by
him, would force a sad soul to laughter."
We have reason to question whether he stood in
1 Fuller's Worthies, ed. 1662, p. 47 (Staffordshire).
III. M
i;8 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
any intimate relation with the new time and its new-born
dramatic literature. He was probably not an actor in
the modern sense of the word, an exponent of human
character, such as the time immediately after him was
to produce, and though he performed "parts" in various
plays,1 he always remained the same Tarlton.
However, such as he was, he not only gained
immense popularity, but he created a school, though
his pupils never equalled their master. He was sur-
rounded by a staff of comic actors like Knell, Bentley,
Mils, Wilson, Crosse and Lanam,2 among whom Knell,
as we see from the preceding note, was the original
Prince Henry in the ante-Shakespearean Henry V.,
while Robert Wilson was one of the companions of
James Burbage and a popular dramatic author, of whom
we have spoken before. They are all mentioned by
their later colleague, Thomas Heywood, in company
1 In Tarlton 's Jests (pp. 24. ff.) we read the following rather amusing little
anecdote, which at least shows that he was capable of playing other parts
than his usual clown : " At the Bull at Bishopsgate was a play of Henry the
fift, wherein the judge was to take a box on the eare ; and because he was
absent that should take the blow, Tarlton himselfe ever forward to please,
tooke upon him to play the same judge, besides his owne part of the clown ;
and Knell then playing Henry the fift, hit Tarlton a sound boxe indeed,
which made the people laugh the more because it was he, but anon the
judge goes in, and immediately Tarlton in his clownes cloathes comes out
and askes the actors what newes ; O, saith one, hadst thou been here thou
shouldest have seen Prince Henry hit the judge a terrible box on the eare :
What, man, said Tarlton, strike a judge ? It is true, y faith, said the other.
No other like, said Tarlton, and it could not be but terrible to the judge,
when the report so terrifies me, that me thinkes the blow remaines still on
my cheeke, that it burnes againe. The people laughed at this mightily :
and to this day I have heard it commended for rare ; but no marvell, for he
had many of these. But I would see our clowns in these dayes do the like :
no, I warrant ye, and yet they thinke well of themselves to."
2 They are mentioned in this order by Thomas Heywood, as a school of
actors which he had never seen himself.— Apology for Actors, p. 43.
HISTRIONIC ART 179
with "all these Doctors, Zannis, Pantaloons and Harle-
quins, in which the French, and especially the Italians,
have distinguished themselves," and this fact confirms
our supposition that this first period was influenced by
the Commedia deir Arte.
To a somewhat later generation belonged artists like
William Kemp, Robert Arnim, Gabriel Spencer, Thomas
Pope, Augustine Phillips and William Sly, the first of
whom, Kemp, undoubtedly gained the greatest celebrity.
He really became Tarlton's inheritor, as Hey wood says,
"of Her Majesty's favour as well as of the good opinion
and thoughts of the public in general." But it may be
doubted if he equalled his predecessor in naive and
brilliant comic power.
It seems to me that the small amount of information
we possess about Kemp gives the impression of a
business-like, swaggering, coarse artist, while Tarlton
was a born comic genius. Where Kemp is mentioned
in the literature of the time, allusions are made to his
ignorance and lack of culture side by side with his
great popularity. Thus, especially in a previously
quoted scene from the University play, The Return from
Parnassus, in which he appears together with Richard
Burbage, and speaks about "that writer Ovid and that
writer Metamorphosis."1 While in the whole of this
scene Burbage is represented as a well-bred and educated
man, we get an image of Kemp as a rough, swaggering
juggler. He cannot distinguish the names of the two
students Philomusus and Studioso, but calls them " Mr
Phil and Mr Otioso " ; he boasts of his fame and says
1 Compare above, p. 43.
i8o HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
to the students : . . . " for honours, who of more report
than Dick Burbage and Will Kemp ? he is not counted
a gentleman that knowes not Dick Burbage and Will
Kemp ; there is not a country wench that can dance
Sellenger's Round but can talk of Dick Burbage and
Will Kemp"; whereupon Philomusus adds: ''Indeed,
M. Kemp, you are very famous."
The only literary work left by Kemp also shows his
vanity and self-complacency. It is a short description
of his celebrated Morris-dance from London to Norwich,
one of those eccentric journeys of which Englishmen
were so fond in those days. What Kemp pledged him-
self to do was this ; in nine days he was to dance the
whole way from London to Norwich, of course not un-
interruptedly, but without walking or driving at all,
only moving in the steps of the Morris-dance, for which
he was particularly noted.1 The Morris was a kind
of rustic dance accompanied by the jingling of bells
which were fastened to the dancer's legs, and by the
sounds of a drum and a pipe played by a musician.
The drawing on the title-page of his little book2
shows us Kemp dancing along the road, accompanied
by his drummer, Thomas Sly (perhaps a relative of
William Sly, the comic actor), and by his servant and
an umpire, who had to see that the dance was properly
executed.
1 He styles himself " Cavaliero Kemp, head-master of Morris-dancers "
(Kemp's Nine Dates Wonder, p. 3).
8 Its title is : Kemps Nine Dates Wonder. -Performed in a daunce from
London to Norwich. Containing the pleasure, paines, and kinde entertain-
ment of William Kemp between London and that Citty in his late Morrice.
London, 1600. This exceedingly rare book has been reprinted by A. Dyce
for the Camden Society.
9 — William Kemp Dancing a Morris Dance.
HISTRIONIC ART 181
On the first Monday in Lent, 1599, in the early-
morning, he danced out of London while his drummer
played merrily, and old and young followed him on the
way, throwing sixpences and coppers to him and crying
many a "good speed on the journey." The dance went
into the country, where the populace crowded curiously
round him, and everyone wanted him to pass through
their particular village ; where nut-brown country-lassies
would borrow jingles of him and dance with him on
the road ; where he stopped in the inns and had great
difficulty in refusing the number of brimming cups which
were offered him by gay millers and enthusiastic smiths ;
where he sometimes danced in water and mud up to
his knees without giving up the task ; at other times in
beautiful clear dry moonlight nights, till at last he
reached Norwich, where the whole populace were
assembled to receive him. He brought his dance to
an end with a smart jump over the church wall, after
which he wound up with a grand festival at the house
of the Mayor of Norwich, who, moreover, made him a
present of ^5.
In a lively and not unamiable way Kemp describes
the experiences of each day in his little book, which
gives us a pretty clear idea of the man, an actor of
Shakespeare, who, like an organ-grinder, accepts the
coppers of the peasants on the road, and nevertheless is
seated side by side with the mayor and aldermen, knights
and ladies, who- honour him for his athletic feat; a
vain, penny-loving, yet tolerably attractive and clever
juggler, who one day acts in one of Shakespeare's finest
plays, dances in a country inn the next, and on the third
i82 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
is admitted perhaps to Her Majesty's table. The man
is a type of a certain kind of Renaissance actor.
Of Kemp's theatrical career we know a little more
than of Tarlton's, but not very much.
Curiously enough, the first entirely trustworthy infor-
mation about Kemp's stage-work dates from Denmark.
It is a well-known fact that from the close of the sixteenth
and quite to the middle of the seventeenth century
English companies travelled through Germany, Austria,
France, the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark. They
were very successful everywhere, both with the courts
and among the people ; chiefly, it is probable, with their
dancing and playing, though in Germany they also
performed their usual dramatic repertoire and were
gradually naturalised.1
Denmark was one of the first countries to be visited
by these companies. As early as in 1579 Frederick II.
engaged a company of " instrumentalists " at his court,
under the management of an Italian named Zoega.
Besides the Italian leader, the company included both
German and English members,2 of whom the English
were much better remunerated than the Germans;
In 1586 a company of much greater importance
arrived at Elsinore, where the King frequently held his
1 In later years the study of the travels and work of these companies has
made considerable progress, especially since the publication in 1865 of the
pioneer book by Albert Cohn, Shakespeare in Germany. Throughout the
annual issues of the Shakespeare Jahrbuch we find numerous interesting
essays and notes, some by Cohn himself, some by Johannes Bolte and
Johannes Meissner.
2 Among them was the unfortunate Thomas Bull, whose love story and
beheading have been described by Dr Ad. Hansen after the municipal
records of Elsinore in Tilskueren of July 1900.
HISTRIONIC ART 183
court. It included such noted members as William
Kemp, Thomas Pope and George Bryan, all of them
well-known clowns, who figure in the list of principal
actors in the plays of Shakespeare published in the folio
edition of 1623. The little company consisted of five
members besides Kemp and his "boy," Daniel Jones.
Kemp seems to have belonged to the company as a kind
of distinguished guest. He only remained two months
in Denmark, and received a larger amount of board-
money than the others. In the accounts of the court
the entry concerning Kemp runs as follows : " William
Kempe, instrumentist, received in board-money for
two months for himself and a boy named Daniell
Jones, which he had earned from the i7th of June,
when he entered the service, and moreover for one month,
which was given him at his departure, together three
months, each month 12 Dalers . . . xxxvi Dalers."
The English guests probably all belonged to " Lord
Leicester's Men," consequently to the company of the
Burbages, and most likely came direct from London with
a large embassy, which Frederick II. had sent to Queen
Elizabeth in April, and which must have arrived at
Elsinore at the date when the company was engaged
(June 1 7th). At the beginning of the year Kemp, and
perhaps the others also, had been in Utrecht with their
protector, Lord Leicester himself, who was staying in
the Netherlands to fan the revolt against Philip II. ; but
in the meantime he had been back in England. This
appears from a passage in a letter from rhilip Sidney,
a nephew of Leicester's, to Walsingham, his father-in-
law, in which he says that at an earlier date he had sent
1 84 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
a message home with Will, " Mylord of Leicester's
jesting plaier." 1
Will Kemp now returned to England, while his
travelling companions remained some time in Denmark,
and then were engaged by the Elector of Saxony. Most
likely he joined his old company again, and acted with
them at " The Theatre " 2 during the following years.
We know for certain that he played Peter in Romeo and
Juliet here, for in the oldest editions of this piece (the
quartos of 1599 and 1609) his name has crept in instead
of the name of the part, so that (in act iv., scene 5) we
read : " enter William Kemp " instead of " enter Peter."
We do not know any of his other parts on this stage,
but as he is specially mentioned as a principal actor in
Shakespeare's plays, and as he was undoubtedly a great
celebrity as a comic actor, it is probable that during this
period he acted such parts as Bottom in A Midsummer
Nighfs Dream ; Lance in The Two Gentlemen of Verona,
which seems to be written for his special capacity ;
Costard in Loves Labour Lost ; one of the Dromios in
A Comedy of Errors, etc.
When " The Theatre " was pulled down in 1 598, he
went with his company to " The Curtain," and there
played Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing; for this
we possess the same kind of evidence as for his im-
personation of Peter. At " The Curtain," moreover, he
1 Albert Cohn (and others after him) is of opinion that Kemp and the
rest of the company travelled direct from the Netherlands to Denmark.
But though those times were not accustomed to quick postal communication,
vre must say that it would have been absurd for anybody to send a letter
home to England by a man who went to Denmark.
, 2 Not at "The Blackfriars," which was not built till 1596, and Kemp is
not likely to have ever acted there.
HISTRIONIC ART 185
played one of the principal parts in Ben Jonson's Every
Man in His Humour ; which it was, we do not know, but
I feel inclined to think that it was Brainworm.
However, during this whole period — from his return
from Denmark in 1586 to 1598 — he did not stay uninter-
ruptedly at the theatres of the Burbages. At any rate,
from the iQth of February to the 22nd of June 1592, a
part of "Lord Leicester's" company, which since 1588
had been " Lord Strange's," played under Henslowe and
Alleyn, and probably at " The Newington." 1 That
Kemp was included in the cast here we know for
certain, from the fact that on the loth or nth of June
1592 2 a new anonymous play was performed for the first
time ; its title was : A Knack to Know a Knave, with
Kemp's Applauded Merriments. The piece is still
extant, and Kemp's Applauded Merriments prove to be
a perfectly senseless and spiritless little interlude, per-
formed by artisans.3 It is to be supposed, however, that
Kemp improvised the jokes which created the success of
the play, for, like Tarlton's, his strong point was improvi-
sation. At any rate, this piece proves unmistakably that
in 1592 Kemp played under Alleyn and Henslowe, for
on the title-page of its first edition (i 594) we read : " as it
has been acted several times by Edw. Allen and his
company." He had not, however, left his own company,
" Lord Strange's Men," as Collier4 thinks, but, for what
1 Not, as asserted by Fleay {English Drama, ii. p. 310), at "The Rose,"
the building of which was not completed at this time.
2 Comp. Henslowe's Diary, p. 28.
3 It is reprinted in Dyce's edition of A Nine Dazes Wonder, pp. xxiii. ff.
4 English Dramatic Poetry, iii. 335, where Collier indeed speaks of "The
Lord Chamberlain's Company," which did not exist at all in 1592, when its
name was " Lord Strange's Men."
186 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
reason, is unknown, this company had for a time sub-
mitted to the leadership of Henslowe and Alley n. This
fact appears distinctly from the headlines of Henslowe's
accounts for this season, which run : " In God's name,
Amen, i59i[2],1 beginning the iQth of February, my Lord
Strange's men, as follows." Till February 1593 Kemp
and his companions probably remained under Henslowe
and Alleyn. A Knack to Know a Knave was performed
for the last time on January 25th, I593,2 whereafter,
very likely, they again returned to the Burbages.
Later, however, matters came to a decisive rupture
between Kemp and the company, or rather, if we dare
venture on the wild paths of conjecture, between Kemp
and Shakespeare. We can scarcely imagine a greater
contrast than these two men. Shakespeare, noble and
reticent, quietly writes one masterpiece after another, but
never about himself, never about his own greatness,
never against his colleagues ; unnoticed, even without
noticing it himself, he becomes the greatest man of his
time. Kemp, noisy and coarse, fills England and the
Continent with the tinkling of his clown's bells, his
pipes and drums ; advertises himself without shame and
without measure, and becomes the common topic much
more than Shakespeare, which naturally gives him the
idea that he himself is a far greater man than the other.
These two are fellow-actors. They play together
daily and in the same pieces, which, moreover, are
written by Shakespeare himself, and the representation
1 Henslowe frequently mixes up the Old and the New Style in his dates.
In the middle of this year of his accounts he suddenly passes from 1591
to 1592.
2 Henslowe's Diary, p. 30.
HISTRIONIC ART 187
of which is conducted by him. A rupture between them
was inevitable. From his tours on the Continent, and
from such more or less mediocre performances as his
above-mentioned ''Applauded Merriments" Kemp had
fallen into habits of improvisation, and of taking posses-
sion of the stage, which Shakespeare did not like, and
from which he considered it his duty to purge the theatre.
That down to a much later period Kemp was famed, or ill-
famed, for his heedless running after witticisms, we gather
from The Antipodes, a piece by Brome, in which there is a
scene between the nobleman, Letoy, and an actor, Byplay.
Letoy endeavours to make the actor see that it is not
right to add anything to the part, or to have direct
intercourse with the public, but that actors have to
follow the course of the dialogue, and pay attention to
what is going on on the stage. Byplay excuses himself
in the following lines : —
" That is a way, my lord, has been allowed
On elder stages, to move mirth and laughter."
But Letoy answers : —
" Yes, in the days of Tarleton and Kemp,
Before the stage was purg'd from barbarism,
And brought to the perfection it now shines with :
Then fools and jesters spent their wits, because
The poets were wise enough to save their own
For profitabler uses."
Now, we cannot justly say that Shakespeare spared
his wit in his comic characters, but probably he did not
like his actors, any more than other authors, and with
i88 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
greater right than any of them, to treat the public to
the jokes which occurred to them at the moment, instead
of offering those which he himself had taken the trouble
of providing with wit and point ; especially if these
jokes, as we may suspect of those delivered by Kemp,
were coarse, and not in keeping with Shakespeare's own
taste. In Kemp and Shakespeare, then, we meet not
only with a conflict between two men, but with a col-
lision between two kinds of taste, two types within the
domain of dramatic art.
Shakespeare did not fail to be explicit in expressing
his opinion about actors of the kind to which he thought
Kemp belonged. In the rules for the players which he
has put into the mouth of Hamlet, he uses the following
sharp words, which are applicable to all times : l " Let
those that play your clowns speak no more than is set
down for them ; for there be of them that will them-
selves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spec-
tators to laugh too ; though, in the meantime, some
necessary question of the play be then to be considered :
that's villainous, and shews a most pitiful ambition in the
fool that uses it."
That these words were aimed directly at Kemp is very
probable, though, of course, it cannot be proved. About
this time Kemp had left the Burbage company. Doubt-
less he did not go to " The Globe " at all, when this
theatre was opened in 1599. For, while he is put down
as one of the cast of Jonson's Every Man in his Humour
in 1598, he is not mentioned among the actors of Every
Man Out of his Humour by the same author, which
1 Hamlet, iii. 2.
HISTRIONIC ART 189
was performed at "The Globe" in 1599. It was in
this year that he undertook his famous Morris-dance to
Norwich, and perhaps he afterwards made other journeys
to the Continent. In the above-mentioned scene in The
Return from Parnassus, which dates from about 1601,
Kemp is greeted as having recently arrived from abroad.
Philomusus says to him : " What, Mr Kemp, how doth
the Emperor of Germany ? " and Studioso : " Welcome,
Mr Kemp, from dancing the morrice over the
Alpes."
After his rupture with Burbage and Shakespeare,
Kemp very likely spent a year on the Continent. In a
play called The Travels of the Three English Brothers,
he is represented as staying in Venice, where he 'is
having a burlesque and not very decent conversation
with an Italian comrade, " Signior Harlakin" and his
wife. However, we do not possess any positive evi-
dence of his having visited either Germany or Italy.
His name is not found included in the various com-
panies which travelled in Germany at this period.
In 1602, in any case, he is again in London, acting
under Henslowe and Alleyn as one of " the Earl of
Worcester's Men." We gather from Henslowe's Diary
that on the loth of March 1602 he borrows "in Redy
monye twentye shillenges for his necessary usses."1 . . .
The later part of his life is enveloped in obscurity.
It does not seem probable, in spite of Collier's assertion,
that he returned to Burbage's company. However, the
document on which Collier founds his belief — a com-
plaint of the Lord Mayor in 1605 against Kemp, Arnim
1 Henslowe's Diary, pp. 215, 237, 238.
190 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
and other players of " The Blackfriars " l — is evidently a.
forgery, and even if it could be proved that Kemp had
played at " The Blackfriars " in 1605, it does not follow
that he had returned to Burbage's company, for, as we
have proved above, it was not till 1608 that the King's
men acted at " The Blackfriars."
The year of Kemp's death is unknown, as is that of
his birth. I think it probable, however, that he was still
alive in 1607, when The Three English Brothers was
acted ; in the scene where he appears under his own
name there is nothing to prove that a dead man is
represented. It is even probable that he impersonated
himself in the play ; in that case he belonged at the
time to "The Queen's Men."
Kemp is not likely to have left other literary works
besides his little Nine Daies Wonder. A number of jigs
indeed bear his name, but doubtless they were not
composed, only performed by him.2
II
The Tragedians — "King Cambyses' Vein" and Shakespeare's Opinion
About It — Edward Alleyn as an Artist and as a Man.
THE custom of improvisation in comic dramatic art,
though it did not die with Kemp, certainly went out of
fashion after his death. If it had ever had a footing in
tragedy, it had long been abolished.
1 Collier, English Dramatic Poetry, iii. 352.
2 A pamphlet directed against the Puritans and published under the
name of W. Kemp has led Collier and others to believe that our clown
took part in the literary struggle against the Puritans. This strange error
rests on the mistake of confusing Kemp the actor with a schoolmaster and
pedagogue in Plymouth, who bore the same name.
HISTRIONIC ART 191
Nevertheless, we can trace an old and a new style in
tragic acting also. The serious performers of the
Middle Ages were mostly artisans and petty tradesmen,
and it was probably from these classes that the first
generation of professional tragedians was recruited.
The first builder of theatres in London, the actor James
Burbage, was a joiner by profession ; the second great
theatrical manager, Philip Henslowe, was a dyer.
Among the earlier performers of the pre-Shakespearean
sanguinary repertoire of tragedies, no doubt there was
many a master-weaver Bottom, carpenter Quince and
tailor Starveling. To semi-amateurs nothing is more
welcome than the external display of violence on which
these pieces were based, where roaring and shouting
cover the lack of capacity for emotional speech, where
rolling of the eyes replaces well developed facial play,
and violent, purposeless movements are substituted for
expressive gestures.
Let us hear what Bottom says (Midsummer Night's
Dream, Act i., sc. 2) : " . . . I could play Ercles
rarely, or a part to tear a cat in, to make all split.
" The raging rocks,
With shivering shocks,
Shall break the locks
Of prison gates :
And Phibbus' car
Shall shine from far,
And make and mar
The foolish fates."
" This was lofty ! . . . This is Ercles' vein, a
tyrant's vein, a lover is more condoling."
192 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
This style was particularly odious to Shakespeare.
In Henry IV. he calls it " King Cambyses' vein," a
splendid expression, which ought to serve for ever as a
description of this sort of art. It is put into the mouth
of old John Falstaff, who, in the famous public-house
scene in the second act, is about to represent the father
of Prince Henry in this style : —
" Give me a cup of sack to make mine eyes look red,
that it may be thought I have wept, for I must speak in
passion, and I will do it in King Cambyses' vein."1
" A lamentable tragedy mixed ful of pleasant mirth
contegning the life of Cambises " was an old play by
Thomas Preston, written ab. 1561, published in 1570,
in which ghastly horrors are mixed up with burlesque
scenes in the old-fashioned way. But the style of this
play in itself has not the slightest resemblance to that of
Falstaff in the speech he makes to the prince — it might
rather be called a little euphuistic — so it cannot be
the style of writing, but the manner of acting which
Shakespeare means to parody, the "tyrant vein," the
old-fashioned exaggerated grandiloquence, which he
detested and against which he struggled in every way,
though he did not conquer it. It still flourishes and will
go on flourishing as long as there are actors without
talent to use it as the best screen for their incapacity.
This style indeed affords the great advantage to the
performer of gaining quite as much admiration from the
ordinary public as true and genuine art. That is why
Mrs Quickly, the hostess of the Boar's Head Tavern,
falls into ecstasies at the first verses recited by Falstaff.
1 Henry IV., Part I., ii. 4.
HISTRIONIC ART 193
Hostess : " O, the Father, how he holds his coun-
tenance ! "
Falstaff : " For God's sake, lords, convey my trustful
queen,
For tears do stop the flood-gates of her
eyes."
Hostess : " O rare ! he doth it as like one of these
harlotry players as I ever see."
Elsewhere (in Richard 1 Y/.)1 Shakespeare describes
the manners of a villain on the stage. It is in the scene
where Gloster incites Buckingham to deceive the Lord
Mayor. Buckingham gives the somewhat conceited
reply : —
" Tut, I can counterfeit the deep tragedian ;
Speak, and look back, and pry on every side,
Tremble and start at wagging of a straw,
Intending deep suspicion : ghostly looks
Are at my service, like enforced smiles ;
And both are ready in their offices,
At any time, to grace my stratagem."
Naturally this exaggerated manner was repugnant to
the refined and self-controlled mind of Shakespeare. He
evidently burned to express his disgust of it. As a rule,
he keeps his own personality in the background, and
scarcely ever expresses his private opinion in literary or
artistic controversies ; but for once he speaks his mind
and deals a blow at his antagonists in art, which is much
harder, much more serious, and more directly personal in
1 Act iii. Sc. 5.
III. N
i94 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
aim than any of the allusions mentioned above. The
attack is found in Hamlet, which, on the whole, contains
more personal and actual self-expression than any other
of Shakespeare's plays ; but which, it must be added,
appeared at a time when the tide in theatrical controversy
ran high.
The old idea in Hamlet, which was not Shakespeare's
own, of making the king betray himself by acting before
him a play in which his own crime was represented,
afforded Shakespeare an opportunity of revealing his
own artistic creed in an unusually outspoken way, and
of doing it in a form so personal and concise, that it
ought to be the vade mecum of every true actor :— -
Hamlet : " Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pro-
nounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue : but if you
mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the
town -crier spoke my lines. Nor do saw the air too
much with your hand, thus, but use all gently ; for in the
very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, the whirlwind
of passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance
that may give it smoothness. O, it offends me to the
soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a
passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the
groundlings, who for the most part are capable of nothing
but inexplicable dumb-shows and noise : I would have
such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant ; it out-
herods Herod. . . . O, there be players that I have seen
play, and heard others praise, and that highly, not to
speak it profanely, that neither having the accent of
Christians nor the gait of Christian, pagan nor man,
have so strutted and bellowed that I have thought some
10— William Shakespeare (the Droeshont- Flowers portrait).
. J
3?
rm
HISTRIONIC ART 195
of nature's journeymen had made men and not made them
well, they imitated humanity so abominably."
To this the actor to whom the speech is addressed
replies : " I hope we have reformed that indifferently
with us, sir."
But Hamlet (Shakespeare) continues inexorably :
" O, reform it altogether." And thereupon he delivers
the little side-blow at Kemp which we quoted before.
Now the play which is subsequently acted does not
offer any opportunity for particular admonitions of this
kind ; there is no fool and no " tyrant " who might have
an occasion for displaying his bad points in acting.
Evidently this little lecture has an aim which lies outside
the subject of the play. It is an attack on a school of
acting which was distasteful to Shakespeare. And
what kind of school it was does not seem difficult to
guess, especially if one passage of Hamlet's speech is
rightly understood.
Shakespeare says : "I would have such a fellow
whipped for o'erdoing Termagant; it out-herods Herod."
Now, as all commentators on Shakespeare know, Ter-
magant and Herod are two characters frequently appear-
uig in the Mysteries of the Middle Ages. Termagant,
originally a deity supposed to be worshipped by the
iracens, stood afterwards in general for an exotic knave
•d tyrant. This name we meet everywhere in ancient
neroic fiction in slightly varying forms, such as Terva-
gant, Termagaunt, Terrogant, Tarmagant. Herod is
the villain and tyrant in the Passion Plays properly
so-called.
Now it seems somewhat strange that Shakespeare
196 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
should point to mediaeval types as examples of bad acting ;
but a circumstance to which the commentators have paid
no attention is this : these two characters undoubtedly
belonged to the repertoire of Edward Alleyn. In Hens-
lowe's Diary frequent mention is made of a play, the
scenario of which we know, and which bears the title of
Tamar Cam or Tambercam}- Considering Henslowe's
usual extraordinary way of spelling, it would not be
surprising if these names were meant for Termagant.
That the subject of this play was " Mahometan," i.e.
heathen and foreign, we see from the scenario,2 in which
the King, or the " Shaugh'en,"3 of Persia makes his appear-
ance. Moreover, there is an abundance of ghosts and
other supernatural beings in the piece, which agrees
perfectly well with Termagant. And further, Alleyn is
unmistakably indicated in the scenario as having played
the title part. He also owned the play, as in 1602
Henslowe buys the book of him for^2.4 It seems to
have been popular and widely known ; for ten years,
from 1592 to 1602, it is on the repertoire (of course, with
interruptions), and it is probable that it had been revived
at the time when Hamlet was performed. So, if Shake-
speare says that he " would have such a fellow whipped
for [even] o'erdoing Termagant," I have not the slightest
doubt that these words, clear enough to all spectators,
were meant as a hit at his rival, Alleyn.
As to Herod, there has been no evidence hitherto to
1 Also Tamour Cam and Tamber Came.
2 Reprinted in Malone : Historical Account, Plate ii.
3 In seventeenth century writers it is sometimes spelt " Shawne."
4 Henslowe's Diary, pp. 227 and 241.
HISTRIONIC ART 197
prove that a play with this title was acted under Alleyn
in the period previous to Hamlet. Much later, about
1622, we know that a play by Markham and William
Sampson was acted at " The Red Bull," the title of
which was Herod and Antipater with the death of Fair
Marian^ Though Henslowe's Diary does not contain
any direct information about a play with this title and
this subject, it may be proved, nevertheless, that such a
play really was included in Alleyn's repertoire even
shortly before the representation of Hamlet, as in
Henslowe's Diary, in an inventory of apparel of I598,2
belonging to " The Lord Admiral's Men," i.e. Alleyn's
company, I find the following entry : " Item iiii. Here-
vodes cottes and iii sogers [soldiers] cottes and i green
gown for Maryan."
Now, if such a play was acted by " The Lord
Admiral's Men," it may be taken for granted that Alleyn
played the part of Herod, as all such violent characters
belonged to his province. So the words, "he out-
herods Herod," are another allusion to the exaggerated
acting of Alleyn and his school.
In speaking, as we did above, of an old and a new
school, of course we must not be understood to imply
that Alleyn and Shakespeare represented two genera-
tions, of which Shakespeare belonged to the younger ;
for the two antagonists were of almost the same age,
Alleyn being even the younger of the two. But a
young person may very well adhere to an old school, be
1 Comp. Fr. G. Fleay, English Drama, ii. 175.
2 This inventory, the MS. of which no longer exists, is reprinted in
Mai one's Additions, pp. 375 ff.
198 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
supported by it, and refuse to adopt the progress which
is the result of a more refined taste and greater artistic
intelligence.
And this, we suppose, was the case with Edward
Alleyn. He was two years younger than Shakespeare,
being born on September ist, 1566, but he was probably
brought up from his childhood for the stage,1 and he
obtained celebrity at a marvellously early age, consider-
ing the branch in which he acted. His father was a
publican and porter to the Queen, and died leaving a
considerable fortune, when his son Edward was only
four years old. His wife afterwards married a shop-
keeper of the name of Brown, who has been erroneously-
identified with the actor, Robert Brown,2 especially-
known for his professional journeys on the Continent.
Mrs Alleyn's second husband was a John Brown, who
had nothing to do with the theatre.
In 1586, when Alleyn was twenty years old, we find
him mentioned for the first time as one of " The Earl
of Worcester's Players," and in the following year he is
already acting a part of such importance as Tamburlaine
the Great in Marlowe's play of that name. The two
following years bring him the gigantic tasks of Dr
Faustus, and of Barrabas in The Jew of Malta, both
also by Marlowe, as well as the title-part of Robert
1 According to Fuller in his Worthies (ii. 84, ed. 1811), and there is no
reason to doubt it, as it is perfectly in accordance with Alleyn's earlier
career that he should have played female parts as a boy, and, as Fuller has
it, been " bred a stage player."
2 Albert Cohn makes this mistake on the authority of Collier's assertion
that the shopkeeper and the actor Brown were the same person. Comp.
Collier's Memoirs of Alleyn^ p. iii., and Cohn's Shakespeare in Germany,
p. xxxi.
The TragicaU Hiftory
of the Life and Death
of *Do8or Fau/lus.
Written by (Jo. Mar
LON*DON,
Pilnte'd lor John Wright, and are to be fold at hi* fhop
Without Newgate, at the fi»- .w.'.hc
XI — Alleyn as Dr Faustus.
HISTRIONIC ART 199
Greene's Orlando Furiosol It is almost incompre-
hensible that a young man of little more than twenty
years should have been able to assume and represent
these indescribably violent and, to a certain extent, really
powerful characters, which at the same time differ very
much from each other. He must have won his fame at
a stroke, but probably he at once adopted a manner
which became fatal to his later artistic career. At
scarcely twenty-six years of age, he is mentioned as the
leading tragedian in England, and even in the same
breath with the comic stars of the elder generation,
Tarlton, Knell and Bentley. In his Pierce Penniless s
Supplication to the Devil, which appeared in 1592,
Thomas Nash draws a comparison between English and
foreign actors, which is interesting in itself, and which
in an unmistakable way shows Alleyn's celebrity at the
time. He writes : " Our players2 are not as the players
beyond the sea, a sort of squirting baudie comedians,
that haue whores and common curtizans to play womens
parts, and forbeare no immodest speach or unchast
action that may procure laughter ; but our sceane is
more stately furnisht than euen it was in the time of
Roscius, our representations honorable, and full of gallaunt
resolution, not consisting like theirs of a pantaloun,
a whore and a zanie, but of emperours, kings and princes,
1 The MS. of his part in this last play, in Alleyn's own hand, is preserved
in Dulwich College as a rare relic. It is the only extant part belonging to
the Shakespearean period, and it shows that the parts were written out in
the same way as nowadays, but with very short cues. The whole part is
reprinted in Memoirs of Alley n, Appendix, pp. 198-213.
2 The original has playes, but this is evidently a misprint, especially as
we read in a marginal note : " A comparison of our players and the players
beyond the sea."
200 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
whose true tragedies (Sophocleo cothurno) they doo
vaunt.
" Not Roscius nor Esope, those tragedians admired
before Christ was borne, could euer performe more in
action than famous Ned Alley n. I must accuse our poets
of sloth and partialitie, that they will not boast in large
impressions what worthie men (above all nations)
England affoords. Other countreyes cannot haue a
fidler breake a string but they will put it in print, . . .
if I euer write any thing in Latine (as I hope one day I
shall), not a man of any desert heere amongst us, but I
will haue up. Tarlton, Ned Alleyn, Knell, Bentley, shall
be made knowen to Fraunce, Spayne and Italic ; and
not a part that they surmounted in more than other but
I will there note and set downe, with the manner of their
habites and attyre."
Unfortunately this hope of N ash's was never realised ;
neither in Latin nor in English did he describe these
actors, which we regret very much, as we should have
liked to know something about their way of acting. The
two pictures reproduced here of two of Alleyn's parts,
Faustus and Hieronymo in Kyd's Spanish Tragedy, give
us little information ; in the first place because they are
very inferior in themselves, and in the second, because it
is not ascertained that they represent Alleyn, though it
is quite probable that the unskilled draughtsman took
his subjects from the traditional representations.
So much is certain, that his reputation as an actor
did not make Alleyn forget his love of business, which
was probably his ruling passion. In his twenty-first
year he is in partnership both with his elder brother,
12 — Alleyn as Hieronimo.
HISTRIONIC ART 201
John, who, like his father, was a publican, but who also
occupied himself with stage matters ; and also with the
noted travelling actors and managers, Robert Browne
and Richard Jones, in a business for the sale of " play-
books " (i.e. manuscripts of plays), costumes, and musical
instruments — Richard Jones, however, whom we know
from his letter quoted above, in which he requests a
loan of his well-to-do colleague, in January 1588 sold
his share to Edward Alleyn for £30, los.1 Four years
later Alleyn appears for a time as leader of " Lord
Strange's Company," but in the following year (1593)
the plague was raging violently, and all acting was
prohibited in London ; so he set out on a tour in the
provinces with his company.
Six months previously he had married Joan Wood-
ward, the step-daughter of Philip Henslowe, of whom he
was evidently fond, and whom he treated well. While
the plague was ravaging London, and Alleyn was
travelling in the provinces with his companions, the
newly married couple exchanged a number of letters,
some of which have been found at Dulwich College,
which give us an amusing picture of the man, if not of
the actor, Alleyn. He appears as a home-loving,
careful, practical and affectionate man, whose thoughts
are shared equally between his little "mouse," as he
calls his wife, his woollen stockings, his spinach and
his horses, but who has not a word to spare for his
art, and is most unlike our idea of an actor, whose
particular task it was to represent the wildest and
1 This we learn from a contract between Alleyn and Jones, printed in an
Appendix to Collier's Memoirs of Alleyn, p. 198.
202 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
most insanely bloodthirsty characters ever produced in
literature. He writes, for instance, on the first of
August from Bristol : —
" This be delyvered to mr. hinslo, on of the gromes
of his maist. chamber ; dwelling on the bank sid, right
over against the clink.
"My good sweete mouse, I comend me hartely to
you And to my father, my mother and my sister bess,
hopinge in God, though the sicknes be round about you,
yett by his mercy itt may escape your house, which by
the grace of God it shall, therefore use this corse : —
kepe your house fayr and clean, which I knowe you will,
and every evening throwe water before your dore and in
your bake sid, and have in your windows good store of
reue and herbe of grace, and with all the grace of God,
which must be obteynd by prayers ; and so doinge, no
doubt but the Lord will mercifully defend you. now,
good mouse, I have no newse to send you but this, thatt
we have all our helth, for which the Lord be praysed.
I reseved your Letter at Bristo by richard canly, for the
which I thank you. I have sent you by this berer,
Thomas popes kinsman, my whit wascote, because it is
a trobell to me to cary it. reseve it with this letter,
And lay it up for me till I com. if you send any
more Letters, send to me by the cariers of Shrewsbury,
or to Westchester, or to York, to be kept till my Lord
Strange's players com. and thus, sweett hart, with my
harty comenda. to all our frends, I sett from Bristo this
Wensday after Saynt James his day, being redy to begin
the playe of hary of Cornwall, mouse, do my harty
HISTRIONIC ART 203
commend, to Mr. grigs, his wife, and all his houshold,
and to my sister phillyps.
" Your Loving housband
" E. ALLEYN.
" Mouse, you send me no newes of any things ; you
should send of your domestycall matters, such things as
hapens att home ; as how your distilled watter proves,
or this or that, or any thing, what you will.
" And, Jug, I pray you, lett my orayng tawny
stokins of wolen be dyed a very good blak against I
com horn, to wear in the winter, you sente me nott
word of my garden, but next tym you will ; but remember
this in any case, that all that bed which was parsley in
the month of September you sowe it with spinage, for
then is the tym. I would do it my selfe, but we shall
nott com horn till allholland tyd. and so, swett mous,
farwell, and broke our Long Jorney with patience."
This letter is delightful in its quite unemotional
commonplace, in its perfectly unvarnished homeliness,
without a vestige of the vainglorious bravado of a stage-
hero ; and it gives us as clear an insight into the every-
day life of this celebrated man as if we had peeped
through one of the windows of his house, where the
" herbe of grace " served as protector against the plague.
But as to his art we are no wiser than we were before.
Or does this entirely matter-of-fact letter confirm our
supposition that Alleyn was a mere workman in art, who
worked on a large scale? For this is how a strolling
player or juggler might write to his family while travelling
professionally from town to town. He does his work to
204 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
the best of his ability, and makes money by it, but his
thoughts are with his house and garden and with his
wife at home.
If chance some day should bring the unexpected to
pass and reveal a similar intimate epistle from Shake-
speare, let us hope that the high-strung expectations
about his personality, in which our minds have been
reared, may not be disappointed by finding that he too
writes only about stockings and parsley.
Some lines of an answer from his father-in-law,
Henslowe, and from "the Mouse" will complete this
little still-life picture of the domestic existence of the
famous performer of villains during the terrible reign
of the plague. The letters from home are written by a
" scrivener," as Mrs Alleyn probably could not write at
all, and Henslowe, as we know, wrote very badly.
" For my wealbeloved husbande Mr. Edwarde
Allen, on of my Lorde Strange's players, this
be delyvered with speade.
" Jesus.
" Welbeloved Sonne, Edwarde Allen, I and your
mother and your sister Beasse have all in generall our
hartie commendations unto you, and very glad to heare
of your good healthe, which we praye God to contenew
longe to his will and pleasur ; for we hard that you were
very sycke at Bathe, and that one of your felowes weare
fayn to playe your part for you, which wasse no lytell
greafe unto us to heare, but thanckes be to God for
amendmente, for we feared it much, because we had no
leatter from you when the other wifes had letters sente ;
HISTRIONIC ART 205
which made your mouse not to weape a lytell, but tooke
yt very greavesly, thinckinge that you had conseved
some unkindnes of her, because you were ever wont to
write with the firste : . . . Now, sonne [it is Henslowe
who goes on] . . . and you sayd in your leater that she
scant you not worde howe your garden and all your
things dothe prosper; very well, thanckes be to God,
for your beanes are growen to heg headge and well
coded, and all other thinges doth very well . . . and for
your good cownsell which you gave us in your leater we
all thanck you, which wasse for keping of our howsse
cleane and watringe of our dores, and strainge our
windowes with wormwoode and rewe, which I hope all
this we do and more ; for we strowe it with hartie
prayers unto the lorde, which unto us is more avaylable
than all thinges eallse in the world ; . . . and I praye
ye, sonne, comend me harteley to all the reast of your
fealowes in generall, for I growe poore for lacke of them,
therefor have no geaftes to sende, but as good and
faythfull a hart as they shall desyer to have comen
amongst them. Now, sonne, we thanck you all for your
tokens you seant us ; and as for newes of the sycknes,
I cane not seande you no juste note of yt, because ther
is comandement to the contrary, but as I thincke doth
die within the sittege and without of all syckneses to
the number of seventeen or eyghten hundredth in one
weacke . . .
" Your lovinge Father and Mother to our powers,
"P. H. A.
"Your lovinge wife to comande till death,
" Johne Allen."
206 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
In the course of the autumn the plague ceased, and
about All Saints' Day (ist of November) Alleyn returned
from his tour with Lord Strange's company, which he
left for good in order to undertake the management of
" The Lord Admiral's Servants," afterwards " The
Prince's Men," to which he henceforth belonged. In
partnership with his father-in-law, the confirmed usurer
Henslowe, he now started a grand theatrical business in
" The Rose " Theatre and " The Bear-garden," an enter-
prise of which we have spoken in a previous chapter.
In 1597, when only thirty-one years of age, he had
already made sufficient money to allow him to retire
from the stage as an active player, which, however, he
only did for a time. When the sharp competition with
"The Globe" Theatre began, Alleyn returned to the
stage and acted again for some years — how many is
unknown — at the new " Fortune " theatre, which he and
his father-in-law had built.
Shortly after the accession of James I. the two
partners received a royal appointment as joint masters
of the Royal game of bears, bulls and mastiff dogs, an
office which Alleyn, who lived the longer of the two,
retained till his death, and which brought him in a con-
siderable income. His riches increased from day to day ;
he bought a mansion and grounds, and became the
recognised and unrivalled leader of the theatrical world.
This is shown by the innumerable petitions, humble
requests for loans, orders, etc., which abound among the
papers left by him. His fortune increased to such a
degree that he was able to buy the estate of Dulwich,
for which he paid in all ,£10,000. He became an
HISTRIONIC ART 207
Esquire, and associated in the most familiar way with
the highest aristocracy ; the Earl of Arundel, for in-
stance, and Sir William Alexander, were among his
good friends.
But what gained him universal respect was the great
munificence he exhibited in converting the Dulwich estate
into a school and training college for poor children, an
institution which still exists under its old name of " God's
gift," and which continues to be one of the most largely
attended schools in England.
An old legend tells us that in one of his parts —
probably Dr Faustus — Alleyn had seen the devil in
person appear before him on the stage, and that this
had made him vow to spend his money on a charitable
purpose. This, of course, is nonsense ; but Alleyn,
though twice married, was childless, and the great work
of charity may have been a matter of honour as well
as of feeling with him. He planned and arranged his
college himself with the greatest care and with extra-
ordinary practical sense. The study of his life and
papers gives us the convincing impression that he was
a distinguished man, and a firm and honest character.
The letters of his later years especially testify to this
fact. A short passage in one of them, where he main-
tains the honour of his class — not of his art — is aglow
with pure manliness, and deserves to be known every-
where. The man of whom he had bought the Dulwich
estate was a nobleman loaded with debts, Sir Francis
Calton, who had wasted his patrimony. This Sir
Francis gave him considerable annoyance, and, in his
impotent vexation, had evidently — his letter is lost —
208 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
taunted Alleyn with his mean extraction and his pro-
fession as an actor. To this Alleyn replies : —
" And where you tell me of my poor originall and of
my quality as a Player. What is that ? If I am richer
than my auncesters, I hope I may be able to do more
good with my riches than ever your auncesters did with
their riches. You must now beare povertye, and if you
bear it more patiently than I, your desert will be the
gretter. That I was a player I can not deny, and I am
sure I will not. My meanes of living were honest, and
with the poore abilytyes wherewith god blesst me I
was able to doe something for myselfe, my relatives and
my frendes, many of them nowe lyving at this daye will
not refuse to owne what they owght me. Therefore I
am not ashamed."
After retiring from the theatre as an actor Alleyn
lived a quiet domestic life, regularly gathered his dues
from the theatres, cultivated his distinguished acquaint-
ances, and entertained his former companions at little
parties on his estate. His most familiar friends among
the actors seem to have been Benfield, Cartwright,
Lowin, Taylor, and others, members also, as we see, of
"The King's Company," though, of course, the "Fortune"
company, "The Prince's Men," were more frequently
invited. He does not seem to have associated at all
with contemporary authors, not even with those who
had written for him, like Ben Jonson, Dekker, Middle-
ton, Hey wood, Webster or Marston.
Several of these, however, did not fail to express to
him their great admiration of his dramatic art. Jonson,
for instance, dedicates an epigram1 to him, in which,
1 Ben Jonson : Epigrams, No. 89, ed. Gifford.
HISTRIONIC ART 209
after the obligatory comparison with Roscius and ALsop,
which is used for nearly all contemporary actors of note,
appear the following lines : —
" How can so great example die in me [viz., that of
Cicero, which brought the name of Roscius down
to posterity]
That, Allen, I should pause to publish thee
Who both their graces [that of Roscius and of y^sop]
in thyself hast more.
Outstript, than they did all that went before,
And present worth in all dost so contract,
As others speak, but only thou dost act.
Wear this renown. 'Tis just, that who did give
To many poets life, by one should live."
It might be concluded from these verses that
Alleyn also played comic parts, for Jonson knew quite
well that Roscius was a comic actor. Nor is it at all
improbable that this was the case, for in those times
it was not usual for actors to be limited to particular
lines. But we are unable to mention a single one of
these parts. An expression like "as others speak,
but only thou dost act," must strike the eye. Do
they not confirm our supposition about Alleyn's ex-
cessive " action," which we cannot be surprised to hear
was particularly to the taste of the rather coarse-grained
Jonson ?
Thomas Hey wood, who during many years wrote
for Alleyn's company, also speaks of him in the most
enthusiastic terms. First of all in his " Apology
for Actors" (1612), where he says: "Among so
III. O
210 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
many dead, let me not forget one yet alive, in his
time the most worthy, famous Maister Edward
Allen."1
And in the prologue of Marlowe's Jew of Malta,
which he published in 1633, six years after the death
of Alleyn,2 he writes : —
" We know not how our play may pass this stage,
But by the best of poets in that age
The Malta Jew had being and was made ;
And he then by the best of actors play'd.
In Hero and Leander one did gain
A lasting memory : in Tamberlaine,
This Jew, with others many, the other man
The attribute of peerless ; being a man
Whom we may rank with (doing no one wrong)
Proteus for shapes, and Roscius for a tongue,
So could he speak, so vary."
Edward Alleyn died in 1625, on the 25th of Novem-
ber, at the age of sixty. Two years before his death,
and five months after losing his first wife, he married a
young girl, Constance Donne, a daughter of the well-
known clergyman, Dr John Donne. With Dr Donne,
however, he lived in constant enmity, and therefore left
him nothing in his will ; while he generously bestowed
£100 on the former proprietor of Dulwich, besides for-
giving a debt of £20. He is buried in his college, which
1 Thomas Heywood : An Apology for Actors, p. 43.
2 A short time before the play had been revived at " The Cockpit " with
R. Perkins in the part of Barrabas,
13 — Edward Alleyn (after a picture at Duhvich College).
HISTRIONIC ART 211
is also the repository of a number of curiosities illus-
trating the history of the stage — among others, the por-
trait reproduced above.1
Ill
The Shakespearean School— Shakespeare as Actor — Richard Burbage and
his Company — Nathaniel Field — The Cessation of Plays.
Nowadays Shakespeare's relation to the art of acting
is generally considered to have been of a purely business-
like and very cool nature, as a tie which he longed to
break, and which he really broke as soon as he was
capable of doing so. But this view of the matter rests
on a great and evident mistake.
It is quite natural that Shakespeare's eminent poetic
productions should have entirely eclipsed the remembrance
1 All the material we possess concerning the life of Alleyn is chiefly
found in Collier's Memoirs of Edward Alleyn, London, 1841. But this
book, like so many by the same author, is marred by a number of spurious
documents, which are mixed up with much good and genuine matter. As a
guide to the unprepared reader, I will mention some of the grossest for-
geries: p. 13, the poem " Sweete Ned," etc., is altogether spurious ; p. 45,
in the letter from Henslowe some words are introduced about Thomas
Lodge to prove that he was an actor (and hauinge some knowledge and
acquaintance of him as a player) ; p. 63, to the otherwise genuine letter
from Alleyn's wife a forged note has been added about Shakespeare (Mr
Shakespeare of the globe, who came . . .) ; p. 69, the list of the eleven
actors of " The King's Company " is concocted by Collier (a facsimile of
the forged document is found in Lee's Life of Shakespeare, libr. ed., p. 305) ;
pp. 90 ff., the list of poor-rates, which is meant to prove that Shakespeare
lived in Southwark in 1609, is fallacious. The whole work is brimful of
false information about stage-matters. Fleay somewhere mentions having
found more than one hundred misstatements merely in the account of
Kemp. The number would be at least equally great if he took Alleyn's
Memoirs alone.
212 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
of his histrionic art. It must not be forgotten, however,
that as certainly as he figures in the modern eye as the
great poet who also at times played comedy, so certainly
did he appear to his own time as the excellent actor and
stage-manager, who also wrote plays, much more so
than even Ben Jonson, who was also an actor.
Clearly enough, his poetic fame gradually eclipsed
his reputation as an actor. In 1592, when Shakespeare
was a young man of twenty-four, Chettle writes about
him that he is " exelent in the qualitie he professes." *
His somewhat younger colleague, William Beeston, the
manager of a company which for a time was called
" The Beeston Boys," afterwards told Aubrey that he
acted exceedingly well. But already in 1699 we learn
from the anonymous author of Historia Histrionica
that he was a much better author than actor. And
Nicholas Rowe, the Shakespeare publisher, tells us in
1709 that he distinguished himself, if not as a superior
actor, yet as an excellent author.
In the nineteenth century Guizot,2 among others,
writes (1852) : " As an actor he does not seem to have
distinguished himself among his rivals." Till now it has
been assumed that his profession as actor weighed on
him like a nightmare of shame, which he fervently longed
to throw off.
This opinion is based on a few passages in the
Sonnets, which poems, on the whole, have given rise to
all kinds of fancies, some of which are perfectly absurd,
1 The word " quality " in the language of the time is constantly used in
the sense of acting. Compare, <?.£"., Hamlet, ii. 2 : " come, give us a taste of
your quality." 2 Shakespeare et son temps, p. 61.
HISTRIONIC ART 213
about the life and circumstances of Shakespeare.1 Thus
No. XXIX., which begins with these lines : —
" When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate. ..."
and CX., where he says : —
" Alas, 'tis true, I have gone here and there,
And made myself a motley to the view."
or again, the bitter lines in CXI. : —
" O for my sake do you with Fortune chide,
The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds.
That did not better for my life provide,
Than public means, which public manners breeds.
Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,
And almost thence my nature is subdued
To what it works in, like the dyer's hand. ..."
But these testimonies do not go far to prove that
Shakespeare had no love for histrionic art. If, on the
whole, it can be considered as anything more than a
momentary feeling, which was consciously clothed in a
poetic form, what he complains of, with less firm
manliness than Alleyn, but certainly with stronger
emotion, was no more than his social status and the
disgust which every actor, and especially the gifted one,
may occasionally feel with his relation to the public.
We cannot wonder that Shakespeare, who was
1 Mr Israel Gollancz, the editor of The Temple Shakespeare, very wittily
puts at the heads of the Sonnets five different and quite contradictory
mottoes (by Wordsworth, Browning, Swinburne, Shelley and Tennyson).
214 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
evidently ambitious and aspiring, not merely in his art,
but also from a mere worldly and social point of view,
found his class low, compared with the powerful and
glorious position of an Earl of Southampton or of Pem-
broke— to whichever of these two the Sonnets may have
been addressed.
As a matter of fact he retired early from the theatre,
at the age of about forty-six ; but so did many of his
colleagues, who, when they had made a certain amount
of money, withdrew to rest after the hard toil of a
number of years. For at that time, even more than
nowadays, the actor's work was most fatiguing ; and this,
we suppose, may be the reason why many of the actors of
those days died comparatively young.1 The companies
were small, and the repertoire exceedingly large. So
there was much to be learned, and it had to be
learned well, as the actors had not, as nowadays, a
prompter to support them. In addition to this, Shake-
speare had his great work as an author, and undoubtedly
was stage-manager — at least with regard to his own
plays. Life as well as work moved at full speed in
those times ; no wonder that age and fatigue came early.
But Shakespeare continued his work as an actor faith-
fully and uninterruptedly until he retired altogether from
the theatrical world, giving up authorship as well as
acting. That he loved his art and was more interested
1 Shakespeare and Richard Burbage were fifty-two years old when they
died ; Nathaniel Field forty-six, Robert Arnim about forty-three. John
Underwood can scarcely have been forty, and William Ostler not much
more than thirty. Kemp and Tarlton no doubt also died young, whereas
Edward Alleyn, who, it is true, spent a large part of his life away from the
theatre, lived to the age of sixty.
14— William Shakespeare (from the Bust belonging to the Garrick Club).
HISTRIONIC ART 215
in it than most of his fellow-actors we shall shortly try
to prove.
Shakespeare's theatrical career, in its external
features, is very clear and simple. Only the first years
after his arrival in London are obscure, or rather,
absolutely blank. There is no foundation whatever for
all the legends about his beginning his stage life by
holding the horses of the spectators during the per-
formance, by organising a company of boys for this
purpose, by helping the book-holder as call-boy, who
had to summon the actors when they were to appear on
the stage. All these reports are of very late origin, and
the thought that they might possibly be true is certainly
no sufficient reason for accepting them as such.
But from the moment when he enters into the full
light of stage history till he retires to his native town,
tired of the labour and toil of London life, his career is
as plain as possible. During all these twenty years he
belongs uninterruptedly to the same company, which, at
the beginning of his career was " Lord Strange's," and
at the end of it " The King's Men."
At the age of twenty-eight we see him already — it
must be borne in mind that he began comparatively late
— in an undoubtedly distinguished position as actor and
author, with steadily increasing fame, and, as is always
the case, surrounded by a barking host of enviers.
One of these, Robert Greene, an author of some
talent, was now a miserable invalid, ruined by a vicious
life, the end of which was near. According to his own
saying, he was now converted, and with the usual
inclination of proselytes to attack their former friends,
2i6 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
he made haste before his death to compose a libellous
pamphlet against his old colleagues among authors and
actors. He warns his friends Marlowe, Lodge (or
Nash) and Peele against the sinful writing of plays, but
especially against actors.
" Base-minded men," he says, "all three of you, if by
my miserie ye be not warned ; for unto none of you, like
me, sought those burres to cleave ; those puppits, I
meane, that speak from our mouths, those anticks gar-
nisht in our colours. Is it not strange that I, to whom
they all have beene beholding, shall, were ye in that case
that I am now, be both at once of them forsaken ? Yes,
trust them not ; for there is an upstart crow, beautified
with our feathers, that with his Tyger's heart wrapt in a
Player's hide, supposes he is as well able to bumbast out
of blanke verse as the best of you ; and being an absolute
Johannes Factotum, is in his owne conseite the onely
Shake-scene in a countrie. O that I might intreate
your rare wits to be imployed in more profitable courses,
and let these apes imitate your past excellence, and
never more acquaint them with your admired inventions !
Wilst you may, seeke you better
maisters ; for it is pittie men of such rare wits should
be subject to the pleasures of such rude groomes. . . .
For other newcommers I leave them to the mercie of
these painted monsters." l
1 Greene's Groafs worth of Wit, bought with a Million of Repentaunce.
The book appeared in September 1 592, very shortly after Greene's death ; the
passage quoted is taken from the introductory letter.
HISTRIONIC ART 217
What made Greene direct this fanatical attack against
" Lord Strange's Men" — for there can be no doubt that
it was aimed at this company — we are unable to say.
Surely it was more than mere professional jealousy.
Most likely he had had a theatrical conflict with " Lord
Strange's Men," who, during the first half of 1 592, acted
at "The Rose" Theatre, and had performed plays by
Marlowe, Lodge and Peele, while their greatest success
had been the first part of Henry VI \, in which Shake-
speare's Talbot-scenes had called forth special enthusiasm
from the public.
The literary basis of Greene's attack does not concern
us here. We have quoted it much more at length than
in the ordinary literary handbooks, in order to show that
it is Shakespeare the actor whom he wants to hit ; he
does not consider Shakespeare as an author at all.
What strikes him is, that having appeared but recently,
he has gained ascendency in his company, and has be-
come an absolute factotum ; so much so, that he has
even ventured to drive an older noted author and actor
into a corner.
A few months later this personal attack on Shake-
speare received a warm retort from Henry Chettle, who
says in the preface of his "Kind Harts Dreame" :
" About three moneths since died Mr Robert Greene,
leaving many papers in sundry booke-sellers hands,
among other his Groatsworth of Wit, in which a letter
written to divers play-makers, is offensively by one or
two of them taken ; and because on the dead they cannot
be avenged, they wilfully forge in their conceites a living
author ; and after tossing it two and fro, no remedy but
218 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
it must light on me. How I have all the time of my
conversing in printing hindred the bitter inveying against
schollers, it hath been very well knowne ; and how in
that I dealt, I can sufficiently proove. With neither of
them that take offence was I acquainted, and with one
of them I care not if I never be. The other, whome at
that time I did not so much spare as since I wish I had,
for that, as I have moderated the heate of living writers,
and might have usde my owne discretion, — especially
in such a case, the author beeing dead, — that I did not I
am sory as if the originall fault had beene my fault,
because myselfe have scene his demeanor no less civill,
than he exelent in the qualitie he professes ; — besides,
divers of worship have reported his uprightnes of deal-
ing, which argues his honesty and his facetious grace in
writing, that aprooves his art."
The attack and the defence combined give us a clear
idea of the young actor Shakespeare as a man of great
importance to his company, a man of the future on whom
high expectations were built. Except the short period
of occasional engagements at "The Rose," and after-
wards (in 1594) at "The Newington," and several
journeys in the provinces, Shakespeare during his first
period chiefly played at " The Theatre."
When "The Globe" was built in 1599, the pro-
prietors, the brothers Burbage, as we said above, ad-
mitted Shakespeare and some of his distinguished
colleagues as part-owners of the theatre. After 1608
he acted also at " Blackfriars," which at this time was
used by " The King's Men," till three years later he
definitely retired to Stratford a wealthy man.
HISTRIONIC ART 219
Unfortunately we know next to nothing about the
parts he acted. That he played tragedy as well as
comedy we see from the list of actors of two of Ben
Jonson's plays. Among the dramatis personae of Every
Man in His Humour we read of "the principal
Comedians " who have acted in this excellent play.
Will Shakespeare stands at the top. Is this done in
courtesy to Shakespeare, because it was he who caused
the play to be acted ? is it mere chance ? or does it mean
that Shakespeare acted the part which headed the list of
the persons represented ?
The last suggestion seems to be the most probable,
and in this case we find that Shakespeare performed
Old Knowell, a rather important part in the play, a
" heavy father," which afterwards belonged in Germany
to the popular Biedermann-repertoire of Iffland and
Schroder.
In Sejanus we see Shakespeare fifth among the
principal Tragedians, at the top of the second column
of the eight actors, and opposite to him Richard Burbage,
who heads the first column. So, if the conclusion we
drew above is right, he must have acted a rather inferior
part in this play.
Rowe tells us that Shakespeare represented the dead
king's ghost in Hamlet, and that it was the top of his
performance, to which may be added the statement of
John Davies, that he performed " some kingly parts." 1
1 " Some say, good Will, which I in sport do sing,
Hadst thou not play'd some kingly parts in sport,
Thou hadst been a companion for a king."
The Scourge of Folly, by John Davies of Hereford ;
quoted by Malone : Historical Account, p. 237.
220 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
brother of Shakespeare's, who was old and infirm at the
time, but who could still remember that, when young, he
had seen William act the octogenarian servant Adam in
As You Like It.
This is absolutely all that is known about the parts
which Shakespeare performed, and it is perfectly use-
less to try to guess what parts he may have taken.
Even though we know beforehand that in most of his
own plays he did not represent the principal characters,
there is a large field for conjecture. To judge from the
parts already mentioned, we might conclude that he had
especially impersonated old men, but the fact that two
parts are known, and two others are supposed to have
been old men, is not sufficient foundation for this con-
clusion, seeing that during his twenty years' career as an
actor he must have played at least some hundred parts.
But of his relation to the art of acting in general,
we know, or may learn something more from his plays.
It is a foregone conclusion that dramatic art filled his
life, as he was attached to it in a threefold way, as poet,
as actor, and as stage-manager. That it filled his
thoughts also we see from innumerable images scattered
throughout his works, which are derived from dramatic
art and stage-life. To him " All the world's a stage —
And all the men and women merely players ; They have
their exits and their entrances ; And one man in his time
plays many parts, His acts being seven ages." l
How fully he realised and yet wondered at the over-
whelming power which the art of the genuine actor could
Finally, we have a statement of Gilbert, a younger
1 As You Like //, ii. 7.
HISTRIONIC ART 221
exercise on himself and others, we find most strikingly
expressed in the following speech of Hamlet : —
" Is it not monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit
That from her working all his visage warm'd,
Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect,
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit ? and all for nothing !
For Hecuba!
What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
That he should weep for her." *
But in his relations to the art of acting Shakespeare
is not only the philosophic critic, but also the practical
reformer. We have seen him, when quite young, derid-
ing the unreal, empty and bombastic style, for which in
his maturer years his contempt increases and deepens.
His taste develops in refinement, and he maintains his
ambition against the cheap applause of the mob, which
is too frequently bought with false coin ; he does not
appreciate the laughter which the comic actor earns with
his shallow jokes, if they are not in keeping with the
subject of the play and disturb its sense ; nor is he im-
pressed by a hero who leaves the stage in a boisterous,
ostentatious way followed by the applauding cheers of
the crowd, while he himself and every quiet expert shake
their heads at the man's atrocious style of speaking.
Just as it was his vocation as a poet to introduce artistic
refinement, natural grace, deep feeling and genuine
1 Hamlet, ii. i.
222 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
humour into the old rude and ungraceful plays, so it
became his task as an actor to lead the violent and
affected style of acting back to nature, true feeling and
moderation. He did not wish to introduce a conventional
literary taste, like that in which Goethe indulged when
he wanted to reform the German acting, nor did he
desire a sombre and dull indifference to counterbalance
excessive enthusiasm and exaggerated praise ; all he
wanted was naturalness.
Hamlet : "Be not too tame neither, but let your
own discretion be your tutor : suit the action to the word,
the word to the action ; with this special observance, that
you o'erstep not the modesty of nature ; for anything so
overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end both
at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the
mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature,
scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the
time his form and pressure. Now this overdone, or come
tardy off, though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but
make the judicious grieve, the censure of the which one
must in your allowance o'erweigh a whole theatre of
others." x
It is Shakespeare who speaks these words, because
they are burning on his tongue ; not Hamlet, for Hamlet
at the moment has other things weighing more heavily
on his mind than the duty of giving golden rules for their
art to the actors he admires.
And the imperious and authoritative tone in which
he speaks the words, and those we quoted above, is
not that of a prince addressing poor actors, still less, of
1 Act ii. Sc. 3.
HISTRIONIC ART 223
course, that of an amateur to an old expert in his art.
It is the language of the mature, intelligent, consistent
actor to younger or less intelligent fellow-actors, or that
of a teacher to his pupils. It is Shakespeare, the in-
structor, teaching his colleagues.
Perhaps this is an ideal picture ; perhaps it was thus
Shakespeare would have liked to speak to the other
actors without having an opportunity of doing so.
Perhaps the picture represents a fact ; perhaps he did
catch the ear of his fellow-actors, and was allowed to be
their guide along the lofty but bewildering paths of art,
which he knew better than anyone else ; along which he
himself preferred to walk, rather than on the broad and
dusty road that leads to the favour of the pit.
We have, indeed, an absolute proof of the fact
that Shakespeare did instruct his younger colleagues.
Downes l tells us that when Thomas Betterton, the
famous tragedian of the Restoration, was to play
Hamlet, he was taught all the details by Sir William
Davenant (Shakespeare's godson), who had seen the
part performed by Mr Taylor of the Blackfriars' com-
pany, "he having been instructed by the author, Mr
William Shakespeare " ; and by his exact reproduction
Betterton gained a higher respect and reputation than
any other.
If Shakespeare instructed young Joseph Taylor,
when he was to play Hamlet, he no doubt also gave his
assistance to his contemporary, his friend and comrade,
Richard Burbage, who was the original performer of
the part. On the whole, we may conclude that these
1 The author of Roscius Anglicanus.
224 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
two men, the highly gifted poet and the equally intelli-
gent actor, worked together in hearty co-operation ;
they inspired and incited each other to continuous
new efforts, and the result obtained must have been
wonderful.
It has frequently been imagined that the histrionic
art of those days was something barbarous and child-
like, something which our taste is much too advanced
to appreciate. Unfortunately we have not the slightest
chance of settling this question by evidence. But since
none of the other arts, poetry, painting, sculpture,
applied arts — perhaps with the single exception of
music — stand higher now than they did at the time of
the Renaissance, it would be absurd to imagine that the
art of acting, which is not one of those which require
centuries of cultivation before they can attain perfection,
should not have failed to reach an equally high standard
with poetry, especially since England offered the very
best conditions for its thriving.
In Italy and France, poetry and the art of acting
were still too far apart to obtain a great result. The
actors cultivated "pure dramatic art" with improvisa-
tions and set phrases, and they reached a certain
external perfection, while the poets who enjoyed any
consideration wrote learned pseudo-classical dramas,
which nobody beyond their own circle wanted to see
performed ; and they had, in consequence, a great
contempt for the theatre.
In England, on the contrary, poetry and dramatic
art went to work hand in hand ; indeed, they were so
merged into each other that we are frequently at a loss
HISTRIONIC ART 225
to know whether it is the poet who acts or the actor
who composes. Men like Marlowe, Robert Wilson,
Greene, Shakespeare, Jonson, Field, and many others —
men, that is, whose aim in life it was to create art on
the stage both by writing and by acting, these were the
men who raised dramatic art in England.
But no doubt it is permissible to say that the co-
operation between Shakespeare and Burbage, and the
effect it exercised on the company to which they be-
longed, was the culmination of the whole movement.
In the eyes of the time, therefore, at any rate from the
close of the nineties, Burbage's company was unquestion-
ably the best and the finest in London.
Richard Burbage was a child of the stage, a son of
the old actor James, the first builder of theatres in
England. Of course he was brought up as an actor
from his childhood, while Cuthbert,1 the elder brother,
who seems to have been an intelligent and business-like
man, became a bookseller. And, very likely, the old
joiner and artist initiated him in the mysteries of the
"art," as V»o understood them, and as they were ex-
pounded in his days. We find Richard, when very
young, already appearing in The Seven Deadly Sins,2 the
improvisational and spectacular play by Tarlton, and it
is not unlikely that during his earliest years James
Burbage's repertoire consisted largely of that kind of
play. But with the increasing influence of Shakespeare,
the repertoire no doubt underwent a change for the
1 " Cuthbert Burby " he generally calls himself in the books he publishes.
2 His name is sometimes met with in the scenario, but it is impossible
to find out which part he played.
III. P
226 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
better. Shakespeare was three or four years older
than Richard Burbage ; l this circumstance, combined
with the great superiority of his mind, rendered it
natural that he should obtain enough influence over the
young actor to draw him away from the affected and
boisterous manner which was the fashion of the time,
and inoculate him with the sound principles which ruled
his own writing and acting. Very likely Shakespeare
did not feel himself qualified for the great principal
parts of his own plays ; it seems evident from what we
know of him, that his nature was too delicate and gentle
for such violent characters as Richard III., Shylock,
Othello and Macbeth. At any rate, it is certain that
it became Richard Burbage's task to play all these parts,
and that he played them so excellently that he gained
the highest admiration from all -his contemporaries.
But it was not only these striking and violent characters
in which he was so successful ; he played Prince Henry,
Hamlet and Brutus with equal success. In 1664 Fleck-
noe2 says: "He was a delightful Proteus, so wholly
transforming himself into his parts, and putting off him-
self with his cloaths, as he never (not so much as in the
tyring-house) assumed himself again, untill the play was
done. He had all the parts of an excellent orator,
animating his words with speaking, and speech with
action ; his auditors being never more delighted than
when he spake, nor more sorry than when he held his
peace ; yet even then he was an excellent actor still :
1 The exact date of Richard Burbage's birth is unknown, but he must have
been born about 1 567.
2 Flecknoe : A Short Discourse of the English Stage, 1664 ; cf. M alone :
Historical Account ', p. 240.
HISTRIONIC ART 227
never failing in his part when he had done speaking,
but with his looks and gesture maintaining it still to the
height."
These are general terms, but they give an idea of the
style of Burbage's art. We see that he did not belong
to the class of actors who transform the part to suit their
own person, but on the contrary to those who adapt their
persons to their parts ; l and that he eagerly and con-
scientiously gave himself up to his art.
A funeral elegy, written after the death of Richard
Burbage in 1619, is preserved in several manuscripts and
reprinted in various places. J. P. Collier pretends to
have found a copy of this elegy, which enumerates a
large number of the parts acted by Burbage ; out of
Shakespeare alone, for instance, it gives Shylock,
Richard III., Prince Henry, Romeo, Henry V., Brutus,
Hamlet, Othello, Lear, Macbeth, Pericles and Coriolanus;
whereas the other copies do not mention these parts.
Now, though this addition to the elegy, as far as I know,
has not been proved to be a forgery,2 and though it has
been introduced as an authentic fact by nearly all writers
on these questions, the mere form of this list of parts
bears in my eyes such a distinct stamp of being spurious,
that, considering the notorious untrustworthiness of the
writer, it is wiser for the present not to put faith in this
testimony of the famous actor's parts.
Burbage very likely acted these and several other
1 In modern times the former category seems to be the prevalent one,
at all events with the great celebrities (among them, for instance, Eleonora
Duse. Mounet-Sully, Josef Kainz).
2 The whole elegy is reprinted in Collier's English Dramatic Poetry, iii.
299-302.
228 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
parts, but we only know with absolute certainty that
he played Hamlet, Hieronymo (in Kyd), King Lear,
Othello, which are mentioned in the authentic manu-
scripts of the elegy, and Richard III. An undoubtedly
genuine version of the elegy contains these lines : — 1
" Hee's gone, and with him what a world is dead,
Which hee reviv'd ; to bee revived so
No more : — young Hamlet, old Hieronimo,
Kind Leir, the greived Moor, and more beside
That lived in him, have now for ever died.
Oft have I scene him leape into the grave,
Suiting the person (that he seemed to have)
Of a sad lover with so true an eye,
That then I would have sworn hee meant to die."
As to Richard III. we know from several con-
temporary anecdotes that this part was performed by
Burbage. One of these, told by the lawyer, John
Manningham, in his diary on March 1602, is well known ;
it runs as follows : " Upon a time when Burbidge played
Rich. 3., there was a citizen grene soe farr in liking
with him that, before shee went from the play, shee
appointed him to come that night unto her by the name
of Ri. the 3. Shakespere, overhearing their conclusion,
went before, was entertained, and at his game ere
Burbedge came. Then message being brought that
Rich, the 3d. was at the dore, Shakespeare caused
returne to be made that William the Conquerorer was
before Rich, the 3. Shakespere's name William." 1
1 Reprinted in Halliwell-Phillipps : Outlines, pp. 600 f.
HISTRIONIC ART 229
Another anecdote which shows the popularity of
Burbage in this part, and which is generally misquoted,
is told in a versified book of travels by Bishop Corbet.1
On his journey the bishop arrives at Bosworth Plain,
where once the battle was fought between Richard III.
and Richmond. The keeper of the inn where the bishop
is staying is a loquacious man, " full of ale and history."
He can describe the whole battle. In short, he can tell
within an inch where Richmond stood and where Richard
fell. But the prelate soon finds out that the landlord has
derived his knowledge from seeing the play : —
" But chiefly by that one perspicuous thing
Where he mistook a player for a king,
For when he would have said, King Richard dy'd,
And call'd a horse, a horse, he Burbage cry'd."
Though we cannot tell for certain what parts Burbage
performed, we read his name in the lists of characters
of several contemporary dramatic authors, e.g., in Jonson's
Sejanus, in which we imagine that he acted the principal
part, and in Every Man in His Humour, in which he
probably played the jealous husband, Kitely. In Mar-
ston's Malcontent we know for a fact he represented
Male vole, the exiled Duke of Genoa, at the time when
this play passed from the hands of the " Children of the
Chapel " at " The Blackfriars " to " The King's Men " at
" The Globe." In the Induction which Webster wrote
for the occasion, and which we have quoted in a previous
chapter (compare above, p. 121), Burbage appears in
1 Published in 1647, but written much earlier. The passage which con-
tains this anecdote is reprinted in Halliwell-Phillipps : Outlines, pp. 601 ff.
23o HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
person under his own name, and offers his welcome to
the gallants on the stage. When he retires one of the
dandies (Sinklo) says : " Does he play the Malcontent? "
to which Condell, who also appears under his own name,
replies : " Yes, sir." l
The external facts of Richard Burbage's theatrical
career were as simple as Shakespeare's, or even simpler.
He was attached to the same company throughout, first
as actor, and later, after the death of his father, as
manager and proprietor as well. His relations with the
various theatres have been mentioned above in detail.
Of his private life and character, we know nothing
beyond that he was married and had several children,
and that he became a man of considerable means.
We have spoken of his financial condition on a previous
occasion.
Like many actors after him, he cultivated pictorial as
well as dramatic art, and the portrait reproduced here,
the original of which is in the Dulwich Museum, is
supposed to have been painted by himself. It shows a
pair of dark, melancholy eyes ; a thin, sensitive mouth ;
and a large, fleshy nose. He is said to have been some-
what short of stature, and rather stout. It is supposed,
as we know, that the phrase used about Hamlet, "He's
fat and scant o' breath," spoken by the Queen during the
duel, alludes to Burbage. The fact that he died of
apoplexy comparatively young (at the age of fifty-two)
also seems to bear witness to his increasing stoutness.
First of all his tongue was paralysed, and thence the
1 John Marston : The Malcontent, Induction, Bullen's edition, i.
204.
HISTRIONIC ART 231
paralysis gradually extended to his whole body, as we
learn from the dirge on his death : — l
" Hadst thou but spoke to Death, and us'd the power
Of thy enchanting tongue, at that first hour
Of his assault, he had let fall his dart,
And quite been charm'd with thy all-charming art ;
This Death well knew, and, to prevent this wrong,
He first made seizure on thy wondrous tongue,
Then on the rest, 'twas easy ; by degrees
The slender ivy twines the hugest trees."
His death, which occurred on May i3th, 1619, called
forth such universal grief in London that it seemed to
make people forget the death of the Queen,2 which had
occurred a few weeks previously. A little poem, no
doubt hailing from the Puritan side, but very well written
indeed, derides the difference of feeling shown by the
Londoners on the two mournful events, and declares it
scandalous that
" The deaths of men who act our Queens and Kings
Are now more mourn'd than are the real things.
The Queen is dead ! to him now what are Queens,
Queens of the theatre are much more worth,
Drawn to the play-house by the bawdy scenes
To revel in the foulness they call mirth.
Dick Burbage was their mortal god on earth ;
When he expires, lo ! all lament the man,
But where's the grief should follow good Queen Anne."3
1 The title of this elegy is : On Mr Richard Burbidg, an excellent both
player and painter.
* Queen Anne, wife of James I., died on the first of March 1619,
J. P. Collier : English Dramatic Poetry, iii. 303.
232
Round Shakespeare and Burbage were gathered a
number of actors of whose individual artistic characters
we know nothing or next to nothing, but whose names
have been frequently mentioned in these pages : men of
the old school, like Augustine Phillips, Thomas Pope,
and George Bryan ; Shakespeare's intimate friends of
about his own age, Henry Condell and John Heminge,
two highly trusted members of the Company; Heminge
being, according to tradition, the original performer of
Falstaff, Condell perhaps the first Captain Bobadill in
Jonson's Every Man in his Humour. Both of them
can lay claim to the deepest gratitude of posterity for
their edition of their friend Shakespeare's plays, without
which, certainly, some of them would never have reached
us. Besides these we find a younger generation, in-
cluding men like Joseph Taylor and Nathaniel Field,
Burbage's successors in the tragic line ; John Lowin,
Heminge's successor in the old comic characters, the
original Volpone in Jonson's comedy of that name ; the
clown Robert Arnim, of Tarlton's school, who filled
the blank left by William Kemp ; William Sly, whom
we know best from the amusing Induction of Marston's
Malcontent, in which he played the comic gallant,
who forcibly obtains admission to the stage ; and John
Shancke, who in the thirties occupied a distinguished
position, and was the most important shareholder in both
"The Blackfriars" and "The Globe"; finally the per-
formers of female parts : Robert Goughe or Goffe, Alex-
ander Cooke, who played both tragic and comic female
characters, and was a pupil of Heminge ; and the
charming Richard Robinson, who, like Shancke, in
15 — Richard Burbage (after a picture at Dulwich College supposed to have
been painted by himself).
HISTRIONIC ART 233
1635, held a large number of shares in the two theatres
of the company.1
The latter is mentioned in a characteristic manner by
Ben Jonson in his The Devil is an Ass, in which the two
rascals, Meercraft and Engine, are discussing the best
means of procuring a woman to help them in deceiving
the foolish squire, Fitzdottrel. The conversation runs
as follows : —
Engine: "Why, sir, your best will be one o' the
players."
Meercraft : " No, there is no trusting them. They'll
talk on't
And tell their poets."
Engine : " What if they do ? the jest
Will brook the stage. But there be some
of 'em
Are very honest lads. There is Dick
Robinson,
A very pretty fellow, and comes often
To a gentleman's chamber, a friend of
mine : we had
The merriest supper of it there one night.
The gentleman's landlady invited him
To a gossip's feast : now, he, sir, brought
Dick Robinson,
Drest like a lawyer's wife, amongst 'em
all.
(I lent him clothes), but to see him
behave it,
1 Compare the repeatedly quoted complaint from the actors Benfield, etc.,
reprinted in Halliwell-Phillipps : Outlines, p. 542.
234 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
And lay the law, and carve, and drink
unto 'em,
And then talk bawdy, and send frolics!
O!
It would have burst your buttons, or not
left you
A seame."
Meercraft. " They say he's an ingenious youth."
Engine, " O, sir ! and dresses himself the best, beyond
Forty o' your very ladies ! Did you never
see him ? "
Meercraft. "No, I do seldom see those toys." 1
This is one of the very few pieces of contemporary
evidence of what we should consider the unsavoury
manner in which the actors of female parts behaved them-
selves off the stage.
Among the actors above-mentioned there was one
who belonged to "The King's Men" for only a very
short time, but who, nevertheless, acquired great fame,
Nathaniel Field, whose name has appeared repeatedly
in these pages.
Field was an actor of rather a remarkable type, who
stands a little removed from the men whom we have
chosen above as types of the histrionic art of the time.
On this account he deserves a few lines to himself,
though we must acknowledge that we know nothing
distinctive about his style of acting.
The first remarkable circumstance relating to Field
is his parentage. He was the son of a Puritan preacher,
1 Ben Jonson : The Devil is an Ass, ii. 3. Gifford's edition.
HISTRIONIC ART 235
one of the most ardent opponents of the art to which his
son afterwards devoted his life, the same Rev. John
Field, who, in 1583, saw a judgment of God in the
misfortune that happened in Paris Garden, when the
Bear-garden, which was situated there, collapsed on a
Sunday.
Fortunately for him, he did not live to see his son
follow the way of evil, as he died the year after the birth
of Nathaniel (1587). At the age of ten the latter was
apprenticed to a bookseller, but no doubt was very early
pressed to enter as a chorister among the Queen's
Chapel-boys.1 And here, between the ages of twelve
and fourteen, he already gained unusual celebrity. Ben
Jonson, who, as we have seen, was writing for the
Chapel-boys at "The Blackfriars " during these years,
took charge of the clever and talented boy, taught him
Latin,2 and, no doubt, instructed him in acting. For
Jonson was known as a bad actor, but as an excellent
instructor. Field became the principal actor in Cynthia s
Revels and in the Poetaster, in which Jonson puts his
name first among the boys. At the dates of their
production he was respectively thirteen and fourteen
years old, and not only a noted actor, but in the heat of
the literary quarrel, with Jonson to back him.
1 At that time Queen Elizabeth had appointed a committee with the task
of procuring boys for the school of choristers of the Chapel Royal. The
Committee made a bargain with " The Blackfriars " Theatre and its leader,
Henry Evans, for providing the latter with the necessary boy-actors. In
this matter Evans overstepped the limits of his authority by depriving
parents of the control of their children. This brought about a lawsuit
between Evans and a Suffolk gentleman. The latter gained his cause, and
Evans lost his privilege. The deeds concerning this affair have been
published by Mr James Greenstreet in The Athenceum of August loth,
1889. See above, pp. 45 f.
2 JonsotHs Conversations with Drummond, p. n.
236 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
However, he did not share the ordinary fate of
infant prodigies, and fade away on reaching maturity ; on
the contrary, he continued to develop as an actor and as a
poet. Before long he remains the only actor whose fame
can be compared to that of Richard Burbage, for by this
time Alleyn had retired from the stage, and he became
the author of a number of very popular plays, which he
wrote, partly alone, partly in co-operation with Fletcher,
Massinger and Daborne. A well-known play of his is
the amusing comedy Woman is a Weathercock, which
was performed about 1610 by the company to which
Field continued to belong, and which at that time was
called " The Children of the Queen's Revels," who now
acted in the refectory of Whitefriars, after " The King's
Men " had taken possession of " The Blackfriars." In
the preface of this play we find the rather haughty
remark that he does not wish to dedicate it to any great
personage, as he does not care for the 403. which he
might expect to receive as a gratuity.
A short time afterwards we find him in the clutches
of old Henslowe, and by now he has changed his tune.
As we stated before, in 1613 he was engaged by
Henslowe and Alleyn as principal actor at the newly
built "Hope" Theatre. Here he had a very good
situation indeed, and Henslowe evidently treated him as
a star to whom particular consideration was due ; * for
all that he was soon in debt to the cunning manager,
who had even to rescue him from the debtors' prison.
A letter from Field concerning this affair has been
1 This appears from the complaint previously quoted from the other
actors against Henslowe.
HISTRIONIC ART 237
preserved among the Alleyn Papers}- It runs as
follows : —
" Father Hinchlow,
" I am unluckily taken on an execution of 30 1. I
can be discharged for xx 1. x 1 I have from a friend ;
if now, in my extremity, you will venture x 1 more for
my liberty, I will never share penny till you have it
againe, and make any satisfaction by writing or other-
wise, y* you can devise. I am loath to importune,
because I know your disbursements are great ; nor must
any know I send to you, for then my creditor will not
free me but for the whole some. I pray, speedily con-
sider my occasion, for if I be putt to use other meanes,
I hope all men and selfe will excuse me if (unforcedly)
I cannot proove so honest as towards you I ever resolv'd
to be.
" Yor loving son,2
" Nat. Field."
After the death of Henslowe in 1616, Field left
" The Hope " Theatre and Alleyn's company and joined
"The King's Men." With him went Fletcher, Mas-
singer and Jonson as authors, which testifies to the
favour in which he stood at that time. But he did not
remain long with "The King's Men" either; after 1619,
at all events, we hear nothing about him as an actor. We
should have thought that the death of Burbage, which
1 Alleyn Papers, pp. 65 f.
2 It was a custom in those times for the young to address their elders
with whom they stood in friendly relations as " father," and vice versa for
older people to call the younger ones "sons." Henslowe is frequently called
Father Henslowe by younger actors and authors, to whom he advanced
money.
238 HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
occurred this same year, would have opened new fields
to him in his own line. But, most likely, Joseph Taylor
took possession of the parts for which Field considered
himself particularly qualified ; we know that Taylor
played Hamlet after Burbage, and Field may have felt
offended and retired altogether.
We know of one Shakespearean part which he played,
that of Othello, from a malicious little epigram,1 which
sneers at Field's jealousy of his wife. We quote it
here : —
" Field is, in sooth, an actor, all men know it,
And is the true Othello of the poet.
I wonder if 'tis true, as people tell us,
That like the character, he is most jealous.
If it be so, and many living sweare it,
It takes no little from the actor's merit,
Since, as the Moore is jealous of his wife,
Field can display the passion to the life."
He died on February 2Oth, 1633, at the age of
forty-six.
Neither his artistic career nor his life was of long
duration, but it seems as if they must have been full of
excitement, fame and variety. His portrait shows us a
narrow, nervous and refined head, beautiful and ex-
pressive, a genuine "decadence" head, compared with
the quiet firmness of Burbage and Shakespeare.
Was not Field the very type of the highly gifted
1 Reproduced from a MS. by J. P. Collier. Its genuineness, as far as I
know, has not been disputed.
i6— Nathaniel Field.
HISTRIONIC ART 239
decadent, in whom the great art of the time blazed forth
with a brief but glorious light ?
At all events, with Field and his generation, men
like Swanston, Benfield and Pollart, we come to the end
of the most important period of the history of the English
theatre.
At the same moment a period was drawing to a close
in politics, the long struggle between King and Parlia-
ment ; and as the winning side was not favourably
inclined towards the theatres, it wrote an emphatic " Finis "
under the history both of the monarchy and of the stage.
On the 2nd of September 1642 Parliament issued the
following order : —
" Whereas the distressed Estate of Ireland, steeped
in her own Blood, and the distracted Estate of England,
threatened with a cloud of Blood, by a Civill Warre, call
for all possible meanes to appease and avert the Wrath
of God appearing in these Judgments ; amongst which
Fasting and Prayer have been often tried to be very
effectual, have been lately, and are still enjoyned, and
whereas publike Sports doe not well agree with publike
Calamities, nor publike Stage-playes with the Seasons
of Humiliation, this being an Exercise of sad and pious
solemnity, and the other being Spectacles of, too com-
monly expressing lacivious Mirth and Levitie. It is
therefore thought fit, and Ordeined by the Lords and
Commons in this Parliament Assembled, that while these
sad Causes and set times of Humiliation doe continue,
publike Stage-playes shall cease, and bee forborne.
Instead of which are recommended to the people of this
Land, the profitable and seasonable Considerations of
24o HISTORY OF THEATRICAL ART
Repentance, Reconciliation, and peace with God, which
probably may produce outward peace and prosperity,
and bring again Times of Joy and Gladness to these
Nations."1
This was the death-blow of the theatres and dramatic
art of the Shakespearean period.
Resistance was indeed attempted for a time, in the
hope that this decree would be no more enforced than
so many of its predecessors. But it soon became evident
that the times had changed. A number of successive
orders, each severer than the last, was directed against
the unfortunate actors. First, they are threatened with
imprisonment ; then all actors are declared to be ipso
facto " rogues and vagabonds " ; if any man is found
acting, he is to be punished with a flogging, and every
person who is present at a play has to pay a fine of five
shillings ; the magistrates are authorised to pull down
galleries and seats ; in short, dramatic art is to be
deprived of every support ; and the actors, who were
naturally nearly all of them staunch royalists, were
persecuted like noxious animals.
Some of them became soldiers and fought in the war
on the royalist side ; others went to the Continent, and
endeavoured to gain a living there.
From 1647 we may say that dramatic art was de-
finitely suppressed in England, till it awoke to new life
under the Restoration.
1 This document is very rare. I believe it has not been reprinted any-
where but in Joseph Knight's edition of Roscius Anglicanus, from which we
reproduce it here. Knight took his reproduction from a copy possessed by
the booksellers, Jarvis & Son.
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Bolte, Johannes : Englische Komodianten in Danemark und Schweden. —
Shakesp. Jahrb. Bd. XXIII.
„ Englische Komodianten in Munster und Ulm, ibid. Bd.
XXXVI.
Brandes, Georg: William Shakespeare. 3 vols. K0benhavn 1895. I vol.
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Cohn, Albert: Shakespeare in Germany in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth
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„ Englische Komodianten in Koln (1562-1656). — Shakesp.
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Collier, J. P.: Memoirs of Edward Alleyn, Founder of Dulwich College.
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„ The History of English Dramatic Poetry to the Time of
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Conrad, Hermann : Robert Greene als Dramatiker. — Shakesp. Jahrb. Bd.
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„ Shakespeare's Works. With an Introduction and Notes
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BIBLIOGRAPHY 243
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III. Q *
INDEX
ACTORS :—
Boy, 38-41, 137-8, 235 ; contracts of,
J55-7 J dress of, 151-3 ; English
and Foreign compared, 199, 200 ;
female parts taken by, 137, 233-4 ;
professional, of Shakespearean
period, 169, 170 ; salaries of, 135-
149 ; theatres, share-owners in,
82-3, 135-146.
Alchymist, the, 65.
All is True, 79.
Allen, Giles, 17, 18-20.
Allen, Ned, see Alleyn, Edward.
Alleyn, Edward, 3, 43*, 53, 58, 59,
140, 185, 1 86, 189, 21472 ; business
enterprise and character of, 65-69,
200-205 ; Dulwich College founded
by, 3, 207 ; Fortune Theatre built
by, 66-69 5 friendships of, 208-210 ;
Henslowe's business taken over by,
89; master of the Bear Garden,
50, 5 1 ; opposition from council, 70-
74 ; parts played by, 198-9 ; pro-
sperity and charity of, 1 50, 206-208 ;
Rose Theatre abandoned by, 65 ;
share system under, 140 seq. ; style
of, 196-7, 199, 200.
Alleyn, Memoirs of, 19972, 21 in.
Alleyn Papers, 109, 10972, 123, 12472,
126, 136-7, 140^^-., 151;*, 152, 15372,
I55«, 23772.
All's lost by Lust, 95.
Antipodes, 49, 100, 187.
Antony and Cleopatra, 64.
Arlecchino, 174.
Armin, Robert, 179, 21472, 232.
As you like it, 15, 64, 220.
Augustus, William, 137.
BAKER, H. Barton, 3072.
Ball, the, 130.
Bankside, 46, 53-6.
Bartholomew Fair, no.
Baxter, Robert, 45.
Beaumont and Fletcher, 65.
Beeston, 130, 212.
" Belle Sauvage," the, 6.
Bellman of London, 877*.
Benfield, Robert, 8372, 144, 208.
Bentley, 178.
Betterton, Thomas, 223.
Birde, William, 109.
Black Army, the, 1 1.
Blacksmith's Daughter, the, 21.
Bolte, Johannes, 18272.
Braynes, John, 17.
Brew, Patrick, 6872.
Bristo, James, 137.
Brome, Richard, 49, 100, 187.
Brown, John, 198.
, Robert, 198.
Bryan, George, 183, 232.
Bryston, James, 137.
Bull, Thomas, 18272.
"Bull," the, 6.
Burbage, Cuthbert, 82, 144 ; letter to
Lord Pembroke quoted, 36-7 ; pub-
lications of, 21 : share system, 145 ;
"The Theatre," connection with,
18-21.
, James, 10, 21, 178, 191 ; actors
under, payment of, 145-6 ; Black-
friars Theatre built by, 29 seq, ; "the
Theatre" built by, 13, 15-18.
, Richard, 10, 23, 43, 60, 81, 21472,
223 ; character and death of, 230,
231 ; friends of, 232 ; Globe rebuilt
by,82 ; Shakespearean plays, in, 64,
225-9 > share system under, 143 seq.;
style of, 179, 1 80 ; " The Theatre,"
connection with, 18-21, 61.
Burby, see Burbage, Cuthbert.
Burke, Sir George, 133.
CALTON, Sir Francis, 207.
Camden, 96.
Careless Shepherdess, The, 91.
Carew, 94.
MS
246
INDEX
Carey, George, see Hunsdon, Lord
(II).
, Henry, see Hunsdon, Lord (I).
Carlton, Sir Dudley, 90^, 144^.
Cartwright, 208.
Case is Altered, 2.
Censorship of Plays, 127-135.
Chamberlain, John, 907*, I44».
Chappuzeau, 123.
Charles I., Shakespeare, appreciation
of, 133-4 ; stage, attitude towards,
8, 131.
Chettle, Henry, 124, 212, 217.
Cohn, Albert, i82», 1847*, 198;*.
Collier, J. P., 3, ii», 29, 30, 33, 48*,
57#, 6i«, 89«,96«, io8«, 12372, i25»,
138, 139, 185, 189, 1907*, 19872,21172.
Comedy of Errors, 24, 184.
Commedia dell' Arte, 2, 4, 179.
Companies : —
Beeston's Boys, 98, 212 ; Chapel-
Boys, 45, 235 ; Children of the
Chapel, 36, 229 ; Children of His
Majesty's Revels, 36 ; Children
of the Queen's Revels, 236 ; Earl
of Pembroke's Servants, 7872 ;
Earl of Worcester's Men, 66, 189,
198 ; Fortune Company, 91, 208;
King's Children, 99, 100 ; King's
Men (or the King's Players), 23,
37, 38, 79«, 83, 89, 94, 190, 208,
215, 229, 236, 237; Lady Eliza-
beth's Servants, 86; Lord Ad-
miral's Men, 41, 59, 60, 65, 70, 90,
118, 197, 206; Lord Chamber-
lain's Servants, 22, 23, 60, 6 1, 70,
112 ; Lord Hunsdon's Men, 22 ;
Lord Leicester's Men, 2 1, 22,183;
Lord Strange's Men (Earl of
Derby's Men), 22, 185, 201, 206,
215, 217 ; Lord Sussex's Men,
65, 7872 ; Prince Charles's Men,
TOO ; Prince's Servants, 90, 206,
208 ; Queen's Men, 98, 100, 190;
Queen's Revels Company, 93.
, joint acting of, 60.
Condell, Henry, 23, 24, 81, 83, 232.
, Mrs, 83, 144.
Conspiracy of Catilina, 65.
Cooke, Alexander, 232.
Coriolanus, 64.
"Cross Keys," the, 6.
Crosse, 178.
Cymbeline, 64, 133.
Cynthia's Revels, 42, 235.
DABORNE, Robert, 86, 87, 126, 236.
Davenant, Sir William, 94, 95, 98,
122, 131, 223.
Davies, John, 219.
Dawes, Robert, 155-7.
De Lawne, William, 31, 32.
De Witt, Johan, 75, 76, 77, 113-
Dead Man's Fortune, 4, 5.
Dekker, Thomas, 41, 60, 78, 124, 125,
127, 208 ; Quarrel with Jonson,
45 j Quoted, 1 20.
Devil is an ass, the, 233.
Donne, Constance, 210.
, Dr John, 210.
Downes, 223.
Down ton, Thomas, 140, I55».
Dray ton, 124.
Drousiano, see Martinelli, Drusiano.
Drummond, William, 41, 147.
Dulwich College, 3, 8972, 106, 1557?,
201, 207.
EGASSES, see Actors, Boy.
Elizabeth, Queen, attitude towards
stage, 8, 10, 104, 23572.
English Stage, Italian influence on,
1-3- .
Evans, Henry, 38, 235;*.
Every man in his humour, 3, 27, 185,
1 88, 229, 232.
Every man out of his humour, 42, 188.
FAIR EM, 21.
Famos wares of Henry the Fyrste,
124.
Fennor, William, 105, 106.
Field, Nathaniel, 37, 38, 45, 86, 87,
89, 99, 105, 138, 151-2, 21472, 225,
232 ; career of, 234 seq. ; Hens-
lowe, relations with, 236-8.
Field, Rev. John, 235,
Fleay, F. G., 2172, 247*, 4172, 44*, 142,
15372, I7in, 18572, 19772.
Flecknoe, 22672.
Fletcher, John, 79, 86, 89, 133, 236.
Frederick II. of Denmark, 182, 183.
Frost, John, 45.
Fuller, Thomas, 171, 177, 19872.
GAEDERTZ, Dr K. Th., 7572, 76.
Gamester ; the, 134.
Gardiner, Stephen, Bp. of Winches-
ter, 46-7.
Garguille, Gaultier, 175*.
Gilbert, 219.
INDEX
247
Goffe, 91.
Gollancz, Israel, 2i3«.
Gosson, Stephen, 21, 176.
Goughe, or Gaffe, Robert, 232.
Greene, Robert, 198, 215-18, 225.
Greenstreet, James, yjn, 2357*.
Guizot, 212.
HALLIWELL-PHILLIPPS, T. O., i2»,
I9«, 2572, 36^, 66», 7o«, 7 in, 11572,
144, I4S«, 171^, 174;*, i75«, 233«.
Hamlet, 44, 64, 139^, 194-5, 197.
Hamlet, the pre-Shakespearean, 22.
Hansen, Dr Ad., i82«.
Harrison, gn.
Harvey, Gabriel, 4.
Heminge, John, 23, 24, 39, 64, 81,
133, 232.
Henry IV., 24, 107.
Henry V., 28, 63-4, 178.
Henry VI., ?8n.
Henry VIII., 79, 80.
Henslowe, Philip, 3, 53, 185, 186,
189, 191 ; character of, 86-7, 89,
124, 155 ; lack of education, 57 ;
properties of, 118, 119, 154; rela-
tions with, Alleyn, 89, 204-5, Field,
236-7, Lord Mayor, 73, 74, Meade,
84, 85, Shakespeare, 147, Sir Ed-
mund Tylney, 70, Dawes, 155-7;
share system under, 140 seq. ; suc-
cesses of, 65 seq. ; " tables " of, 4 ;
theatres built by, Fortune, 66-9,
Hope, 84-5, Rose, 58-9, 65.
Henslowe's Diary, 56, 58, 59, 60, 7872,
123, J24«, 125, 126, 142, 153, 185/2,
189, 196, 197.
Hentzner, Paul, 48.
Herbert, Sir Henry, 129, 134, 135,
138-9, 140.
Herod and A ntipater, 1 97.
Hey wood, Thomas, 2, 69^, I78», 179,
208, 209, 210.
Hinchlow, see Henslowe.
Historia Histrionica, 212.
Histriomastix, 93, I54».
Histrionic Art, English and Foreign
styles compared, 199, 200 ; Im-
provisation in, 190, 224; "King
Cambyses' Vein," Shakespeare's
opinion on, 191-5 ; School of
Shakespeare, 223-5 ; Shakespeare,
of, 221, 226.
Holland's Leaguer, 78, 100.
Hunsdon, Lord (I), 22.
Hunsdon, Lord (II), 22.
Hutton, Henry, I2i».
INN-THEATRES, 5-7.
Italian Stage, influence in England,
JAMES I., Sport, love for, 49-51 ;
Stage attitude towards, 8, 104-5.
Jew of Malta, 198.
"Jigs," character of, 24; Tarlton's,
174-177.
Jones, Daniel, 183.
Jones, Inigo, 114, 131.
Jonson, Ben, 84^, 86, 89, no, in,
125, 131, 142-6, I54«, 208, 225, 232,
233 ; Italian types in, 2, 3 ; Jones,
quarrel with, 114; Shakespeare's
plays, on, H5«; Marston and
Dekker, quarrel with, 41-5 ; Plays
of, at the Globe, 64-5 ; Shake-
speare, relations with, 43-5.
Jonson, William, 21.
Julius Caesar, 64.
Just Italian, the, 94.
KEMP, William, 43, 64, 163, 179,
Burbage's Company and, rupture
between, 185 seq. ; Denmark and
the Netherlands, travels in, 182-3 ;
Norwich, dance to, 180, 181 ; Parts
taken by, 184-5 > Shakespeare and,
contrasted, 186-9 > Style of, 179,
1 80 ; Travels and later engage-
ments of, 189, 190.
Killigrew, Charles, iy)n.
King John, 24.
King Lear, 64, 107.
Knack to know a Knave, 185, 186.
Knell, 178.
Kyd, 2.
LAING, David, 4i«.
- , T., 14791.
Lanam, 178.
Langley, Francis, 72, 76, 77.
Lanham, John, 21.
Lee, Sidney, 6o«, 14 in, 143^, 149^.
Leicester, Earl of, attitude towards
Stage, 8, 10.
Lewin, see Lowin, John.
Lodge, Thomas, 22, 60, 217.
London Corporation, hostility to-
wards Theatres, 8, 10 seq., 18, 19,
34-5, 72-3-
248
INDEX
London Sports, 47. See also Sports.
Theatres, first permanent, 8, 972.
See also Theatres.
Lovers Labour Lost, 24, 1 84.
Lowin, John, 83, 144, 208, 232.
MACBETH, 64.
Malcontent, the, 121, 229.
Malone, Edmond, 3, 4, 29, 30, 57
Son, 8472, 8972, 11872, 1 2 172, 13372
138, 139, 140, 141, 14472, 15472,
15572, i97».
Manningham, John, 228.
Markham, 197.
Marlowe, Christopher, 59, 198, 217,
225.
Marmion, see Marmyon.
Marmyon, Shakerly, 78.
Marston, John, 41, 45, 121, 208.
Marston, Thomas, 45.
Martinelli, Drusiano, 2.
, Tristano, 2.
Masks, Italian, 2.
Massinger, Philip, 86, 89, 236.
Master of the Revels, 132, 134, 136,
138.
Mead, Jacob, 53,84-5, 155-7.
Medicine for a Curst Wife, 127.
Meissner, Johannes, 18272.
Merchant of Venice, 24, 107.
Merry Wives of Windsor, 64.
Middleton, 208.
Midsummer Night's Dream, A, 24,
108, 184
Mils, 178.
Milton, 134.
Moliere, 12372.
Much Ado about Nothing, 28, 64,
184.
NAJERA, Duke of, 47.
Nash, Thomas, 4, 10772, 199.
Nine Days' Wonder, 190.
Nobility, the :—
Sport, love for, 49 ; Stage, attitude
towards, 8.
North, John, 10572.
Northbrooke, John, n.
Nottingham, Lord, 8, 73.
ORDISH, T. F., 972, 2572, 3072, 4972, 6672,
7672, 90/2.
Orlando Furioso, 199.
Ostler, William, 37, 38, 45, 21472.
Othello, 64.
PAGE OF PLYMOUTH, THE, 125.
Parrot, H., 12172.
Pavy, Salathiel, 45.
Peele, 217.
Pembroke, Earl of, 36, 83??, 144,
14972.
Penniman, J. H., 41/2.
Pepys, Samuel, quoted, 95.
Performance, a first, at the Globe,
155-166.
Perkin, John, 21.
Phaeton, 124.
Philaster, 65.
Phillips, Augustine, 24, 8272, 232.
Pierce Penniless 's Supplication to the
Devil, 199.
Plague, Theatres, effect on, 9, 10.
Play-bills, 106-8.
Play-houses, see also Theatres : —
Civil War, effect on, 134 ; Public
and Private, 34 seq. ; Suppres-
sion of, 71-2.
Play, Renaissance, 170.
Plays :—
Advertisement, method of, 105-8 ;
Authorship fees, 123-7 ; Com-
mencement, hour of, 104 ; En-
trance fees, 108-9 > Licensing of,
127-135 ; Proceeds of, 138-42 ;
Sunday performances, 104-5.
Poetaster, the, 3, 42, 43, 44, 235.
Pollard, Thomas, 8372, 144.
Pope, Thomas, 179, 183, 232.
Porters, Endymion, 131.
Privy Council, Theatres, attitude
towards, 72-3.
Prologue, the, Sketch, 1 58 seq.
Prophecy of the Cobbler, 21.
Prynne, William, Son, 93, 96-7, 154.
Puritans, Stage, antipathy towards, 7,
9, 10-12, 34-5,69, 80,231.
RALPH ROISTER DOISTER, 2.
Ratsey, Gamaliel, 150.
Return from Parnassus, 43, 45, 149,
179, 189.
Rhodes, 95.
Rhyming Matches, 105.
Richard II., 24.
Richard III., 98.
"Rings," 15,47.
Robinson, Richard, 83, 144, 232.
Romeo and Juliet, 24, 184.
Rosania, 83.
Rowe, Nicholas, 212, 219.
INDEX
249
SAMPSON, WILLIAM, 197.
Satiromastix, 45, 78.
Scaramuccia, 174.
Schancke, John, 83, 14972, 232.
"School of Abuse," 21, 22, 176.
Second part of King Henry IV., 28.
Se janus, 64, 219, 229.
Seven Deadly Sins, 4, 225.
Shakespeare : —
Actor, as, 211-215, 221-2; Black-
friars Theatre, connection with
29; Career of, 215 seq. ; "City
Fathers," disrespect for, 73-4
Financial condition and salary
of, 146-151 ; Friends of, 232
Globe, connection with, 29, 64
82, 148 ; Kemp and, contrasted,
186-9; "King Cambyses vein,'
opinion on, 191-5; Non-apprecia-
tion of, under Charles I., 133-4 ;
Parts taken by, 219-20 ; Plays of,
24, 28, 79 ; Relations with ; — Ben
Jonson, 43-5, Green, 217, Tarlton,
171; School of, 223-5; "The
Theatre," connection with, 23-4 ;
Theatres, played at, 218-9.
Shankes, 144.
Shares, Theatre, 135-146.
Shawe, Robart, 125, 138, 153.
Shirley, James, 83, 100, 130, 134.
Shrewsbury, Earl of, 73.
Sly, Thomas, 180.
— , William, 121, 179.
Smyth, William, 20.
Sommer, William, 177.
Spanish Tragedy, 2, 200.
Spencer, Gabriel, 179.
Sports, London : —
Bear-baiting, 47-9, 206 ; Bull-
baiting, 47-9 ; Dog and Lion
rights, 49-51 ; River ferrying,
and, 54-6; Theatres and, 14, 15.
Stage : —
Italian influence on, 1-3 ; Laws
against, 239-40 ; Nobility, atti-
tude towards, 8 ; Puritans, atti-
tude towards, 7, 9, 34-5 ; Shake-
spearean, 116-7 ; Share-holding
system, 135-146.
Costumes during Renaissance, 113-
4, 118 ; Properties, 118-9 ; Scenic
arrangements, 114; Seats on
the, 120-123.
Staple of News, 154.
Steevens, 3/2, 4.
"Stews," u«.
Stockwood, John, 12.
Stow's, Chronicle, 8o#, 81 n, gon, 96.
Strange, Lord, Stage, attitude to-
wards, 8.
Street, Peter, 20, 61, 66.
Sussex, Earl of, Stage, attitude to-
wards, 8.
Swanston, Heliard, 837*, 144.
TALE OF A TUB, 131.
Taming of the Shrew, 133.
Tarlton, Richard : —
Character and wit of, 170, 173-7 ;
events in life of, 171-2 ; Fuller
on, 177; "jigs" of, 174-7;
Kemp and, compared, 179, 180 ;
Shakespeare, relations with, 171.
Tarlton's Jests,i7i#, 17272, 17472, 175/2,
17872.
Taylor, John, 53-6, 105, 106, 112.
Taylor, Joseph, 5372, 83, 144, 208,
223, 232.
Tempest, the, 5272, 64.
Theatre to let, 95.
Theatre, the : —
Actors as shareholders, 135-146 ;
admission fees, 109-113; Dis-
repute of, 97 ; expenses, 113-4,
127 ; first permanent, 8, 972, 10,
56, 71.
Theatres, see also Play-houses : —
General survey of London, 100-
102 ; Privy Council opposition,
69-71; "public and private"
play-houses, 34 seq. ; sport in,
14, 15.
Theatres, London : —
Bear Garden, 61, 65, 76, 77, 90, 206.
Blackfriars, 29, 64/2, 83, 93, 101,
190, 229, 232, 235, 236; boy-
actors at, 41 ; built by Burbage,
29 seq. ; C. Burbage, statement
by, 37 ; Notoriety of, 45 ; profits
of, 38-9 ; share-system in, 144.
Cockpit, 93, 96-8, 102.
Curtain, 10, 11, 12, 19, 24-8, 56, 59,
70, 74, 7S» 93-4, i°°, 176, 184.
Fortune, 41, 42, 66-70, 73, 74, 90-
92, 101, 140, 142, 206, 208.
Globe, 21, 29, 39, 40, 55, 70, 73,
78, 84, 89, 93, 101, 188, 189, 206,
229, 232 ; a first performance at,
157-166; building and descrip-
250
INDEX
Theatres, London — continued : —
tion of, 61-3 ; burning and re-
building of, 79-82 ; profits of,
I4I« ; repertoire of, 64-5 ; re-
putation of, 83 ; share system
at, 83, 144, 148.
Hope, 77, 85, 88, 89, 90, 101, 105,
236, 237.
Inn, 6, 7.
Newington (Newington Butts),
59, 60, 72, 77, 93, 101, 185.
Paris Garden, 76, 78, 92.
Phoenix, see Theatres, Cockpit.
Red Bull, 36, 91, 95, 101.
Rose, 55, 58-9, 65, 66, 74, 75, 77,
93, 101, 142, 206, 217.
Royal Drury Lane, 98.
Salisbury Court, 100, 102.
Swan, 55, 58^, 72, 75, 78-9, 93, 101,
The Theatre, 10 seq., 18, 27-8, 56,
59, 75, 93, 1°°, l845 actors of,
23 ; Bankside, removal to, 19-21,
61 ; built by James Burbage, 13,
15-17 ; repertoire of, 21-2, 24.
Whitefriars, 98-9.
Three Ladies of London, 21.
Timon of Athens, 64.
Tiring House dues, 122.
Titus Andronicus, 7$n.
Travels of three English Brothers,
189, 190.
Triplicity of Cuckolds, the, 1 24.
Troilus and Cressida, 44.
Twelfth Night, 64, 77.
Two Gentlemen of Verona, 24, 184.
Tylney, Sir Edmund, 70, 128.
UDALL, 2.
Underwood, John, 37, 38, 45, 214^.
Untrussing of the Humorous Poet,
45-
VlSCHER, 62, 77.
Volpone, 65.
WALSINGHAM, Sir Francis, 8.
Warner, G. F., 57*.
Webster, 208, 229.
Wilson, Robert, 21, ijin, 178, 225.
Winchester, Bishop of, see Gardiner,
Stephen.
Winter's Tale, 64, 133.
Woman is a Weathercock, 236.
Woodward, Jone, 58.
Wotton, Sir Henry, 8o».
YOUNG ADMIRAL, THE, 130.
ZOEGA, 182.
TURNBULL AND SPEARS, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
uoi
PN
M3
1903
v.3
Mantzius, Karl
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