A Book of the Play / Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character

by Dutton Cook

larger audience. John Stockwood, schoolmaster of Tunbridge, who preached at Paul's Cross on St. Bartholomew's Day, 1578, demanded, "will not a filthy play, with the blast of a trumpet, sooner call thither a thousand than an hour's tolling bring to the sermon a hundred?" It was, moreover, an especial grievance to the devout at this period that plays were represented on a Sunday, the church and the theatre being thus brought into positive rivalry and antagonism. The clergy saw with dismay that their own congregations were thin and listless, while crowded and excited audiences rewarded the exertions of the players. Mr. Stockwood, declining to discuss whether plays were or not wholly unlawful, yet protested with good reason that in a Christian commonwealth they were intolerable on the seventh day, and exclaimed against the "horrible profanity" and "devilish inventions" of the lords of misrule, morrice, and May-day dancers, whom he accused of tripping about the church, even during the hours of service, and of figuring in costumes which, by their texture and scantiness, outraged ordinary notions of decency.

But notwithstanding this old-established opposition to the theatres on the part of both Churchmen and Puritans, and the severe oppression of the players by the authorities, it is yet indisputable that the English were essentially a playgoing people; proud, as well they might be, of the fact that they possessed the finest drama and the best actors in the world. And, allowing for the licence and grossness which the times permitted if they did not encourage, and a certain liberty of speech and action allowed time out of mind to the clowns of the stage, the drama suppressed by the Puritans was of sound and wholesome constitution, rich in poetry of the noblest class. It is sufficient to say, indeed, that it was the drama of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. To a very large class, therefore, the persecution of the players and the suppression of the stage must have been grave misfortune and real privation. To many the theatre still supplied not merely recreation but education and enlightenment as well. That there was any rising of the public on behalf of the players does not appear. Puritanism was too strong for opposition; and besides, the playgoer, by the nature of his favourite pursuit, almost avows himself a man of peace and

obedient to the law. The public had to submit, as best it could, to the tyranny of fanaticism. But that bitter mortification was felt by very many may be taken for granted.

The authors were deprived of occupation so far as concerned the stage; they sought other employment for their pens; printing a play, however, now and then, by way of keeping their hands in as dramatists. The managers, left with nothing to manage, perhaps turned to trade in quest of outlet for their energies—the manager has been always something of the trader. But for the actors, forbidden to act, what were they to do? They had been constituted Malignants or Royalists almost by Act of Parliament. The younger players promptly joined the army of King Charles. Mohun acquired the rank of captain, and at the close of the war, served in Flanders, receiving the pay of a major. Hart became a lieutenant of horse, under Sir Thomas Dallison, in the regiment of Prince Rupert. In the same troop served Burt as cornet, and Shatterel as quartermaster. Allen, of the Cockpit, was a major and quartermaster-general at Oxford. Robinson, serving on the side of the King, was long reputed to have lost his life at the taking of Basing House. The story went that the Cromwellian General Harrison had, with his own hands, slain the actor, crying, as he struck him down: "Cursed is he that doeth the work of the Lord negligently." Chalmers maintains, however, that an entry in the parish register of St. Anne's, Blackfriars, of the death and burial of "Richard Robinson, a player," in March, 1647, negatives this account of the actor's fate. Possibly there were two actors bearing the not uncommon name of Robinson. These were all players of note, who had acquitted themselves with applause in the best plays of the time. Of certain older actors, unable to bear arms for the king, Lowin turned innkeeper, and died, at an advanced age, landlord of the Three Pigeons at Brentford. He had been an actor of eminence in the reign of James I.; "and his poverty was as great as his age," says one account of him. Taylor, who was reputed to have been taught by Shakespeare himself the correct method of interpreting the part of Hamlet, died and was buried at Richmond. These two actors, as did others probably, sought to pick up a little money by publishing copies of plays that had obtained favour in performance, but had not before been printed.

Thus, in 1652, Beaumont and Fletcher's "Wild Goose Chase" was printed in folio, "for the public use of all the ingenious, and the private benefit of John Lowin and Joseph Taylor, servants to his late Majesty, and by them dedicated to the honoured few lovers of dramatic poesy: wherein they modestly intimate their wants, and that with sufficient cause, for whatever they were before the wars, they were afterwards reduced to a necessitous condition." Pollard, possessed of some means, withdrew to his relatives in the country, and there ended his days peacefully. Perkins and Sumner lodged humbly together in Clerkenwell, and were interred in that parish. None of these unfortunate old actors lived to see the re-opening of the theatres or the restoration of the monarchy.

But one actor is known to have sided with the Parliament and against the King. He renounced the stage and took up the trade of a jeweller in Aldermanbury. This was Swanston who had played Othello, and had been described as "a brave roaring fellow, who would make the house shake again." "One wretched actor only," Mr. Gifford writes, in the introduction to his edition of Massinger, "deserted his sovereign." But it may be questioned whether Swanston really merited this reprehension. He was a Presbyterian, it seems, and remained true to his political opinions, even though these now involved the abandonment of his profession. If his brother-players fought for the King, they fought no less for themselves, and for the theatre the Puritans had suppressed. Nor is the contrast Mr. Gifford draws, between the conduct of our actors at the time of the Civil War, and the proceedings of the French players during the first French Revolution, altogether fair. As Isaac Disraeli has pointed out, there was no question of suppressing the stage in France—it was rather employed as an instrument in aid of the Revolution. The actors may have sympathised sincerely with the royal family in their afflicted state, but it was hardly to be expected that men would abandon, on that account, the profession of their choice, in which they had won real distinction, and which seemed to flourish the more owing to the excited condition of France. The French Revolution, in truth, brought to the stage great increase of national patronage.

The Civil War concluded, and the cause of King Charles

wholly lost, the actors were at their wits' end to earn bread. Certain of them resolved to defy the law, and to give theatrical performances in spite of the Parliament. Out of the wreck of the companies of the different theatres they made up a tolerable troop, and ventured to present some few plays, with as much caution and privacy as possible, at the Cockpit, in Drury Lane. This was in the winter of 1648. Doubtless there were many to whom the stage was dear, who were willing enough to encourage the poor players. Playgoing had now become as a vice or a misdemeanour, to be prosecuted in secret—like dram-drinking. The Cockpit representations lasted but a few days. During a performance of Fletcher's tragedy of "Rollo, Duke of Normandy," in which such excellent actors as Lowin, Taylor, Pollard, Burt, and Hart were concerned, a party of troopers beset the house, broke in about the middle of the play, and carried off the players, accoutred as they were in their stage dresses, to Hatton House, then a prison, where, after being detained some time, they were plundered of their clothes and dismissed. "Afterwards, in Oliver's time," as an old chronicler of dramatic events has left upon record, "they used to act privately, three or four miles or more out of town, now here, now there, sometimes in noblemen's houses—in particular Holland House, at Kensington—where the nobility and gentry who met (but in no great numbers) used to make a sum for them, each giving a broad-piece or the like." The widow of the Earl of Holland who was beheaded in March, 1649, occupied Holland House at this time. She was the granddaughter of Sir Walter Cope, and a stout-hearted lady, who doubtless took pride in encouraging the entertainments her late lord's foes had tried so hard to suppress. Alexander Goffe, "the woman-actor at Blackfriars," acted as "Jackal" on the occasion of these furtive performances. He had made himself known to the persons of quality who patronised plays, and gave them notice of the time when and the place where the next representation would "come off." A stage-play, indeed, in those days was much what a prize-fight has been in later times—absolutely illegal, and yet assured of many persistent supporters. Goffe was probably a slim, innocent-looking youth, who was enabled to baffle the vigilance of the Puritan functionaries, and to pass freely and unsuspected between the players and their patrons. At Christmas-time and

during the few days devoted to Bartholomew Fair, the actors, by dint of bribing the officer in command of the guard at Whitehall, and securing in such wise his connivance, were enabled to present performances at the Red Bull in St. John Street. Sometimes the Puritan troopers were mean enough to accept the hard-earned money of these poor players, and, nevertheless, to interrupt their performance, carrying them off to be imprisoned and punished for their breach of the law. But their great trouble arose from the frequent seizure of their wardrobe by the covetous soldiers. The clothes worn by the players upon the stage were of superior quality—fine dresses were of especial value in times prior to the introduction of scenery—and the loss was hard to bear. The public, it was feared, would be loath to believe in the merits of an actor who was no better attired than themselves. But at length it became too hazardous, as Kirkman relates, in the preface to "The Wits, or Sport upon Sport," 1672, "to act anything that required any good cloaths; instead of which painted cloath many times served the turn to represent rich habits." Kirkman's book is a collection of certain "scenes or parts of plays ... the fittest for the actors to represent at this period, there being little cost in the cloaths, which often then were in great danger to be seized by the soldiers." These "select pieces of drollery, digested into scenes by way of dialogue, together with variety of humours of several nations, fitted for the pleasure and content of all persons, either in court, city, county, or camp," were first printed in 1662, by H. Marsh, and were originally contrived by Robert Cox, a comic genius in his way, who exhibited great ingenuity in evading the ordinances of Parliament, and in carrying on dramatic performances in spite of the Puritans. He presented at the Red Bull what were professedly entertainments of rope-dancing, gymnastic feats, and such coarse practical fun as may even now be seen in the circus of strolling equestrian companies; but with these he cunningly intermingled select scenes from the comedies of the best English dramatists. From Kirkman's book, which is now highly prized from its rarity, it appears that the "drollery" entitled "The Bouncing Knight, or the Robbers Robbed," is, in truth, a famous adventure of Sir John Falstaff's, set forth in close accordance with the original text; while the comedy of "Rule a Wife and have a Wife" is reduced to a brief entertain

ment called "The Equal Match." Other popular plays are similarly dealt with. But Cox, it seems, invented not less than he borrowed. Upon the foundation of certain old-established farces, he raised up entertainments something of the nature of the extemporary comedy of Italy: characters being devised or developed expressly with a view to his own performance of them. "All we could divert ourselves with," writes Kirkman, "were these humours and pieces of plays, which, passing under the name of a merry conceited fellow called Bottom the Weaver, Simpleton the Smith, John Swabber, or some such title, were only allowed us, and that by stealth too ... and these small things were as profitable and as great get-pennies to the actors as any of our late famed plays." He relates, moreover, that these performances attracted "a great confluence of auditors," insomuch that the Red Bull, a playhouse of large size, was often so full, that "as many went back for want of room as had entered;" and that meanly as these "drolls" might be thought of in later times, they were acted by the best comedians "then and now in being." Especially he applauds the actor, author, and contriver of the majority of the farces—"the incomparable Robert Cox." Isaac Disraeli gives him credit for preserving alive, as it were by stealth, the suppressed spirit of the drama. That he was a very natural actor, or what would now be called "realistic," may be judged from the story told of his performance of a comic blacksmith, and his securing thereby an invitation to work at the forge of a master smith, who had been present among the audience. "Although your father speaks so ill of you," said the employer of labour, "if you will come and work with me, I will give you twelvepence a-week more than I give any other journeyman." As Kirkman adds: "Thus was he taken for a smith bred, that was, indeed, as much of any trade."