[1032] In 1628 Sir Henry Herbert notes in his office-book (Variorum, iii. 176), 'The Kinges company with a general consent and alacritye [poor devils! E. K. C.] 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 2ˡ 5ˢ. this 25 May, 1628.' Herbert words it oddly, but the 'dayly charge' must be that of the sharers, not the housekeepers, who had none, and the estimate agrees fairly with that of 1635. Herbert took during 1628-33 sums of from £1 5s. to £6 7s., averaging £4 8s. 6d., out of five performances at the Globe, and £9 16s. to £17 10s., averaging £13 10s., from five performances at the Blackfriars. The gross takings averaged therefore £6 13s. 6d. at the Globe and £15 15s. at the Blackfriars. In 1633 Herbert compounded for a payment of £10 at Christmas and £10 at Midsummer. But in 1662 (Variorum, iii. 266) he included amongst the incomings of his office the profits of a summer's day and a winter's day at the Blackfriars, which he valued at £50 each.
[1033] Cf. p. 363 and ch. xiii (Admiral's).
[1034] Cf. W. W. Greg in T. L. S. (12 Feb. 1920) and his analysis of the Dulwich 'plots' (H. P. 152). Here also we find the tireman, gatherers, and attendants used as 'supers'.
[1035] Puttenham, i. 14, says that Roscius 'brought vp these vizards, which we see at this day vsed'. In The Longer Thou Livest, 1748, 1796, God's Judgement has 'a terrible visure' and Confusion 'an ill fauowred visure', and in All For Money, 389, 1440, 1462, Damnation, Judas, and Dives have vizards. But this is early evidence, and perhaps drawn from the private stage. Harington, Metamorphosis of Ajax (1596, An Anatomy, 5), speaks of 'an ill-favoured vizor, such as I have seen in stage plays, when they dance Machachinas', but this rather tells against the use by ordinary actors at that date.
[1036] Women only began to act regularly at the Restoration; cf. Ward, iii. 253. There had been occasional earlier examples; even in 1611 Coryat, Crudities, i. 386, says that at Venice 'I saw women acte, a thing that I never saw before, though I have heard that it hathe beene sometimes used in London'. The exceptions are, I think, such as prove the rule; private plays such as Hymen's Triumph, Venner's gulling show of England's Joy, the Italian tumblers of 1574, the virago Moll Frith at the Fortune (cf. ch. xxiii, s.v. Dekker, Roaring Girl). On 22 Feb. 1583 Richard Madox 'went to the theater to see a scurvie play set out al by one virgin, which there proved a fyemarten without voice, so that we stayed not the matter' (Cotton MSS. App. xlvii, f. 6ᵛ; cf. S. P. Colonial, E. Indies, 221). As to the skill of the boys, cf. Ben Jonson on Richard Robinson in The Devil is an Ass, II. viii. 64.
[1037] Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 316.
[1038] Cf. ch. xvi (Swan).
[1039] Cf. ch. xiii (Admiral's).
[1040] Cf. ch. vii.
[1041] Cf. ch. xiii (Admiral's).