The Elizabethan Stage, Vol. 1

by E. K. Chambers

The longest number of plays given before Elizabeth in any one winter was probably in 1600-1, when there were eleven. During the greater part of the reign the number ranged from six to ten. For some of the earliest years only two or three are on record. It is possible that a few may have escaped notice owing to the absence of a 'reward', or conceivably the charge of a reward to funds other than those covered by the very complete accounts of the Treasurer of the Chamber.[682] Naturally, if an Inn of Court or gentlemen such as the sons of Sir Percival Hart played, they did not take a money payment. The schoolboys of Eton and Westminster did, but the latter perhaps not from the very beginning. The only winter for which the Treasurer of the Chamber records no rewards is that of the plague year 1563-4. But the Revels Office provided for three plays at Windsor, and if it was thought dangerous to bring companies from London or elsewhere to court, Eton or the Windsor choir would have been the natural substitutes. In 1574 again the Revels Office were furnishing plays at Windsor and Reading by Italians, no payments to whom can be traced. Elizabeth occasionally ordered a mask outside the winter season, for some such purpose as the entertainment of an ambassador. I do not find clear evidence that she ever ordered a play. But, both in winter and in summer, she was from time to time present at a play given by some one else, in progress or at a wedding or banquet in London.[683]

James gave the impression, when he first came to England, of taking, unlike Queen Anne and Prince Henry, 'no extraordinary pleasure' in plays.[684] But he had a great many more than his predecessor, and reverted in some years to the early practice of opening the play season at the beginning of November. Nor, on the other hand, was he strict in his observance of Lent, and in some years the performances continued at intervals until after Easter. During his first winter he saw eleven plays and gradually increased this number, reaching a maximum of twenty-three in 1609-10. Up to 1615 he never saw less than eleven, except during 1612-13, the winter of Henry's death, when the number fell to seven. Moreover, even when he himself escaped to a hunting-box, he was liberal in ordering additional plays for the prince and court, and yet others seem to have been charged to the private funds of Anne and the royal children.[685] The records do not in all years give the dates of individual performances; but in 1611-12, to take one example, the programme was as follows. The King himself was present at plays on October 31, November 1, and November 5, on the four nights after Christmas, on January 5, on Candlemas, and on Shrove Sunday and Tuesday. On January 6 was the mask. Most of the intervening days he spent in visits to his various hunting quarters. Meanwhile there were at least twenty-six other plays before one or more of the royal children, at which Anne was probably also present. Two of these were in November, one in the middle of December, one in Christmas week, eight in January after Twelfth night, and nine in February, both before and after Lent had begun. Two plays at the end of March and three in April, none of these in the King's presence, exhausted the official supply, but not the enthusiasm of Prince Henry. He spent a fortnight with Anne at Greenwich during January, and there was 'every night a play', some of which the Queen probably paid for; and in March he was entertained by the Marquis of Winchester at supper, again with plays.[686] Occasionally James ordered a play during the summer; there were four for the entertainment of the King of Denmark in 1606, of which one, by the Paul's boys, is not traceable in the Chamber accounts, and one for the Duke of Savoy's ambassador in 1613. All plays at the Jacobean court was given by professional companies; if the lawyers came to court, it was not in a play, but a mask.

Whether the revels were kept at Westminster, Hampton Court, Greenwich, Richmond, or Windsor, sufficient accommodation could be afforded for a play in the great hall, which thus for a brief space resumed its ancient glories as the state apartment of the sovereign. At the first three of those palaces, there is definite evidence of the use of the hall. But Whitehall, at least, was spacious enough to offer other alternatives. The banqueting-house might be available, if it was not occupied by the preparations for a mask. And performances were sometimes given in the 'great chamber', which at Whitehall was distinct from both the presence chamber and the 'guard' or 'watching' chamber which served as an ante-room to the presence.[687] It seems also that provision could be made, perhaps only on the less public and crowded occasions when the King was not present, for a stage in the octagonal cockpit, which stood on the edge of St. James's Park, in the western extension of the palace.[688] As a courtesy to a royal visitor, a play was given in 1565 at the Savoy, where the Lady Cecilia of Sweden was housed, and in 1614 Anne's pastoral of Hymen's Triumph took place in 'a little square paved court' at Somerset House.

It is a curious illustration of the functions of the Privy Council as a household board that, during the whole of Elizabeth's time and the greater part of that of James, the actors could not get their fee or 'reward', except through the medium of a formal warrant addressed by that body to the Treasurer of the Chamber. These warrants are not in existence, but their issue is noted, rather irregularly and inaccurately, in the collection of minutes known as the Council register, and they are recited, with their dates and places of signature, and the names of the actors or managers to whom they appointed payment to be made on behalf of the companies, in the annual accounts of the Treasurer of the Chamber as audited and declared before the Exchequer.[689] The amount of the reward was, subject to certain historical developments, a uniform one. It had been fixed, early in the reign of Henry VIII, at ten marks (£6 13s. 4d.) a play, and this rate continued to rule, when Elizabeth came to the throne, and for some years thereafter. But in 1572 a tendency to an increase shows itself, and up to 1575 the amounts are irregular. Sometimes the normal fee is paid, sometimes a double fee of £13 6s. 8d., sometimes an intermediate one of £10. The Treasurer of the Chamber records various explanations of the extra sums. They are 'a more rewarde by her maiesties owne comaundement', or they are paid in respect of special charges incurred by the companies, as for example when Farrant had to bring his boys from Windsor to Whitehall. And after 1575 things had evidently settled down on the basis of a normal £10, which was conventionally regarded as made up of £6 13s. 4d. 'for presentinge' the play, and £3 6s. 8d. 'by way of speciall reward'. The formulas in the accounts are not invariably the same, but they all come to this; and the shadowy distinction between the two amounts is preserved in the practice by which, if a play was ordered and then counter-ordered, the £6 13s. 4d. was paid, but not the £3 6s. 8d. The £10 rate was maintained, with insignificant exceptions, during the rest of Elizabeth's reign, and was taken over as 'the usuall allowaunce' or 'the ordinary rates formerly allowed' by James.[690] If, however, a play was ordered for the Prince only and not the King, the 'speciall rewarde' was omitted, so far as the Treasurer of the Chamber was concerned, although it is quite possible that the Prince may have supplied it out of his privy purse.[691] A quite exceptional amount of £30 was paid to the King's men for a play at Wilton in December 1603, to cover their 'paynes and expences' in coming from Mortlake to give the performance. Plague was raging, and they were probably practicing at Mortlake for the court entertainments of the following Christmas. It may be added that the King's company, and that alone, received a subsidy of £30 from the Treasurer of the Chamber, in aid of its maintenance during this plague-winter. Similar payments, of £40 and £30 respectively, were made after the plague-winters of 1608-9 and 1609-10.[692]

In 1614 there was an innovation in the procedure, by which the responsibility for signing warrants for allowances to players was transferred from the Privy Council to the Lord Chamberlain; and thenceforward the payments are recorded in a special section of the Treasurer's accounts, devoted to expenditure which the Chamberlain had power to authorize, and most of which had been at one time charged to the Privy Purse.[693] An example from a later date of a Lord Chamberlain's warrant for payment is preserved, together with a schedule of the plays covered by the amount paid. The warrant refers to the 'acquittance for the receipt' of the money, which the Treasurer would take from the players, and is in fact endorsed with receipts by one of them for the successive instalments paid, and with a final one for the whole sum due.[694] References in the Chamber Accounts for 1605-6 and 1609-10 to similar schedules in or annexed to the warrants show that, at an earlier date, the Privy Council had evidence before them, perhaps from the Lord Chamberlain, perhaps from the Master of the Revels, as to the number of plays which a company had given.[695] It is a pity that the Treasurer of the Chamber only on rare occasions thought it worth while to record the name of the play for which he was paying. A chance memorandum of Henslowe's tells us that, as perhaps we might have guessed, some of the money stuck to the hands of officials in the form of fees. To get the £10 due to Worcester's men for a play in 1601-2, Henslowe had had to give the Clerk of the Council 7s. for 'geatynge the cownselles handes to' the warrant, and 10s. 6d. 'for fese' to one Mr. Moysse 'at the receuinge of the mony owt of the payhowsse'.[696] On the other hand, the players got their money pretty quickly; the warrants were generally signed within a month or so, sometimes within a day or so, of the performances to which they relate. Considerable delays during the years 1596-9 possibly reflect the disorganization of the Revels Office by the disputes of the officers; just as similar delays about 1615-17 probably reflect the general disorganization of Jacobean finance.

Plays were given in private houses, as well as at court, and not only when there was a royal guest to be entertained. As the public theatres were open by daylight, the companies were easily available for private engagements after supper. Naturally the record of such occasions has in most cases perished with the domestic account-books in which it was entered. But Sir Edward Hoby invited Sir Robert Cecil to a performance of Richard II—at least, I think so—in 1595.[697] The gossip of Rowland Whyte informs us of the banquets and plays given in honour of Sir Robert Cecil by Sir Walter Raleigh and other friends on the eve of his mission to France in 1598, of the two plays at a supper about the same date by Sir Gilly Meyrick at the rival political head-quarters of Essex House, and of the performances of Henry IV under its original title of Sir John Oldcastle, when Lord Chamberlain Hunsdon feasted the Flemish ambassador Louis Verreyken in 1600.[698] Similarly, in 1606 John Chamberlain went to a play at Sir Walter Cope's, now Holland House, and 'had to squire his daughter about, till he was weary', and in 1613 Sir Robert Rich had a play for the delectation of the Savoyard ambassador after a supper in Holborn.[699] An amusing side-light on the improvised stage-arrangements necessary in private houses is given by a stage-direction in Percy's Aphrodysial, 'Here went furth the whole Chorus in a shuffle as after a Play in a Lord's howse'.[700] Wealthy citizens, if they were not too puritanically disposed, could well afford to follow the lead of the nobles and gentry of the court. And in the years before the controversy between the corporation and the actors became acute, a play was thought no inappropriate accompaniment to the annual feast of a guild, or the welcome or valediction of a civic dignitary.[701] The domestic plays of the Oxford and Cambridge colleges had their origin in the Renaissance theories of education, and dispensed with the professional mimes. A detailed study of them lies outside the scope of these volumes.[702] The Inns of Court men, too, could hold their own upon the boards at will. But for their ordinary solace they were accustomed to take the easier course of calling in professional aid. At the Inner Temple, Beaumont mentions a Christmas show of Lady Amity, probably not long after his admission in 1600, and the Treasurer's accounts of the Inner Temple, which are extant from 1605, show that from that year to 1611 there was always a play, at a cost of £5, either upon Candlemas or upon All Saints' Day, and in some years on both dates. At Candlemas 1611, something must have gone wrong, for on February 10 the Benchers passed a decree:

'For that great disorder and scurrility is brought into this House by lewd and lascivious plays, it is likewise ordered in this parliament that from henceforth there shall be no more plays in this House, either upon the feast of All Saints or Candlemas day, but the same from henceforth to be utterly taken away and abolished.'