The Elizabethan Stage, Vol. 1

by E. K. Chambers

At the following feast of All Saints the only expenditure entered by the Treasurer is of £2 10s. for a 'consort' of music and £2 for antics and puppets. These must have proved but inadequate substitutes, for on November 24 the period of austerity was brought to an end by the withdrawal of the interdict.

'Whereas of late years upon the two festival days of All Saints and Candlemas, plays have been used after dinner for recreation which have lately been laid down by order in parliament, it is now ordered that the same order shall henceforth stand repealed.'

The payments are now resumed, and continue twice a year, generally at the increased rate of £6 13s. 4d. At Candlemas 1613 some misunderstanding seems to have led to a supplementary payment to 'another company of players which were appointed to play the same day'. On All Saints 1614 and both Candlemas and All Saints 1615, the players are specified to have been the King's men.[703] From the other Inns the story is more fragmentary. The devices for the famous Gray's Inn Christmas of 1594-5, reported in the Gesta Grayorum, were mainly due to the fertile imagination of the lawyers themselves. In addition to the continuous burlesque of state ceremonies in the court of Purpoole and the mask sent to Whitehall at Shrovetide, they included a special show of Amity for the reception of the ambassador of Templaria on January 3. But this had its origin in the disorders of an earlier revel on Innocents' Day, when the confusion was so great that the Inner Temple men left in dudgeon, and the show then intended was not given. To supply its place, 'a Comedy of Errors (like to Plautus his Menechmus) was played by the players. So that night was begun, and continued to the end, in nothing but Confusion and Errors; whereupon, it was ever afterwards called, The Night of Errors.' On the following day there was a trial, and a supposed sorcerer or conjurer was arraigned on the charge amongst others 'that he had foisted a Company of base and common Fellows, to make up our Disorders with a Play of Errors and Confusions'.[704] Similarly the Middle Temple in 1597-8 varied their own fooling with plays on 28 December and 2 January, which from the absence of details in the narrative were probably supplied by professional actors.[705] And this house, too, must have been accustomed to keep Candlemas with a play, for a note of February 1602 in John Manningham's diary makes mention of Twelfth Night as given 'at our feast'.[706] The same practice, known as the Post Revels, prevailed at Lincoln's Inn. Here the notices are of an earlier date, and preserve the memory of performances by the Chapel boys in 1565, 1566, and 1580, and by Lord Roche's, or more probably Lord Rich's, men in 1570.[707]

I have digressed somewhat from the ways of the court. The arrangements for performances were in the hands of the Revels, and are therefore only traceable in detail before 1589, after which year the extant accounts of that office are very summary. As Christmas drew near, symptoms of bustle began to show themselves in the work-rooms. A good deal of time was spent in the discovery and preparation of suitable pieces. It would seem that the available companies were invited to submit the various plays in which they had exercised themselves by public performance, that these were then recited, and a selection made from them to the number which her majesty intended to hear.[708] Both in 1574-5 and in 1576-7 the accounts record the trying over of plays that were not ultimately given. These 'rehearsals' or 'proofs' took place in the hall or the 'great chamber' of St. John's, or the Master's lodgings, and were of an elaborate character, for it was thought worth while to bring in cumbrous properties for them and to employ musicians. When the selection had been made, further rehearsals were required, especially as the texts had to undergo a process of 'reforming' or editing, in order that they might be 'convenient' for her majesty's hearing. There had been a bad blunder at the second Christmas of the reign when 'the plaers plad shuche matter that they wher commondyd to leyff off'.[709] Sometimes the office called in special aid to make such alterations; sometimes, as we learn from Henslowe's diary, the companies employed their own poets to carry them out, or to write special prologues or epilogues.[710] At first the perusal of plays appears to have been a common responsibility of the officers.[711] While Blagrave was in charge, it was supervised by the Lord Chamberlain, for whose satisfaction rehearsals sometimes took place at court. Tilney was encouraged by his commission of 1581 to treat it as his personal function, and charged wages for attendance at the office, with a porter and three other servitors, but as a rule without his colleagues, on nearly every day between All Saints and Christmas for the purpose of carrying it out.[712] All the officers, on the other hand, were concerned with the provision of the fittings of the stage and the properties and apparel necessary to furnish a sumptuous appearance for the players. The details of this provision are so mixed up in the accounts with those for the masks that they can only occasionally be assigned to individual plays. The wording of certain entries suggests that, while some plays required a complete outfit, for others the Revels was only called upon to supplement what the companies already possessed.[713] Probably the stuffs employed were less expensive than those lavished on the masks. Certain articles, such as armour, were generally hired. Elaborate properties, which might entail the designing of special 'patterns', had often to be constructed. The fixed 'composition' of £66 6s. 8d. for all the ordinary charges of plays imposed upon the office in 1598 cannot have left much margin for apparel and properties.[714] But probably by this date the companies were themselves better equipped.

When the actual night of performance arrived, all the officers gave personal attendance at Court. Here they had, in Tilney's time, until they were crowded out and driven to hire for themselves, an office and a chamber for the Master, both of which they kept supplied with fuel and rushes.[715] They had also to superintend the conveyance of the 'stuff', either by wagon or by barge and tiltboat, to fit the players with the gloves which seem to have been de rigueur at a Court performance, and to furnish such amenities of the tiring-house as 'an iron cradle to make fire in' and a close-stool.[716] With the officers came a doorkeeper and three servitors, who probably acted as dressers.[717] As the court performances were always at night, beginning about 10 p.m. and ending about 1 a.m., the arrangements for lighting were a constant preoccupation.[718] From the wire-drawers' bills incorporated in the accounts we can gather that use was made of candlesticks of various kinds and sizes, of lanterns, and of branches large and small. Candelabra were formed of as many as twenty-four branches, each bearing four lights, and hung upon wires strained across the hall.[719] But here again the precise provision made for plays cannot be disentangled from that made for masks. There is no special reference to footlights.

Except for the lighting and the maintenance of a 'music-house', the situation of which is unknown, the functions of the Revels do not appear to have extended beyond the tiring-house and the decorative enrichment of the stage.[720] The fabric, both of the stage and of the seating for spectators, was a matter for the Works.[721] The 'apparelling' of the room was under the supervision of the Gentleman Usher of the Chamber, and in the marshalling of the audience the Lord Chamberlain could count on the assistance of the 'white staves' of the Household, and of the few officers who still survived from the once important office of the Hall.[722] No picture or detailed description of the auditorium survives.[723] A brief notice of 1594 shows us Elizabeth conspicuous 'in a high throne, richly adorned', and next to her chair the Earl of Essex, 'with whom she often devised in sweet and favourable manner'.[724] This high throne was no doubt the 'state', which was brought into the action of The Arraignment of Paris. Something more may be gleaned from the narratives of royal visits to the universities. That to Cambridge in 1564, indeed, affords no very close analogy, for the structure of the stage was of quite an abnormal type.[725] It was not in a hall, but in the chapel of King's College, and was built five feet high right across the nave from wall to wall. The 'state' for the Queen was placed on the stage itself, against the south wall. She reached it by a bridge from the choir door. At the other end of the stage, under the north wall, stood the actors, with two side chapels to serve for their entrances and exits. Cecil and Dudley, as Chancellor and High Steward of the University, 'vouchsafed to hold both books on the scaffold themselves, and to provide that sylence might be kept with quietness'. I am not quite clear whether these books were prompt-books, or copies of the texts, provided in order that the Queen or her train, if they thought fit, might help out their Latinity. When the Westminster boys brought the Miles Gloriosus to Court in 1565, they spent 11s. on 'one Plautus geuen to the Queenes maiestie and fowre other unto the nobilitie', and the Sapientia Salomonis which they gave Elizabeth in 1565-6 is still extant.[726] Only a few other privileged spectators were allowed on the King's College stage, at the north end. Seats were provided for ladies and gentlemen in the rood loft, and for the chief officers of the Court at 'the twoe loer Tables' below the rood loft. The only lighting was provided by the torches of the guard, who were aligned along the sides of the stage. At Oxford, on the other hand, where the plays were given in Christ Church hall, it is reasonable to assume that the arrangements were directly modelled upon those prevalent in the palaces.[727] There was, however, one exceptional feature, due to the desire to enable the Queen to reach the hall, without being incommoded by the press of spectators. A temporary door was cut in the side of the hall and a 'proscenium' or 'porch' built in front of it, which was approached by a wooden 'bridge' or stairway, adorned with a painted roof and hung with greenery.[728] It was a wise precaution, for undergraduates were not excluded, as they had been at Cambridge, and the press on the main staircase of the hall was so great that one of the low bounding walls was broken down and killed a college cook and two other persons.[729] The interior appearance of the hall is fully described by Bereblock. The stage was at the upper or western end, raised high above a flight of steps. The Queen had a high seat beneath a gilded state, the exact location of which is not specified. The lords and ladies were accommodated on scaffolds round the walls, and the lesser personages in galleries above them. Every kind of lighting device seems to have been utilized, including 'ramuli' and 'orbes', in which we may see the 'branches' and 'plates' of the Revels Accounts. The Christ Church hall, with a stage at its upper end, was used again when James came in 1605, and we hear of a dispute between the academic functionaries and those of the Household as to the placing of the King's chair. The latter complained that it was fixed so low that only His Majesty's cheek would be visible to the auditory; the latter attempted to explain that, by the laws of perspective, the King would have a much better view than if he sat higher. There was a solemn debate in the council chamber, resulting in the decision that a King must not merely see, but be seen, and the state was moved to the middle of the hall, twenty-eight feet from the stage, which in fact proved too far, as he could not well hear or understand the long speeches. The Queen and Prince shared the state with the King; in front, but on a lower level, were seats for ladies; the state itself was ringed with lights; on either side were placed nobles; and the populace thronged around the walls.[730]

I think it may be taken that this seating, with the sovereign in the middle of the floor and directly opposite the stage, was that ordinarily employed. It may be illustrated by a French engraving of Louis XIII in Richelieu's Palais Royal theatre of the mid-seventeenth century, which also shows very clearly the seating round the walls and the lighting by means of suspended chandeliers.[731] I notice that Mr. Ernest Law, in tracing the outlines of the vanished hall of Whitehall, places the stage at the lower or screen end of the building, and suggests that the pantry was utilized as a tiring-room.[732] He may have evidence as to this in reserve; but the Christ Church analogy, for what it is worth, points to a stage at the upper or daïs end. The Revels Accounts contain many items bearing upon the scenic decoration of the plays; but, as they were compiled, unfortunately, to satisfy the financial appetite of contemporary auditors, rather than to elucidate the archaeological problems of posterity, they not unnaturally take for granted a familiarity with the general system of that decoration which we do not happen to possess. The discussion of the problems, which cannot be dissociated from those presented by the public theatres, must be left for treatment, with the aid of the evidences furnished by plays themselves, in a later chapter.[733] But the actual information furnished by the accounts may conveniently be summarized at this point. The outstanding features were evidently certain 'houses', appropriate to the action of the plays, and specially prepared, with considerable trouble and expense, for each production, although no doubt the Revels officers, as in the case of masking garments, exercised their economical ingenuity where possible in the 'translation' of old material.[734] These houses appear to have been structures in relief, presumably practicable for entrances and exits, and perhaps also on occasion for interior action. Wooden frame-works, fitted with hooped tops, were covered with painted cloths of canvas, which was strained on with nails or pins, and was sometimes fringed.[735] From the amount of canvas used, it may be judged that they were of considerable size.[736] The painting of the cloths was a matter of skilled workmanship. William Lyzarde, with thirty assistants, was employed upon it in 1571.[737] In 1572-3 'patternes' were prepared for the play of Fortune.[738] In most of the earlier accounts the houses are only mentioned incidentally and generically. But in 1567-8 they are stated to have consisted of 'Stratoes howse, Gobbyns howse, Orestioes howse, Rome, the Pallace of Prosperitie, Scotland and a gret Castell one thothere side'.[739] And when Edmund Tilney became Master of the Revels in 1579, he introduced, perhaps under pressure from the auditors, a practice, which lasted for some years, of including in the preliminary schedule of plays, with which his accounts began, a note of the specific houses constructed for each. Thus in 1579-80, there were a country house and a city for The Duke of Milan and the Marquis of Mantua, a city and a battlement for Alucius, a city and a mount for The Four Sons of Fabius, a city and a battlement for Scipio Africanus, a city and a country house for an unnamed play, a city and a town for Portio and Demorantes, a city for a play on the Soldan and a duke, and a great city, a wood, and a castle for Serpedon.[740] In 1580-1 there were a city and a battlement for Delight, a great city and a senate house for Pompey, a city and a battlement for each of two unnamed plays, a house and a battlement for a third, a city and a palace for a fourth, and a great city for a fifth.[741] In 1582-3 there were four pavilions for A Game of the Cards, a cloth and a battlement of canvas for Beauty and Housewifery, and a city and a battlement of canvas for each of four other plays.[742] In 1584-5 there were a great curtain, a mountain, and a great cloth of canvas for Phillida and Corin, a battlement and a house of canvas for Felix and Philiomena, a great cloth and a battlement, well, and mount of canvas for Five Plays in One, a house and a battlement for Three Plays in One, and a house for an unnamed play.[743] It is evident that decorative variety was sought after. Even when several successive plays could be fitted into the normal scheme of a city and a battlement, the stage architects had to prepare a separate device for each.

I think that when the Elizabethans spoke of 'houses' on the stage, they were perhaps regarding them primarily as the habitations of the actors rather than of the personages whom these represented. They were the tiring-houses, in which the actors remained when they were not in action and to and from which they made their exits and their entrances. At any rate, the term in its technical use seems wide enough to cover, not merely the palaces and the more humble domestic edifices which made appropriate backgrounds to the comings and goings of individual kings and citizens—of an Orestes, a Dobbyn—but also more elaborate and composite structures of 'battlements' and 'cities', of which the former doubtless represented the external view of the walls and gates of a town or castle, and the latter some internal town scene, a street or market-place, perhaps before the doors of more than one house in the narrower sense. We hear of such specialized forms of 'house' as 'pavilions' or tents, the 'Senat howse' used for Quintus Fabius in 1573-4 and the 'prison' which must have formed part of the 'cittie' for The Four Sons of Fabius in 1579-80. These, and probably other houses, were no doubt sufficiently practicable for personages to be seen, and in some cases also heard, inside them; and the senate house was veiled by curtains, which doubtless remained closed until the proper moment for interior action to take place. There are other references to curtains, the mechanism by which they were drawn, and the sarcenet of which they were made.[744] It has been suggested that some of these were front curtains, but there is no reason, so far as the evidence in the Revels Accounts is concerned, why they should not all, like the senate house curtain, have been veils for individual 'houses', such as were used in masks, and had been used in the corresponding domus of miracle-plays. It is possible, although not certain, that some of the 'great cloths' provided may have been for hangings to the back and side walls of the stage, rather than for covering houses. There is no reason why these should not have been painted in perspective, but the extent to which, if at all, perspective was employed is one of the points on which we are most in the dark.[745] Subsidiary structures, hollow trees, arbours, gibbets, altars, wells, gave variety to the action, and helped out the decorative effect of the houses.[746] For these also timber frames and canvas served. The hollow tree was doubtless a feature of the wood scenes, in which the painter's art, whether in relief or in perspective, was supplemented by the natural foliage of holly and ivy.[747] Elaborate rocks, such as are familiar in the masks, were also constructed. That for The Knight in the Burning Rock in 1578-9 required much timber, carried a chair, and was reached by a scaling ladder. The effect of burning was produced by lighted aqua vitae.[748] I am not quite sure whether a cloud drawn up and down by a cord and pulleys in the same year belonged to this play or to a mask, but obviously there was much give and take between the methods of plays and masks.[749] Spectacular elements were freely introduced into plays. A 'monster' of hoops and canvas, with a man moving inside it, was as easy for the managers of a Perseus and Andromeda in 1572-3 as for those of a Peter Pan in our own day; and doubtless the character was equally popular.[750] Hounds' heads were 'mowlded' for the cynocephali in The History of the Cenofalles of 1576-7.[751] The mediaeval 'devices for hell, and hell mowthe' were still in vogue in 1571-2, and in the same year Narcissus was enlivened by thunder and lightning and by the sounds of a hunt which rang through the palace court-yard, and Paris and Vienna by a tourney and barriers, in which players mounted on hobby-horses contended for a 'christall sheelde'.[752] So far as minor properties and apparel are concerned, it is often difficult to distinguish the respective needs of masks and plays in the long lists of provisions which the Revels officers detail.[753]

Something may be gleaned, to eke out the rather tantalizing indications of the account-books, from the more descriptive accounts of performances at the universities. The process is legitimate, because the organization of such productions was largely in the hands of Revels and Works experts brought from London by the Lord Chamberlain, who would naturally employ or adapt the methods already found successful at the Court itself. But even the university writers take a good deal of contemporary knowledge for granted. Of the Cambridge visit in 1564 we learn no more than that two chapels before which the stage was set served for 'houses'; of the Oxford visit in 1566 that 'palatia' and 'aedes' were built up 'ex utroque scenae latere', and that a temple in a wood was staged for an out-of-doors episode; of the Oxford visit of 1592 nothing.[754] Greater detail is forthcoming in 1605. The chroniclers were interested by the experiments of 'one Mʳ. Jones, a great Traveller', the result of which was stupendous in the eyes of the Oxford Public Orator, although an envious spy from Cambridge declared that he 'performed very little to that which was expected'. The stage on this occasion was slightly raked, so that the actors as they entered appeared to be coming down hill. At the back was a false wall, with a space of five or six paces behind it, 'for their howses and receipt of the actors'. In this wall Jones had set revolving pillars or peripetasmata, obviously based on the triangular [Greek: periaktoi] of Vitruvius, whereby 'with the help of other painted clothes', he was able to change the face of the scene twice in the course of each play. Thus in Ajax Flagellifer the scene successively represented first 'Troia et littus Sigaeum', then 'Sylvae et solitudines horrenda antra et furiarum domicilia', and finally 'Tentoriorum naviumque facies'. The machines which worked these changes were painted 'motantibus quasi nubibus, ut eas, Sole Britannico statim ingressuro, aufugientes putares'.[755]