If the system of patents did not render the London players independent of the Master of the Revels, still less did it abrogate from the ultimate authority of the King in Council. There is evidence that the theatres were closed in the autumn of 1605, during which plague was prevalent, and in this matter the responsibility for action still rested with the Council.[867] Unfortunately the full Register for the period 1603-13 is missing. A letter of 12 April 1607 from the City asking for a restraint is addressed to the Lord Chamberlain, whose function it would no doubt be to move the Council. In this or some later year the Whitefriars vestry seem also to have made a protest against the dumping of a play-house in their precinct.[868] That plague interfered with plays in 1608-9, and 1609-10 also, is indicated by payments made to the King's men 'for their private practice' during these years. After 1610 London was no more troubled by the plague until 1625. Other reasons for inhibiting plays sometimes presented themselves. Some bad political indiscretions of 1608, which will require consideration in the next chapter, led to a temporary suspension of performances and a royal threat of permanent suppression. The untimely death of Prince Henry on 7 November 1612 threw a shadow upon all mirth, and the Council declared that 'these tymes doe not suite with such playes and idle shewes, as are daily to be seene in and neere the cittie of London, to the scandall of order and good governement at all occasions when they are most tollerable'. On 29 March 1615 the Council summoned representatives of all the London companies before them, to answer for playing in Lent, contrary to the express direction of the Lord Chamberlain given through the Master of the Revels. The records of suburban administration show the Middlesex Justices trying William Claiton, an East Smithfield victualler, on 20 December 1608, for suffering plays to be performed in his house during the night season, and on 1 October 1612 making an Order for Suppressing Jigs at the End of Plays, on the ground that the lewd jigs, songs, and dances so used at the Fortune led to the resort of cutpurses and other ill-disposed persons and to consequent breaches of the peace. Generally speaking, the problem of metropolitan stage-control may be said, during the reign of James I, to have reached a condition of comparative stability.
As regards the provinces there has been some misapprehension. The royal patents of course ran there, and there is one example of a patent issued to a company which actually had its head-quarters in a provincial town, that to the Children of the Queen's Chamber of Bristol, granted through the influence of Queen Anne, who had visited Bristol on her progress in 1613. But in the provinces the patented companies had no monopoly; side by side with them still wandered both unlicensed vagrants and the protected servants of noblemen. It is true that a Vagabond Act of 1604, which in the main and with certain exceptions, such as dropping the experiment of transportation, continued the policy of that of 1597, has been supposed to have withdrawn the privilege of protection.[869] But the provincial records show that in fact the noblemen's companies were still afoot, and the provision of the statute itself, when carefully read, bears quite another interpretation.[870] It professes to be declaratory of that of Elizabeth on which 'divers doubtes and questions' had arisen, and after reciting the catalogue of persons who were to be classed as vagrants, which includes not only players of interludes, but also fencers, bearwards, minstrels, begging scholars and sailors, palmists, fortune-tellers, proctors, and others, it lays down that no authority shall be given by noblemen to 'any other person or persons'; that is surely, to any of the persons named in the catalogue, other than the players of interludes belonging to the noblemen and authorized under their hands and seals, for whom exception is specifically made therein.[871] The system of patents lent itself to certain abuses by travelling companies. Exemplifications were taken out in duplicate, and while the regular company remained in London, a quite distinct one would go on tour with one of the duplicates and, if necessary, an instrument of deputation from the man named in the patent of which it was a copy.[872] This practice was condemned in 1616 by a warrant of the Lord Chamberlain, to whose department the supervision of the issue of playing patents, as well as the general supervision of the Master of the Revels, appears to have been entrusted. The same document also condemns a company which had been travelling under a 'warrant,' by which is apparently meant a licence under the royal sign manual or signet, used instead of an elaborate and doubtless expensive patent.[873] The signet licences were, however, such an obvious convenience that it was not long before they came to be regularly issued to players under the administration of the Lord Chamberlain himself.[874] This is a topic which lies rather beyond my purview. Nor can I dwell at any length on the evidence which shows that the licences given to players, like other assumptions of the royal prerogative, did not pass altogether without criticism from contemporary constitutionalists. I do not know whether it was a weak point that the statutory sanction taken for the patents in 1572 was not re-enacted in 1597. Their wording purported clearly enough to give the holders an authority to play both within and without the liberties and freedoms of any cities, towns, and boroughs. But Chief Justice Sir Edward Coke, charging a Norwich jury on 4 August 1606, appears to have told the justices that the remedy of the abuses due to players was entirely in their hands—'they hauing no commission to play in any place without leaue: and therefore, if by your willingnesse they be not entertained, you may soone be rid of them'.[875] Too much stress must not be laid upon this, for Coke vigorously repudiated the accuracy of the printed edition of his charge from which the passage is taken.[876] But Prynne seems to insinuate a very similar argument in his Histriomastix of 1633,[877] and in any event the validity of the patents was terminated by the final ordinance for the suppression of plays passed by the Long Parliament on 9 February 1648, which enacted that 'all stage-players, and players of interludes, and common playes, are hereby declared to be, and are, and shall be taken to be, rogues, ... whether they be wanderers or no, and notwithstanding any license whatsoever from the King or any person or persons to that purpose'.[878] We, however, are now concerned, not with the decadence of the stage, but with its palmy days under Elizabeth and James.
X
THE ACTOR'S QUALITY
[Bibliographical Note.—This chapter mainly rests upon the official documents in Appendix D, the plague-data in Appendix E, and the detailed accounts of individual companies in Book III. To the books and dissertations cited for those sections and for chapter viii may be added, as studies of the stage in its political aspect, R. Simpson, The Political Use of the Stage in Shakespeare's Time and The Politics of Shakespere's Historical Plays (1874, N. S. S. Trans. 371, 396), S. R. Gardiner, The Political Element in Massinger (1875-6, N. S. S. Trans. 314), S. Lee, The Topical Side of the Elizabethan Drama and Elizabethan England and the Jews (1887-92, N. S. S. 1, 143), J. A. de Rothschild, Shakespeare and his Day (1906), T. S. Graves, Some Allusions to Religious and Political Plays (1912, M. P. ix. 545), and The Political Use of the Stage during the Reign of James I (1914, Anglia, xxxviii. 137). The fragments of Sir Henry Herbert's office-book, showing the working of the censorship from 1623 to 1642, usually cited from the Shakespeare Variorum (1821), and G. Chalmers, Supplemental Apology (1799), are now conveniently collected in J. Q. Adams, The Dramatic Records of Sir Henry Herbert (1917). A useful study has recently appeared in A. Thaler, The Travelling Players in Shakespeare's England (1920, M. P. xvii. 489).]
THE history detailed in the foregoing chapter represents, from the point of view of the playing companies, a vexed progress towards that state of regulative security which, in the case of any industry dependent upon a permanent habitation and the outlay of capital, is the first condition of economic stability. More than once in the course of the struggle was an approach made to a settlement before it was actually reached. The rather obscure period of the first attempts of the companies to establish themselves in London was closed by the experimental patent to Leicester's men and the fairly reasonable City regulations of 1574. But the building of the suburban theatres on the one hand and the aggressiveness of the preachers on the other broke down the equilibrium; and there followed a period of acute conflict, of which the commission to the Master of the Revels in 1581, the City prohibition of 1582, the appointment of the Queen's men in 1583, and the controversy before the Privy Council in 1584 formed the final stages. The players were victorious, and the result of their victory was an assured position under the Council and the Master of the Revels, which was not indeed wholly accepted by the City, and was seriously threatened in 1596 and 1597, but only to be the more firmly established in the latter year when the central government assumed direct responsibility for the regulation of the stage throughout the London area. I think that 1597 must be regarded as the critical moment at which complete stability was attained; the substitution under James I of letters patent for Star Chamber orders as the licensing machinery was of comparatively slight importance. From 1597 onwards it was definitely the Crown and not the local authorities which determined the companies to whom, subject to the detailed administrative control of the Privy Council, the Lord Chamberlain, and his subordinate the Master of the Revels, the privilege of playing within the neighbourhood of London should be conceded. And the policy of the Crown, alike under Elizabeth and under the Stuarts, was consistently in favour of such solace and recreation for the Sovereign and the subjects as the players ministered.
And so, tentatively up to 1584, and thereafter with a security which received final confirmation in 1597, the actor's occupation began to take its place as a regular profession, in which money might with reasonable safety be invested, to which a man might look for the career of a lifetime, and in which he might venture to bring up his children. As early as 1574 the patent to Leicester's men refers to playing as an 'arte and facultye'. In 1581 the Privy Council call it a 'trade'; in 1582 a 'profession'; in 1593 a 'qualitie'. The order of 1600 explicitly recognizes that it 'may with a good order and moderacion be suffered in a well gouerned estate'. So that when Fleetwood takes occasion in 1584 to recall that originally interludes were merely the by-work of 'men for their lyvings using other honest and lawfull artes, or reteyned in honest services', his argument has already become anachronistic, not wholly justified even as an antiquarian quibble, and still less as a serious appreciation of the administrative facts with which the writer had to deal. The player of the seventeenth century is in fact as necessary a member of the polity as the minstrel of the twelfth or the fourteenth; with this distinction that, in London at least, he is a householder and not a vagrant, and is therefore able to perform his function on a larger scale and with a fuller use of the methods and advantages of co-operation.
Obviously the player's status, like any other status in a civilized community, depended upon the observance on his side of certain obligations. He had to get his formal authority or licence for the exercise of his art. He had to respect certain prescribed limitations of times and seasons. He had to shoulder certain responsibilities imposed upon him as a subject and a citizen. To each of these aspects of his calling some measure of detailed consideration is due.
A company of players was not in form, like a company of merchants, a guild or association of independent men. Its constitution had a mediaeval element, by which the derivation of playing from minstrelsy is strongly recalled. The nature of the licence which it must hold, at any rate if it desired to secure itself from the arbitrary discretion of local justices, was determined by statute. And this licence, whether it took the form of a warrant from a nobleman with the confirmation of the Master of the Revels, or of a royal licence by patent, was always such as to set up a relation of service between the company and a 'lord'. Nor is this relation to be dismissed as a mere empty formality. Probably the players of many country nobles and gentlemen continued to the end to consist of their ordinary household servants, who played only at Christmas and other times of recreation, and mainly at their lord's expense.[879] With the regular travelling companies, and particularly with the London companies, it was different. Financially, at least, they were independent. But even of these the 'service', though largely a legal fiction, was not wholly so. The Statutes of Retainers, kept alive by the proclamations of 1572 and 1583, forbade the maintenance of retainers who were not in some real sense household servants. The consequent application made by his players to the Earl of Leicester in 1572 does not suggest that the distinction was a very vital one. Certainly they guard themselves against being supposed to be asking their lord for a fee. But I think it is clear that the lord was expected to take some responsibility for the conduct of those who used his name, and to exercise some discipline in cases of misdemeanour. It was so in 1559, when the proclamation against unlicensed plays expressly called upon noblemen and gentlemen having players to see that it received attention from their servants. And it must still have been so in 1583, when the ill behaviour of Worcester's men at Norwich was effectively checked by a threat to certify their lord of their contempt. On the other hand there is abundant evidence that the lord might be looked to, in time of need, to intervene for the active furtherance of the interests of his players, over and above the general recommendation to favour for his sake, which is common form in the warrants of protection and even in the royal patents. Thus Leicester is found writing to the President of the North on behalf of his men in 1559, Berkeley and Hunsdon to the City in 1581 and 1594 respectively, Nottingham to Middlesex in 1600, Lennox for his men in 1604; while the toleration of Oxford's and Worcester's men as a third London company in 1602 is expressly stated by the Privy Council to be due to the suit of the Earl of Oxford to the Queen. On their side the players no doubt had reciprocal courtesies, if no more, to pay. They wore the lord's livery and bore his badge.[880] Leicester's men refer to their livery in their letter of 1572, and in 1588 they had occasion to make their complaint to the Norwich Corporation of a local cobbler 'for lewd woords uttered ageynst the ragged staff'. A practice of offering up a prayer for the lord's well-being at the end of a performance was probably of ancient derivation, although whether it survived in the public theatres may perhaps be doubted.[881] There are instances, moreover, which suggest that, if the lord had need of players for the celebration of a wedding or other festivity, it was to his own servants that he would naturally turn. Thus Leicester had his company with him on his expedition to the Netherlands in 1585, and it was the Chamberlain's men who were called upon to play Henry IV at Hunsdon's house in the Blackfriars when he entertained the Flemish ambassador Verreyken in 1600. Similarly the royal companies, under both Elizabeth and James, formed integral parts of the royal household. They were attached to the Lord Chamberlain's department, and ranked as Grooms of the Chamber. And on one occasion at least, the visit of the Constable of Castile in 1604, the King's and Queen's men were actually assigned, in their capacity as Grooms, to the service of the distinguished strangers. Their exact status is, however, a matter of some difficulty. The old interlude players had held an independent position as such, with fees charged originally on the Exchequer and afterwards on the Chamber, at higher rates than those of Grooms of the Chamber, and the liveries not of Grooms but of Yeomen. When they died out, they were replaced by the Queen's men of 1583. Howes tells us that these 'were sworn the queen's servants and were allowed wages and liveries as grooms of the chamber'. Howes is not quite a contemporary authority, and makes at least a technical mistake when he adds that until 1583 'the queene had no players'. If by 'wages' he means such annual fees as the interlude players had received, his statement is not confirmed by the Chamber Accounts, and it is not very likely that such payments were put back upon the Exchequer. It is true that fee-lists, not only Elizabethan but Jacobean, continue to include eight players of interludes at £3 6s. 8d. each, but I doubt whether this can be safely taken as evidence that the vacancies were filled.[882] No doubt, however, Howes was accurate on the main point, for Tarlton is described in a document of 1587 as an 'ordenary grome off her majestes chamber', and both Tarlton and Johnson as 'groomes of her majesties chamber' in another of 1588. I may add that in a list of the sixteen ordinary grooms who received allowances at Elizabeth's funeral are to be found the names of George Brian and John Singer.[883] These had been respectively a Chamberlain's and an Admiral's man, but both seem to have left playing before the date of the list, and I suspect that they retired on taking up these active Household appointments. For the King's players there is fuller testimony, although most of it is Caroline rather than Jacobean. The players are not called Grooms of the Chamber in their patents of appointment; but this proves nothing, as most of the Household posts were conferred, not by patent, but by swearing-in before the Lord Chamberlain or other high officer. But they received payment as 'his Maiesties Groomes of the Chamber and Players', when they waited upon the Spanish ambassador in 1604, and are entered in the Chamber Accounts for this payment as a distinct group, apart from the seven ordinary and four extraordinary grooms who were also assigned to the ambassador's service. The Queen's men, who waited upon the Flemish commissioners, are similarly described as being 'Groomes of the Chamber and the Queenes Players'. A few months before the King's, Queen's, and Prince's players had all received 4½ yards of red cloth each as a livery at the time of James's coronation procession.[884] Nearly a quarter of a century later we find very similar liveries furnished for both the King's and the Queen's men by a series of Lord Chamberlain's warrants to his Wardrobe, which begin in 1622.[885] These liveries were renewed every two years and consisted at first of three, and afterwards of four, yards of bastard scarlet for a cloak, and a quarter of a yard of crimson velvet for a cap. These were of course state liveries, not the 'watching' liveries of medley-coloured cloth, at 5s. a yard as against the 26s. 8d. paid for the scarlet.[886] The Chamberlain's books of the same period also contain warrants for the swearing-in of new members of the King's and other companies, and in these the players are directed to be sworn as 'grooms of the chamber in ordinary without fee'.[887] These are, as I say, Caroline records, but if we may assume that the procedure which they disclose was no novelty, and that the royal players from 1583 onwards held this intermediate position as 'grooms in ordinary without fee' between the ordinary and the extraordinary Grooms of the Chamber, we get an explanation of their status which, on the assumption that Howes was not quite well informed, is at least consistent with all the few known facts.