The Elizabethan Stage, Vol. 2

by E. K. Chambers

Graphic attempts to reconstruct the plan and elevation of a typical Elizabethan stage will be found in the dissertations cited above of Brodmeier, Wegener, Archer, Godfrey, Albright, Corbin (1911, by G. Varian and J. Hambridge), and Forestier, and in the picture reproduced in W. N. Hills, The Shakespearian Stage (1919).

Various revivals have also been carried out on Elizabethan stages, with more or less of archaeological purism, notably in London (W. Poel, Shakespeare in the Theatre), Paris (Sh.-Jahrbuch, xxxv. 383), Harvard (G. P. Baker in Sh.-Jahrbuch, xli. 296), and Munich (Sh.-Jahrbuch, xlii. 327).]

A history of the theatres would not be complete without some account of their general structure and economy in the disposition of auditorium and stage. I propose to begin with the more assured or less important points, as a clearing of the way for the difficult and controverted problems of scenic setting, on some of which I am afraid that no very secure conclusion can be reached.

It is necessary, in the forefront, to appreciate the distinction between the ‘common’ or ‘public’ play-houses and the ‘private’ houses, which, so far as our period is concerned, were Paul’s, the Blackfriars, and the Whitefriars. This distinction is in its origin somewhat a technical one, for there is no reason to suppose that in the private houses the performances were private, in the sense that access to them could not be obtained, on payment, by members of the general public. Probably it is to be explained in relation to the Elizabethan system of State control of theatres, and represents an attempt to evade the limitations on the location and the number of play-houses which had been established through the action, first of the civic authorities and later of the Privy Council itself. This view receives support from the allegations made during the campaign for the suppression of the Blackfriars in 1619 that the owner ‘doth vnder the name of a private howse (respectinge indeed private comoditie only) convert the said howse to a publique play-house’.[1643]

It can hardly be supposed, however, that Burbadge could have hoodwinked the Privy Council merely by calling the Blackfriars a ‘private’ house, without finding any other means of differentiating it from the ‘public’ houses, and it is quite possible that the technical distinction, for which modern analogies could be found, consisted in the fact that admission was paid for in advance and no money taken at the doors.[1644] Mr. Lawrence has very appropriately quoted in this connexion the Common Council regulations of 1574, in which an exception is made for performances ‘withowte publique or comen collection of money of the auditorie, or behoulders theareof’; and though I do not suggest that the extension of this principle to Paul’s or the Blackfriars fell within the intention of the order, the evasion may have been allowed, within the gates of Paul’s or in a liberty, and for a well-conducted house attended by a well-to-do audience, to hold.[1645] If so, it is probable that Paul’s from the beginning and the earlier Blackfriars were in effect private houses. But the actual terminology does not emerge before the revival of the boy companies in 1599 and 1600. For some years past the title-pages of plays had vaunted them as ‘publikely acted’.[1646] A corresponding ‘priuately acted’ appears for Blackfriars in Jonson’s Cynthia’s Revels (1601) and Poetaster (1602), and for Paul’s in Middleton’s Blurt Master Constable (1602), while the antithesis is complete in Dekker’s Satiromastix (1602), which was presented ‘publikely’ by the Chamberlain’s and ‘priuately’ by Paul’s. Somewhat later we find Field’s Woman a Weathercock (1612) acted ‘priuately’, and Chapman’s Revenge of Bussy D’Ambois (1613) ‘at the priuate Play-house’ in the Whitefriars.[1647] But by this time the distinction may be taken for granted as well established in general use.[1648]

From the point of view, however, of stage arrangements, the technical differentia of a private house is less important than certain subsidiary characteristics.[1649] The private houses were all in closed buildings, were occupied by boys, and charged higher prices than the ordinary theatres. These facts entailed variations of structure and method, which will require attention at more than one point. They naturally became less fundamental, but did not entirely disappear, after the transfer of the Blackfriars to the King’s men in 1609, and probably passed still further into the background after the introduction of roofed public houses in the Caroline age.[1650] The title-pages generally describe the Blackfriars, the Cockpit, and Salisbury Court as ‘private’ houses right up to the closing of the theatres, but the term, in so far as it connotes anything different from ‘public’, seems to have lost what little meaning it ever had.[1651]

De Witt, about 1596, describes the Theatre, Curtain, Rose, and Swan as ‘amphiteatra’, and Hentzner in 1598 adds that they were all ‘lignea’.[1652] The Globe and the Hope were built later on the same structural model. The Fortune was also of wood, but square. Of the shape and material of the Red Bull we know nothing. Prologues and epilogues often refer to the internal appearance of the auditorium as presenting a ‘round’, ‘ring’, ‘circuit’, ‘circumference’, or ‘O’.[1653] If we can rely upon the draughtsmanship of the London maps, the external outline was rather that of a polygon. This evidence must not be pressed too far, for there is probably an element of cartographic symbolism to be reckoned with. The same house may appear in one map as a hexagon, in another as an octagon or decagon, and the late Hollar group differs from its predecessors in using a completely circular form. But there is confirmation in the Paris Garden manor map of 1627, which shows the ground-plan of the Swan decagonal, and in the statement of Mrs. Thrale that the ruins of the Globe still visible in the eighteenth century were hexagonal without and round within. This was of course the later Globe built in 1613, and there is some reason for thinking that the earlier Globe may have been of rather different design. The verses on the fire by which it was destroyed speak of the stage-house ‘as round as taylers clewe’, and the early Hondius map, while it shows the Rose as polygonal, shows the Globe as circular, with the upper half of less diameter than the lower. This construction reappears in the Delaram drawings, and is so peculiar that the representation may well be realistic. There was an obvious precedent for the amphitheatrical form in the bear and bull rings which preceded the public theatres, and I do not know that we need go back with Ordish to a tradition of round mediaeval play-places, Cornish or English, or to the remains of Roman occupation. A ring is the natural form in which the maximum number of spectators can press about an object of interest.[1654]

There is nothing to show that, for the main fabric, any material but timber was used, until the Fortune was rebuilt of brick in 1623. Timber is provided for in the contracts for the earlier Fortune and the Hope, and these were modelled on the Globe and Swan. Oak was to be mainly used for the Hope; no fir in the lower or middle stories. Burbadge’s lawsuits show that timber was the chief object of his expenditure on the Theatre, although some ironwork was also employed, presumably to tie the woodwork together. The dismantled fabric of the Theatre was used for the Globe. Henslowe used a good deal of timber for the repairs of the Rose in 1592–3, and did the house ‘about with ealme bordes’ in 1595. There was also some brickwork, and the Fortune and Hope were to have brick foundations, a foot above the ground. The Fortune was to be covered with lath, lime, and hair without. Henslowe also used plaster, and I do not see anything inconsistent with a substantially wooden structure in De Witt’s statement that the Swan was ‘constructum ex coaceruato lapide pyrritide ... ligneis suffultum columnis’. This has been regarded as an error which prejudices the reliability of De Witt’s observations, but the description is too precise to be disproved by Hentzner’s generalized ‘lignea’, and after all the strength of the building was naturally in the columns, and the flints and mortar—a common form of walling in the chalk districts of England—may well have filled up the interstices between these. De Witt adds that the columns might deceive the shrewdest ‘ob illitum marmoreum colorem’.[1655]

De Witt has also been criticized for giving the seating capacity of the Swan as 3,000. I dare say this is merely the exaggerated round estimate of a casual visitor, but Wheatley calculates from the drawing that the galleries might hold 2,000, and it would not be surprising if our rude forefathers sat a bit closer than we care to do. Moryson speaks even more largely of theatres ‘more remarkable for the number, and the capacity, than for the building’, and ‘capable of many thousands’, while no less than 2,000 got into Trinity College hall for the academic plays of 1615.[1656] The frame of the Fortune was 80 ft. square without and 55 ft. square within. This allows a depth of 12½ ft. for the galleries, and Corbin calculates a seating capacity, allowing 18 in. for a seat and 18 in. square for a standing man, of 2,138 or 2,558 at a pinch.[1657] We do not know that the Swan was not larger than the Fortune, and have therefore no right to assume that De Witt was seriously out. Wright tells us that the Globe, Fortune, and Red Bull were ‘large’ houses; he is comparing them with the private houses of Caroline days.[1658] The allusion in Old Fortunatus to the ‘small circumference’ of the Rose perhaps hardly indicates that it was below the average size.