[1676] Malcontent (1604, Globe), ind., ‘Good sir, will you leave the stage? I’ll help you to a private room’; cf. Sir J. Davies’ epigram, infra.
[1677] Wright, Hist. Hist. 407, ‘The prices were small (there being no scenes)’.
[1678] L. Wager’s Mary Magdalene (1566) has a prologue which says that the actors will take ‘halfpence or pence’ from the audience, but this was probably used by strolling actors and continues the miracle-play tradition. At almost the same date, a jest in Merry Tales, Wittie Questions and Quick Answers (1567, Hazlitt, Jest Books, i. 145) tells how men stood at the gate of a play at Northumberland Place, ‘with a boxe (as the facion is) who toke of euery persone that came in a peny or an half peny at the least’.
[1679] J. Mayne in Jonsonus Virbius (1638):
So when thy Fox had ten times acted been,
Each day was first, but that ’twas cheaper seen;
And so thy Alchemist played o’er and o’er,
Was new o’ the stage, when ’twas not at the door.
[1680] G. Harvey (p. 530, supra); Lyly, Pappe with an Hatchet (Works, iii. 408); cf. Martin’s Month’s Mind (1589, App. C, No. xl). Lodge, Scillaes Metamorphosis (1589), will not ‘tie my pen to Pennie-knaves delight’, and S. Rowlands, Letting of Humour’s Blood in the Head Vein (1600), bids poets not ‘To teach stage parrots speak for penny pleasure’; cf. Case is Altered, I. i. 104, ‘Tut, giue me the penny, giue me the peny, I care not for the Gentlemen, I, let me haue a good ground’.
[1681] Cf. ch. xvi, introd. Field says in 1583 (App. C, No. xxxi), ‘Euery dore hath a payment, & euery gallerie maketh a yearely stipend’.