The Elizabethan Stage, Vol. 2

by E. K. Chambers

Such mustie fopperies of antiquitie,

And do not sute the humorous ages backs,

With clothes in fashion.

The criticism, being a self-criticism, must not be taken too seriously. So far as published plays are concerned, Histriomastix is the only one to which it applies. In Marston, Chapman, and Middleton the company had enlisted vigorous young playwrights, who were probably not sorry to be free from the yoke of the professional actors, and appear to have followed the exceptional policy of printing some at least of their new plays as soon as they were produced.

On 11 March 1601, two months after the boys made their first bow at Court, the Lord Mayor was ordered by the Privy Council to suppress plays ‘at Powles’ during Lent. It is to be inferred that they were, as of old, acting in their singing school. Confirmation is provided by a curious note appended by William Percy to his manuscript volume of plays, presumably in sending them to be considered with a view to production by the boys. The plays bear dates in 1601–3, but it can hardly be taken for granted that they were in fact produced by the Paul’s or any other company. The note runs:

A note to the Master of Children of Powles.

Memorandum, that if any of the fine and formost of these Pastorals and Comoedyes conteyned in this volume shall but overeach in length (the children not to begin before foure, after prayers, and the gates of Powles shutting at six) the tyme of supper, that then in tyme and place convenient, you do let passe some of the songs, and make the consort the shorter; for I suppose these plaies be somewhat too long for that place. Howsoever, on your own experience, and at your best direction, be it. Farewell to you all.[49]

Both parts of Marston’s Antonio and Mellida were entered on the Stationers’ Register in the autumn of 1601 and printed in 1602. The second part may have been on the stage during 1601, and in the same year the boys probably produced John Marston’s What You Will, and certainly played ‘privately’, as the Chamberlain’s men did ‘publicly’, Satiromastix in which Dekker, with a hand from Marston, brought his swashing blow against the redoubtable Jonson. This also was registered in 1601 and printed in 1602. There is no sign of the boys at Court in the winter of 1601–2. In the course of 1602 their play of Blurt Master Constable, by Middleton, was registered and printed. They were at Court on 1 January 1603, for the last time before Elizabeth, and on 20 February 1604, for the first time before James. Either the choir school or the grammar school boys took part in the pageant speeches at the coronation triumph on 15 March 1604.[50] To the year 1604 probably belongs Westward Ho! which introduced to the company, in collaboration with Dekker, a new writer, John Webster. Northward Ho! by the same authors, followed in 1605. The company was not at Court for the winter of 1604–5, but during that of 1605–6 they gave two plays before the Princes Henry and Charles. For these the payee was not Pearce, but Edward Kirkham, who is described in the Treasurer of the Chamber’s account as ‘one of the Mr^es of the Childeren of Pawles’. Kirkham, who was Yeoman of the Revels, had until recently been a manager of the Children of the Revels at the Blackfriars. It may have been the disgrace brought upon these by Eastward Ho! in the course of 1605 that led him to transfer his activities elsewhere.[51] With him he seems to have brought Marston’s The Fawn, probably written in 1604 and ascribed in the first of the two editions of 1606 to the Queen’s Revels alone, in the second to them ‘and since at Poules’. The charms of partnership with Kirkham were not, however, sufficient to induce Pearce to continue his enterprise. The last traceable appearance of the Paul’s boys was on 30 July 1606, when they gave The Abuses before James and King Christian of Denmark.[52] Probably the plays were discontinued not long afterwards. This would account for the large number of play-books belonging to the company which reached the hands of the publishers in 1607 and 1608. The earlier policy of giving plays to the press immediately after production does not seem to have endured beyond 1602. Those now printed, in addition to Bussy D’Ambois, What You Will, Westward Ho! and Northward Ho! already mentioned, included Middleton’s Michaelmas Term, The Phoenix, A Mad World, my Masters, and A Trick to Catch the Old One, together with The Puritan, very likely also by Middleton, and The Woman Hater, the first work of Francis Beaumont. The Puritan can be dated, from a chronological allusion, in 1606. The title-pages of The Woman Hater, A Mad World, my Masters, and A Trick to Catch the Old One specify them to have been ‘lately’ acted. It is apparent from the second quarto of A Trick to Catch the Old One that the Children of the Blackfriars took it over and presented it at Court on 1 January 1609. This was probably part of a bargain as to which we have another record. Pearce may have had at the back of his mind a notion of reopening his theatre some day. But it is given in evidence in the lawsuit of Keysar v. Burbadge in 1610 that, while it was still closed, he was approached on behalf of the other ‘private’ houses in London, those of the Blackfriars and the Whitefriars, and offered a ‘dead rent’ of £20 a year, ‘that there might be a cessation of playeinge and playes to be acted in the said howse neere S^t. Paules Church’.[53] This must have been in the winter of 1608–9, just as the Revels company was migrating from the Blackfriars to the Whitefriars. The agent was Philip Rosseter who, with Robert Keysar, was financially interested in the Revels company. When the King’s men began to occupy the Blackfriars in the autumn of 1609, they took on responsibility for half the dead rent, but whether the arrangement survived the lawsuit of 1610 is unknown.

ii. THE CHILDREN OF THE CHAPEL AND OF THE QUEEN’S REVELS

The Children of the Chapel (1501–1603).