If you can (either for loue or money) prouide your selfe a lodging by the water-side: for, aboue the conueniencie it brings, to shun Shoulder-clapping, and to ship away your Cockatrice betimes in the morning, it addes a kind of state vnto you, to be carried from thence to the staires of your Playhouse: hate a Sculler (remember that) worse then to be acquainted with one ath’ Scullery. No, your Oares are your onely Sea-crabs, boord them, and take heed you neuer go twice together with one paire: often shifting is a great credit to Gentlemen; and that diuiding of your fare wil make the poore watersnaks be ready to pul you in peeces to enioy your custome: No matter whether vpon landing you haue money or no, you may swim in twentie of their boates ouer the riuer upon Ticket: mary, when siluer comes in, remember to pay trebble their fare, and it will make your Flounder-catchers to send more thankes after you, when you doe not draw, then when you doe; for they know, It will be their owne another daie.
Before the Play begins, fall to cardes, you may win or loose (as Fencers doe in a prize) and beate one another by confederacie, yet share the money when you meete at supper: notwithstanding, to gul the Ragga-muffins that stand aloofe gaping at you, throw the cards (hauing first torne foure or fiue of them) round about the Stage, iust vpon the third sound, as though you had lost: it skils not if the foure knaues ly on their backs, and outface the Audience, theres none such fooles as dare take exceptions at them, because ere the play go off, better knaues than they will fall into the company.
Now sir, if the writer be a fellow that hath either epigramd you, or hath had a flirt at your mistris, or hath brought either your feather or your red beard, or your little legs, &c. on the stage, you shall disgrace him worse then by tossing him in a blancket, or giuing him the bastinado in a Tauerne, if, in the middle of his play (bee it Pastoral or Comedy, Morall or Tragedie), you rise with a skreud and discontented face from your stoole to be gone: no matter whether the Scenes be good or no, the better they are the worse do you distast them: and, beeing on your feet, sneake not away like a coward, but salute all your gentle acquaintance, that are spred either on the rushes, or on stooles about you, and draw what troope you can from the stage after you: the Mimicks are beholden to you, for allowing them elbow roome: their Poet cries perhaps a pox go with you, but care not you for that, theres no musick without frets.
Mary if either the company, or indisposition of the weather binde you to sit it out, my counsell is then that you turne plain Ape, take vp a rush and tickle the earnest eares of your fellow gallants, to make other fooles fall a laughing: mewe at passionate speeches, blare at merrie, finde fault with the musicke, whew at the childrens Action, whistle at the songs: and aboue all, curse the sharers, that whereas the same day you had bestowed forty shillings on an embrodered Felt and Feather, (scotch-fashion) for your mistres in the Court, or your punck in the city, within two houres after, you encounter with the very same block on the stage, when the haberdasher swore to you the impression was extant but that morning.
To conclude, hoard vp the finest play-scraps you can get, vpon which your leane wit may most sauourly feede for want of other stuffe, when the Arcadian and Euphuisd gentlewomen haue their tongues sharpened to set vpon you: that qualitie (next to your shittlecocke) is the onely furniture to a Courtier thats but a new beginner, and is but in his A B C of complement. The next places that are fild, after the Playhouses bee emptied, are (or ought to be) Tauernes, into a Tauerne then let vs next march, where the braines of one Hogshead must be beaten out to make vp another.
APPENDIX I
RESTORATION TESTIMONY
i.
[Extracts from A Short Discourse of the English Stage. To his Excellency, the Lord Marquess of Newcastle, attached to Richard Flecknoe’s Love’s Kingdom (1664), and reprinted in Hazlitt, E. D. S. 275. Flecknoe, who died c. 1678, was old enough to travel abroad in 1640.]
They Acted nothing here but Playes of the holy Scripture, or Saints’ Lives; and that without any certain Theaters or set Companies, till, about the beginning of Queen Elizabeth’s Reign, they began here first to assemble into Companies, and set up Theaters, first in the City, (as in the Inn-yards of the Cross-Keyes, and Bull in Grace and Bishops-Gate Street at this day is to be seen) till that Fanatick Spirit which then began with the Stage, and after ended with the Throne, banisht them thence into the Suburbs, as after they did the Kingdom, in the beginning of our Civil Wars. In which time, Playes were so little incompatible with Religion, and the Theater with the Church, as on Week-dayes after Vespers, both the Children of the Chappel and St. Pauls Acted Playes, the one in White-Friers, the other behinde the Convocation-house in Pauls, till people growing more precise, and Playes more licentious, the Theatre of Pauls was quite supprest, and that of the Children of the Chappel converted to the use of the Children of the Revels....
It was the happiness of the Actors of those times to have such Poets as these to instruct them, and write for them; and no less of those Poets to have such docile and excellent Actors to Act their Playes, as a Field and Burbidge; of whom we may say, that he was a delightful Proteus, so wholly transforming himself into his Part, and putting off himself with his Cloathes, as he never (not so much as in the Tyring-house) assum’d himself again until the Play was done: there being as much difference between him and one of our common Actors, as between a Ballad-singer who onely mouths it, and an excellent singer, who knows all his Graces, and can artfully vary and modulate his Voice, even to know how much breath he is to give to every syllable. He had all the parts of an excellent Orator (animating his words with speaking, and Speech with Action) his Auditors being never more delighted then when he spoke, nor more sorry then when he held his peace; yet even then, he was an excellent Actor still, never falling in his Part when he had done speaking; but with his looks and gesture, maintaining it still unto the heighth, he imagining Age quod agis, onely spoke to him: so as those who call him a Player do him wrong, no man being less idle then he, whose whole life is nothing else but action; with only this difference from other mens, that as what is but a Play to them, is his Business: so their business is but a play to him.