THE IMPECUNIOSITY OF ACTORS.
There is a letter extant, written to Sir Francis Walsingham in 1586, in which the writer speaks “with pious indignation of overcrowded playhouses and deserted churches;” and says “it was a wofull sight to see two hundred proude players jett in their silks where fyve hundred pore people sterve in the streetes.” From this and many similar allusions we glean that actors were not in the infancy of our English dramatic art the shabby impecunious class they afterwards became. They were on the whole well to do, and highly respectable men of college education, who were in most cases poets as well as players, patronised and encouraged by all classes, except those who were so bitterly jealous of their extraordinary influence—the clergy. A special Act of Parliament was passed in the reign of Queen Elizabeth for their encouragement and protection, and they had that which many of the well-born and wealthy envied them—the right of wearing the badges of royal and noble families, ensuring them respect, hospitality, and protection, wherever they went. The profession of the player was not then open to all comers, and those who dared to adopt it without licence from “any baron, or person of high rank, or two justices of the peace,” were “deemed and treated as rogues and vagabonds;” prison and the whipping-post, or cart-tail, stocks, and the pillory, being but the milder forms of that treatment promised them in the often quoted, commonly misrepresented, Act of “good Queen Bess.”
Some of the dramatic poets and players, plunging headlong into dissipation and debauchery, were at length abandoned by their fellows, and sank into the depths of misery and extreme poverty; but the majority prospered, and went about in their silks and velvets, with roses in their shoes, and swords by their sides, no longer the poor scholars they had been in their college days—the licensed beggars, who, when they came into a town, set all the dogs barking—but prosperous gentlemen of fair repute, such as were Shakespeare, and Edward Alleyn, the founder of the Hospital and College at Dulwich.
But a great change was at hand when the rebellion broke out, and civil war gave the Puritans dominant power. Their stage-plays and interludes were abolished, and the players’ occupation was gone. Worse still, the very Act of Parliament which had been created for their protection was turned against them, and they were classed with the rogues and vagabonds against whom it had formerly protected them. Then the whipping and imprisonment, and even selling into slavery, became the poor players’ miserable ill-fortune, and the reign of impecuniosity began in all its rigorous severity and terror. The London playhouses, which, between the years 1570 and 1629, had grown from one (the Theatre in Shoreditch) to seventeen, were shut up, and had all their stages, chambers (boxes, we call them), and galleries pulled down. Small wonder was it, therefore, that the players, almost to a man, drew their swords for the King, and fought stoutly under the royal banner. In the ‘Historia Histrionica,’ printed in 1699, we read the following dialogue:
“Lovewit. ‘Prythee, Trueman, what became of these players when the stage was put down, and the rebellion raised?’
“Trueman. ‘Most of ’em, except Lown, Taylor, and Pollard, who were superannuated, went into the King’s army, and, like good men and true, served their old master, though in a different, yet more honourable, capacity. Robinson was killed at the taking of a place (I think Basing House) by Harrison (he that was after hanged at Charing Cross), who refused him quarter, and shot him in the head after he had laid down his arms, abusing Scripture at the same time in saying, “Cursed is he that doeth the work of the Lord negligently.” Mohun was a captain (and after the wars were ended here served in Flanders, where he received pay as a major); Hart was a lieutenant of horse under Sir Thomas Dathson, in Prince Rupert’s regiment; Burt was cornet in the same troop, and Shatterd, quarter-master. Allen, of the Cockpit, was a major, and quarter-master-general at Oxford. I have not heard of one of these players of note who sided with the other party, but only Swanston, and he professed himself a Presbyterian, took up the trade of a jeweller, and lived in Aldermanbury, within the territory of Father Calamy: the rest either lost, or exposed, their lives for their King. When the wars were over, and the Royalists wholly subdued, most of ’em who were left alive gathered to London, and for a subsistence endeavoured to revive their old trade privately. They made up one company out of all the scattered members of several; and in the winter before the King’s murder, 1648, they ventured to act some plays, with as much caution and privity as could be, at the Cockpit (now Drury Lane Theatre). They continued undisturbed for three or four days; but at last, as they were representing the tragedy of ‘The Bloody Brother’ (in which Lowin acted Aubrey; Taylor, Rolla; Pollard, the cook; Burt, Latorch; and, I think, Hart, Otto), a party of foot-soldiers beset the house, surprised ’em about the middle of the play, and carried them away in their habits, not permitting them to shift, to Hatton House, then a prison, where, having detained them some time, they plundered them of their clothes and let ’em loose again. Afterwards, in Oliver’s time, they used to act privately, three or four miles, or more, out of town, now here, now there, sometimes in noblemen’s houses, in particular Holland House, at Kensington, where the nobility and gentry who met—but in no great numbers—used to make up a sum for them—each giving a broad piece, or the like—and Alexander Goffe (the woman-actor at Blackfriars) used to be jackall, and give notice of the time and place. At Christmas and Bartholomew Fair they used to bribe the officer who commanded at Whitehall, and were thereupon connived at, to act, for a few days, at the “Red Bull,” but were sometimes, notwithstanding, disturbed by soldiers. Some picked up a little money by publishing the copies of plays never before printed, but kept up in MS.; for instance, in the year 1652, Beaumont and Fletcher’s ‘Wild Goose Chase’ was printed in folio, for the public use of all the ingenious, as the title-page says, and the private benefit of Jown Lowin and Joseph Taylor, servants to his late Majesty; and by them dedicated to the honoured few lovers of dramatic poetry: wherein they modestly intimate their wants, and with sufficient cause; whatever they were before the wars, they were afterwards reduced to a necessitous condition.’”
Hard times these for the poor wandering players.
It is curious to note that a reputed natural son of Oliver Cromwell became an actor. This was Joe Trefusis, nicknamed “Honest Joe,” described as a person of “infinite humour and shrewd conceits.” On one occasion, driven, we presume, by impecuniosity, Joe volunteered as a seaman, and served under the Duke of York. This was just before the memorable sea-fight between the duke and the Dutch admiral, Van Tromp, in which Joe took part, as he confessed, with great fear, which was not, you may be sure, decreased when one of the sailors, grimly preparing for the strife, said to him “Now, master play-actor, you’re a-going to take part in one of the deepest and bloodiest tragedies you ever heard of.”
Another player of Puritan descent was the famous American actress, Charlotte Cushman, the name of her ancestor, Robert Cushman, being one that figures honourably and prominently as a leader amongst the Pilgrim Fathers. She tells us many anecdotes of the impecuniosity which afflicted her in the early days of her career. It was decided that she should abandon singing, and commence acting, and her first essay was to be in—of all parts—“Lady Macbeth”! She was then a tall, thin, fair-skinned, country girl, and being unable to procure a suitable costume, Madame Closel, a short, fat, dark-complexioned French woman, was applied to, and laughed heartily at the ludicrous idea of her clothes being worn by Miss Cushman, who says,—
“By dint of piecing out the skirt of one dress it was made to answer for an under-skirt, and then another dress was taken in in every direction to do duty as an over-dress, and so make up the costume. And thus I essayed for the first time the part of Lady Macbeth.”