A History of Advertising from the Earliest Times.

by Henry Sampson

Pryce Dyas, Coblar, daler in Bacco Shag and Pig tail, Bacon and Ginarbread Eggs laid every morning by me, and very good Paradise, in the Summer, Gentlemen and Lady can have good Tae and Crumquets and Strawburry with a scim milk, because I can’t get no cream.—N.B. Shuse and Boots mended very well.

Of a similar kind is the following, which was, years back, copied from a bill in the window of a small house near Lancaster:—

James Williams, parish clerk, saxtone, town crier, and bellman, makes and sells all sorts of haberdasharies, groceries, &c.; likewise, hair and wigs drest and cut on the shortest notice. N.B.—I keeps an evening scool, where I teach, at reasonable rates, reading, riting, and rithmitic, and singing. N.B.—I play the hooboy occasionally if wanted. N.B.—My shop is next door, where I bleed, draw teeth, and shoo horses, with the greatest scil. N.B.—Children taut to dance if agreeable at 6d. per week, by me, J. Williams, who buy and sell old iron, and coats—boots and shoos cleaned and mended. N.B.—A hat and pr of stockens to be cudgelled for, the best in 5, on Shrof Tushday. For particulars encuire within, or at the horse shoo and bell, near the church, on t’other side the way. N.B.—Look over the dore for the sign of the 3 pidgeons. N.B.—I sells good ayle, and sometimes cyder. Lodgings for single men. N.B.—I teach jografy, algebry, and them outlandish kind of things. A ball on Wednesdays and Fridays.

The next quaint window inscription, which treats of the troubles of a small shopkeeper, may also be depended upon, it being an exact copy of a written card suspended in the shop window of a tradesman in Horsemarket Street, Warrington. One can conceive the amount of provocation undergone and the indignation felt by the honest purveyor of mousetraps, whose blood must have been at boiling point when he penned this:—

Notice I dont keep twelve hole mousetrap nor penney ones what i keep I sell to respectable people not to impudent Boys Hand Bad Girls that comes to rob me and annoy me and has bad parents those that come into my shop shall be severely beat and put into the celler and took before the magistrates those that come into a shop and ask for article that is not made they must come to steal.

Examples like this are manifold, and could be extended to great length, but those we have given are quite enough to afford a vivid idea of the danger of venturing upon literature without the precaution of first learning the rudiments of education, and of the ridicule likely to attend upon any more than usually ambitious effort, which succeeds in landing its perpetrator quite out of his depth.

Old playbills offer a fruitful subject to the investigator, but their actual origin is hidden in the obscurity of ages. So far as their history goes, however, they are plentiful, and mention of them is made in works of a period far anterior to the date of any specimens extant. The modern drama had its origin in an attempt to commemorate the mysteries of the Incarnation, from whence the plays were called mysteries; and it is recorded that one Gregory Nazianzen, an early father of the Christian Church, constructed a drama on the Passion, for the purpose of counteracting the profanities of the ancient plays, about the year of our Lord 364. We have to pass over eight hundred years for the next mention of dramatic representations, and then it is met in Fitzstephen, who states that “London had for its theatrical exhibitions holy plays, and the representation of miracles wrote by holy confessors.” This would be towards the close of the twelfth century; and next we come to the Chester Mysteries, which were performed about 1270. These have been reprinted during the present century, and the application of the word mystery is explained in the two subjoined verses from the proclamation or prologue to the Whitsun Plays, a title by which the famous Chester Mysteries were also known. The “moonke” mentioned is Done Rondali, of Chester Abbey, who founded the plays:—

This moonke, moonke-like in Scriptures well seene
In storyes travelled with the best sorte;
In pagentes set fourth, apparently to all eyne,
The Olde and Newe Testament with livelye comforte;
Intermynglinge therewith, onely to make Sporte,
Some things not warranted by any writt,
Which, to glad the hearers, he woulde men to take yt.

Now, you worshippfull Tanners, that of custome olde
The fall of Lucifer did set out,
Some writers awarrante your matter; therefore be boulde,
Lustily to playe the same to all the rowtte;
And yf any thereof stande in any doubte,
Your author his author hath, your shewe let bee,
Good speech, fyne players, with apparill comelye.

With the history of plays we have nothing to do, and need only state that the first regular English tragedy was “Ferrex and Porrex,” which was acted before Queen Elizabeth on the 18th of January 1561 by the gentlemen of the Inner Temple. This same play was tried at one of the minor theatres in 1854, but had no claim upon the tastes of the time. From a passage in Strype’s Life of Archbishop Grindall, it has been assumed that the custom of issuing bills, giving information concerning the time, place, and nature of plays to be acted, came in with the plays themselves, as it is there shown to exist prior to the year 1563. In alluding to Grindall’s objections to dramatic representations, Strype mentions that the Archbishop complained to Queen Elizabeth’s secretary that the players “did then daily, but especially on the holidays, set up their bills, inviting to plays.” This, however, is a somewhat curious error of Strype’s, into which Mr Payne Collier has also fallen. The Bishop did not write bills but booths; his words are as follows: “Common players, now daylie, but speciallye on holy dayes, set up boothes whereunto the youthe resorteth excessively.” There is, however, other evidence to prove that playbills were in use not long after the above date; for John Northbrooke, in his treatise against theatrical performances, printed about 1579, says: “They use to set up their bills upon posts some certain days before, to admonish people to make resort to their theatres.” At that time the Stationers’ Company had the right of giving licences for the printing of playbills, and in the year 1587 its Court of Assistants conferred upon John Charlewood the privilege of being the sole printer of bills for players. Before that time they were printed by one James Roberts, who names “the bills for the players” amongst his publications as early as 1573—six years before Northbrooke’s mention of them—and, authorised no doubt by Charlewood, he continued to print them until after the year 1600. This right of printing playbills was at a subsequent period assumed by the Crown. A broadside, dated 1620, is preserved in the Library of the Society of Antiquaries, by which this privilege was granted to a printing firm by James I. It is entitled “An Abstract of his Majesty’s Letters Patent granted unto Roger Wood and Thomas Symcocke, for the sole printing of paper and parchment on the one side.” Among the articles enumerated as coming under this category are, “Bills for Playes, Pastimes, Showes, Challenges, Prizes, or Sportes whatsoever.” At the end the public are informed that if they may want any work of that description, they need only repair to Edward Allde (Wood and Symcocke’s assignee), “in the Old Change at the Golden Anchor, over against Carter Lane end, where they shall be reasonably dealt with for the same.”