"For do but cast up a reckoning; what large commings-in are pursd up by sitting on the stage? First a conspicuous eminence is gotten; by which meanes, the best and most essencial parts of a gallant (good cloathes, a proportionable legge, white hand, the Persian lock, and a tollerable beard), are perfectly revealed."
Of course you must choose with the greatest care your time to come in. "Present not your selfe on the stage especially at a new play until the quaking Prologue hath, by rubbing, got [colour] into his cheekes and is ready to give the trumpets their cue that hees upon point to enter; for then it is time, as though you were one of the properties, or that you dropt out of ye hangings, to creepe from behind the arras, with your tripos or three-footed stoole in one hand and a teston (i.e., six pence) mounted betweene a forefinger and a thumbe in the other; for if you should bestow your person upon the vulgar when the belly of the house is but halfe full, your apparell is quite eaten up, the fashion lost ..."[308]
When the play is well begun, there is also a special behaviour to observe: "It shall crowne you with rich commendation to laugh alowd in the middest of the most serious and saddest scene of the terriblest tragedy; and to let that clapper your tongue, be tost so high that all the house may ring of it: your lords use it; your knights are apes to the lords, and do so too ... be thou a beagle to them all.... [At] first, all the eyes in the galleries will leave walking after the players and onely follow you; the simplest dolt in the house snatches up your name, and when he meetes you in the streetes, ... heele cry: 'hees such a gallant.' ... Secondly you publish your temperance to the world, in that you seeme not to resort thither to taste vaine pleasures with a hungrie appetite; but only as a gentleman to spend a foolish houre or two, because you can doe nothing else; thirdly you mightily dis relish the audience and disgrace the author." Perhaps the next time he will be wise enough to offer you a dedication sonnet "onely to stop your mouth."
The getting away must not be less carefully performed than the getting in. If you owe the author a particular grudge, mind you leave just in the middle of his play: "bee it Pastoral or Comedy, Morall or Tragedie, you rise with a screwd and discontented face from your stoole to be gone: no matter whether the scenes be good or no; the better they are, the worse you distast them. And being 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 for that; there is no musick without frets."
But the rain outside may deprive you of the benefits of this carefully laid plan. In that case, and this is the last piece of advice, here is what you must do: "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 up 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; find fault with the musicke; whew at the children's action, whistle at the songs."
Dekker knew only too well such gallants as those he describes, and if his picture of a theatre in Shakespeare's time seems now somewhat exaggerated, if we cannot conceive "Hamlet" or "Romeo" performed while gallants on the stage tickle each other's ears with rushes picked from the stage boards, let us remember as a confirmation of his accuracy that such customs were prevalent, not only in England, but in Europe. In France especially, even in the time of the Grand Roi, when Molière and Corneille were shining in all their glory, we have Molière's corroborating evidence that these customs had not been abolished. Molière was annoyed by the same malpractices as Shakespeare, only he did not, like Shakespeare, who never complained of anything or anybody, keep his displeasure to himself. He recurs in more than one of his plays to the indecent behaviour of marquesses sitting on the stage, and there is scarcely one of the particulars mentioned by Dekker which does not find place in Molière's angry pictures of ill-bred gallants:
"The actors began; every one kept silence; when ... a man with large rolls entered abruptly crying out: 'Hulloa, there, a seat directly!' and disturbing the audience with his uproar, interrupted the play in its finest passage....
"Whilst I was shrugging my shoulders, the actors attempted to continue their parts. But the man made a fresh disturbance in seating himself, and again crossing the stage with long strides, although he might have been quite comfortable at the wings, he planted his chair full in front, and, defying the audience with his broad back, hid the actors from three-fourths of the pit.
"A murmur arose, at which any one else would have felt ashamed; but he, firm and resolute, took no notice of it, and would have remained just as he had placed himself if, to my misfortune, he had not cast his eyes on me....
"He began asking me a hundred frivolous questions, raising his voice higher than the actors. Every one was cursing him; and in order to check him, I said, 'I should like to listen to the play.'