During the dark years that followed, the Red Bull, in spite of this ordinance, was occasionally used by venturous actors. James Wright, in his Historia Histrionica, tells us that upon the outbreak of the war the various London actors had gone "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.... Mohun was a captain.... Hart was cornet of the same troop, and Shatterel quartermaster. Allen, of the Cockpit, was a major.... The rest either lost or exposed their lives for their king."[509] He concludes the narrative by saying that when the wars were over, those actors who were left alive gathered to London, "and for a subsistence endeavoured to revive their old trade privately." They organized themselves into a company in 1648 and attempted "to act some plays with as much caution and privacy as could be at the Cockpit"; but after three or four days they were stopped by soldiers. Thereafter, on special occasions "they used to bribe the officer who commanded the guard at Whitehall, and were thereupon connived at to act for a few days at the Red Bull, but were sometimes, notwithstanding, disturbed by soldiers."[510] To such clandestine performances Kirkman refers in his Preface to The Wits, or Sport upon Sport (1672): "I have seen the Red Bull Playhouse, which was a large one, so full that as many went back for want of room as had entered; and as meanly as you may now think of these drolls, they were then acted by the best comedians then and now in being." Not, however, without occasional trouble. In Whitelocke's Memorials, p. 435, we read: "20 Dec., 1649. Some stage-players in St. John's Street were apprehended by troopers, their clothes taken away, and themselves carried to prison"; again, in The Perfect Account, December 27-January 3, 1654-1655: "Dec. 30, 1654.—This day the players at the Red Bull, being gotten into all their borrowed gallantry and ready to act, were by some of the soldiery despoiled of all their bravery; but the soldiery carried themselves very civilly towards the audience."[511] In the Weekly Intelligencer, September 11-18, 1655, we find recorded still another sad experience for the actors: "Friday, September 11, 1655.—This day proved tragicall to the players at the Red Bull; their acting being against the Act of Parliament, the soldiers secured the persons of some of them who were upon the stage, and in the tiring-house they seized also upon their clothes in which they acted, a great part whereof was very rich."[512]
On this occasion, however, the soldiers, instead of carrying themselves "very civilly" towards the audience, undertook to exact from each of the spectators the fine of five shillings. The ordinance of Parliament, passed February 9, 1648, read: "And it is hereby further ordered and ordained, that every person or persons which shall be present and a spectator at such stage-play or interlude, hereby prohibited, shall for every time he shall be present, forfeit and pay the sum of five shillings to the use of the poor of the parish."[513] But the spectators did not submit to this fine without a struggle. Jeremiah Banks wrote to Williamson on September 16, 1655: "At the playhouse this week many were put to rout by the soldiers and had broken crowns; the corporal would have been entrapped had he not been vigilant."[514] And in the Weekly Intelligencer, September 11-18, we read: "It never fared worse with the spectators than at this present, for those who had monies paid their five shillings apiece; those who had none, to satisfy their forfeits, did leave their cloaks behind them. The Tragedy of the spectators was the Comedy of the soldiers. There was abundance of the female sex, who, not able to pay five shillings, did leave some gage or other behind them, insomuch that although the next day after the Fair was expected to be a new fair of hoods, of aprons, and of scarfs; all which, their poverty being made known, and after some check for their trespass, were civilly again restored to the owners."[515]
At the period of the Restoration the Red Bull was among the first playhouses to reopen. John Downes, in his Roscius Anglicanus, writes: "The scattered remnant of several of these houses, upon King Charles' Restoration, framed a company, who acted again at the Bull."[516] Apparently the company was brought together by the famous old Elizabethan actor, Anthony Turner. From the Middlesex County Records (iii, 279) we learn that at first the players were interrupted by the authorities:
12 May, 1659.—Recognizances, taken before Ra: Hall, esq. J.P., of William Wintershall and Henry Eaton, both of Clerkenwell, gentlemen, in the sum of fifty pounds each; "Upon condition that Antony Turner shall personally appear at the next Quarter Sessions of the Peace to be holden at Hicks Hall for the said County of Middlesex; for the unlawful maintaining of stage-plays and interludes at the Red Bull in St. John's Street, which house he affirms that they hire of the parishioners of Clerkenwell at the rate of twenty shillings a day over and above what they have agreed to pay towards the relief of their poor and repairing their highways, and in the meantime to be of good behaviour and not to depart the Court without license.—Ra: Hall." Also similar Recognizances, taken on the same day, before the same J.P., of the same William Wintershall and Henry Eaton, gentlemen, in the same sum of fifty pounds each; for the appearance of Edward Shatterall at the next. Q.S.P. for Middlesex at Hicks Hall, "to answer for the unlawful maintaining of stage-plays and interludes at the Red Bull in St. John's Street &c." S.P.R., 17, May, 1659.
Later, it seems, they secured a license from the authorities, and thenceforth acted without interruption. Samuel Pepys made plans "to go to the Red Bull Playhouse" with Mrs. Pierce and her husband on August 3, 1660, but was prevented by business. An account of his visit there on March 23, 1661, is thus given in his Diary:
All the morning at home putting papers in order; dined at home, and then out to the Red Bull (where I had not been since plays came up again), but coming too soon I went out again and walked up and down the Charterhouse Yard and Aldersgate Street. At last came back again and went in, where I was led by a seaman that knew me, but is here as a servant, up to the tiring-room, where strange the confusion and disorder that there is among them in fitting themselves, especially here, where the clothes are very poor and the actors but common fellows. At last into the pit, where I think there was not above ten more than myself, and not one hundred in the whole house. And the play, which is called All's Lost by Lust, poorly done; and with so much disorder, among others, that in the musique-room, the boy that was to sing a song not singing it right, his master fell about his ears and beat him so, that it put the whole house in an uproar.
The actors, however, did not remain long at the Red Bull. They built for themselves a new theatre in Drury Lane, whither they moved on April 8, 1663;[517] and after this the old playhouse was deserted. In Davenant's The Play-House to Be Let (1663), i, i, we read:
Tell 'em the Red Bull stands empty for fencers:[518]
There are no tenants in it but old spiders.