OLD HOUSE IN COX STREET
Each Coventry craft was required by the authorities to contribute towards the setting forth of a pageant at the festival. The more important fraternities—such as the mercers and drapers—were able to bear the expenses of furnishing stage scenery, paying actors, and providing suitable accessories without any aid from bodies outside their ranks. But among the lesser crafts it was usual for two, three, four, or more to band together in order to lessen the individual burden,[663] while in all cases the journeymen probably contributed towards the expenses of their masters' pageant.[664] The task of adjusting these payments according to the means of the various inferior craft companies, was a delicate one, and often brought trouble upon the corporation. None of them cared to undertake the expenses and responsibility involved in the provision of a play. The smiths in 1428 petitioned the leet to be released from the burden;[665] the dyers in 1494 could not be induced to take the load upon their shoulders;[666] while for many years the skinners, fishmongers, cappers, corvesars, butchers, and others contrived to evade payment towards the support of a pageant, until a complaint arose from some of the contributory crafts that they were over-burdened with charges consequent thereon.
This primary difficulty being overcome, the crafts took no little pains to make the representations as perfect as possible. They provided the dresses and stage furniture from their own funds, each company having a pageant-house[667] usually in Mill Lane, now Cox Street, wherein these properties were stored. They paid the composer of the piece, if need were, or the copyist; the actors also, who were maybe lower craftsfolk, had a fixed hire, with "bread and ale" at rehearsals, and between the repetition of the performance on the festival day in different quarters of the town. All were required by order of leet to play "well and sufficiently," "lest any impediment should arise" in the performance, under pain of 20s. to the town wall,[668] and in order that they might be perfect in their several parts, there were usually two, or in the case of a new play no less than five, rehearsals before the festival,[669] some of these taking place in the presence of the assembled fellowship, while the "keeper of the play book" attended, no doubt in the capacity of prompter.
36 Gosford St
