Your loving
Rosaline.
A FIRST NIGHT
Letter from Jean-Antoine de Binet to a Friend in Paris, July 20, 1602
Yesterday I went to the theatre to see a Tragedy played by the Lord Chamberlain, his servants, called “The Revenge of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.” I was taken thither by Guasconi, who is attached to the Italian Ambassador, and who desired that I should not miss any of the curiosities of the city. The play was new, and the theatre was crowded with people, many of whom were of high rank, since noblemen in this country are fond of visiting the playhouse. They sit in places kept for them on the stage, and encourage the players by applause, and they express their approval and their blame.
The play is written partly in a kind of verse, which is pleasing to the ear and not without a certain happy fancy; but Guasconi told me that the English, who have learnt our science and make sonnets and madrigals after the pattern of our masters, do not consider this kind of writing to be either poetry or literature; but these rough and unpolished rhythms are used to tickle the popular ear and to please the taste of the common people.
There were in the theatre many well-known faces. Sir Bacon was sitting in the front, but he went to sleep shortly after the beginning of the play, and slept right until the end, none daring to disturb him. At the end of the play his servants woke him up by shaking him. He is a busy man, and goes to the theatre for repose, liking well the music, the high screeching of the players, and the buzz of tongues, and finding them conducive to repose. In one of the boxes Guasconi pointed me out the beautiful Countess of Nottingham, whom, he said, the English consider to be one of their most beautiful countrywomen. She has the marks of race, and was richly and elegantly dressed in black and crimson colours. With her was a young nobleman whom I took to be her son, but Guasconi told me that this was not so. He was her second husband. One nobleman, the Earl of Essex, arrived in the middle of the performance, and talked loudly to his friends, paying but little attention to the players. Since his father was beheaded not long ago it was considered a lapse in taste on his part to visit the theatre so soon. In the theatre were several well-known players from other theatres, who were much clapped by the populace when they entered. The crowd was good-humoured, and pleased with the show: but they made a great noise, eating oranges and nuts, and throwing shells and peel right and left. There were also in the audience some men of letters, scholars and noblemen, whose fame as writers of verse is the talk of the town. For instance, Lord Southampton, who has written over a hundred sonnets; Sir Iger and the Countess of Pembrock, the author of “The Fall of Troy,” which those who know say is the finest epic which has been written since the death of Virgil. There were also many students, who were tempestuous and unruly in the expression of their enjoyment, and among these many vagabond writers and ballad-mongers.
The show was not displeasing, being full of much excellent clowning and fine dresses. It is a tale of murder and revenge such as have been brought into the fashion by the Italian story-tellers. It is brutal, and therefore suits the English taste, for Guasconi tells me the English will not go to the playhouse unless they can see tales of battle and murder with plenty of fighting on the stage, mixed with grotesque episodes and rough horseplay. The players declaimed their words nicely, and the utterance of the verse, especially that which was spoken by the young boy who played the part of the mad heroine of the play, struck me as being not unmelodious poetry, but when I said this to the young literary noblemen with whom we supped after the performance, they split their sides with laughter, and said how impossible it was for a foreigner to judge the literature of a country which was not his own.
The author of the play, whose name I have forgotten, but which was something like John or James Shockper or Shicksperry, was himself, they told me, one of the players, which proved that he could neither be a man of education nor capable of writing his own tongue. In the play, they told me, he had played the part of the ghost. If this really be so, he cannot be a man of talent, for he spoke his lines so feebly and so haltingly that the vagabonds in the body of the theatre laughed and interrupted him several times, shouting such things as “Speak louder!” and “Go back to your grave.” The stage plays are, I was told, almost always written by players, for they best know what suits the popular taste, being of the populace and vagabonds themselves.
The scene which pleased the audience most was that of a fight in which the players fought bravely, more after the Italian style than the French, and the audience was greatly delighted by the close of the play, and laughed heartily when all the characters were killed and rolled about on the stage, the actor who played the King was especially popular; he had a jovial face, so that whenever he spoke, and sometimes even before he spoke, the audience laughed, heartily enjoying his comic talent.
There is no intelligible story in the play, nor is it possible to follow the sequence of events that happen on the stage; but it is rather the aim of the performance to present the public with a series of varied pictures, pleasant to the eye owing to the finery, the brave dresses, the glint of steel rapiers, the tinselled cloaks, and pleasing to the ear owing to the interludes of viol and hautboy playing.