It was not until the celebrated Inigo Jones designed scenery for certain masques given at the Court of King James that the traditional bareness of the boards was covered, and it was not until the time of Charles II. that women began to make their appearance upon the boards and unite the stage with the second estate. Many writers have emphasised the difficulties besetting the Elizabethan dramatist; Sir Philip Sidney himself has apologised to the spectator for the heavy overdraft on his imagination, and we have but to consider some of the most striking moments in our poet's work to realise what they must have lost under the Elizabethan tradition. How could bare boards conjure up a vision of Juliet's garden, of the wood "outside Athens" in which Titania and Oberon met, of Prospero's island, of the Forest of Arden? How could any boy, however smoothly spoken, present a Rosalind, a Juliet, a Miranda, or Cordelia? While we wonder at these things, it is well to remember that to those who have never eaten wheat, acorns may prove very satisfactory fare. The tradition of the theatre being so strictly circumscribed, nobody could imagine anything better than bare boards, boy heroines, and modern costumes. There are many sound judges of stage matters to-day who are very strongly of the opinion that we have travelled too far in the opposite direction, that by reason of costly mounting, extravagant costumes, alluring music, and the rest, we are no longer able to maintain that "the play's the thing." Doubtless the need for the finest possible expression of thought, and the knowledge that his words must carry the full burden of success, stimulated not only Shakespeare, but every dramatist of the great Elizabethan age.
There was one special advantage attaching to the limitation of stage equipment—touring was a simple matter. When we remember that three or even four days were required to travel on horseback from London to Stratford-on-Avon, owing to the bad tracks that enjoyed the courtesy title of roads, and the fords that must be crossed out of flood time, it is easy to see that no part of the cumbersome equipment of the modern stage could have been taken far out of London without vast and unremunerative labour. But the Elizabethan actor travelled light, and as soon as the fine weather came he would leave London for the country, and tour in all manner of unexpected places until autumn warned him home, because it was no longer possible to pass from town to town.
To turn up the old touring list of the Elizabethan companies is to find special attention given to towns of which no town is on the first touring list to-day. Saffron Walden (the quaint market-town in Essex, that opposed the coming of the Great Eastern Railway, and is now served by a little branch line), Rye in Sussex (then probably a seaport of some dimensions), Marlborough, Coventry, Oxford, Faversham, Hythe, Bath, New Romney, Folkestone—here are some of the cities or towns that the touring companies delighted to honour in the best season of the year. There is ample evidence to show that some companies crossed the border into Scotland, and that others went still farther afield—to France, Germany, Austria, and other countries. Probably these companies were sent abroad by their patrons and supporters, and were consequently assured of a hearing and adequate remuneration. It is hardly probable that the conditions of continental travel would have been favourable enough, or the security for life and property great enough, to tempt even third-rate English actors oversea unless they had a definite programme and an assured welcome.
Some have thought that Shakespeare in his acting days travelled on the Continent, or at least into Scotland, but modern expert opinion does not accept the suggestion; it rather inclines to the belief that the poet did no more than make a small provincial tour. As far as the Continent is concerned, his quaint ideas of French pronunciation and European geography should do much to settle the question with regard to these countries. His references to Denmark in "Hamlet" are no more than he could have founded on a brief chat with actors who had been there. Then, again, the period of his active and sole association with the actor's profession was brief; he soon became playwright and manager as well, too busy to stir far beyond the boundaries of London until the time came when he could enjoy his brief period of well-earned ease. Dr. Sidney Lee says that the name of Shakespeare does not appear in any known list of the actors who travelled from England between 1580 and 1630, a period more than sufficient to cover the debatable years. Against this must be set the fact that the name appears in certain records of the town of Aberdeen as that of a member of a travelling company visiting the city in the period covered by Dr. Lee's investigations.
Despite an infinity of research, the figure of William Shakespeare in London remains very dim. He is reputed to have been a good actor; but Richard Burbage the tragedian and William Kemp the comedian were greater actors than he. He played with them before Queen Elizabeth at Greenwich Palace, in a couple of scenes designed to celebrate Christmas. We are told that he took the part of the Ghost in a performance of his own "Hamlet" and the part of old Adam in "As You Like It." These very brief glimpses into his life as an actor are the more unsatisfactory because he remained a player long after he had achieved greatness as a playwright. When he left the boards it was to return to Stratford-on-Avon and live the retired life. It may be taken for granted, then, that his talents as an actor were not in any way extraordinary, or those who witnessed his rising fame as a dramatist would have left some record of his other work. His advice to the players in "Hamlet" is often and justly quoted in evidence of the attention he had given to the theory of the acting art, but there is evidence to be found in the Sonnets to show that he did not admire himself as an actor. Some very recent research in the Record Office shows that the poet lodged with a family of French Huguenots named Mountjoy, at the corner of Monkwell Street and Silver Street, in the City of London, where a public-house called the Coopers' Arms now stands.
HOLY TRINITY CHURCH AND THE AVON—STRATFORD
As far as we can tell, the poet had been five years in London before he started upon his life-work, and he entered the arena of the playwright at the age of twenty-seven. His methods were his own. The stories and legends that other men had set down, often crudely, in form of chronicle, or even of a play, he melted in the crucible of his own brain and gave back in a new and beautiful form. The play can be traced to its source, whether that source be a novellino of Masuccio, or Holinshed's "Chronicles," or Plutarch's Lives in North's translation, from which some passages are copied in extenso. The poet himself would seem to have had but little consciousness of the worth of his own work. In his time plays were not published. Publication was supposed to destroy the playgoer's interest in the work presented, and many Elizabethan plays owe their survival to the happy accident that enabled some unscrupulous person to collect a set of the actors' parts and print them, in order either to dispose of the acting rights for private use, or to derive the ordinary profits of the sale. When a play was written for and bought by a manager, it became his absolute property. He could request the author to rewrite or modify passages deemed ineffective; he could even call in another man to tinker the work, unrestrained and unrebuked. It is supposed that Shakespeare first showed his great parts as a dramatist in improving other men's work for Manager Burbage, and that this constant exercise of talent upon reproductions, the most of which are absolutely unknown to us, paved the way for the development of his gift upon original or quasi-original work.