While ‘Julius Cæsar’ was winning its first laurels on the stage, the fortunes of the London theatres were menaced by two manifestations of unreasoning prejudice on the part of the public. The earlier manifestation, although speciously the more serious, was in effect innocuous. The puritans of the city of London had long agitated for the suppression of all theatrical performances, and it seemed as if the agitators triumphed when they induced the Privy Council on June 22, 1600, to issue to the officers of the Corporation of London and to the justices of the peace of Middlesex and Surrey an order forbidding the maintenance of more than two playhouses—one in Middlesex (Alleyn’s newly erected playhouse, the ‘Fortune’ in Cripplegate), and the other in Surrey (the ‘Globe’ on the Bankside). The contemplated restriction would have deprived very many actors of employment, and driven others to seek a precarious livelihood in the provinces. Happily, disaster was averted by the failure of the municipal authorities and the magistrates of Surrey and Middlesex to make the order operative. All the London
theatres that were already in existence went on their way unchecked. [213a]
The strife between adult and boy actors.
More calamitous was a temporary reverse of fortune which Shakespeare’s company, in common with the other companies of adult actors, suffered soon afterwards at the hands, not of fanatical enemies of the drama, but of playgoers who were its avowed supporters. The company of boy-actors, chiefly recruited from the choristers of the Chapel Royal, and known as ‘the Children of the Chapel,’ had since 1597 been installed at the new theatre in Blackfriars, and after 1600 the fortunes of the veterans, who occupied rival stages, were put in jeopardy by the extravagant outburst of public favour that the boys’ performances evoked. In ‘Hamlet,’ the play which followed ‘Julius Cæsar,’ Shakespeare pointed out the perils of the situation. [213b] The adult
actors, Shakespeare asserted, were prevented from performing in London through no falling off in their efficiency, but by the ‘late innovation’ of the children’s vogue. [214a] They were compelled to go on tour in the provinces, at the expense of their revenues and reputation, because ‘an aery [i.e. nest] of children, little eyases [i.e. young hawks],’ dominated the theatrical world, and monopolised public applause. ‘These are now the fashion,’ the dramatist lamented, [214b] and he made the topic the text of a reflection on the fickleness of public taste:
Hamlet. Do the boys carry it away?
Rosencrantz. Ay, that they do, my lord, Hercules and his load too.
Hamlet. It is not very strange; for my uncle is King of Denmark, and those that would make mows at him while my father lived, give twenty, forty, fifty, a hundred ducats apiece for his picture in little.
Jealousies in the ranks of the dramatists accentuated the actors’ difficulties. Ben Jonson was, at the end of the sixteenth century, engaged in a fierce personal quarrel with two of his fellow dramatists, Marston and Dekker. The adult actors generally avowed sympathy with Jonson’s foes. Jonson, by way of revenge, sought an offensive alliance with ‘the Children of the Chapel.’ Under careful tuition the boys proved capable of performing much the same pieces as the men. To ‘the children’ Jonson offered
in 1600 his comical satire of ‘Cynthia’s Revels,’ in which he held up to ridicule Dekker, Marston, and their actor-friends. The play, when acted by ‘the children’ at the Blackfriars Theatre, was warmly welcomed by the audience. Next year Jonson repeated his manœuvre with greater effect. He learnt that Marston and Dekker were conspiring with the actors of Shakespeare’s company to attack him in a piece called ‘Satiro-Mastix, or the Untrussing of the Humourous Poet.’ He anticipated their design by producing, again with ‘the Children of the Chapel,’ his ‘Poetaster,’ which was throughout a venomous invective against his enemies—dramatists and actors alike. Shakespeare’s company retorted by producing Dekker and Marston’s ‘Satiro-Mastix’ at the Globe Theatre next year. But Jonson’s action had given new life to the vogue of the children. Playgoers took sides in the struggle, and their attention was for a season riveted, to the exclusion of topics more germane to their province, on the actors’ and dramatists’ boisterous war of personalities. [215]
Shakespeare’s references to the struggle.
In his detailed references to the conflict in ‘Hamlet’ Shakespeare protested against the abusive comments on the men-actors of ‘the common stages’ or public theatres which were put into the children’s mouths. Rosencrantz declared that the children ‘so berattle [i.e. assail] the common stages—so they call them—that many wearing rapiers are afraid of goose-quills, and dare scarce come thither [i.e. to the public theatres].’ Hamlet in pursuit of the theme pointed out that the writers who encouraged the vogue of the ‘child-actors’ did them a poor service, because when the boys should reach men’s estate they would run the risk, if they continued on the stage, of the same insults and neglect which now threatened their seniors.