Lastly, with regard to the playhouse furniture and ornaments, a writer of King Charles II.'s time,[1212] who well remembered the preceding age, assures us that in general "they had no other scenes nor decorations of the stage, but only old tapestry, and the stage strewed with rushes, with habits accordingly."[1213]
Yet Coryate thought our theatrical exhibitions, &c., splendid when compared with what he saw abroad. Speaking of the Theatre for Comedies at Venice, he says: "The house is very beggarly and base in comparison of our stately playhouses in England, neyther can their actors compare with ours for apparrell, shewes, and musicke. Here I observed certaine things that I never saw before: For I saw women act, a thing that I never saw before, though I have heard that it hath been sometimes used in London; and they performed it with as good a grace, action, gesture, and whatsoever convenient for a player, as ever I saw any masculine actor."[1214]
It ought, however, to be observed, that amid such a multitude of playhouses as subsisted in the metropolis before the Civil Wars, there must have been a great difference between their several accommodations, ornaments, and prices; and that some would be much more shewy than others, though probably all were much inferior in splendor to the two great theatres after the Restoration.
☞ The preceding Essay, although some of the materials are new arranged, hath received no alteration deserving notice, from what it was in the second edition, 1767, except in section IV, which in the present impression hath been much enlarged.
This is mentioned, because, since it was first published, the history of the English stage hath been copiously handled by Mr. Tho. Warton in his History of English Poetry, 1774, &c., 3 vols. 4to. (wherein is inserted whatever in these volumes fell in with his subject); and by Edmond Malone, Esq., who, in his Historical Account of the English Stage (Shakesp. vol. i. part ii. 1790), hath added greatly to our knowledge of the œconomy and usages of our ancient theatres.
[This Essay is now entirely out of date, on account of the mass of new material for a complete history of the English stage, which has been printed since it was written. Information on the subject must be sought in the prefaces of the various editions of the dramatists and of the collections of mysteries and miracle plays, or in Collier's History of English Dramatic Poetry, and Halliwell's New Materials for the Life of Shakespeare.]