No other play, but her own tragedy.
She will submit to none but your commands,
And take commission only from your hands.”
This change altered the whole character of the theatre. At the beginning it lowered the tone of the stage, which was already bad enough. When the spectators became accustomed to the appearance of women on the stage, it began perhaps to have a refining influence, but certainly not at first.
In Wycherley’s Country Wife, Pinchwife takes his wife to the “eighteen-penny place” so that she shall not be seen. This place was the tier called the upper boxes. Ladies sometimes went into the Pit, but not alone. In the same play Alithea says to her lover, “I will not go if you intend to leave me alone in the Pit as you used to do.” Ladies, however, for the most part, went into the first tier or dress circle, where they received visits from their friends. Lord Foppington says, “After dinner I go to the play, where I amuse myself till nine o’clock with looking upon the company, and usually dispose of an hour more in leading them out.”
The tickets were, to the boxes, 4s.; to the Pit, half-a-crown; to the upper boxes, 1s. 6d.; and to the gallery, 1s. There were only two theatres, the King’s and the Duke of York’s; the seats were simple benches without backs.
Pepys, a great lover of the stage, commends the improvement of the theatre since the Restoration:—
“The stage is now by his pains a thousand times better and more glorious than ever heretofore. Now, wax-candles, and many of them; then, not above 3 lbs. of tallow: now, all things civil, no rudeness anywhere; then, as in a bear-garden: then, two or three fiddlers; now, nine or ten of the best: then, nothing but rushes upon the ground, and everything else mean; and now, all otherwise: then, the Queen seldom, and King never would come; now, not the King only for state, but all civil people do think they may come as well as any. He tells me that he hath gone several times, eight or ten times, he tells me, hence to Rome, to hear good musique; so much he loves it, though he never did sing or play a note. That he hath ever endeavoured in the late King’s time, and in this, to introduce good musique, but he never could do it, there never having been any musique here better than ballads. Nay, says, ‘Hermitt poore’ and ‘Chevy Chese’ was all the musique we had; and yet no ordinary fiddlers get so much money as ours do here, which speaks our rudenesse still” (Pepys, vol. vi. pp. 171, 172).
Bankside had long since ceased to be the chosen seat of the drama. The Globe, after being burned down and rebuilt, was finally pulled down in 1644; the Rose, the Swan, and the Bear Garden had met the same fate; the Fortune Theatre was destroyed by soldiers in 1549; the Curtain had become, before it was pulled down, a place for prize fights; Blackfriars Theatre, after standing empty for some years, in accordance with the law, was pulled down in 1655.
