The Red Bull Playhouse stood on a plot of ground lately called “Red Bull Yard” near the upper end of St. John’s Street Clerkenwell; and is traditionally said to have been the Theatre at which Shakespeare first held a gentleman’s horses. In the civil wars it became highly celebrated for the representations of Drolls, to a collection of which pieces published by Frauncis Kirkman in 1672, this view of it forms a frontispiece. The figures brought together on the stage are intended as portraits of the leading actors in each Droll. The one playing Simpleton is Robert Cox, then a great favourite, of whom the publisher thus speaks in his preface. “I have seen the Red Bull Playhouse which was a large one, so full that as many went back for want of room as had entred. Robert Cox, a principal actor and contriver of these pieces, how have I heard him cryed up for his John Swabber, and Simpleton, the Smith. In which latter, he being to appear with a large piece of Bread & Butter, on the stage I have frequently known some of the female spectators to long for it”. The above print may be regarded not only as highly curious for the place it represents, but as a unique specimen of the interior economy of our antient English Theatres.
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VIOLA DA GAMBA
“For important regale of the Company the concerts were usually all viols to the organ or harpsichord. The violin came in late and imperfectly. When the hands were well supplied the whole chest went to work, that is, six viols, music being formed for it which would seem a strange sort of music now, being an interwoven hum-drum.”—From Autobiography of Roger North, born 1653.
CLAVICHORD
“The Clavichord hath a tunely kynde
As the wyre is wrested high and lowe.”
John Skelton, 1459–1529, Poet Laureate.