The strongest charge against the theatres was the license allowed to the clowns or jesters, who between the pieces, or between the Acts, played “jigs” or “drolls” accompanied by songs and dances, and impromptu jokes which were topical, and, as may be imagined, broad and coarse. We may easily imagine that the civic authorities, the preachers, and the pamphleteers, who were always assailing the player and driving him from place to place, were not spared when the Clown had the stage all to himself, with hundreds of grinning faces in front of him, all of whom were egging him on with laughter and applause to say or do something more outrageous still, and loved nothing so much as to see before them acted to the life some sour Puritan who could see only “filthie and beastlie” stuff in the noblest play by Shakespeare, or in any sport.
BANKSIDE, SOUTHWARK, IN 1648, WITH A VIEW OF HOLLAND’S LEAGUER, ONE OF THE ANCIENT STEWS OR LICENSED BROTHELS SUPPRESSED DURING THE REIGN OF HENRY VIII.
Another favourite place of resort for the citizens, especially for the more riotous sort, was Southwark, with its raised river-wall or Bankside; its numerous inns and taverns; its low-lying fields and its various amusements. There were amphitheatres for bear- and bull-baiting; in the High Street itself there was a ring for the bull; in Paris Gardens, on the east side of Blackfriars Bridge, were kept bears and dogs for the favourite, almost the national, amusement; there was a kind of sanctuary in Southwark: here were allowed to reside the “Flemish Frows” still, in spite of Henry the Seventh’s suppression; here were held May Day games; here was held every year the pageant of St. George’s Day; and here, in the time of Henry VIII., were collected together idlers, vagabonds, and rogues in great numbers. In this place, the resort of all the young bloods and the wild element of London, the players settled down in force. The Rose, The Hope, The Globe, The Swan, all built about the same time, show the steady popularity of the Drama, in spite of the Puritanic attacks upon it, which seem to have done it no manner of harm.
At one end of Bankside stood the ruins of the Monastic House and the Clink Prison; then followed a single row of houses, at the back of which were the Bull-Baiting Ground and the Bear Garden; then the theatres already mentioned; also the Falcon Tavern, and Paris Gardens. All these places were built on a low-lying and marshy ground planted thickly with trees, intersected with ponds, ditches, and running streams—for instance, the Pudding Mill stream ran round two-thirds of Paris Gardens. For an account of the interior of a theatre and the presentation of a play I quote an imaginary account, in my own words:—
“The interior of the theatre was circular in shape. It contained three galleries, one above the other: the lowest called the ‘rooms,’ for seats in which we paid a shilling each, contained the better sorts. At each side of the stage there were boxes, one of which contained the music. The stage itself, a stout construction of timber, projected far into the pit, or, as Stow called it, the ‘yarde.’ At the back was another stage, supported on two columns, and giving the players a gallery about ten or twelve feet high, the purpose of which we were very soon to find out. On each side of the stage were seats for those who paid an additional sixpence. Here were a dozen or twenty gallants, either with pipes of tobacco, or playing cards or dice before the play began. One of them would get up quickly with a pretence of impatience, and push back his cloak so as to show the richness of his doublet below. The young men, whether at the theatre, or in Paul’s Walk, or in Chepe, seemed all intent upon showing the bravery of their attire: no girls of our day could be more vain of their dress or more critical of the dress worn by others. Some of them, however, I perceived among the groundlings—that is, the people on the ‘yarde’—gazing about the house upon the women in the galleries. Here there were many dressed very finely, like ladies of quality, in satin gowns, lawn aprons, taffeta petticoats, and gold threads in their hair. They seemed to rejoice in being thus observed and gazed upon. When a young man had found a girl to his taste, he went into the gallery, sat beside her, and treated her to pippins, nuts, or wine.
It was already one o’clock when we arrived. As we took our seats the music played its first sounding or flourish. There was a great hubbub in the place: hucksters went about with baskets, crying pippins, nuts, and ale; in the ‘rooms’ booksellers’ boys hawked about new books; everybody was talking together; everywhere the people were smoking tobacco, playing cards, throwing dice, cheapening books, cracking nuts, and calling for ale. The music played a second sounding. The hubbub continued unabated. Then it played the third and last. Suddenly the tumult ceased. The piece was about to begin.
The stage was decorated with blue hangings of silk between the columns, showing that the piece was to be—in part at least—a comedy. Across the railed gallery at the back was stretched a painted canvas representing a royal palace. When the scene was changed this canvas became the wall of a city, and the actors would walk on the top of the wall; or a street with houses; or a tavern with its red lattice and its red sign; or a tented field. When night was intended, the blue hangings were drawn up and exchanged for black.
The hawkers retired and were quiet; the house settled down to listen, and the Prologue began. Prologue appeared dressed in a long black velvet cloak: he assumed a diffident and most respectful manner; he bowed to the ground.
‘In Troy there lies the scene. From Isles of Greece
The princes orgulous, their high blood chaf’d,
Have to the port of Athens sent their ships.’
In this way the mind of the audience was prepared for what was to follow. We needed no play-bill. The palace before us could be no other than Priam’s Palace. If there was a field with tents, it must be the battle-field and the camp of the Greeks; if there was a wall, it must be the wall of Troy. And though the scenery was rough, it was enough. One wants no more than the unmistakable suggestion; the poet and the actor find the rest. Therefore, though the intrusive gallants lay on the stage; though Troilus was dressed in the armour of Tudor time, and Pandarus wore just such a doublet as old Stow himself, we were actually at Troy. The boy who played Cressida was a lovely maiden. The narrow stage was large enough for the Council of Kings, the wooing of lovers, and the battle-field of heroes. Women unfaithful and perjured, lovers trustful, warriors fierce, the alarms of war, fighting and slaying, the sweet whispers of love were drowned by the blare of trumpets; the loss of lover forgotten in the loss of a great captain; and among the warriors and the kings and the lovers, the creeping creatures who live upon the weaknesses and the sins of their betters, played their parts upon these narrow boards before a silent and enraptured house. For three hours we were kept out of our senses. There was no need, I say, of better scenery: a quick shifting of the canvas showed a battle-field, and turned the stage into a vast plain covered with armies of Greeks and Romans. Soldiers innumerable, as thick as motes in the sun, crossed the stage fighting, shouting, challenging each other. While they fought, the trumpets blew and the drums beat, the wounded fell, and the fight continued over these prostrate bodies till they were carried off by their friends. The chiefs rushed to the front, crossed swords, and rushed off again. ‘Come both you cogging Greeks!’ said Troilus, while our cheeks flushed and our lips parted. If the stage had been four times as broad, if the number of men in action had been multiplied by ten, we could not have felt more vividly the rage, the joy, the madness of the battle. When the play was finished, the ale, the apples, and the nuts were passed round, and the noise began again. Then the clown came in and began to sing, and the music played—but oh, how poor it seemed after the great emotions of the play! The old man plucked me by the sleeve and we went out, and with us most of the better sort.” (London, pp. 237–239.)
In addition to the foregoing, or as confirming and supplementing that account, I quote the following from Drake’s Shakespeare and his Times:—
“The passion for the stage continued rapidly to increase, and before the year 1590, not less than four or five theatres were in existence. The patronage of dramatic representation made an equal progress at Court; for though Elizabeth never, it is believed, attended a public theatre, yet had she four companies of children who frequently performed for her amusement, denominated the Children of St. Paul’s, the Children of Westminster, the Children of the Chapel, and the Children of Windsor. The public actors, too, who were sometimes, in imitation of these appellations, called the Children of the Revels, were, towards the close of Her Majesty’s reign especially, in consequence of a greatly acquired superiority over their younger brethren, often called upon to act before her at the royal theatre in Whitehall. Exhibitions of this kind at Court were usual at Christmas, on Twelfth Night, at Candlemas, and at Shrove-tide, throughout the reigns of Elizabeth and James, and the plays of Shakspeare were occasionally the entertainment of the night; thus we find Love’s Labour Lost to have been performed before our maiden Queen during the Christmas-holydays, and King Lear to have been exhibited before King James on St. Stephen’s night. On these occasions, the representation was generally at night, that it might not interfere with the performances at the regular theatre, which took place early in the afternoon; and we learn from the Council-books that the royal remuneration, in the age of Elizabeth, for the exhibition of a single play at Whitehall, amounted to ten pounds, of which twenty nobles, or six pounds, thirteen shillings, and fourpence, formed the customary fee; and three pounds, six shillings, and eightpence the free gift or bounty. If, however, the performers were required to leave the capital for any of the royal palaces in its neighbourhood, the fee, in consequence of the public exhibition of the day being prevented, was augmented to twenty pounds.
The protection of the Drama by Elizabeth and her Ministers, though it did not exempt the public players, except in one instance, from the penalties of statutes against vagabonds, yet it induced during the whole of her long reign numerous instances of private patronage from the most opulent of her nobility and gentry, who, possessing the power of licensing their own domestics as comedians, and, consequently, of protecting them from the operation of the Act of Vagrancy, sheltered various companies of performers, under the denomination of their servants, or retainers—a privilege which was taken away, by Act of Parliament, on the accession of James, and, as Mr. Chalmers observes, ‘put an end for ever to the scenic system of prior times.’”
There were no fewer than fourteen companies of players, under private patronage, who contributed to exhilarate the people of London and the country. Of these, Drake furnishes a chronological enumeration. “Soon after the accession of Elizabeth appeared Lord Leicester’s company, the same which, in 1574, was finally incorporated by royal licence; in 1572 was formed Sir Robert Lane’s company; in the same year Lord Clinton’s; in 1575 companies were created by Lord Warwick, and the Lord Chamberlain, the name of Shakspeare being enrolled among the servants of the latter, who, in the first year of the subsequent reign, became entitled to the appellation of His Majesty’s servants; in 1576, the Earl of Sussex brought forward a theatrical body, and in 1577, Lord Howard another, neither of which, however, attained much eminence; in 1578 the Earl of Essex mustered a company of players, and in 1579, Lord Strange, and the Earl of Derby, followed his example; in 1591 the Lord Admiral produced his set of comedians; in 1592 the Earl of Hertford effected a similar arrangement; in 1593 Lord Pembroke protected an association of actors, and at the close of Her Majesty’s reign the Earl of Worcester had in pay also a company of theatrical performers.”