The Bear Garden and Hope Theatre, 1616
But Fortune was against them. The Puritanic spirit prevailed. When the Parliament conquered, the theatres were doomed. And in 1655, by command of Thomas Pride, High Sheriff of Surrey, the seven bears of Paris Gardens were shot by a company of soldiers. In the same year it is mentioned that the Hope Theatre had been destroyed to make room for tenements.
The profession of actor in a time when the Puritanic spirit was rapidly growing stronger could not possibly be held in good repute. There was dancing in it: music: mockery: merriment: satire: low comedy: all these things the misguided flock enjoyed and the shepherd deplored. The Mayor, long before the Theatres were suppressed, would never allow a theatre to be set up within his jurisdiction: had that jurisdiction extended beyond the various Bars: had there not, fortunately, happened to exist certain illogical and absurd Liberties and Precincts, in which the Mayor had no authority, there would have been no theatres in the neighbourhood of London, and therefore no Elizabethan drama, no Shakespeare, no Ben Jonson, no Massinger, no Fletcher. As things happened, we have to note the very remarkable fact that while the popular love for the theatre increased year by year; while the theatre became the teacher of history, the satirist of manners, the home of music and of poetry; the ministers and preachers thundered perpetually against it, yet prevailed not at all, until the Civil War broke out, and the power fell into the hands of the Puritans. For instance, one John Field, the father of one of the most famous players, Nathan Field, wrote to the Earl of Leicester as early as 1585 reviling him for having interfered 'on the behalf of evil men as of late you did for players, to the great griefe of all the godly,' and adjuring him not to encourage their wickedness, and 'the abuses that are wont to be nourished by those impure interludes and plays.' And the same divine, two years later, wrote an attack upon the theatre in consequence of the accident at Paris Gardens which has been already mentioned. The theatre was forcibly suppressed in the Civil War, but it was never forgotten, and the moment that the Restoration allowed it was opened again. But to our day the old Puritanism continues, in a now feeble and impotent way, to consider the Theatre as the chosen home of the Devil.
INTERIOR OF THE OLD SWAN THEATRE
Nathan Field, though the son of such a father, was ready to meet all comers in defence of the stage. In 1616 one Sutton, Preacher at St. Mary Overies, denounced the Theatre and all connected with it. Field answered him manfully, telling him plainly that he, the preacher, is disloyal, in preaching from his pulpit against people who are licensed and patronised by the King. The players were at all times equal to the task of covering the preacher with derision; but derision seldom convinces or converts.
The general opinion of players remains that they have at all times been a penniless tribe, eating the 'corn in the green;' borrowing; spending their money in riotous living. This opinion is not by any means always true. The musician, the mummer, the dancer, and the tumbler were all regarded much in the same light; they were despised; they did not fight like the soldier; they did not produce like the craftsman; they did not, like the priest, say mass and forgive sins; they did not heal the sick; they knew no law; their only function in the world was to amuse; to make men laugh. It is very remarkable that directly the players ceased to be dependent on noble lords, as soon as they appealed to the public and received money from those who came to see them perform, they became prudent men of business. They may have been a cheerful tribe; they were, however, well to do, and, so far as can be learned, a thrifty tribe. They made money, not by writing plays, nor by acting them, but by being shareholders in the company with which they played. Burbage, Alleyn, Heminge, Sly, Field, Schanke, not to speak of Shakespeare, all appear to have lived in comfort, and to have died possessed of moderate fortunes.
The poets, certainly, continued, as poets have always been, penniless and in debt. By the end of the sixteenth century the earliest of the dramatic poets, Marlowe, Peele, Nash, Greene—that turbulent roystering profligate band whom everybody loved while everybody reproved—had passed away. The early extravagance vanished. The later poets, Ben Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, Massinger, led more godly lives. Yet they were often harassed for want of money. Three of them, Massinger, Field and Daborne, write to Henslow asking for an advance of 5l. on the security of a play which is worth ten pounds in addition to what they have had. All those, in fact, were poor, and remained poor, who attempted to live by poetic literature alone.
The poets have had enough attention paid to them: let us consider the Company of Actors who played at the Globe and the Rose, the Hope and the Lion, and lived on and near the Bankside. The books of St. Saviour's (see Rendle's 'Southwark,' App. p. 26) are full of references to the actors who died and were buried here, whose children were baptised here or buried here. The name of William Shakespeare, unfortunately, does not occur. Among the actors, and first and chief, was Richard Burbage—like Shakespeare, a Warwickshire man. In person he was under the middle stature, and grew fat and scant of breath. But no actor of the time had so great a power over his audience. It was his father who built the very first permanent theatre—called The Theatre at Shoreditch. In consequence of a dispute with the landlord, he pulled down the house, carried the timbers across the river to Bankside, and set up the Globe.