The companies of actors which occupied these theaters were coöperative organizations. Eight or ten actors formed a company, leased a theater, hired supernumeraries, Companies of Actorsbought plays, and shared in the profits. In Elizabeth's reign they secured a legal position by obtaining a license from some nobleman, and so were known as the Earl of Leicester's men, Lord Admiral's men, and so on. On the accession of James I, the leading London companies were taken directly under patronage of members of the royal family. During Shakespeare's time there were innumerable companies, but the tendency was for the best actors to become associated in a few companies, and for each company to keep to a particular theater; so that at the accession of James I, there were only five adult companies in London with permanent theaters. The best companies were frequently employed to act at court, and during the summer or when the plague was raging in London, they often toured the country. The children's companies flourished from time to time, and especially from 1599-1607 they were, as we learn from Hamlet, formidable rivals of the men.
The history of the adult companies shows the growth of two distinct interests, that of Henslowe and Alleyn, and that of the Burbages. Henslowe, whose diary is one of the chief documents for the history of the theater, built the Rose, and in partnership with his son-in-law, the famous actor Alleyn, controlled the Fortune and the Hope, and the companies known as the Admiral's and the Earl of Worcester's men, and later on the Queen's and the Prince's men. The Burbages owned the Theater, the Globe, and the Blackfriars, and were in control of Shakespeare's company. This company, at first the Earl of Leicester's men, was known by the names of its various patrons, Strange's, Derby's, Hunsdon's, and the Lord Chamberlain's, until in 1603 it became the King's men. For a short time, as Lord Strange's men, it acted at the Rose, and apparently later at the playhouse in Newington Butts, but its regular theaters were the Theater, the Globe, and Blackfriars. With this company Shakespeare was connected from the beginning, and he aided in making it the chief London company. For a time, Alleyn and the Admiral's men were its close rivals, but even before the accession of James I, Shakespeare and Burbage had given it a supremacy that it maintained to the closing of the theaters.
There are various pictures of the exterior of Elizabethan theaters in the contemporary maps or views of London, the best representation of the four Bankside theaters being the engraving of Hollar printed in the Tudor edition of Twelfth Night. This was first published in Londinopolis, 1657, but represents the Bankside as it was about 1620. Four pictures of interiors have been preserved, that from Kirkman's Drolls, those from the title-pages of Roxana and Messalina, and the DeWitt drawing of the Swan, reproduced in the Tudor Shakespeare, 1 Henry VI. The drawing from Kirkman's Drolls is usually known as the Red Bull stage, but it was not issued until 1679, and does not seem to have anything to do with the Red Bull or with Public Theatersany other regular theater. The Messalina and Roxana pictures are small, and both show a rear curtain and a projecting stage. The DeWitt drawing was done from hearsay evidence, is inaccurate in details, and represents a theater with a movable stage, probably not long regularly used for plays; it gives little idea of the stage, but does afford a good general notion of the interior of a public theater. The contract for the Fortune theater, built on the model of the Globe, except that it was square instead of octagonal, has been preserved and enables us to complete this view of the interior in detail.
The public theaters were usually round, or nearly round, wooden buildings of three stories. These stories were occupied by tiers of galleries encircling the pit, which was open to the air. The stage projected halfway into the pit, and was provided with dressing rooms in the rear, and a protecting roof overhead, supported in some cases by pillars. At the top was the 'hut', a room used to provide apparatus for raising and lowering persons or properties from the stage, Light when needed was provided by torches. Admission to standing room in the pit was usually only a penny, but seats in the gallery or boxes or on the stage cost much more, rising as high as half a crown. Performances were given on every fair day except Sunday, and a flag flying from the hut indicated that a play was to be performed. Some of the public playhouses were used for acrobats, fencing, or even bear-baiting as well as for plays; but the better theaters, as the Globe and Fortune, seem to have been limited to dramatic performances.
The size and arrangement of the stage doubtless varied somewhat with the different theaters, and considerable changes seem to have been introduced by the indoor private theaters. But the Curtain was used from 1577 to 1642, some new theaters were modeled closely on the old, and the same plays were acted on different stages, so it is apparent that in all the stage was the same in its main features. For clearness these may be again enumerated. The stage was a platform projecting into the pit, open on three sides, and without any front curtain. In the rear were two doors, and between them, an alcove, or inner stage, separated from the front stage by curtains. Above the inner stage was a gallery, also provided with curtains, and over the doors were windows or balconies. The arrangement of doors, inner stage, gallery, and curtain may have varied somewhat, but the essential elements are a curtained space at the rear, and a gallery above. Trap-doors were also provided, and the hut overhead supplied the machinery for ascents and descents of gods and goddesses.
Our diagram for the ground floor of the Fortune shows a square-cornered stage with doors flat on the rear, while the perspective drawing from Dr. Albright's Shaksperian Stage shows a tapering stage, as in the Messalina picture, with doors on the bias. Some stagesThe Fortune Theater may have had rounded corners with doors in the side. The pillars were not necessary in the private theaters; or in some public houses where other means were found for supporting the roof.
GROUND PLAN OF THE FORTUNE THEATER
Dimensions: 80 ft. square on the outside; 55 ft. square on the inside,
the stage 43 ft. wide and extending to the middle of the pit.
The performance of a play differed in many ways from one to-day. There was no scenery and there were no women actors. Though scenes were used in court performances as early as 1604, they do not seem to have been employed by the professional companies to any extent until after the Restoration. Female parts were taken by boys, and, except in plays acted by the children's companies, there were rarely more than two important female characters in a play. Though without scenery, the Elizabethan stage was by no means devoid of spectacle. Processions, battles, all kinds of mythological beings, ascents to heaven, descents to hell, fire-works, and elaborate properties, were employed. Numerous contemporary plays indicate that neither the fairyland of A Midsummer-Night's Dream, nor the magnificent court of Henry VIII, was devised without an eye to the resources of the stage. Large sums of money were lavished on costumes, the cost of a coat often exceeding the price paid an author for a play. Costume was anachronistic; Cleopatra was impersonated by a boy in stays and farthingale; and Cæsar, probably by Burbage, in a costume much like that worn by the Earl of Essex. Some attention, however, was paid to appropriateness. Shepherds were clothed in white, hunters in green; and doubtless mermaids, Stage Presentationfairies, Venuses, and satyrs were given as appropriate a dress as fancy could devise. The action of a play seems usually to have been completed in two hours. There was sometimes music between the acts, but there were no long waits, and little stage business.