GRASSINGTON THEATRICALS.
To the Editor.
Dear sir,—When I sent you the [sketch] of “Tom Airay” of this place, and his associates, I was not aware that the practice of acting plays was a very ancient one in the parish of Linton, (in which this place is.) The following extract from Whitaker’s history will prove this to have been the case, and that Airay was “the last of a bright band.” It will doubtless be perused with interest by many of the inhabitants of Craven, very few of whom I am inclined to think know of the circumstance. Whitaker’s history is an expensive work, and only in the hands of a few.
“Many of these amusements were long after in use at Linton. But the most popular of their amusements was the practice of acting old plays, continued, I have no doubt, from the old ‘Kirk Sights,’ and clerk plays, though I can trace it in Craven no farther than 1606, where I find the following article in the accounts of Francis, earl of Cumberland:—
“‘Item, paid to the yonge men of the town, (Skipton,) being his l’ps tenants and servants, to fit them for acting plays this Christmas, IIIIs.’
“In the interval of a century from this time, it does not seem that they had much improved their stock of dramas; for, within the recollection of old persons with whom I have conversed, one of their favourite performances was ‘The Iron Age,’ by Heywood, a poet of the reign of James I., whose work, long since become scarce, and almost forgotten, had probably been handed down from father to son, through all that period. But in every play, whether tragedy or comedy, the Vice constituted one of the dramatis personæ, and was armed, as of old, with a sword of lath, and habited in a loose party-coloured dress, with a fur-cap, and fox’s brush behind. In some parts of Craven these personages were called clowns, as in Shakspeare’s time, and too often and too successfully attempted to excite a laugh by ribaldry and nonsense of their own; a practice which is very properly reprehended in Hamlet.
“In the ‘Destruction of Troy’ this personage easily united with Thersites; but he was often found in situations where his appearance was very incongruous, as ex. gr. in ‘George Barnwell.’ These rustic actors had neither stage nor scenes, but performed in a large room, what is called the ‘house,’[331] of an ordinary dwelling.
“Sometimes they fabricated a kind of rude drama for themselves; in which case, as it is not likely that the plot would be very skilfully developed, the performers entered one by one, and each uttered a short metrical prologue, which they very properly chose to call a fore-speech. For why should these honest Englishmen be indebted to the Grecian stage for the word prologue, when they were certainly beholden to it for nothing else?