Читать книгу Their Majesties' Servants. Annals of the English Stage (Volume 1 of 3) - Doran John - Страница 2

The period of the origin of the drama is an unsettled question, but it has been fixed at an early date, if we may accept the theory of a recent writer, who suggests that Moses described the Creation from a visionary pictorial representation, which occupied seven days from the commencement to the close of the spectacle!

Among the most remote of the Chinese traditions, the theatre holds a conspicuous place. In Cochin-China there is at this day a most primitive character about actors, authors, and audience. The governor of the district enjoys the least rude seat in the sylvan theatre; he directs the applause by tapping with his fingers on a little drum, and as at this signal his secretaries fling strings full of cash on to the stage, the performance suffers from continual interruption. For the largesse distributed by the patron of the drama, and such of the spectators as choose to follow his example, the actors and actresses furiously scramble, while the poor poet stands by, sees his best situations sacrificed, and is none the richer – by way of compensation.

In Greece the profession of actor was accounted honourable. In Rome it was sometimes a well-requited, but also a despised vocation. During the decade of years when that aristocratic democrat Pisistratus held power, the drama first appeared (it is said) at Athens. It formed a portion of the religion of the State. The theatre was a temple in which, rudely enough at first, the audience were taught how the will, not only of men but of gods, must necessarily submit to the irresistible force of Destiny. This last power, represented by a combination of the lyric and epic elements, formed the drama which had its origin in Greece alone. In such a sense the Semitic races had no drama at all, while in Greece it was almost exclusively of Attic growth, its religious character being especially supported on behalf of the audience by the ever-sagacious, morally, and fervently-pious chorus. Lyric tragedy existed before the age of Thespis and Pisistratus; but a spoken tragedy dates from that period alone, above five centuries earlier than the Christian era; and the new theatre found at once its Prynne and its Collier in that hearty hater of actors and acting, the legislative Solon.

At the great festivals, when the theatres were opened, the expenses of the representations were borne partly by the State and partly by certain wealthy officials. The admission was free, until over-crowding produced fatal accidents. To diminish the latter an entrance-fee of two oboli, 3¼d., was established, but the receipts were made over to the poor.1 From morning till dewy eve these roofless buildings, capable of containing on an average twenty thousand persons, were filled from the ground to the topmost seat, in the sweet spring-tide, sole theatrical season of the Greeks.

Disgrace and disfranchisement were the penalties laid upon the professional Roman actor. He was accounted infamous, and was excluded from the tribes. Nevertheless, the calling in Italy had something of a religious quality. Livy tells us of a company of Etruscan actors, ballet-pantomimists, however, rather than comedians, who were employed to avert the anger of the gods, which was manifested by a raging pestilence. These Etruscans were in their way the originators of the drama in Italy. That drama was at first a dance, then a dance and song; with them was subsequently interwoven a story. From the period of Livius Andronicus (b. c. 240) is dated the origin of an actual Latin theatre, a theatre the glory of which was at its highest in the days of Attius and Terence, but for which a dramatic literature became extinct when the mimes took the place of the old comedy and tragedy.

Even in Rome the skill of the artist sometimes freed him from the degradation attached to the exercise of his art. Roscius, the popular comedian, contemporary with Cicero, was elevated by Sulla to the equestrian dignity, and with Æsopus, the great tragedian, enjoyed the friendship of Tully and of Tully's friends, the wisest and the noblest in Rome. Roscius and Æsopus were what would now be called scholars and gentlemen, as well as unequalled artists, whom no amount of application could appal when they had to achieve a triumph in their art. An Austrian emperor once "encored" an entire opera (the Matrimonio Segreto); but, according to Cicero, his friend Æsopus so delighted his enthusiastic audience, that in one piece they encored him "millies," a thousand, or perhaps an indefinite number of times. The Roman tragedian lived well, and bequeathed a vast fortune to his son. Roscius earned £32 daily, and he too amassed great wealth.

The mimes were satirical burlesques, parts of which were often improvised, and had some affinity to the pasquinades and harlequinades of modern Italy. The writers were the intimate friends of emperors; the actors were infamous. Cæsar induced Decius Laberius, an author of knightly rank, to appear on the stage in one of these pieces; and Laberius obeyed, not for the sake of the honorarium, £4000, but from dread of disobeying an order from so powerful a master. The unwilling actor profited by his degradation to satirise the policy of Cæsar, who did not resent the liberty, but restored Laberius to the rank and equestrian privileges which he had forfeited by appearing on the stage. Laberius, however, never recovered the respect of his countrymen, not even of those who had applauded him the most loudly.

The licentious pantomimists were so gross in their performances that they even disgusted Tiberius, who forbade them from holding any intercourse, as the professional histriones or actors of the drama had done, with Romans of equestrian or senatorial dignity. It was against the stage, exclusively given up to their scandalous exhibitions, that the Christian fathers levelled their denunciations. They would have approved a "well-trod stage," as Milton did, and the object attributed to it by Aristotle, – but they had only anathemas for that horrible theatre where danced and postured Bathyllus and Hylas, and Pylades, Latinus and Nero, and even that graceful Paris, whom Domitian slew in his jealousy, and of whom Martial wrote that he was the great glory and grief of the Roman theatre, and that all Venuses and Cupids were buried for ever in the sepulchre of Paris, the darling of old Rome.

In this our England, minds and hearts had ever been open to dramatic impressions. The Druidical rites contained the elements of dramatic spectacle. The Pagan Saxon era had its dialogue-actors, or buffoons; and when the period of Christianity succeeded, its professors and teachers took of the evil epoch what best suited their purposes. In narrative dialogue, or song, they dramatised the incidents of the lives of the saints, and of One greater than saints; and they thus rendered intelligible to listeners what would have been incomprehensible if it had been presented to them as readers.

In Castle-Hall, before farm-house fires, on the bridges, and in the market-places, the men who best performed the united offices of missionary and actor, were, at once, the most popular preachers and players of the day. The greatest of them all, St. Adhelm, when he found his audience growing weary of too much serious exposition, would take his small harp from under his robes, and would strike up a narrative song, that would render his hearers hilarious.

The mixture of the sacred and profane in the early dialogues and drama prevailed for a lengthened period. The profane sometimes superabounded, and the higher Church authorities had to look to it. The monotony of monastic life had caused the wandering glee-men to be too warmly welcomed within the monastery circles, where there were men who cheerfully employed their energies in furnishing new songs and lively "patter" to the strollers. It was, doubtless, all well meant; but more serious men thought it wise to prohibit the indulgence of this peculiar literary pursuit. Accordingly, the Council of Clovershoe, and decrees bearing the king's mark, severally ordained that actors, and other vagabonds therein named, should no longer have access to monasteries, and that no priest should either play the glee-man himself, or encourage the members of that disreputable profession, by turning ale poets, and writing songs for them.

It is a singular fact, that one of our earliest theatres had Geoffrey, a monk, for its manager, and Dunstable – immortalised by Silvester Daggerwood – for a locality. This early manager, who flourished about 1119,2 rented a house in the town just named, when a drama was represented, which had St. Katherine for a heroine, and her whole life for a subject. This proto-theatre was, of course, burnt down; and the managing monk withdrew from the profession, more happy than most ruined managers, in this, that he had his cell at St. Albans, to which he could retire, and therein find a home for the remainder of his days.

Through a course of Mysteries, Miracle-plays – illustrating Scripture, history, legend, and the sufferings of the martyrs, – Moralities, in which the vices were in antagonism against the virtues, and Chronicle-plays, which were history in dialogue, we finally arrive at legitimate Tragedy and Comedy. Till this last and welcome consummation, the Church as regularly employed the stage for religious ends, as the old heathen magistrates did when they made village festivals the means of maintaining a religious feeling among the villagers. Professor Browne, in his History of Greek Classical Literature, remarks: – "The believers in a pure faith can scarcely understand a religious element in dramatic exhibitions. They who knew that God is a spirit, and that they who worship Him must worship him in spirit and in truth, feel that His attributes are too awful to permit any ideas connected with Deity to be brought into contact with the exhibition of human passions. Religious poetry of any kind, except that which has been inspired, has seldom been the work of minds sufficiently heavenly and spiritual, to be perfectly successful in attaining the end of poetry, namely the elevation of the thoughts to a level with the subject. It brings God down to man, instead of raising man to Him. It causes that which is most offensive to religious feeling, and even good taste, irreverent familiarity with subjects which cannot be contemplated without awe. But a religious drama would be, to those who realise to their own minds the spirituality of God, nothing less than anthropomorphism and idolatry. Christians of a less advanced age, and believers in a more sensuous creed, were able to view with pleasure the mystery-plays in which the gravest truths of the Gospel were dramatically represented; nay, more, just as the ancient Athenians could look even upon their gross and licentious comedy as forming part of a religious ceremony, so could Christians imagine a religious element in profane dramas which represented in a ludicrous light subjects of the most holy character."

Mysteries kept the stage from the Norman to the Tudor era. The Moralities began to displace them during the reign of Henry VI., who was a less beneficial patron of the stage than that Richard III. who has himself retained a so unpleasant possession of the scene. Actors and dramatists have been ungrateful to this individual, who was their first practically useful patron. Never, previous to Richard's time, had an English prince been known to have a company of players of his own. When Duke of Gloucester, a troop of such servants was attached to his household. Richard was unselfish towards these new retainers; whenever he was too "busy," or "not i' the vein" to receive instruction or amusement at their hands, he gave them licence to travel abroad, and forth went the mirthful company, from county to county, mansion to mansion, from one corporation-hall and from one inn-yard to another, playing securely under the sanction of his name, winning favour for themselves, and a great measure of public regard, probably, for their then generous and princely master.

The fashion thus set by a prince was followed by the nobility, and it led to a legal recognition of the actor and his craft, in the royal licence of 1572, whereby the players connected with noble houses were empowered to play wherever it seemed good to them, if their master sanctioned their absence, without any let or hindrance from the law.

The patronage of actors by the Duke of Gloucester led to a love of acting by gentlemen amateurs. Richard had ennobled the profession, the gentlemen of the Inns of Court took it up, and they soon had kings and queens leading the applause of approving audiences. To the same example may be traced the custom of having dramatic performances in public schools, the pupils being the performers. These boys, or, in their place, the children of the Chapel Royal, were frequently summoned to play in presence of the King and Court. Boatsful of them went down the river to Greenwich, or up to Hampton Court, to enliven the dulness or stimulate the religious enthusiasm of their royal auditors there. At the former place, and when there was not yet any suspicion of the orthodoxy of Henry VIII., the boys of St. Paul's acted a Latin play before the sovereign and the representatives of other sovereigns. The object of the play was to exalt the Pope, and consequently Luther and his wife were the foolish villains of the piece, exposed to the contempt and derision of the delighted and right-thinking hearers.

In most cases the playwrights, even when members of the clergy, were actors as well as authors. This is the more singular, as the players were generally of a roystering character, and were but ill-regarded by the Church. Nevertheless, by their united efforts, though they were not always colleagues, they helped the rude production of the first regularly constructed English comedy, "Ralph Roister Doister," about 1540. The author was a "clerk," named Nicholas Udall, whom Eton boys, whose master he was, hated because of his harshness. The rough and reverend gentleman brought forth the above piece, just one year previous to his losing the mastership, on suspicion of being concerned in a robbery of the college plate.

Subsequently to this, the Cambridge youths had the courage to play a tragedy called "Pammachus," which must have been offensive to the government of Henry VIII. Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, Chancellor of the University, immediately wrote a characteristic letter to the Vice-Chancellor, Dr. Matthew Parker. It is dated 27th March 1545. "I have been informed," he says, "that the youth in Christ's College, contrary to the mind of the Master and President, hath of late played a tragedy called 'Pammachus,' a part of which tragedy is so pestiferous as were intolerable. If it be so, I intend to travail, as my duty is, for the reformation of it. I know mine office there, and mind to do in it as much as I may." Parker answers on the 3d of April, that the play had been performed with the concurrence of the College authorities, after means had been taken to strike out "slanderous cavillations and suspicious sentences," and "all such matter whereby offence might greatly have risen. Hitherto," adds Parker, "have I not seen any man that was present at it to show himself grieved; albeit it was thought their time and labour might be spent in a better-handled matter." Gardiner is not satisfied with this, and he will have the subject investigated. Accordingly, some of the audience are ordered to be examined to discover if what they applauded was what the King's government had reproved. "I have heard specialities," he writes, "that they" (the actors) "reproved Lent fastings, all ceremonies, and albeit the words of sacrament and mass were not named, yet the rest of the matter written in that tragedy, in the reproof of them was expressed." Gardiner intimates that if the authorities concurred, after exercising a certain censorship, in licensing the representation, they were responsible for all that was uttered, as it must have had the approval of their judgments.

A strict examination followed. Nearly the entire audience passed under it, but not a man could or would remember that he had heard anything to which he could make objection. Therewith Parker transmitted to Gardiner the stage-copy of the tragedy, which the irate prelate thus reviews: – "Perusing the book of the tragedy which ye sent me, I find much matter not stricken out, all which, by the parties' own confession, was uttered very naught, and on the other part something not well omitted." Flagrant lies are said to be mixed up with incontrovertible truths; and it is suggested, that if any of the audience had declared that they had heard nothing at which they could take offence, it must have been because they had forgotten much of what they had heard. Ultimately, Parker was left to deal with the parties as he thought best; and he wisely seems to have thought it best to do nothing. Plays were the favourite recreation of the university men; albeit, as Parker writes, "Two or three in Trinity College think it very unseeming that Christians should play or be present at any profane comedies or tragedies."

Actors and clergy came into direct collision, when, at the accession of Edward VI. (1547), the Bishop of Winchester announced "a solemn dirge and mass," in honour of the lately deceased king, Henry VIII. The indiscreet Southwark actors thereupon gave notice that at the time announced for the religious service they would act a "solempne play" to try, as the bishop remarks in a letter to Paget, "who shall have most resort, they in game or I in earnest." The prelate urgently requests the interference of the Lord Protector, but with what effect, the records in the State Paper Office afford no information.

Some of these Southwark actors were the "servants" of Henry Grey, Marquis of Dorset, whose mansion was on the opposite side of the river. In 1551 he was promoted to the dukedom of Suffolk, but his poor players were then prohibited from playing anywhere, save in their master's presence.3

Severity led to fraud. In the autumn of the following year Richard Ogle forwarded to the Council a forged licence, taken from the players – a matter which was pronounced to be "worthy of correction." The young king's patronage of his own "servants" was not marked by a princely liberality; the salary of one of his players of interludes, John Brown, was five marks yearly as wages, and one pound three shillings and fourpence for his livery.

Of the party dramatists of this reign, that reverend prelate, "Bilious Bale," was the most active and the least pleasant-tempered. Bale had been a Romanist priest, he was now a Protestant bishop (of Ossory), with a wife to control the episcopal hospitality. Bale had "seen the world." He had gone through marvellous adventures, of which his adversaries did not believe a word; and he had converted the most abstruse doctrinal subjects into edifying semi-lively comedies. The bishop did not value his enemies at the worth of a rush in an old king's chamber. He was altogether a Boanerges; and when his "John, King of England," was produced, the audience, comprising two factions in the Church and State, found the policy of Rome towards this country illustrated with such effect, that while one party hotly denounced, the other applauded the coarse and vigorous audacity of the author.

So powerful were the influences of the stage, when thus applied, that the government of Queen Mary made similar application of them in support of their own views. A play, styled "Respublica," exhibited to the people the alleged iniquity of the Reformation, pointed out the dread excellence of the sovereign herself (personified as Queen Nemesis), and exemplified her inestimable qualities, by making all the Virtues follow in her train as Maids of honour.

Such, now, were the orthodox actors; but the heretical players were to be provided against by stringent measures. A decree of the sovereign and council, in 1556, prohibited all players and pipers from strolling through the kingdom; such strollers – the pipers singularly included – being, as it was said, disseminators of seditions and heresies.

The eye of the observant government also watched the resident actors in town. King Edward had ordered the removal of the king's revels and masques from Warwick Inn, Holborn, "to the late dissolved house of Blackfriars, London," where considerable outlay was made for scenery and machinery – adjuncts to stage effect – which are erroneously supposed to have been first introduced a century later by Davenant. There still remained acting a company at the Boar's Head, without Aldgate, on whom the police of Mary were ordered to make levy. The actors had been playing in that inn-yard a comedy, entitled a "Sack full of News." The order of the privy council to the mayor informs his worship, that it is "a lewd play;" bids him send his officers to the theatre without delay, and not only to apprehend the comedians, but to "take their play-book from them and send it before the privy council."

The actors were under arrest for four-and-twenty hours, and were then set free, but under certain stipulations to be observed by them "and all other players throughout the city," – namely: they were to exercise their vocation of acting "between All Saints and Shrovetide" only; and they were bound to act no other plays but such as were approved of by the Ordinary. This was the most stringent censorship to which the stage has ever been subjected.

Although Edward had commanded the transfer of the company of actors from Warwick Inn to Blackfriars, that dissolved monastery was not legally converted into a theatre till the year 1576, when Elizabeth was on the throne. In that year4 the Earl of Leicester's servants were licensed to open their series of seasons in a house, the site of which is occupied by Apothecaries' Hall and some adjacent buildings. At the head of the company was James, father of Richard Burbage, the original representative of Richard III. and of Hamlet, the author of which tragedies, so named, was, at the time of the opening of the Blackfriars' theatre, a lad of twelve years of age, surmounting the elementary difficulties of Latin and Greek in the Free School of Stratford-on-Avon.

In Elizabeth the drama possessed a generous patroness and a vindictive censor. Her afternoons at Windsor Castle and Richmond were made pleasant to her by the exertions of her players. The cost to her of occasional performances at the above residences during two years amounted to a fraction over £444. There were incidental expenses also, proving that the actors were well cared for. In the year 1575, among the estimates for plays at Hampton Court, the liberal sum of £8, 14s. is set down "for the boyling of the brawns against Xtmas."

As at Court, so also did the drama flourish at the Universities, especially at Cambridge. There, in 1566, the coarse dialect comedy, "Gammer Gurton's Needle" – a marvellous production, when considered as the work of a bishop, Still, of Bath and Wells – was represented amid a world of laughter.

There, too, was exercised a sharp censorship over both actors and audience. In a letter from Vice-Chancellor Hatcher to Burleigh, the conduct of Punter, a student of St. John's, at stage-plays at Caius and Trinity, is complained of as unsteady. In 1581 the heads of houses again make application to Burleigh, objecting to the players of the Great Chamberlain, the Earl of Oxford, poet and courtier, exhibiting certain plays already "practised" by them before the King. The authorities, when scholastic audiences were noisy, or when players brought no novelty with them to Cambridge, applied to the great statesman in town, and vexed him with dramatic troubles, as if he had been general stage-manager of all the companies strolling over the kingdom.

On one occasion the stage was employed as a vantage ground whereon to raise a battery against the power of the stage's great patroness, the Queen. In 1599, the indiscreet followers of Essex "filled the pit of the theatre, where Rutland and Southampton are daily seen, and where Shakspeare's company, in the great play of 'Richard II.,' have, for more than a year, been feeding the public eye with pictures of the deposition of kings." In June of the following year, "those scenes of Shakspeare's play disturb Elizabeth's dreams. The play had had a long and splendid run, not less from its glorious agony of dramatic passion than from the open countenance lent to it by the Earl, who, before his voyage, was a constant auditor at the Globe, and by his constant companions, Rutland and Southampton. The great parliamentary scene, the deposition of Richard, not in the printed book, was possibly not in the early play; yet the representation of a royal murder and a successful usurpation on the public stage is an event to be applied by the groundlings, in a pernicious and disloyal sense. Tongues whisper to the Queen that this play is part of a great plot to teach her subjects how to murder kings. They tell her she is Richard; Essex, Bolingbroke. These warnings sink into her mind. When Lambard, Keeper of the Records, waits upon her at the palace, she exclaims to him, 'I am Richard! Know you not that?'"

The performance of this play was, nevertheless, not prohibited. When the final attempt of Essex was about to be made, in February 1601 – "To fan the courage of their crew," says Mr. Hepworth Dixon, from whose Personal History of Lord Bacon I borrow these details, "and prepare the citizens for news of a royal deposition, the chiefs of the insurrection think good to revive, for a night, their favourite play. They send for Augustine Phillips, manager of the Blackfriars Theatre, to Essex House; Monteagle, Percy, and two or three more – among them Cuffe and Meyrick – gentlemen whose names and faces he does not recognise, receive him; and Lord Monteagle, speaking for the rest, tells him that they want to have played the next day Shakspeare's deposition of Richard II. Phillips objects that the play is stale, that a new one is running, and that the company will lose money by a change. Monteagle meets his objections. The theatre shall not lose; a host of gentlemen from Essex House will fill the galleries; if there is fear of loss, here are 40s. to make it up. Phillips takes the money, and King Richard is duly deposed for them, and put to death."

Meanwhile, the profession of player had been assailed by fierce opponents. In 1587,5 when twenty-three summers lightly sat on Shakspeare's brow, Gosson, the "parson" of St. Botolph's, discharged the first shot against stage plays which had yet been fired by any one not in absolute authority. Gosson's book was entitled, A School of Abuse, and it professed to contain "a pleasant invective against poets, players, jesters, and such like caterpillars of a Commonwealth." Gosson's pleasantry consists in his illogical employment of invective. Domitian favoured plays, argal, Domitian's domestic felicity was troubled by a player – Paris. Of Caligula, Gosson remarks, that he made so much of players and dancers, that "he suffered them openly to kiss his lips, when the senators might scarcely have a lick at his feet;" and the good man of St. Botolph's adds, that the murder of Domitian, by Charea, was "a fit catastrophe," for it was done as the Emperor was returning from a play!

As a painter of manners, Gosson thus gaily limns the audiences of his time. "In our Assemblies at plays in London, you shall see such heaving and shouting, such pitching and shouldering to sit by women, such care for their garments that they be not trodden on, such eyes to their laps that no chips light on them, such pillows to their backs that they take no hurt, such masking in their ears, I know not what; such giving them pippins to pass the time; such playing at foot-saunt without cards; such ticking, such toying, such smiling, such winking, and such manning them home when the sports are ended, that it is a right comedy to mark their behaviour." In this picture Gosson paints a good-humoured and a gallant people. When he turns from failings to vices, the old rector of St. Botolph's dwells upon them as Tartuffe does upon the undraped shoulders of Dorinne. He likes the subject, and makes attractive what he denounces as pernicious. The playwrights he assails with the virulence of an author, who, having been unsuccessful himself, has no gladness in the success, nor any generosity for the shortcomings of others. Yet he cannot deny that some plays are moral, such as "Cataline's Conspiracy," – "because," as he elegantly observes, "it is said to be a pig of mine own sow." This, and one or two other plays written by him, he complaisantly designates as "good plays, and sweet plays, and of all plays the best plays, and most to be liked."

Let us now return to the year of Shakspeare's birth. The great poet came into the world when the English portion of it was deafened with the thunder of Archbishop Grindal, who flung his bolts against the profession which the child in his cradle at Stratford was about to ennoble for ever. England had been devastated by the plague of 1563. Grindal illogically traced the rise of the pestilence to the theatres; and to check the evil he counselled Cecil to suppress the vocation of the idle, infamous, youth-infecting players, as the prelate called them, for one whole year, and – "if it were for ever," adds the primate, "it were not amiss."

Elizabeth's face shone upon the actors, and rehearsals went actively on before the Master of the Revels. The numbers of the players, however, so increased and spread over the kingdom, that the government, when Shakspeare was eight years of age, enacted that startling statute which is supposed to have branded dramatic art and artists with infamy. But the celebrated statute of 1572 does not declare players to be "rogues and vagabonds." It simply threatens to treat as such all acting companies who presume to set up their stage without the license of "two justices of the peace at least." This was rather to protect the art than to insult the artist; and a few years subsequent to the publication of this statute, Elizabeth granted the first royal patent conceded in England to actors – that of 1576.6 By this authority Lord Leicester's servants were empowered to produce such plays as seemed good to them, "as well," says the Queen, "for the recreation of our loving subjects as for our solace and pleasure, when we shall think good to see them." Sovereign could scarcely pay a more graceful compliment to poet or to actor.

This royal patent sanctioned the acting of plays within the liberties of the city; but against this the city magistrates commenced an active agitation. Their brethren of Middlesex followed a like course throughout the county. The players were treated as the devil's missionaries; and such unsavoury terms were flung at them and at playwrights, by the city aldermen and the county justices, that thereon was founded that animosity which led dramatic authors to represent citizens and justices as the most egregious of fools, the most arrant of knaves, and the most deluded of husbands.

Driven from the city, Burbage and his gay brotherhood were safe in the shelter of Blackfriars, adjacent to the city walls. Safe, but neither welcome nor unmolested. The devout and noble ladies who had long resided near the once sacred building, clamoured at the audacity of the actors. Divine worship and sermon, so they averred, would be grievously disturbed by the music and rant of the comedians, and by the debauched companions resorting to witness those abominable plays and interludes.

This cry was shrill and incessant, but it was unsuccessful. The Blackfriars' was patronised by a public whose favours were also solicited by those "sumptuous houses" the "Theatre" and the "Curtain" in Shoreditch. Pulpit logicians reasoned, more heedless of connection between premises and conclusion than Grindal or Gosson. "The cause of plagues is sin," argues one, "and the cause of sin are plays; therefore, the cause of plagues are plays." Again: "If these be not suppressed," exclaims a Paul's Cross preacher, "it will make such a tragedy that all London may well mourn while it is London."7 But for the sympathy of the Earl of Leicester it would have gone ill with these players. He has been as ill-requited by authors and actors as their earlier friend, Richard of Gloucester. To this day the stage exhibits the great earl, according to the legend contrived by his foes, as the murderer of his wife.

Sanctioned by the court, befriended by the noble, and followed by the general public, the players stood their ground, but they lacked the discretion which should have distinguished them. They bearded authority, played in despite of legal prohibitions, and introduced forbidden subjects of state and religion upon their stage. Thence ensued suspensions for indefinite periods, severe supervision when the suspension was rescinded, and renewed transgression on the part of the reckless companies, even to the playing on a Sunday, in any locality where they conjectured there was small likelihood of their being followed by a warrant.

But the most costly of the theatrical revels of King James took place at Whitehall, at Greenwich, or at Hampton Court, on Sunday evenings – an unseemly practice, which embittered the hatred of the Puritans against the stage, all belonging to it, and all who patronised it. James was wiser when he licensed Kirkham, Hawkins, Kendall, and Payne to train the Queen's children of the revels, and to exercise them in playing within the Blackfriars' or elsewhere all plays which had the sanction of old Samuel Danyell. His queen, Anne, was both actress and manager in the masques performed at court, the expenses of which often exceeded, indeed were ordered not to be limited to, £1000. "Excellent comedies" were played before Prince Charles and the Prince Palsgrave8 at Cambridge; and the members of St. John's, Clare, and Trinity, acted before the King and court in 1615, when the illustrious guests were scattered among the colleges, and twenty-six tuns of wine consumed within five days!

The lawyers alone were offended at the visits of the court to the amateurs at Cambridge, especially when James went thither to see the comedy of Ignoramus, in which law and lawyers are treated with small measure of respect. When James was prevented from going to Cambridge, he was accustomed to send for the whole scholastic company to appear before him, in one of the choicest of their pieces, at Royston. Roving troops were licensed by this play-loving king to follow their vocation in stated places in the country, under certain restrictions for their tarrying and wending – a fortnight's residence in one town being the time limited, with injunction not to play "during church hours."

Then there were unlicensed satirical plays in unlicensed houses. Sir John Yorke, his wife and brothers, were fined and imprisoned, because of a scandalous play acted in Sir John's house, in favour of Popery. On another occasion, in 1617, we hear of a play, in some country mansion, in which the King, represented as a huntsman, observed that he had rather hear a dog bark than a cannon roar. Two kinsmen, named Napleton, discussed this matter, whereupon one of them remarked that it was a pity the King, so well represented, ever came to the crown of England at all, for he loved his dogs better than his subjects. Whereupon the listener to this remark went and laid information before the council against the kinsman who had uttered it!

The players could, in James's reign, boast that their profession was at least kindly looked upon by the foremost man in the English Church. "No man," says Hacket, "was more wise or more serious than Archbishop Bancroft, the Atlas of our clergy, in his time; and he that writes this hath seen an interlude well presented before him, at Lambeth, by his own gentlemen, when I was one of the youngest spectators." The actors thus had the sanction of the Archbishop of Canterbury in James's reign, as they had that of Williams, Archbishop of York, in the next. Hacket often alludes to theatrical matters. "The theatres," he says, in one of his discourses made during the reign of Charles II., when the preacher was Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, "are not large enough nowadays to receive our loose gallants, male and female, but whole fields and parks are thronged with their concourse, where they make a muster of their gay clothes." Meanwhile, in 1616, the pulpit once more issued anathemas against the stage. The denouncer, on this occasion, was the preacher of St. Mary Overy's, named Sutton, whose undiscriminating censure was boldly, if not logically, answered by the actor, Field. There is a letter from the latter in the State Paper Office, in which he remonstrates against the sweeping condemnation of all players. The comedian admits that what he calls his trade has its corruptions, like other trades; but he adds, that since it is patronised by the King, there is disloyalty in preaching against it, and he hints that the theology of the preacher must be a little out of gear, seeing that he openly denounces a vocation which is not condemned in Scripture!

Field, the champion of his craft in the early part of the seventeenth century, was one of the dozen actors to whom King James, in 1619, granted a licence to act comedy, tragedy, history, &c., for the solace and pleasure of his Majesty and his subjects, at the Globe, and at their private house in the precincts of Blackfriars. This licence was made out to Hemings, Burbage, Condell, Lowen, Tooley, Underwood, Field, Benfield, Gough, Eccleston, Robinson, Shancks, and their associates. Their success rendered them audacious, and, in 1624, they got into trouble, on a complaint of the Spanish ambassador. The actors at the Globe had produced Middleton's "Game at Chess," in which the action is carried on by black and white pieces, representing the Reformed and Romanist parties. The latter, being the rogues of the piece, are foiled, and are "put in the bag." The Spanish envoy's complaint was founded on the fact that living persons were represented by the actors, such persons being the King of Spain, Gondomar, and the famous Antonio de Dominis, who, after being a Romish bishop (of Spalato), professed Protestantism, became Dean of Windsor, and after all died in his earlier faith, at Rome. On the ambassador's complaint, the actors and the author were summoned before the council, but no immediate result followed, for, two days later, Nethercole writes to Carleton, informing him that "the comedy in which the whole Spanish business is taken up, is drawing £100 nightly." At that time, a house with £20 in it was accounted a "good house," at either the Globe or Blackfriars. Receipts amounting to five times that sum, for nine afternoons successively, may be accepted as a proof of the popularity of this play. The Spaniard, however, would not let the matter rest; the play was suppressed, the actors forbidden to represent living personages on the stage, and the author was sent to prison. Middleton was not long detained in durance vile. James set him free, instigated by a quip in a poor epigram, —

A worse joke never secured for its author a greater boon – that of liberty.

With all this, an incident of the following year proves that the players disregarded peril, and found profit in excitement. For Shrovetide, 1625, they announced a play founded on the Dutch horrors at Amboyna, but the performance was stopped, on the application of the East India Company, "for fear of disturbances this Shrovetide." A watch of 800 men was set to keep all quiet on Shrove Tuesday; and the subject was not again selected for a piece till 1673, when Dryden's "Amboyna" was produced in Drury Lane, and the cruelties of the Dutch condemned in a serio-comic fashion, as those of a people – so the epilogue intimated to the public – "who have no more religion faith – than you."

In James's days, the greater or less prevalence of the plague regulated the licences for playing. Thus, permission was given to the Queen's Servants to act "in their several houses, the Curtain, and the Boar's Head, Middlesex, as soon as the plague decreases to 30 a week, in London." So, in the very first year of Charles I., 1625, the "common players" have leave not only to act where they will, but "to come to court, now the plague is reduced to six." Accordingly, there was a merry Christmas season at Hampton Court, the actors being there; and, writes Rudyard to Nethercole, "the demoiselles" (maids of honour, doubtless), "mean to present a French pastoral, wherein the Queen is a principal actress." Thus, the example set by the late Queen Anne and now adopted by Henrietta Maria, led to the introduction of actresses on the public stage, and it was the manifestation of a taste for acting exhibited by the French princess, that led to the appearance in London of actresses of that nation.

With the reign of Charles I. new hopes came to the poor player, but therewith came new adversaries. Charles I. was a hearty promoter of all sports and pleasures, provided his people would be merry and wise according to his prescription only. Wakes and maypoles were authorised by him, to the infinite disgust of the Puritans, who liked the authorisation no more than they did the suppression of lectures. When Charles repaired to church, where the Book of Sports was read, he was exposed to the chance of hearing the minister, after reading the decree as he was ordered, calmly go through the Ten Commandments, and then tell his hearers, that having listened to the commands of God and those of man, they might now follow which they liked best.

When Bishop Williams, of Lincoln, and subsequently Archbishop of York, held a living, he pleaded in behalf of the right of his Northamptonshire parishioners to dance round the maypole. When ordered to deliver up the Great Seal by the King, he retired to his episcopal palace at Buckden, where, says Hacket, "he was the worse thought of by some strict censurers, because he admitted in his public hall a comedy once or twice to be presented before him, exhibited by his own servants, for an evening recreation." Being then in disgrace, this simple matter was exaggerated by his enemies into a report, that on an Ordination Sunday, this arrogant Welshman had entertained his newly-ordained clergy with a representation of Shakspeare's "Midsummer's Night's Dream," the actors in which had been expressly brought down from London for the purpose!

In the troubled days in which King Charles and Bishop Williams lived, the stage suffered with the throne and church. After this time the names of the old houses cease to be familiar. Let us take a parting glance of these primitive temples of our drama.

The royal theatre, Blackfriars, was the most nobly patronised of all the houses opened previous to the Restoration. The grown-up actors were the most skilled of their craft; and the boys, or apprentices, were the most fair and effeminate that could be procured, and could profit by instruction. On this stage Shakspeare enacted the Ghost in "Hamlet," Old Adam, and a similar line of characters, usually intrusted to the ablest of the performers of the second class. Blackfriars was a winter house. Some idea of its capability and pretension may be formed from the fact, that in 1633 its proprietors, the brothers Burbage,9 let it to the actors for a yearly rent of £50. In 1655 it was pulled down,10 after a successful career of about three-quarters of a century.

Upon the strip of shore, between Fleet Street and the Thames, there have been erected three theatres. In the year 1580, the old monastery of Whitefriars was given up to a company of players; but the Whitefriars' Theatre did not enjoy a very lengthened career. In the year 1616, that in which Shakspeare died, it had already fallen into disrepute and decay, and was never afterwards used for the representation of dramatic pieces. The other theatres, in Dorset Gardens, were built subsequently to the Restoration.

In the parish of St. Giles's, Cripplegate, and in the street now called Playhouse Yard, connecting Whitecross Street with Golding Lane, stood the old Fortune, erected in 1600, for Henslowe (the pawnbroker and money-lender to actors) and Alleyn, the most unselfish of comedians. It was a wooden tenement, which was burned down in 1621, and replaced by a circular brick edifice. In 1649, two years after the suppression of plays by the Puritan Act, when the house was closed, a party of soldiers, "the sectaries of those yeasty times," broke into the edifice, destroyed its interior fittings, and pulled down the building.11 The site and adjacent ground were soon covered by dwelling-houses.

Meanwhile, the inn yards, or great rooms at the inns, were not yet quite superseded. The Cross Keys in Gracechurch Street, the Bull in Bishopsgate Street, near which lived Anthony Bacon, to the extreme dislike of his grandmother; and the Red Bull, in St. John Street, Clerkenwell, which last existed as late as the period of the Great Fire, were open, if not for the acting of plays, at least for exhibitions of fencing and wrestling.

The Surrey side of the Thames was a favourite locality for plays, long before the most famous of the regular and royally-sanctioned theatres. The Globe was on that old joyous Bankside; and the Little Rose, in 1584, there succeeded to an elder structure of the same name, whose memory is still preserved in Rose Alley. The Globe, the summer-house of Shakspeare and his fellows, flourished from 1594 to 1613, when it fell a prey to the flames caused by the wadding of a gun, which lodged in and set fire to the thatched roof. The new house, erected by a royal and noble subscription, was of wood, but it was tiled. Its career, however, was not very extended, for in 1654, the owner of the freehold, Sir Matthew Brand, pulled the house down; and the name of Globe Alley is all that is left to point out the whereabouts of the popular summer-house in Southwark.

On the same bank of the great river stood the Hope, a play-house four times a week, and a garden for bear-baiting on the alternate days. In the former was first played Jonson's "Bartholomew Fair." When plays were suppressed, the zealous and orthodox soldiery broke into the Hope, horsewhipped the actors, and shot the bears. This place, however, in its character of Bear Garden, rallied after the Restoration, and continued prosperous till nearly the close of the seventeenth century. There remains to be noticed, Paris Garden, famous for its cruel but well-patronised sports. Its popular circus was converted by Henslowe and Alleyn into a theatre. Here, the richest receipts were made on the Sunday, till the law interfered, and put down these performances, the dear delight of the Southwarkians and their visitors from the opposite shore, of the olden time.

The supposed assertion of Taylor, the Water poet, has often been quoted, namely, that between Windsor Bridge and Gravesend there were not less than 40,000 watermen, and that more than half of these found employment in transporting the holiday folks from the Middlesex to the Southwark shore of the river, where the players were strutting their little hour at the Globe, the Rose, and the Swan, and Bruin was being baited in the adjacent gardens. A misprint has decupled what was about the true number, and even of these, many were so unskilful that an Act was passed in the very first year of King James, for the protection of persons afloat, whether on pleasure or serious business.

In Holywell Lane, near High Street, Shoreditch, is the site of an old wooden structure which bore the distinctive name of "The Theatre," and was accounted a sumptuous house, probably because of the partial introduction of scenery there. In the early part of Shakspeare's career, as author and actor, it was closed, in consequence of proprietary disputes; and with the materials the Globe, at Bankside, was rebuilt or considerably enlarged. There was a second theatre in this district called "The Curtain," a name still retained in Curtain Road. This house remained open and successful, till the accession of Charles I., subsequent to which time stage plays gave way to exhibitions of athletic exercises.

This district was especially dramatic; the popular taste was not only there directed towards the stage, but it was a district wherein many actors dwelt, and consequently died. The baptismal register of St. Leonard's contains Christian names which appear to have been chosen with reference to the heroines of Shakspeare; and the record of burials bears the name of many an old actor of mark whose remains now lie within the churchyard.

Not a vestige, of course, exists of any of these theatres; and yet of a much older house traces may be seen by those who will seek them in remote Cornwall.

This relic of antiquity is called Piran Round. It consists of a circular embankment, about ten feet high, sloping backwards, and cut into steps for seats or standing-places. This embankment encloses a level area of grassy ground, and stands in the middle of a flat, wild heath. A couple of thousand spectators could look down from the seats upon the grassy circus which formed a stage of more than a hundred feet in diameter. Here, in very early times, sports were played and combats fought out, and rustic councils assembled. The ancient Cornish Mysteries here drew tears and laughter from the mixed audiences of the day. They were popular as late as the period of Shakspeare. Of one of them, a five act piece, entitled "The Creation of the World, with Noah's Flood," the learned Davies Gilbert has given a translation. In this historical piece, played for edification in Scripture history, the stage directions speak of varied costumes, variety of scenery, and complicated machinery, all on an open-air stage, whereon the deluge was to roll its billows and the mimic world be lost. This cataclysm achieved, the depressed spectators were rendered merry. The minstrels piped, the audience rose and footed it, and then, having had their full of amusement, they who had converged, from so many starting points, upon Piran Round, scattered again on their several ways homeward from the ancient theatre, and as the sun went down, thinned away over the heath, the fishermen going seaward, the miners inland, and the agricultural labourers to the cottages and farm-houses which dotted, here and there, the otherwise dreary moor.

Such is Piran Round described to have been, and the "old house" is worthy of tender preservation, for it once saved England from invasion! About the year 1600, "some strollers," as they are called in Somer's Tracts, were playing late at night at Piran. At the same time a party of Spaniards had landed with the intention of surprising, plundering, and burning the village. As the enemy were silently on their way to this consummation, the players, who were representing a battle, "struck up a loud alarum with drum and trumpet on the stage, which the enemy hearing, thought they were discovered, made some few idle shots, and so in a hurly-burly fled to their boats. And thus the townsmen were apprised of their danger, and delivered from it at the same time."

Thus the players rescued the kingdom! Their sons and successors were not so happy in rescuing their King; but the powerful enemies of each suppressed both real and mimic kings. How they dealt with the monarchs of the stage, our prologue at an end, remains to be told.