XVI
INTRODUCTION: THE PUBLIC THEATRES
[Bibliographical Note.—Some notes in the Gentleman’s Magazine for 1813–16 by Eu. Hood [Joseph Haslewood] are reprinted in The Gentleman’s Magazine Library, xv (1904), 86, and in Roxburghe Revels (ed. J. Maidment, 1837). J. P. Collier, History of English Dramatic Poetry, iii. 79, has An Account of the Old Theatres of London, and chronological sections on the subject are in F. G. Fleay, A Chronicle History of the London Stage (1890). T. F. Ordish, Early London Theatres (1894), covers the Shoreditch and Bankside theatres ‘in the Fields’ other than the Globe; a companion volume on the urban houses has never appeared. The Bankside houses are also dealt with by W. Rendle, The Bankside, Southwark, and the Globe (1877), being Appendix I to F. J. Furnivall, Harrison’s Description of England, Part II (N. Sh. Soc.), and in Old Southwark and its People (1878) and The Play-houses at Bankside in the Time of Shakespeare (Walford’s Antiquarian, 1885, vii. 207, 274; viii. 55). J. Q. Adams, Shakespearean Play-houses (1917), is a comprehensive and valuable work, which reached me when this chapter was practically complete. I am glad to find that our results so generally agree. The chief London maps have been reproduced by the London Topographical Society and on a smaller scale by G. E. Mitton, Maps of Old London (1908). Some are also given as illustrations in G. P. Baker, The Development of Shakespeare as a Dramatist (1907). They are classified by W. Martin, A Study of Early Map-Views of London in The Antiquary, xlv (1909), 337, 406, and their evidence for the Bankside analysed by the same writer, with partial reproductions, in The Site of the Globe Play-house of Shakespeare (1910, Surrey Archaeological Collections, xxiii. 149).
The evidence of the maps as to the position of the theatres is obscured, partly by uncertainties as to the dates and authorships both of the engravings and of the surveys on which they were based, and partly by the pictorial character of the topography. They are not strict plans in two dimensions, such as modern cartographers produce, but either drawings in full perspective, or bird’s-eye views in diminished perspective. The imaginary standpoint is always on the south, and the pictorial aspect is emphasized in the foreground, with the result that, while the Bankside theatres, but not those north of the river, are generally indicated, this is rarely with a precision which renders it possible to locate them in relation to the thoroughfares amongst which they stand. This is more particularly the case since, while the general grouping of buildings, gardens, and trees appears, from a comparison of one view with another, to be faithfully given, it is probable that the details are often both conventionally represented and out of scale. The following classification is mainly borrowed from Dr. Martin: (a) Pre-Reformation representations of London throwing no light on the theatres; (b) Wyngaerde, a pictorial drawing (c. 1543–50) by A. Van der Wyngaerde (L. T. Soc. i; Mitton, i); (c) Höfnagel, a plan with little perspective by G. Höfnagel, from a survey of c. 1554–7 (cf. A. Marks in Athenaeum for 31 March 1906), published (1572) with the title Londinum Feracissimi Angliae Regni Metropolis in G. Braun and F. Hohenburg, Civitates Orbis Terrarum (L. T. Soc. ii; Mitton, iv); (d) Agas, an engraving with more perspective, but generally similar to that of Höfnagel and possibly from the same survey, but drawn after 1561, and assigned by G. Vertue, who reproduced it (1737), to Ralph Agas (L. T. Soc. xvii; Mitton, ii); (e) Smith, a coloured drawing by William Smith, possibly based on Höfnagel or Agas, in B. M. Sloane MS. 2596, reproduced in H. B. Wheatley and E. W. Ashbee, W. Smith, The Particular Description of England, 1588 (1879), and in G. P. Baker, The Development of Shakespeare as a Dramatist (1907), 18; (f) Bankside Views, small representations of the same general character as (c), (d), and (e), used as backgrounds to pictures and described by W. Martin in Antiquary, xlv. 408; (g) Norden, engravings in slight perspective of ‘London’ and ‘Westminster’ by P. Van den Keere in J. Norden, Speculum Britanniae (1593), from survey of about the same date (L. T. Soc. vii; Mitton, v, vi; Furnivall, Harrison’s Description of England, Part I, with notes on p. lxxxix by H. B. Wheatley, reprinted by L. T. Soc. in Record, ii); (h) Delaram Group, perspective views as backgrounds to portrait (c. 1616) of James I by F. Delaram (1620), reproduced by W. Martin in Surrey A. Colls. xxiii. 186, and other portraits probably based on some original of c. 1603; (i) Hondius Group, (i) drawing by P. D. Hondius (1610) in J. Speed, Theatre of the Empire of Great Britain (1611), as inset to map of Britain (L. T. Record, ii, with notes by T. F. Ordish; Baker, f. p.), (ii) engraving on title-page of R. Baker, Chronicle (1643), reproduced by Martin in Surrey A. Colls. xxiii. 187, (iii) engraving on title-page of H. Holland, Herwologia Anglica (1620), (iv) engraving of triumphal arch at coronation entry of James I by W. Kip in S. Harrison (cf. ch. xxiv), The Arches of Triumph (1604), all perhaps based on the same original or survey; (k) Visscher, engraving in perspective by Nikolaus Janssen Visscher (1616), ‘Amstelodami, ex officina Judoci Hondii’, with mutilated text from Camden’s Britannia, reproduced from unique copy in Brit. Mus. (L. T. Soc. iv, with notes by T. F. Ordish in L. T. Record, vi; also W. Martin in Surrey A. Colls. xxiii. 188, and in Ordish, Shakespeare’s London, f. p. and elsewhere); (l) Merian Group, (i) engraving in perspective by M. Merian in J. L. Gottfried, Neuwe Archontologia Cosmica (1638), 290, reproduced by Martin, 191, and Adams, 256, and copied in (ii) f. p. to James Howell, Londinopolis (1657), reproduced by Baker, 154, and (iii) R. Wilkinson, Londina Illustrata (1819); (m) ‘Ryther’ Group, (i) engraving in very slight perspective from drawing unfinished as regards the Bankside in Crace Collection, No. 32, without date, imprint, or indication of authorship, reproduced by W. J. Loftie, History of London, ii. 282, C. L. Kingsford, Chronicles of London, (1905) f. p., and Baker, 36, 125, 135, and ascribed to Augustine Ryther in 1604, but probably of about 1636–45 (cf. 4 N. Q. ix. 95; 6 N. Q. xii. 361, 393; 7 N. Q. iii. 110; vi. 297; vii. 498) in view of (ii) another version in Crace Coll., No. 31, with the Bankside complete, bearing the imprint of ‘Cornelis Danckerts grauer of maps’ in Amsterdam (c. 1631–56), and possibly by Hollar, who worked for Danckerts, and was in England 1636–45, (iii) map by T. Porter (c. 1666), based on (i) with later additions (reproduced L. T. Soc. v); (n) Hollar, engraving in perspective by W. Hollar (in London 1635–43), published by Cornelius Danckerts in 1647 (L. T. Soc. xix; section by Martin in Surrey A. Colls. xxiii. 194); (o) Faithorne and Newcourt, engraving in conventional perspective by William Faithorne from drawing by Richard Newcourt, published in 1658 (L. T. Soc. xviii; Mitton, vii). Of the various maps of post-conflagration London the most useful are that of Leeke and Hollar (c. 1666), of which a section is reproduced by Martin in Surrey A. Colls. xxiii. 191, and those of John Ogilby and W. Morgan (1677, Mitton, viii), John Ogilby and W. Morgan (1682, L. T. Soc. xv), and John Rocque (1746, L. T. Soc. xxxiv, xxxv, xxxvii; Mitton, ix; section in Martin, ut supra, 197). Rendle, Bankside, has attempted to indicate the sites of the Bankside theatres upon a reconstructed map based on Rocque, and Martin in Surrey A. Colls. xxiii. 155, 202, gives parts of the Bankside area as it now stands from the Ordnance Survey map (1896) and a plan of the Anchor Brewery (1909).]
A. INTRODUCTION
The detailed notices, which will form the greater part of this chapter, may with advantage be prefaced with some general observations upon the historical sequence of the theatres and their distribution at different periods over the London area. The earlier Tudor London knew no theatre, in the sense of a building specially planned and maintained for public dramatic performances, although Yarmouth had its ‘game-house’ by 1538, and a theatrum at Exeter was the scene of satirical farces far back in the fourteenth century. The miracle plays, not in London processional, were given in the open air, and probably on temporary scaffolds. Similar stages may sometimes have been used for the interludes, but these were ordinarily represented in the winter-time, and sought the kindly shelter of a hall.[1019] In the provision of specialized buildings, the drama appears to have been anticipated by the ruder sport of baiting. Höfnagel’s pre-Elizabethan map already shows on the Southwark side of the river the two rings, with open centres and roofed seats for spectators, which are repeated later on by Agas and by Smith. They stand in yards or gardens lined with dog-kennels. One is lettered ‘The Bowll bayting’, the other ‘The beare bayting’. When the first Elizabethan theatres were built in 1576, it was the hall on the one hand, and the ring on the other, which determined the general structure of the two types of auditorium that came simultaneously into being.[1020] The ‘private’ house, roofed and lit, and with its seats arranged in tiers along three sides of a long room, and the ‘public’ house, generally circular, with covered stage and galleries, and a central yard or ‘pit’ open to the day, co-existed for more than half a century, and finally merged in the post-Restoration type of theatre which has come down to our own day. The distinction between ‘private’ and ‘public’ is an unessential one, depending probably upon some difference in the methods of paying for admission necessitated by the regulations of the City or the Privy Council.[1021] The performances in all the houses were public in the ordinary sense. There was, however, another important factor, besides the baiting ring, which greatly affected the structure of the open-air theatre. This was the inn-yard. Long before 1576, interludes had been given in public, as well as in the private halls of the great, and even the need for some kind of permanent, or quasi-permanent, installation had been felt. No doubt there were halls in London which could be hired. The keeper of the Carpenters’ Hall in Shoreditch was prosecuted towards the end of Henry VIII’s reign for procuring a Protestant interlude ‘to be openly played’.[1022] Fees for the letting of Trinity Hall for plays occur among the ‘casuall recepts’ of the churchwardens of St. Botolph without Aldersgate in 1566–7.[1023] A jest-book of 1567 records a play at Northumberland Place.[1024] But an even more convenient hospitality was afforded by the great court-yards of the City inns, where there was sack and bottle-ale to hand, and, as the Puritans averred, chambers ready for deeds of darkness to be done, when the play was over.[1025] In these yards, approached by archways under the inn buildings from one or more streets, and surrounded by galleries with external staircases giving access to the upper floors, an audience could quickly gather, behold at their ease, and escape payment with difficulty. The actors could be accommodated with a tiring-room on the ground floor, and perform as on a natural stage between the pillars supporting the galleries. An upper gallery could be used to vary the scene. The first performances in London inns upon record were at the Saracen’s Head, Islington, and the Boar’s Head, Aldgate, both in 1557.[1026] By the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign the use of them was normal. Plays ‘in hostels and taverns’ were specified for prohibition by the proclamation of April 1559, and the City regulations of 1574 are clearly aimed at the control of the ‘greate innes, havinge chambers and secrete places adjoyninge to their open stagies and gallyries’, and impose obligations for the sake of good order upon innkeepers and tavern-keepers in the forefront of those regarded as likely to harbour plays.[1027] It is not reading too much between the lines to suggest that the owners of particular houses specially laid themselves out to secure the attraction of public entertainments, entered into regular contracts with players, and probably even undertook structural alterations which in fact converted their yards into little less than permanent theatres.[1028] We have, indeed, the record of a trade dispute about the workmanship of play-scaffolds at the Red Lion in Stepney as far back as 1567. The Red Lion stood outside the jurisdiction of the City. Within it, and so far as we can judge, much more important in the history of the stage were the Bell and the Cross Keys, both in Gracechurch Street, the Bull in Bishopsgate Street, and the Bel Savage on Ludgate Hill. No one of these four is in fact mentioned by name as a play-house earlier than 1575, and although they must have been hard hit by the regulations of 1574, it is clear that they did not go altogether out of use, especially during the winter, when climatic conditions rendered the suburbs unattractive, for another twenty years. Stockwood, in 1578, speaks of six or eight ‘ordinarie places’ where plays were then performed.[1029] Nevertheless the action of the City, and the enterprise of James Burbadge, whose descendants claimed for him the honour of being ‘the first builder of playhowses’, led to a shifting of the dramatic focus. The Theatre and the Curtain, both built in or about 1576, stood in ‘the fields’ to the north of London proper, and were perhaps soon followed by Newington Butts on the south side of the river, beyond St. George’s Fields; while the Blackfriars, adapted in the same year (1576) by Richard Farrant to house the performances of children, occupied an old monastic building in the precinct of a ‘liberty’ which, although within the walls, was largely exempt from the jurisdiction of the Corporation. This became the home of the Children of the Chapel, while the Paul’s boys played in their own ‘song-school’, either the church of St. Gregory or some other building in the neighbourhood of St. Paul’s. How long this arrangement had existed, or whether any company of children had played in public at all before the date of Farrant’s experiment, we do not know. From 1576 onwards, it is the Theatre and the Curtain which have to bear the brunt of the Puritan attack, and the luxury of these, as compared with the primitive accommodation of the inn-yards, arouses a special indignation. ‘The sumptuous Theatre houses, a continual monument of Londons prodigalitie and folly’, wails Thomas White in 1577. Stockwood in 1578 discommends ‘the gorgeous playing place erected in the fieldes’; and William Harrison, perhaps about the same time, finds it ‘an evident token of a wicked time when plaiers wexe so riche that they can build such houses’.[1030] Presently the theatres became notable amongst the sights which foreign travellers must see in London. Lupold von Wedel in 1584 says nothing of them, although he records the baiting and its rings.[1031] But they are noticed in the following year by Samuel Kiechel, a merchant of Ulm, who writes:[1032]
‘Comedies are given daily. It is particularly mirthful to behold, when the Queen’s comedians act, but annoying to a foreigner who does not know the language, that he understands nothing. There are some peculiar houses, which are so made as to have about three galleries over one another, inasmuch as a great number of people always enters to see such an entertainment. It may well be that they take as much as from 50 to 60 dollars [£10 to £12] at once, especially when they act anything new, which has not been given before, and double prices are charged. This goes on nearly every day in the week; even though performances are forbidden on Friday and Saturday, it is not observed.’
The Theatre and the London inns were still the chief playing-places, when at some date between 1576 and 1596 William Lambarde illustrated his account of the pilgrimages to Boxley, by explaining that those who visited the shrine did not get off scot-free—
‘no more than such as goe to Parisgardein, the Bell Sauage, or Theatre, to beholde Beare baiting, Enterludes, or Fence play, can account of any pleasant spectacle, unlesse they first pay one pennie at the gate, another at the entrie of the Scaffolde, and the thirde for a quiet standing.’[1033]
Paris Garden was the generic name given to the successive places for bear-baiting which lay on the Surrey side of the river, not in Southwark proper, which was in the jurisdiction of the City, but in the Liberty of the Clink, which stretched in a westerly direction along the Bankside, or still farther to the west, in the Manor of Paris Garden itself. In Surrey, no less than in London, plays had established themselves at an early date. A performance was going on in Southwark, while the priests of St. Saviour’s sang Dirige for Henry VIII’s soul in 1547.[1034] The Privy Council ordered the Surrey justices to suppress plays in the Borough and the adjoining places during 1578; and it seems probable that a regular play-house had been built south of the river at a date not much later than that of the Theatre itself. It stood far back behind Southwark, in the village of Newington, divided from the river by St. George’s Fields. The distance and the bad roads were against it; and it was not until the Rose was built in the Clink about 1587, that the Bankside became a serious rival to the ‘fields’ in the north as the home of theatres. The Swan, in Paris Garden, was built in 1595. Newington is too far to the south to appear in the maps, but Norden’s map of 1593 shows two round buildings, standing between Bankside and an unnamed road, which may safely be identified with that called Maiden Lane. One is lettered ‘The Beare howse’, the other, more to the east and the south, ‘The play howse’; and this must clearly be the Rose.
In 1596 the City appear to have at last obtained the assent of the Privy Council to the complete exclusion of plays from the area of their jurisdiction. This is probably the proceeding described, with no precise indication of date, in the following passage from Richard Rawlidge’s A Monster Lately Found out and Discovered, or the Scourging of Tipplers (1628):[1035]
‘London hath within the memory of man lost much of hir pristine lustre, ... by being ... filled with ... sinnes, which ... are ... maintained, in Play-houses, Ale-houses, Bawdy-houses, Dising-houses, ... All which houses, and traps for Gentlemen, and others, of such Receipt, were formerly taken notice of by many Citizens, and well disposed graue Gentlemen ... wherevpon some of the pious magistrates made humble suit to the late Queene Elizabeth of ever-liuing memorie, and her priuy Counsaile, and obteined leaue from her Majesty to thrust those Players out of the Citty and to pull downe the Dicing houses: which accordingly was affected, and the Play-houses in Gracious street, Bishops-gate-street, nigh Paules, that on Ludgate hill, the White-Friars were put down, and other lewd houses quite supprest within the Liberties, by the care of those religious senators, ... and surely had all their successors followed their worthy stepps, sinne would not at this day haue beene so powerfull, and raigning as it is.’
The play-houses in Gracious or Gracechurch Street, Bishopsgate Street, and Ludgate Hill were presumably the Bell and the Cross Keys, the Bull, and the Bel Savage. By the house ‘nigh Paul’s’ Rawlidge possibly meant the choir song-school; but in fact there had been no plays by the Paul’s boys since 1590. If there was really a Whitefriars house at so early a date, this is the only notice preserved of it. It may be suspected that Rawlidge confused it with the Blackfriars, which James Burbadge was apparently prevented, upon representations by the City, from reopening in 1596. The claim of the City to exercise any control over the old religious precincts of the Blackfriars and the Whitefriars was a doubtful one; and although they ultimately secured jurisdiction, they were not able to prevent the so-called ‘private’ theatres from establishing themselves in these ‘liberties’.[1036] With these exceptions, however, and possibly that of the Boar’s Head, which seems to have been used for a few years after 1602, but was more likely just outside the bars, 1596 probably saw the last of playing within the actual gates of the City.
Londoners had now to look wholly to the suburbs for their dramatic entertainment. Prince Lewis of Anhalt-Cöthen found four theatres in 1596.[1037] These were doubtless the Theatre and the Curtain on the north and the Rose and the Swan on the south of the river. The Newington house was still used in 1594, but even before that had long been out of fashion. It was probably also about 1596 that John de Witt wrote his Observations Londinenses. He too mentioned the four theatres, together with the baiting house, and was particularly struck by the newest, and as he avers, the largest and fairest of them, the Swan, of the interior of which he attached a rough sketch to his manuscript. This manuscript is lost, but fortunately an extract survives, copied into a commonplace book by Arend van Buchell of Utrecht. The following is the complete text:[1038]
Ex Observationibus Londinensibus Johannis de Witt.
De phano D. Pauli. Huic Paulino phano adheret locus ab asservandis sacratioribus vestimentis Sacristi dictus, omnino observatione dignus, quippe quo DIANAE delubrum fuisse ferunt. Sacellum est rotundum, hemyphericum, concameratum, cuius structura Romanam antiquitatem referre videtur. Aiunt cum fundamenta templi iacerentur effossam ante huius aediculae fores innumeram cervinorum capitum copiam; inde colligi Dianae sacrificia (cui cervis litabatur) ibi olim peracta esse eique hanc aedem sacratam fuisse; in eodem phano sunt epitaphia et sepulcra varia praeter ea quae alio loco a me notata sunt, Guilelmi Herberti Penbrochiae comitis Walliae praesidis qui obijt Ao aetat. lxiii Christi vero 1569.
Ibidem in aede Westmonasteriensi sunt monumenta cum suis elogiis: Guill. Thynne armigeri ex antiqua Bottevillorum familia, Joannis Thynne fratris qui obijt 14 Martii 1584, item Joannis Bourgh Duisburgi gubernatoris Ao 1596.
Amphiteatra Londinij sunt iv visendae pulcritudinis quae a diversis intersigniis diuersa nomina sortiuntur: in iis varia quotidie scaena populo exhibetur. Horum duo excellentiora vltra Tamisim ad meridiam sita sunt, a suspensis signis ROSA et Cygnus nominata: Alia duo extra vrbem ad septentrionem sunt, viâ quâ itur per Episcopalem portam vulgariter Biscopgat nuncupatam. Est etiam quintum, sed dispari [vsu?] et structura, bestiarum concertationi destinatum, in quo multi vrsi, tauri, et stupendae magnitudinis canes, discretis caueis & septis aluntur, qui [drawing occupies rest of page] ad pugnam adseruantur, iocundissimum hominibus spectaculum praebentes. Theatrorum autem omnium prestantissimum est et amplissimum id cuius intersignium est cygnus (vulgo te theatre off te cijn [off te swan]),[1039] quippe quod tres mille homines in sedilibus admittat, constructum ex coaceruato lapide pyrritide (quorum ingens in Britannia copia est) ligneis suffultum columnis quae ob illitum marmoreum colorem, nasutissimos quoque fallere possent. Cuius quidem formam quod Romani operis vmbram videatur exprimere supra adpinxi.
Narrabat idem se vidisse in Brittannia apud Abrahamum de lyndeley [?] mercatorem Alberti Dureri omnia opera cartacea elegantissima et absolutissima.
The account of Paul Hentzner, who was in London from 31 August to 8 September 1598, lays less stress upon the theatres than upon the baiting, and is not altogether consistent with that of de Witt as to the structure of the Swan, which was the nearest house to the moorings of the royal barge at the west end of Paris Garden.[1040] Hentzner writes:
‘Sunt porro Londini extra Urbem Theatra aliquot, in quibus Histriones Angli Comoedias & Tragoedias singulis fere diebus, in magna hominum frequentia agunt, quas variis etiam saltationibus, suavissima adhibita musica, magno cum populi applausu finire solent. Non longe ab uno horum theatrorum, quae omnia lignea sunt, ad Thamesim navis est regia, quae duo egregia habet conclavia, fenestris perlucidis, picturis & sculpturis eleganter exornata, in sicco & quidem sub tecto collocata, propterea, ut a pluviis & coeli injuria immunis sit.’
Hentzner then describes the baiting.[1041] He concludes:
‘Utuntur in hisce spectaculis sicut & alibi, ubicunque locorum sint Angli, herba Nicotiana, quam Americano idiomate Tabacam nuncupant (Paetum alii dicunt) hoc modo frequentissime; Fistulae in hunc finem ex argilia factae, orificio posteriori, dictam herbam probe exiccatam, ita ut in pulverem facile redigi possit, immittunt, & igne admoto accendunt, unde fumus ab anteriori parte ore attrahitur, qui per nares rursum, tanquam per infurnibulum exit, & phlegma ac capitis defluxiones magna copia secum educit. Circumferuntur insuper in hisce theatris varii fructus venales, ut poma, pyra, nuces & pro ratione temporis, etiam vinum & cerevisia.’[1042]
It is perhaps natural that foreign visitors should be more struck by the English theatres at a time when the English stage was serving as a model to northern Europe, than was the case with a native chronicler of grave and slightly Puritanic tendencies. John Stowe, when he published his Survey of London in 1598, had nothing to say of the Bankside houses, and but little of those in Middlesex. After writing of the miracle plays, he says:
‘Of late time in place of those Stage playes, hath beene vsed Comedies, Tragedies, Enterludes, and Histories, both true and fayned: For the acting whereof certaine publike places as the Theater, the Curtine, &c., haue been erected’ [in margin, ‘Theater and Curten for Comedies & other shewes’].[1043]
In another place, at the end of a description of Holywell, he adds:
‘And neare therevnto are builded two publique houses for the acting and shewe of Comedies, Tragedies, and Histories, for recreation. Whereof the one is called the Courtein, the other the Theatre: both standing on the South-west side towards the field.’[1044]
Even these scanty references were pruned in the second edition of 1603, after the Theatre had disappeared at the end of 1598 and the Chamberlain’s men had left the Curtain. And of the Globe, built during the earlier half of 1599, to which they migrated, Stowe takes no notice. The Globe, however, appears, although unnamed, together with two other theatres, of which one must be the Curtain, in the next foreign account, a very full one by Thomas Platter of Basle, who was in England from 18 September to 20 October 1599.[1045] I translate the passage, of which sufficient use has not been made by historians of the stage:
‘After dinner on the 21st of September, at about two o’clock, I went with my companions over the water, and in the strewn roof-house saw the tragedy of the first Emperor Julius with at least fifteen characters very well acted. At the end of the comedy they danced according to their custom with extreme elegance. Two in men’s clothes and two in women’s gave this performance, in wonderful combination with each other. On another occasion, I also saw after dinner a comedy, not far from our inn, in the suburb; if I remember right, in Bishopsgate. Here they represented various nations, with whom on each occasion an Englishman fought for his daughter, and overcame them all except the German, who won the daughter in fight. He then sat down with him, and gave him and his servant strong drink, so that they both got drunk, and the servant threw his shoe at his master’s head and they both fell asleep. Meanwhile the Englishman went into the tent, robbed the German of his gains, and thus he outwitted the German also. At the end they danced very elegantly both in English and in Irish fashion. And thus every day at two o’clock in the afternoon in the city of London two and sometimes three comedies are performed, at separate places, wherewith folk make merry together, and whichever does best gets the greatest audience. The places are so built, that they play on a raised platform, and every one can well see it all. There are, however, separate galleries and there one stands more comfortably and moreover can sit, but one pays more for it. Thus anyone who remains on the level standing pays only one English penny: but if he wants to sit, he is let in at a further door, and there he gives another penny. If he desires to sit on a cushion in the most comfortable place of all, where he not only sees everything well, but can also be seen, then he gives yet another English penny at another door. And in the pauses of the comedy food and drink are carried round amongst the people, and one can thus refresh himself at his own cost.
‘The comedians are most expensively and elegantly apparelled, since it is customary in England, when distinguished gentlemen or knights die, for nearly the finest of their clothes to be made over and given to their servants, and as it is not proper for them to wear such clothes but only to imitate them, they give them to the comedians to purchase for a small sum.
‘What they can thus produce daily by way of mirth in the comedies, every one knows well, who has happened to see them acting or playing.’
Platter then describes the Cockpit and the baiting. He concludes:
‘With such and many other pastimes besides the English spend their time; in the comedies they learn what is going on in other lands, and this happens without alarm, husband and wife together in a familiar place, since for the most part the English do not much use to travel, but are content ever to learn of foreign matters at home, and ever to take their pastime.’
A year later than Platter, another traveller thus describes a visit to the Bankside:[1046]
‘1600 die Lunae 3 Julii. Audivimus comoediam Anglicam; theatrum ad morem antiquorum Romanorum constructum ex lignis, ita formatum ut omnibus ex partibus spectatores commodatissime singula videre possint. In reditu transivimus pontem magnificis aedificiis ornatum e quibus uni adhuc affixa cernuntur capita quorundam comitum et nobilium, qui laesae Majestatis rei supplicio affecti sunt.’
When Lewis of Anhalt and de Witt wrote, there were four theatres, exclusive of the City inn-yards, which were probably already closed. Platter found two, and sometimes three, performances being given daily. This agrees with the evidence available from other sources. After the scandal of The Isle of Dogs in 1597, the Privy Council decreed a limitation of the London companies to two, the Chamberlain’s men and the Admiral’s. The former played at the Curtain until 1599, when they destroyed the Theatre and built the Globe. The latter played at the Rose until 1600, when they migrated to the newly built Fortune. But it is clear that the ordinance of the Privy Council was not strictly observed. An intruding company was playing in February 1598, either at the Theatre or the Swan. Platter’s three houses in 1599 included the Curtain, together presumably with the Globe and the Rose. When the Council sanctioned the opening of the Fortune in 1600, they understood that the Curtain was to be ‘either ruinated or applied to some other good use’, but it was still the scene of plays in 1601. Finally, in the spring of 1602 Elizabeth ordered the Council to tolerate a third company, that of the Earl of Worcester, Master of the Horse. This was then playing at the Boar’s Head, a short-lived house of which practically nothing is known; in the autumn it moved to the Rose. The Swan possibly went out of use, except for the occasional performances of acrobats and fencers, or of amateurs. On the other hand, Lord Hertford’s men were in London during the winter of 1602–3, in addition to the three privileged companies, and they must have practised somewhere.
To the above must be added, for the closing years of Elizabeth’s reign, the ‘private’ houses; Paul’s reopened in the winter of 1599, the Blackfriars in that of 1600. Of these Platter knows nothing, but Duke Philip Julius of Stettin-Pomerania, in the autumn of 1602, in addition to performances at the Fortune and another theatre, saw also, doubtless at the Blackfriars, the Kinder-comoedia. The following is an extract from the diary of the visit kept by the duke’s secretary, Frederic Gerschow:[1047]
‘13 [September] On the thirteenth a comedy was played, of the taking of Stuhl-Weissenberg, firstly by the Turks, and thereafter back again by the Christians.
14. In the afternoon was played a tragicomedy of Samson and the half tribe of Benjamin.’[1048]
On 16 September the duke and his retinue saw the baiting. On 18 September they visited the Blackfriars, and Gerschow wrote an account of the organization of the Children of the Chapel and of the nature of their performances.[1049]
The Globe and the Fortune continued in regular use, as the houses of the King’s men, and the Prince’s men respectively, during the new reign, and endured to the closing of the theatres in 1642. Each was destroyed by fire and rebuilt; the former in 1613, the latter in 1621. Queen Anne’s men at first used the Boar’s Head and the Curtain, but migrated from the Boar’s Head to the Red Bull, which had been built by 1606. This became their principal house, and they cannot be shown to have used the Curtain after 1609. These were the only companies of men players in London during 1603–8, and the Globe, the Fortune, and the Red Bull are obviously the ‘three houses’ whose rivalry is referred to by Dekker in the following passage from his Raven’s Almanack of 1608:[1050]
‘Another ciuill warre doe I finde wil fal betweene players, who albeit at the beginning of this fatall yeare, they salute one another like sworne brothers, yet before the middle of it, shall they wish one anothers throate cut for two pence. The contention of the two houses, (the gods bee thanked) was appeased long agoe, but a deadly warre betweene the three houses will I feare burst out like thunder and lightning. For it is thought that Flag will be aduanced (as it were in mortall defiance against Flag), numbers of people will also bee mustred and fall to one side or other, the drums and trumpets must be sounded, partes will then (euen by the chiefest players) bee taken: words will passe to and fro: speeches cannot so bee put vp, handes will walke, an alarum be giuen, fortune must fauour some, or els they are neuer able to stand: the whole world must sticke to others, or else al the water in the theames wil not serue to carrie those away that will bee put to flight, and a third faction must fight like wilde Buls against Lyons, or else it will be in vaine to march vp into the field.’
There were, however, more than three London companies about 1608. M. de la Boderie tells us how one fell into disgrace during that year, and how four others subscribed to buy off the consequent inhibition of plays.[1051] The reconciliation is simple. Dekker has in mind only the ‘public’ and not the ‘private’ houses. Of these Paul’s was closed in 1606; it was made worth its Master’s while not to reopen it. The Blackfriars was used by the successive boy companies, known generically as the Queen’s Revels, until 1608 or 1609, when it passed to the King’s men, who thereafter maintained it as a winter house, to supplement the Globe. The Queen’s Revels then moved to the Whitefriars, a private house built at some time before 1608, and occupied in that year by the ephemeral company of the King’s Revels.
An increase in the number of adult companies now made fresh demands upon theatrical house-room. It is presumably the Duke of York’s men who were described at Leicester in 1608 as ‘the Princes players of the White Chapple, London’. The description suggests that they used the Boar’s Head, but if so, nothing more is heard of it, and it is conceivable that they soon succeeded to the Curtain. The Lady Elizabeth’s, who came into existence in 1611, are traceable at the Swan, which Henslowe may have taken over to succeed the Rose, disused, if not pulled down, by 1606. The following lines are in John Heath’s Two Centuries of Epigrammes (1610), but may of course, especially as the Red Bull is not named, date back to the period when the Curtain was still in the hands of the Queen’s men:
A foreign traveller again gives us help. The relation of the visit of Prince Lewis Frederick of Württemberg in 1610 merely records that he went to the Globe, and Justus Zingerling, who was in London at about the same date, has the briefest note of the existence of ‘theatra comoedorum et in quibus ursi et tauri cum canibus committuntur’.[1053] But the itinerary of Prince Otto of Hesse-Cassel in the following year is more expansive. The compiler writes:
‘In London there are seven theatres, where daily, except on Sundays, comedies are performed, whereof the most important is the Globe, which lies over the water. The theatre, where the children play, is on the hither side of the water; they play at three o’clock, but only from Michaelmas to Easter. Here it only costs half a shilling to enter, but for the other places at least half a crown. These play only with lights, and are the best company in London.’[1054]
In addition to the Globe and the Whitefriars, the tale of seven theatres is probably made up by the Blackfriars, the Fortune, the Red Bull, the Curtain, and the Swan.
Henslowe’s correspondence with Daborne shows that he still had a ‘publique howse’, probably the Swan, in December 1613, and also that in June of that year his company was only just thinking of ‘comming over’ for a summer season, presumably from the Whitefriars, as he had recently carried out an amalgamation between the Lady Elizabeth’s men and the Queen’s Revels.[1055] In the following year occurred an episode which curiously emphasizes the constant shifting of the focus of theatrical interest during the whole of the period with which we are concerned. Originally stageland was in the heart of the City itself. With the building of the first theatres, it was transferred to the Fields of the northern suburbs. During the last decade of the sixteenth century the Fields in their turn gave way to the Bankside. The Rose, the Swan, and the Globe successively made their appearance, and the vestry of Southwark began to echo the earlier outcry of the City against the iniquities of players, until their mouths were stopped with tithes. But the transpontine period proved a brief one. Hardly was the Globe up, before Alleyn’s choice of a site for the Fortune set the fashion veering again, and opened up a new theatrical region in the western suburbs. This was convenient for the Court and the great houses along the Strand and for the lawyers in the Temple and at Westminster, as well as for the City proper, and its tradition has endured until quite recent years. The Red Bull and the Whitefriars followed in the same area. On the other hand, the Rose had vanished, and the King’s men, although they did not desert the Globe, acknowledged the change of venue by taking up their winter quarters in the Blackfriars hard by. One result was that men who had ridden to the Fields and been ferried to the Bankside, now walked or drove in their coaches to the theatre door. During the spring of 1614 things were probably at their worst. Both the Globe, after its fire, and the Hope were still in the builder’s hands, and if the Lady Elizabeth’s lingered again at the Whitefriars, there can have been no plays across the water at all. The watermen, who twenty years before had exercised the influence of their patron, the Lord Admiral, to induce the Privy Council to revoke an inhibition on the Bankside houses, sent up a bitter cry of protest. John Taylor, the ‘water-poet’, whom they chose as their spokesman, tells the story.[1056] A petition to the King was prepared, to the effect that no play-house might be permitted ‘in London or in Middlesex, within four miles of the City on that side of the Thames’, and with this Taylor pursued James to Theobalds, Newmarket, and Royston. It recited the service done by watermen in the navy during the Armada invasion of 1588 and in such expeditions as those of Essex in 1596 and 1597. And it proceeded: