[Prologue to Every Man In His Humour, first printed in Folio of 1616, and possibly written for a Jacobean revival.]
lv. 1607. Ben Jonson.
[From Epistle to Volpone (cf. ch. xxiii).]
Hence is it, that I now render my selfe gratefull, and am studious to iustifie the bounty of your act: To which, though your mere authority were satisfying, yet it being an age wherein Poëtry and the Professors of it heare so ill on all sides, there will a reason bee look’d for in the subject. It is certaine, nor can it with any forehead be oppos’d, that the too-much licence of Poëtasters in this time hath much deform’d their Mistresse; that euery day their manifold and manifest ignorance doth stick vnnaturall reproches vpon her. But for their petulancy, it were an act of the greatest iniustice, either to let the learned suffer, or so diuine a skill (which indeed should not be attempted with vncleane hands) to fall vnder the least contempt. For if men will impartially, and not à-squint, looke toward the offices and function of a Poët, they will easily conclude to themselues the impossibility of any mans being the good Poët, without first being a good Man. He that is sayd to be able to informe yong-men to all good disciplines, inflame growne-men to all great vertues, keepe old men in their best and supreme state, or as they decline to child-hood, recouer them to their first strength; that comes forth the Interpreter and Arbiter of Nature, a Teacher of things diuine no lesse than humane, a Master in manners; and can alone, or with a few, effect the busines of Mankind. This, I take him, is no subject for Pride and Ignorance to exercise their railing rhetorique vpon. But it will here be hastily answer’d, that the Writers of these dayes are other things; that not onely their manners, but their natures, are inuerted, and nothing remaining with them of the dignity of Poët, but the abused name, which euery Scribe vsurpes; that now, especially in Dramatick, or (as they terme it) Stage-Poëtry, nothing but Ribaldry, Profanation, Blasphemy, al Licence of offence to God, and Man, is practisd. I dare not deny a great part of this, and am sory I dare not: because in some mens abortiue Features (and would they had neuer boasted the light) it is ouer-true. But that all are embarqu’d in this bold aduenture for Hell, is a most vncharitable thought, and vtterd, a more malicious slander. For my particular, I can, and from a most cleare conscience, affirme, that I haue euer trembled to thinke toward the least Prophanenesse; haue loathed the vse of such foule and vn-washd Baudr’y, as is now made the foode of the Scene.
lvi. 1608. William Crashaw.
[From The Sermon preached at the Crosse, Feb. xiiij. 1607 (1608, 2nd ed. 1609). Crashaw was preacher at the Inner Temple and father of Richard Crashaw, the poet. The hypocrites, Nicholas Saint-Tantlings and Simon Saint-Mary-Oueries, are characters in The Puritan (1607). John Selden says in his Table Talk (1689; ed. Reynolds, 134), ‘I never converted but two, the one was Mr. Crashaw from writing against plays, by telling him a way how to understand that place, of putting on woman’s apparel, which has nothing to do with the business’; cf. infra, s.v. Selden (1616).]
P. 169. ‘Now there are also besides these two great Babels, certaine other little pettie Babylons, namely, incurable sinnes amongst vs, ...’ P. 170. ‘2. The vngodly Playes and Enterludes so rife in this nation: what are they but a bastard of Babylon, a daughter of error and confusion, a hellish deuice (the diuels owne recreation to mock at holy things) by him deliuered to the Heathen, from them to the Papists, and from them to vs? Of this euill and plague, the Church of God in all ages can say, truly and with a good conscience, wee would haue healed her. [Quotes Tertullian and others.] ... All this they are daily made to know, but all in vaine, they be children of Babylon that will not bee healed: nay, they grow worse and worse, for now they bring religion and holy things vpon the stage: no maruel though the worthiest and mightiest men escape not, when God himselfe is so abused. Two hypocrites must be brought foorth; and how shall they be described but by these names, Nicolas S. Antlings, Simon S. Maryoueries. Thus hypocrisie a child of hell must beare the names of two Churches of God, and two wherein Gods name is called on publikely euery day in the yeere, and in one of them his blessed word preached euerie day (an example scarce matchable in the world): yet these two, wherin Gods name is thus glorified, and our Church and State honoured, shall bee by these miscreants thus dishonoured, and that not on the stage only, but euen in print.’ Complains of profaneness, atheism, blasphemy, and profaning of Sabbath ‘which generally in the countrie is their play day’. Calls on magistrate, lest God take the matter into his own hand.
lvii. 1608 (?). Thomas Heywood.
[From An Apology for Actors. Containing three briefe Treatises. 1. Their Antiquity. 2. Their ancient Dignity. 3. The True Use of their Quality (1612), reprinted by William Cartwright as The Actor’s Vindication (N.D., but according to Douce 1658) and in 1841 (Sh. Soc.). I think the treatise was probably written in 1607 and touched up in 1608, since (a) the series of actors named as dead ends with Sly, who died in Aug. 1608; (b) the Revels Office is located at St. John’s, which it lost about Feb. 1608; (c) the frustrated Spanish landing in ‘Perin’ in Cornwall ‘some 12 yeares ago’ is probably the abortive Spanish attempt to burn Pendennis Castle on Falmouth Harbour, 3 miles from Penrhyn, which appears from S. P. D. Eliz. cclvi, 21, 40, and Dasent, xxv. 15, to have taken place in the autumn of 1595, probably in connexion with the better-known landing of 22 July 1595 in Mount’s Bay. Here there is a Perranuthnoe, but this was a successful landing, resulting in serious damage to Penzance, Mousehole, and Newlyn (Procl. 879). There was also a raid at Cawsand Bay near Plymouth on 14 Mar. 1596 (S. P. D. Eliz. cclvi. 89), in which the invaders fired some houses and boats, and fled to sea on a shot being fired. But there is no ‘Perin’ in Cawsand Bay. In Journal of the Folk-Song Society, v. 275, is recorded a tradition that ‘the French once landed invading troops at Padstow Bay; but on seeing a number of mummers in red cloaks with their hobby-horse they supposed that the English army was at hand, and fled’. This raid was at St. Eval, 3 miles west of Padstow, on 13 July 1595 (Hatfield MSS. v. 285), and no doubt formed part of the same expedition which reached Mount’s Bay. Of course it was Spanish, not French; the perversion is characteristic of tradition. Conceivably this episode was what Heywood had in mind, but the nearest ‘Perin’, Perranporth, is some dozen miles farther west than St. Evall. Heywood was answered by I. G. in A Refutation of the Apology for Actors (1615), which contributes nothing new, and uses material from Gosson’s Plays Confuted (No. xxx), with references to the long-destroyed Theatre unchanged.]
[Summary and Extracts.] P. 3. To the Earl of Worcester. ‘I presumed to publish this unworthy worke under your gracious patronage ... as an acknowledgement of the duty I am bound to you in as a servant.’ P. 4. To my good Friends and Fellowes the Citty-Actors. ‘That it [our quality] hath beene esteemed by the best and greatest ... I need alledge no more than the royall and princely services in which we now live.... Some over-curious have too liberally taxed us ... we may as freely (out of our plainnesse) answere, as they (out of their perversenesse) object, instancing my selfe by famous Scaliger, learned Doctor Gager, Doctor Gentiles, and others.... So, wishing you judiciall audiences, honest poets, and true gatherers, I commit you all to the fulnesse of your best wishes.’ P. 6. Verses by, inter alios, John Webster, and by Richard Perkins, Christopher Beeston and Robert Pallant to their ‘fellow’. Book i. P. 15. The author is ‘mooved by the sundry exclamations of many seditious sectists in this age.... It hath pleased the high and mighty princes of this land to limit the use of certaine publicke theaters, which, since many of those over-curious heads have lavishly and violently slandered, I hold it not amisse to lay open some few antiquities to approve the true use of them.’ A vision of Melpomene. Actors in antiquity. P. 20. The lives of worthies ‘can no way bee so exquisitly demonstrated, nor so lively portrayed, as by action.... A description is only a shadow, received by the eare, but not perceived by the eye; so lively portrature is meerely a forme seene by the eye, but can neither shew action, passion, motion, or any other gesture to moove the spirits of the beholder to admiration: but to see a souldier shap’d like a souldier, walke, speake, act like a souldier; to see a Hector all besmered in blood, trampling upon the bulkes of kinges; a Troilus returning from the field, in the sight of his father Priam, as if man and horse, even from the steed’s rough fetlockes to the plume on the champion’s helmet, had bene together plunged into a purple ocean; to see a Pompey ride in triumph, then a Caesar conquer that Pompey; labouring Hannibal alive, hewing his passage through the Alpes. To see as I have seene, Hercules, in his owne shape, hunting the boare, knocking downe the bull, taming the hart, fighting with Hydra, murdering Geryon, slaughtering Diomed, wounding the Stymphalides, killing the Centaurs, pashing the lion, squeezing the dragon, dragging Cerberus in chaynes, and lastly, on his high pyramides waiting Nil ultra, Oh, these were sights to make an Alexander! To turne to our domesticke hystories: what English blood, seeing the person of any bold Englishman presented, and doth not hugge his fame, and hunnye at his valor, pursuing him in his enterprise with his best wishes, and as beeing wrapt in contemplation, offers to him in his hart all prosperous performance, as if the personator were the man personated? so bewitching a thing is lively and well-spirited action, that it hath power to new-mold the harts of the spectators, and fashion them to the shape of any noble and notable attempt. What coward, to see his countrymen valiant, would not bee ashamed of his owne cowardise? What English prince, should hee behold the true portrature of that famous King Edward the Third, foraging France, taking so great a king captive in his owne country, quartering the English lyons with the French flower-delyce, and would not bee suddenly inflam’d with so royale a spectacle, being made apt and fit for the like atchievement. So of Henry the Fift.’ The place of actors at Rome. P. 24. ‘Neither Christ himselfe, nor any of his sanctified apostles, in any of their sermons, acts, or documents, so much as named them, or upon any abusive occasion touched them.... Since they (I say) in all their holy doctrines, bookes, and principles of divinity, were content to passe them over, as thinges tollerated and indifferent, why should any nice and over-scrupulous heads, since they cannot ground their curiousnesse either upon the Old or New Testament, take upon them to correct, controule, or carpe at that, against which they cannot finde any text in the sacred scriptures?’ P. 25. ‘Since God hath provided us of these pastimes, why may we not use them to his glory? Now, if you aske me why were not the theaters as gorgeously built in all other cities of Italy as Rome, and why are not playhouses maintained as well in other cities of England as London? My answere is ... Rome was a metropolis, a place whither all the nations knowne under the sunne resorted: so is London, and being to receive all estates, all princes, all nations, therefore to affoord them all choyce of pastimes, sports, and recreations.’ Actors in Greece. The scriptural prohibition of change of sex-costume has no reference to plays. P. 28. ‘To see our youths attired in the habit of women, who knowes not what their intents be? who cannot distinguish them by their names, assuredly knowing they are but to represent such a lady, at such a tyme appoynted? Do not the Universities, the fountaines and well springs of all good arts, learning, and documents, admit the like in their colledges? and they (I assure my selfe) are not ignorant of their true use. In the time of my residence at Cambridge, I have seen tragedyes, comedyes, historyes, pastorals, and shewes, publickly acted, in which the graduates of good place and reputation have bene specially parted.’ Value of such exercises in teaching audacity in disputation and good enunciation. The critics of acting ‘a sorte of finde-faults’. Book ii. Antiquities of the theatre, and distribution of theatres in ancient and modern states. P. 40. ‘The King of Denmarke, father to him that now reigneth, entertained into his service a company of English comedians, commended unto him by the honourable the Earle of Leicester: the Duke of Brunswicke and the Landgrave of Hessen retaine in their courts certaine of ours of the same quality.... And amongst us one of our best English Chroniclers [in margin, ‘Stowe’] records, that when Edward the Fourth would shew himselfe in publicke state to the view of the people, hee repaired to his palace at S. Johnes, where he accustomed to see the citty actors: and since then that house, by the prince’s free gift, hath belonged to the Office of the Revels, where our court playes have beene in late daies yearely rehersed, perfected, and corrected before they come to the publike view of the prince and the nobility.’ Famous classical actors. P. 43. ‘According to the occasion offered to do some right to our English actors, as Knell, Bentley, Mils, Wilson, Crosse, Lanam, and others, these, since I never saw them, as being before my time, I cannot (as an eye-witnesse of their desert) give them that applause, which no doubt they worthily merit; yet by the report of many juditiall auditors their performances of many parts have been so absolute, that it were a kinde of sinne to drowne their worths in Lethe, and not commit their (almost forgotten) names to eternity. Here I must needs remember Tarleton, in his time gratious with the queene, his soveraigne, and in the people’s generall applause, whom succeeded Wil. Kemp, as wel in the favour of her majesty, as in the opinion and good thoughts of the generall audience. Gabriel, Singer, Pope, Phillips, Sly, all the right I can do them is but this, that, though they be dead, their deserts yet live in the remembrance of many. Among so many dead, let me not forget one yet alive, in his time the most worthy, famous Maister Edward Allen.... I also could wish, that such as are condemned for their licentiousnesse, might by a generall consent bee quite excluded our society; for, as we are men that stand in the broad eye of the world, so should our manners, gestures, and behaviours, savour of such government and modesty, to deserve the good thoughts and reports of all men, and to abide the sharpest censures even of those that are the greatest opposites to the quality. Many amongst us I know to be of substance, of government, of sober lives, and temperate carriages, house-keepers, and contributory to all duties enjoyned them, equally with them that are rank’t with the most bountifull; and if amongst so many of sort, there be any few degenerate from the rest in that good demeanor which is both requisite and expected at their hands, let me entreat you not to censure hardly of all for the misdeeds of some.’ On royal actors, quoting (p. 45) ‘M. Kid, in his Spanish Tragedy’. Book iii. The quality not to be condemned because of its abuses. P. 52. ‘Playing is an ornament to the citty.’ It refines the language, instructs the ignorant, and teaches moral lessons. P. 54. ‘Briefly, there is neither tragedy, history, comedy, morall, or pastorall, from which an infinite use cannot be gathered. I speake not in the defence of any lascivious shewes, scurrelous jests, or scandalous invectives. If there be any such I banish them quite from my patronage.’ Plays have discovered murders. P. 57. ‘We will prove it by a domestike and home-borne truth, which within these few years happened. At Lin, in Norfolke, the then Earl of Sussex players acting the old History of Feyer Francis’ drove a townswoman to confess the murder of her husband in circumstances parallel to those of the play. P. 58. Relates rout of Spanish raiders ‘at a place called Perin in Cornwall’, though their alarm at the drum and trumpets of ‘a company of the same quality some 12 yeares ago, or not so much ... playing late in the night’. Another story of a woman who had driven a nail into her husband’s brain, urged to remorse by a similar incident in ‘the last part of the Four Sons of Aymon’ played by ‘a company of our English comedians (well knowne)’ at Amsterdam. Summarizes the favour of many sovereigns to players. P. 60. ‘The cardinal at Bruxels hath at this time in pay a company of our English comedians.... But in no country they are of that eminence that our’s are: so our most royall and ever renouned soveraigne hath licenced us in London: so did his predecessor, the thrice vertuous virgin, Queen Elizabeth; and before her, her sister, Queene Mary, Edward the sixth, and their father, Henry the eighth.’ P. 61. ‘Moreover, to this day in divers places of England there be townes that held the priviledge of their faires, and other charters by yearely stage-playes, as at Manningtree in Suffolke, Kendall in the north, and others.... Now, to speake of some abuse lately crept into the quality, as an inveighing against the state, the court, the law, the citty, and their governements, with the particularizing of private men’s humors (yet alive) noblemen, and others: I know it distastes many; neither do I any way approve it, nor dare I by any meanes excuse it. The liberty which some arrogate to themselves, committing their bitternesse, and liberall invectives against all estates, to the mouthes of children, supposing their juniority to be a priviledge for any rayling, be it never so violent, I could advise all such to curbe and limit this presumed liberty within the bands of discretion and government. But wise and juditiall censurers, before whom such complaints shall at any time hereafter come, wil not (I hope) impute these abuses to any transgression in us, who have ever been carefull and provident to shun the like.’ P. 162. Epistle to the publisher. Notes the printer’s faults in his Britain’s Troy, and the pirating of his two epistles of Paris to Helen, and Helen to Paris by Jaggard [in The Passionate Pilgrim].
lviii. 1610. William Crashaw.
[From A Sermon Preached in London before the right honorable the Lord Lawarre, Lord Gouernour and Captaine Generall of Virginea ... Feb. 21, 1609 (1610).]
P. 57. ‘We confesse this action hath three great enemies: but who be they? euen the Diuell, Papists, and Players.’ P. 62. ‘3. As for Plaiers: (pardon me right Honourable and beloued, for wronging this place and your patience with so base a subiect) they play with Princes and Potentates, Magistrates and Ministers, nay with God and Religion, and all holy things: nothing that is good, excellent or holy can escape them: how then can this action?... But why are the Players enemies to this Plantation and doe abuse it? I will tell you the causes: First, for that they are so multiplied here, that one cannot liue by another, and they see that wee send of all trades to Virginea, but will send no Players, which if wee would doe, they that remaine would gaine the more at home. Secondly ... because wee resolue to suffer no Idle persons in Virginea, which course if it were taken in England, they know they might turne to new occupations.’
lix. 1615. I. H.
[From This World’s Folly. Or A Warning-Peece discharged vpon the Wickednesse thereof. By I. H. (1615).]
Bv-B2. ‘What voice is heard in our streetes? Nought but the squeaking out of those τερετίσματα, obscaene and light Iigges, stuft with loathsome and vnheard-of Ribauldry, suckt from the poysonous dugs of Sinne-sweld Theaters.... More haue recourse to Playing houses, then to Praying houses.... I will not particularize those Blitea dramata (as Laberius termes another sort) those Fortune-fatted fooles, and Times Ideots, whose garbe is the Tooth-ache of witte, the Plague-sore of Iudgement, the Common-sewer of Obscaenities, and the very Traine-powder that dischargeth the roaring Meg (not Mol) of all scurrile villanies vpon the Cities face; who are faine to produce blinde Impudence [in margin, ‘Garlicke’], to personate himselfe vpon their stage, behung with chaynes of Garlicke, as an Antidote against their owne infectious breaths, lest it should kill their Oyster-crying Audience. Vos quoque [in margin, ‘Or Tu quoque’], and you also, who with Scylla-barking, Stentor-throated bellowings, flash choaking squibbes of absurd vanities into the nosthrils of your spectators, barbarously diuerting Nature, and defacing Gods owne image, by metamorphising humane [in margin, ‘Greenes Baboone’] shape into bestiall forme. Those also stand within the stroke of my penne, who were wont to Curtaine ouer their defects with knauish conueyances, and scum off the froth of all wanton vanity, to qualifie the eager appetite of their slapping Fauorites.’
lx. 1615. J. Cocke.
[The variant texts of this character are here given from the two editions of John Stephens’ essays, in each of which it is Bk. ii, char. 4, viz. (A) Satyrical Essayes Characters and Others (1615) and (B) Essayes and Characters, Ironical and Instructive. The second impression (1615), of which a reprint is in J. O. Halliwell, Old Books of Characters (1857), 131. Between A and B had appeared the sixth edition of The Wife, with the character of An Excellent Actor and the reference to a rival as ‘the imitating Characterist’ (v. No. lxi). To this the additions in B are a rejoinder, and they are reinforced by two epistles. One is ‘To the namelesse Rayler: who hath lenghthened his Excellent Actor, a most needy Caracter following the wife with a peece of dog-skin witt; dressed ouer with oyle of sweaty Posthorse’. Here the writer, I. S., says he did ‘admit a friends Satyre’. The other epistle, ‘To the nameles Author of a late Character entituled, an Excellent Actor, following The Wife’, is signed by ‘I. Cocke’, who says, ‘witnes your gross mistaking of approued and authorised actors for counterfeit Runagates, or country Players, inueighed against by the Characterist’. Some appended verses claim for Cocke the authorship of the Tinker, Apparator, and Almanac-maker in The Wife. It seems clear that Cocke and not Stephens wrote the present character, and that An Excellent Actor was a reply to it. It is true that Stephens only speaks of it as ‘lenghthened’ by the attack on himself, but ‘lenghthened’ may mean ‘pieced out’, and there is no version, long or short, in any of the five first editions of The Wife, while a reference to ‘the sixt impression of S. Thomas Overburyes wife’ on p. 434 of B shows this was before its writers. John Stephens (cf. ch. xxiii) was a Lincoln’s Inn dramatist. I cannot find a likely Cocke in the Lincoln’s Inn Admission Books; there is an Isaac Cox, admitted 10 Jan. 1611 (i. 154), and a John Cookes on 6 June 1614 (i. 166). Can the satirist be the John Cooke (cf. ch. xxiii) who wrote Greene’s Tu Quoque?]
A common Player
Is a slow Payer, seldom a Purchaser, never a Puritan. The Statute hath done wisely to acknowledg him a Rogue errant[824], for his chiefe essence is, A daily Counterfeit[825]: He hath beene familiar so long with out-sides, that he professes himselfe (being unknowne) to be an apparant Gentleman. But his thinne Felt, and his silke Stockings, or his foule Linnen, and faire Doublet, doe (in him) bodily reveal the Broker: So beeing not sutable, hee proves a Motley: his mind observing the same fashion of his body: both consist of parcells and remnants: but his minde hath commonly the newer fashion, and the newer stuffe: hee would not else hearken so passionately after new Tunes, new Trickes, new Devises: These together apparrell his braine and understanding, whilst he takes the materialls upon trust, and is himself the Taylor to take measure of his soules liking. Hee doth conjecture somewhat strongly, but dares not commend a playes goodnes,[826] till he hath either spoken, or heard the Epilogue[827]: neither dares he entitle good things Good, unlesse hee be heartned on by the multitude: till then hee saith faintly what hee thinkes, with a willing purpose to recant or persist: So howsoever hee pretends to have a royall Master or Mistresse, his wages and dependance prove him to be the servant of the people.[828] When he doth hold conference upon the stage; and should looke directly in his fellows face; hee turnes about his voice into the assembly for applause-sake, like a Trumpeter in the fields, that shifts places to get an eccho.[829] The cautions of his judging humor (if hee dares undertake it) be a certaine number of sawsie rude[830] jests against the common lawyer; hansome conceits against the fine Courtiers; delicate quirkes against the rich Cuckold a cittizen; shadowed glaunce[831] for good innocent Ladies and Gentlewomen; with a nipping scoffe for some honest Justice, who hath[832] imprisoned him: or some thriftie Trades-man, who hath allowed him no credit: alwayes remembred, his object is, A new play, or A play newly revived. Other Poems he admits, as good-fellowes take Tobacco, or ignorant Burgesses give a voyce, for company sake; as thinges that neither maintaine nor be against him. To be a player, is to have a mithridate against the pestilence; for players cannot tarry where the plague raignes; and therfore they be seldome infected.[833] He can seeme no lesse then one in honour, or at least one mounted; for unto miseries which persecute such, he is most incident. Hence it proceeds, that in the prosperous fortune of a play frequented, he proves immoderate, and falles into a Drunkards paradise, till it be last no longer. Otherwise when adversities come, they come together: For Lent and Shrovetuesday be not farre asunder, then he is dejected daily and weekely: his blessings be neither lame nor monstrous; they goe upon foure legges, but moove slowly, and make as great a distance between their steppes, as between the foure Tearmes. Reproofe is ill bestowed uppon him; it cannot alter his conditions: he hath bin so accustomed to the scorne and laughter of his audience, that hee cannot bee ashamed of himselfe: for hee dares laugh in the middest of a serious conference, without blushing.[834] If hee marries, hee mistakes the Woman for the Boy in Womans attire, by not respecting a difference in the mischiefe: But so long as he lives unmarried, hee mistakes the Boy, or a Whore for the Woman; by courting the first on the stage, or visiting the second at her devotions. When hee is most commendable, you must confesse there is no truth in him: for his best action is but an imitation of truth, and nullum simile est idem. It may be imagined I abuse his carriage, and hee perhaps may suddenly bee thought faire-conditioned; for he playes above board.[835] Take him at the best, he is but a shifting companion; for hee lives effectually by putting on, and putting off. If his profession were single, hee would think himselfe a simple fellow, as hee doth all professions besides his owne: His own therefore is compounded of all Natures, all humours, all professions. Hee is politick also[836] to perceive the commonwealth[837] doubts of his licence, and therefore in spight of Parliaments or Statutes hee incorporates himselfe by the title of a brotherhood. Painting and fine cloths may not by the same reason be called abusive, that players may not be called rogues: For they bee chiefe ornaments of his Majesties Revells.[838] I need not multiplie his character; for boyes and every one, wil no sooner see men of this Facultie walke along but they wil (unasked) informe you what hee is by the vulgar title.[839] Yet in the generall number of them, many may deserve a wise mans commendation: and therefore did I prefix an Epithite of common, to distinguish the base and artlesse appendants of our citty companies, which often times start away into rusticall wanderers and then (like Proteus) start backe again into the Citty number.[840]
lxi. 1615. John Webster (?).
[This Character Of an Excellent Actor is one of the additions made in the 6th edition (1615) to the Characters printed with Sir Thomas Overbury’s The Wife, of which the 1st edition appeared after Overbury’s death on 15 Sept. 1613. The Characters do not profess to be all from Overbury’s hand, and the present one was evidently written as a reply to that of A Common Player (No. lx). The allusion to painting suggests that the model was Richard Burbadge. The passage Therefore the imitating Characterist ... flea them was omitted in the 7th edition (1616) and in later editions, including the 9th (1616), from which the reprints in E. F. Rimbault, Works of Overbury, 147, and H. Morley, Character Writings, 86, are taken. A. F. Bourgeois, in 11 N. Q. x. 3, 23, gives some striking parallels of phrase between the Characters of 1615 and the work of John Webster, which may point to his authorship. Later Characters of a Player are in J. Earle, Microcosmography (1628, ed. A. S. West, 81), and R. M., Micrologia (1629, Morley, 285).]
An Excellent Actor.
Whatsoeuer is commendable in the graue Orator, is most exquisitly perfect in him; for by a full and significant action of body, he charmes our attention: sit in a full Theater, and you will thinke you see so many lines drawne from the circumference of so many eares, whiles the Actor is the Center. He doth not striue to make nature monstrous, she is often seene in the same Scaene with him, but neither on Stilts nor Crutches; and for his voice tis not lower then the prompter, nor lowder then the Foile and Target. By his action he fortifies morall precepts with example; for what we see him personate, we thinke truely done before vs: a man of a deepe thought might apprehend, the Ghosts of our ancient Heroes walk’t againe, and take him (at seuerall times) for many of them. Hee is much affected to painting, and tis a question whether that make him an excellent Plaier, or his playing an exquisite painter. Hee addes grace to the Poets labours: for what in the Poet is but ditty, in him is both ditty and musicke. He entertaines vs in the best leasure of our life, that is betweene meales, the most vnfit time, either for study or bodily exercise: the flight of Hawkes and chase of wilde beastes, either of them are delights noble: but some think this sport of men the worthier, despight all calumny. All men haue beene of his occupation: and indeed, what hee doth fainedly that doe others essentially: this day one plaies a Monarch, the next a priuate person. Heere one Acts a Tyrant, on the morrow an Exile: A Parasite this man to night, to morow a Precisian, and so of diuers others. I obserue, of all men liuing, a worthy Actor in one kind is the strongest motiue of affection that can be: for when he dies, wee cannot be perswaded any man can doe his parts like him. Therefore the imitating Characterist was extreame idle in calling them Rogues. His Muse it seemes, with all his loud inuocation, could not be wak’d to light him a snuffe to read the Statute: for I would let his malicious ignorance vnderstand, that Rogues are not to be imploide as maine ornaments to his Maiesties Reuels; but the itch of bestriding the Presse, or getting vp on this wodden Pacolet, hath defil’d more innocent paper, then euer did Laxatiue Physicke: yet is their inuention such tyred stuffe, that like Kentish Posthorse they can not go beyond their ordinary stage, should you flea them. But to conclude, I valew a worthy Actor by the corruption of some few of the quality, as I would doe gold in the oare; I should not mind the drosse, but the purity of the metall.
lxii. 1616. John Selden.
[From a letter to Ben Jonson of ‘28th of Feb. 1615’ (Works, ii. 1690).]
‘I have most willingly collected what you wished, my notes touching the literal sense and historical of the holy text usually brought against the counterfeiting of sexes by apparell.’ Explains it as a prohibition of an idolatrous Palestine ritual.
lxiii. 1616. Nathan Field.
[From Feild the Players Letter to Mr Sutton, Preacher att St Mary Overs, 1616, printed by Halliwell, Illustrations, 115, from S. P. Dom. Jac. I, lxxxix. 105. There are some slight references to the stage in Thomas Sutton’s England’s First and Second Summons (1616), 27, 195, but these are Paul’s Cross sermons delivered, and in the case of the first at least printed, before he became preacher at Saint Mary Overies in 1616, and Field is probably answering something later and more pointed.]
Protests that Sutton’s labour ‘to hinder the Sacrament and banish me from myne owne parishe Churche’ is ‘uncharitable dealing with your poore parishioners, whose purses participate in your contribucion and whose labour yow are contented to eate’. Can find nothing in the Bible, ‘which I have studied as my best parte’, condemning players, nor does ‘our Caesar, our David’, King James, condemn them.