On December 8, 1660, a great change was effected at the theatre. For the first time, to the exasperation of the Puritans, a woman’s part was taken by a woman. The place was the theatre of Vere Street. The part first performed was that of Desdemona. The prologue written “to introduce the first woman that came to act on the stage” was as follows (Leigh Hunt, The Town):—

And the epilogue, much shorter, was as follows:—

This change altered the whole character of the theatre. At the beginning it lowered the tone of the stage, which was already bad enough. When the spectators became accustomed to the appearance of women on the stage, it began perhaps to have a refining influence, but certainly not at first.

In Wycherley’s Country Wife, Pinchwife takes his wife to the “eighteen-penny place” so that she shall not be seen. This place was the tier called the upper boxes. Ladies sometimes went into the Pit, but not alone. In the same play Alithea says to her lover, “I will not go if you intend to leave me alone in the Pit as you used to do.” Ladies, however, for the most part, went into the first tier or dress circle, where they received visits from their friends. Lord Foppington says, “After dinner I go to the play, where I amuse myself till nine o’clock with looking upon the company, and usually dispose of an hour more in leading them out.”

The tickets were, to the boxes, 4s.; to the Pit, half-a-crown; to the upper boxes, 1s. 6d.; and to the gallery, 1s. There were only two theatres, the King’s and the Duke of York’s; the seats were simple benches without backs.

Pepys, a great lover of the stage, commends the improvement of the theatre since the Restoration:—

“The stage is now by his pains a thousand times better and more glorious than ever heretofore. Now, wax-candles, and many of them; then, not above 3 lbs. of tallow: now, all things civil, no rudeness anywhere; then, as in a bear-garden: then, two or three fiddlers; now, nine or ten of the best: then, nothing but rushes upon the ground, and everything else mean; and now, all otherwise: then, the Queen seldom, and King never would come; now, not the King only for state, but all civil people do think they may come as well as any. He tells me that he hath gone several times, eight or ten times, he tells me, hence to Rome, to hear good musique; so much he loves it, though he never did sing or play a note. That he hath ever endeavoured in the late King’s time, and in this, to introduce good musique, but he never could do it, there never having been any musique here better than ballads. Nay, says, ‘Hermitt poore’ and ‘Chevy Chese’ was all the musique we had; and yet no ordinary fiddlers get so much money as ours do here, which speaks our rudenesse still” (Pepys, vol. vi. pp. 171, 172).

Bankside had long since ceased to be the chosen seat of the drama. The Globe, after being burned down and rebuilt, was finally pulled down in 1644; the Rose, the Swan, and the Bear Garden had met the same fate; the Fortune Theatre was destroyed by soldiers in 1549; the Curtain had become, before it was pulled down, a place for prize fights; Blackfriars Theatre, after standing empty for some years, in accordance with the law, was pulled down in 1655.

In 1642 the Parliament commanded the cessation of plays on the ground “that public sports do not well agree with public calamities, nor public stage plays with the seasons of humiliation.” So the houses were closed. Then, as always happened, the law was timidly and tentatively broken; the theatres began again. In 1647, however, a second ordinance appeared calling upon the magistrates to enter houses where performances were going on and to arrest the performers. This ordinance proving of more effect, a third and more stringent law was passed denouncing stage plays, interludes, and common plays as the occasion of many and sundry great vices and disorders, tending to the high provocation of God’s wrath and displeasure, ordered the destruction of all galleries, seats, and stages of the theatre. This settled the question for the time. Most of the actors went off to fight for the King; a few remained and gave private performances at the residences of noblemen. In 1658 Davenant opened the old Cockpit Theatre in Drury Lane for performances of declamation and music without being molested. Probably he ascertained beforehand what the Protector would do. On the Restoration a bookseller of dramatic propensities took possession of the Cockpit, where he played with his two apprentices, Betterton and Kynaston. Killigrew and Davenant obtained patents for opening theatres, Killigrew’s company to be called the King’s servants, Davenant’s to be called the Duke of York’s servants. Davenant associated with himself the dramatic booksellers, and after a season at the Phœnix went to the new theatre in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and from there to the larger theatre in Dorset Garden, Fleet Street, a place more commodious because it was on the river, the great highway of London. Killigrew began at the Red Bull in St. John’s Street, going from that place, which seems to have been out of the way, to Gibbon’s Tennis Court in Clare Market. He then proceeded to build a new theatre in Drury Lane, not far from the Phœnix. The new theatre opened with Beaumont and Fletcher’s comedy of the Humourous Lieutenant on April 8, 1663. Ten of the company were in the Royal household, and had allowances of scarlet cloth and lace for liveries; did they wear the livery on the stage? It was here that Charles fell in love with Nell Gwynne; she was playing Valeria in Dryden’s Tyrannic Love. She died on the stage and then jumped up and spoke the epilogue:—

Here Pepys saw her, was presented to her, and kissed her, “and a mighty pretty soul she is.” And again he mentions how he saw her in a part called Florimell, “a comical part done by Nell that I never can hope to see the like done again by man or woman.”

It is sometimes stated that the theatres of the time were still without a roof. This appears to be incorrect. Pepys mentions the inconvenience of rain. “To the King’s house and saw the Silent Woman. Before the play was done it fell such a storm of hail that we in the pit were fain to rise and all the house in disorder.” A few years later, however, he notes (May 1, 1668) another visit to the same theatre, where he saw the Surprizall, and mentions “a disorder in the pit by its raining in from the cupola at top, it being a very foul day.” There was, therefore, some kind of dome or cupola open at the side.

The time of commencing the performance was three, so that the theatre, at all events for the first part of Charles’s reign, was an afternoon amusement. The doors were thrown open soon after noon. Pepys, on one occasion, went to the theatre a little after noon; the doors were not then open, but they were thrown open shortly afterwards. On entering the Pit he found many people there already, having got in by private ways. As he had had no dinner he found a boy to keep his seat, and went outside to get some dinner at the Rose Tavern (Wills’s, Russell Street).

The play was constantly changed, and the popularity of the rival houses continually varied. On one occasion, on arriving at Drury Lane at three, the hour for beginning, Pepys found not one single person in the Pit. However, some came late, and there was a performance after all. The new fashion of having women instead of boys for the female parts was so popular, that plays acted by women alone were actually presented. One of the plays then performed, Killigrew’s Parsons Wedding, is described as “obscene and loose,” for which reason it was thought fittest for women to play.

The wearing of masks at the theatre, which was common among ladies, was due to the disgraceful licence of the dramatist. One would think, however, that if ladies disliked the grossness, they might stay away; perhaps it was rather due partly to the desire of not attracting public attention, partly to the charm of the mysterious. As for women disliking the coarseness of the play, we may simply remember that though women are in every age better than men in that respect, they are not always very much better. Like the clergy, the best we can expect of them is that they should be a little better than the men.

The seventeenth century witnessed the splendour and the death of the masque. For fifty years, if one sought for fine stage scenery, splendid dresses, curious stage effects, it was not at the theatre that it was to be found, but at the masque.

It was a very costly form of entertainment. Private persons could not attempt it. No manager of a theatre could attempt it, because the fullest house could not pay for producing it. Only great noblemen, rich bodies, and the Court could present a masque. There was orchestral music of the finest; there were songs, madrigals, choruses; there were long speeches; there was dancing, both singly and in groups; there were most costly dresses, and there were transformation scenes managed with a dexterity worthy of a modern theatre. It is remarkable that the theatre never tried to vie with the masque in scenery or dresses or music. Ben Jonson was the principal writer of the libretti; Henry Lawn was the musician; Gills the inventor of the dances; Inigo Jones the machinist and scene painter.

James the First and his Queen delighted in the masque. So did Charles and Henrietta; the Civil War put a stop to this beautiful and courtly entertainment; after the Restoration, when an attempt was made to revive it, the taste for it had gone; it had played its part and was dead.

Let me present, greatly abbreviated, one of Ben Jonson’s masques:—

The masque of Neptune’s Triumph for the Return of Albion is a favourable specimen of the scenic effects of the masque. It was played on Twelfth Night, 1624.

The scene at first showed nothing but two pillars with inscriptions; on the one NEP. RED., and on the other SEC. JOV. The masque opens with a long and tedious dialogue between a cook and a poet; in the course of it the latter explains the purpose of the masque, which is to celebrate the safe return of the Prince from Spain:—

The ground thus cleared, the cook brings in persons representing the various ingredients of an Olla Podrida. This was intended for the comic part. Then a comic anti-masque is danced by these mummers. After this the scene opens, and discloses the Island of Delos. The masquers are sitting in their “sieges.” Then the heavens open and disclose Apollo, Mercury, the Muses, and the Goddess Harmony. Below, Proteus is sitting. Apollo sings:—

The island moves forward and joins the mainland. There is a grand chorus of Proteus and the others while the masquers land. While they prepare for their entry the chorus sings another verse:—

Then the masquers “danced their entry.” The dance was performed by the courtiers and the Queen’s ladies. It was a dance invented for the occasion, with stately figures, arranged groups, and active “capers.” Then the scene was changed and disclosed a maritime palace, the home of Oceanus, “with loud music.” “And the other above is no more seen.”

“Then follows the main dance, after which the second prospect of the sea is shown, to the former music.”

Then Proteus and the others advance to the ladies with another song:—

The revels follow, which ended, the fleet is discovered, while the three cornets play.

After a little more foolish talk between the cook and the poet, the sailors of the fleet come in and dance, and the whole is concluded with a song by ten voices accompanied by the “Whole music, five lutes, three cornets”:—

It is sometimes stated that music was killed by the Puritans. If Pepys is to be considered as an average London citizen in this respect, their music was very far from being killed by the Puritans. We find him, his household and his friends, all singing, playing, taking a part; we find parties on the river singing part songs as they glided down the stream; we hear of the singing in church; at Court the evenings were always provided with singing boys; at the theatre songs were plentifully scattered about the plays. The Elizabethan custom of music at dinner had apparently vanished, yet the power of playing some instrument was far more general than it was later. As soon as possible after the Restoration the choral service was re-established in the cathedrals and the Royal chapels. Cooke, Lawn, Rogers, Wilson, and other composers were engaged in forming and teaching the choirs; new anthems were composed by Pelham Humphrey or Humfrey, Michael Wise, John Blow, and Henry Purcell. The last of these, one of the greatest of English composers, was born in 1658 and died in 1695.

It was common for people of rank to attend the service of the Chapel Royal at Whitehall or that of St. Paul’s Cathedral. At Oxford an association was formed, consisting of the leading scholars and professors of the University, for the purpose of promoting the study and practice of music, vocal and instrumental. It is true that in the eighteenth century music seems to have deserted the English household; perhaps in the seventeenth it lingered only among the better sort, and had already been killed in the circles affected by the sour Puritanism of the time.

The condition and advancement of painting in the century may be briefly considered. The soil was prepared for the development of the fine arts by the learning, scholarship, and travel of the English nobles and scholars. About the year 1615 the Earl of Arundel began to collect pictures, statues, vases, and gems. Prince Henry began a collection which at his death passed to his brother Charles. On his accession Charles began to increase the Royal collections begun by Henry the Eighth, and continued slowly by his successors. Charles bought the whole of the cabinet of the Duke of Milan for £18,000. The cartoons of Raffaelle were acquired in Flanders by the agency of Rubens. Whitehall Palace contained four hundred and sixty pictures, of which twenty-eight were by Titian, eleven by Correggio, sixteen by Julio Romano, nine by Raffaelle, four by Guido, and seven by Parmigiano. Vandyke, the greatest among the pupils of Rubens, came over to this country and remained here for life. In 1630 Rubens himself came over, not as a painter but as an ambassador. However, he consented to paint the ceiling of the Banqueting Hall at Whitehall. Charles planned an Academy of Arts, but, like everything else, it had to be set aside.

Among lesser painters of the century were William Dobson, John Hoskins, Samuel Cooper, John Peiletot, and Geuteleschi, all of whom lived and painted in London.

Lely of course belongs to the first Restoration period. So also do Hayls, Michael Wright, Henry Anderton, the two Vandeveldes, and many others. Grinling Gibbons belongs to the latter years of the seventeenth and the first quarter of the eighteenth century.

The greatest invention of the century was, without doubt, the newspaper. As far as this country is concerned, setting aside the apocryphal history of the English Mercury, its first newspaper was started in London by Nathaniel Butter, with whom were associated Nicholas Bonner, Thomas Archer, Nathaniel Newberry, William Sheppard, Bartholomew Dounes, and Edward Allor. The sheet was called the Weekly News, and it is believed to have begun on May 23, 1622. In the same year the London Weekly Courant also began. Twenty years later the Mercurius Clericus (1641) was started in the interests of the clergy; the Mercurius Britannicus (1642), the Mercurius Civicus (1643), the Mercurius Politicus, a Parliamentary paper, and Mercurius Pragmaticus, a Royalist paper.

About the year 1663 the Kingdom’s Intelligence was started, and this was incorporated with the London Gazette when that was founded in 1665.

Of course it was not long before the power of the Press was discovered. The Government began to subsidise the papers; private persons began to pay for notices in them; and trade advertisements began to appear. All these papers were weekly. In 1695, however, the Post Boy appeared—the first daily paper.