[1729] Grindal to Cecil (1564, App. D, No. xv), ‘these Histriones, common playours who now daylye, butt speciallye on holydayes, sett vp bylles’; Merry Tales, &c. (1567; cf. ch. xxiii, s.v. Vennar), ‘billes ... vpon postes about London’; Northbrooke (1577, App. C, No. xvi), ‘they use to set vp their billes vpon postes certain dayes before’; Gosson, S. A. (1579, App. C, No. xxii), 44, ‘If players can ... proclame it in their billes, and make it good in theaters’; Rankins (1587, App. C, No. xxxviii), ‘sticking of their bills in London’; Marston, Scourge of Villainy (Bullen, iii. 302), ‘Go read each post, view what is play’d to-day’; Histriomastix, v. 69, ‘Text-bills must now be turned to iron bills’; Warning for Fair Women, (> 1599):

Wither, Abuses Stript and Whipt (1613), ii. 2:

In Bartholomew Fair, v. iii. 6, Cokes ‘reads the Bill’ of the motion; cf. Lawrence (ii. 55), The Origin of the Theatre Programme.

[1730] Devil an Ass, I. iv. 43, ‘Hee giues him the Play-bill’.

[1731] Arber, ii. 477; iii. 575.

[1732] Henslowe Papers, 106.

[1733] Lawrence, ii. 240.

[1734] Jonson, in printing plays, and following him the editors of the Beaumont and Fletcher F₁ often give the scene and the actors’ names, and casts appear in Duchess of Malfi (1623). But these are not necessarily taken from any documents put before the audiences.

[1735] Lawrence, ii. 154; cf. the stipulation in Burbadge’s lease (p. 387), and W. Fennor, Compter’s Commonwealth (1617), 8, ‘he that first comes in is first seated, like those that come to see playes’.

[1736] Cf. p. 540 (Tatham), and the notices of Hentzner and Platter (ch. xvi, introd.). In K. B. P. the wife comes with her pockets full of sweetmeats, which she bestows upon the actors, liquorice (i. 77), green ginger (ii. 279), sugar-candy (ii. 366), and her husband brings beer (iii. 631). The liquorice would open Ralph’s pipes; cf. ch. xii (Westminster) and C. Revels, ind. 215, ‘I would thou hadst some sugar candyed, to sweeten thy mouth’; Overbury, Characters (ed. Rimbault, 113, A Puny-Clarke), ‘Hee eats ginger-bread at a play-house’.

[1737] Cf. pp. 534, 536 and Hentzner (ch. xvi, introd.); C. Revels, ind. 122, ‘I haue my three sorts of Tabacco, in my Pocket, my light by me’; K. B. P. i. 224, ‘Fie, this stinking Tobacco kils men, would there were none in England, now I pray Gentlemen, what good does this stinking Tobacco? do you nothing, I warrant you make chimnies a your faces’; Dekker, G. H. B., ‘By sitting on the stage, you may ... get your match lighted’; Scornful Lady, I. ii. 52, ‘They wear swords to reach fire at a play’; Sir Giles Goosecap, IV. ii. 87 (street-scene), ‘By this fire, they do, my lord’. Burn, 84, cites a note by Sir J. Caesar in Lansd. MS. 160, p. 302, of a speech by James in a Star Chamber case of 1613, in which he advised gentlemen of the Temple not to frequent plays, whence the smoke of tobacco and the presence of painted ladies should deter them.

[1738] W. Fennor, Descriptions (1616), ‘I suppose this Pamphlet will hap into your hands before a Play begin, with the importunate clamour of “Buy a new Booke!” by some needy companion that will be glad to furnish you with worke for a turned teaster’. Dekker, G. H. B. (cf. App. H), recommends cards.

[1739] V. P. xiv. 593, 599, records a charge against the ambassador Foscarini (1611–15) of pursuing a woman, and ‘sometimes attending the public comedies and standing among the people on the chance of seeing her’. Foscarini said he only went three or four times to the play and that the archduke’s ambassador and his wife did the same. It was given in evidence that the ambassador Giustiniani (Dec. 1605–Oct. 1608) went with the French ambassador and his wife to see Pericles at a cost of 20 crowns. This must have been at the Globe. For the presence of harlots, cf. pp. 534, 535; vol. i, p. 255.

[1740] Dekker, G. H. B. (1609, Works, ii. 201), ‘you can neither shake our Comick Theater with your stinking breath of hisses, nor raise it with the thunder-claps of your hands’ (cf. also App. H); Isle of Gulls, ind., ’Tis growne into a custome at playes if anyone rise (especially of any fashionable sort) about what serious busines soeuer, the rest thinking it in dislike of the play, tho he neuer thinks it, cry “Mew! by Jesus, vilde!” and leaue the poore hartlesse children to speake their Epilogue to the emptie seates’. Later a Gent. says, ‘See it be baudy, or by the light I and all my friends will hisse’, and the Prologue replies, ‘You shoulde not deale gentlemanlike with us els’; E. Guilpin, Skialetheia (1598), prol. to Sat., ‘It is the grand hisse to a filthy play’; Roaring Girl, prol., ‘If that he finds not here, he mews at it’; T. and C., epil.:

Downfall of Robin Hood, ad fin.:

Devil an Ass, III. v. 41:

[1741] Isle of Gulls, ind., ‘a prepared company of gallants to aplaud his iests and grace out his play’; Histriomastix, ii. 137, ‘Belch.’ ‘What’s an Ingle? Posthaste. One whose hands are hard as battle doors with clapping at baldness’. For the special use of ‘ingle’ (= ‘intimate’) in the sense of a patron of players, cf. Poetaster, I. ii. 18, ‘What! shall I have my sonne a stager now? an enghle for players? a gull? a rooke? a shot-clogge? to make suppers, and bee laught at?’

[1742] Cf. p. 547, n. 1.

[1743] K. to K. a Knave (1594), ad fin.; Looking-Glass, 2282; Locrine, 2276; 2 Hen. IV, epil. 35, ‘And so kneele down before you; but indeed, to pray for the Queene’; Two Wise Men and All the Rest Fools (1619), epil., ‘It resteth that we render you very humble and hearty thanks, and that all our hearts pray for the king and his family’s enduring happiness, and our country’s perpetual welfare. Si placet, plaudite’; cf. ch. xxii.

[1744] Cf. ch. x.

[1745] M. N. D. v. i. 360, ‘Will it please you to see the epilogue, or to hear a Bergomask dance between two of our company?’; Much Ado, v. i. 130, ‘Strike vp, pipers. Dance’; A. Y. L. V. iv. 182.

[1746] Cf. ch. xiii (Leicester’s).

[1747] Murray, ii. 206, 293, 304, 367, ‘upon the Q. players at the dancing on the rop’ (1590, Bridgnorth), ‘vnto the Torkey Tumblers’ (1589–90, Ipswich), ‘to certen playars, playinge uppon ropes at the Crosse Keyes’ (1590, Leicester), ‘to the Quenes men when the Turke wente vpon roppes at Newhall’ (22 April 1590, Norwich); Coventry Corp. MS. A 7 (b), ‘the Queens players & the turk’ (1589–90, Coventry); cf. Nashe, Epistle to Strange Newes (1592, Works, i. 262), ‘Say I am as verie a Turke as hee that three yeeres ago ranne vpon ropes’. A Gloucester payment of 1594–5 for ‘a wagon in the pageant for the Turke’ (Murray, ii. 285) may or may not refer to the acrobat of 1590.

[1748] Cf. ch. xiv.

[1749] Both Hentzner (1598) and Platter (1599) describe it; cf. ch. xvi, introd. Platter saw it at both the Globe and the Curtain, where it was ‘Englisch unndt Irlendisch’. Von Wedel also describes something very much like a well-developed jig after a baiting on the Bankside in 1584 (cf. ch. xvi, Hope).

[1750] Gosson, P. C. (1582; cf. App. C, No. xxx), ‘daunsing of gigges’; Much Ado, II. i. 78, ‘Wooing ... is hot and hasty, like a Scotch jig, and full as fantastical’; Hamlet, III. ii. 132, ‘O God, your only jig-maker’; E. M. O. (Q₁), 1147, ‘a thing studied, and rehearst as ordinarily at his comming from hawking, or hunting, as a Iigge after a play’; Jack Drum, i. 404, ‘as the Iigge is cal’d for when the play is done’; R. Knolles, Six Bookes of a Commonweal (1606), 645, ‘Now adayes they put at the end of euerie Tragedie (as poyson into meat) a comedie or jigge’ (translating Bodin’s ‘obscoena quadam fabula turpissimis ac sordidissimis narrationibus condita’); Cotgrave (1611), ‘Farce ... also, the Iyg at the end of an Enterlude, wherein some pretie knauerie is acted’; Dekker, A Strange Horse Race (1613, Works, iii. 340), ‘As I haue often seene, after the finishing of some worthy Tragedy, or Catastrophe in the open Theaters, that the sceane after the Epilogue hath been more blacke (about a nasty bawdy jigge) then the most horrid sceane in the play was: The stinkards speaking all things, yet no man understanding any thing’; cf. the late Shirley allusion on p. 528. The term is sometimes more loosely used. In James IV, 82, 88, 620, 636, 661, 666, 673, 1116, the speakers of the Induction call the main action a jig; cf. 1 Tamburlaine, prol. 1, ‘iygging vaines of riming mother wits’. Swaen (Sh.-Jahrbuch, xlvi. 122) points out that a tune known as The Cobler’s Jig would fit the dialogue song by cobblers in Locrine, 569. Naylor, 124, gives some account of jig tunes and derives the term from giga, an instrument of the fiddle type.

[1751] Cf. the quotation from K. B. P. on p. 557, and ch. v.

[1752] Tarlton and Kempe (cf. ch. xv) are spoken of as acting in ‘merriments’. I doubt whether anything more technical is meant than a farcical episode in a play, perhaps helped out with such ‘gags’ as Hamlet, III. ii. 42, deprecates.

[1753] Arber, ii. 297, 298, 571, 600, 601, 669, 670, 671; iii. 49, 50, ‘a newe Northerne Jigge’ (5 Jan. 1591), ‘the seconde parte of the gigge betwene Rowland and the Sexton’ (16 Dec. 1591), ‘the thirde and last parte of Kempes Jigge’ (28 Dec. 1591), ‘a merrie newe Jigge betwene Jenkin the Collier and Nansie’ (14 Jan. 1592), ‘a plesant newe Jigge of the broome-man’, ascribed in the margin to Kempe (16 Jan. 1595), ‘a pleasant Jigge betwene a tincker and a Clowne’ (4 Feb. 1595), ‘a ballad of Cuttinge George and his hostis beinge a Jigge’ (17 Feb. 1595), ‘Master Kempes Newe Jigge of the kitchen stuffe woman’ (2 May 1595), ‘Phillips his gigg of the slyppers’ (26 May 1595), ‘a pretie newe Jigge betwene Ffrancis the gentleman Richard the farmer and theire wyves’ (14 Oct. 1595), and ‘Kemps newe Jygge betwixt a Souldiour and a Miser and Sym the clown’ (21 Oct. 1595); cf. ch. xv (Tarlton). Creizenach, 312, cites a list of jig titles by Hoenig in Anzeiger für deutsches Altertum, xxii. 304.

[1754] Have With You to Saffron Walden (Works, iii. 114).

[1755] Henslowe, i. 70, 82.

[1756] E. Guilpin, Skialetheia, Sat. v.

[1757] App. D, No. cl; cf. the quotation from Dekker, supra; Hamlet, II. ii. 522, of Polonius, ‘He ’s for a jig or a tale of bawdry, or he sleeps’; Wither, Abuses Stript and Whipt (1613), ii. 3, ‘a Curtaine Iigge, a Libell, or a Ballet’. Possibly the Middlesex order has a bearing on the curious variant in the Epistle to Jonson’s Alchemist (1612), where some copies lament ‘the concupiscence of jigges and daunces’, others of ‘daunces and antikes’.

[1758] The Black Man is in Kirkman’s The Wits (1672), and Singing Simpkin is ascribed in undated texts to the Caroline Robert Cox, but a tune of this name was known in Basle in 1592, and a German jig of 1620 seems to be a translation; cf. Herz, 132; F. Bolte, Die Singspiele der englischen Komödianten und ihrer Nachfolger (1893, Theatergeschichtliche Forschungen, vii); W. J. Lawrence (T. L. S. 3 July 1919).

[1759] A. Clark, Shirburn Ballads, 244 (cf. S. R. list, supra, s. a. 1595), ‘M^r Attowel’s Jigge: betweene Francis, a Gentleman; Richard, a farmer; and their wives’. It is in four scenes, sung respectively to the tunes of ‘Walsingham’, ‘The Jewishe Dance’, ‘Buggle-boe’, and ‘Goe from my windo’. In Roxburghe Ballads, i. 201; ii. 101, are ‘Clod’s Carroll, a proper new jigg’, and ‘A mery new Jigge’. Collier’s ‘Jigge of a Horse Loade of Fooles’ (New Facts, 18; cf. Halliwell, Tarlton, xx) is probably a fake.

[1760] Clark, 354, from Bodl. Rawlinson Poet. MS. 185 (c. 1590), ‘A proper new ballett, intituled Rowland’s god-sonne’. It is to the tune of ‘Loth to departe’. Nashe, Summer’s Last Will and Testament, 76, mentions this jig. Two parts of a ‘Rowlandes godson moralised’ were entered in S. R. on 18 and 29 April 1592. Rowland is not a character, and numerous German allusions to and adaptations of a jig beginning ‘Oh neighbour Rowland’ (Herz, 134) have probably some other original. A ‘Roland and the Sexton’ is in the S. R. list, supra. A verse dialogue in Alleyn Papers, 8, mentions ‘bonny Rowland’ and is probably a jig of his cycle; another (p. 29) does not read to me like a jig.

[1761] Cf. ch. xv (Tarlton, Wilson) and Nashe, Pierce Penilesse (Works, i. 244), ‘the queint Comaedians of our time, That when their Play is doone, do fal to ryme’. Armin’s (q.v.) Quips Upon Questions (1600) are probably themes, or based upon the conception of themes. A theme is introduced in Histriomastix, ii. 293. The Lord sets it:

and a sixteen-line ‘song extempore’ by Posthaste follows. The verses on ‘theames’ in Gascoigne’s Posies (ed. Cunliffe, 62) are not, I think, improvisations.

[1762] Smith, Commedia dell’ Arte, 175; cf. M. J. Wolff, Shakespeare und die Commedia dell’ arte (Sh.-Jahrbuch, xlvi. 1).

[1763] C. is A. II. vii. 36, of the players in Utopia (England), ‘Sebastian. And how are their plaies? as ours are? extemporall? Valentine. O no! all premeditated things’. The references of Whetstone, Heptameron (1582), Sp. Tragedy, IV. i. 163, Middleton, Spanish Gypsy, IV. ii. 38, are specifically to French and Italian practice, and so too, presumably, A. C. v. ii. 216, ‘The quick comedians Extemporally will stage us’. The interpretation of Hamlet, II. ii. 420, ‘For the law of writ and the liberty, these are the only men’, is open, but Falstaff says in 1 Hen. IV, II. iv. 309, ‘Shall we have a play extempore?’

[1764] Hamlet, III. ii. 42; cf. John a Kent and John a Cumber, iii, ad fin., ‘One of us Johns must play beside the book’.

[1765] In K. B. P., ind. 94, where Ralph ‘should have playd Jeronimo with a Shooemaker for a wager’; Ratseis Ghost (1605, Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 326), ‘I durst venture all the mony in my purse on thy head to play Hamlet with him for a wager’; Dekker, Jests to Make You Merrie (1607, Works, ii. 282), ‘A paire of players, growing into an emulous contention of one anothers worth, refusde to put themselves to a day of hearing (as any Players would haue done) but stood onely vpon their good parts’; cf. ch. xvi (Fortune), ch. xv (Alleyn).

[1766] Cf. ch. xi, p. 371.

[1767] 2 Ant. Mellida, prol., ‘within this round ... this ring’; cf. p. 536. Fawn (1604–6), prol., has ‘this fair-filled room’, but the play was transferred to Paul’s from Blackfriars.

[1768] For the existence of tiring-houses in private theatres, cf. inductions to Jack Drum’s Entertainment (Paul’s) and C. Revels (Blackfriars).

[1769] Cf. ch. xvii.

[1770] Dutch Courtesan (c. 1603, Blackfriars), V. iii. 162, ‘my very fine Heliconian gallants, and you my worshipful friends in the middle region’.

[1771] Cf. Wright (App. I). For the origin of the term, cf. the c. v. of L. Digges to Shakespeare’s Poems (1640):

[1772] Dekker, G. H. B. (cf. App. H), with its mingling of ‘public’ and ‘private’ features, cannot be relied on. The Roxana and Wits engravings show spectators ‘over the stage’, but cannot be treated as evidence for the private houses. The Messallina engraving only shows a window closed by curtains.

[1773] Cf. p. 556, infra.

[1774] 1 Ant. Mellida (Paul’s), prol., ‘select and most respected auditors’; What You Will (Paul’s), ind., ‘the female presence, the genteletza, the women’; Jack Drum’s Entertainment (Paul’s), ind., ‘this choise selected influence’. But it was still mixed enough; cf. Jonson’s c. v. to Faithful Shepherdess (Revels, c. 1608–9):

[1775] Cf. chh. i, x, and M. L. R. ii. 12.

[1776] Jonson, supra; Mich. Term (c. 1606, Paul’s), ‘sixpenny fees all the year long’; Otho of Hesse-Cassel (1611, Whitefriars), ‘hier kostet der eingang einen halben schilling nur, da an andern orten wohl eine halbe kron’; Scornful Lady (1613–16,? Whitefriars), IV. i. 238, ‘I ... can see a play For eighteen-pence again: I can, my lady’; Wit Without Money (? 1614, Whitefriars), i. 1, ‘And who extoled you in the halfcrown boxes, where you might sit and muster all the beauties’. So later, Jonson, Magnetic Lady (1632, Blackfriars), ind., ‘the faeces or grounds of your people, that sit in the oblique caves and wedges of your house, your sinful sixpenny mechanicks’. I am rather puzzled by Percy, C. and C. Errant, ‘Poules steeple stands in the place it did before; and twopence is the price for the going into a newe play there’. Even in 1589 (cf. p. 532) the price at Paul’s was 4d. according to a Marprelate tract, and William Darrell in that year paid 6d. (Hall, Society in Elizabethan Age, 211).

[1777] In Isle of Gulls (1606, Blackfriars), ind., a Gent. can only see an act or two out, for ‘I lay in bed till past three a clock, slept out my dinner and my stomache will toule to supper afore fiue’. Otho of Hesse-Cassel (1611) says that the Whitefriars plays were at three, and from Michaelmas to Easter only. Percy, on the other hand (cf. ch. xii), says that the Paul’s boys were not allowed to begin before four, after prayers, and the gates of Paul’s shut at six. So, too, Ram Alley (King’s Revels), epil., ‘Thus two hours have brought to end’. Gerschow in 1602 (cf. ch. xii) says that the Chapel acted once a week; cf. Eastward Hoe (1605, Blackfriars), epil., ‘May this attract you hither once a week’.

[1778] Dekker, Seven Deadly Sins (1606, Works, ii. 41), ‘All the Citty lookt like a priuate Play-house, when the windowes are clapt downe, as if some Nocturnall, or dismal Tragedy were presently to be acted’.

[1779] What You Will (1601, Paul’s), ‘Enter Atticus, Doricus, and Philomuse, they sit a good while on the stage before the Candles are lighted.... Enter Tier-man with lights’; Mich. Term (1607, Paul’s), ‘Ours [terms] haue but sixpenny fees all the year long, yet we dispatch you in two hours without demur: your suits hang not long here after candles be lighted’; Faithful Shepherdess (1608–9, Blackfriars), Beaumont’s c. v., ‘Some like, if the wax lights be new that day’. Otho of Hesse-Cassel (1611) says that the Whitefriars plays were ‘nur bei lichtern’. Later we have G. Wither, Fair Virtue (1622), 1781:

Lenton, The Young Gallants Whirligig (1629):

Cf. Lawrence (ii. 1), Light and Darkness in the Elizabethan Theatre; also E. S. xlviii. 213.

[1780] Cf. ch. xii; and for evidence of inter-act music, Lawrence, i. 81; Cowling, 68. Papers on Early Elizabethan Stage Music in Musical Antiquary (Oct. 1909, Jan. 1913) show the origin of the musical tradition in the earlier boy companies; for its seventeenth-century development, cf. Wallace, ii. 114.

[1781] Faithful Shepherdess (1608–9, Blackfriars), Beaumont’s c. v.:

In K. B. P. (1607, Blackfriars) a boy dances after Acts i and iii, and the citizens comment, ‘I will haue him dance Fading; Fading is a fine Iigge’. After Act ii there are fiddlers. After Act iv Ralph intervenes with a May Day speech.

[1782] 2 Ant. Mellida, V. i. 50, ‘Andrugio’s ghost is placed betwixt the music-houses’; Faery Pastoral, s. ds., ‘Highest aloft and on the Top of the Musick Tree the Title The Faery Pastoral. Beneath him pind on Post of the Tree The Scene Eluida Forest Lowest of all ouer the Canopie ΝΑΠΑΙΤΒΟΔΑΙΟΝ or Faery Chappell’.... ‘Here they shutt both into the Canopie Fane or Trophey’; Cuck Queenes and Cuckolds Errants, prol. by Tarlton, ‘standing at entrance of the doore and right vnder the Beame I think Graves, 14, rightly explains ‘Trophey’ as ‘arch’, on the analogy of its use for a triumphal arch in Dekker, Coronation Pageant (1603). The only other use of ‘canopy’ for a structural part of a theatre seems to be in Sophonisba, iv. 1, ‘Play softly within the canopy’.... ‘Syphax hasteneth within the canopy, as to Sophonisba’s bed’. This is a Blackfriars play, but it might conceivably have been written for Paul’s.