Chapter XI: The Second Blackfriars (2)

The following year the Children gave much more serious offense by acting _Eastward Hoe_, a comedy in which Marston, Chapman, and Jonson collaborated. Not only did the play ridicule the Scots in general, and King James's creation of innumerable knights in particular, but one of the little actors was actually made, it seems, to mimic the royal brogue: "I ken the man weel; he is one of my thirty pound Knights." Marston escaped by timely flight, but Jonson and Chapman were arrested and lodged in jail, and were for a time in some danger of having their nostrils slit and their ears cropped. Both Chapman and Jonson asserted that they were wholly innocent, and Chapman openly put the blame of the offensive passages on Marston.[342] Marston, however, was beyond the reach of the King's wrath, so His Majesty punished instead the men in control of Blackfriars. It was discovered that the manager, Kirkham, had presented the play without securing the Lord Chamberlain's allowance. As a result, he and the others in charge of the Children were prohibited from any further connection with the playhouse. This doubtless explains the fact that Kirkham shortly after appears as one of the managers of Paul's Boys.[343] It explains, also, the following statement made by Evans in the course of one of the later legal documents: "After the King's most excellent Majesty, upon some misdemeanors committed in or about the plays there, _and specially upon the defendant's_ [Kirkham's] _acts and doings there_, had prohibited that no plays should be more used there," etc.[344] Not only was Kirkham driven from the management of the troupe and the playhouse closed for a time, but the Children were denied the Queen's patronage. No longer were they allowed to use the high-sounding title "The Children of the Queen's Majesty's Revels"; instead, we find them described merely as "The Children of the Revels," or as "The Children of Blackfriars."[345]

[Footnote 342: See Dobell, "Newly Discovered Documents," in _The Athenaeum_, March 30, 1901.]

[Footnote 343: Cunningham, _Revels_, p. xxxviii.]

[Footnote 344: Fleay, _op. cit._, p. 221.]

[Footnote 345: Except carelessly, as when sometimes called "The Children of the Chapel."]

For a time, no doubt, affairs at the playhouse were at a standstill. Evans again sought to surrender his lease to Burbage, but without success.[346] Marston, having escaped the wrath of the King by flight, decided to end his career as a playwright and turn country parson. It was shortly after this, in all probability, that he sold his share in the Blackfriars organization to one Robert Keysar, a goldsmith of London, for the sum of L100.[347]

[Footnote 346: Wallace, _Shakespeare and his London Associates_, p. 82.]

[Footnote 347: _Ibid._, pp. 81, 86, 89, 93.]

Keysar, it seems, undertook to reopen the playhouse, and to continue the Children there at his own expense.[348] From the proprietors he rented the playhouse, the stock of apparel, the furnishings, and playbooks. This, I take it, explains the puzzling statement made by Kirkham some years later:

This repliant [Kirkham] and his said partners [Rastell and
Kendall] have had and received the sum of one hundred pounds
per annum for their part and moiety in the premises without
any manner of charges whatsoever [i.e., during Kirkham's
management of the troupe prior to 1605].[349] And after that
this replyant and his said partners had received the
foresaid profits [i.e., after Kirkham and his partners had
to give up the management of the Children in 1605], the said
Children, which the said Evans in his answer affirmeth to be
the Queen's Children [i.e., they are no longer the Queen's
Children, for after 1605 they had been deprived of the
Queen's patronage; but Kirkham was in error, for Evans with
legal precision had referred to the company as 'The Queen's
Majesty's Children of the Revels (for so it was often
called)'] were masters themselves [i.e., their own
managers], and this complainant and his said partners
received of them, and of one Keysar who was interest with
them, above the sum of one hundred and fifty pounds per
annum only for the use of the said great hall, without all
manner of charges, as this replyant will make it manifest to
this honorable court.[350]

[Footnote 348: Wallace, _Shakespeare and his London Associates_, p. 80 ff.]

[Footnote 349: That is, L33, more or less, a share. We have documentary evidence to show that a share in the Red Bull produced L30, and a share in the Globe L30 to L40 per annum.]

[Footnote 350: Fleay, _op. cit._, p. 249. The yearly rental must have included not only the playhouse and its equipment, but the playbooks, apparel, properties, etc., belonging to the Children. These were on July 26, 1608, divided up among the sharers, Kirkham, Rastell, Kendall, and Evans.]

Under Keysar's management the Blackfriars troupe continued to act as the Children of the Revels. But, unfortunately, they had not learned wisdom from their recent experience, and in the very following year we find them again in serious trouble. John Day's _Isle of Guls_, acted in February, 1606, gave great offense to the Court. Sir Edward Hoby, in a letter to Sir Thomas Edwards,[351] writes: "At this time was much speech of a play in the Blackfriars, where, in the _Isle of Guls_, from the highest to the lowest, all men's parts were acted of two diverse nations. As I understand, sundry were committed to Bridewell."[352]

[Footnote 351: Birch, _Court and Times of James the First_, I, 60; quoted by E.K. Chambers, in _Modern Language Review_, IV, 158.]

[Footnote 352: Possibly an aftermath of the King's displeasure is to be found in the cancellation of Giles's long-standing commission to take up boys for the Chapel, and the issuance of a new commission to him, November 7, 1606, with the distinct proviso that "none of the said choristers or children of the Chapel so to be taken by force of this commission shall be used or employed as commedians or stage players." (The Malone Society's _Collections_, I, 357.)]

The Children, however, were soon allowed to resume playing, and they continued for a time without mishap. But in the early spring of 1608 they committed the most serious offense of all by acting Chapman's _Conspiracy and Tragedy of Charles, Duke of Byron_. The French Ambassador took umbrage at the uncomplimentary representation of the contemporary French Court, and had an order made forbidding them to act the play. But the Children, "voyant toute la Cour dehors, ne laisserent de la faire, et non seulement cela, mais y introduiserent la Reine et Madame de Verneuil, traitant celle-ci fort mal de paroles, et lui donnant un soufflet." Whereupon the French Ambassador made special complaint to Salisbury, who ordered the arrest of the author and the actors. "Toutefois il ne s'en trouva que trois, qui aussi-tot furent menes a la prison ou ils sont encore; mais le principal, qui est le compositeur, echapa."[353] The Ambassador observes also that a few days before the Children of the Revels had given offense by a play on King James: "Un jour ou deux avant, ils avoient depeche leur Roi, sa mine d'Ecosse, et tous ses Favoris d'une etrange sorte; car apres lui avoir fait depiter le Ciel sur le vol d'un oisseau, et fait battre un Gentilhomme pour avoir rompu ses chiens, ils le depeignoient ivre pour le moins une fois le jour."[354] As a result of these two offenses, coming as a climax to a long series of such offenses, the King was "extremement irrite contre ces marauds-la," and gave order for their immediate suppression. This marked the end of the child-actors at Blackfriars.

[Footnote 353: From the report of the French Ambassador, M. de la Boderie, to M. de Puisieux at Paris, _Ambassades de Monsieur de la Boderie en Angleterre_, 1750, III, 196; quoted by E.K. Chambers in _Modern Language Review_, IV, 158.]

[Footnote 354: The name of this play is not known; probably the King was satirized in a comic scene foisted upon an otherwise innocent piece. Mr. Wallace, in _The Century Magazine_ (September, 1910, p. 747), says: "From a document I have found in France the Blackfriars boys now satirized the King's efforts to raise money, made local jokes on the recent discovery of his silver mine in Scotland, brought him on the stage as drunk, and showed such to be his condition at least three times a day, caricatured him in his favorite pastime of hawking, and represented him as swearing and cursing at a gentleman for losing a bird." I do not know what document Mr. Wallace has found; the French document quoted above has been known for a long time.]

Naturally Kirkham, Rastell, and Kendall, since there was "no profit made of the said house, but a continual rent of forty pounds to be paid for the same," became sick of their bargain with Evans. An additional reason for their wishing to withdraw finally from the enterprise was the rapid increase of the plague, which about July 25 closed all playhouses. So Kirkham, "at or about the 26 of July, 1608, caused the apparrels, properties, and goods belonging to the copartners, sharers, and masters" to be divided. Kirkham and his associates took away their portions, and "quit the place," the one-time manager using to Evans some unkind words: "said he would deal no more with it, 'for,' quod he, 'it is a base thing,' or used words to such or very like effect."[355] Evans, thus deserted by Kirkham, Rastell, and Kendall, regarded the organization of the Blackfriars as dissolved; he "delivered up their commission which he had under the Great Seal authorizing them to play, and discharged diverse of the partners and poets."

[Footnote 355: Fleay, _op. cit._, pp. 221-22.]

Robert Keysar, however, the old manager, laid plans to keep the Children together, and continue them as a troupe after the cessation of the plague. For a while, we are told, he maintained them at his own expense, "in hope to have enjoyed his said bargain ... upon the ceasing of the general sickness."[356] And he expected, by virtue of the share he had purchased from John Marston, to be able to use the Blackfriars Playhouse for his purpose.

[Footnote 356: Wallace, _Shakespeare and his London Associates_, pp. 83, 97.]

In the meanwhile Evans began negotiations with Burbage for the surrender of the lease: "By reason the said premises lay then and had long lyen void and without use for plays, whereby the same became not only burthensome and unprofitable unto the said Evans, but also ran far into decay for want of reparations ... the said Evans began to treat with the said Richard Burbage about a surrender of the said Evans his said lease."[357] This time Burbage listened to the proposal, for he and his fellow-actors at the Globe "considered that the house would be fit for themselves." So in August, 1608, he agreed to take over the building for the use of the King's Men.

[Footnote 357: _Ibid._, p. 87.]

Even after Evans's surrender of the lease, Keysar, it seems, made an effort to keep the Children together. On the following Christmas, 1608-09, we find a record of payment to him for performances at Court, by "The Children of Blackfriars." But soon after this the troupe must have been disbanded. Keysar says that they were "enforced to be dispersed and turned away to the abundant hurt of the said young men";[358] and the Burbages and Heminges declare that the children "were dispersed and driven each of them to provide for himself by reason that the plays ceasing in the City of London, either through sickness, or for some other cause, he, the said complainant [Keysar], was no longer able to maintain them together."[359] In the autumn of 1609, however, Keysar assembled the Children again, reorganized them with the assistance of Philip Rosseter, and placed them in Whitefriars Playhouse, recently left vacant by the disruption of the Children of His Majesty's Revels. Their subsequent history will be found related in the chapter dealing with that theatre.

[Footnote 358: _Ibid._, p. 90.]

[Footnote 359: Wallace, _Shakespeare and his London Associates_, p. 97.]

When in August, 1608, Richard Burbage secured from Evans the surrender of the Blackfriars lease, he at once proceeded to organize from the Globe Company a syndicate to operate the building as a playhouse. He admitted to partnership in the new enterprise all of the then sharers in the Globe except Witter and Nichols, outsiders who had secured their interest through marriage with the heirs of Pope and Phillips, and who, therefore, were not entitled to any consideration. In addition, he admitted Henry Evans, doubtless in fulfillment of a condition in the surrender of the lease. The syndicate thus formed was made up of seven equal sharers, as follows: Richard Burbage, Cuthbert Burbage, Henry Evans, William Shakespeare, John Heminges, Henry Condell, and William Slye. These sharers leased the building from Richard Burbage for a period of twenty-one years,[360] at the old rental of L40 per annum, each binding himself to pay annually the sum of L5 14_s._ 4_d._[361] The method of distributing the profits between the sharers (known as "housekeepers") and the actors (known as the "company") was to be the same as that practiced at the Globe.[362]

[Footnote 360: Twenty-one years was a very common term for a lease to run; but in this case, no doubt, it was intended that the lease of Blackfriars should last as long as the lease of the Globe, which then had exactly twenty-one years to run.]

[Footnote 361: Shortly after this agreement had been made William Slye died, and his executrix delivered up his share to Richard Burbage "to be cancelled and made void." See the Heminges-Osteler documents printed by Mr. Wallace in the London _Times_, October 4, 1909. In 1611 Burbage let William Osteler have this share.]

[Footnote 362: The method is clearly explained in the documents of 1635 printed by Halliwell-Phillipps, in _Outlines_, I, 312.]

Soon after this organization was completed, the King's Men moved from the Globe to the Blackfriars. They did not, of course, intend to abandon the Globe. Their plan was to use the Blackfriars as a "winter home," and the Globe as a "summer house."[363] Malone observed from the Herbert Manuscript that "the King's Company usually began to play at the Globe in the month of May";[364] although he failed to state at what time in the autumn they usually moved to the Blackfriars, the evidence points to the first of November.

[Footnote 363: See Wright, _Historia Histrionica_, Hazlitt's Dodsley, XV, 406.]

[Footnote 364: Malone, _Variorum_, III, 71.]

Such a plan had many advantages. For one thing, it would prevent the pecuniary losses often caused by a severe winter. In the _Poetaster_ (1601), Jonson makes Histrio, representing the Globe Players, say: "O, it will get us a huge deal of money, and we have need on't, for this winter has made us all poorer than so many starved snakes; nobody comes at us."[365] This could not be said of the King's Men after they moved to the Blackfriars. Edward Kirkham, a man experienced in theatrical finances, offered to prove to the court in 1612 that the King's Men "got, and as yet doth, more in one winter in the said great hall by a thousand pounds than they were used to get on the Bankside."[366]

[Footnote 365: Act III, scene iv. Cf. also Webster's Preface to _The White Devil_, acted at the Red Bull about 1610.]

[Footnote 366: Fleay, _A Chronicle History of the London Stage_, p. 248.]

Kirkham's testimony as to the popularity of the King's Men in their winter home is borne out by a petition to the city authorities made by "the constables and other officers and inhabitants of Blackfriars" in January, 1619. They declared that to the playhouse "there is daily such resort of people, and such multitudes of coaches (whereof many are hackney-coaches, bringing people of all sorts), that sometimes all our streets cannot contain them, but that they clog up Ludgate also, in such sort that both they endanger the one the other, break down stalls, throw down men's goods from their shops, and the inhabitants there cannot come to their houses, nor bring in their necessary provisions of beer, wood, coal, or hay, nor the tradesmen or shopkeepers utter their wares, nor the passenger go to the common water stairs without danger of their lives and limbs." "These inconveniences" were said to last "every day in the winter time from one or two of the clock till six at night."[367]

[Footnote 367: The Malone Society's _Collections_, I, 91.]

As a result of this petition the London Common Council ordered, January 21, 1619, that "the said playhouses be suppressed, and that the players shall from thenceforth forbear and desist from playing in that house."[368] But the players had at Court many influential friends, and these apparently came to their rescue. The order of the Common Council was not put into effect; and so far as we know the only result of this agitation was that King James on March 27 issued to his actors a new patent specifically giving them--described as his "well-beloved servants"--the right henceforth to play unmolested in Blackfriars. The new clause in the patent runs: "as well within their two their now usual houses called the Globe, within our County of Surrey, and their private house situate in the precinct of the Blackfriars, within our city of London."[369] At the accession of King Charles I, the patent was renewed, June 24, 1625, with the same clause regarding the use of Blackfriars.[370]

[Footnote 368: Halliwell-Phillipps, _Outlines_, I, 311.]

[Footnote 369: The Malone Society's _Collections_, I, 281.]

[Footnote 370: _Ibid._, I, 282.]

In 1631, however, the agitation was renewed, this time in the form of a petition from the churchwardens and constables of the precinct of Blackfriars to William Laud, then Bishop of London. The document gives such eloquent testimony to the popularity of the playhouse that I have inserted it below in full:

To the Right Honorable and Right Reverend Father in God,
William, Lord Bishop of London, one of His Majesty's
Honorable Privy Council. The humble petition of the
churchwardens and constables of Blackfriars, on the behalf
of the whole Parish, showing that by reason of a playhouse,
exceedingly frequented, in the precinct of the said
Blackfriars, the inhabitants there suffer many grievances
upon the inconveniences hereunto annexed, and many other.

May it therefore please your Lordship to take the said
grievances into your honorable consideration for the
redressing thereof. And for the reviving the order, which
hath been heretofore made by the Lords of the Council, and
the Lord Mayor and the Court of Aldermen, for the removal of
them. And they shall, according to their duties, ever pray
for your Lordship.

Reasons and Inconveniences Inducing the Inhabitants of
Blackfriars, London, to Become Humble Suitors to Your
Lordship for Removing the Playhouse in the Said Blackfriars:

1. The shopkeepers in divers places suffer much, being
hindered by the great recourse to the plays (especially of
coaches) from selling their commodities, and having their
wares many times broken and beaten off their stalls.

2. The recourse of coaches is many times so great that the
inhabitants cannot in an afternoon take in any provision of
beer, coals, wood, or hay, the streets being known to be so
exceeding straight and narrow.

3. The passage through Ludgate to the water [i.e., Water
Lane] is many times stopped up, people in their ordinary
going much endangered, quarrels and bloodshed many times
occasioned, and many disorderly people towards night
gathered thither, under pretense of attending and waiting
for those at the plays.

4. If there should happen any misfortune of fire, there is
not likely any present order could possibly be taken, for
the disorder and number of the coaches, since there could be
no speedy passage made for quenching the fire, to the
endangering of the parish and city.

5. Christenings and burials, which usually are in the
afternoon, are many times disturbed, and persons endangered
in that part, which is the greatest part of the parish.

6. Persons of honor and quality that dwell in the parish are
restrained by the number of coaches from going out, or
coming home in seasonable time, to the prejudice of their
occasions. And some persons of honor have left, and others
have refused houses for this very inconvenience, to the
prejudice and loss of the parish.

7. The Lords of the Council in former times have by order
directed that there shall be but two playhouses tolerated,
and those _without the city_, the one at the Bankside, the
other near Golding Lane (which these players still have and
use all summer), which the Lords did signify by their
letters to the Lord Mayor; and in performance thereof the
Lord Mayor and the Court of Aldermen did give order that
they should forbear to play any longer there, which the
players promised to the Lord Chief Justice of the Common
Pleas (while he was Recorder of London) to observe,
entreating only a little time to provide themselves
elsewhere.[371]

[Footnote 371: Collier, _History of English Dramatic Poetry_ (1879), I, 455.]

Bishop Laud endorsed the petition with his own hand "To the Coun. Table," and in all probability he submitted it to the consideration of the Privy Council. If so, the Council took no action.

But in 1633, as a result of further complaints about the crowding of coaches, the Privy Council appointed a committee to estimate the value of the Blackfriars Theatre and "the buildings thereunto belonging," with the idea of removing the playhouse and paying the owners therefor. The committee reported that "the players demanded L21,000. The commissioners [Sir Henry Spiller, Sir William Beecher, and Laurence Whitaker] valued it at near L3000. The Parishioners offered towards the removing of them L100."[372] Obviously the plan of removal was not feasible, if indeed the Privy Council seriously contemplated such action. The only result of this second agitation was the issuance on November 20 of special instructions to coachmen: "If any persons, men or women, of what condition soever, repair to the aforesaid playhouse in coach, as soon as they are gone out of their coaches, the coachmen shall depart thence and not return till the end of the play."[373] Garrard, in a letter to the Lord Deputy dated January 9, 1633, says: "Here hath been an order of the Lords of the Council hung up in a table near Paul's and the Blackfriars to command all that resort to the playhouse there to send away their coaches, and to disperse abroad in Paul's Churchyard, Carter Lane, the Conduit in Fleet Street, and other places, and not to return to fetch their company, but they must trot afoot to find their coaches. 'Twas kept very strictly for two or three weeks, but now I think it is disordered again."[374] The truth is that certain distinguished patrons of the theatre did not care "to trot afoot to find their coaches," and so made complaint at Court. As a result it was ordered, at a sitting of the Council, December 29, 1633 (the King being present): "Upon information this day given to the Board of the discommodity that diverse persons of great quality, especially Ladies and Gentlewomen, did receive in going to the playhouse of Blackfriars by reason that no coaches may stand ... the Board ... think fit to explain the said order in such manner that as many coaches as may stand within the Blackfriars Gate may enter and stay there."[375]

[Footnote 372: The _Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1633_, p. 293. The report of the commissioners in full, as printed by Collier in _New Facts_ (1835), p. 27, and again in _History of English Dramatic Poetry_ (1879), I, 477, is not above suspicion, although Mr. E.K. Chambers is inclined to think it genuine. According to this document the actors estimated the property to be worth L21,990, but the committee thought that the actors might be persuaded to accept L2900 13_s._ 4_d._]

[Footnote 373: The Malone Society's _Collections_, I, 99; 387.]

[Footnote 374: _The Earl of Strafforde's Letters_ (Dublin, 1740), I, 175.]

[Footnote 375: The Malone Society's _Collections_, I, 388.]

All this agitation about coaches implies a fashionable and wealthy patronage of the Blackfriars. An interesting glimpse of high society at the theatre is given in a letter written by Garrard, January 25, 1636: "A little pique happened betwixt the Duke of Lenox and the Lord Chamberlain about a box at a new play in the Blackfriars, of which the Duke had got the key, which, if it had come to be debated betwixt them, as it was once intended, some heat or perhaps other inconvenience might have happened."[376] The Queen herself also sometimes went thither. Herbert records, without any comment, her presence there on the 13 of May, 1634.[377] It has been generally assumed that she attended a regular afternoon performance; but this, I am sure, was not the case. The Queen engaged the entire building for the private entertainment of herself and her specially invited guests, and the performance was at night. In a bill presented by the King's Men for plays acted before the members of the royal family during the year 1636 occurs the entry: "The 5th of May, at the Blackfryers, for the Queene and the Prince Elector ... _Alfonso_." Again, in a similar bill for the year 1638 (see the bill on page 404) is the entry: "At the Blackfryers, the 23 of Aprill, for the Queene ... _The Unfortunate Lovers_." The fact that the actors did not record the loss of their "day" at their house, and made their charge accordingly, shows that the plays were given at night and did not interfere with the usual afternoon performances before the public.

[Footnote 376: _The Earl of Strafforde's Letters_ (Dublin, 1740), I, 511.]

[Footnote 377: The Herbert MS., Malone, _Variorum_, III, 167.]

The King's Men continued to occupy the Blackfriars as their winter home until the closing of the theatres in 1642. Thereafter the building must have stood empty for a number of years. In 1653 Sir Aston Cokaine, in a poem prefixed to Richard Brome's _Plays_, looked forward prophetically to the happy day when

Black, and White Friars too, shall flourish again.

But the prophecy was not to be fulfilled; for although Whitefriars (i.e., Salisbury Court) did flourish as a Restoration playhouse, the more famous Blackfriars had ceased to exist before acting was allowed again. The manuscript note in the Phillipps copy of Stow's _Annals_ (1631) informs us that "the Blackfriars players' playhouse in Blackfriars, London, which had stood many years, was pulled down to the ground on Monday the 6 day of August, 1655, and tenements built in the room."[378]

[Footnote 378: See _The Academy_, 1882, XXII, 314. Exactly the same fate had overtaken the Globe ten years earlier.]