Chapter XXI: Book II: The Control of the Stage (4)

I have described these arguments in some detail, because of the clearness with which they set out the divergent views. Unfortunately the documents from which they are drawn do not record any decision upon them. But whether the remedies were accepted, wholly or in part, or not, there can be no doubt whatever that the attempt to enforce an absolute prohibition had utterly failed, and that for several years afterwards the companies continued to find their winter quarters within London itself. Henceforward it became the settled policy of the Corporation to defer to the authority of the Privy Council, and to content themselves with doing their best to influence that body in the direction of their own ideals. There came a day when they were destined to reach some measure of success along these lines. For the time, however, events followed a quiet course. During two or three years there is a blank in the correspondence. Plays were suspended in London and Surrey during the summer of 1586, at the Lord Mayor's request, on the ground that the growing heat might breed a plague, and a similar measure in 1587 had an additional provocation in disturbances which had taken place at the play-houses. In both years the inhibition was declared early in May, and in 1587 it was fixed to terminate at the end of August. On 29 October the Council had to call the attention of both the Surrey and the Middlesex Justices to the imperfect observance of the order against Sunday plays. There was, of course, an undercurrent of Puritan discontent during these years at the lame issue of the anti-stage agitation. This is well shown by a grumbling letter from a correspondent of Walsingham's in January 1587, in which 'the daily abuse of stage-plays' is represented as still 'an offence to the godly'. The redress of Sabbath-breaking is acknowledged, but still 'two hundred proud players jet in their silks' under the protection of various lords, as well as of Her Majesty. The writer proposes that every stage shall be required to pay a weekly subsidy in aid of the poor. The flood of pamphlets had, however, subsided. The _Mirror of Monsters_, published by William Rankins in 1587, is of markedly less importance than its predecessors. In November 1587 the City sent a deputation to the Privy Council in the hope of securing the suppression of plays within their boundaries; so far as is known, they were unsuccessful. A year or two later new combative relations were established between the players and the Puritans as an outcome of the Martin Marprelate controversy, which began with a series of anonymous pamphlets attacking the principles of episcopacy, and continued throughout 1589 and 1590. The players were not at first particularly concerned against their hereditary enemies. Tarlton, who died on 3 September 1588, is said himself to have satirized the existing ecclesiastical order in a mock discovery of Simony 'in Don John of Londons cellar'. And indeed the ribald style in which Martin Marprelate canvassed the bishops was held to be modelled on the manners of the theatre. 'The stage is brought into the church; and vices make play of church matters', said one episcopalian writer, and described Martin as declaring on his death-bed, 'All my foolery I bequeath to my good friend Lanam and his consort, from whom I had it'. Bacon also condemned 'this immodest and deformed manner of writing lately entertained, whereby matters of religion are handled in the style of the stage'.[861] But before long the vigour of the attack drove the bishops to seek on their side for an equally effective literary retort. They hired writers, including John Lyly and Thomas Nashe; and these not only answered Martin in his own vein, but also made use of the theatres for what must have been the congenial task of producing scurrilous plays against him. To this campaign there are many allusions in the pamphlets belonging to the controversy. The Puritans hit back with all their old contempt of the rogues and vagabonds dressed in the Queen's liveries; but the laugh was on the other side when Martin was brought dressed like a monstrous ape on the stage, and wormed and lanced to let the blood and evil humours out of him, or when Divinity appeared with a scratched face, complaining of the assaults received in the hideous creature's attacks upon her honour. _Vetus Comoedia_, the savage Aristophanic invective, was assuredly in full swing upon the English boards. Nashe professed to have another device ready, in which Martin was to figure in a grotesque pageant called the _May-Game of Martinism_; but the scandal was now getting too great, and the Government was obliged to disavow its own instruments. According to Nashe, it was by 'sly practice' that the comedies which had been penned were not allowed to be played. However this may have been, we find the Lord Mayor writing to Lord Burghley on 6 November 1589 that, in accordance with what he understood from a letter of his lordship to Mr. Young of Middlesex to be his desire, he had stayed plays in the City, in that the Master of the Revels 'did utterly mislike the same'. Almost immediately afterwards, on 12 November, the Privy Council issued three letters from 'the Starre Chamber' to the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Mayor, and the Master of the Revels, directing the Master to join with a divine and with a person 'learned and of judgement' nominated by the other two, and form a commission for allowing the books of plays and striking out or reforming 'suche partes and matters as they shall fynde unfytt and undecent to be handled in playes, both for Divinitie and State'. Perpetual disabilities are threatened to players who produce any pieces not so allowed.

There are indications that in the next year or two a considerable increase took place in the number of plays given during each week. Other kinds of amusement, no less than more serious occupations, suffered, and in a letter of 25 July 1591 to London, Middlesex, and Surrey, the Privy Council had not merely to insist once more upon the due observance of Sunday, but also to forbid plays on Thursdays, on the ground that on this day bear-baiting and other like pastimes, maintained for the royal pleasure if occasion should require, had 'ben allwayes accustomed and practized'. In the following year the Corporation were moved to approach Archbishop Whitgift with a view to obtaining some redress of their grievances through his influence. By a letter of 25 February they set out the evils of plays in the familiar terms, expressing themselves as moved by the 'earnest continuall complaint' of the preachers and declaring that by no one thing was the government of the City 'so greatly annoyed and disquieted'. They explained the difficulty in which they were put by the authority conferred upon the Master of the Revels, who had licensed the playing-houses, 'which before that time lay open to all the statutes for the punishing of these and such lyke disorders', and begged the Archbishop to confer with the Master as to the possibility of providing for the Queen's recreation without the necessity of public performances. A second letter of 6 March thanks the Archbishop for his advice, which apparently was, quite frankly, to bribe the Master. A committee of the Corporation was appointed on 18 March to treat with Tilney, but the scheme fell through for financial reasons. On 22 March the Court of the Merchant Taylors Company discussed a 'precepte' from the Lord Mayor, which called attention to the evils of plays and suggested 'the payment of one anuytie to one Mr. Tylney, mayster of the revelles of the Queenes house, in whose hands the redresse of this inconveniency doeth rest, and that those playes might be abandoned out of this citie'. The Court sympathized, but 'wayinge the damage of the president and enovacion of raysinge of anuyties upon the Companies of London', declined to unloose their purse-strings. On 12 June the Lord Mayor reported to Lord Burghley a disturbance in Southwark, the pretence for which had been furnished by a gathering at a play, held in defiance of orders on a Sunday. Anticipation of a renewal of disorder on Midsummer Day led the Council on 23 June to impose an inhibition on plays until the following Michaelmas. Three undated papers in the Henslowe-Alleyn collection at Dulwich may perhaps suggest that later in the summer they became willing to relax their severity. The first of these is a petition to the Council from Lord Strange's men, begging to be allowed to use their play-house on the Bankside, both for their own sake, as otherwise they would have to travel at considerable charge, and for that of the watermen who 'nowe in this long vacation' look for relief through ferrying spectators to and from the plays. The second is a petition from the watermen themselves to the same effect. The third is a copy of a warrant from the Council, setting out that not long since they had restrained Lord Strange's men from playing at the Rose and enjoined them to play at Newington Butts, and removing the injunction, 'by reason of the tediousness of the waie and that of longe tyme plaies have not there bene used on working daies'. If these documents really belong to 1592, which must remain doubtful, the permission to resume playing was almost certainly rendered nugatory by a plague more serious than any that had devastated London since 1563. In fact Henslowe's _Diary_ shows no performances at the Rose between 22 June and 29 December, and the short winter season that followed was abruptly broken off by a renewed outbreak and an order from the Privy Council on 28 January for the suppression of all assemblies for purposes of amusement within seven miles of London. This was probably renewed in April, and the companies, who had waited for some months in hopes of relaxation, had perforce to travel. On 29 April and 6 May the Council itself issued warrants of authorization to Lord Sussex's and Lord Strange's men respectively to assist them in taking this course. Probably the theatres remained closed during the greater part of the next eighteen months. Henslowe's _Diary_ only indicates performances from 27 December 1593 to 6 February 1594, evidently interrupted by another restraint within five miles of London under a Council order of 3 February, and then a few more in April and in May. The Countess of Warwick's men seem to have been negotiating with the City for toleration on 10 May. Regular playing, however, was not resumed on Bankside until 3 June. The plague was now fairly over, and the shattered companies began to reconstruct themselves. In October Lord Hunsdon wrote to the Lord Mayor begging permission for his men to use the Cross Keys in Gracechurch Street. In November Francis Langley, one of the alnagers for London, was planning a new theatre, the Swan, on the Bankside, and the Lord Mayor once more detailed the objections to plays in a letter of protest to Lord Burghley. This was followed up on 13 September 1595 by a formal petition from the Corporation for 'the present stay and finall suppressing' of plays in Middlesex and Surrey. Herein the origin of yet another prentice riot was traced to the obnoxious performances. Obviously the request was not acceded to. Henslowe's _Diary_ shows no break in the sequence of plays, except for Lent, until the July of 1596, when plague once more called for an inhibition. At about the same time the balance of parties on the Privy Council was seriously disturbed by the death of Henry Lord Hunsdon, who had been Lord Chamberlain since 1585. His successor, Lord Cobham, was less favourable to the players. In the course of the long vacation Thomas Nashe wrote of them as 'piteously persecuted by the Lord Maior and the Aldermen: and however in their old Lord's tyme they thought there state setled it is now so uncertayne they cannot build upon it'. In November there was a petition from inhabitants of the Blackfriars against the erection of a theatre in the precinct, which recited how 'all players being banished by the Lord Mayor from playing within the city by reason of the great inconveniences and ill rule that followeth them, they now think to plant themselves in liberties.' At last the City had gained the point denied them in 1574 and again in 1584. Their importunity, in season and out of season, had moved the hearts of the autocratic body at Whitehall. Hence-forward, although play-houses might stand thick enough within the rapidly growing suburbs beyond the gates, there were to be none, or at any rate none but 'private' houses, within the closely guarded circuit of the liberties. A fuller account of the transaction, without any clear indication of its date, is given many years later by Richard Rawlidge in _A Monster Lately Found Out, or The Scourging of Tipplers_ (1628), and five play-houses are enumerated as pulled down and suppressed under authority from the Queen and Council by the 'religious senators'.[862]

The events of the next year must have given the Corporation high hopes of making an equally clean sweep in the suburbs. They had by now learnt that, although there were many abuses of the stage to which the Council would turn a blind eye, any interference in politics or encouragement, direct or indirect, to civil commotion, was not one of them. On 28 July 1597 they were able, in renewing their appeal for a 'present staie and fynall suppressinge' of the Middlesex and Surrey theatres, to add to their summary of 'inconveniences' a definite statement of a recent confession by some unruly apprentices that plays had served as the 'randevous' of their 'mutinus attemptes'. On the same day the Council wrote to the Middlesex and Surrey Justices, ordering not merely that there should be a restraint of plays within three miles of the City until Allhallowtide, but also that the owners of the theatres should be required 'to pluck downe quite the stages, gallories and roomes that are made for people to stand in, and so to deface the same as they maie not be ymploied agayne to suche use'. As their reason they cited the disorders, due partly to the 'confluence of bad people' at the play-houses, and partly to the handling of 'lewd matters' on the stage. There is reason to suppose that their action was not altogether determined by the representations of the City. A 'seditious' play called _The Isle of Dogs_ had been shown on one of the Bankside stages.[863] This had been brought to their notice by the famous heretic-hunter and informer, Richard Topcliffe, and was, according to Henslowe's _Diary_, the cause of the restraint. The players and one of the makers of the play had been committed to prison; the other, Thomas Nashe, had fled to Yarmouth, leaving incriminating papers in his lodgings. On 15 August a commission was issued to Topcliffe and others to examine further into the matter and ascertain how far the 'lewd' play had been spread abroad. The second writer has recently been found to be Benjamin Jonson, who thus makes his stormy entry into a field of activity which he was destined, more than any other save one, to illustrate and adorn. It is natural to suppose that, in ordering the complete gutting of the theatres, the Council contemplated the continuance of the restraint even beyond Allhallowtide. But if so, they again changed their minds, and the City were disappointed. On 3 October a warrant was sent to the Keeper of the Marshalsea for the release of Jonson and of the offending players, and Henslowe's _Diary_ notes the resumption of playing a week later. Evidently the Council had satisfied themselves, perhaps under the influence of another new Lord Chamberlain, George Lord Hunsdon, who had succeeded Lord Cobham in the course of the year, that it was after all impossible, in view of the amenities of the royal Christmas, wholly to dispense with plays.

This winter of 1597-8 is really an important turning-point in the history of stage-control. The events of the past two years, following upon a long period of vexatious conflict, seem to have brought the Government to the conclusion that the method of regulation through the magistrates had now broken down, and that the time had come for the resettlement of the matter upon the more centralized basis already foreshadowed by the commission to the Master of the Revels in 1581. Of this there are two indications. And first, for the county as a whole, a new Vagabond Act, replacing that of 1572, had been called for by the progressive development of the Elizabethan poor-law policy on the humane lines of a local rate, and the consequent possibility of discriminating more closely between the deserving poor and the idle vagrants. The latter class were again to be treated with greater severity. Summary whipping was reinstated and might be inflicted in future by local constables as well as justices. The more dangerous rogues were to be transported, and treated as felons if they returned. These were the main objects of the statute, but incidentally the status of players and minstrels was affected. The power of justices to license travelling was taken away. Before long even John Dutton had to prove his claim to his Cheshire privilege. The right of noblemen to protect their servants was not interfered with, and indeed must now have become even more important, as they acquired a monopoly; but it must be exercised under hand and seal and, although this point is not dealt with in the statute, must presumably be endorsed by the Master of the Revels. As regards London and its suburbs in particular, the Privy Council, with the Master of the Revels as an adviser and agent, took the control into its own hands, and decided that the companies to be licensed should be limited to two. It seems likely that this policy took shape in a solemn order in Star Chamber, although the document itself has not reached us.[864] At any rate the rule is set out and confirmed in a letter written by the Lord Chamberlain and the Lord Admiral to the Justices and the Master of the Revels on 19 February 1598, in which complaint is made of the intrusion of a third company, not included in the Council's sanction and not bound to the Master of the Revels for observance of the conditions imposed. In principle it continued to prevail until the end of the reign, although in practice it was not found very easy to restrict the number of companies, and still less that of theatres. On the Surrey side, indeed, an element of local feeling adverse to the stage began to show itself, which perhaps owed its origin to little more than a dispute about the liability of the players to contribute to local assessments. It took shape in a petition from the vestry of St. Saviour's, Southwark, to the Council on 19 July 1598 for the closing of the play-houses in the parish, on account of the enormities that came thereby. But on 28 March 1600 the vestry were content that the churchwardens should 'talk with the players for tithes for their playhouses and for money for the poor, according to the order taken before my lords of Canterbury and London and the Master of the Revels'. In Middlesex, on the other hand, the growth of the western suburbs and their convenience for theatrical purposes led to divers new enterprises. The most important of these was the erection of the Fortune in St. Giles's, Cripplegate, by Edward Alleyn during 1600. The Council seem to have been in two minds about the desirability of the scheme. In January the project had been encouraged by a personal letter from the Lord Admiral to the Middlesex Justices. Some of the inhabitants, however, raised a protest, and in March the Council ordered the Justices in nowise to permit the building, as that would be inconsistent with the order for the plucking down of theatres given them 'not longe sithence'. If this means the order of 28 July 1597, the Council seem to have forgotten that their own action later in the same year had rendered it nugatory; nor were they very consistent when, on 15 May 1600, they allowed the use of the Swan, which certainly should have been plucked down in 1597, for feats of activity by Peter Bromvill, an acrobat specially recommended to Elizabeth by the French king. Ultimately the question of the Fortune received a final reconsideration. The inhabitants, just as in Southwark, were squared by the promise of liberal contributions towards poor relief. Possibly, also, the Queen herself intervened in Alleyn's favour, and on 8 April the consent of the Council was signified by a further letter to the justices. On 22 June the allowance was explained and the principle adopted in 1597 reaffirmed by an Order in Council, which was not, however, passed without some 'question and debate'. There were to be two houses and no more, the Fortune in Middlesex for the Admiral's men and the Globe in Surrey for the Chamberlain's. In addition to the old prohibitions of plays on Sunday, in Lent or during infection, two new restrictions make their appearance. No plays were in future to be given in any 'common inn', and neither of the privileged companies was to play more than twice a week. A few months before, on 1 April 1600, the Middlesex Justices had stopped a contemplated play-house in East Smithfield on the strength of the Star Chamber order. But the twice-repeated limitation of the Privy Council, for all the formality of its expression, seems to have had the shortest of lives. By October 1600 it had already been broken by Pembroke's men, who began to play in that month as a third company at the Rose. During the same year the Chapel boys and those of St. Paul's were also performing, although no doubt these were technically located in 'private' houses. Blackfriars, where the Chapel plays were given, was not yet in the full sense part of the City; it was, however, to the Lord Mayor that the Council gave instructions on 11 March 1601 to stop plays in the Blackfriars, as well as at St. Paul's, during Lent. In May the Curtain was open, and although the Council suppressed a particular play there, they did not suppress the house. By the end of 1601 the order of the previous year had fallen into complete disregard. There were a 'multitude of play-howses' and a daily concourse of people to the plays. The Corporation complained and were informed by the Council on 31 December that the fault lay largely with themselves and their predecessors, as they had failed to see to the execution of their lordships' directions. These were renewed, and a reminder was also sent to the county Justices. It has been suggested that the attitudes of the Corporation and the Council had now been reversed, and that the former had become favourably disposed towards the players.[865] I find no evidence of this. Probably the City policy was to show that the Council's attempt at regulation had broken down, and that complete prohibition had become the only remedy. On 31 March 1602 the Council wrote again to the Lord Mayor, who had reported some amendment of the abuses, and announced that, 'upon noteice of her Maiesties pleasure at the suit of the Earle of Oxford', a third company, made up of the Earl's servants and of those of the Earl of Worcester, were to be tolerated, and were to have the Boar's Head as their sole playing-place.

Plays were suspended by the Council on 19 March 1603 during the illness of the Queen, which terminated fatally on 24 March. Their resumption was anticipated on the coming of James, one of whose first acts was to issue on 7 May a proclamation against plays or bear-baiting on Sundays. But plague intervened, a plague more deadly even than that of 1592-4; and it was not until after the Lent of 1604 that on 9 April the Council authorized the three companies of players to the King, Queen, and Prince to perform at the Globe, Curtain, and Fortune, so long as the weekly plague-deaths should not exceed thirty. These were the former companies of the Chamberlain's, Worcester's, and the Admiral's men, now taken directly into the royal service. By a piece of generosity not paralleled during the late reign, the King's men had received a payment of £30 from the Treasurer of the Chamber in February for their 'maintenance and relief', in view of the prohibition of performances during the plague. The attachment of the three companies to the royal households is to be regarded as something a little more than a mere honour bestowed upon them. It signified a further advance on the lines already laid down in 1597 and 1600 of direct royal control in affairs theatrical. In favour of the King's men, the precedent set for Leicester's men in 1574 was revived, and their privileges, formerly dependent upon orders of the Privy Council, were conferred upon them by a licence under letters patent. A similar patent was drafted for Queen Anne's men, but was not at the time executed. In 1606 a provincial detachment of these men was using a letter of recommendation from the Queen herself as a warrant; they did not receive a licence under letters patent until 1609. Gradually, however, the issue of a patent became the normal Jacobean method of licensing the privileged London players. The Children of the Queen's Revels received theirs in 1604 and a new one in 1610, the Prince's men in 1606, the Duke of York's in 1610, the Lady Elizabeth's in 1611, and the Elector Palatine's in 1613. In 1615 a patent of an exceptional type was issued to Philip Rosseter and his partners for a new theatre at Porter's Hall in the Blackfriars. In the patents for companies the model of the 1574 patent is in the main followed, but as a rule the 'usual howse' in which the company will play is named. This, however, does not seem to be meant to fetter their discretion to use some other convenient house, and a general authority to play in the provinces is, except in the case of the Revels Children, always added. There is no such limitation on playing to two days a week as was imposed on the companies by the Council order of 1600. Most of the patents contain a clause reserving 'all auctoritie power priuiledges and profittes' appertaining to the Master of the Revels under his patent or commission. This is omitted in the licence for the King's men and in both of those for the Revels Children, whose 1604 patent contains a special clause requiring their plays to have the 'approbacion and allowaunce' of Samuel Daniel, whom Queen Anne had appointed for that purpose.[866] It became the duty of the Master to scrutinize the phraseology of plays in the light of an _Act to Restrain Abuses of Players_, passed in May 1606, which imposed a penalty of £10 for any profane or jesting use of the names of God, Christ Jesus, the Holy Ghost, or the Trinity, in any stage-play, interlude, show, May-game, or pageant. This statute, even if not always literally observed, entailed much revision of existing dramatic texts.

If the system of patents did not render the London players independent of the Master of the Revels, still less did it abrogate from the ultimate authority of the King in Council. There is evidence that the theatres were closed in the autumn of 1605, during which plague was prevalent, and in this matter the responsibility for action still rested with the Council.[867] Unfortunately the full Register for the period 1603-13 is missing. A letter of 12 April 1607 from the City asking for a restraint is addressed to the Lord Chamberlain, whose function it would no doubt be to move the Council. In this or some later year the Whitefriars vestry seem also to have made a protest against the dumping of a play-house in their precinct.[868] That plague interfered with plays in 1608-9, and 1609-10 also, is indicated by payments made to the King's men 'for their private practice' during these years. After 1610 London was no more troubled by the plague until 1625. Other reasons for inhibiting plays sometimes presented themselves. Some bad political indiscretions of 1608, which will require consideration in the next chapter, led to a temporary suspension of performances and a royal threat of permanent suppression. The untimely death of Prince Henry on 7 November 1612 threw a shadow upon all mirth, and the Council declared that 'these tymes doe not suite with such playes and idle shewes, as are daily to be seene in and neere the cittie of London, to the scandall of order and good governement at all occasions when they are most tollerable'. On 29 March 1615 the Council summoned representatives of all the London companies before them, to answer for playing in Lent, contrary to the express direction of the Lord Chamberlain given through the Master of the Revels. The records of suburban administration show the Middlesex Justices trying William Claiton, an East Smithfield victualler, on 20 December 1608, for suffering plays to be performed in his house during the night season, and on 1 October 1612 making an Order for Suppressing Jigs at the End of Plays, on the ground that the lewd jigs, songs, and dances so used at the Fortune led to the resort of cutpurses and other ill-disposed persons and to consequent breaches of the peace. Generally speaking, the problem of metropolitan stage-control may be said, during the reign of James I, to have reached a condition of comparative stability.

As regards the provinces there has been some misapprehension. The royal patents of course ran there, and there is one example of a patent issued to a company which actually had its head-quarters in a provincial town, that to the Children of the Queen's Chamber of Bristol, granted through the influence of Queen Anne, who had visited Bristol on her progress in 1613. But in the provinces the patented companies had no monopoly; side by side with them still wandered both unlicensed vagrants and the protected servants of noblemen. It is true that a Vagabond Act of 1604, which in the main and with certain exceptions, such as dropping the experiment of transportation, continued the policy of that of 1597, has been supposed to have withdrawn the privilege of protection.[869] But the provincial records show that in fact the noblemen's companies were still afoot, and the provision of the statute itself, when carefully read, bears quite another interpretation.[870] It professes to be declaratory of that of Elizabeth on which 'divers doubtes and questions' had arisen, and after reciting the catalogue of persons who were to be classed as vagrants, which includes not only players of interludes, but also fencers, bearwards, minstrels, begging scholars and sailors, palmists, fortune-tellers, proctors, and others, it lays down that no authority shall be given by noblemen to 'any other person or persons'; that is surely, to any of the persons named in the catalogue, other than the players of interludes belonging to the noblemen and authorized under their hands and seals, for whom exception is specifically made therein.[871] The system of patents lent itself to certain abuses by travelling companies. Exemplifications were taken out in duplicate, and while the regular company remained in London, a quite distinct one would go on tour with one of the duplicates and, if necessary, an instrument of deputation from the man named in the patent of which it was a copy.[872] This practice was condemned in 1616 by a warrant of the Lord Chamberlain, to whose department the supervision of the issue of playing patents, as well as the general supervision of the Master of the Revels, appears to have been entrusted. The same document also condemns a company which had been travelling under a 'warrant,' by which is apparently meant a licence under the royal sign manual or signet, used instead of an elaborate and doubtless expensive patent.[873] The signet licences were, however, such an obvious convenience that it was not long before they came to be regularly issued to players under the administration of the Lord Chamberlain himself.[874] This is a topic which lies rather beyond my purview. Nor can I dwell at any length on the evidence which shows that the licences given to players, like other assumptions of the royal prerogative, did not pass altogether without criticism from contemporary constitutionalists. I do not know whether it was a weak point that the statutory sanction taken for the patents in 1572 was not re-enacted in 1597. Their wording purported clearly enough to give the holders an authority to play both within and without the liberties and freedoms of any cities, towns, and boroughs. But Chief Justice Sir Edward Coke, charging a Norwich jury on 4 August 1606, appears to have told the justices that the remedy of the abuses due to players was entirely in their hands--'they hauing no commission to play in any place without leaue: and therefore, if by your willingnesse they be not entertained, you may soone be rid of them'.[875] Too much stress must not be laid upon this, for Coke vigorously repudiated the accuracy of the printed edition of his charge from which the passage is taken.[876] But Prynne seems to insinuate a very similar argument in his _Histriomastix_ of 1633,[877] and in any event the validity of the patents was terminated by the final ordinance for the suppression of plays passed by the Long Parliament on 9 February 1648, which enacted that 'all stage-players, and players of interludes, and common playes, are hereby declared to be, and are, and shall be taken to be, rogues, ... whether they be wanderers or no, and notwithstanding any license whatsoever from the King or any person or persons to that purpose'.[878] We, however, are now concerned, not with the decadence of the stage, but with its palmy days under Elizabeth and James.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 839: Aydelotte, 58, misrepresents the Act of 1531 on this point. The clearest proof that the unprotected player was a vagabond is in a Privy Council letter of 30 April 1556 to Lord Shrewsbury (Lodge, i. 260), which, after directing that Sir Francis Leek shall not let his servants travel as players, adds, 'And in case any person shall attempt to set forth these sort of games or pastimes at any time hereafter, contrary to this order; and do wander, for that purpose, abroad in the country; your Lordship shall do well to give the Justices of the Peace in charge to see them apprehended out of hand, and punished as vagabonds, by virtue of the statute made against loitering and idle persons'.]

[Footnote 840: Cf. App. C, s.vv. Gosson (1582), 215; Cox (1591); App. D, No. lxxv (2) (_b_). An Act of 1552 (_5 & 6 Edw. VI_, c. 21) required every travelling 'Pedler, Tynker, or Pety Chapman' to have a licence from two justices of the shire in which he resided (_Statutes_, iv. 155). This was merged in the Act of 1572 (App. D, No. xxiv), but not formally repealed until _1 Jac. I_, c. 25, in 1604 (_Statutes_, iv. 1052).]

[Footnote 841: _Procl._ 455; cf. Dasent, v. 73; Machyn, 69.]

[Footnote 842: Cf. _M. S. C._ i. 350; Aydelotte, 14. _Procl._ 273 laid down (1545) 'that noe person of what estate, degree or condicion soever he be, doe in any wise hereafter name or avowe any man to be his servant, unles he be his houshold servant, or his bailiffe or keeper, or such other as he may keepe and retayne by the lawes and statutes of this realme, or be retayned by the kings maiestys licence' (Hazlitt, _E. D. S._ 7). But the laws against retainers had fallen into desuetude again by 1572; cf. App. D, No. xix.]

[Footnote 843: Scargill-Bird³, 80; W. R. Anson, _Law and Custom of the Constitution_, ii. 1. 55; H. Hall, _Studies in English Official Historical Documents_, 263; _M. S. C._ i. 260. The stages of a patent, as settled by _27 Hen. VIII_, c. 11 (1535), were (_a_) a Petition setting out the grant desired, and (_b_) a direction by the Sovereign for the preparation of (_c_) a King's Bill. In this the wording of the intended patent was settled, and this wording was followed, with varying initial and final _formulae_, in the subsequent instruments. The King's Bill received the royal Sign Manual and became the authority for the issue by a Clerk to the Signet of (_d_) a Signet Bill. This was sent to the Lord Privy Seal, who based upon it (_e_) a Writ of Privy Seal, which was addressed to the Lord Chancellor, and became in its turn the authority for the issue of (_f_) the actual Letters Patent under the Great Seal. These were handed to the recipient, while the Writ of Privy Seal passed on to the Six Clerks in Chancery, for (_g_) an Enrolment of its contents upon the Patent Roll.]

[Footnote 844: Cf. ch. ii.]

[Footnote 845: _Mediaeval Stage_, ii. 216.]

[Footnote 846: Cf. App. D, Nos. ii-v.]

[Footnote 847: Dasent, iii. 307.]

[Footnote 848: _S. P. D. Edw. VI_, xv. 33. By _5 & 6 Edw. VI_ of 1552 (_Statutes_, iv. 155) travelling tinkers and pedlars could hold a licence from two justices of the peace. This arrangement is continued by the Act of 1572 (_vide infra_), and tinkers and pedlars are there grouped with players. Possibly therefore such local licences had also been issued to players who were not 'servants', even before 1572.]

[Footnote 849: Dasent, i. 104, 109, 110, 122. The nature of the joiners' offence is clear; three of those imprisoned were named Hawtrell, Lucke, and Lucas. They had played 'wythowt respect ether off the day or the ordre whiche was knowen openlye the Kinges Highnes intended to take for repressinge off playes'. At the same time the Lord Warden's men were committed 'for playing contrary to an ordre taken by the Mayour'.]

[Footnote 850: P. F. Tytler, _England under the Reigns of Edward VI and Mary_, i. 21, from _S. P. D. Edw. VI_, i. 5.]

[Footnote 851: Gildersleeve, 5, points out that I was misled by Collier, i. 119, into citing the Marian proclamation in _Mediaeval Stage_, ii. 220, under 1533 as well as 1553. I regret the error.]

[Footnote 852: Dasent, vi. 102. The Lord Mayor is to send offending players 'to the Commissioners for Religion to be by them further ordered, and also to take ordre that no playe be made hencefourthe within the Citie except the same be first seen and allowed and the players aucthorised'.]

[Footnote 853: Cf. ch. xxii and App. D, Nos. ix, xii, xiii. The Commission had also an authority over vagrants in or near London, which apparently disappeared after the legislation of 1572 (_vide infra_).]

[Footnote 854: There is a doubtful notice of a Court play by the servants of George Evelyn of Wotton in 1588. Sir Percival Hart's sons played in 1565.]

[Footnote 855: The list of small travelling companies in Murray, ii. 77, 113, includes 14 belonging to knights and 3 to gentlemen in 1558-72, and 8 belonging to knights and 2 to gentlemen in 1573-97; also 7 companies under the names of their towns only in 1558-72 and 11 in 1573-97. Alexander Houghton of Lea in Lancashire wrote on 3 Aug. 1581 (G. J. Piccope, _Lancashire and Cheshire Wills_, ii. 238), 'Yt ys my wyll that Thomas Houghton of Brynescoules my brother shall have all my instrumentes belonginge to mewsyckes and all maner of playe clothes yf he be mynded to keppe and doe keppe players. And yf he wyll not keppe and maynteyne playeres then yt ys my wyll that Sir Thomas Heskethe Knyghte shall haue the same instrumentes and playe clothes. And I moste hertelye requyre the said Syr Thomas to be ffrendlye unto Foke Gyllome and William Shakshafte now dwellynge with me and ether to take theym unto his servyce or els to helpe theym to some good master'. Was then William Shakshafte a player in 1581?]

[Footnote 856: _S. P. D. Eliz._ clx. 48; clxiii. 44, record a dispute in 1583 between Sir Walter Waller and Mr. Potter, a J.P. of Kent. Waller, summoned before the Council, denies that his servants played an interlude at Brasted, and is confirmed by the constable and parishioners, who assert that Mr. Potter factiously sent the men to gaol as rogues. Lord Cobham made a vain attempt to reconcile the parties.]

[Footnote 857: Cf. _Mediaeval Stage_, ii. 259, on the history of this privilege. The reservation was continued by _39 Eliz._ c. 4, § 10 (1598). By _43 Eliz._ c. 9, § 2 (1601), it was made dependent on a certificate by the Lords Justices to the validity of Dutton's claim. Presumably this was obtained as the privilege was reserved unconditionally by _1 Jac. I_, c. 7, § 8 (1604). There were several Elizabethan actors of the name of Dutton (cf. ch. xv), but it is not known whether they belonged to the Cheshire house.]

[Footnote 858: For documents addressed to Richard Young or mentions of him, cf. App. D, Nos. lxviii, lxxiv, xc. He is often referred to in the _Hatfield MSS._, in connexion with a monopoly of starch which he held, and otherwise. In 1593 (iv. 393) he writes 'from my house, Stratford the Bowe'. On 30 Nov. 1594 (v. 25) he wrote to the Queen, 'in these my aged and extreme or last days' with notes of many examinations, chiefly of papists, taken by him. On the other hand, Carter, _Shakespeare Puritan and Recusant_, 145, quotes an inscription on the coffin of Roger Rippon, who died in Newgate in 1592, 'his blood crieth for speedy vengeance against ... Mʳ. Richard Young, a justice of the peace in London, who in this and many like points hath abused his power for the upholding of the Romish Antichrist, Prelacy and Priesthood'.]

[Footnote 859: Cf. p. 265. Collier, i. 254, quotes an epigram calling Fleetwood 'the enemy of all poor players'. John Field dedicates his _Godly Exhortation_ (1583) to him as a Middlesex and Surrey Justice.]

[Footnote 860: Cf. App. D, Nos. xxxvii, lxviii.]

[Footnote 861: Bacon, _On the Controversies of the Church_ (Spedding, viii. 76).]

[Footnote 862: Cf. ch. xvi, introduction.]

[Footnote 863: Cf. ch. xxiii, s.vv. Jonson, Nashe.]

[Footnote 864: Cf. App. D, No. cxx.]

[Footnote 865: Wallace, ii. 162.]

[Footnote 866: There is no reference to licensing in the later Queen's Revels patent of 1610. That for the Queen's men in 1609 has the usual provision for licensing by the Master of the Revels. This was, however, not inconsistent with 'a kind of gouernment and suruey ouer the said players' by the Chamberlain of the Queen's Household (cf. ch. xiii).]

[Footnote 867: Philip Gawdy (_Letters_, 160) writes on 28 Oct. 1605 of his nephew in London, 'Playes he was never at any, for they are all put downe'; cf. App. D, Nos. cxxxix, cxl.]

[Footnote 868: Cf. ch. xvii.]

[Footnote 869: Some interesting light is thrown on the workings of the Vagabond Acts in the North Riding of Yorkshire by the presentations in _Quarter Sessions Records_ (_North Riding Record Soc._), i. 204, 260; ii. 110, 119, 197. At Topcliffe on 2 Oct. 1610 Thomas Pant, apprentice to Christopher Simpson of Egton, shoemaker and recusant, was released from his indentures on complaining that he had been 'trayned up for these three yeres in wandering in the country and playing of interludes'. At Helmesley on 8 July 1612 Christopher Simpson, late of Egton, was presented and fined as a player, and Richard Dawson, tanner and constable of Stokesley, for allowing Christopher and also Robert Simpson of Staythes, shoemaker, Richard Hudson of Hutton Bushell, weaver, and Edward Lister of Allerston, weaver, to wander as common players of interludes. A similar charge was made against William Blackborne, labourer and constable of Marton, as regards Robert Simpson, Richard Knagges of Moorsham, William Fetherston of Danby, and James Pickering of Bowlby, mason. At Helmesley on 9 Jan. 1616 a number of gentlemen and yeomen were presented for receiving players in their houses and giving them bread and drink. John, Richard, and Cuthbert Simpson, recusants, of Egton, Robert Simpson, of Staythes, and four other players were fined 10_s._ each. There were similar cases at Hutton Bushell on 4 April 1616, at Thirsk on 10 April 1616 and 7 April 1619, and at Helmesley on 9 July 1616. Presumably the Simpsons were the same men who brought Sir John Yorke into trouble with the Star Chamber in 1614 (cf. p. 328).]

[Footnote 870: Gildersleeve, 28, 35, 38. The origin of the error is probably in the shoulder-note 'No Licence by any Noblemen shall exempt Players' to _1 Jac. I_, c. 7, § 1, in the R. O. edition of the _Statutes_.]

[Footnote 871: The players of Lords Berkeley, Chandos, Dudley, Evers, Huntingdon, and Mounteagle (Murray, ii. 28, 32, 43, 45, 49, 57), as well as those of the Duke of Lennox (cf. ch. xiii), are still traceable after 1604.]

[Footnote 872: Cf. App. D, No. clviii, and ch. xiii, s.v. Anne's.]

[Footnote 873: Cf. ch. xii, s.v. King's Revels. A later warrant of 20 Nov. 1622 deals with the same abuse of players and others who 'without the knowledge and approbacon of his maiesties office of the Revels' travel 'by reason of certaine grants comissions and lycences which they haue by secret meanes procured both from the Kings Maiestie and also from diuerse noblemen' (Murray, ii. 351).]

[Footnote 874: _M. S. C._ i. 284; Murray, ii. 192.]

[Footnote 875: _The Lord Coke his Speech and Charge. With a Discouerie of the Abuses and Corruption of Officers_ (1607) H₂. There is an epistle to the Earl of Exeter signed R. P., said (_D. N. B._) to be Robert Pricket.]

[Footnote 876: Coke, _Preface to 7th Report_, 'libellum quendam ... rudem et inconcinnum ... quem sane contestor non solum me omnino insciente fuisse divulgatum, sed ... ne unam quidem sententiolam eo sensu et significatione, prout dicta erat, fuisse enarratam'; cf. Gildersleeve, 40; J. Haslewood in _Gentleman's Magazine_, lxxxvi. 1. 205; _1 N. Q._ vii. 376, 433.]

[Footnote 877: Prynne, 492, 497.]

[Footnote 878: Hazlitt, _E. D. S._ 67.]

X

THE ACTOR'S QUALITY

[_Bibliographical Note._--This chapter mainly rests upon the
official documents in Appendix D, the plague-data in Appendix
E, and the detailed accounts of individual companies in Book
III. To the books and dissertations cited for those sections
and for chapter viii may be added, as studies of the stage in
its political aspect, R. Simpson, _The Political Use of the
Stage in Shakespeare's Time_ and _The Politics of Shakespere's
Historical Plays_ (1874, _N. S. S. Trans._ 371, 396), S. R.
Gardiner, _The Political Element in Massinger_ (1875-6, _N. S.
S. Trans._ 314), S. Lee, _The Topical Side of the Elizabethan
Drama_ and _Elizabethan England and the Jews_ (1887-92, _N. S.
S._ 1, 143), J. A. de Rothschild, _Shakespeare and his Day_
(1906), T. S. Graves, _Some Allusions to Religious and
Political Plays_ (1912, _M. P._ ix. 545), and _The Political
Use of the Stage during the Reign of James I_ (1914, _Anglia_,
xxxviii. 137). The fragments of Sir Henry Herbert's
office-book, showing the working of the censorship from 1623 to
1642, usually cited from the _Shakespeare Variorum_ (1821), and
G. Chalmers, _Supplemental Apology_ (1799), are now
conveniently collected in J. Q. Adams, _The Dramatic Records of
Sir Henry Herbert_ (1917). A useful study has recently appeared
in A. Thaler, _The Travelling Players in Shakespeare's England_
(1920, _M. P._ xvii. 489).]

The history detailed in the foregoing chapter represents, from the point of view of the playing companies, a vexed progress towards that state of regulative security which, in the case of any industry dependent upon a permanent habitation and the outlay of capital, is the first condition of economic stability. More than once in the course of the struggle was an approach made to a settlement before it was actually reached. The rather obscure period of the first attempts of the companies to establish themselves in London was closed by the experimental patent to Leicester's men and the fairly reasonable City regulations of 1574. But the building of the suburban theatres on the one hand and the aggressiveness of the preachers on the other broke down the equilibrium; and there followed a period of acute conflict, of which the commission to the Master of the Revels in 1581, the City prohibition of 1582, the appointment of the Queen's men in 1583, and the controversy before the Privy Council in 1584 formed the final stages. The players were victorious, and the result of their victory was an assured position under the Council and the Master of the Revels, which was not indeed wholly accepted by the City, and was seriously threatened in 1596 and 1597, but only to be the more firmly established in the latter year when the central government assumed direct responsibility for the regulation of the stage throughout the London area. I think that 1597 must be regarded as the critical moment at which complete stability was attained; the substitution under James I of letters patent for Star Chamber orders as the licensing machinery was of comparatively slight importance. From 1597 onwards it was definitely the Crown and not the local authorities which determined the companies to whom, subject to the detailed administrative control of the Privy Council, the Lord Chamberlain, and his subordinate the Master of the Revels, the privilege of playing within the neighbourhood of London should be conceded. And the policy of the Crown, alike under Elizabeth and under the Stuarts, was consistently in favour of such solace and recreation for the Sovereign and the subjects as the players ministered.

And so, tentatively up to 1584, and thereafter with a security which received final confirmation in 1597, the actor's occupation began to take its place as a regular profession, in which money might with reasonable safety be invested, to which a man might look for the career of a lifetime, and in which he might venture to bring up his children. As early as 1574 the patent to Leicester's men refers to playing as an 'arte and facultye'. In 1581 the Privy Council call it a 'trade'; in 1582 a 'profession'; in 1593 a 'qualitie'. The order of 1600 explicitly recognizes that it 'may with a good order and moderacion be suffered in a well gouerned estate'. So that when Fleetwood takes occasion in 1584 to recall that originally interludes were merely the by-work of 'men for their lyvings using other honest and lawfull artes, or reteyned in honest services', his argument has already become anachronistic, not wholly justified even as an antiquarian quibble, and still less as a serious appreciation of the administrative facts with which the writer had to deal. The player of the seventeenth century is in fact as necessary a member of the polity as the minstrel of the twelfth or the fourteenth; with this distinction that, in London at least, he is a householder and not a vagrant, and is therefore able to perform his function on a larger scale and with a fuller use of the methods and advantages of co-operation.

Obviously the player's status, like any other status in a civilized community, depended upon the observance on his side of certain obligations. He had to get his formal authority or licence for the exercise of his art. He had to respect certain prescribed limitations of times and seasons. He had to shoulder certain responsibilities imposed upon him as a subject and a citizen. To each of these aspects of his calling some measure of detailed consideration is due.