Chapter XXVI: Introduction: The Public Theatres (8)

It is rather disappointing that the numerous documents bearing upon the occupation of the Blackfriars between 1600 and 1608 should throw so little light upon the way in which James Burbadge adapted his purchase ‘with great charge and troble’ to the purposes of a theatre. The lease of 1600 did not cover the whole of the property, but only a ‘great hall or roome, with the roomes over the same’. Presumably this was the case also with the leases of 1608, since the rent was the same as in 1600. The rest of the premises, with those purchased later by the younger Burbadges, may be represented by the four tenements valued at £75 a year in 1633, and the ‘piece of void ground to turn coaches’ valued at £6 was doubtless the fragment of the old kitchen yard north of the approach. The Kirkham lawsuits tell us that one or two rooms were reserved for the residence of Evans in 1602 and that during the early part of 1604 ‘a certen rome, called the Scholehouse, and a certen chamber over the same’ had been ‘seuered from the said great hall, and made fitt by’ Evans ‘at his owne proper cost and chardges, to dyne and supp in’.[1629] Professor Wallace has a number of additional lawsuits, still unpublished.[1630] But the extracts from these given by him in 1908 add only a few details to those formerly known. They seem to amount to this. The hall was 66 ft. from north to south and 46 ft. from east to west. It was paved, and had a stage, galleries, and seats of which a schedule was attached to the lease. The stage was at one end of the hall. The school-house was at the north end of the hall.[1631] At this end also must have been the entrance, as one of the petitions of 1619 locates it near the way used from part of the precinct in going to church.[1632] It was doubtless by the gate-house entry to the cloister, just beyond where the coaches turned. Unfortunately one is left quite in doubt upon the critical question as to which of the rooms known to us from earlier records were used for the theatre. It might have been the upper frater with the partitions removed; it might have been constructed out of the paved hall and blind parlour beneath, which appear to be represented by the ‘midle romes’ and two of the rooms in the occupation of Peter Johnson enumerated in the conveyance to Burbadge. _A priori_ one would have thought the upper frater the most likely. It may very well have been paved, like the hall beneath it, and a chamber which had held parliaments and a legatine trial could amply suffice to hold a theatre. On this supposition the rooms ‘above’ the hall which were conveyed by the lease of 1600, and one of which Evans converted into a dining-room can only have been the room over the staircase and the garret over that. These, indeed, may have extended over the north end of the frater proper, although in the main that building appears, down to the time when Burbadge bought it, to have had nothing over it but leads.[1633] There is a serious difficulty in the way of the alternative theory, which would identify the theatre with the ‘midle romes’ on the ground floor. This is that these would most likely only be low rooms, vaulted to carry the heavy floor of the parliament chamber above. On the whole, the balance of probability appears to be strongly in favour of the upper frater.

Professor Wallace’s account of the matter is categorical. ‘The south section’, he says, ‘underwent a thorough transformation. The two stories were converted into the auditorium called “the great Hall or Room”.... The roof was changed, and rooms, probably of the usual dormer sort, were built above the Great Hall.’[1634] I do not know whether there is any evidence for this theory, which disregards a good many structural difficulties, in those parts of his recently discovered documents which Professor Wallace has not published; there is certainly none in those which he has. If not, I do not think we must assume that Burbadge undertook expensive building operations, when he had all the facilities for planning an admirable auditorium without them. Professor Wallace seems to have been led into his conjecture by an assumed necessity for providing space for three tiers of galleries. There is no such necessity, and in fact no evidence for more than one tier, although I dare say that the upper frater taken by itself was high enough for two. Professor Wallace cites a reference to ‘porticibus _anglice_ galleryes’, and points out that ‘galleryes’ is a plural. This is so, but the ‘galleryes’ were not necessarily superimposed; if one ran along the east side of the hall and the other along the west, they would still constitute a plural. Professor Wallace takes the step from his plural to three with the aid of Cockledemoy’s address to ‘my very fine Heliconian gallants, and you, my worshipful friends in the middle region’.[1635] Obviously the ‘middle region’ is not bound to be the middle one of three galleries; it may just as well be the space between the stage and the galleries.

It is beyond the scope of this inquiry to trace the detailed fortunes of the Blackfriars during its later years. By Caroline times it took place of the Globe as the principal and most profitable house of the King’s men.[1636] In 1653, when like the rest of the theatres it was closed, Richard Flecknoe recalled its origin and wrote its epitaph.[1637] It was pulled down on 6 August 1655.[1638] This site was used for tenements, which in course of time were replaced by _The Times_ office which now occupies the site.[1639]

ii. THE WHITEFRIARS

[_Bibliographical Note._--The relevant dissertations are
P. Cunningham, _The Whitefriars, the Salisbury Court, and
the Duke’s Theatres_ (1849, _Sh. Soc. Papers_, iv. 89), J.
Greenstreet, _The Whitefriars Theatre in the Time of Shakspere_
(1888, _N. S. S. Trans._ 269), with text of the Bill and Answer
in the Chancery suit of _Androwes v. Slater_ (1609), and A. W.
Clapham, _The Topography of the Carmelite Priory of London_
(1910, _Brit. Arch. Assoc. Journal_, n. s. xvi. 15), with
seventeenth-century plan of the precinct, reproduced by Adams,
312.]

The only suggestion of a sixteenth-century play-house in the Whitefriars is to be found in the statement of Richard Rawlidge in 1628 that one was suppressed there at a date under Elizabeth which he does not specify, but which may most plausibly be put at 1596 (cf. p. 359). It is not improbable that Rawlidge wrote ‘Whitefriars’ when he should have written ‘Blackfriars’, but Malone (_Var._ iii. 46, 52) accepted the statement and assigned the suppression to 1580. I do not suppose that Collier had any other basis than this for the ‘more then 30 yeares’ of the following description which he alleged to be an extract from ‘an original survey of some part of the precinct, made in March 1616’ in his possession, and printed in his _New Facts_ (1835), 44:

‘The Theater is situate near vnto the Bishopps House, and was
in former times a hall or refectorie belonging to the dissolved
Monastery. It hath beene vsed as a place for the presentation
of playes and enterludes for more then 30 yeares, last by the
Children of her Majestie. It hath little or no furniture for a
play-house, saving an old tottered curten, some decayed benches,
and a few worne out properties and peeces of Arras for hangings
to the stage and tire house. The raine hath made its way in and
if it bee not repaired, it must soone be plucked downe or it
will fall.’

The earliest record, therefore, on which reliance can be placed is the lawsuit of _Androwes v. Slater_ in 1609,[1640] which recites the lease by Robert Lord Buckhurst to Michael Drayton and Thomas Woodford for six years eight months and twenty days from March 1608 of ‘a messuage or mansion howse parcell of the late dissolved monastery called the Whitefriars, in Fleete streete, in the subvrbs of London’, while the articles of agreement between the sharers of the King’s Revels syndicate (cf. ch. xii), of the same date, assign lodgings in the house to Martin Slater, and add

‘The roomes of which howse are thirteene in number, three belowe
and tenne above, that is to saie, the greate hall, the kitchin
by the yard, and a cellar, with all the roomes from the east
ende of the howse to the Master of the revells’ office, as the
same are now severed and devided.’[1641]

The precinct of the former priory of the Carmelites or White Friars lay between Fleet Street and the river, to the east of Serjeants’ Inn and to the west of Water Lane, which divided it from Salisbury Court, the old inn of the bishops of Salisbury, which had passed to the Sackvilles in the sixteenth century, and ultimately became known as Dorset House (Stowe, _Survey_, ii. 45). The precinct was a liberty, and its history, from the point of view of local government, had been closely analogous to that of the Blackfriars. Like the Blackfriars, it came under complete civic control in this very year of 1608 (cf. p. 480). The Whitefriars mansion itself the Sackvilles probably acquired from the family of Thomas Lord De La Warr, to whom a grant of priory property was made in 1544 (Dugdale, vi. 1572).

From the King’s Revels the Whitefriars passed to the occupation of the Queen’s Revels (cf. ch. xii) in 1609, and continued in their use both before and after their amalgamation with the Lady Elizabeth’s in March 1613. It is named on the title-pages of _Woman a Weathercock_ (1612) and _The Insatiate Countess_ (1613), and a reference in the prologue to ‘daughters of Whitefriars’ shows that it was also the locality of _Epicoene_ (1609). In February 1613 it was ‘taken up’ by some London apprentices for an invitation performance of Robert Tailor’s _The Hog Hath Lost His Pearl_ (q.v.). From March 1613 the amalgamated companies had Bankside theatres available, first the Swan and afterwards the Hope, but it is clear from the Watermen’s petition (cf. p. 370) that, at any rate before the Hope was built, they mainly used the Whitefriars. Daborne in a letter to Henslowe of 5 June 1613 speaks of the company ‘comming over’, presumably from the Whitefriars to Bankside, and on 9 Dec. 1613 suggests that a play of his would be suitable for Henslowe’s ‘publique howse’, from which it may perhaps be inferred that Henslowe had also an interest in a ‘private’ house at the time (_Henslowe Papers_, 72, 79). Apparently conversion into a public theatre was then contemplated, for on 13 July 1613 the Master of the Revels received a fee of £20 ‘for a license to erect a new play-house in the White-friers, &c.’ (_Var._ iii. 52). But this scheme was stopped by the Privy Council.[1642] On 3 June 1615 Rosseter and others obtained their patent for the Porter’s Hall theatre in Blackfriars (cf. p. 472), which contemplated its use by the Revels, the Prince’s, and the Lady Elizabeth’s, and incidentally recited that the Revels Children had been trained and exercised in the Whitefriars ‘ever since’ 1610. The amalgamation was dissolved in the spring of 1616, and the Lady Elizabeth’s and the Revels probably disappeared from London. If, therefore, the Whitefriars continued in use, it was probably by Prince Charles’s men, who would have been left homeless by the demolition of Porter’s Hall early in 1617. That it did continue in use and that a renewed lease was still held by some of the parties interested in the house in 1608 is indicated by the suit of _Trevell v. Woodford_ before the Court of Requests in 1642, from which it appears, according to Peter Cunningham, that Sir Anthony Ashley, the then landlord of the house, entered the theatre in 1621, and turned out the players, on the pretence that half a year’s rent was due to him. In 1629 the Whitefriars was replaced by the Salisbury Court theatre, built on the site of an old barn just on the other side of Water Lane.

XVIII

THE STRUCTURE AND CONDUCT OF THEATRES

[_Bibliographical Note._--The only Restoration treatises which
throw any light on the pre-Restoration theatre are R. Flecknoe,
_A Short Discourse of the English Stage_ (1664), and J. Wright,
_Historia Histrionica_ (1699), extracts from which are in
Appendix I.

Archaeological material was brought together by E. Malone in
_Variorum_ iii. 51, and J. P. Collier in _H. E. D. P._
iii. 140.

Modern investigation may be said to begin with the discovery of
the Swan drawing in 1888. The principal dissertations up to 1916
are:

K. T. Gaedertz, _Zur Kenntnis der altenglischen Bühne_ (1888);
H. B. Wheatley, _On a contemporary Drawing of the interior of
the Swan Theatre_, 1596 (1888, _N. S. S. Trans. 1887–92_, 215);
W. Archer, _A Sixteenth-Century Play-house_ (1888, _Universal
Review_), _The Stage of Shakespeare_ (10 Aug. 1907, _Tribune_),
_The Fortune Theatre_, 1600 (12 Oct. 1907, _Tribune_, repr.
_Jahrbuch_, xliv. 159), _The Swan Drawing_ (11 Jan. 1908,
_Tribune_), _The Elizabethan Stage_ (1908, _Quarterly Review_,
ccviii. 442), _The Play-house_ (1916, _Shakespeare’s England_,
ii. 283); R. Genée, _Ueber die scenischen Formen Shakespeare’s
in ihrem Verhältnisse zur Bühne seiner Zeit_ (1891, _Jahrbuch_,
xxvi. 131); E. Kilian, _Die scenischen Formen Shakespeares
in ihrer Beziehung zu der Aufführung seiner Dramen auf der
modernen Bühne_ (1893, _Jahrbuch_, xxviii. 90), _Shakespeare
auf der modernen Bühne_ (1900, _Jahrbuch_, xxxvi. 228); H.
Logeman, _Johannes de Witt’s Visit to the Swan Theatre_ (1897,
_Anglia_, xix. 117); C. Grabau, _Zur englischen Bühne um
1600_ (1902, _Jahrbuch_, xxxviii. 232); W. J. Lawrence, _Some
Characteristics of the Elizabethan-Stuart Stage_ (1902, _E.
S._ xxxii. 36), _The Elizabethan Play-house_ (1912, 1913),
_Night Performances in the Elizabethan Theatres_ (1915, _E.
S._ xlviii. 213), _New Light on the Elizabethan Theatre_ (May
1916, _Fortnightly Review_), _A Forgotten Play-house Custom of
Shakespeare’s Day_ (1916, _Book of Homage_, 207), _Horses on
the Elizabethan Stage_ (_T. L. S._ 5 June 1919), _He’s for a
Jig or ---- _ (_T. L. S._ 3 July 1919); K. Mantzius, _History
of Theatrical Art_ (1903–9); E. E. Hale, _The Influence of
Theatrical Conditions on Shakespeare_ (1904, _M. P._ i. 171);
E. Koeppel, _Die unkritische Behandlung dramaturgischer Angaben
in den Shakespeare-Ausgaben_ (1904, _E. S._ xxxiv. 1); W. Bang,
_Zur Bühne Shakespeares_ (1904, _Jahrbuch_, xl. 223); W. Keller,
_Nochmals zur Bühne Shakespeares_ (1904, _Jahrbuch_, xl. 225);
A. H. Tolman, _Shakespeare’s Stage and Modern Adaptations_
(1904, _Views about Hamlet_, 115), _Alternation in the Staging
of Shakespeare’s Plays_ (1909, _M. P._ vi. 517); C. Brodmeier,
_Die Shakespeare-Bühne nach den alten Bühnenanweisungen_ (1904);
R. Prölss, _Von den ältesten Drucken der Dramen Shakespeares_
(1905); P. Monkemeyer, _Prolegomena zu einer Darstellung der
englischen Volksbühne_ (1905); G. P. Baker, _Hamlet on an
Elizabethan Stage_ (1905, _Jahrbuch_, xli. 296), _Elizabethan
Stage Theories_ (3 Nov. 1905, _The Times Literary Supplement_);
C. H. Kaulfuss-Diesch, _Die Inszenierung des deutschen Dramas an
der Wende des 16 und 17 Jahrhunderts_ (1905); G. F. Reynolds,
_Some Principles of Elizabethan Staging_ (1905, _M. P._ i. 581,
ii. 69), _Trees on the Stage of Shakespeare_ (1907, _M. P._ v.
153), _What we know of the Elizabethan Stage_ (1911, _M. P._ ix.
47), _William Percy and his Plays_ (1914, _M. P._ xii. 109);
J. Corbin, _Shakespeare and the Plastic Stage_ (1906, _Atlantic
Monthly_, xcvii. 369), _Shakespeare his Own Stage Manager_
(1911, _Century_, lxxxiii. 260); R. Bridges, _On the Influence
of the Audience_ (1907, _Stratford Town Shakespeare_, x. 321);
E. K. Chambers, _On the Stage of the Globe_ (1907, _Stratford
Town Shakespeare_, x. 351); C. C. Stopes, _Elizabethan Stage
Scenery_ (June 1907, _Fortnightly Review_); R. Wegener, _Die
Bühneneinrichtung des Shakespeareschen Theaters_ (1907); W.
H. Godfrey, _An Elizabethan Play-house_ (1908, _Architectural
Review_, xxiii. 239; cf. xxxi. 53); C. W. Wallace, _The
Children of the Chapel at Blackfriars_ (1908); F. Schelling,
_The Elizabethan Play-house_ (1908, _Proc. of Philadelphia
Num. and Antiq. Soc._); A. A. Helmholtz-Phelan, _The Staging
of Court Dramas before 1595_ (1909, _M. L. A._ xxiv. 185); V.
E. Albright, _The Shaksperian Stage_ (1909), _Percy’s Plays as
Proof of the Elizabethan Stage_ (1913, _M. P._ xi. 237); A.
R. Skemp, _Some Characteristics of the English Stage before
the Restoration_ (1909, _Jahrbuch_, xlv. 101); W. Creizenach,
_Bühnenwasen und Schauspielkunst_ (1909, _Gesch. des neueren
Dramas_, iv. 401); B. Neuendorff, _Die englische Volksbühne im
Zeitalter Shakespeares nach den Bühnenanweisungen_ (1910); H.
H. Child, _The Elizabethan Theatre_ (1910, _C. H._ vi. 241); H.
Conrad, _Bemerkungen zu Lawrence’ Title and Locality Boards_
(1910, _Jahrbuch_, xlvi. 106); C. R. Baskervill, _The Custom
of Sitting on the Elizabethan Stage_ (1911, _M. P._ viii.
581); J. Q. Adams, _The Four Pictorial Representations of the
Elizabethan Stage_ (April 1911, _J. G. P._); F. A. Foster,
_Dumb Show in Elizabethan Drama before 1620_ (1911, _E. S._
xliv. 8); A. Forestier, _The Fortune Theatre Reconstructed_ (12
Aug. 1911, _Illustrated London News_); M. B. Evans, _An Early
Type of Stage_ (1912, _M. P._ ix. 421); T. S. Graves, _A Note
on the Swan Theatre_ (1912, _M. P._ ix. 431), _Night Scenes in
the Elizabethan Theatres_ (1913, _E. S._ xlvii. 63), _The Court
and the London Theaters during the Reign of Elizabeth_ (1913),
_The Origin of the Custom of Sitting upon the Stage_ (1914, _J.
E. G. P._ xiii. 104), _The Act Time in Elizabethan Theatres_
(1915, _Univ. of Carolina, Studies in Philology_, xii. 3), _The
Ass as Actor_ (1916, _S. Atlantic Quarterly_, xv. 175); G. H.
Cowling, _Music on the Shakespearian Stage_ (1913); H. Bell,
_Contributions to the History of the English Play-house_ (1913,
_Architectural Record_, 262, 359); W. G. Keith, _The Designs
for the first Movable Scenery on the English Stage_ (1914,
_Burlington Magazine_, xxv. 29, 85); W. Poel, _Shakespeare in
the Theatre_ (1915), _Some Notes on Shakespeare’s Stage and
Plays_ (1916); J. Le G. Brereton, _De Witt at the Swan_ (1916,
_Book of Homage_, 204); A. H. Thorndike, _Shakespeare’s Theater_
(1916); T. H. Dickinson, _Some Principles of Shakespeare
Staging_ (1916, _Wisconsin Shakespeare Studies_, 125). More
recent papers are noted in the _Bulletin_ of the English
Association. R. C. Rhodes’ _The Stagery of Shakespeare_ (1922)
deserves consideration.

It remains to give some account of the iconographical material
available. Of four representations of the interiors of
play-houses, the only one of early date (_c._ 1596) is (_a_)
Arend van Buchell’s copy of a drawing by Johannes de Witt of
the Swan, published in 1888 by Gaedertz and in more accurate
facsimile by Wheatley (_vide supra_). The other three are
Caroline. (_b_) A small engraving in a compartment of the
title-page of W. Alabaster, _Roxana_ (1632), may be taken as
representing a type of academic stage, as the play was at
Trinity, Cambridge, _c._ 1592. (_c_) A very similar engraving
in the title-page of N. Richards, _Messallina_ (1640), if it
represents a specific stage at all, is less likely to represent
the second Fortune, as suggested by Skemp in his edition of
the play, or the Red Bull, as suggested by Albright, 45,
than Salisbury Court, where it is clear from Murray, i. 279,
that most of the career of the Revels company, by whom it
was produced, was spent. (_d_) An engraved frontispiece to
Francis Kirkman’s editions (1672, 1673) of _The Wits, or Sport
upon Sport_ (originally published by Marsh, 1662) has been
shown by Albright, 40, to have been erroneously regarded as a
representation of the Red Bull, to which there is an incidental
reference in the preface to Part II, and must be taken to show
the type of stage on which the ‘drolls’ contained in the book
were given ‘when the publique Theatres were shut up’.

A Court interlude, with performers and spectators, might be
supposed to be represented in (_e_) a woodcut prefixed to
Wilson’s _Three Lords and Three Ladies of London_ (1590), but
the subject is not that of the play, and the cut is shown by A.
W. Pollard (_English Miracle Plays_, ed. 6, 1914) to be taken
from S. Batman, _The Travayled Pylgrime_ (1569), and ultimately
from a fifteenth-century illustration to O. de la Marche’s
_Chevalier Délibéré_.

Of the exteriors of theatres there are (_f_) a small engraving
of _Theatrum_ in a compartment of the title-page of Jonson’s
_Works_ (1616), which may be merely a bit of classical
archaeology, but appears to have the characteristic Elizabethan
hut, and (_g_) a series of representations, or perhaps only
cartographical symbols, in the various maps detailed in the
bibliographical note to ch. xvi. Doubtfully authentic is (_h_) a
façade of the Blackfriars, reproduced by Baker, 78, from a print
in the collection of Mr. Henry Gardiner, with a note (44) that
the owner and various antiquarians ‘believe it genuine’; and
almost certainly misnamed (_i_) a façade engraved as a relic of
the second Fortune in R. Wilkinson, _Londina Illustrata_ (1819),
ii. 141, and elsewhere, which is plausibly assigned by W. J.
Lawrence, _Restoration Stage Nurseries_, in _Archiv_ (1914),
301, to a post-Restoration training-school for young actors.

A small ground-plan (_k_) of the Swan appears upon a manor map
of Paris Garden in 1627, reproduced by W. Rendle in Harrison,
ii, App. I.

A rough engraving (_l_) on the title-page of _Cornucopia,
Pasquils Nightcap_ (1612) shows a section of the orchestra of a
classical play-house as seen from the stage, and throws no light
on contemporary conditions; and (_m_) the design by Inigo Jones
described in ch. vii is of uncertain date, and intended for the
private Cockpit theatre at Whitehall.

I know of no representation of an English provincial stage,
and unfortunately E. Mentzel, who describes (_Gesch. der
Schauspielkunst in Frankfurt am Main_, 38) a woodcut of a
play, with signboards, by English actors, probably at Frankfort,
Nuremberg, or Cassel, in 1597, does not reproduce it. Some
notion of the improvised stages used by travelling companies for
out-of-door performances may be obtained from the continental
engravings reproduced by Bapst, 153, by Rigal in _Petit de
Julleville_, iii. 264, 296, and by M. B. Evans, _An Early
Type of Stage_ (_M. P._ ix. 421).

An engraving of the Restoration stage of the Theatre Royal,
Drury Lane (built 1663), from _Ariane, ou Le Mariage de
Bacchus_ (1674), and another of the same house as altered in
1696, from _Unhappy Kindness_ (1697), are reproduced by
Lawrence, i. 169; ii. 140. Of the five engravings of the Duke’s
Theatre, Dorset Garden (built 1671), in E. Settle, _Empress
of Morocco_ (1673), one is reproduced by Albright, 47, and
another by Lawrence, ii. 160, and Thorndike, 110.

Graphic attempts to reconstruct the plan and elevation of a
typical Elizabethan stage will be found in the dissertations
cited above of Brodmeier, Wegener, Archer, Godfrey, Albright,
Corbin (1911, by G. Varian and J. Hambridge), and Forestier, and
in the picture reproduced in W. N. Hills, _The Shakespearian
Stage_ (1919).

Various revivals have also been carried out on Elizabethan
stages, with more or less of archaeological purism, notably
in London (W. Poel, _Shakespeare in the Theatre_), Paris
(_Sh.-Jahrbuch_, xxxv. 383), Harvard (G. P. Baker in
_Sh.-Jahrbuch_, xli. 296), and Munich (_Sh.-Jahrbuch_, xlii.
327).]

A history of the theatres would not be complete without some account of their general structure and economy in the disposition of auditorium and stage. I propose to begin with the more assured or less important points, as a clearing of the way for the difficult and controverted problems of scenic setting, on some of which I am afraid that no very secure conclusion can be reached.

It is necessary, in the forefront, to appreciate the distinction between the ‘common’ or ‘public’ play-houses and the ‘private’ houses, which, so far as our period is concerned, were Paul’s, the Blackfriars, and the Whitefriars. This distinction is in its origin somewhat a technical one, for there is no reason to suppose that in the private houses the performances were private, in the sense that access to them could not be obtained, on payment, by members of the general public. Probably it is to be explained in relation to the Elizabethan system of State control of theatres, and represents an attempt to evade the limitations on the location and the number of play-houses which had been established through the action, first of the civic authorities and later of the Privy Council itself. This view receives support from the allegations made during the campaign for the suppression of the Blackfriars in 1619 that the owner ‘doth vnder the name of a private howse (respectinge indeed private comoditie only) convert the said howse to a publique play-house’.[1643]

It can hardly be supposed, however, that Burbadge could have hoodwinked the Privy Council merely by calling the Blackfriars a ‘private’ house, without finding any other means of differentiating it from the ‘public’ houses, and it is quite possible that the technical distinction, for which modern analogies could be found, consisted in the fact that admission was paid for in advance and no money taken at the doors.[1644] Mr. Lawrence has very appropriately quoted in this connexion the Common Council regulations of 1574, in which an exception is made for performances ‘withowte publique or comen collection of money of the auditorie, or behoulders theareof’; and though I do not suggest that the extension of this principle to Paul’s or the Blackfriars fell within the intention of the order, the evasion may have been allowed, within the gates of Paul’s or in a liberty, and for a well-conducted house attended by a well-to-do audience, to hold.[1645] If so, it is probable that Paul’s from the beginning and the earlier Blackfriars were in effect private houses. But the actual terminology does not emerge before the revival of the boy companies in 1599 and 1600. For some years past the title-pages of plays had vaunted them as ‘publikely acted’.[1646] A corresponding ‘priuately acted’ appears for Blackfriars in Jonson’s _Cynthia’s Revels_ (1601) and _Poetaster_ (1602), and for Paul’s in Middleton’s _Blurt Master Constable_ (1602), while the antithesis is complete in Dekker’s _Satiromastix_ (1602), which was presented ‘publikely’ by the Chamberlain’s and ‘priuately’ by Paul’s. Somewhat later we find Field’s _Woman a Weathercock_ (1612) acted ‘priuately’, and Chapman’s _Revenge of Bussy D’Ambois_ (1613) ‘at the priuate Play-house’ in the Whitefriars.[1647] But by this time the distinction may be taken for granted as well established in general use.[1648]

From the point of view, however, of stage arrangements, the technical _differentia_ of a private house is less important than certain subsidiary characteristics.[1649] The private houses were all in closed buildings, were occupied by boys, and charged higher prices than the ordinary theatres. These facts entailed variations of structure and method, which will require attention at more than one point. They naturally became less fundamental, but did not entirely disappear, after the transfer of the Blackfriars to the King’s men in 1609, and probably passed still further into the background after the introduction of roofed public houses in the Caroline age.[1650] The title-pages generally describe the Blackfriars, the Cockpit, and Salisbury Court as ‘private’ houses right up to the closing of the theatres, but the term, in so far as it connotes anything different from ‘public’, seems to have lost what little meaning it ever had.[1651]

De Witt, about 1596, describes the Theatre, Curtain, Rose, and Swan as ‘amphiteatra’, and Hentzner in 1598 adds that they were all ‘lignea’.[1652] The Globe and the Hope were built later on the same structural model. The Fortune was also of wood, but square. Of the shape and material of the Red Bull we know nothing. Prologues and epilogues often refer to the internal appearance of the auditorium as presenting a ‘round’, ‘ring’, ‘circuit’, ‘circumference’, or ‘O’.[1653] If we can rely upon the draughtsmanship of the London maps, the external outline was rather that of a polygon. This evidence must not be pressed too far, for there is probably an element of cartographic symbolism to be reckoned with. The same house may appear in one map as a hexagon, in another as an octagon or decagon, and the late Hollar group differs from its predecessors in using a completely circular form. But there is confirmation in the Paris Garden manor map of 1627, which shows the ground-plan of the Swan decagonal, and in the statement of Mrs. Thrale that the ruins of the Globe still visible in the eighteenth century were hexagonal without and round within. This was of course the later Globe built in 1613, and there is some reason for thinking that the earlier Globe may have been of rather different design. The verses on the fire by which it was destroyed speak of the stage-house ‘as round as taylers clewe’, and the early Hondius map, while it shows the Rose as polygonal, shows the Globe as circular, with the upper half of less diameter than the lower. This construction reappears in the Delaram drawings, and is so peculiar that the representation may well be realistic. There was an obvious precedent for the amphitheatrical form in the bear and bull rings which preceded the public theatres, and I do not know that we need go back with Ordish to a tradition of round mediaeval play-places, Cornish or English, or to the remains of Roman occupation. A ring is the natural form in which the maximum number of spectators can press about an object of interest.[1654]

There is nothing to show that, for the main fabric, any material but timber was used, until the Fortune was rebuilt of brick in 1623. Timber is provided for in the contracts for the earlier Fortune and the Hope, and these were modelled on the Globe and Swan. Oak was to be mainly used for the Hope; no fir in the lower or middle stories. Burbadge’s lawsuits show that timber was the chief object of his expenditure on the Theatre, although some ironwork was also employed, presumably to tie the woodwork together. The dismantled fabric of the Theatre was used for the Globe. Henslowe used a good deal of timber for the repairs of the Rose in 1592–3, and did the house ‘about with ealme bordes’ in 1595. There was also some brickwork, and the Fortune and Hope were to have brick foundations, a foot above the ground. The Fortune was to be covered with lath, lime, and hair without. Henslowe also used plaster, and I do not see anything inconsistent with a substantially wooden structure in De Witt’s statement that the Swan was ‘constructum ex coaceruato lapide pyrritide ... ligneis suffultum columnis’. This has been regarded as an error which prejudices the reliability of De Witt’s observations, but the description is too precise to be disproved by Hentzner’s generalized ‘lignea’, and after all the strength of the building was naturally in the columns, and the flints and mortar--a common form of walling in the chalk districts of England--may well have filled up the interstices between these. De Witt adds that the columns might deceive the shrewdest ‘ob illitum marmoreum colorem’.[1655]

De Witt has also been criticized for giving the seating capacity of the Swan as 3,000. I dare say this is merely the exaggerated round estimate of a casual visitor, but Wheatley calculates from the drawing that the galleries might hold 2,000, and it would not be surprising if our rude forefathers sat a bit closer than we care to do. Moryson speaks even more largely of theatres ‘more remarkable for the number, and the capacity, than for the building’, and ‘capable of many thousands’, while no less than 2,000 got into Trinity College hall for the academic plays of 1615.[1656] The frame of the Fortune was 80 ft. square without and 55 ft. square within. This allows a depth of 12½ ft. for the galleries, and Corbin calculates a seating capacity, allowing 18 in. for a seat and 18 in. square for a standing man, of 2,138 or 2,558 at a pinch.[1657] We do not know that the Swan was not larger than the Fortune, and have therefore no right to assume that De Witt was seriously out. Wright tells us that the Globe, Fortune, and Red Bull were ‘large’ houses; he is comparing them with the private houses of Caroline days.[1658] The allusion in _Old Fortunatus_ to the ‘small circumference’ of the Rose perhaps hardly indicates that it was below the average size.

The Swan drawing is our one contemporary picture of the interior of a public play-house, and it is a dangerous business to explain away its evidence by an assumption of inaccurate observation on the part of De Witt, merely because that evidence conflicts with subjective interpretations of stage-directions, arrived at in the course of the pursuit of a ‘typical’ stage. Still less can it be discredited on the ground that it was merely made by Van Buchell on ‘hearsay evidence’ from the instructions of De Witt.[1659] It is a copy, like the accompanying description on the same piece of paper, of De Witt’s original, which De Witt says he drew (‘adpinxi’) in order to bring out an analogy which had struck him between the English and the Roman theatres. It was for this reason also, no doubt, that he marked certain features of the structure on the drawing with the names of what he thought to be their classical prototypes. I do not, of course, suggest that the drawing has the authority of a photographic record. De Witt is more likely to have made it as an afterthought in his inn than during the actual performance, and he may well have omitted or misrepresented features. Certainly he can hardly have seen the trumpeter sounding when the action had already begun. And the draughtsmanship is bad, and may have been made worse by the copyist.[1660] The upper part is done, with an attempt at perspective, as he may have seen it from a point in the middle, or perhaps the upper, gallery somewhat to the right of the centre; the lower part as from full face, so that the pillars stand equidistant from the edges of the stage, as they would not have appeared to him in perspective. His doors and the compartments of his stage gallery are of uneven sizes.[1661] But, with all its faults, the drawing is the inevitable basis of any comprehensive account of the main structural features of a play-house, and I propose, leaving aside for the present the question of the possible hangings which it does not show, to take its parts one by one and illustrate them from other sources, and in particular from Henslowe’s contracts for the construction of the Fortune in 1600 and the Hope in 1614.[1662]

The outline of the building is round, or slightly ovoid.[1663] The floor, which shows no traces of seating, is marked ‘planities siue arena’. This is the space ordinarily known as the ‘yard’, a name which it may fairly be taken to have inherited from the inn-yards, surrounded by galleries and open overhead, in which, in the days before the building of the Theatre in 1576, more or less permanent play-houses had grown up.[1664] Spectators in the yard always stood, and the more unstable psychology of a standing, as compared with a seated, crowd must always be taken into account in estimating the temperament of an Elizabethan audience. These are the ‘groundlings’, and the poets take their revenge for occasional scenes of turbulence in open or covert sneers at their ‘understanding’.[1665]

Well into the yard, leaving space for the groundlings on three sides of it, projects a quadrangular stage, which is marked ‘proscaenium’.[1666] The breadth is perhaps rather greater than the depth.[1667] This was certainly the case at the Fortune, where the stage was 43 ft. wide, and extended ‘to the middle of the yarde’, a distance of 27½ ft. The level of the stage may be some 3 or 4 ft. above the ground. Two solid trestles forming part of its supports are visible, but at the Fortune it was paled in with oak, and in view of the common use of the space below the stage to facilitate apparitions and other episodes requiring traps, this was probably the normal arrangement.[1668] It has been thought that the stage of the Swan, like that of the Hope, which was in many respects modelled upon it, may have been removable. But this is hardly consistent with the heavy pillars which, in this respect certainly unlike the Hope, it carries. Moreover, the Hope had to be available for bear-baiting, which entailed an open arena, and there is no evidence, and very little likelihood, that baiting ever took place at the Swan. Like other theatres, it sometimes accommodated gymnasts and fencers, but these would use the stage.[1669] There are no rails round the stage, such as we may infer the existence of at the Globe.[1670] The only scenic apparatus visible is a large bench, on which a lady sits, while another stands behind her in an attitude of surprise, at the rapid approach from an outer corner of the stage of a man in an affected attitude, with a hat on his head and a long staff in his hand. You might take him for Malvolio cross-gartered, were there any chance that _Twelfth Night_ could have been written when the drawing was made, or produced at the Swan.[1671] Probably he is a returning traveller or a messenger bringing news. The floor of the stage is apparently bare. Sometimes rushes were laid down, at any rate for interior scenes.[1672] The Globe produced _Henry VIII_ in 1613 ‘with many extraordinary circumstances of pomp and majesty, even to the matting of the stage’.

Circling the yard and raised above it are three tiers of galleries, each containing three rows of seats. Beneath the first gallery De Witt wrote ‘orchestra’, above its seats ‘sedilia’, and between the middle and upper galleries ‘porticus’. In the classical theatre ‘porticus’ was the name for a covered gallery, and the classical analogy also makes it clear that by ‘orchestra’ De Witt meant to indicate the position occupied by the spectators of highest rank, corresponding to the seats of Roman senators, to which the name of the obsolete dancing place immediately in front of them had been transferred. It was not until the Restoration that the orchestra was allocated to the music.[1673] The fronts of the galleries are supported by a number of turned posts. In the Fortune all the chief supports, presumably both in the auditorium and on the stage, were to be square and made ‘palasterwise, with carved proporcions called Satiers’. Internal painting was contemplated, but was not covered by the contract. Other references to painted theatres suggest that the Elizabethan builders were not content with bare scaffolds, but aimed at a decorative effect.[1674] Three seems to have been the regular number of galleries. Kiechel bears witness to it for the Theatre and Curtain in 1585; and there were three at the Fortune and at the Hope. The lowest gallery at the Fortune was 12 ft. high, the next 11 ft., and the uppermost 9 ft., and each of the two latter jutted out 10 in. beyond that below. This gives a total height of 32 ft., about three-fifths of the interior width of the house. The maps, therefore, make the buildings rather disproportionately high. The uppermost gallery has a roof, marked ‘tectum’. This in the earlier Globe was of thatch, which caused the fire of 1613, and left the unlucky King’s men with little but ‘wit to cover it with tiles’. I think the Rose was also thatched; but the Fortune and Hope were tiled. In view of the jetties, such a roof would give some protection to those in the galleries, but the groundlings had none. Both the drawing and the maps confirm the statement of Wright that the Globe, Fortune, and Red Bull were ‘partly open to the weather’, and this was doubtless also the case with their predecessors.[1675]

De Witt does not indicate any internal gallery partitions, but the Swan had these by 1614, for they were to be the model for ‘two boxes in the lowermost storie fitt and decent for gentlemen to sitt in’, which were to be constructed at the Hope. Similarly the Fortune was to have ‘ffower convenient divisions for gentlemens roomes, and other sufficient and convenient divisions for twoe pennie roomes, with necessarie seates’. These were to be ceiled with lath and plaster. An earlier example of the technical use of the term ‘room’ for a division of the auditorium occurs in the draft Theatre lease of 1585, which gave the landlord a right to sit or stand in ‘some one of the upper romes’, if the places were not already taken up. If the clause, like the rest of the draft, merely reproduced the covenants of the 1576 lease, the term was of long standing. Probably the divisions were of varying sizes. There would not have been much point in cutting up the space available for ‘two-pennie roomes’ into very small sections, but there were also ‘priuate roomes’, which are perhaps the same as the ‘gentlemens roomes’ of the contracts.[1676] If so, these were probably to the right and left of the stage in the lowest gallery. But the whole question of seating and prices is rather difficult, and it is further complicated by obscurely discerned changes of fashion, which involved the adoption of the very inconvenient custom of sitting on the stage, and the consequent abandonment by the gentry of what was called the lord’s room. Prices also, no doubt, tended to grow, at any rate for the better seats; the ‘popular’ prices always remained low.[1677] I do not know whether the professional actors ever contented themselves, after their establishment in London, with merely sending round the hat, or, in mediaeval phrase, making a ‘gatheryng’.[1678] Fixed prices must certainly have been the rule by the time of Kiechel’s visit in 1585, for he tells us that, on the occasion of a new play, double prices were charged. This practice helps to explain the fluctuating receipts in Henslowe’s diary, and was still in force in the seventeenth century.[1679] Spenser and his friends could have their laugh at a play for 1_d._ or 2_d._ in 1579, and ten years later Martin Marprelate could be seen for 2_d._ at the Theatre and 4_d._ at Paul’s.[1680] Higher prices are already characteristic of the private houses. In 1596 Lambarde informs us of a regular scale, apparently applicable to all public entertainments. None, he says, who ‘goe to Paris Gardein, the Bell Savage or Theatre, to beholde beare baiting, enterludes or fence play, can account of any pleasant spectacle unlesse they first pay one pennie at the gate, another at the entrie of the scaffolde and the thirde for a quiet standing’. Platter, in 1599, reports the same scale and adds a distinction, not made by Lambarde, between standings and seats. You paid 1_d._ to stand on the level, 1_d._ at an inner door to sit, and 1_d._ at a third door for one of the best places with a cushion.[1681] The two-penny galleries or rooms long continued to be the resort of the ordinary playgoer, if he was not satisfied to stand in the yard for a penny.[1682] He sat close, and the insolent poets and pamphleteers classed him with the groundlings as a ‘stinkard’.[1683] His domain certainly included the top gallery, but about the other galleries I am not sure. There are some puzzling allusions to penny galleries and rooms, but probably, these are not distinct from the ‘two-penny’ ones, and the explanation is to be found in the practice of paying the twopence in two instalments, one on entrance, the other at the gallery door.[1684] It did not long remain possible to get one of the best seats for the 3_d._ quoted by Platter, even if there was not already in his time a higher charge for ‘the priuate roomes of greater price’.[1685] There were both sixpenny and twelve-penny rooms by 1604.[1686] These may have been the same private rooms at varying prices, according as the play was old or new. I take it that you only got a single seat, even in a ‘private’ room, for your 6_d._ or 12_d._, and not the whole room. Overbury or another gives 12_d._ as the price of the ‘best room’ as late as about 1614, but in the same year the ordinary scale of charges was greatly exceeded throughout the house on the production of _Bartholomew Fair_ at the Hope, where a speaker in the induction says, ‘it shall be lawful to judge his six-penny-worth, his twelve-penny-worth, so to his eighteen-pence, two shillings, half a crown, to the value of his place, provided always his place get not above his wit’. This must have been a quite exceptional occasion, not merely a new play, but a new play at a new house. Similarly, when Richard Vennar brought the gulls to his swindle of _England’s Joy_ in 1602, ‘the price at cumming in was two shillings or eighteen-pence at least’.

A special compartment in one of the galleries was not the only privilege offered to the more fashionable playgoer. He might, at one time or another, sit ‘over the stage’ and on the stage. De Witt’s drawing shows, at the back of the stage, a raised gallery divided into six small boxes, in each of which one or two spectators appear to be placed.[1687] It is reasonable to suppose that these are sitting ‘over the stage’.[1688] And some or all of those ‘over the stage’ again, appear to have sat in ‘the lords room’ or ‘rooms’.[1689] Of such a room we first hear in 1592, when Henslowe, repairing the Rose, paid 10_s._ ‘for sellynge of the Rome ouer the tyerhowsse’ and 13_s._ ‘for sellinges my lords Rome’. The entry rather suggests that this was not so much a room for ‘lords’, as a room primarily reserved for the particular ‘lord’, under whose patronage the actors played; but however this may be, it was probably available by courtesy for other persons of distinction. The practice of sitting on the stage itself first emerges about 1596.[1690] It was general by the seventeenth century, and was apparently most encouraged at the Blackfriars, where it perhaps lent itself best to the structural character of the building.[1691] It was known at Paul’s, but was inconvenient on so small a stage.[1692] And, as it certainly originated at the public houses, so it maintained itself there, in spite of the grumbles of the ordinary spectators, with whose view of the action the throng of feathered and restless gallants necessarily interfered.[1693] It may have been profitable to the actors as sharers, but as actors they resented the restriction of the space available for their movements which it entailed.[1694] The prologue to Jonson’s _The Devil is an Ass_ of 1616 contains a vigorous protest.[1695] But the gallant liked to be seen as well as to see, and liked to slip in and out of the tiring-house and hob-nob with the players. It was not until Caroline times that the custom became intolerable.[1696] On the stage stools were provided for those who did not care to sit on the rushes, and for these they paid at least sixpence and sometimes a shilling.[1697] One result of the introduction of sitting on the stage appears to have been that the lord’s room lost its attractiveness and consequently its status. It fell into the background, and became the haunt of a rather disreputable class of playgoer. The lords were now to be found either on the stage itself, or in the private rooms of the lower gallery. Presumably the ‘grate’ to which the courtier of Sir John Davies’ epigram relegated himself, was in the lord’s room, perhaps fitted with a casement for scenic purposes.[1698] The change is chronicled by Dekker in the passage of _The Gull’s Horn Book_, in which the gull is instructed how to behave himself in a play-house. He must by all means advance himself up to the throne of the stage.

‘I meane not into the Lords roome (which is now but the
Stages Suburbs): no, those boxes, by the iniquity of custome,
conspiracy of waiting-women and Gentlemen-Ushers, that there
sweat together, and the couetousnes of Sharers, are contemptibly
thrust into the reare, and much new Satten is there dambd, by
being smothred to death in darknesse.’

I return to the guidance of De Witt. The boarding between the yard and the lower gallery, which in the Fortune was overlaid with iron pikes, presumably to prevent the groundlings from climbing over, shows two apertures, to right and left of the stage, one of which is marked ‘ingressus’. From these steps lead to the lower gallery itself, and we may infer the presence of a passage to staircases behind, by which the upper galleries were reached. The contracts show that the Fortune, like the Globe, and the Hope, like the Swan, were to have external staircases.[1699] Perhaps this accounts for the greater diameter of the lower part of the Globe in the London maps. Of external doors there were only two at the Globe, which caused trouble at the time of the fire, and two also at the Fortune, when Alleyn leased a share of it to Henslowe in 1601. One of these would in each case have been a door to the tiring-house, giving access to the stage and the lord’s room, while the other served the body of the theatre.[1700] Those bound for the galleries paid their pennies at the theatre door, passed through the yard to the ‘ingressus’, and made additional payments there and in the ‘rooms’, according to the places selected.[1701] The custom explains itself by the arrangement between the sharers of companies and the housekeepers of theatres, which gave the latter a proportion of gallery takings in lieu of rent. ‘Gatherers’, appointed by the persons interested, collected the money, and although this was put into a locked box, whence the modern term ‘box-office’, there were abundant opportunities for fraud. At need, the gatherers could serve as supernumeraries on the stage.[1702]

At the back of the stage, and forming a chord to an arc of the circular structure of the play-house, runs a straight wall, pierced by two pairs of folding doors, on which De Witt has written ‘mimorum aedes’. Above it is the gallery or lord’s room already described. This wall is the ‘scene’, in the primary sense; it is also the front of the ‘tire-house’, or in modern phrase ‘green-room’, a necessary adjunct of every theatre. The Theatre depositions of 1592 speak of this as ‘the attyring housse or place where the players make them readye’. The drawing indicates nothing in the way of hangings over either wall or doors, but in some theatres these certainly existed. Thus Peacham, in his _Thalia’s Banquet_ (1620) referring to much earlier days, tells us that

Tarlton when his head was onely seene,
The Tire-house doore and Tapistrie betweene,
Set all the multitude in such a laughter,
They could not hold for scarce an hour after.[1703]

The front of the tiring-house is the ‘scene’ in the Renaissance sense, and its characteristics will be of great concern in later chapters.[1704] The Fortune tire-house was to be within the frame of the theatre, and would not, therefore, unless it projected on to the stage, have more depth than about 12 ft. Mr. Brereton, in a careful analysis of the drawing, suggests that the Swan tire-house may not have extended the full width of the stage, but may have left room to come and go on either side of its front.[1705] If so, some projection is not improbable, but one cannot rely much upon the hazardous interpretation of bad draughtsmanship. The ground-plan of the Swan seems to show an annexe at one point, and of course additional depth could easily be obtained in this way. Moreover, there were at least three stories available. The spectators in the lord’s room would not take up the whole depth on the level of the middle gallery, and there must have been a corresponding space on that of the top gallery. Henslowe ceiled ‘the rome ouer the tyerhowsse’ in 1592, and an inventory of the Admiral’s men in 1598 includes effects ‘leaft above in the tier-house in the cheast’. No doubt a fair amount of accommodation was needed. The tire-house was not merely a dressing-room and a store-house. Here came the author, to rail at the murdering of his lines, and the gallants to gossip and patronize the players.[1706] Here were the book-holder, who prompted the speeches, surveyed the entrances and exits, and saw to the readiness of the properties;[1707] the tireman, who fitted the dresses and the beards, furnished stools, and in the private theatres took charge of the lights;[1708] the stage-keeper;[1709] the grooms and ‘necessary attendants’, waiting to draw curtains, to thrust out beds, and to carry benches and banquets on and off.[1710] Here, too, was the head-quarters of the music, although in the public theatres the music was largely incidental, and was often played on, or above, or even below the stage, as might seem most appropriate to any particular action.[1711] Music between the acts was not unknown, but we learn from the induction to the _Malcontent_ that it was ‘not received’ by the audience at the Globe in 1604.[1712] There was also, of course, the final ‘jig’.[1713] For an overture, the public theatres seem to have employed nothing beyond three soundings of a trumpet, the last of which was the signal for the prologue to begin.[1714] Probably the musical element tended to increase. A special music-room perhaps existed already at the Swan in 1611, and, if so, may have been, as it was in the later theatres, in the upper part of the tire-house.[1715]