"private" playhouse, spending on it a larger sum than had hitherto been spent on any playhouse in London. The term private" does not seem to imply that the public was excluded; but "in making up his mind to establish a playhouse, in defiance of the law, within the city walls, Burbage must have counted for support less on the people than on the nobility." 13 In November, 1596, the people in the vicinity petitioned against the establishment of a playhouse in their midst, but ineffectually, and, in spite of other troubles, the Blackfriars continued to be one of the best-known homes of the English drama down to 1642. The suitability of the Surrey side of the Thames, commonly called the Bankside, as a place for the location of playhouses is especially attested by the removal thither of the Theater in the winter of 1598-99. The Burbage heirs, seemingly unwilling to pay an increased rental when their old lease expired, tore down the building, and erected it again on the Bankside, this time calling it the Globe, which was in the next few years to become the most famous of all the London theatres. Other playhouses of the period were the Swan, the Whitefriars, and Newington Butts; and in 1600 Henslowe erected the Fortune. "The situation of the Fortune outside Cripplegate, although a considerable distance west of the Curtain, was, roughly, that of the earlier theatres, the northern suburbs of the city.” 14 19. Stage and Setting.—We have already observed that the stage in one of these theatres was primarily a plat13 H. Child, C. H. E. L., VI, 289. 14 Durham in MacCracken, Pierce, and Durham: An Introduction to Shakespeare, 38. In general see also Neilson and Thorndike: The Facts about Shakespeare, Chapter VI. Note also that there were really two Blackfriars theatres, distinguished as Burbage or Farrant. See Thorndike: Shakespeare's Theater, 62-63. 66 form built out into the yard. At the Fortune this platform was forty-three feet wide (though in connection with such a figure it is well to remember that some seats were provided on the stage). Projecting from the level of the top gallery and extending for a few feet over the stage, was a structure called the "hut," from the bottom of which a roof, or "shadow," extended further over the stage. Together hut and shadow made up what are commonly known as the "heavens." Behind the platform or the front stage was the rear stage, an alcove in front of which curtains could be drawn." In both front and rear stages were traps out of which ghosts or apparitions could rise and into which such properties as the caldron in Macbeth could sink. From the "heavens," actors representing gods or spirits as Jupiter Cymbeline or Ariel in The Tempest -could be lowered by means of a mechanical contrivance. Costumes were elaborate, but little effort was made for historical accuracy; and scenery was by no means as pretentious as it is to-day. Scenery in fact was primarily intended simply to be suggestive and to be assisted by the play of the imagination; one or two trees, for instance, were supposed to indicate a forest. "The capital difference between the pre-rebellion public stage and the modern stage lies in the fact that the former was a platform stage, while the latter is a picture stage. The eye was appealed to less forcibly than the ear. The drama was rhetorical, and the actor more of a rhetorician than he is to-day, since the audience looked to his enunciation of the poet's words for much of the pleasure that the picture stage supplies through the eye. . Authors, being free from the modern playwright's necessity to lead up to a 'situation,' a stage picture, on which the curtain may fall sharply at the close of each act, made the play, rather than each division of it, the artistic whole." 15 These differences from more recent tendencies are important. 20. Theatrical Companies.-In connection with the Interlude we have already seen how companies of players began to be maintained by great nobles even before the close of the fifteenth century. When these companies were not employed by their patrons they were permitted to travel about the country to give performances. The fact that some other bands of strolling players also went about from place to place led to a law in 1572 to the effect that all such companies would have to be under the protection of some legally recognized patron. Very frequently the oversight of the patron was merely nominal, extending not beyond the securing of a license. Obviously, as patronage might change, a single company might be known by different names from time to time. Thus "the Earl of Leicester's Men became Lord Strange's in 1588. In 1592 Lord Strange became Earl of Derby, and the players changed their title accordingly. In 1594 the Earl of Derby died, and his company of actors became Lord Hunsdon's or the Lord Chamberlain's Men. In 1596 the earl died, and his son, the second Lord Hunsdon, became their patron; he also became Chamberlain in 1597. After the accession of James in 1603, this same company was honored with the title of King's Players. William Shakespeare was certainly a member of this company in 1594, and one of its foremost men in 1598. Richard Burbage, greatest actor of his time, was Shakespeare's colleague and first interpreted his great tragic characters. William Kemp, the best comedian of his day, was a member of this 15 H. Child: C. H. E. L., VI, 295. 99 16 same company. After this company one of the best known was that of the Admiral's Men, managed by Henslowe and having its home after 1600 in the Fortune Theatre. Among its actors was Edward Alleyn, generally ranked next to Burbage among the performers of the time. Very popular also were the companies of boys of the Chapel Royal and of St. Paul's. On the professional stage female parts were regularly taken by boys throughout the Elizabethan and Jacobean period of the drama; women were not known on the stage until the reign of Charles I, and they found no real place there before the age of the Restoration. The boys in the two companies specially remarked, however, were usually well trained; one company at least had the advantage of royal patronage; and in general these young players became serious rivals of the performers on most of the commercial stages. "The performances of the Children of the Chapel Royal at the Blackfriars between 1596 and 1608 were the most fashionable in London. The children's companies were finally suppressed about 1609.” 17 "The success of the companies of choir boys in both early and later times was, doubtless, due, in no small degree, to the songs scattered through their plays and the instrumental music before the play began and between the acts. Other companies, of course, had incidental songs, but, apparently, not so many of them, and instrumental music seems not to have been given in the public theatres.” 18 These children moreover were pioneers in more than one interesting movement, 1 Simonds: A Student's History of English Literature, 121-22. 17 Durham in An Introduction to Shakespeare, 49. 1 Manly: "The Children of the Chapel Royal and their Masters," C. H. E. L., VI, 329. |