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’.

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. 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. 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’. 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. But by this time the distinction may be taken for granted as well established in general use.

From the point of view, however, of stage arrangements, the technical differentia of a private house is less important than certain subsidiary characteristics. 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. 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.

De Witt, about 1596, describes the Theatre, Curtain, Rose, and Swan as ‘amphiteatra’, and Hentzner in 1598 adds that they were all ‘lignea’. 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’. 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.

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’.

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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.

The outline of the building is round, or slightly ovoid. 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. 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’.

Well into the yard, leaving space for the groundlings on three sides of it, projects a quadrangular stage, which is marked ‘proscaenium’. The breadth is perhaps rather greater than the depth. 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. 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. There are no rails round the stage, such as we may infer the existence of at the Globe. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.

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. 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. 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’. 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. Spenser and his friends could have their laugh at a play for 1d. or 2d. in 1579, and ten years later Martin Marprelate could be seen for 2d. at the Theatre and 4d. at Paul’s. 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 1d. to stand on the level, 1d. at an inner door to sit, and 1d. at a third door for one of the best places with a cushion. 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. He sat close, and the insolent poets and pamphleteers classed him with the groundlings as a ‘stinkard’. 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. It did not long remain possible to get one of the best seats for the 3d. quoted by Platter, even if there was not already in his time a higher charge for ‘the priuate roomes of greater price’. There were both sixpenny and twelve-penny rooms by 1604. 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 6d. or 12d., and not the whole room. Overbury or another gives 12d. 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. It is reasonable to suppose that these are sitting ‘over the stage’. And some or all of those ‘over the stage’ again, appear to have sat in ‘the lords room’ or ‘rooms’. Of such a room we first hear in 1592, when Henslowe, repairing the Rose, paid 10s. ‘for sellynge of the Rome ouer the tyerhowsse’ and 13s. ‘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. 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. It was known at Paul’s, but was inconvenient on so small a stage. 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. 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. The prologue to Jonson’s The Devil is an Ass of 1616 contains a vigorous protest. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.

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.

The front of the tiring-house is the ‘scene’ in the Renaissance sense, and its characteristics will be of great concern in later chapters. 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. 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. Here were the book-holder, who prompted the speeches, surveyed the entrances and exits, and saw to the readiness of the properties; the tireman, who fitted the dresses and the beards, furnished stools, and in the private theatres took charge of the lights; the stage-keeper; the grooms and ‘necessary attendants’, waiting to draw curtains, to thrust out beds, and to carry benches and banquets on and off. 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. 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. There was also, of course, the final ‘jig’. 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. 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.

The Fortune tire-house was to have ‘convenient windowes and lightes glazed’. Some of these may have looked into the auditorium, and have been used for scenic purposes. But the maps show external windows here and there in the walls, and these would be necessary to light both the tire-house and the galleries. We have a picture of Burbadge leaning out of an upper window to greet with abuse the disturbers of his peace at the Theatre in 1590. The yard and the stage itself were, of course, lit, in the absence of a roof, from above. Performances were ordinarily by daylight; before the end of the sixteenth century the time for beginning had been fixed at 2 o’clock. The stage-directions point to a frequent enough use of lamps and tapers, but always to give the illusion of scenic darkness. Plays, however, lasted at least two hours, sometimes half an hour or even an hour longer, and there was the jig to follow. It must therefore be doubtful whether, in the depth of winter, daylight could have served quite to the end. Webster complains that the ill-success of The White Devil was due to its being given ‘in so dull a time of winter, and presented in so open and black a theatre’. Perhaps the shorter plays were chosen for the shorter days, or the jig was omitted. But it is also possible that some primitive illumination, in the form of cressets, or baskets of tarred and flaring rope, was introduced.

The actors themselves were not wholly without protection from the elements. De Witt depicts two heavy classical columns, which stand on square bases rather farther back than the middle of the stage and a little way from each side of it. These support a pent-house roof, which starts from the level of the eaves of the ‘tectum’ over the top gallery, and descends in a steep slope to a level opposite to the middle of the second gallery, where it slightly projects beyond the supporting columns. Behind and above it rises a kind of hut, conspicuous above the ‘tectum’ and forming a superstructure to the tire-house. Its front has less width than that of the tire-house, and its side is shown in clumsy perspective, which is apparently followed round by the pent-house below it. The pent-house is the only thing in the drawing, that can represent the ‘shadow’ or ‘heavens’, which several allusions point to as a regular feature in the public theatres, and which certainly existed at the Rose, the Fortune—and therefore presumably the Globe—and the Hope. But it must be admitted that this sharply sloping roof, coming down low and considerably impeding the vision of the spectators at any rate in the top gallery, does not agree very well with the notion of a heavens dominating the stage, elaborately decorated, and serving for the display of spectacular effects, which were surely meant to be visible to all. It is possible that De Witt’s halting draughtsmanship has failed him in the attempt to tackle the architectural perspective from a difficult angle in an upper gallery. My impression is that, by giving too much height to the bottom gallery, he has got the two other galleries out of line with the stories of the tire-house to which they correspond, and that the lower gallery should really be on the level of the stage, the middle gallery on that of the gallery ‘over the stage’, and the top gallery on that of the rather obscure story above. If so, the front of this story would have been visible, and may have contained some aperture of which account has not yet been taken in formulating theories of staging. And I think that the columns were really higher and the roof flatter than De Witt has drawn them. It is perhaps less easy to suggest that the columns stood farther forward than De Witt has placed them, but the roof may well have projected farther over them. They are solid enough to bear a much greater weight than the drawing indicates. However these things may have been at the Swan—I am not blind to the dangers of attempting to convert what De Witt has shown into something which he has not shown—one may, perhaps, infer that more extensive roofing than the pent-house of the drawing would afford was contemplated by the Fortune contract, which provides for ‘a shadowe or cover over the saide stadge’, and the Hope contract, which is even more precise in its specification of ‘the Heavens all over the saide stage’. In both cases there were to be gutters to carry away rain-water. The heavens at the Hope were ‘to be borne or carryed without any postes or supporters to be fixed or sett uppon the saide stage’, and it has been thought that other theatres of later date than the Swan may also have dispensed with posts. But there is little ground for this theory, other than the obvious obstruction which the posts would offer to vision. Howes seems to refer to the arrangement at the Hope as an innovation, and it can hardly be unrelated to the special need for a removable stage at that house. On the other hand the posts may very likely have been slighter than De Witt has shown them. At the Fortune they were, like other ‘princypall and maine postes’, square and carved ‘palasterwise’ with satyrs. The posts are worked into the action of several plays, and Kempe tells us that pickpockets were pilloried by being tied to them.

The hut has two windows in front, and a door in the visible side. It has been suggested that it may really have stood rather more forward than De Witt indicates, jutting out from the tire-house so as to be directly over a part of the heavens. An analogous superstructure is observable in most of the map-representations of theatres. That of the later Globe in Visscher’s map of 1616 seems to have two bays, one behind another, instead of the one bay of the Swan drawing, and would have required more space. The ‘Theatrum’ of Jonson’s 1616 Folio has an L-shaped superstructure. The object of a jut forward would be to facilitate the descents and ascents from and to the heavens, which formed popular features in many plays, and which must have been contrived by some kind of machinery from above. From the roof of this hut floats a flag, with the figure of a swan upon it, and at the door stands a man, apparently blowing a trumpet, from which depends a smaller flag also bearing a swan. There is abundant evidence that the play-houses flew flags when they were open for performances, and took them down when Lent or a plague rendered playing impossible. The trumpeter is no doubt giving one of the three ‘soundings’ which preluded the appearance of the prologue in his traditional long black velvet cloak. Nor did the flag and the trumpet exhaust the resources of the Elizabethan art of advertisement. The vexillatores of the miracle-play would perhaps have been out of keeping with London conditions. But it was customary to announce after the epilogue of each performance what the next was to be. And public notification was given by means of play-bills, of which we hear from as early a date as 1564, and which were set up on posts in conspicuous places up and down the city and probably also at the play-house doors. Copies seem also to have been available for circulation from hand to hand. On 30 October 1587 John Charlwood entered in the Stationers’ Register a licence for ‘the onely ympryntinge of all manner of billes for players’. This passed from him to James Roberts, and was transferred by Roberts to William Jaggard on 29 October 1615. No theatrical bill of the Elizabethan or Jacobean period is preserved, although a manuscript bill for the Bear Garden is amongst Alleyn’s papers at Dulwich. Four late seventeenth-century bills are at Claydon; they are brief announcements, which give the names of the plays, but not those of the authors or actors. There is no evidence of anything corresponding to the modern programme, with its cast and synopsis of scenes. The audience gathered early, as there were few, if any, reserved seats. The period of waiting was spent in consuming fruit or sweatmeats and liquid refreshment, and in expressing impatience if the actors failed to make an appearance in good time. Tobacco was freely used, especially by the gallants on the stage. Books were also hawked up and down, and a game of cards might beguile the tedium of waiting. The galleries were full of light women, who found them a profitable haunt, but whose presence did not altogether prevent that of ladies of position, probably in the private rooms, and possibly masked.

If the audience liked a play, the actors expected a Plaudite of hand-clapping; if otherwise, they took their chance of hissing and ‘mewing’, or of a pointed withdrawal of spectators from the stage. The device of a claque was not unknown. The applause was often invited in the closing speech or in a formal epilogue, on the same lines as the prologue, which it seems to have replaced in favour about the end of the sixteenth century. This might also lead up to or perhaps represent the prayer for the sovereign, of which there are traces up to a late date, and which was analogous to the modern use of ‘God Save the King’. The accompanying prayer for the ‘lord’ of the players, on the other hand, cannot be shown to have been adopted into the public theatres. Finally, the epilogue might indicate a coming dance. Of this a little more needs to be said. The players have amongst other elements in their ancestry the mediaeval mimes, and they inherit the familiar mimic tradition of multifarious entertainment. The ‘legitimate’ drama was not as yet on its pedestal. The companies of the ’eighties and even the early ’nineties were composed of men ready at need to eke out their plays by musical performances and even the ‘activities’ of acrobats. This is perhaps most obvious in the continental companies, which had to face the obstacles to a complete intelligence between stage and audience introduced at the tower of Babel. Such a cosmopolitan mingling of drama and ‘activities’ as we may suppose The Labours of Hercules to have been was a valuable resource. But at home also we find Strange’s and the Admiral’s men showing their ‘activities’ at court, and Symons the acrobat becoming a leader amongst the Queen’s, and even so late as 1601 Henslowe fitting out the Admiral’s boy Nick to tumble in the presence of royalty. The country tours of the Queen’s were for some time accompanied by a Turkish rope dancer. In the theatres themselves Italian players made their success and their scandal, with the help of tumbling women. Whether English players did the same we do not know. But we do know that the dance by way of afterpiece was a regular and enduring custom. It was known as the jig. At first, perhaps, nothing more than such dancing, with the help of a variety of foreign costumes, as was also an element in the early masks, it developed into a farcical dialogue, with a musical and Terpsichorean accompaniment, for which popular tunes, such as Fading, were utilized. This transformation was perhaps due to the initiative of Tarlton, to whom several jigs are attributed. But he was followed by Kempe and others, and in the last decade of the sixteenth century the jig may be inferred from the Stationers’ Register to have become almost a literary type. Nashe in 1596 threatens Gabriel Harvey with an interlude, and ‘a Jigge at the latter end in English Hexameters of O neighbour Gabriell, and his wooing of Kate Cotton’. In 1597 Henslowe bought two jigs from two young men for the Admiral’s at a cost of 6s. 8d. In 1598 ‘Kemps Jigge’ was being sung in the streets. The Middlesex justices made a special order against the lewd jigs, songs, and dances at the Fortune in 1612. Unfortunately few jigs have survived except from a late date or in German adaptations. Two or three, however, appear amongst collections of ballads to which they are cognate in metrical form, notably one ascribed to ‘Mr Attowel’, whom we should, I think, identify with the sixteenth-century George, rather than the seventeenth-century Hugh, of that name. Another, Rowland’s Godson, seems to be the surviving member of a well-known cycle.

Nor was the jig the only form of afterpiece which had its savour in an Elizabethan play-house. Tarlton again, and after Tarlton Wilson, won reputation in the handling of ‘themes’, which appear to have been improvisations in verse, strung together on some motive supplied by a member of the audience. It has been suggested that complete plays were also sometimes given by the method of improvised dialogue on a concerted plot which was followed in the Italian commedie dell’ arte. This must remain very doubtful. The Italian practice and the stock characters, pantaloon, zany, and harlequin, of the commedie dell’ arte were certainly known in England; but we have the clear evidence of The Case is Altered that by 1597 at any rate they had not been naturalized. If improvisation went beyond the gagging of a clown, it was probably only in some exceptional experiment or tour de force. As exceptional also we may regard Vennar’s spectacular Englands Joy of 1602 and the wager plays, in which actors or even amateurs challenged each other to compete in rendering some ‘part’ of traditional repute. One would like to know more about the play, apparently a monologue, ‘set out al by one virgin’, at the Theatre in 1583.

Many of the characteristics of the public theatres naturally repeated themselves at the Blackfriars, the Whitefriars, and Paul’s. The distinctive features of these, as already indicated, arose from the structure of the buildings, from the higher prices charged, and in the beginning at least from the employment of singing boys as actors. Some assimilation of ‘public’ and ‘private’ methods was bound to follow upon the acquisition of the Blackfriars by men actors in 1609, but the period during which this was the principal house of the King’s company lies outside the scope of this survey.

The exact location of Paul’s is obscure, but we know that its auditorium was round and its stage small. Whitefriars and both the earlier and the later Blackfriars were in rooms which had formed part of mediaeval conventual buildings, rectangular, roofed, and more analogous to courtly halls than to popular rings. No room at Farrant’s disposal would have given him a stage of a greater width than 27 ft. Burbadge’s theatre was 66 ft. from north to south, and 46 ft. from east to west. It was on the second story of his purchase that he could have best constructed it. The stage, which stood on a paved floor, was probably towards the south end, and as the whole space available was something like 100 ft. long by 52 wide, we may guess that partitions had been put up to screen off a tiring-house behind it and a passage by which the tiring-house could be reached. The entrance would be at the north end, where a great flight of stairs led up from a yard large enough for coaches to turn in. There were galleries, but not necessarily three distinct tiers of galleries, as in the public theatres, for which, indeed, there would hardly have been height enough. And there was a ‘middle region’ in which the spectators sat, instead of standing as they did in the public ‘yards’. This, which was a feature also of the later private houses, came to be known as the ‘pit’, but as the derivation of this term is from ‘cockpit’, it may not be of earlier origin than the building of the Cockpit or Phoenix theatre in Drury Lane about 1617. A roofed theatre would not require a specially constructed ‘heavens’, as descents could be worked through the ceiling from a room above. There is no clear evidence for a lord’s room at any of the private houses. But there were ‘boxes’, at any rate at the Whitefriars. Evidence for seats on the stage has already been furnished. There is much to suggest that the audience was a more select one than that of the public theatres. Elizabeth cannot be shown to have ever attended the Blackfriars, but Anne certainly did. And the price of the seats, which ranged from 6d. to 2s. 6d., was of itself sufficient to keep out persons of the ‘groundling’ or ‘stinkard’ type. Performances did not necessarily take place every day, and they could begin rather later and go on rather longer than those out of doors, since they were not dependent on daylight. Windows were certainly used, for we hear of them being clapped down to give the illusion of night scenes. But candles and torches supplied an artificial lighting. As both the Paul’s boys and those of the Chapel were primarily choristers, it is not surprising that music played a considerable part in the entertainment provided. Musical interludes were given between the acts, and Gerschow records a preliminary concert of an hour in length before the play began at the Blackfriars in 1602. Sometimes also a boy came forward and danced between the acts. At Paul’s there was at the back of the stage a ‘musick tree’, which apparently rose out of a ‘canopie’ and bore a ‘musick house’ on either side of it.