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XXXV. THEATRES AND MUSIC.

ALTHOUGH the earliest public Theatres seem to have been established during the continuance of a pertinacious struggle between the players and play-lovers on the one side, and the civic power on the other (who held the stage and everything connected with it in especial dislike), they had become very numerous by the time the great dramatic writers, with Shakspere at their head, were prepared to raise them into their true importance and value. For their success in this struggle the players were evidently indebted to the court favour they enjoyed, which, in 1583, was signalised by Elizabeth's choosing, from among the different companies accustomed to perform before her, twelve of the best actors, and forming them into a company, under her own especial patronage. The chief London theatres at that period were these :-The Theatre, especially so called, in Shoreditch, and the Curtain close by; Paris Garden, Bankside, chiefly used as a Bear Garden, but also for the performance of plays, as Dekker, in his satire upon Jonson, makes the latter say he had played Zulziman there; the Blackfriars, Whitefriars, Salisbury Court, Rose, Hope, Swan, Newington, Red Bull, and Cockpit or Phoenix in Drury Lane. Various places of minor importance were also dignified by the name of Theatre, as the Inn Yard of the 'Bel Savage.' We learn what was the number of actors at the same time in the metropolis, from a letter to Secretary Walsingham, in 1586, which, after referring to the different companies, as the Queen's, Lord Leicester's, Lord Oxford's, Lord Nottingham's, and other noblemen's then performing, states the number of players as not less than two hundred. Of these theatres, the Blackfriars is the one that most deeply interests us it was there, in all probability, Shakspere made his first appearance both as actor and writer; it was there, certainly, that he established his reputation. The Blackfriars (and, it is supposed, others also of those we have mentioned, as the Curtain) were erected immediately after-and in consequence of the entire expulsion of players from the limits of the City by the Lord Mayor and Aldermen in 1575; who, however, gained little more by the movement than the exhibition of a kind of successful contempt of their authority, in the erection of such houses as the Theatre in the Blackfriars, under their very noses, but, owing to the old monastic privileges, beyond their jurisdiction. Two companies, it appears, had the right of playing at this house, the one that Shakspere belonged to (the Lord Chamberlain's) and that of the Children of the Chapel, afterwards (on James's accession) known as the Children of Her Majesty's Revels, who played regular pieces the same as their older rivals; as, for instance, Ben Jonson's 'Case is Altered,' in 1599, and his 'Cynthia's Revels,' in 1600. The proprietor of the Blackfriars, in fee, was Richard Burbage; and he probably let the theatre to the Children of the Revels, in the summer season, whilst he and his brother shareholders acted at the Globe. The noticeable passage in 'Hamlet' refers to them, and to the neglect experienced by the players at some particular period, through the overweening admiration of the public for these tiny representatives of the drama; who, it should seem, also, had been accustomed to injure the regular theatres by more direct modes of attack. "There is, sir,” says Rosencrantz, "an aiery of children, little eyases, that cry out on the top of question, and are most tyrannically clapped for 't : these are now the fashion; and so berattle the common stages (so they call them) that many wearing rapiers, are afraid of goose-quills, and dare scarce come thither.

And in the kindly and thoughtful spirit of Hamlet's reply there is evidence that the complaint may have been made in no selfish spirit :-" Will they pursue the quality no longer than they can sing?" he asks. "Will they not say afterwards, if they should grow themselves to common players (as it is like most, if their means are no better), their writers do them wrong, to make them exclaim against their own succession ?" The Blackfriars was one of those theatres distinguished by the title of private, and which were entirely roofed over, instead of, as in those which were public, merely the stage portion; which had a pit instead of a mere enclosed yard; in which performances took place by candle-light; and where the visitors, being altogether of a higher class, enjoyed especial accommodations; among which, the right to sit on the stage during the progress of the play was the feature most peculiar to the time. In the public theatres this last-mentioned custom also prevailed; influential persons no doubt being permitted to do so without comment, and impudent ones taking permission in order to show their impudence, or to display their new dresses to the audience in all their bravery. The stools used by such persons were hired at sixpence each. The Blackfriars was probably pulled down soon after the permanent close of the Theatres, during the Commonwealth, by the Puritans; the locality is still marked by the name Playhouse Yard, near Apothecaries' Hall.

The other Theatre which Shakspere has bound so closely up with his own history, and to which, therefore, a similar kind of interest is attached, was the Globe, erected about 1593; and it is highly probable, in consequence of the growing prosperity of the Lord Chamberlain's servants, who desired a roomier house, a more public field for exertion. This was the largest and best of the theatres yet raised; as is clear from the care of Alleyn and Henslowe, in the erection of the Fortune, soon after, on a still larger scale, to imitate all its arrangements, excepting the shape. Yet what the Globe was, Shakspere himself has told us in the preliminary chorus to 'Henry the Fifth

What then?

"Pardon, gentles all,

The flat unraised spirit, that hath dared
On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth
So great an object: Can this cockpit hold
The vasty fields of France? or may we cram
Within this wooden O the very casques
That did affright the air at Agincourt?"

"Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts,"

is the bidding of the poet; and he spoke to an audience who could do even better than that, who could forget them altogether, in their apprehension of the spiritual grandeur and magnificence that was then with them in the cockpit. It was burnt down in 1613, and rebuilt the next year, when Taylor, the water-poet, noticing it,

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Like the Blackfriars, it was most probably pulled down during the Commonwealth. The Fortune Theatre, built about 1599, proved truly a fortune to its chief owner, Alleyn, the actor, and founder of Dulwich College. Here the Lord Admiral's servants performed. From the indenture between Alleyn and Henslowe, his co-partner, on the one side, and the builder, Street, on the other, we learn that the house had three tiers, consisting of boxes, rooms, and galleries; that there were "two-penny rooms," and "gentlemen's;" that the width of the stage was forty-three feet, and the depth

thirty-nine and a half, including, however, we should presume, the 'tiring house at the back.

The price of admission seems to have varied not only at the different theatres, but at different times in the same theatre. Ben Jonson has told us in an amusing passage what they were in 1614, when his 'Bartholomew Fair' was acted at the Hope. In the Induction he says, "It shall be lawful for any man to judge his six-pennyworth, his twelve-pennyworth, so to his eighteenpence, two shillings, halfa-crown, to the value of his place, provided always his place get not above his wit." But Dekker speaks of your groundling and gallery commoner buying his sport for a penny; and other writers also of the "penny bench theatres," referring most likely to theatres of a lower grade than any we have enumerated. Of moveable painted scenes, the theatres of the Shaksperian era were not entirely deficient; but in the earliest period we had "Thebes written in great letters on an old door," when the audience were desired to understand the scene lay in that place, and which Sir Philip Sydney ridicules. Hence the briefest, but most significant of stage directions in Selimus, Emperor of the Turks,' published in 1594, where, when the hero is conveying his father's dead body in solemn state to the Temple of Mahomet, all parties are quietly told to suppose the Temple of Mahomet." A great many difficulties might be got rid of by this principle, which, however, was not stretched too far. Our forefathers were not required to suppose the descent of the cauldron in Macbeth,' as there were trap-doors; nay, upon occasion, still more difficult feats of ingenuity were accomplished. In the directions to Greene's 'Alphonsus' we read, "after you have sounded thrice, let Venus be let down from the top of the stage, and when she is down, say;" again, in another part, "Exit Venus. Or, if you can conveniently, let a chair come down from the top of the stage, and draw her up." In dresses and properties the stage of the Shaksperian era seems to have been rich enough to compare with the stage of the present day; nay, it is probable that, in comparison with the size of its theatres, and the number of its actors, it surpassed ours in the splendour and value of the wardrobe. In Henslowe's 'Inventory,' we find, among other and still more expensive items of dress, one of a "Robe for to go invisible," which, with a gown, cost 37. 10s. of the money of the sixteenth century.

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In 1642 appcared an ordinance of the Long Parliament, commanding the cessation of plays, on the ground that "public sports do not well agree with public calamities, nor public stage-plays with the seasons of humiliation, this being an exercise of sad and pious solemnity, and the other being spectacles of pleasure, too commonly expressing lascivious mirth and levity." For a time the ordinance was obeyed, though of course a cruel one to the actors, whose means of existence were annihilated; but gradually theatres opened again, first in one quarter and then in another, and by 1647 the ordinance seems to have been almost forgotten. A second then appeared, dealing in a more summary mode with all offenders, directing the governing powers and magistracy of London and adjoining counties to enter houses where performances were taking place, arrest the players, and commit them for trial at the next sessions, there to be "punished as rogues, according to law." Even this being found insufficient, the Lords and Commons met and debated the matter warmly, and at last an Act was passed on the 11th of February, 1648, which, after denouncing stageplays, interludes, and common plays as "the occasion of many and sundry great vices and disorders, tending to the high provocation of God's wrath and displeasure, which lies heavy upon this kingdom," ordained the demolition of all stage galleries, seats and boxes used for performances, and the punishment of convicted players

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