acting, Elizabethan. The Elizabethan word for what we call acting was `playing',
and the word `acting' was reserved for the gesticulations of an orator. We have little
direct evidence about the style of Elizabethan acting, although a few general principle
can be derived from the conditions of performance. The relative shortness of rehearsal
periods and the large number of plays in the repertory at any one time suggest that an
actor was not likely to think of his character as having a unique and complex human
psychology in the way which, in our time, the Stanislavskian technique encourages.
Likewise, the distribution of parts as individual rolls of paper giving only the
particular speeches needed for one character suggests that what we think of as dramatic
interaction was less important than the individual's interpretation of his speeches.
Modern ensemble acting requires lengthy rehearsals which were unknown on the early modern
stage. But should not be taken as evidence that the acting was mere declamation without
emotion. When the King's men played Othello at Oxford in 1610 an eyewitness was
moved to report that Desdemona "killed by her husband, in her death moved us
especially when, as she lay in her bed, her face alone implored the pity of the
audience". Likewise Simon Forman's records of performances of Cymbeline, The
Winter's Tale, Macbeth and a play about Richard 2 clearly express his enjoyment
of the intensity of the emotional experience, and hence the quality of the acting. The
mere fact that boys played great tragic roles such as a Cleopatra, Desdemona, Hermione and
Lady Macbeth indicates that a degree of unrealistic formalism (symbolic gestures and
convention) must have been used, but scholars do not agree about precisely how
`naturalistic' or `formalistic' the acting usually was, or whether perhaps some mixed
style was used.
There was hardly a professional acting tradition in existence
in 1576 when James Burbage built the Theatre, and until the early 1600s most actors were
men who had taken up this career having first trained in something else. Once the
profession was established the system of apprenticeship must have helped systematize an
actor's training , although without a governing guild practice might have varied greatly
from one master to another. Acting was taught as part of a standard grammar school
education and of course actors had to be literate, so despite the apparent low status of
the profession actors were amongst the better educated Elizabethans. Scholars have looked
to the education system, and especially the instruction in oratory, for evidence of the
acting style of the period; educational policy at least is well documented. Bernard
Beckerman thought that the styles and conventional gestures of the Elizabethan orator and
actor were essentially the same but found manuals of oratory rather vague: a number of
gestures were offered to accompany a particular emotion and the individual orator was left
to choose whichever best suited the occasion.
Another source of information about acting styles is the drama
itself, and the most overused piece of evidence is Hamlet's advice to the players
(3.2.1-45) which includes "Speak the speech . . . trippingly on the tongue",
"do not saw the air too much with your hand", and avoid imitating those who have
"strutted and bellowed" on the stage. This does not tell us much and indeed the
conscious contradiction of the general and transcendent ("hold as 'twere the mirror
up to nature, to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image") and the
particular and contingent ("[show] the very age and body of the time his form and
pressure") makes this if anything an evasion of detailed instruction in acting style.
Commentators have relied heavily upon Hamlet's advice because we have no direct
description of Elizabethan acting.
Despite the lack of direct evidence, certain trends which
impinged upon acting can be traced across the period. The drama of the 1570s used strong
rhyme and rhythm (especially the `galloping' fourteen syllable line) which gave an actor
little scope for personal interpretation, whereas Marlowe's looser verse style and
increasingly subtle characterization gave the Queen's men new opportunities for virtuoso
acting. Stable long-term residences at the Rose and the Globe after 1594 allowed a star
system to develop with Edward Alleyn for the Admiral's and Richard Burbage for the
Chamberlain's men being the most highly praised actors of their time. T. W. Baldwin
developed a complex model of the character types (`lines') which were the {pecial skills
of a particular actors of the period but other scholars feel that flexibility, not
specialization, was the most valued attribute in an actor. Whether Shakespeare ever got
the performances he wanted is uncertain. Shakespeare's characters use acting as a metaphor
for public behaviour of all kinds but, as M. C. Bradbrook noted, the descriptions
(`strutting player', `frets', `wooden dialogue') are seldom complimentary.
The differences in conditions at different venues appears to
have had an effect on the acting. Indoor theatres were smaller than the open-air
amphitheatres and had less extraneous noise, so actors could afford to soften their voices
and make smaller physical gestures. Players at the northern playhouses, especially the
Fortune and Red Bull, were more commonly attacked for exaggerated acting once the private
theatres had developed their own subtle style. Also, an actor in an amphitheatre is
effectively surrounded on all sides by spectators and may choose to keep moving so that
everyone has a chance to see him. The indoor theatres, however, had a greater mass of
spectators directly in front of the stage and this probably encouraged playing `out-front'
rather than `in-the-round' as we would now call it. Adjusting between the two modes must
have been fairly easy for the actors, however, as on tour they were unlikely to find many
venues which provided the `in-the-round' experience of the London amphitheatres.
GE
Harbage, Alfred 'Elizabethan Acting',
Publication of the Modern Language Association of America, 54 (1939)
Beckerman, Bernard Shakespeare at the Globe, 1599-1609
(New York: Macmillan, 1962)
Baldwin, T. W. The Organization and Personnel of the Shakespearean Company
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1927)
Bradbrook, M. C. Elizabethan Stage Conditions: A Study of Their Place in the Interpretation of Shakespeare's Plays
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1932)
Gurr, Andrew 'Playing in Amphitheatres and Playing in Hall Theatres', in
A. L. Magnusson and C. E. McGee (ed.) The Elizabethan Theatre XIII: Papers Given at the 13th International Conference on Elizabethan Theatre Held at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, in July 1989
(Toronto: Meany, 1994)
Salgādo, Gāmini (ed.) Eyewitnesses of Shakespeare: First Hand Accounts of Performances 1590-1890
(Brighton: Sussex University Press, 1975)
999 words
acting profession, Elizabethan and Jacobean. The Elizabethan word for an actor
was `player' and there were three classes: the sharer, the hired man, and the apprentice.
The nucleus of the company was the sharers, typically between 4 and 10 men, who were named
on the patent which gave them the authority to perform and which identified their
aristocratic patron. The sharers owned the capital of the company, its playbooks and
costumes, in common and shared the profits earned. All other actors were the employees of
the sharers. The sharers were not necessarily the finest actors but they would have to
bring a significant contribution to the company either in the form of capital or, as in
the case of Shakespeare, in the form of writing ability. The sharing took place after the
rent on the venue--often simply consisting of the takings from the galleries--had been
paid and the hired men had received their wages. There was no guild system in place to
regulate the industry, so an apprentice was in the unusual position of being legally
apprenticed in the secondary trade practised by the individual sharer who was his master.
The sharers of London companies selected a new play by
audition reading and, if purchased, they would rehearse it in the morning while playing
items from the current repertory in the afternoon. The inconclusive evidence from
Henslowe's account book suggests that at least two weeks were allowed for rehearsal of a
new play, including time needed for the player to privately `study' (memorize) his part.
With no cheap mechanical means of reproducing an entire play, players were issued with
rolls of paper containing only their own lines plus their cues. This practice and the
short rehearsal periods suggests that acting skill was largely considered to reside in
expressing the meanings and emotions in one's part rather than reacting to the speeches of
others.
The majority of players were hired men, and amongst these
there was not a strict distinction between what we now call `front of house' and `stage'
work: an entrance-fee gatherer or costumer might well be expected to take a minor role at
need, and those providing musical accompaniment might have to portray onstage musicians.
Fee-gathering was the only job open to women as well as men; apart from ambiguous evidence
concerning Middleton and Dekker's The Roaring Girl (1611) there is nothing to
suggest that women ever acted. Usually the apprentices played the female roles in the
drama but because of the anomalous lack of a guild governing the acting profession we do
not know the precise extent of an apprentice's responsibilities, or if indeed any standard
arrangements existed other than the customary provision of board, keep, and training.
There is little evidence that players were type-cast although
a dramatist attached to a company, as Shakespeare was, would have thought about his human
resources during composition. However, there was a distinct position of `clown' or `fool'
in each of the major companies and Richard Tarlton of the Queen's men and William Kempe
and later Robert Armin of the Chamberlain's men had roles written to suit their abilities
and did not perform in plays which lack a `clown' or `fool' character. The emergence
of actor `stars' in the early 1590s appears to be related to the increasingly long
residences at London playhouses which allowed audiences to follow the particular
development of an individual's career. Star actors could expect to take just one of the
major roles in a play, but other actors, and especially hired men, would be expected to
`double' as needed.
GE
Bentley, Gerald Eades The Profession of Player in Shakespeare's Time, 1590-1642
(Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1984)
Ingram, William The Business of Playing: The Beginnings of the Adult Professional Theater in Elizabethan England
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992)
627 words
Blackfriars. In 1576, the year that James Burbage built The Theatre in
Shoreditch, Richard Farrant leased from Sir William More the Upper Frater of an old
Dominican monastery in the Blackfriars district of north London and used it for theatrical
performances by boy players. Since the fourteenth century the building had served on
occasion as parliament chamber of the realm and there was no official sanction for its
used as a playhouse, but by pretending that the boys were merely rehearsing and by keeping
the audience small and elite, Farrant and his partner William Hunnis, and later John
Newman and Henry Evans, were able to run what was effectively an indoor theatre for eight
years until legal wrangles between the partners brought the project to a end. In 1596
James Burbage paid £600 for this property and began converting it to become an indoor
home for the Chamberlain's men, the company whose leading actor was his son Richard and
who were expecting to leave the Theatre when that playhouse's ground lease expired in
1597. A petition from important local residents objecting to the traffic and disturbance
that a playhouse would bring to the Blackfriars area caused the privy council to forbid
the building's use. James Burbage died in February 1597 and his sons decided to relocate
the timbers of the Theatre to Bankside to create the Globe as the Chamberlain's men's new
permanent home, and to recover the lost expense by leasing the Blackfriars playhouse to a
company of boy players led by the same Henry Evans who had used it twenty years earlier.
Presumably discrete performances by boy players were again tolerable where performances by
famous adult players were not. Evans's boys changed names and managements several times
during their residency at the Blackfriars. In March of 1608 they gave a performance of
George Chapman's Conspiracy and Tragedy of Charles, Duke of Byron which offended
King James and the company was disbanded, leaving the Blackfriars playhouse vacant.
Richard Burbage's playing company was now under royal
patronage as the King's men, and he had reason to suppose that he might now be allowed use
his indoor playhouse. In August 1608 Burbage formed a seven-man syndicate--himself, John
Heminges, William Shakespeare, Cuthbert Burbage, Henry Condell, William Sly, and Thomas
Evans--to run the Blackfriars along the same lines as the syndicate formed to run the
Globe in 1599. Plague closure prevented use of the building until late 1609, but
thereafter the King's men used the open-air Globe in the summer and the indoor Blackfriars
in the winter. The first of the King's men's plays to be written specially for the
Blackfriars was either Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale or his Cymbeline,
although both probably also played at the Globe as did Shakespeare's later plays The
Tempest, All is True, and The Two Noble Kinsmen. The Blackfriars was
closed with all the other playhouses in 1642 and was pulled down in 1655.
The room which housed the playing space was a rectangle 66
feet by 46 feet and the stage ran across the full width of one of the short sides,
although its usable width would have been reduced to something less than 30 feet by the
presence of spectators' boxes at the sides. The main body of the audience sat in the space
immediately in front of the stage (roughly what would be the yard in an open-air theatre)
and in galleries which ran around three walls of the room, formed into a U shape by the
cutting off of two corners. The economic deposition of the audience was an inversion of
the open-air arrangements: those nearest the stage at an indoor playhouse paid most. The
practices and facilities of the Blackfriars can be inferred from the plays written
specially for the boy players between 1600 and 1608. Spectators were allowed to sit on the
stage, as they were in the public theatres from the mid 1590s. Performances were divided
into five acts separated by intervals during which music was played. The audience was
entirely seated, so the stage was probably not as high as stages in the public theatres,
but it would need to be high enough to allow an actor to rise from underneath for the
opening direction of Ben Jonson's Poetaster (1602): "[Enter] ENVY. Arising
in the midst of the stage". It is not certain whether actors ascended through the
trap via a ladder or were raised by a mechanically operated platform, but if the latter
the lack of space under the low stage would have required cutting a hole in the massive
floor and fitting the machine against the ceiling of the room beneath. Descents by flight
machine, with musical accompaniment, are made in Beaumont and Fletcher's Cupid's
Revenge and in George Chapman's The Widows Tears, and music plays as the actors
descends. In the public theatres music was typically provided by brass instruments but for
the enclosed space of the Blackfriars woodwind instruments were preferred. Operation of
the flight machine in open-air playhouses was usually masked by the simulation of thunder,
and the use of music alone in Cupid's Revenge and The Widow's Tears might
indicate that the solid roof of the Upper Frater effectively deadened the noise of the
Blackfriars flight machine.
The Blackfriars playhouse was famous for the quality of its
musicians who provided entertainment before the performance as well as music during the
four act intervals. When the King's men took over the theatre they appear to have adapted
their open-air practices to conform with those of the Blackfriars: thereafter they used
more music in all their plays and used intervals in all performances. Absolute conformity
was not possible however: as well as quieter instruments the smaller indoor theatre suited
a more restrained style of vocal delivery and less movement about the stage.
GE
Smith, Irwin Shakespeare's Blackfriars Playhouse: Its History and Its Design
(New York: New York University Press, 1964)
Gurr, Andrew 'Playing in Amphitheatres and Playing in Hall Theatres', in
A. L. Magnusson and C. E. McGee (ed.) The Elizabethan Theatre XIII: Papers Given at the 13th International Conference on Elizabethan Theatre Held at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, in July 1989
(Toronto: Meany, 1994)
Wallace, C. W. The Children of the Chapel at Blackfriars, 1597-1603
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1908)
Berry, Herbert Shakespeare's Playhouses
(New York: AMS, 1987)
995 words
Chamberlain's Men/King's Men. In May 1594 two privy councillors, Henry Carey
(the Lord Chamberlain) and Charles Howard (the Lord Admiral) established two acting
companies, the Chamberlain's men and the Admiral's men, and gave them exclusive rights to
perform in London at the Theatre and the Rose respectively. Shakespeare appears to have
been one of the new Chamberlain's men from the company's inception and his plays came with
him, whether in his own possession or in the hands of fellow actors who performed in them
for other companies we do not know.
The difficulty of distinguishing different plays on the same
theme (there appears to have been more than one `Hamlet' play in the 1590s) and of
identifying single plays which might be known by more than one name (as might be the case
with `The Taming of A/The Shrew') makes the precise limits of the early Shakespeare canon
uncertain. The nucleus of the company was composed of the actor-sharers George Bryan,
Richard Burbage, John Heminges, Will Kemp, Augustine Phillips, Thomas Pope, William
Shakespeare and William Sly. The distinctive John Sincler was not a sharer but his career
can be traced through a number of Shakespeare's `thin man' roles including Nym and Slender
in 2 Henry 4, Henry 5, and The Merry Wives of Windsor and Sir Andrew
Aguecheek in Twelfth Night. In 1598 Francis Meres praised Shakespeare's The Two
Gentlemen of Verona, The Comedy of Errors, Love's Labour's Lost, A
Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merchant of Venice, Richard 2, Richard 3,
Henry 4, King John, Titus Andronicus, and Romeo and Juliet.
Together with Shakespeare's Henry 6 plays and The Taming of the Shrew this
makes an impressive body of work and it is hardly surprising that the Chamberlain's men,
with such a repertory and with a state-enforced monopoly on playing on the north side of
the Thames, were hugely successful. On 22 July 1596 the company's patron, Henry Carey the
Lord Chamberlain, died and Lord Cobham was made Lord Chamberlain in his place. The
patronage of the company passed to Henry Carey's son George, so for a while the company
was officially Lord Hunsdon's men, but in early 1597 Lord Cobham also died and George
Carey received the Chamberlainship, thus restoring the more impressive name to his
players. Also early in 1597 died James Burbage, owner of the Theatre and the Blackfriars
and father to the Chamberlain's men's leading actor Richard Burbage. The lease on the land
underneath the Theatre expired on 13 April 1597 and sometime before September 1598 the
company must have started using another venue, presumably the nearby Curtain whose owner,
Henry Lanham, made a profit-sharing deal with James Burbage in 1585. Unable to settle the
dispute over the site of the Theatre and unable to move into the Blackfriars playhouse
built by James Burbage in 1596, the Chamberlain's men dismantled the timbers of the
Theatre and reassembled them on a new site on Bankside to form the Globe, which opened
some time between June and September 1599. James Burbage's sons, Richard and Cuthbert,
inherited his Theatre and Blackfriars venues but had insufficient cash to finance the
Globe project alone and so they formed a syndicate to bring in John Heminges, William
Kemp, Augustine Phillips, Thomas Pope and William Shakespeare. These actors became not
only sharers in the playing company but also `housekeepers' owning their own venue and
this alignment of interests proved to be a powerful stabilizing force in the company's
fortunes. William Sly stayed out of the deal initially but took up Pope's share after the
latter's death in 1603. Some time after 1596 one of the original Chamberlain's men
sharers, George Bryan, dropped out and was probably replaced by Henry Condell, who became
a `housekeeper' too after Phillips died in 1605.
While the Globe was being erected in 1599 the clown William
Kemp left the company and was replaced by Robert Armin, whose subtler style of humour
seems to be reflected in Shakespeare's subsequent creation of reflective intellectual
`fools'. On 25 March 1603 Queen Elizabeth died and was succeeded by the king of Scotland,
James 6, who became James 1 of England. The new monarch showed greater interest in drama
than his predecessor and on 19 May 1603 he became the company's patron, changing their
name to the King's men. The following winter James demanded eight performance at court
from his players, more than they had ever been asked for by Elizabeth. The company also
began to tour more frequently and more widely under James's patronage, which might
indicate that the new king saw his playing company as a travelling advertisement for the
new reign.
In 1608 the children's company at Blackfriars disbanded
temporarily after performing a play which offended James, and their manager Henry Evans
surrendered his lease on the Blackfriars back to Richard Burbage. Now with royal
patronage, the King's men were able to occupy the playhouse James Burbage had built just
before his death. The share-holding arrangement at the Globe had apparently proved
successful for the players because they now made the same arrangement to run the
Blackfriars. The new syndicate formed on 9 August 1608 was comprised of Richard and
Cuthbert Burbage, John Heminges, William Shakespeare, William Sly, Henry Condell, and an
outsider named Thomas Evans. Plague closure probably prevented the company using the
Blackfriars until late in 1609 and, assuming that they opened it with a new play by their
resident dramatist, the first performance in their new home was either Shakespeare's The
Winter's Tale or his Cymbeline. With two playhouses at their disposal, the
King's men were able to use the Globe from May to September and, when the weather began to
make outdoor performances uncomfortable, to move to the indoor Blackfriars for the winter.
Outdoor performances had traditionally used no intervals but the tradition at the
Blackfriars was to have a short break, a musical interlude, after each act. The King's men
normalized their practices by introducing act intervals at the Globe and by moving its
music room from an unseen position inside the tiring house to the balcony in the back wall
of the stage. The practicalities of staging differed in the company's indoor and outdoor
venues. Woodwind instruments are suitable indoors, brass outdoors, but more pressingly the
small stage of the Blackfriars made swordfighting difficult. Despite this, and presumable
because they had the ingrained touring habit of accommodating to whatever space is
available, the company did not immediately develop different repertories for each
playhouse.
Although the Blackfriars attracted an elite audience paying
high prices, the Globe's importance to the company is attested by their decision to
rebuild it "in far fairer manner than before", as Edmond Howes put it, after it
burned down in 1613. Shakespeare retired around this time and was replaced by the
partnership of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher. Richard Burbage died in 1619 and was
replaced by Joseph Taylor. A new patent was issued to the company on 27 March 1619, but
only Heminges and Condell remained from the first patent of 1603. Heminges was by this
time primarily an administrator for the company, and Condell seems to have stopped acting
by the end of the 1610s. It was these two men who organized the publication of the first
collected works of Shakespeare, the Folio of 1623. Playing the established masterpieces of
Shakespeare and the new works of Beaumont and Fletcher, the King's men survived intact
until the general theatrical closure of 1642.
GE
Gurr, Andrew The Shakespearian Playing Companies
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996)
Knutson, Roslyn Lander The Repertory of Shakespeare's Company 1594-1613
(Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1991)
Somerset, Alan ''How Chances it They Travel':? Provincial Touring, Playing Places, and the King's Men',
Shakespeare Survey, 47 (1994)
Taylor, Gary and John Jowett Shakespeare Reshaped: 1606-1623
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993)
Wiles, David Shakespeare's Clown: Actor and Text in the Elizabethan Playhouse
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987)
1267 words
Davenant, Sir William, putative illegitimate son of Shakespeare, the second Poet
Laureate, theatre impresario, playwright, and adapter of Shakespeare, born late February
or early March 1606, death reported "just now" by Samuel Pepys on 7 April 1668.
John Aubrey recorded that Davenant would "when he was pleasant over a glasse of wine
with his most intimate friends . . . say that it seemed to him that he writt with the very
spirit that Shakespeare [had], and was seemed contentended [sic] enough to be thought his
son". The tavern in Oxford owned by Davenant's parents was on the road from Stratford
on Avon to London but it did not offer any public accommodation and there is no evidence
beyond the frequent retelling of Aubrey's anecdote to substantiate the story. However,
Davenant was an avid fan of Shakespeare's work. At the age of 18 Davenant went to London
and although they rejected his The Tragedy of Albovine, King of the Lombards
(1629), the King's men put on his The Cruel Brother (1630) in 1627. Davenant's The
Colonel (1673) was licensed on 22 July 1629 but might not have been performed, but his
The Just Italian (1630) certainly was performed by the King's men. In 1630 Davenant
contracted syphilis and suffered disfigurement to his nose from taking mercury to cure it.
When Ben Jonson broke his partnership with Inigo Jones, William Davenant took up Jonson's
place and wrote his first court masque, The Temple of Love (1634), in 1634. Masque,
play, and poetry writing occupied Davenant until the civil war and from 25 March 1638 he
received a royal pension which, although Jonson was not yet dead, was widely taken to
indicate that Davenant had succeeded him as poet laureate.
Davenant's interest in running his own theatre is indicated by
his petition of 26 March 1639 to build one in Fleet Street, and although this was refused
he was appointed to succeed William Beeston as governor of the `Beeston Boys' at the
Cockpit in Drury Lane. Military service in the skirmishes which prefigured the civil war
prevented Davenant from fulfilling this commission, and in 1642 he, like many in the
theatre, joined the royalist side. In prison after defeat of the royalists Davenant wrote
his epic poem Gondibert, and after two years he was released unharmed, probably
aided by solicitations from John Milton amongst others. Covert theatrical performances
continued throughout the interregnum, and Davenant wrote a number of `entertainments'
which introduced innovations set to become standard theatrical practice after the
Restoration: a proscenium arch, painted canvases, and female actors. The most theatrically
complete of these `entertainments' was Davenant's The Siege of Rhodes (1656) which
was presented in revised form for the opening of Davenant's theatre, the Duke's in 1661.
In Charles 2's reign Davenant at the Duke's and Thomas Killigrew at the Theatre Royal
enjoyed a theatrical duopoly in London, and both showed established classics from the
pre-commonwealth era. Davenant also adapted the earlier works: his The Law Against
Lovers (1673) was Shakespeare's Measure for Measure plus Beatrice and Benedick
from Much Ado About Nothing, and his The Tempest, or the Enchanted Island
(1670) was Shakespeare's play with the addition of sisters for Miranda and Caliban and a
sweetheart for Ariel. Davenant's leading actor, Thomas Betterton, was reputedly aided by
Davenant's familiarity with the performances of John Lowin and Joseph Taylor who received
their instructions directly from Shakespeare. This cannot be literally true since Taylor
joined the King's men in 1619, but Davenant's links with the Shakespearian tradition were
closer than anyone else working in the London theatre.
Davenant's adaptations of Shakespeare were only a part of his
life's achievement, but having the confidence to rewrite Shakespeare's lines and to
introduce technological innovations, such as "Enter Three Witches Flying"
in his Macbeth (1674), brought considerable disapproval when the early twentieth
century theatre industry re-discovered what it took to be `authentic' Shakespearian
practices. One of Davenant's innovations, women playing women's parts, might be
judged a necessity brought about by the interruption of theatrical traditions caused by
the commonwealth suppression of drama: no boy apprentices were available when the theatres
re-opened. But biographer Mary Edmond is undoubtedly right to credit Davenant with making
Shakespeare available to a generation denied any access to theatrical art and his
intelligent reworkings may be seen as an appropriate responses to conditions utterly
unlike those which obtained when the theatres were closed in 1642.
GE
Edmond, Mary Rare Sir William Davenant
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1987)
Harbage, Alfred Sir William Davenant: Poet Venturer 1606-1668
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1935)
725 words
Globe Theatre. The primary playing space of the Chamberlain-King's men between
1599 and 1608, and thereafter their summer venue alternating with the indoors Blackfriars
playhouse in winter. The Globe was located in the Bankside district of south London,
famous for its animal baiting rings and brothels, and near to the Rose theatre operated by
Philip Henslowe. Built from the recycled timbers of the company's previous home, the
Theatre, the Globe was an open-air, virtually circular, amphitheatre with a diameter of
between 80 and 100 feet and a thatched roof. Although associated with several of
Shakespeare's most famous plays which received their first performance in it, the Globe
was built because James Burbage's intended new home for the company, the indoors
Blackfriars playhouse was prevented from opening in 1596 by the objection of local
residents. Despite its inauspicious beginning, the Globe's long-term economic success is
attested by the decision to rebuild it "far fairer" than before after it burnt
down during a performance of Shakespeare's All Is True on 29 June 1613. The
appearance of this second Globe is recorded in Wensceslaus Hollar's Long View of London
(1641), the preliminary sketch for which was used as the basis of the modern replica of
the first Globe which was officially opened on Bankside in 1999.
The Globe was owned and operated by a syndicate of the leading
players in the Chamberlain's men. Hitherto playhouses were owned by entrepreneurs working
singly or in pairs to build and maintain venues hired out to acting companies for a share
of the takings, usually the money collected in the galleries with the income from standing
spectators going to the actors. Expenditure on the abortive Blackfriars project left James
Burbage without sufficient capital to provide a replacement for the Theatre but by forming
a syndicate and by taking the Theatre's timbers with them, the Chamberlain's men were able
to finance the Globe. Thus leading members of the acting troupe, such as Shakespeare, were
also shareholders (`housekeepers') in their own theatre. This arrangement proved to be
particularly stable and the same procedure was followed when, in 1608, the Blackfriars
project was resumed.
Because the Globe's timbers were merely those of the Theatre
re-assembled on a new site, and because it is unlikely that the old joints in the wood
were sawn off and remade, the new building must have been the same size and shape as its
predecessor. The Theatre's name was intended to evoke the Roman amphitheatres of 1000
years earlier whose circular shape it emulated, and the Globe's name extended this
association to assert the microcosmic correspondence of the world of drama and the world
of everyday life. This correspondence was made explicit in a number of Shakespeare's plays
written for the Globe, for example in Jaques's comment that "All the world's a
stage" (As You Like It 2.7.139) and in Hamlet's polysemic reference to
"this distracted globe" (Hamlet 1.5.97) meaning his head, the theatre,
and the world. There is, however, little evidence to support the frequently repeated claim
that the Globe's identifying flag represented Hercules supporting the earth and nothing at
all to suggest that its motto was "Totus Mundus Agit Histrionum" (the
"whole world moves the actor", but often mistranslated as "all the world's
a stage").
The second Globe, recorded by Hollar, was built on the
foundations of the first and so presumably it was the same size and shape. If so, the
original groundplan of the Theatre, built in 1576, survived in this form until the closing
of the playhouses in 1642. Hollar's sketch of the second Globe was made with an accurate
optical instrument, but estimates of the Globe's size derived from this sketch are
undermined by his multiple sketching lines and by detail hidden behind obstacles. Even if
the modern replica is as much as 10% too large the increase in average human body size
over the last 400 years renders the replica about as relatively roomy to us as the
original was to its users. Contemporary accounts record audiences as numerous as 3000,
about 1% of the London population. With its stage extending into the middle of the yard,
the Globe allowed an actor to stand almost at the centre of a densely packed cylinder of
spectators although experiments in the replica do not conclusively show that this central
spot is the ideal place to deliver the most powerful lines of Shakespeare's plays.
29 plays of the period, 15 of them by Shakespeare, seem to
have had their first performance at the first Globe. None calls for a character to `fly'
and so it is unlikely that the Globe had a flight machine when first built. Shakespeare's
first use of flight was in Cymbeline (written 1608) and around this time staging
practices at the Globe were brought into line with practices at the Blackfriars, so
presumably a flight machine was then added to the Globe. Dramatic use of below-stage space
is evinced by the stage direction "ghost cries from under the stage" (1.5.157)
in the second quarto of Shakespeare's Hamlet and by music from "under the
stage" (4.3.10) in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, but extensive
exploitation of the "hell" (as it was called) would have been limited by the
marshiness of the land on which the Globe was built.
GE
Gurr, Andrew and John Orrell Rebuilding Shakespeare's Globe
(London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989)
903 words
Inns. Before the construction of the first permanent theatre spaces in London in
the 1560s and 1570s, the large yards of the inns of the City of London were being used for
dramatic performance. The yards, designed for the unloading of wagons, were enclosed on
three or four sides and had galleries around their edges which provided access to the
rooms available for nightly rental. With the addition of a portable stage an inn-yard made
an effective theatre with space for spectators standing around the stage and under or
within the galleries. The first recorded performances were at the Saracen's Head,
Islington, and the Boar's Head, Aldgate in 1557. The Red Lion used to be thought an
inn-playhouse, but new evidence shows that, despite the unlikely sounding name, this was a
farm converted to a playhouse in 1567.
Until 1594 playing companies moved between different city inns
in winter, and the suburban playhouses in the summer. In 1594 the privy council banned all
playing at city inns and allowed only two companies, the Admiral's men and the
Chamberlain's men, at two specified suburban venues: the Rose and the Theatre,
respectively. Glynne Wickham thought that players using an inn probably preferred one of
its interior halls to its exposed yard for their performance since this would give them
protection from the winter elements and would also please the inn-keeper who would not
want to lose the use of his yard for unloading wagons. But wagons were probably unloaded
early in the morning and late at night so for most of the day no conflict existed, and
moreover Oscar Brownstein showed that the annual migration between city inns and suburban
amphitheatres was prompted more by plague restrictions than by concerns of comfort.
(Receipts for the Boar's Head galleries on 24 and 26 December 1599 suggest that outdoor
playing was practical in winter.) However, it is quite possible that the Cross Keys and
the Bell inns allowed only indoor performance since they never put on the exclusively
outdoor entertainment of sword-fighting `prizes' which were popular at the rival Bull and
the Bell Savage inns. We know of only one inn being permanently converted into a
playhouse: the Boar's Head in 1598. A privy council order of June 1600 banned all playing
at inns and no subsequent performances are recorded.
GE
Brownstein, Oscar 'A Record of London Inn-playhouses from C. 1565-1590',
Shakespeare Quarterly, 22 (1971)
Brownstein, Oscar 'The Saracen's Head, Islington: A Pre-Elizabethan Inn Playhouse',
Theatre Notebook, 25 (1971)
Berry, Herbert The Boar's Head Playhouse
(Washington: Folger, 1986)
Wickham, Glynne Early English Stages 1300 to 1660, 3 vols.
(London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963), vol. 2: 1576 to 1660, Part I
414 words
Rose Theatre. Philip Henslowe, in partnership with one John Cholmley, built the
first open-air amphitheatre playhouse on Bankside, the Rose, in 1587. Excavation of the
site has revealed that the Rose was an irregular fourteen sided polygon approximately 74
feet across and with a small, shallow, tapered stage which either fronted or formed a
chord across three auditorium bays. This was considerably smaller than the Swan and the
Globe which were later erected in the same district. Henslowe enlarged the Rose in 1592
but not by much and the main increase was in yard space. Prior to the Rose excavation it
was generally assumed that Elizabethan theatrical amphitheatres were regular polygons and
that their stages were rectangular and extended into the middle of the yard. In 1595
Henslowe paid for the installation of a "throne in the heavens", presumably a
device for lowering an actor to the stage from the stage cover. The layering of the
foundations on the site indicates that the stage cover and its attendant stage posts were
built no earlier than the alterations of 1592. A rainwater erosion line in the yard of the
Rose, and Henslowe's payments to thatchers, indicate that the roof of the Rose was
thatched.
Henslowe's accounts recording his income from the Rose name a
great many plays, most of which are lost to us. Because a play might appear under more
than one name, and more than one play might exist on the theme of, say, Henry 5's life,
identification of plays from Henslowe's records is not certain. However Henslowe's
"tittus & ondronicus" was almost certainly Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus,
and quite possibly "harey the vj" was his 1 Henry 6, indicating
that these plays were performed at the Rose. Amongst other famous plays Henslowe's record
refers to Rose performances of Marlowe's Tamburlaine (1590), The Jew of
Malta (1633), and Dr Faustus (1604), and of Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy (c.
1592). Scott McMillin's analysis of the staging requirement of known Rose plays showed
that if an `enclosure' or `discovery' were needed, the same play usually also called for
playing `aloft'. From this coincidence--both `enclosure/discovery' and `aloft' are needed,
or neither is--McMillin concluded that a large stage booth served both functions which the
permanent fixtures of the playhouse could not fulfil. Henslowe's attention focused on his
new Fortune playhouse after 1600 and by 1606 the Rose had been pulled down.
GE
Bowsher, Julian M. C. and Simon Blatherwick 'The Structure of the Rose', in
Franklin J. Hildy (ed.) New Issues in the Reconstruction of Shakespeare's Theatre: Proceedings of the Conference Held at the University of Georgia, February 16-18, 1990
(New York: Peter Lang, 1990)
Rutter, Carol Chillington (ed.) Documents of the Rose Playhouse
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984)
McMillin, Scott 'The Rose and The Swan', in
John H. Astington (ed.) The Development of Shakespeare's Theater
(New York: AMS, 1992)
421 words
Swan Theatre. The Swan was built in 1595 by Francis Langley in the Bankside
district of south London and it was clearly intended to compete with the nearby Rose owned
by Philip Henslowe . In 1596 a Dutch humanist scholar, Johannes de Witt, visited the Swan
and drew a picture of it which his friend and fellow classicist Aernout van Buchell
copied; this copy is extant. De Witt's sketch is the only surviving interior view of an
open-air playhouse of the period and it shows a virtually round amphitheatre of somewhere
between 16 and 24 sides with a stage projecting into the yard surmounted by a stage cover
supported on two pillars. External views of the Swan also appear in a number of pictures
of London, including a 1627 map of the Paris Garden Manor which appears to show the Swan
having a single exterior staircase. None of the external views of the Swan is a reliable
guide to its dimensions, but the Hope playhouse contract specified that it should be
"of suche large compass, fforme, widenes, and height as the Plaihouse called the
Swan". Hollar's sketch of the second Globe shows the Hope to be about 100 feet
across, and we may assume the Swan was about the same.
De Witt described the Swan as the largest of the London
playhouses of its day and wrote that it was made out of an aggregate of flint stones
("ex coacervato lapide pyrritide"), a detail we must doubt given the
construction practices of the day. The large wooden columns supporting the stage cover
were painted like marble so cleverly as "to deceive the most inquiring eye", and
perhaps the external rendering too was deceptive. The described marbelization, the
circular shape, and the use of classical columns with ornate bases and capitals put the
Swan in a neo-classicist tradition of design emerging at the end of the sixteenth century
despite the apparent Tudor bareness of the sketch.
The Swan was closed in 1597 when Pembroke's men played The
Isle of Dogs (now lost) by Thomas Nashe and Ben Jonson which was highly critical of
the government and which landed the dramatists in jail. By 1602 it appears to be have been
operating again: the hoaxer Richard Vennar circulated a playbill describing an
entertainment called England's Joy, "to be Played at the Swan this 6 of
Nouember, 1602". Having received the takings Vennar tried to flee without providing a
performance and the expectant audience "when they saw themselves deluded, revenged
themselves upon the hangings, curtaines, chaires, stooles, walles" of the playhouse.
Langley died in 1601 and the Paris Garden estate was sold to Hugh Browker. The Swan had a
revival of theatrical activity between 1611 and 1615, as shown by the receipts of the
estate's overseers and also the allusion in Middleton and Dekker's The Roaring Girl
(1611) to a "new play i' the Swan". The only extant play known to have been
performed at the Swan is Thomas Middleton's A Chaste Maid in Cheapside (1613),
presumably during the 1611-15 revival of activity. After 1620 the Swan was occasionally
used for prize-fighting, and in 1632 Nicholas Goodman described it as "now fallen in
decay, and like a dying Swanne, hanging downe her head, seemed to sing her own
dierge". Herbert Berry discovered that in 1634 the Swan was used by the commissioners
of the Court of Requests as a venue for taking evidence in a lawsuit concerning the Globe,
and such men "would not take official evidence in a hovel" so presumably the
building had been restored to some of its former elegance.
GE
624 words
Theatre, The. The first substantial purpose-built London playhouse in England
since Roman times, built in 1576 by James Burbage in the Shoreditch district just
north-east of the city and hence beyond the jurisdiction of the anti-theatrical puritan
city fathers. Although the Red Lion was earlier (built 1567), the Theatre appears to have
been considerably more substantial than its predecessor and indeed its timbers survived in
the form of the Globe until the fire of 1613. The only contemporary picture of the the
Theatre is the sketch belonging to Abram Booth now in the University of Utrecht library.
This shows an apparently round open-air structure with a superstructural hut like that at
the Swan, but artistic distortion of proportion (especially height) limits this picture's
usefulness concerning the Theatre's size. The presence of the superstructural hut does not
prove that the Theatre had a stage cover and posts similar to those of the Swan since this
might be merely the top of a `turret' like that at the Red Lion. Patrons could apparently
stand in the yard around the stage and either stand or sit in the galleries which enclosed
the yard.
When it was built the Theatre was available to any playing
company to use and the precise occupancy is largely untraceable before the settlement of
1594 which licensed the Chamberlain's men to use the Theatre and the Admiral's men to use
the Rose. Shakespeare's plays written in the latter half of the 1590s, Love's Labour's
Lost, Richard 2, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, King John, The Merchant of
Venice, 1 Henry 4, 2 Henry 4, and Much Ado About Nothing, would have been written for the
Theatre. The nearby Curtain playhouse was described as an "esore" to the Theatre
in 1585, which suggests some an obscure financial connection which might have involved the
Chamberlain's men playing at the Curtain. The lease on the site expired in 1597 and when
negotiations for its renewal stalled and the Blackfriars project was thwarted the Burbages
engaged the master carpenter Peter Street to dismantle the building and to re-erect the
timbers as the Globe on a new site south of the river.
GE
Lusardi, James P. 'The Pictured Playhouse: Reading the Utrecht Engraving of Shakespeare's London',
Shakespeare Quarterly, 44 (1993)
Berry, Herbert 'Aspects of the Design and Use of the First Public Playhouse', in
Herbert Berry (ed.) The First Public Playhouse: the Theatre in Shoreditch 1576-1598
(Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1979)
390 words
theatres, Elizabethan and Jacobean. The Romans built amphitheatres in Britain
during their occupation, but we know of no purpose-built theatres erected between their
departure and the construction of the open-air galleries and stage of the Red Lion in
Stepney in 1567. More substantial than the Red Lion were James Burbage's Theatre in
Shoreditch built in 1576 and Henry Lanham's nearby Curtain built in 1577, both of which
echoed the circular shape of the Roman amphitheatres. Also in 1576 Richard Farrant began
to use the Upper Frater of the Blackfriars dominican monastery as a playhouse and some
time in the 1570s the Paul's playhouse opened. The first playhouse south of the river was
probably the one at Newington Butts, about which almost nothing is known, but in 1587
Philip Henslowe built his open-air Rose theatre on Bankside and this was joined by its
neighbours the Swan (1595) and the Globe (1599). There had long been an animal baiting
ring in the south bank area known as Paris Garden, but the theory that open-air playhouses
developed out of the tradition of placing a touring company's portable stage and booth
inside a baiting ring is unproven. In truth we do not know where the open-air circular
playhouse design came from, other than imitation of the Roman style. In 1599-1600 Henslowe
built a new open-air playhouse, the Fortune, north of the river but broke with tradition
in making the gallery ranges in the form of a square.
Until 1608, when the King's men regained the Blackfriars, the
indoor theatres were used exclusively by companies of child actors and the open-air
playhouses dominated the adult industry. It was customary at the indoor playhouses to
divide the performance into 5 acts and for short musical interludes to fill the intervals,
and this practice spread to the outdoor playhouses with the King's men's acquisition of
the Blackfriars. The terminology `public' and `private' theatre for the open-air and
indoor theatres respectively is misleading as both kinds were open to the public, although
the considerably higher cost of entrance to the indoor theatres kept out all but the
middle and upper classes. In 1616 Christopher Beeston built the indoor Cockpit theatre in
Drury Lane which competed directly with the Blackfriars for the elite market, and a number
of new theatres followed before the Civil War. All the theatres were closed by order of
parliament in 1642 as war became inevitable and those which were still structurally sound
were converted into dwellings or their timbers stripped for re-use elsewhere.
GE
Foakes, R. A. Illustrations of the English Stage 1580-1642
(London: Scolar Press, 1985)
444 words
Curtain Theatre. The Curtain took its name from the parcel of land upon which it
was built in Holywell, just to the south of the Theatre--with which its history is closely
related--and about one year later, in 1577. In 1585 the Curtain's owner, Henry Lanman,
entered into an obscure deal with James Burbage and John Brayne, the Theatre's owners,
which involved them "taking the Curten as an Esore to their playe housse". The
modern word closest to 'Esore' is 'easer', but it is hard to see how one playhouse could
'ease' another, although William Ingram made plausible sense of the deal as a means of
selling the Curtain to Burbage and Brayne for the equivalent of seven years' income, about
£1400. The Theatre appears to have stood empty for some time before being removed to form
the Globe, and during this time the Chamberlain's men were presumably using the Curtain
until their new home was ready on Bankside.
Leslie Hotson identified as the Curtain the playhouse
represented in the 'Utrecht' engraving owned by Abram Booth, but this has subsequently
been firmly re-identified as the Theatre, although the Curtain's flag can just be made out
emerging from behind an intervening roof to the right of the Theatre. Because of this
misidentification a number of models of the Curtain were made from the 'Utrecht' engraving
and, while quite without value concerning the Curtain, these are now reasonable guesses
for the Theatre so long as the engraving's exaggeration of height is borne in mind.
Chambers thought that the venue for an unnamed play seen by Thomas Platter must have been
the Curtain, but recent discoveries by Herbert Berry make the Boar's Head a likelier
venue.
GIE
Ingram, William 'Henry Lanman's Curtain Playhouse as an "Easer" to the
Theatre, 1585-1592', in Herbert Berry (ed.) The First Public Playhouse: The Theatre in
Shoreditch 1576-1598 (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1979)
316 words
Lords Room. A number of contemporary references indicate that a part of the
playhouse auditorium had this name, although whether one or more lords is meant is
unclear--any possessive apostrophe we apply must be speculative--and we should remember
that 'room' commonly meant 'space' rather than 'chamber'. The standard work by W. J.
Lawrence identified the Lords Room as the balcony behind and above the stage as seen in De
Witt's drawing of the Swan, but this generates a number of problems. In 1592 Henslowe paid
for a ceiling to be installed in the Lords Room at the Rose and for another in "the
room over the tirehouse", so it would seem that the Lords Room was not the room over
the tiring house. Sir John Davies's epigram "In Sillam", written in 1595 or
1596, describes a gallant sitting on the stage at a playhouse instead of choosing either
"the best and most conspicuous place" or else the stage balcony. This suggests
that the Lords Room was either not the "the best and most conspicuous place"--as
we would expect of an aristocrat's seat--or it was not in the stage balcony. In addition
to these problems it is difficult to imagine the aristocrats putting up with extremely
poor sightlines to the 'discoveries' which were a recurrent feature of the drama. It is
probable that, like the "gentlemens roomes" described in the contract to build
the Fortune, the Lords Room was in the lowest auditorium gallery directly adjacent to the
stage.
GIE
Egan, Gabriel 'The Situation of the "Lords Room": A Revaluation', Review
of English Studies, 48 (1997)
Lawrence, W. J. The Elizabethan Playhouse and Other Studies
(Stratford-upon-Avon: Shakespeare Head Press, 1912)
283 words
costume. Actors' costumes were their most expensive possessions, a company's
wardrobe often being more valuable than its theatre. Henslowe's accounts show that a
doublet might cost £3 and a gown between £2 and £7, amounts which can be scaled by
comparison with the £20 annual income of the master of the Stratford Grammar School.
Expensive costumes were a vital part of the visual appeal of theatre, and characters of
high social rank were represented by appropriately luxurious clothing. Outside the
playhouse, the wearing of such costumes by commoners was criminalized by the Sumptuary
Laws, not repealed until 1604. Thomas Platter, a Swiss visitor to London, described one
way the actors got their costumes: ". . . when men of rank or knights die
they give and bequeath almost their finest apparel to their servants, who, since it does
not befit them, do not wear such garments, but afterwards let the play-actors buy them for
a few pence." Historical accuracy in costuming was not important, and plays set in
the ancient world were performed in Elizabethan dress with small additions to represent
distant times and places: a curved sword to connote the middle East, a sash to connote the
Roman toga. The Peacham drawing of what appears to be a performance of Shakespeare's Titus
Andronicus bears out this costuming principle, but it might in fact show a performance
of a German play on the same theme.
GIE
235 words
Kempe, William. Comic actor (Leicester's men 1585-6, Strange's men 1592,
Chamberlain's men 1594-9), date of birth unknown, buried 2 November 1603. Kempe's fame
grew in the late 1580s and early 1590s from his work with Leicester's and then Strange's
men. Richard Tarlton established the improvisional clowning tradition which Kempe
inherited and refined although his particular skill was in dancing and playing musical
instruments rather than mockery and he wrote a number of highly popular jigs. Kempe's name
appears in a stage direction in the 1599 quarto of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet
where we should expect Peter and in the speech prefixes of the 1600 quarto of
Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing where we should expect Dogberry, so we may be
confident that he took these roles. Other roles are speculative but David Wiles saw
Kempe's style in the Clown in Titus Andronicus, Launce in The Two Gentlemen of
Verona, Costard in Love's Labours Lost, Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream,
Launcelot in The Merchant of Venice, and, his acme, in Falstaff in the Henry 4
plays and in The Merry Wives of Windsor.
Kempe sold his Globe share soon after the building was
complete in 1599 and early in 1600 he demonstrated his extraordinary endurance by morris
dancing from London to Norwich, which he described in his pamphlet Kemp's Nine Days
Wonder. It is not clear why Kempe left the King's men but the mocking of his style of
clowning in The Return to Parnassus and Hamlet's demand that clowns should
"speak no more than is set down for them" (3.2.39) suggests that improvisation
became unfashionable. Robert Armin replaced Kempe as the Chamberlain's men's clown and
after a continental sojourn in 1601 Kempe was acting with Worcester's men at the Boar's
Head and the Rose in 1602. Thereafter Kempe disappears from records until the burial of
"Kempe a man" at St Saviour's.
GIE
Wiles, David Shakespeare's Clown: Actor and Text in the Elizabethan Playhouse
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987)
329 words
Armin, Robert. Comic actor in the Chamberlain's/King's men, born around 1568,
buried in St Bodolph Aldgate on 30 November 1615. William Kempe left the Chamberlain's men
in 1599 and was replaced by Armin, a successful writer and comedian first heard of as
apprenticed to the goldsmith John Lonyson in 1581. During his apprenticeship Armin wrote a
number of popular ballads and after completing his term he joined Chandos's men. A
collection of tales called Foole Upon Foole was published in 1600 by the author
"Clonnico de Curtanio Snuffe" (Snuff, the clown at the Curtain) and was
reprinted in 1605 under the authorship "Clonnico del Mondo Snuffe" (Snuff, the
clown at the Globe) and finally under Armin's name as A Nest of Ninnies in 1608.
Armin's association with the Curtain may well indicate that he was already a member of the
Chamberlain's men before Kempe's departure, which might then have been hastened by the
availability of a suitable internal replacement.
Armin took over Kempe's existing roles while Shakespeare
adjusted his comic output to suit the new star's less physical, more cerebral, style of
wit. Roles in the style included Touchstone in As You Like It, Feste in Twelfth
Night, Lavatch in Alls' Well that Ends Well, Thersites in Troilus and
Cressida and the Fool in King Lear. Although small in stature Armin was
dependent less on the comedy of physical deformity than his predecessors Tarlton and Kempe
and although he continued their tradition of singing, he was not a dancer of vigorous
jigs. A successful dramatist in his own right, Armin had more reason than Kempe to share
Hamlet's, and presumably Shakespeare's, annoyance of clowns who unbalance the performance
by straying from the text. The title page of Armin's Two Maids of More-Clacke
(printed in 1609) has a woodcut which may well represent Armin himself in costume.
GIE
Wiles, David Shakespeare's Clown: Actor and Text in the Elizabethan Playhouse
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987)
323 words
Lowin, John. Actor (Worcester's men 1602, King's men 1603-42), born 1576, buried 24
August 1653. Lowin was apprenticed to goldsmith Nicholas Rudyard at age 17 and was an
actor in Worcester's men in 1602-3 at the Rose but in 1603 he began his association with
the King's men which was to last the rest of his long career. Lowin appears to have joined
Shakespeare's company as a hired man since he is in the 1603 cast list for Ben Jonson's Sejanus
but not in the company patent. In the Induction to Marston's The Malcontent
(performed in 1604) Lowin plays himself, the actor, helping his fellows eject gallants who
attempt to take up seats on the Globe stage. Lowin published a mildly puritan pamphlet
called Conclusions Upon Dances in 1606 and in 1607 he married a widow, Joan Hall.
In his Historia Histrionica (published in 1699) James Wright claimed that
"Lowin used to Act, with mighty Applause, Falstaffe, Morose, Vulpone,
and Mammon in the Alchymist; [and] Malantius in the Maid's Tragedy".
John Downes, in his Roscius Anglicanus (published 1708), attributed the quality of
Betterton's performance in the role of Shakespeare's Henry 8 to instruction transmitted
via William Davenant "who had it from Old Mr. Lowen, that had his Instructions
from Mr. Shakespeare himself".
Lowin was apparently a large man, judging from consistent
comments on his characters' appearance and from his picture (when aged 64) in Ashmolean
Museum, Oxford. A number of his roles are men whose outspokenness borders on gruffness,
although more significant is the range of his roles which in his 50s included Domitianus
Caesar in Philip Massinger's The Roman Actor, Eubulus in Massinger's The Picture,
and Undermyne in John Clavell's The Soddered Citizen. After John Heminges's death
in 1630 Lowin became joint manager of the company with Joseph Taylor but he continued to
act and thus may be considered the origin of the theatrical tradition of 'actor-manager'.
GIE
Bowers, Rick 'John Lowin: Actor-manager of the King's Company, 1630-1642', Theatre
Survey, 28 (1987)
333 words
Beeston, Christopher. Actor (Chamberlain's men 1598, Worcester's/Queen Anne's men
1602-19, Prince Charles's men 1619-22, Lady Elizabeth's men 1622-5, Queen Henrietta's men
1625-37) and theatre entrepreneur, born around 1580, died before 10 August 1639. Beeston
first enters the theatrical record in the cast list (contained in the 1616 Folio) for
performances in 1598 of Jonson's Every Man in his Humour. By 1602 he was with
Worcester's men, who became Queen Anne's men in the new reign, and in 1605 Augustine
Phillips described Beeston as "my servant" in his will. As a member of Queen
Anne's men Beeston formed a lifelong friendship with Thomas Heywood to whose Apology
for Actors (1612) he contributed verses. Beeston took over as manager of the Queen's
men from Thomas Greene when the latter died in 1612 and in 1617 he built the Cockpit in
Drury Lane, possibly designed by Inigo Jones as an adaptation of an existing circular
auditorium. Beeston's plan to move the Queen's men from their home, the open-air Red Bull,
to the new expensive (and hence exclusive) playhouse was thwarted when city apprentices
attacked the Cockpit during their common Shrove Tuesday rioting. Beeston repaired the
Cockpit and, appropriately, renamed it the Phoenix.
After he built the Cockpit/Phoenix, Beeston was always a
member of the playing company which occupied it: Queen Anne's (1617-19), Prince Charles's
(1619-22), Lady Elizabeth's (1622-25), Queen Henrietta's (1625-37), and finally Beeston's
Boys (1637-39). However, his role appears to have become solely managerial and he was
repeatedly criticized for sharp business practices. On 10 August 1639 Beeston's son
William is described as 'governor' of Beeston's Boys at the Cockpit, which must mean he
had died. His will indicates large debts owed by him and to him "which no-one but my
wife understands, where or how to receive pay or take in", for which reason he made
her executrix.
GIE
308 words
Henslowe, Philip. Theatre entrepreneur (The Rose, The Fortune, The Hope), born in
1555 or 1556, died 6 January 1616. Philip Henslowe was apprenticed to one Henry Woodward
who died in 1578 and whose widow, Agnes, Henslowe married in 1579. Agnes was much older
than Philip but not, as is often assumed, much wealthier and she already had two
daughters. In 1587 Henslowe and John Cholmley built the Rose playhouse and in 1592
Henslowe recorded expenditure on a substantial enlargement of it. Also in 1592 Agnes's
daughter Joan married the actor Edward Alleyn who led an amalgamation of Strange's men and
Admiral's men performing at the Rose. In 1595 Henslowe paid for further work at the Rose
and towards the end of the century (possibly as a result of competition from the Swan and
the Globe) Henslowe and his step-son-in-law Alleyn planned a new square open-air
playhouse, the Fortune, located north of the river in the parish of St Giles without
Cripplegate, which opened in 1600. In 1613 Henslowe built the multi-purpose Hope playhouse
near to the site of the old Beargarden on Bankside.
Much of what we know about the Elizabethan theatre
business comes from Henslowe's book of accounts and memoranda commonly (but misleadingly)
known as his 'Diary' which was deposited among other papers at the College of God's Gift
at Dulwich founded by Alleyn and opened in 1617. Recorded in the account book are
Henslowe's pawn transactions, personal and business debts and loans, receipts from his
theatres, expenditure on costumes, and an inventory of the Admiral's men's stage
properties. Critical work on these records in the early twentieth century characterized
Henslowe as a ruthless exploiter of actors, but recent work has tended to ameliorate this
view.
GIE
Greg, W. W. (ed.) Henslowe's 'Diary', 2 vols. (London: Bullen, 1908), vol. 2:
Commentary
Cerasano, S. P. 'Philip Henslowe, Simon Forman, and the Theatrical Community of the
1590s', Shakespeare Quarterly, 44 (1993)
320 words
Condell, Henry. Actor (Chamberlain's/King's men 1598-1627) and originator with John
Heminges of the1623 Folio of Shakespeare's works, born 1576, buried 29 December 1627.
Shakespeare's friend and fellow actor, Henry Condell married Elizabeth Smart on 24 October
1596 and, according to the 1616 Folio cast list, he performed in Jonson's Every Man in
his Humour in 1598. Condell remained in the Chamberlain's/King's men his entire career
and is named in their royal patent of 1603. He appears as himself, an actor, in the
metadramatic Induction to Marston's The Malcontent (performed at the Globe in 1604)
and acted Mosca to Richard Burbage's Volpone in Jonson's Volpone and Surly to
Burbage's Subtle in Jonson's The Alchemist. In 1613 Condell's name appeared in
verses on the burning of the Globe and in 1616 Shakespeare left money in his will for
Condell to buy a commemorative ring. Condell appears to have stopped acting in 1619 but
maintained his business connection with the King's men. Condell was not an original
housekeeper of the Globe but acquired a joint interest with John Heminges by 1612; in 1608
Condell was one of the syndicate formed to run the Blackfriars. Although not a star actor,
Condell's high status within his profession is attested by the responsibilities laid on
him in fellow actors' wills: trustee in Alexander Cooke's (1614), executor in Nicholas
Tooley's (1623), and executor in John Underwood's (1625).
GIE
231 words
Benfield, Robert. Actor (Lady Elizabeth's men c.1613, King's men c.1615-1642),
born around 1583, buried 28 July 1649. When William Ostler died in 1614 his part as
Antonio in Webster's The Duchess of Malfi appears to have been taken by Robert
Benfield, who came to the King's men from Lady Elizabeth's men. On 23 April 1615 Benfield
married Mary Bugge, probably a relative of the Dr John Bugges to whom Richard Benfield
(kinsman to "Robert Benefeild") left £15 in his will. Robert Benfield is named
in the actor lists of Beaumont and Fletcher's The Coxcomb and The Honest Man's
Fortune for performances probably by the Lady Elizabeth's men in 1613, as recorded in
the 1679 Folio of their plays, and he is named as an actor in the 1623 Folio of
Shakespeare's plays. The 1679 Beaumont and Fletcher Folio also lists Benfield as a player
in The Mad Lover, The Knight of Malta, The Humorous Leiutenant, The
Custom of the Country, The Island Princess, Women Pleased, The Little
French Lawyer, The False One, The Double Marriage, The Pilgrim, The
Prophetess, The Spanish Curate, The Maid in the Mill, The Lovers'
Progress, and A Wife for a Month, all performed by the King's men between 1616
and 1624. In 1619 the renewed patent of the King's men names Benfield as a sharer. As a
result of the sharers dispute of 1635 he, along with Eliard Swanston and Thomas Pollard,
became a housekeeper in the Globe and the Blackfriars.
GIE
247 words
Cowley, Richard. Actor (Strange's men 1590-3, Chamberlain's/King's men 1598-1619),
born around 1568, buried 12 March 1619. The plot of 2 Seven Deadly Sins (performed
before 1594, possibly by Strange's men) names Cowley as a lieutenant in the Induction, a
soldier and a lord in "Envy", Giraldus and a musician in "Sloth", and
a lord in "Lechery". Letters between Edward and Joan Alleyn in 1593 indicate
that Cowley was touring with Strange's men. It appears that in 1597 Cowley's wife
Elizabeth had an affair with the astrologer Simon Forman while consulting him
professionally. By 1598 Cowley was with the Chamberlain's men and his name is recorded in
the speech prefixes of the 1600 quarto of Shakespeare Much Ado About Nothing where
we should expect Verges's name, indicating that he took this role. Cowley is named as a
sharer in the 1603 patent to the King's men and as an actor in the 1623 Folio of
Shakespeare. In his will of 1605 Augustine Phillips called Cowley "my fellow"
and left him 20 shillings in gold and Cowley's brief orally declared will of 13 January
1618 was witnessed by John Heminges, Cuthbert Burbage, John Shank, and Thomas Ravenscroft.
GIE
196 words
Cox, Robert. Actor and writer of drolls, born possibly in 1604, died possibly in
1655. No direct records exist of Cox acting before the closing of the theatres, but later
commentaries assert that he achieved some fame before the commonwealth period. In 1653 Cox
was arrested apparently for a performance at the Red Bull which crossed the line between
the permitted entertainments of show-dancing and the prohibited entertainment of acting.
Francis Kirkman called "the incomparable Robert Cox" the author, compiler, and
performer of the drolls collected as The Wits (first published 1662, Kirkman's
enlarged edition 1672-3) and named the Red Bull as the venue. A book called Actaeon and
Diana, containing two plays, a jig, and a prose farce was printed "for the use of
the Author Robert Cox" some time before 1 September 1656, the day George Thomason
purchased a copy.
GIE
Kirkman, Francis The Wits, or Sport Upon Sport, ed. John James Elson (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1932)
160 words
Ostler, William. Actor (Blackfriars boys in 1601-1608, King's man 1608-14), born
around 1585, died 16 December 1614. Ostler first enters the dramatic record via the actor
list for Jonson's Poetaster (performed 1601), printed in the 1616 Folio. In the
Sharers Papers of 1635 Cuthbert Burbage described Ostler as one of the "boys growing
up to be men" (the others were John Underwood and Nathan Field) who joined the King's
men when the Blackfriars reverted to the Burbages in 1608. Ostler subsequently appeared in
actors lists for the King's men's performances: Jonson's The Alchemist and Catiline;
Webster's The Duchess of Malfi in the role of Antonio; and Beaumont and Fletcher's The
Captain, Bonduca, and Valentian. In 1611 Ostler married Thomasine
Heminges, daughter of John Heminges, and soon after he acquired shares in the Globe and
the Blackfriars which were the subject of a legal dispute between Thomasine and her
daughter after Ostler died intestate on 16 December 1614. A epigram by John Davies,
printed around 1611, described Ostler as "Sole King of Actors".
GIE
173 words
Phillips, Augustine. Actor (Strange's men 1593, Chamberlain's/King's men
1598-1605), date of birth unknown, died between 4 and 13 May 1605. Phillips is named as
taking the role of Sardanapalus in "Sloth" in the plot of 2 Seven Deadly Sins
which was performed before 1594, possibly by Strange's men. A touring licence issued to
Strange's men by the privy council names Phillips, but by 1598 he had joined the
Chamberlain's men, appearing in the actor lists for Jonson's Every Man in his Humour
and Every Man out of his Humour, and Sejanus, as printed in the 1616 Folio.
When the syndicate to run the Globe was formed in 1599 Phillips was a member, and on 18
February 1601 Phillips was called upon to explain to Chief Justice Popham and Justice
Fenner why the company had performed Shakespeare's Richard 2, which dramatizes
usurpation, at the Globe on the eve of Essex's rebellion and at the request of his
supporters. Phillips's name appears in the King's men's patent of 1603 and the actor list
of the 1623 Folio of Shakespeare's plays. The circumstances of Phillips's marriage are
unclear, but Simon Forman's notes suggest that he was twice rejected in marriage suits
before being accepted by Anne, who survived him. In his will Phillips left money to his
fellow actors (including Shakespeare) and costumes, properties, and musical instruments to
his apprentice Samuel Gilburne.
GIE
230 words
Burbage, James. Actor (Leicester's men 1572-1576), builder of the Theatre and the
second Blackfriars, possibly part-owner of the Curtain, father to Richard and Cuthbert
Burbage, born around 1531, buried 2 February 1597. When Burbage married Ellen Brayne on 23
April 1559 he was described as a joiner, or a worker in small wooden structures such as
furniture, an occupation distinct from a carpenter who made buildings. In 1567 Ellen's
brother John Brayne paid for construction of a makeshift playhouse on the Red Lion farm in
Stepney and in 1576 Burbage and Brayne embarked on the altogether more substantial Theatre
project. A letter he wrote to the earl of Leicester in 1572 makes it clear that Burbage
was already one of his players, and Burbage is named in the company's patent of 1574, but
from 1576 running the Theatre occupied all his time. Relations between Burbage and Brayne
rapidly deteriorated, apparently because the former cheated his partner, and the ensuing
lawsuits outlived Brayne and his widow. A deal with Henry Lanman made the Curtain
playhouse "an Esore" to the Theatre, possibly a means of selling the Curtain to
Burbage and Brayne. Burbage died shortly after the frustration of his plan to move the
Chamberlain's men--led by his son Richard--into his new Blackfriars playhouse.
GIE
215 words
Cooke, Alexander. Actor (King's men 1603-1614), date of birth unknown, buried 25
February 1614. Sometimes assumed to be the man named Sander who appears in the plot of 2
Seven Deadly Sins (which was performed before 1594, possibly by Strange's men), Cooke
enters the theatrical record with certainty in the actor lists for Jonson's Sejanus,
Volpone, The Alchemist, and Catiline, as reproduced in the 1616
Folio, and for Beaumont and Fletcher's The Captain. For Sejanus, Volpone,
and The Captain his name appears last in the list of actors, which might mean that
he played women's roles in these plays. His will indicates that he was a company sharer
and that he had been apprenticed to John Heminges.
GIE
118 words
Bryan, George. Actor (Strange's men 1593, Chamberlain's men 1596), date of birth
unknown, died 16 April 1612. First mentioned among the players at Elsinore in 1586 (the
others were Thomas Pope and William Kempe), Bryan's name occurs in the roles of Warwick in
the Induction and Damascus in "Envy" in the plot of 2 Seven Deadly Sins
(performed before 1594, possibly by Strange's men). Strange's men's license to tour,
issued on 6 May 1593, names Bryan but by 21 December 1596 he was with Chamberlain's men
and received, with John Heminges, the payment for court performances. Although identified
as an actor in the 1623 Shakespeare Folio, his name is conspicuously absent from the actor
lists in the Jonson Folio of 1613 for plays performed in the late 1590s and early 1600s
and from the company patent of 1603. Possibly he gave up acting: a George Bryan was paid
as Groom of the Chamber in 1603 and in 1611-13, but the latter date extends beyond the
actor's death, casting doubt on the assignment.
GIE
173 words
Pope, Thomas. Actor (Strange's men 1593, Chamberlain's men 1597-1603), date of
birth unknown, died between 22 July 1603 (when he made a will) and 9 December 1603 (when
the will's inventory was exhibited). First mentioned among the players at Elsinore in 1586
(the others were George Bryan and William Kempe), Pope's name occurs in the role of
Arbactus in "Sloth" in the plot of 2 Seven Deadly Sins (performed before
1594, possibly by Strange's men). Strange's men's license to tour, issued on 6 May 1593,
names Pope but by 27 November 1597 he was with Chamberlain's men and received, with John
Heminges, the payment for court performances. His name appears in the actor lists for
Jonson's Every Man out of his Humour and Every Man in his Humour in Jonson's
1616 Folio and in the actor list in the Shakespeare Folio of 1623. In 1599 he was one of
the original Globe housekeepers, but he is not mentioned in the King's men's patent of 19
May 1603. His will indicates that he also had a share in the Curtain playhouse.
GIE
181 words
Shank, John. Actor (Pembroke's men some time within 1597-1600, Queen's men some
time within 1597-1603, Prince's men 1610-1612, Palatine's men (aka Palsgrave's men) from
1613, King's men by 1619 until 1631), born around 1580, buried 27 January 1636. In the
Sharers Papers dispute of 1635 (initiated by his purchase of Globe and Blackfriars shares
from William, son of John Heminges) Shanks described himself to the Lord Chamberlain as an
old man who "served your noble father, and after that the late Queene Elizabeth, then
King James, and now his royal majesty". Shank was named in the Prince's men's patent
of 1610, the Palatine's men's patent of 1613, and the King's men's patent of 1619, and in
the 1623 Shakespeare Folio actor list. Contemporary allusions indicate that Shank was a
comedian.
GIE
131 words
Sly, William. Actor (Chamberlain's/King's men by 1598 until 1608) born around 1573,
buried 16 August 1608. Sly is named in the roles of Porrex in "Sloth" and a lord
in "Lechery" in the plot of 2 Seven Deadly Sins (performed before 1594,
possibly by Strange's men). By 1597 he was with Chamberlain's men and received, with John
Heminges, the payment for court performances. His name appears in the actor lists for
Jonson's Every Man out of his Humour, Every Man in his Humour, Sejanus,
and Volpone in Jonson's 1616 Folio, and in the actor list in the Shakespeare Folio
of 1623, and in the King's men patent of 1603. Sly also appears as himself in the
Induction to Marston's The Malcontent. Although not an original housekeeper of the
Globe he acquired a share in it after Augustine Phillips died in 1605 and just before his
own death he became a housekeeper of the Blackfriars.
GIE
155 words
Tarlton, Richard. Actor (Sussex's men 1578, Queen's men 1583-1588), jester and
writer, date of birth unknown, buried 3 September 1588. The earliest record of Tarlton is
as author of a ballad in 1570 and by the end of the 1570s he was also being alluded to as
an actor. In 1585 he wrote The Seven Deadly Sins for the Queen's men which Gabriel
Harvey claimed that Thomas Nashe plagiarized for his Pierce Penilesse (1592).
Dozens of allusions to Tarlton's comic improvisations survive in Elizabethan verse and
prose and a collection of his so-called 'jests' was published in the late 1590s although
the earliest surviving edition is from 1611. This jest-book gives a sense of his clowning
talents (which included fencing, verse improvisation, and playing instruments) and some
biographical detail: he performed his clowning at inns and at court, he was protestant, he
ran an inn and an 'ordinary' (eatery), and he had facial deformities considered comic. The
woodcut of Tarlton printed with his jest-book was copied from a Flemish model and is no
more than a general guide to his appearance, and John Scottowe's copy of this woodcut
cramps Tarlton's body to fit it into a prescribed space on the page, introducing
deformities which cannot be presumed in the man. One of Tarlton's trademarks was to thrust
his head through a curtain at the back of a stage and peer at the audience before the
performance, and he was famous too for his jigs performed after a theatrical performance.
GIE
Wiles, David Shakespeare's Clown: Actor and Text in the Elizabethan Playhouse
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987)
266 words
Swanston, Eliard. Actor (Lady Elizabeth's men 1622, King's men 1624-42), date of
birth unknown, died between 24 June (will made) and 3 July 1651 (will administered).
Swanston played a number of roles for the King's men including the lead in Shakespeare's Othello
and Richard 3 in the 1630s. A housekeeper (one of the initiators of the Sharers
Papers dispute) at the Globe and the Blackfriars, Swanston unusually (for an actor) took
the parliamentary side in the Civil War.
GIE
79 words
Taylor, Joseph. Actor (York's men 1610, Lady Elizabeth's 1611-16, Charles's
1616-1619, King's men by 19 May 1619-42), born perhaps 1586, buried 4 November 1652.
Taylor enters the theatrical record with his unauthorized transfer from York's men to Lady
Elizabeth's men in 1610-11 and had established himself sufficiently to replace Richard
Burbage as the leading King's man on the latter's death in March 1619. In his Roscius
Anglicanus (1708) John Downes claimed that Thomas Betterton's performance as Hamlet
was derived, via William Davenant, from "Mr. Taylor of the Black-Fryars
Company" who was "instructed by the Author Mr. Shakespear". Downes's
reference to the playhouse might suggest the Blackfriars boys (1600-1608) rather than the
King's men, in which case Shakespeare instructed the adolescent Taylor in something other
than Hamlet. Certainly by the time Taylor joined the King's men in 1619--between their
patent of 27 March, from which he is absent, and their livery warrant of 19 May where he
appears--Shakespeare and Burbage were dead. Taylor appears in the 1623 Folio list of
player, and he played Ferdinand in Webster's The Duchess of Malfi, Hamlet in
Shakespeare's Hamlet, Iago in Shakespeare's Othello, Truewit in Jonson's Epicoene,
and Face in Jonson's The Alchemist. After John Heminges death in 1630 Taylor became
a housekeeper of the Globe and the Blackfriars and he and John Lowin took over as joint
managers of the King's men.
GIE
231 words
Underwood, John. Actor (Blackfriars boys 1601-1608, King's men 1608-1624), date of
birth presumed around 1588, died between 4 and 10 October 1624. Underwood first appears in
the Blackfriars boys cast lists for Jonson's Cynthia's Revels and Poetaster
and he was one of the "boys growing up to be men" (the others were William
Ostler and Nathan Field) who joined the King's men when the Blackfriars reverted to the
Burbages in 1608. Underwood's name occurs in 22 King's men's cast lists (including the
1623 Folio), although his only known roles are as Delio in Webster's The Duchess of
Malfi , Dapper in Jonson's The Alchemist, and Bonario in Jonson's Volpone.
His will indicates that he owned shares in the Curtain, Globe, and Blackfriars playhouses.
GIE
124 words
Burbage, Cuthbert. Non-playing company sharer and housekeeper (Theatre, Globe,
Blackfriars), son of James Burbage, brother of Richard Burbage, baptized 15 June 1565,
buried 17 September 1636. As well as his familial link, Cuthbert's theatrical connections
are shown by his being mentioned in the wills of William Sly, Richard Cowley, Nicholas
Tooley (who died in his house), John Heminges, and Henry Condell.
GIE
62 words
Ecclestone, William. Actor (King's men 1610-11, Lady Elizabeth's men 1611-13,
King's men 1614-23), born around 1591, died some time after 1623. Ecclestone is named in a
number of King's men actor lists (including the 1623 Folio) and took the part of Kastril
in Jonson's The Alchemist.
GIE
Field, Nathan. Actor (Blackfriars boys 1600-13, Lady Elizabeth's men 1613-15,
King's men 1615-20), dramatist, baptized 7 October 1587, died between 19 May 1619 and 2
August 1620. Nathan Field's father, the puritan anti-theatricalist John Field, wrote A
Godly Exhortation by Occasion of the Late Judgement of God at Parris-garden (1583)
which attributed to divine displeasure the Bear Garden's fatal collapse during a Sunday
performance, but he died before Nathan was old enough to be dissuaded from the theatrical
life. Nathan Field's name occurs in the Blackfriars boys cast lists for Jonson's Cynthia's
Revels and Poetaster. In the Sharers Papers of 1635 Cuthbert Burbage described
Nathan as one of the "boys growing up to be men" (the others were John Underwood
and William Ostler) who joined the King's men after the Blackfriars reverted to the
Burbages in 1608, but in Field's case this happened "in process of time", since
he appears in the cast list for Jonson's Epicoene which was first performed in 1609
by the Blackfriars boys, renamed the Queen's Revels Children, in their new venue the
Whitefriars playhouse. In 1613 the Queen's Revels Children merged with the Lady
Elizabeth's men and Field stayed with this new company until he joined the King's men,
apparently in 1615. As an actor Field was at the height of his powers (second only to
Burbage and subsequently Taylor in the King's men) when he died. Field sole-authored two
successful plays, A Woman is a Weathercock and Amends for Ladies (before
becoming a King's man, and he collaborated on six after: Four Plays, or Moral
Representations, in One with Fletcher; The Honest Man's Fortune with Fletcher
and possibly Massinger; The Jeweller of Amsterdam with Fletcher and Massinger; The
Queen of Corinth with Fletcher and possibly Massinger; The Knight of Malta with
Fletcher and Massinger; and The Fatal Dowry with Massinger.
GIE
Brinkley, Roberta Florence Nathan Field: The Actor-playwright (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1928)
320 words
Gilburne, Samuel. Actor (King's men 1605), dates of birth and death unknown.
Gilburne is named in the actor list in the 1623 Folio and he was apprenticed to Augustine
Phillips, whose will left him "the sum of 40 shillings and my mouse coloured velvet
hose and a white taffeta doublet suit, my purple cloak, sword, and dagger, and my bass
viol".
GIE
62 words
Hunnis, William. Master of the Chapel Royal (1566-97), poet, composer, date of
birth unknown, died 6 June 1597. Hunnis, together with Richard Farrant and Henry Evans,
ran the first Blackfriars playhouse from 1576 to 1584.
GIE
Stopes, C. C. William Hunnis and the Revels of the Chapel Royal (Louvain: A.
Uystpruyst, 1910)
Smith, Irwin Shakespeare's Blackfriars Playhouse: Its History and Its Design
(New York: New York University Press, 1964)
69 words
Brayne, John. Co-builder with his brother-in-law James Burbage of the Red Lion
(1567) and the Theatre (1576), date of birth unknown, dead by 10 August 1586.
GIE
27 words
Robinson, Richard. Actor (King's men 1611-42), born around 1595, buried 23 March
1648. Apparently an accomplished female impersonator (mentioned in Jonson's The Devil
is an Ass 2.8), Robinson was a sharer by 1619 and on 31 October 1622 he married
Winifred Burbage, Richard Burbage's widow .
GIE
47 words
Sincler (Sinclo), John. Actor (Pembroke's men 1592-3, Chamberlain's/King's men
1598-1604), dates of birth and death unknown. Sincler is named in the plot of 2 Seven
Deadly Sins (performed before 1594, possibly by Strange's men), the 1623 Folio texts
of Richard Duke of York (3 Henry 6) and The Taming of the Shrew, and
in the 1600 quarto of 2 Henry 4, and appears as himself in the Induction to
Marston's The Malcontent. His absence from company lists indicates that he was
hired man, not a sharer, and allusions to his appearance suggest that he was particularly
thin.
GIE
98 words
Spencer, Gabriel. Actor (Pembroke's men 1597, Admiral's men 1598), baptized 8 April
1576, killed by Ben Jonson on 22 September 1598. Spencer was probably the
"Gabriel" whose name appears in the 1623 Folio text of Richard Duke of York
(3 Henry 6) 1.2.
GIE
44 words
Tawyer, William. Musician and actor (King's men by 1624), date of birth unknown,
buried June 1625. Tawyer was apprenticed to John Heminges and appears in a stage direction
in the 1623 Folio text of A Midsummer Night's Dream 5.1 and in a list of King's men
musicians protected from arrest by Henry Herbert in 1624.
GIE
56 words
Tooley, Nicholas. Actor (King's men by 1605 to 1623) born probably 1582 or 1583,
buried 5 June 1623. If Edmond's identification is correct, Tooley was a wealthy
Anglo-Flemish orphan whose Warwickshire relatives Shakespeare would have known from
childhood. In his will Tooley thanked Cuthbert Burbage's wife for her "motherly
care" of him. Augustine Phillips in his will called Tooley his "fellow"
which indicates that Tooley was by then a sharer in the King's men. A surviving annotated
cast list indicates that Tooley played Ananias in Jonson's The Alchemist and Covino
in Jonson's Volpone. The 1619 King's men patent names Tooley after Heminges,
Burbage, Condell, and Lowin and the 1623 Folio, published after his death, names him as
principal actor.
GIE
Edmond, Mary 'Yeoman, Citizens, Gentlemen and Players: The Burbages and Their
Connections', in R. B. Parker and S. P. Zitner (ed.) Elizabethan Theater: Essays in
Honor of S. Schoenbaum (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1996)
155 words
Williams, John. Unsuccessful theatrical entrepreneur and possibly a musician, date
of birth unknown, date of burial possibly 7 November 1634. Together with John Cotton and
Thomas Dixon, John Williams was granted a licence to built an amphitheatre for
"martial exercizes, and extraordinary shows", but king James wrote to the privy
council revoking this licence on 29 September 1620. On 28 September 1626 another attempt
by Cotton and Williams to build an amphitheatre was blocked. This John Williams might have
been the musician to the king buried in St Peter's, Paul's Wharf, in 1634.
GIE
94 words
Crosse, Samuel. Actor (probably Chamberlain's men around 1594), born perhaps 12
September 1568, died presumably before 1595. Samuel Cross is named as a principal actor in
the 1623 Folio but nowhere else in records of the company. In An Apology for Actors
Thomas Heywood named a "Crosse" as one of the famous actors before his time,
which suggests that Cross died before Heywood came to London around 1594.
GIE
69 words
Gough, Robert. Actor (King's men by 1611 to 1624), brother-in-law of Augustine
Phillips, date of birth unknown, buried 19 February 1624. Gough was probably the "R.
Go" named in the plot of 2 Seven Deadly Sins (performed before 1594, possibly
by Strange's men) and his being called "Mr" Gough in a stage direction in The
Second Maiden's Tragedy (first performed 1611) suggests that he was by then a King's
men sharer. Gough played Peregrine in Jonson's Volpone and is named in the 1619
King's men patent and in the 1623 Folio list of actors.
GIE
95 words
Rice, John. Actor (King's men 1607-1611, Lady Elizabeth's men 1611 until 1612-14,
King's men 1612-4 until 1625), born around 1593, died after 1630. Rice was John Heminges's
apprentice and appeared with Richard Burbage in a sea-pageant to honour Henry's
investiture as Prince of Wales in 1610; this sea-pageant apparently provided the King's
men with costumes for Shakespeare's The Tempest. Rice disappears from the
theatrical record after 1625 and John Heminges calls him a "clerk" in his will
of 1630, indicating that Rice had entered the priesthood.
GIE
Saenger, Michael Baird 'The Costumes of Caliban and Ariel qua Sea-nymph', Notes
and Queries, 240 (1995)
103 words
Alleyn, Edward. Actor (Worcester's men 1583, Admiral's/Prince Henry's 1589-1597 and
1600-1606) and housekeeper, born 1 September 1566, died 25 November 1626. The 17 year old
Alleyn was named as one of Worcester's men in a license of 14 January 1583 and he was
already a renowned actor when, on 22 October 1592, he married Joan Woodward the
step-daughter of Philip Henslowe at whose Rose playhouse he had led Lord Strange's men
from February to June that year. We know of Alleyn's personal life through charming
letters which passed between him and Joan while he led Lord Strange's men on tour in 1593,
and we hear of his ever rising professional fame through glowing reports by Thomas Nashe,
amongst others. Contemporary allusions suggest that Alleyn was an unusually large
man--which undoubtedly helped his celebrated presentation of Marlowe's anti-hero
Tamburlaine--and a surviving portrait and signet ring confirm that he was about 6 feet
tall, well above the period's average. To augment his bulk Alleyn apparently developed a
powerful style of large gestures and loud speaking which others mocked as 'stalking' or
'strutting' and 'roaring'. Alleyn took the lead roles in Marlowe's The Jew of Malta
and Doctor Faustus, Greene's Orlando Furioso, and also Sebastian in the
anonymous Frederick and Basilea, Muly Mahamet in Peele's The Battle of Alcazar,
and Tamar Cam in the anonymous 1 Tamar Cam. After three more years at the Rose
(1594-97) Alleyn retired but he returned to the stage when Henslowe's Fortune opened in
1600 and continued until some time before 30 April 1606 when the Prince's men were issued
a patent which lacks his name. In early May 1608 Alleyn performed in an entertainment for
James 1 at Salisbury House on the Strand and received £20. On 13 September 1619 Alleyn
founded the College of God's Gift at Dulwich which received Alleyn's and Henslowe's
papers, most importantly the latter's Diary upon which much of our knowledge of the
theatre is based. Joan Alleyn died on 28 June 1623 and on 3 December that year Alleyn
married Constance, the eldest daughter of John Donne, the Dean of St Paul's.
GIE
Cerasano, S. P. 'Tamburlaine and Edward Alleyn's Ring', Shakespeare Survey, 47
(1994)
366 words
Allen, Giles. Owner of the site upon which the Theatre was built, date of birth
unknown, died 27 March 1608. On April 13 1576 Allen leased a plot of land in Shoreditch to
James Burbage who, with his brother-in-law John Brayne, built the Theatre on it. Allen and
the Burbages failed to reach agreement on renewal of the lease in 1597, and
December/January 1598-9 the Burbages removed their playhouse to re-erect it as the
Bankside Globe. Allen's ensuing legal battles with the Burbages provide much of our
knowledge about the Theatre and the Globe.
GIE
Berry, Herbert Shakespeare's Playhouses (New York: AMS, 1987)
103 words
Street, Peter. Carpenter-builder of the Globe and Fortune playhouses, baptized 1
July 1553, buried 13 May 1609. Street completed his apprenticeship in 1577 and might have
helped build the Theatre in 1576; detailed knowledge of its construction would have been
useful when he transformed it into the Globe in 1599.
GIE
Edmond, Mary 'Peter Street, 1553-1609: Builder of Playhouses', Shakespeare Survey,
45 (1993)
63 words
Cholmeley, Richard. Company patron, dates of birth and death unknown. A group of
recusant players under Cholmeley's patronage toured in Yorkshire from 1606 to at least
1616 using only printed playtexts for their repertory. When tried for sedition these
players insisted (falsely, it turned out) that they had not strayed from the printed
texts, apparently thinking that this gave them a kind of surrogate licence from the Master
of the Revels who had licenced the original manuscripts underlying the printing. One of
the actors reported that at Candlemas 1609-10 they performed "Perocles prince of
Tire", which was undoubtedly the work of Shakespeare and Wilkins, and "Kinge
Lere" which might have been Shakespeare's (his quarto was the most recent) but
equally might have been the old chronicle history of King Leir printed in 1605.
GIE
Sisson, C. J. 'Shakespeare Quartos as Prompt-copies', Review of English Studies,
18 (1942)
147 words
anti-theatrical polemic. The first important attack on the theatre was Stephen
Gosson's rather mild The School of Abuse (1579), followed by the stronger Plays
Confuted in Five Actions (1582). The former was dedicated, without authority, to
Philip Sidney whose Defence of Poetry partly answers it. In January 1583 the
bearbaiting stadium at Paris Garden collapsed killing many in the lowest gallery and
puritan preachers hailed this as god's judgement. Later the same year Philip Stubbes, in
his Anatomy of Abuses (1583), complained that "the running to Theaters and
Curtains, daily and hourly, time and tide, to see plays and interludes" was bound to
"insinuate foolery, and renew the remembrance of heathen idolatory" and to
"induce whoredom and uncleanness". Two aspects of playing were subject to
criticism in these attacks. The subject matter was likely to incite irreligious sensual
pleasure via spectacles of "wrath, cruelty, incest, injury [and] murder" in the
tragedies and "love, cozenage, flattery, bawdry [and] sly conveyance of
whoredom" in the comedies, as Gosson put it. Furthermore, acting itself was suspect
because commoners feigned the actions of monarchs and men the actions of women, which
might suggest that god-given social and sexual distinctions were matters merely of conduct
rather than being.
In a sermon at Paul's Cross delivered on 3 November 1577,
Thomas White broke off his attack on Sunday-pleasures in general to focus on playing:
"behold the sumptuous Theatre houses, a continual monument of London's prodigality
and folly". White welcomed the cessation of playing due to the plague and saw a
spiritual as well as a practical causal connection: ". . . the cause of
plagues is sin, if you look to it well, and the cause of sin are plays; therefore the
cause of plagues are plays". Puritanism had initially been a movement to expunge
remaining elements of Catholicism from the Church of England, but the reform movement
fragmented and there was no simple puritan objection to the stage. John Milton was a
puritan play-goer and many reformist aristocrats patronized playing companies. Dramatists
often represented puritans as anti-sensual hypocrites (Zeal-of-the-Land Busy in Jonson's Bartholomew
Fair is a fine example) but historians no longer see the court as essentially
pro-theatre and the city authorities (dominated by puritans) as essentially anti-theatre.
Rather, the theatre industry was one of the sites upon which was played out the larger
political conflict between court and city. The longest anti-theatrical polemic was William
Prynne's Histrio-mastix: The Players Scourge of 1633 which specifically laments the
use of the Folio format, once reserved for Bibles and other high-quality work, being used
for play anthologies such as "Ben Johnsons, Shackspeers and others". Prynne was
imprisoned and his ears were removed because his condemnation of women acting was taken to
be an direct reference to Queen Henrietta Maria's participation in a masque, but his book
was influential in the suppression of playing in 1642.
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children's companies. Rosencrantz's speech about the "an eyrie of children,
little eyases" (Hamlet 2.2.340) was probably written in 1606-8 and refers to
the Blackfriars boys company whose success--and the politically dangerous drama it was
based upon--threatened the King's men. Venues for performances by all-boy playing
companies were built in St Paul's cathedral in 1575 (used by Paul's boys) and in the Old
Buttery of the Blackfriars building in 1576 (used by the Chapel Children). The boys who
performed in these companies were drawn from the choirs of St Paul's and the Chapel Royal
in Windsor and their managers maintained the legal fiction that they were merely
continuing their education by acting. Songs and dances were a major part of the
performance in the plays performed by these early companies, and the subject matter seems
to have been largely classical. When John Lyly began writing for an amalgamation of Paul's
boys and the Chapel Children the drama became more sophisticated and introduced a number
of innovations (especially themes of cross-dressing and mistaken identity) which
influenced Shakespeare. In 1584 the first Blackfriars playhouse was closed by its
landlord, but the Paul's continued until 1590 when, in circumstances still mysterious
(probably related to Lyly's involvement in the Martin Marprelate controversy), it too
closed.
In 1599 the Paul's playhouse reopened in another part of
the same building and in 1600 Richard Burbage leased the second Blackfriars playhouse to
the same Henry Evans who had managed the first Blackfriars, and all-boy performances
resumed. The drama of this revival was markedly different from the earlier phase: strong
sexual innuendo predominated in plays such as Jonson, Marston, and Chapman's Eastward
Ho! and Marston's The Dutch Courtesan for the Blackfriars boys and surprising
violence in Marston's Antonio and Mellida and Antonio's Revenge for the
Paul's boys. The Paul's and Blackfriars playhouses ceased in 1608, the former apparently
after being denounced by puritan William Crashawe and the latter because a production of
Chapman's Conspiracy of Byron enraged the French ambassador. The Blackfriars boys
continued at the Whitefriars playhouse. Another company of children, Beeston's boys,
flourished at the Cockpit Drury Lane from 1637 to 1642.
GIE
Gair, Reavley The Children of Paul's: The Story of a Theatre Company, 1553-1608
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982)
Shapiro, Michael Children of the Revels: The Boy Companies of Shakespeare's Time and
Their Plays (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977)
397 words
Masques were quasi-dramatic entertainments performed at court which combined music
and dancing and, especially in its blossoming under James 1, elaborate scenery and
spectacle. Masques were often written to celebrate a particular event--a royal birthday or
a marriage--and performed by a company made up of professionals and members of the court
before a banquet; the culmination being a mass dance joining performers with the audience.
Typically the characters of a masque would be classical deities or abstract qualities such
as a Virtue and Beauty, contrasted with rustic figures, and the story would represent an
archetypal conflict proceeding to resolution. Originally a carnivalesque folk celebration
with the tradition themes of inversion and transgression, the courtly form became highly
formalized in the Jacobean collaborations of Inigo Jones and Ben Jonson. As set-maker
Jones emulated the elaborate perspective designs of the Italian Sebastian Serlio which
were best seen from a focal point--where the monarch sat--and which used complex machinery
to transform the scene as if by magic. To match Jones's visual effects Jonson wrote poetic
dialogue of the highest order.
In 1608 Jonson introduced the innovation of an
'antimasque' in which grotesque figures (antics) danced before the main masque, for which
reason the word 'antemasque' is also sometimes used. Although new to the court masque, the
Jonsonian contrast was really a reintroduction of the folk element of inversion. The
fullest extant eyewitness account of a masque is by the Venetian chaplain Orazio Busino
describing a performance of Jonson's Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue in 1618, ending
with an exhausting communal dance and an unseemly rush for food which sent the glassware
crashing to the floor of the Banqueting House.
GIE
Orgel, Stephen The Jonsonian Masque (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press,
1965)
Welsford, Enid The Court Masque: A Study in the Relationship between Poetry and the
Revels (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1927)
Bevington, David and Peter Holbrook (eds.) The Politics of the Stuart Court Masque
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998)
329 words
doubling. In Shakespeare's time the number of roles in a play always exceeded the
number of actors in the company, so undoubtedly actors 'doubled' (played more than one
part). The evidence of printed cast lists bears out the commonsense assumption that each
actor took several minor roles or else one or two major roles, thereby reducing, but not
eliminating, the disproportion in the number of lines to be learnt. Detailed studies of
doubling possibilities using extant play texts as well as 'plots' are hampered by our
ignorance concerning women's roles: if these were commonly played by adult men as well as
boys the company would have an easier time assigning roles. Where we know the parts
doubled it seems that audiences valued actorly virtuosity (displayed in pairing highly
unalike characters) as well as thematic allusiveness (displayed in pairing characters who
share a characteristic or a dramatic function). Doubling was intrinsic to the actor's
profession so only the company fool and the most important star (Edward Alleyn is a
notable case) had the opportunity to develop a speciality or 'type'. To ease moments of
doubling stress an additional scene might be interpolated to give an actor time to change
costumes and Henslowe's payments for 'mending' of and 'additions' to plays seem to have
been for this purpose.
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Lord Chamberlain. One of the most powerful of court officials, the Lord Chamberlain
was responsible for assigning lodgings in the palace, for the court's travel arrangements,
for the reception of overseas dignitaries, and for the court's entertainments including
plays. The Revels Office, and its Master, were but part of the Lord Chamberlain's vast
responsibility. Henry Carey, Lord Hunsdon, was appointed Lord Chamberlain on 4 July 1585
and in May 1594 he formed a playing company, the Chamberlain's men, which included
Shakespeare. Henry Carey died on 22 July 1596 and the office passed to William Brooke,
seventh Lord Cobham. At this time Shakespeare's company reverted to the name of Henry's
son George Carey (the second Lord Hunsdon) and so were Hunsdon's men. Fortunately for
Shakespeare's company Cobham--who objected to his ancestor Sir John Oldcastle being mocked
when Shakespeare's 1 Henry 4 played at court over Christmas 1596--died on 5 March
1597 and George Carey was appointed to the Chamberlainship; the company again had an
influential patron. The Lord Chamberlain's office remained responsible for overseeing the
theatre industry until 1968 and its records (which include, for example, the Sharers
Papers) are a major source of our dramatic knowledge.
GIE
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Master of the Revels. The Office of the Revels, overseen by its Master, existed to
provide entertainment for the court and the official reason for the existence of
Elizabethan playing companies was to meet this need; by public performance the players
could maintain a state of perpetual readiness for court performance. In 1581 Edmund Tilney
(Master from 1579 to 1610) was given the patent to license all playbooks for public
performance and when George Buc succeeded to the office in 1610 he brought to it his
responsibility (held since 1606) for the licensing of printed plays. Buc was succeeded by
John Astley in 1622, who was himself succeeded by Henry Herbert in 1623. Herbert kept the
job until the closure of 1642 and his office book is an important source of our knowledge
of play licensing and censorship in the period.
GIE
Dutton, Richard Mastering the Revels: The Regulation and Censorship of English
Renaissance Drama (London: Macmillan, 1991)
Clare, Janet 'Art Made Tongue-tied By Authority': Elizabethan and Jacobean Dramatic
Censorship (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990)
175 words
audiences. The minimum price of admission at open-air playhouses (for example the
Theatre and the Globe) was traditionally a penny--about 10% of an artisan's daily
pay--while at the indoor playhouses (for example the Blackfriars) it was 6 pence. Thus the
wealthy might attend either type of venue but the average worker was likely to visit only
the open-air playhouses. Women of all social classes attended the playhouses and although
their presence at the open-air theatres was criticized as dangerous folly, if not flagrant
prostitution, their numbers rose steadily in line with the increased respectability of the
industry in the reigns of James and Charles. Pickpockets and prostitutes naturally found
the open-air playhouses, with their crowds and bustle, more productive than the sedentary
indoor playhouses.
The different types of theatre accommodated different
tastes: the indoor-theatres providing masque-like spectacles and subtle music while the
open-air playhouses had jigs and explosive sound effects. However, each had elements of
the other's specialism and the King's men showed the same plays at the Blackfriars and the
Globe at least until the 1620s. When the Queen's men left the Red Bull to open Christopher
Beeston's new Cockpit in Drury Lane in late 1616, rioting apprentices vented frustration
at their elitist move up market by attacking the Cockpit and Beeston's adjoining home. The
ultimate triumph of the indoor playhouses--no open-air amphitheatres were built in the
Restoration--marks the disappearance of the truly popular (in the sense of appealing to
all classes) theatrical tradition.
GIE
Gurr, Andrew Playgoing in Shakespeare's London (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1987)
Harbage, Alfred Shakespeare and the Rival Traditions (New York: Macmillan, 1952)
Cook, Ann Jennalie The Privileged Playgoers of Shakespeare's London (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1981)
Harbage, Alfred Shakespeare's Audience (New York: Columbia University Press,
1941)
296 words
stage decoration. Elizabethan public places were always brightly decorated and that
playhouses were no exception is indicated by John Stockwood's sermon at Paul's Cross of
1578 which refers to the Theatre as "the gorgeous playing palace", by Thomas
White's sermon at Paul's Cross of 1577 calling the Theatre and Curtain "sumptuous
theatre houses", and Philip Stubbs's reference to the Theatre and Curtain as
"Venus' palaces". We must discount anti-theatrical exaggeration, but the
contract for the Fortune (based on the Globe) called for "carved proportions called
satyrs" and De Witt's drawing of the Swan--which looks somewhat bare--is accompanied
by a description of fake-marble painting of the wooden posts. It seems that brightly
painted wood carvings covered the bare walls inside a playhouse.
During a riot at the Swan in 1602 the audience attacked
"the hangings [and] curtaines" and there must have been a cloth against the
back-wall of the stage for Richard Tarlton to amuse audiences by poking his head through
it, for Volpone to peep over, and for Polonius and Claudius to hide behind. It seems
likely that the hangings were embroidered or painted in keeping with the general
brightness of the playhouses, although in the anonymous A Warning for Fair Women
Tragedy says "The stage is hung with black and I perceive / The auditors prepared for
tragedie" and in Dekker's Northward Ho! 4.1 Bellamont anticipates "the
stage hung all with black velvet" for his tragedy.
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performance times, lengths. Ordinarily at open-air and indoor hall playhouses the
performances began at 2pm and 3pm and lasted 2 to 3 hours; the elite indoor venues
probably had more latitude to run late than did the amphitheatres. At court the
performances were always at night and quite possibly the authorities in towns visited by
touring companies were flexible since an unanticipated performance would draw a larger
crowd if it began after the working day was finished. None of the references to
performance lengths is shorter than the Romeo and Juliet Prologue's
"two-hours' traffic" and a few go as high as 3 hours, which is a variation of
+/- 20% around a norm of 2 1/2 hours. Surviving playtexts, on the other hand, vary by as
much as +/- 50% around a norm of about 2600 lines, with a tendency to longer plays in the
later years. Whether plays were routinely cut for performance remains a matter of
argument.
GIE
Gurr, Andrew 'Maximal and Minimal Texts: Shakespeare v. the Globe', Shakespeare
Survey, 52 (1999)
174 words
Jigs were short verse ballads on a comic, often sexual, theme accompanied by
vigorous dancing and performed in the theatre as a afterpiece to the main play. Richard
Tarlton appears to have excelled in this entertainment and made it ubiquitous. Thomas
Platter describes how, after a play about Julius Caesar "they danced together
admirably and exceedingly gracefully, according to their custom, two in each group dressed
in men's and two in women's apparel", suggesting that the jig was toned down if it
followed a tragedy. At the other extreme of dignity was probably the bergamask dance by
Bottom and Flute after their performance as Pyramis and Thisbe in Shakespeare's A
Midsummer Night's Dream.
GIE
Baskervill, C. R. The Elizabethan Jig and Related Song Drama (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1929)
130 words
Parnassus plays. The collective name for three anonymous plays, The Pilgrimage
to Parnassus, the First Part of the Return from Parnassus, and The Second
Part of the Return from Parnassus, written between 1598 and 1602 and performed at St
John's College Cambridge. The theme is several young scholars' attempts to find
occupations and in the final part two of them try to join the Chamberlain's men. During
their audition, William Kempe disparages university plays and university men, in
particular Jonson to whom Shakespeare has given "a purge that made him beray his
credit", which suggests that Shakespeare too indulged in personal satire. In First
Part of the Return from Parnassus are disparaging allusions to Shakespeare's Venus
and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece.
GIE
Anon. The Three Parnassus Plays (1598-1601), ed. J. B. Leishman (London: Ivor
Nicholson, 1949)
Glatzer, Paula The Complaint of the Poet, The Parnassus Plays: A Critical
Study of the Trilogy Performed at St John's College, Cambridge, 1598/99-1601/2 Authors
Anonymous (Salzburg: Institut fur Englische Sprache und Literatur, Universitat
Salzburg, 1977)
173 words
properties. Among the items in Philip Henslowe's inventory of "all the
properties for my Lord Admiral's men" (taken on 10 March 1598) are a "rock"
a "tomb" and a "hell mouth", which presumably were lifelike, and
others such as a "the city of Rome" and a "rainbow" which must have
been representative. The "dragon for fostes" (Marlowe's Doctor Faustus)
and the "cauldron for the Jewe" (Marlowe's The Jew of Malta) were
obviously kept for particular plays and the fewness of other general-purpose items accords
with the sparcity of directions requiring properties in the drama. Curtained beds are
commonly needed and the Admiral's men had a "bedstead" and a "wooden
canopy", the latter presumably being a multi-use booth structure. The most numerous
handheld items are 8 "vizards", 8 lances, and 6 crowns (sorted into Imperial and
plain). Anything not worn or carried by an actor would have to be transported by
stagehands in full view of the audience and this potential disruption--together with the
exigencies of touring--would encourage dramatists to minimize use of larger properties.
GIE
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yard. The uncovered space around the stage at the open-air playhouses. Spectators
who stood in the yard paid the least to enter (usually 1 penny) and, at the cost of tired
legs, had the best view. If rain started during a performance those in the yard were
probably allowed to enter the galleries for the usual additional penny. Puns on the yard's
occupants and their intelligence are common, ranging from the mild 'understanders' to
Hamlet's "groundlings" (3.2.11) which compares them to the ground-feeding fish
of the same name which have large mouths and small bodies.
GIE
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chorus. The speaker and the part spoken by an extra-dramatic character who supplies
background information and commentary in the drama. In Shakespeare's Henry 5 and Pericles
a chorus provides a series of links within the drama, but usually the role is more
limited: in Romeo and Juliet the chorus precedes acts 1 and 2 only, and in The
Winter's Tale "Time, the Chorus" bridges the 16 year gap between acts 3 and
4. Inductions (such as Rumour's at the start of 2 Henry 4) and prologues (as before
Troilus and Cressida) fulfil the choric scene-setting function, but those which
exhort the audience to attend carefully (such as before All is True and The Two
Noble Kinsmen) may have been used only on the first performance.
GIE
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rehearsal. In London theatres holding performances in the afternoons, the morning
was given over to rehearsals. Before meeting for a collective rehearsal each actor studied
(that is, memorized) his part which was written out on a scroll giving only the lines
spoken by a single character and the two or three cue words which end the preceding speech
of another character. Snug in A Midsummer Night's Dream asks to be given the lion's
part as soon as possible "for I am slow of study" (1.2.62). Not until the
first--sometimes the only--collective rehearsal would the actors find out what each
others' characters were to say and do.
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repertory system. In the London theatres each playing company would present a
different play every day, selecting from a repertory of between 20 and 40 plays (in a
typical company of the 1590s) for which they owned the playbooks. The London audience's
demand for new plays--largely attributable to the frequency with which the same people
visited relatively few theatres--forced a successful young company such as the Admiral's
men in the 1590s, who had relatively few revivable old plays, to add a new play to the
repertory every two weeks. A new play which did badly on first performance might never be
repeated, but a typical run would be about 8 to 12 performances over 4 to 6 months.
GIE
Knutson, Roslyn Lander The Repertory of Shakespeare's Company 1594-1613
(Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1991)
Carson, Neil A Companion to Henslowe's Diary (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1988)
148 words
'above'. About half of Shakespeare's plays need an elevated playing space which is
often signalled by a stage direction of the kind "enter above", and most of
these use this location just once or twice. An actor appearing 'above' is usually to be
thought of as appearing at a window, or upon the walls of a castle or fortified town.
Contemporary accounts and drawings (most clearly the De Witt drawing of the Swan) indicate
a balcony set in the back wall of the stage which could be used as a spectating position
but also would be ideal to provide the occasional 'above' acting space.
GIE
Hosley, Richard 'The Gallery Over the Stage in the Public Playhouse of Shakespeare's
Time', Shakespeare Quarterly, 8 (1957)
123 words
apron stage. The technical name for the part of the modern stage projecting in
front of the curtain, but used anachronistically to refer to the entire stage of
Shakespeare's time which projected into the audience (seated at the indoor theatres and
standing at the open-air theatres) who thus surrounded it on three sides. Also known as
the thrust stage and to be contrasted with the proscenium arch stage.
GIE
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Flags were flown over the theatres on days when performances were to be given. The
De Witt drawing clearly shows one at the Swan, the 'Utrecht' engraving shows flags over
the Theatre and the Curtain, John Norden's engraved panorama Civitas Londini shows
flags over the Globe, the Rose, the Swan, and the Beargarden, and Wenceslaus Hollar's
'Long View' of London shows a particularly tall flagpole at the Hope, although none at the
second Globe. It is possible that the colour of the flag indicated the genre of the play
but more likely that, as with an inn sign, the flag told the illiterate the name of the
venue. De Witt shows the Swan's flag bearing a Swan, and an inset in Norden's Civitas
Londini mislabels the Rose "The Star", which is easily a misreading of a
flag emblem.
GIE
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flats/shutters. Before the Restoration the theatres used little or no scenery, but
thereafter it became usual to paint a realistic background onto canvas stretched over
wooden frames (flats), often using the principle of perspective foreshortening. A shutter
was two flats, each holding half the background, which could be run on grooves cut in the
stage floor in order to meet on the stage. Before the Civil War masques and, less often,
plays performed at court used this technology and John Webb, nephew and assistant to Inigo
Jones, brought it to the Restoration stage in his designs for William Davenant's The
Siege of Rhodes in 1661.
GIE
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flying. In the drama a supernatural character (for example a classical god) might
best enter by being lowered from the 'heavens' over the stage, suggesting flight. The
actor sat in a carriage attached by ropes to a winch in the stage cover, and the first
playhouse to have a full stage cover was the Rose. In 1595 Henslowe paid carpenters for
"making the throne in the heavens", which was the first known descent machine
for flying. The Globe seems not to have been fitted with a flight machine until around
1608-9 when the King's men brought it into conformity with their other playhouse, the
Blackfriars, which had one. Shakespeare's pre-1608 supernatural characters--Hymen in As
You Like It and Diana in Pericles--walk rather than fly onto the stage. Sounds
effects (for example thunder) or celestial music added to the impact of a supernatural
descent and also helped drown the creaking of the winch.
GIE
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forestage. Another name for an apron stage, or an extension to an apron stage.
GIE
15 words
heavens. Early playhouses such as the Theatre and the Curtain had no substantial
cover over the stage, only a turret-like tiring house with perhaps a short pentice
extension. By 1595 the Rose was fitted with a full cover which provided protection for the
actors' (and soon after, the onstage spectators') costumes, and all subsequent playhouses
copied this innovation. The underside of the cover, the heavens, was brightly painted with
astral bodies and figures from classical mythology and from the zodiac on a background of
marbelization. Shakespeare's characters commonly allude to the heavens: in Titus
Andronicus 4.3 Titus and Marcus fire arrows towards it, Othello swears by "yon
marble heaven" (3.3.463), Timon of Athens speaks of "the marbled mansion all
above" (4.3.192), Hamlet finds no pleasure in "this brave o'erhanging, this
majestical / roof fretted with golden fire" (2.2.302-3), and in Cymbeline
Giacomo commits to memory the detail that "The roof o' th' chamber / With golden
cherubins is fretted" (2.4.87-8).
GIE
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music room. Musicians in the Elizabethan theatre were located behind the scenic
wall, either hidden within the tiring house or else in a balcony overlooking the stage.
Prior to 1609 music used in plays at the Globe comes from "within", suggesting
somewhere out of sight inside the tiring house, but thereafter the music tends to come
from "above", indicating that the stage balcony was used. At the Blackfriars the
stage balcony was always occupied by the musicians whose lengthy pre-performance recitals
were famously excellent and who, unlike the open-air theatres which used continuous
performance until 1609, also played between the acts. It seems likely that when the King's
men took over the Blackfriars in 1608-9 they regularized the musical arrangements by
adopting Blackfriars practice (visible musicians in the balcony playing music between the
acts) at both playhouses, much as they adopted the Blackfriars observance of intervals and
use of a flight machine.
GIE
Hosley, Richard 'Was There a Music-room in Shakespeare's Globe?', Shakespeare Survey,
13 (1960)
166 words
orchestra. In the Roman theatre the space directly in front of the stage reserved
for the senators. In his drawing of the Swan, Johannes de Witt labelled as
"orchestra" the auditorium gallery adjacent to the tiring house, presumably to
indicate that this was the place (known as the lords room) where the most socially
elevated members of the audience sat. The reorganization of spectating positions in the
Restoration theatre gave the position in front of the stage to the musicians who, by
transference from the old name for this location, became known as the orchestra in the
early eighteenth century.
GIE
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galleries. The wooden structures forming the auditorium seating around the stage
and the yard (at the open-air playhouses) or around the stage and the pit (at the indoor
hall playhouses), usually built to provide three levels of seating stacked vertically. At
most of the open-air playhouses these structures formed the main, virtually circular, body
of the venue and had the typical Tudor 'overhang' (each upper level being larger than the
one upon which it rests) seen in houses of the period. At the indoor playhouses the
galleries were attached to the walls of the existing hall, but cutting off the corners in
order to make a U shape.
GIE
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hell. The area underneath the stage, often used to represent the underworld.
Hellish characters could emerge through a trapdoor set in the stage or, if the underside
of the stage was not boarded in, through the hangings which concealed the understage area.
Occasionally an actor or musician might perform from within the hell, as when the ghost of
Hamlet's father cries "Swear" from under the stage (1.5.151) and when
"Music of the hautboys is under the stage" in Antony and Cleopatra
(4.3.10).
GIE
83 words
Hotel de Bourgogne. The first public theatre in France, built in 1548 in the market
district of Paris and used for over 200 years. The theatre was built in a rectangular room
about 109 by 44 feet, the approximate size and shape of English indoor hall playhouses of
Shakespeare's time. The Hotel de Bourgogne had an upper playing space and flying
machinery, and its main stage could employ perspective scenery as well as the more
traditional use of multiple stage 'houses' representing diverse locations.
GIE
Wiley, W. L. 'The Hotel de Bourgogne: Another Look at France's First Public Theatre', Studies
in Philology, 70 (1973)
104 words
lighting. Open-air playhouses used available daylight supplemented by
cresset-lights (oil-soaked rope burning in a metal basket) in the early evening. Putting
the stage in the northeast corner of the yard would have maximized the sunlight on the
stage, and although the Rose's stage was so located, the stage of the Globe seems to have
been in the shaded southeast corner. The indoor hall playhouses relied heavily on candles
throughout the performance, enabling visual illusions such as the gradual increase in
lighting intensity (by lighting additional candles) immediately prior to a scene of night
(achieved by quickly extinguishing most of the candles) in order to increase the
subjective feeling of being plunged into darkness.
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locality boards. In The Defence of Poesie Philip Sidney refers to a
theatrical convention which indicates that written labels identified fictional locations:
"What child is there, that coming to a play, and seeing 'Thebes' written in great
letters upon an old door, does believe that it is Thebes?" Presumably entrance
through such a door indicated that the ensuing scene occurred in the place named in the
label. It is not clear whether this practice was confined to certain venues in certain
periods but Shakespeare's use of scene-setting dialogue seems to obviate it.
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machines. Little was needed to adapt the mechanical winches used in the
construction industry for theatrical flying from the 'heavens' and for unassisted ascent
from or descent into 'hell', but once settled at permanent playhouses the companies were
slow to give up the minimalist habits required for touring. No play written for the Globe
requires an mechanical elevator platform beneath the trapdoor set into the stage--simple
steps will do for the descending actor--and not until Shakespeare's Cymbeline
(1610), when Juno descends on an eagle, was flight called for. Philip Henslowe was ahead
of his rivals, paying for the flight machine at the Rose in 1595.
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multiple setting. To present a story taking place in multiple locations the actors
usually cleared the stage between scenes to signify the shift to a new place, but an
occasionally-employed alternative was 'multiple setting' or 'simultaneous staging' in
which widely separated locations were presented onstage together. In Shakespeare's Richard
3 5.3 the camps of Richard and Richmond are represented by two tents on stage--which
conveniently allows ghosts to address them both--and in Jonson, Chapman, and Marston's Eastward
Ho! 4.1 Slitgut remains up a pole to view rescues, depicted on the stage below him,
which occur across several miles of the Thames. In The Defence of Poesie Philip
Sidney mocked over-use of this in technique in plays which "have Asia on the one
side, and Africa on the other".
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Norris's Men. An obscure playing company presumably patronized by Sir Henry Norris
(born around 1525, died 27 July 1601), known only by a payment of 16 shillings made at
Bath to "the Lorde Admiralls & the Lord Norris players" some time
between 11 September 1593 and October 1594. The record does not make it clear whether the
two companies collaborated or performed separately, and perhaps "Lord Norris
players" is an error for, or an alternate name for, the men of Edward Parker, Lord
Morley, who appear in several touring records in temporary amalgamation with leading
companies.
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perspective. Stage scenery can be made to appear three dimensional by illusionistic
techniques of painting based upon perspective foreshortening, but this technique was not
used in the theatres until the Restoration. Artificial perspective effects require
spectators to view from within a predefined focal area and so demand a seated audience all
of whose members are looking in approximately the same direction, as in a hall playhouse;
open-air playhouse conditions, with spectators all around the stage, are quite unsuited to
perspective effects. Sebastiano Serlio's mid-sixteenth century work on theatre perspective
illusions was absorbed by Inigo Jones and his assistant-nephew John Webb and emerged in
the elaborate court masques and in the perspective techniques of the Restoration theatres.
GIE
Campbell, Lily B. Scenes and Machines on English Stage During the Renaissance: A
Classical Revival (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1923)
Orrell, John The Human Stage: English Theatre Design, 1567-1640 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1988)
151 words
Red Lion. A farm in Stepney in the garden of which John Brayne, James Burbage's
brother-in-law, constructed the first playhouse in 1567. The galleries were a single
storey and the stage was 40 feet by 30 feet by 5 feet high with an attached turret--the
purpose of which is unclear--reaching some 30 feet above the ground. The entire structure
was cheap (under £20 compared to the Theatre's £700), rested on the ground without
foundations, and there is no evidence that it lasted beyond the summer of 1567. Spurious
speculation about "lewis" braces--suggesting a winch at the top of the
turret--has arisen from a simple error in transcribing the construction contract.
GIE
Berry, Herbert 'The First Public Playhouses, Especially the Red Lion', Shakespeare
Quarterly, 40 (1989)
Loengard, Janet S. 'An Elizabethan Lawsuit: John Brayne, His Carpenter, and the
Building of the Red Lion Theatre', Shakespeare Quarterly, 34 (1983)
151 words
pit. The area of ground-level seating nearest the stage of an indoor hall playhouse
such as the Blackfriars, corresponding in location and relative low cost to the yard in
the open-air amphitheatres. A thrust stage projecting into the pit would be surrounded by
seats.
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playbills. Public notices announcing advertising that plays were to be performed,
attached to posts in the surrounding district. No playbills have survived so we cannot be
sure how much detail was given. Richard Vennar's advertisement for his entertainment England's
Joy at the Swan in 1603 was fraudulent--he planned to steal the receipts without
giving a performance--so it should not be treated as typical playbill.
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proscenium. A Renaissance word for the stage and so used as a label in De Witt's
drawing of the Swan, but subsequently used to refer to the arrangement in post-Restoration
theatres (and some Stuart masques) where the acting space is recessed behind an arch.
Another term for this arrangement is the 'picture frame' stage.
GIE
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Roxana titlepage. A engraved vignette on the titlepage of the second edition of
William Alabaster's play Roxana (1632) shows a small, tapered stage backed by
curtains and fronted by a rail. This has been thought a useful representation of an indoor
playhouse, but the engraver, John Payne, is now known to have merely copied parts of other
pictures and hence the engraving is of little direct value to theatre history.
GIE
Astington, John H. 'The Origins of the Roxana and Messalina
Illustrations', Shakespeare Survey, 43 (1990)
86 words
scenery. The pre-Restoration theatre used little or no scenery, the location of the
action usually being denoted by dialogue. Philip Henslowe's inventory of the Admiral's men
equipment in 1598 listed a rock and a hell-mouth, as well as a "city of Rome"
which might have been a three-dimensional unit or else a cloth similar to "the cloth
of the Sun & Moon", together with a number of trees. Inigo Jones introduced
perspective scenery to the court masque and the first recorded dramatic use was for a
performance under the auspices of Queen Henrietta Maria of the French play Artenice
at Somerset House in February 1626.
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stage doors. Most theatres of Shakespeare's time had two stage doors, in some cases
flanking a larger central opening which could be used for ceremonial entrances and exits.
If no central opening existed, a 'discovery' (for example Ferdinand and Miranda "at
chess" in Shakespeare's The Tempest 5.1.173) might have been effected within
the space behind a large stage door. Given the rapid turnover of plays and the short
rehearsal periods, it is likely that a predetermined convention rather than an ad hoc
decision told an actor which door to use for each entrance and exit.
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stage furniture. Most plays of Shakespeare's time can be performed with little more
than the actors and their costumes. Beds are occasionally called for and the most useful
piece of furniture would have been a multi-purposes stage booth (rather like an
old-fashioned four-poster bed) which could, with minor alterations, also serve as the
monarch's state containing the throne, a discovery space, a pulpit, a tomb, or to provide
a playing space above the stage level.
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Throne or State. The official chair of a monarch was set on a raised dais under a
canopy and the combined property, or either or its components, could be called a throne or
state. An ordinary chair placed with multi-purpose stage booth was the simplest way to
represent the state. In 1595 Philip Henslowe paid carpenters for "making the throne
in the heavens" at the Rose and in the prologue to Every Man in his Humour
Jonson mocked plays in which a "creaking throne comes down" from above the
stage, but in these cases 'throne' means simply 'chair used for descents' rather than the
monarchial state which would have been carried or pushed onto the stage.
GIE
117 words
tiring house. Any place concealed from the audience could be used as the actors'
dressing (or 'tiring') place, but in the purpose-built playhouses the backwall of the
stage (or frons scenae), pierced by the stage doors, was also the front wall of the
tiring house. As well as a changing room, the tiring house was a storage space for the
properties, the costumes, and presumably the playbooks. In De Witt's drawing of the Swan
the tiring house is labelled "mimorum aedes" (actors' house) and its roof forms
the floor of the balcony over the stage which could be used for playing 'above'.
GIE
103 words
trap doors. Access to the understage 'hell' was provided by a trapdoor set in the
floor of the stage, probably near the centre. Hellish characters ascended and descended
through this trapdoor, most easily by provision of a ladder placed underneath the hole,
although the technology for a mechanical elevator platform was available. Left open, the
trap door could also make a useful grave such as that needed for Ophelia's burial in
Shakespeare's Hamlet 5.1.
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Porter's Hall. When Phillip Rosseter's lease on the Whitefriars playhouse expired
he obtained a royal patent (dated 3 June 1615) to build a playhouse in Porter's Hall in
Blackfriars. The Porter's Hall playhouse was not long open when the privy council, under
pressure from the London corporation and presumably also the local residents, closed the
playhouse by exploiting a flaw in the patent: since 1608 Blackfriars had not been "in
the suburbs" as the patent had stated, but within the City.
GIE
82 words
University performances. Dramatic performance and rhetoric were taught at Oxford
and Cambridge as part of a classical humanist education and from the mid-sixteenth century
plays in English were performed by the academic amateurs alongside plays in Latin. By the
early seventeenth century the London theatre industry's effect was being felt. The
Parnassus plays written between 1598 and 1602 and performed at St John's College Cambridge
made direct reference to the Chamberlain's men, Shakespeare, and Jonson, and The
Tragedy of Caesar and Pompey, "Privately acted by the Students of Trinity
Colledge in Oxford" according to the 1607 titlepage, was clearly influenced by the
professional theatre's output. The universities could also be ahead of the industry: in
1605 James 1 was entertained at Christ Church Oxford by Latin plays performed on
stage designed by Inigo Jones using Sebastiano Serlio's principles of perspective
foreshortening, a precursor of post-Restoration staging.
GIE
Boas, Frederick S. University Drama in the Tudor Age (Oxford: Clarenden Press,
1914)
160 words
academic drama. When Shakespeare came to London in the late 1580s or 1590s the
chief dramatists were university educated men: John Lyly, Christopher Marlowe, Robert
Greene, George Peele, Thomas Nashe, and Thomas Lodge. Shakespeare, by comparison, was less
thoroughly educated--as some of the university men were quick to point out--but his work
is clearly influenced by the verse style of their plays (especially Marlowe's) and he
reworked their plots.
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Admiral's men. The players of Charles Howard, second Lord Effingham--made Lord
Admiral in 1585 and Earl of Nottingham in 1597--were the main rivals of Shakespeare's
company. Also known as the Lord Howard's men (1576-85), the Earl of Nottingham's men
(1597-1603), Prince Henry's men (1603-12), and Elector Palatine's men (1613-24), their
greatest asset in the 1590s and 1600s was the actor Edward Alleyn, whose uncle Philip
Henslowe owned the Rose and Fortune playhouses used by the company.
GIE
79 words
An Acte to restraine abuses of players (1606) was a parliamentary bill introducing
a fine of £10 for each occasion upon which an actor "jestingly or profanely"
spoke the name of God, or Jesus Christ. Plays written after this date have little or no
such profanity, and plays already written show alteration of the offending phrases when
revived, although the original unexpurgated text could safely be printed. Words such as
"zounds" (a contraction of "Gods's wounds") could be replaced by
"why" or "come", and exclamations such as "o God!" softened
to "o heaven!"
GIE
Taylor, Gary ''Swounds Revisited: Theatrical, Editorial, and Literary Expurgation', in
Gary Taylor and John Jowett (ed.) Shakespeare Reshaped 1606-1623 (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1993)
118 words
book-keeper. An official playtext manuscript (or Book) contained the essential
license from the Master of the Revels, the obtaining of which was the first of task of the
book-keeper after receiving the work from the dramatist. Additionally, the book-keeper
(sometimes called a prompter or book-holder) oversaw the preparation of the individual
parts (the lines of each character, written out on separate rolls), supervised the casting
of roles (possibly employing a 'plat' or 'plot'), annotated the Book with the necessary
additional directions and reminders, and remained backstage during performance to ensure
that actors and properties were ready on time. Prompting, in the modern sense of jogging
an actor's memory by speaking the next line, was not undertaken.
GIE
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Chamber Accounts. The accounting records of the Treasurer of the Chamber who paid
out for court entertainments. This is a major source of our knowledge concerning the
professional players' court performances.
GIE
Cook, David and F. P. Wilson (eds.) Dramatic Records in the Declared Accounts of the
Treasurer of the Chamber 1558-1642 (Oxford: Malone Society, 1961)
56 words
Chapel Royal. A part of London royal household which existed to provide a
children's choir, and later an acting troupe, for court entertainments. There was also a
Windsor Chapel with which the Chapel Royal appears to have merged in 1576 when Richard
Farrant, in association with the Chapel Royal Master William Hunnis, installed the Chapel
Children in the first Blackfriars playhouse.
GIE
62 words
Derby's (Strange's) Men. The men of Ferdinando Stanley, Lord Strange (earl of Derby
from 25 September 1593), led by Edward Alleyn from 1591, containing remnants of
Leicester's men and possibly Shakespeare. In 1592 the company played "harey the
vj" (possibly Shakespeare's 1 Henry 6) in a successful season at Henslowe's
Rose. Stanley died in 1594 leaving the company without a patron. Alleyn left to form the
Admiral's men while Thomas Pope, John Heminges, Augustine Phillips, and George Bryan left
to form the Chamberlain's men. The rest of Derby's men continued playing but were unable
to break the Admiral's/Chamberlain's London duopoly.
GIE
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dumb shows. Moments of silent action in a play where gesture is made to bear
greater significance than is usual, often with emblematic meaning. Ceremonial rituals are
frequently silent but the term "dumb show" is usually reserved for the
deliberate artistic suppression of dialogue where it might be expected, so creating an
atmosphere of expectation. Shakespeare's dumb shows are usually contained in a
play-within-the-play (such as the ones which precede 'The Murder of Gonzago' in Hamlet
and 'Pyramis and Thisbe' in A Midsummer Night's Dream), but in Pericles, a
collaboration with George Wilkins, Shakespeare made extensive use of dumb shows and choric
narration in an apparent experiment in dramatic form.
GIE
Mehl, Dieter The Elizabethan Dumb Show: The History of a Dramatic Convention
(London: Methuen, 1965)
126 words
Gatherers were the collectors of money from spectators at the playhouses. This was
the only playhouse occupation open to both men and women.
GIE
24 words
groundlings. Hamlet's amusing name for the spectators in the yard open-air
amphitheatre (3.2.11), derived from the name of a fish with a large open mouth and small
body.
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29 words
hired men. The majority of actors were not sharers in a playing company but were
merely hired men expected to double several minor roles and paid a contract rate (5 to 10
shillings a week) rather than a share of the profits. The term also covered musicians and
non-performing playhouse personnel such as tiremen and stage-keepers.
GIE
57 words
housekeepers. The owners of a playhouse, to be distinguished from the sharers in a
playing company, although from 1599 several Chamberlain's men (including Shakespeare) were
both.
GIE
27 words
Herbert, Sir Henry. Master of the Revels (1623-1673), born 1595, died 27 April
1673. Herbert bought his Mastership from Sir John Astley, and his collection of papers
(extant until 1818) are an important source of information concerning the Caroline stage.
GIE
Bawcutt, N. W. (ed.) The Control and Censorship of Caroline Drama: The Records of
Sir Henry Herbert, Master of the Revels 1623-73 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996)
Dutton, Richard Mastering the Revels: The Regulation and Censorship of English
Renaissance Drama (London: Macmillan, 1991)
83 words
Gesta Grayorum. An account of entertainments at Gray's Inn during Christmas 1594-5,
including "Dancing and Revelling with Gentlewomen; and after such Sports, a Comedy of
Errors (like to Plautus his Menechmus) was played by the Players".
Shakespeare's play might have been written for this indoor performance: it is suitably
short and has a five-act structure unsuited to the open-air amphitheatres of the time.
GIE
Bland, Desmond (ed.) Gesta Grayorum, or the History of the High and Mighty Prince
Henry Prince of Purpoole, Anno Domini 1594 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press,
1968)
90 words
intervals. Indoor hall performances were usually divided into 5 acts by 4 intervals
of music, but the open-air amphitheatres used uninterrupted performance until around 1609
when occupation of the indoor Blackfriars playhouse made the King's men apply its
traditions to their other playhouse, the Globe.
GIE
Taylor, Gary 'The Structure of Performance: Act-intervals in the London Theatres,
1576-1642', in Gary Taylor and John Jowett (ed.) Shakespeare Reshaped 1606-1623
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1993)
71 words
interlude players. The word 'interlude' was used from the fourteenth century for a
short dramatic performance, given on its own or during an interval within a longer
entertainment. Medwall's Fulgens and Lucrece (probably 1497) and Udall's Jack
Jugeler (1535-60) show the genre's usual moralism, and the latter also its use of
characteristic names in Dame Coye and Jenkin Careaway. Elizabeth 1 allowed her father's Lusores
Regis (Players of the King's Interludes) to disintegrate, and the entertainment
'Pyramis and Thisbe' in A Midsummer Night's Dream parodies the genre's lack of
sophistication.
GIE
91 words
Langley, Francis. Builder of the Swan playhouse and investor in the Boar's Head,
born 1547-8, buried 9 July 1602.
GIE
Ingram, William A London Life in the Brazen Age: Francis Langley 1548-1602
(Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1978)
38 words
Jones, Inigo. Architect and court masque designer, baptized 19 July 1573, buried 26
June 1652. With his nephew-assistant John Webb, Jones brought Sebastian Serlio's
perspective scenery to the English stage. Jones's finest building design, as Surveyor of
Works, was the 1622 Banqueting house in Whitehall which still stands.
GIE
Orgel, Stephen and Roy Strong (eds.) Inigo Jones: the Theatre of the Stuart Court,
2 vols. (Sotheby Parke Bernet: London, 1973)
70 words
Lent. From 1579, playhouses were supposed to close during Lent but the order was
frequently repeated (suggesting non-compliance) and in 1618 Master of the Revels George
Buc sold to John Heminges a dispensation limiting the restriction to just Sundays,
Wednesdays, and Fridays and the whole of Easter week.
GIE
52 words
livery. As the household servants of their patron, sharers in a playing company
were given distinctive clothing (livery) identifying their master. In 1604 each of the
King's men (including Shakespeare) received four and a half yards of red cloth for James
1's delayed coronation procession.
GIE
46 words
Pageants. Professional players were hired to perform in public events celebrating
the installation of officials such as the Lord Mayor of London. On 31 May 1610 the
investiture of Prince Henry as Prince of Wales was celebrated with a sea-pageant on the
Thames in which Richard Burbage and John Rice performed as tritons. In recompense, Burbage
and Rice were allowed to keep their costumes which probably were reused for Caliban and
Ariel-as-sea-nymph in The Tempest.
GIE
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Parts. Players of Shakespeare's time were not given the entire script of a play to
rehearse, but only their 'part' or 'side' written out with cues indicating when to
commence a speech. The only extant 'part' is for Edward Alleyn's title role in Robert
Greene's Orlando Furioso, in the form of a scroll over 17 feet long.
GIE
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pay. See hired men.
GIE
4 words
Pembroke's men. An obscure playing company known mostly from the titlepages of
their plays. Their The Taming of a Shrew has some relation to Shakespeare's The
Taming of the Shrew, their Richard Duke of York is a memorial reconstruction of
the play printed as 3 Henry 6 in the Shakespeare Folio of 1623, and their Titus
Andronicus is Shakespeare's. It seems likely that Shakespeare was one of Pembroke's
men before he, and several of the others, joined the Chamberlain's men in 1594. Other
Pembroke's men were John Sinkler, Gabriel Spencer, Robert Shaw, and possibly Richard
Burbage. The company probably played at the Theatre in 1592-3 and broke in 1594, to be
reformed in 1597 for a brief season at the Langley's Swan playhouse before their
production of The Isle of Dogs caused that playhouse's closure. The company
survived Ben Jonson's murder of Gabriel Spencer in 1598, occupying the Rose after the
Admiral's men left it for the Fortune in 1600, only to break forever with the death of
their patron on 9 January 1601.
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sharer. One of the core members of a playing company, required to put up capital to
purchase costumes and playbooks and receiving in return a proportionate share of the
profits after playhouse rent and hired men's wages had been paid. Most sharers were
leading actors in the company.
GIE
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stage-keeper. The hired man responsible for sweeping the stage and attaching the
playbills to posts near the playhouse, and occasionally called upon for small non-speaking
roles in the performance.
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30 words
tireman. The wardrobe-keeper in a playhouse, responsible for the acquisition and
orderly (moth-free) storage of the costumes and for repairs and alterations. Like other
non-performing hired men, the tireman could be called upon for small roles.
GIE
37 words
soundings (of trumpets). At outdoor playhouses a trumpet was sounded three times to
indicate that a performance was about to begin. The figure standing in the hut of the Swan
in De Witt's drawing might be a trumpeter, although his instrument lacks the distinctive
bell-mouth. The more refined indoor hall playhouses did not use this device.
GIE
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plague regulations. A large crowd gathering in a confined space, such as a
playhouse, gives ideal conditions for transmission of the plague by fleas, and the privy
council wisely closed the playhouses when the weekly death toll exceeded 50 (reduced under
James 1 to 30).
GIE
Barroll, Leeds Politics, Plague, and Shakespeare's Theater: the Stuart Years
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991)
Wilson, F. P. The Plague in Shakespeare's London (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1927)
73 words
playbook. The official playtext manuscript (or Book), containing the essential
license from the Master of the Revels. From this valuable document--which ordinarily never
left the theatre--the book-keeper would have actors parts produced, and he might also
annotate the playbook with reminders and additional directions to help him run the
performance from off stage. The word promptbook is equivalent, although prompting (in the
sense of reminding actors of their lines) does not seem to have happened in Shakespeare's
time.
GIE
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plot ('plat'). Seven theatrical documents, known as 'plats', belonging to Edward
Alleyn have survived and although they clearly are abstracts of plays their precise
function remains mysterious. A characteristic hole suggests that they were hung on a peg,
perhaps backstage for consultation during the performance, although entrances and exits
other than those at the beginning of a scene are not consistently recorded. Alternatively,
they might have been used for casting a play, although this hypothesis leaves the hole
unexplained.
GIE
Bradley, David From Text to Performance in the Elizabethan Theatre (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1992)
Greg, W. W. (ed.) Dramatic Documents From the Elizabethan Playhouses: Stage Plots,
Actors' Parts, Prompt Books, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1931)
117 words
privy council. A group of about 10 advisors to the monarch which met daily to
decide matters of policy and of law. Many regulations concerning the theatre industry
emerged directly from the privy council and countered anti-theatrical orders from the
London corporation. Lord Hunsdon, the Chamberlain's men's patron, was a privy councillor.
GIE
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protection of players. On 27 December 1624 the Master of the Revels, Sir Henry
Herbert, signed a document protecting 22 men from arrest without the prior authorisation
of himself or the Lord Chamberlain. These men were described as "employed by the
King's majesty's servants in their quality of playing as musicians and other necessary
attendants" and as many as half were musicians, perhaps the beginnings of a theatre
orchestra.
GIE
Cutts, John P. 'New Findings with Regard to the 1624 Protection List', Shakespeare
Survey, 19 (1966)
86 words
Revels Office and Accounts. The Office of the Revels, overseen by its Master, was
formed to organize court entertainments at Christmas and Easter but with the growth of the
London theatre industry in the 1580s the players were increasingly able to manage their
own productions and the office's role was changed to licensing and censoring. The accounts
of the Revels Office illuminate court theatre but unfortunately are extant only for the
periods 1571-89, 1604-5, and 1611-2.
GIE
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War of the Theatres. Between 1599 and 1602 three playwrights directed personal
satire at each other in their plays: Jonson in his Every Man out of His Humour,
Marston in his Histriomastix, Jack Drum and What You Will and Dekker
and Marston in their Satiro-mastix. This poets' quarrel (or 'poetomachia') might be
symptomatic of conflict between the open-air playhouses (occupied by adult actors) and
indoor playhouses (occupied by children's companies) which is also reflected in
Rosencrantz's reference to the "little eyases" (child actors) who "berattle
the common stages" (Hamlet 2 .2.343). However, the entire 'war' might simply
have been a publicity-seeking fabrication and the "little eyases" passage
written later than 1602.
GIE
Knutson, Roslyn L. 'Falconer to the Little Eyases: A New Date and Commercial Agenda for
the 'little Eyases' Passage in Hamlet', Shakespeare Quarterly, 46 (1995)
Small, Roscoe Addison The Stage-quarrel between Ben Jonson and the So-called
Poetasters (Bresau: Verlag von M. & H. Marcus, 1899)
157 words
animal shows. Baiting of bulls and bears using dogs was already a popular
entertainment on Bankside when the first playhouses were constructed. Like open-air
playhouses, baiting rings were wooden structures, approximately round, and scholars have
conjectured that a travelling players' booth placed within a baiting ring gave the design
for the playhouses. However, baiting rings do not elevate the lowest auditorium
gallery--which is essential in a playhouse else the yardlings obscure the view--because
the baiting ring yard is necessarily free of spectators. Also, the barriers needed to
contain animals make for poor sightlines. Philip Henslowe, joint Master and Keeper of the
King's Bear's with Edward Alleyn from 1604, built the first combined playhouse and baiting
ring, the Hope in 1614.
GIE
Brownstein, Oscar 'Why Didn't Burbage Lease the Beargarden? A Conjecture in Comparative
Architecture', in Herbert Berry (ed.) The First Public Playhouse: The Theatre in
Shoreditch 1576-1598 (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1979)
154 words
Palladio, Andrea. Italian architect, born 1508, died 1580, builder of the Teatro
Olimpico in Vicenza in 1583. Palladio's neoclassical designs were based on principles of
harmonious proportion derived from mathematical ratios, especially 1:? 2, 3:4, 2:3, 3:5,
and 1:2. Inigo Jones's absorption of Palladian principles is evidenced in his Whitehall
Banqueting House of 1622 and the Cockpit-in-Court playhouse conversion of 1629.
GIE
Ackerman, James S. Palladio (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966)
Wittkower, Rudolf Palladio and English Palladianism (London: Thames and Hudson,
1974)
80 words
The Wits titlepage. Henry Marsh's The Wits (1662) is collection of 'drolls'
or comic episodes from popular plays adapted for independent performance, and it has a
titlepage engraving (probably by John Chantry) showing 7 figures together on a stage,
including Sir John Falstaff and a Hostess (originally from Shakespeare's 1 Henry 4),
and a "Changling", presumably Antonio from Middleton and Rowley's play The
Changeling. A second, enlarged, edition of The Wits, printed in 1672-3 with a
coarse copy of the original titlepage engraving, contains Francis Kirkman's preface which
associates the drolls with Robert Cox and the Red Bull playhouse, but the engraving is of
little theatrical interest, being derived from non-theatrical sources.
GIE
Astington, John H. 'The Wits Illustration, 1662', Theatre Notebook, 47
(1993)
124 words
court performances. The official reason for the existence of playing companies was
to provide entertainment for the monarch in the traditional festive seasons of Christmas
and Easter, and prior public performance was supposed to test and refine plays before they
were taken to court. The Revels Office was initially responsible for making the costumes,
properties, and sets for court performances, but from the 1580s the London theatre
industry was strong enough to provide its own production materials and the Revels Office
was reduced to licensing the commercial theatre and selecting from its best offerings.
Because the court moved between palaces in and around
London, the players performed in a variety of rooms temporarily converted into theatres.
Being called to court was lucrative and, more importantly, was a mark of royal favour
which lent respectability to the leading players. James 1 was more keen on theatre than
his predecessor and his patronage of Shakespeare's company gave them court appearances
more frequent and of longer duration than they had enjoyed under Elizabeth. The court
Cockpit (a bird-fighting arena), which had been occasionally used for performance, was
converted into a permanent court theatre in 1629 by James's successor Charles, under whom
royal patronage of dramatic art reached its peak.
GIE
Astington, John H. English Court Theatre 1558-1642 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1999)
219 words
apprentices. See boy actors.
GIE
3 words
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Corrected entries:
censorship. The official government censor of drama in Shakespeare's time was
the Master of the Revels, to whom a playing company had to submit each playbook together
with a fee. The censor's remit was never precisely defined, but successive postholders
took their responsibility to be the excision of material offensive to the church and
state, broadly interpreted to include not only sedition and personal satire but also foul
language and excessive sexuality. If the Master of the Revels allowed the play, he would
attach his license (a signed statement of his approval) at the end of the manuscript.
Often the license would state conditions such as "may with the reformations [i.e.
changes] be acted" or "[with] all the oaths left out". The office of the
Master of the Revels was originally established to select plays for the entertainment of
Queen Elizabeth, but in 1581 Edmund Tilney was given a new patent which required "all
and every player or players . . . to present and recite before our said
servant" any new work. The volume of new plays made recitation by the actors
impractical and Tilney was content to read the drama by himself. Tilney was succeeded by
George Buc (who was not, as formerly thought, his nephew) in 1610, and Buc was succeeded
by John Astley in 1622, who was himself succeeded by Henry Herbert in 1623. Herbert kept
the job until the closure of 1642 and managed to resume some of the same functions when
the playhouses opened again in the Restoration. Herbert's office book was extant until the
nineteenth century and it provides most of what we know about the detailed operation of
the censor, although it is rather later than Shakespeare's working life. If the Master of
Revels was sufficiently unhappy about a play he might refuse even a conditional license,
but we have only one record of Herbert exacting the extreme penalty: "Received of Mr
Kirke for a new play which I burnt for the ribaldry that was in it . . . £2".
Not infrequently a play in performance at one of the London
playhouses caused offence to an important person and the players were held to account.
Thomas Nashe and Ben Jonson's The Isle of Dogs (now lost) was highly critical of
the government and its performance at the Swan resulted in a temporary closure of all the
London playhouses. Presumably the Master of the Revels could have been held responsible if
such a play had been licensed, and in 1633 the players tried to blame Herbert's negligence
for the offence caused by Jonson's The Magnetick Lady, although the Court of
Commission exonerated him. An entirely separate system of censorship governed the
publication of plays. Getting "authority" or "allowance" was a
prerequisite demanded of a stationer by a Star Chamber decree of 1586, and until 1606 the
authority for playbook publication was in the hands of the bishop of London and the
archbishop of Canterbury who governed publication generally. Unlike the performance
license which was a strict necessity, failure to secure authority for printing seems to
have been casually ignored unless someone was actually offended by the work. From 1606
George Buc, later to become Master of Revels, took over the licensing of play publication.
The "authority" needed for publication should not be confused with license for
printing given by the Stationers' Company, the guild association for the printing trade.
The Stationers' Company regulations were designed to protect the individual interests of
stationers, and in particular to prevent conflicts where more than one stationer wanted to
print a given text, but in deciding whether or not to give the license the Company
officers would also take into consideration whether the book had authority and whether it
was likely to give offence. If they were unhappy, they might license the book on condition
that it not be printed until "further", "better", or
"lawful" authority had been obtained.
On 27 May 1606 an "Acte to restraine Abuses of
Players" was passed which made it an offence to "jestingly or prophanely speake
or use the holy Name of God or of Christ Jesus, or of the Holy Ghoste or of the
Trinitie" in a stage play, on penalty of a £10 fine. As well as effectively
censoring new works, this act also required old plays to be expurgated if they were to be
revived for the stage. The act did not cover printing, however, and the 1623 Folio of
Shakespeare contains a mixture of expurgated and unexpurgated plays according to the
provenance of the manuscript underlying each of them. In many cases what looks like
censorship of printed plays might be something else. The first, second, and third quartos
of Shakespeare's Richard 2 do not have the deposition scene which is present in the
fourth and fifth quartos, and it is often assumed that the first three editions represent
censorship of the potentially offensive scene. It is not clear, however, whether the
deposition was performed on stage but left out of the printed texts, or whether it was
left out of the stage version also until some time after initial composition. It is not
impossible that the deposition scene was written later than the rest of the play and was
added to performances at a time in James's reign when it was deemed an acceptable
enhancement of the old play. Certainly the play appealed to opponents of Elizabeth:
supporters of the earl of Essex commissioned a performance of it as a morale-booster prior
to their abortive rebellion. Much clearer evidence of censorship is the response of the
lords Cobham to what they perceived as satire of their ancestor, Sir John Oldcastle, in
Shakespeare's 1 Henry 4. Shakespeare was forced to give Sir John a new surname, and
he chose Falstaff for 2 Henry 4. That generations of readers have loved this
character under the name Falstaff, and scholars have inserted the name into 1 Henry 4
where it does not belong, is testimony to the potentially fruitful effect of external
pressure upon drama. Scholars are not in agreement about how, or indeed whether, to undo
changes apparently forced onto unwilling dramatists, and modern socio-cultural studies of
the entire system of relations between the theatre industry, the monarchy, and the
parliament (such as Richard Dutton's) find the Master of the Revels "as much a friend
of the actors as their overlord". For the opposite interpretation, summarized in her
book's title, see Janet Clare.
GE
Dutton, Richard Mastering the Revels: The Regulation and Censorship of English
Renaissance Drama (London: Macmillan, 1991)
Clare, Janet 'Art Made Tongue-tied By Authority': Elizabethan and Jacobean Dramatic
Censorship (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990)
Blayney, Peter W. M. 'The Publication of Playbooks', in John D. Cox and David Scott
Kastan (ed.) A New History of Early English Drama (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1997)
Taylor, Gary and John Jowett Shakespeare Reshaped: 1606-1623 (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1993)
Bawcutt, N. W. (ed.) The Control and Censorship of Caroline Drama: The Records of
Sir Henry Herbert, Master of the Revels 1623-73 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996)
1100 words
provincial companies, tours. The majority of playing companies were provincial
troupes who seldom or never performed in London but rather followed established
touring routes across the countryside, stopping for a few days in each town to play in the
town hall or a large inn. Because they were not settled, information about the companies
resides in provincial records and the overall picture of non-London drama is only now
beginning to emerge from the Records of Early English Drama project. All companies
were essentially provincial touring companies until, in 1594, the Chamberlain's men and
the Admiral's men were granted a duopoly in London.
GIE
playing companies. Before the emergence of the professional theatre industry in the
second half of the sixteenth century, companies of travelling players made their livings
from performances throughout the kingdom. The forces that shaped these troupes into the
enormously successful companies of Shakespeare's time were political and economic. The
provincial town authorities began to demand that players have some kind of certification
(in practice, a patron) and in 1550 the London Aldermen issued a decree banning `common'
players (those without a patron) from performing in the City without license. The informal
collections of players were squeezed out. In a proclamation of 16 May 1559 Elizabeth
restated the responsibility of lords lieutenant and sheriffs to ensure that players were
licensed and did not perform anything "wherin either matters of religion or of the
gouernaunce of the estate of the common weale shalbe handled or treated". Licensing
the burgeoning theatre industry was a means of censoring it. That Robert Dudley, earl of
Leicester, took trouble to write to the earl of Shrewsbury in June 1559 requesting that
his players be allowed perform in Yorkshire indicates that Elizabeth's demand for
licensing was being heeded, and that Dudley felt the free travel of his players was
important. The licensed players had such an advantage over the remaining unlicensed
players that we may rely on the principle of natural selection to explain the
disappearance of the latter; aggressive entrepreneurial instincts were needed to survive
in the new, harsher, climate.
The first nationally prominent company emerged directly from
Dudley's players when the government again moved to curtail, and so control, the acting
industry. In 1583 Privy councillors Walsingham and Leicester put together an all-star
troupe of players picked mostly from Leicester's men to tour the country under the
patronage of Elizabeth herself in the interests of national unity. The Queen's men
specialized in a new dramatic genre, the English history play, which was particularly
suited to the puritan sensibilities of the councillors. The leading players of this new
company were John Adams and Richard Tarlton, and throughout the 1580s the Queen's men
toured extensively and enjoyed an effective monopoly of playing in London. But the
settlement of 1594 gave two new companies, the Admiral's men at the Rose and the
Chamberlain's men at the Theatre, an effective London duopoly and the Queen's men were
forced to concentrate on touring. Staying put in particular London playhouses gave the
Admiral's and Chamberlain's men advantages which outweighed the burden of having to
maintain a high turnover of new material. (Touring players can of course repeat the same
play in each new town.) Because audiences knew where to see the new the Admiral's or
Chamberlain's play--where to see Alleyn or Burbage's newest role--a loyal base of
supporters could develop amongst the London theatre-going public. Companies with a
permanent base could also benefit from their accumulated capital by investing in lavish
costume collections which, even if they could afford them, would have been impossibly
cumbersome for travelling players. The extreme effect of these two principles--expensive
costuming and high turnover of new plays--can be discerned from two facts derived from
Henslowe's account book: the costume collection of a company might easily be worth more
than the playhouse, and a dozen different plays might be performed in one month.
The next important development to promote the theatrical
company stability upon which Shakespeare's greatest work was predicated happened by
chance. Denied use of the Blackfriars playhouse, Richard and Cuthbert Burbage brought
their fellow playing company sharers into a syndicate to finance the Globe playhouse, and
the commonality of interest within this nucleus of sharer/housekeepers made the
Chamberlain-King's men considerably more economically stable than their competitors. At
the Blackfriars a succession of companies of child actors performed outrageous satires
with strong, and to modern sensibilities quite disturbing, sexual content. Although these
ceased after 1608, the incorporation of two of the Blackfriars conventions, act intervals
and sophisticated music, into amphitheatre playing indicates the leading companies'
ability to adapt themselves to changing tastes. The new king, James, took a much greater
interest in the drama than his predecessor and the leading players could expect to be
summoned to play at court more often.
The history of playing from 1610 to the closure of 1642 is one
of gradual bifurcation into two traditions centred on two types of venue: the open-air
amphitheatres and the indoor hall playhouses. The latter were more profitable but did not
see off the former, perhaps because nostalgia for the populist and robust mode of outdoor
entertainment persisted amongst the players. More pragmatically, the apprentice boys' riot
which followed the transference of Queen Anne's men from the Red Bull to the Cockpit in
Drury Lane signalled the tension between the two traditions which made persistence of both
a practical necessity. Specialization by social class began to emerge in the drama with
the indoor plays increasingly distancing themselves from the noisy spectacle available at
the amphitheatres. By the end of the period the status of the playing profession was
immeasurably higher--at least for the rich sharers in the most successful companies--than
it had been at the beginning. Edward Alleyn's founding of the College of God's Gift at
Dulwich, and Shakespeare's retirement in affluent middle-age were possible only because a
highly successful urban theatre industry emerged in London with extraordinary rapidity;
less than half a century separates the construction of the Theatre from the publication of
Shakespeare First Folio.
GE
Ingram, William The Business of Playing: The Beginnings of the Adult Professional Theater in Elizabethan England
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992)
McMillin, Scott and Sally-Beth MacLean The Queen's Men and Their Plays
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998)
Gurr, Andrew The Shakespearian Playing Companies
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996)
950 words
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Burbage, Richard, the leading actor of Shakespeare's company, baptized 7 July
1568, died 13 March 1619, son of playhouse builder James Burbage, and younger brother to
Cuthbert Burbage. Richard and Cuthbert held shares in the playhouses built by their
father, but only Richard followed his father in being an actor. Richard's acting career
began in the mid 1580s but around 1590 he was still playing minor parts, if the entrance
for "Burbage a messenger" in the `plot' of The Dead Man's Fortune refers
to him. The more important roles of Gorboduc and Tereus are assigned to Richard Burbage in
the `plot' of 2 Seven Deadly Sins, but this is difficult to date. With the
settlement of the Chamberlain's men at the Theatre, his father's playhouse, in 1594 his
fame rapidly increased. On 15 March 1595 Shakespeare, William Kemp, and Richard Burbage
were paid for Chamberlain's men performances given at court the previous December. Ben
Jonson recorded Richard Burbage as an actor in his 1616 Folio texts of Every Man out of
His Humour (1600) and Every Man in His Humour (1601) which were first performed
in 1598-9. When his fellow King's man Augustine Phillips made a will on 4 May 1605,
Richard Burbage was appointed as an executor, and in Shakespeare's will, written on 25
March 1616, Richard Burbage, John Heminges, and Henry Condell were each left 26 shillings
8 pence to buy a ring.
Allusions to Richard Burbage's acting talent continued long
after his death in 1619. A funeral elegy exists in a number of manuscript versions from
shortly after his death, which despite some differences generally agree upon these lines:
No more young Hamlett, ould Heironymoe.
Kind Leer, the greued Moore, and more beside.
That liued in him, haue now for ever dy'de.
Oft haue I seene him leap into the graue,
Suiting the person which he seem'd to haue
Of a sadd louer with soe true an eye,
Thar theer I would haue sworne, he meant to dye.
The roles named here are presumably from Shakespeare's Hamlet, King Lear,
and Othello ("the grieved Moor"), and Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy
(c. 1592), in which Jeronimo revenges his son's murder). The title-page of
the first edition of John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi (1623) gives Richard
Burbage the part of Ferdinand, and the third printing of John Marston's The Malcontent
(1604) has a comic induction during which Richard Burbage is identified as the actor
playing Malevole. These are the only roles of which we can be certain, but the plenitude
of commendations of his talent, and his seniority within the Chamberlain-King's men makes
it likely that he took leading roles in all of Shakespeare's plays from the opening of the
Globe in 1599 until his retirement in the mid 1610s.
Some time before 7 October 1601 Richard Burbage married his
wife Winifred, for on that day she consulted the quack doctor and astrologer Simon Forman.
In his will of June 3 1623 Nicholas Tooley referred to Richard Burbage as "my late
M[aste]r", which indicates that Tooley was Burbage's apprentice. As well as being an
actor, Richard Burbage was an accomplished painter and for the Earl of Rutland's
participation in the King's Accession Day tilt in 1613, Burbage painted a commemorative
impresa to which Shakespeare added the motto, and for which each of them received 44
shillings.
GE
Nungezer, Edwin A Dictionary of Actors and of Other Persons Associated with the Public Representation of Plays in England Before 1642
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1929)
Ingram, William 'The Early Career of James Burbage', in
C. E. McGee (ed.) The Elizabethan Theatre X: Papers Given at the Tenth International Conference on Elizabethan Theatre Held at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, in July 1983
(Port Credit Ontario: P. D. Meany, 1988)
Edmond, Mary 'Yeoman, Citizens, Gentlemen and Players: The Burbages and Their Connections', in
R. B. Parker and S. P. Zitner (ed.) Elizabethan Theater: Essays in Honor of S. Schoenbaum
(Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1996)
Honigmann, E. A. J. and Susan Brock Playhouse Wills 1558-1642: An Edition of Wills By Shakespeare and His Contemporaries in the London Theatre
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992)
Bentley, Gerald Eades The Jacobean and Caroline Stage, 7 vols.
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1941), vol. 2: Dramatic Companies and Players
Bradley, David From Text to Performance in the Elizabethan Theatre
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992)
Baldwin, T. W. The Organization and Personnel of the Shakespearean Company
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1927)
578 words
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Sharpham, Edward. Dramatist, baptized 22 July 1576, died 23 April 1608. For the
Blackfriars boy Sharpham wrote The Fleir and Cupid's Whirligig, both
published in 1607 and showing echoes of Shakespeare. The Fleir contains the line
"Faith, like Thisbe in the play, 'a has almost killed himself with the
scabbard", alluding to stage business from early performances of Shakespeare's A
Midsummer Night's Dream (Flute-as-Thisbe stabbing himself with Pyramus's scabbard
instead of his sword) which survived into twentieth-century productions.
GIE
74 words
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Heminges, John. Actor (Strange's men by 1593, Chamberlain's/King's men 1596-1630)
and business manager for the King's men, born 1566, buried 12 October 1630. Heminges was
about to become free of his apprenticeship as a grocer when he married Rebecca Knell, the
16 year old widow of William Knell (a Queen's men actor), on 10 March 1588. By May 1593
Heminges was an actor with Strange's men and by the end of 1596 Heminges was a
Chamberlain's man, receiving with George Bryan the payment for their court performances;
throughout his career, especially after 1611, Heminges's business skill was as important
as his acting. In 1599 Heminges became one of the original Globe housekeepers and in 1608
one of the Blackfriars housekeepers, and he managed to increase his shares to a
one-quarter holding in each by the time of his death. Heminges probably owned the taphouse
which adjoined, and which in 1613 caught fire from, the first Globe and he certainly had a
house (possibly also a taphouse) adjoining the second Globe. In 1611 Heminges's daughter
Thomasine married the King's man William Ostler who died intestate on 16 December 1614
leaving his widow shares in the company playhouses over which father and daughter fought
in the courts. The legal records of this battle are an important source of our knowledge
about the ownership of the playhouses.
Heminges appears as himself in the Induction to Marston's
The Malcontent and is named as an actor in company cast lists for Jonson's Every
Man in his Humour, Every Man out of his Humour, Sejanus, Volpone,
The Alchemist, and Catiline. A surviving copy of Jonson's 1616 Folio has a
handwritten Jacobean annotation assigning Heminges the part of Corbaccio in Volpone
alongside Nathan Field as Voltore, and since the latter did not the join the King's men
until 1616 Heminges's acting career seems to have lasted until his early 50s. In 1619
Heminges's wife Rebecca died and in 1623 he and Henry Condell produced the Shakespeare
Folio. Towards the end of his life Heminges's was almost solely responsible for the
business affairs of the King's men. After his death in 1630, Heminges's son William sold
Globe and Blackfriars shares to the Kings man John Shank, triggering the dispute recorded
in the Sharers Papers.
GIE
376 words
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boy actors. The early acting industry had no guild structure to regulate
apprenticeship, but nonetheless boys were taken into theatrical companies and trained.
Without guild regulation the system was ad hoc and if formal arrangements were made
the boy was usually officially apprenticed to his master's secondary trade. Prepubescent
boys had the stature and unbroken voices for female impersonation and Samuel Pepys called
Edward Kynaston "the loveliest lady that ever I saw in my life--only her voice not
very good". Where a boy actor's name appears in a stage direction it is often by
reference to the master's name ("Enter John: Skanks Boy"). The relationships
could be warm on both sides: Augustine Phillips's will left gifts to his apprentices and
the wills of Alexander Cooke and Nicholas Tooley refer affectionately to their masters
John Heminges and Richard Burbage respectively. Heminges left 20 shilling to his former
apprentice John Rice (who had since quit the stage) and made him an overseer with Burbage
for his estate, and apprentice John Pyk (or Pig) wrote a charmingly affectionate letter to
the wife of his master, Edward Alleyn.
An average company probably contained between 2 and 5 boy
actors, aged between about 14 and 18 years. The relative scarcity of actors capable of
taking female roles is the main reason that male roles dominate the drama. Frequently
young female characters dress as young men in order to enter into the service of older men
and the obvious homoerotic frisson which is generated indicates that the underlying
maleness and youth of the female impersonator is important. Literary and historical
scholarship is beginning to make sense of this phenomenon in relation to Elizabethan
notions of sexuality and service.
GIE
Davies, W. Robertson Shakespeare's Boy Actors (London: J M Dent, 1939)
Orgel, Stephen Impersonations: The Performance of Gender in Shakespeare's England
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)
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