Shakespearean Playhouses Part 17

_Mercutio._ The pox of such antick, lisping, affecting fantasticoes! These new tuners of accents!--"By Jesu, a very good blade!"

At the date of the sale to Burbage, February 4, 1596, the fencing school of Bonetti, had become "those rooms and lodgings, with the kitchen thereunto adjoining, called the Middle Rooms or Middle Stories, late being in the tenure or occupation of Rocco Bonetti, and now being in the tenure or occupation of Thomas Bruskett, gentleman."

To make his playhouse Burbage removed all the part.i.tions in the Middle Rooms, and restored the Parlor to its original form--a great room covering the entire breadth of the building, and extending fifty-two feet in length from north to south. To this he added the Hall at the north, which then existed as two rooms in the occupation of Peter Johnson. The Hall and Parlor when combined made an auditorium described as "per estimacionem in longitudine ab australe ad borealem partem eiusdem s.e.xaginta et s.e.x pedes a.s.sissae sit plus sive minus, et in lat.i.tudine ab occidentale ad orientalem partem eiusdem quadraginto et s.e.x pedes a.s.sissae sit plus sive minus."[301] The forty-six feet of width corresponds to the interior width of the Frater building, for although it was fifty-two feet wide in outside measurement, the stone walls were three feet thick. The sixty-six feet of length probably represents the fifty-two feet of the Parlor plus the breadth of the Hall.

[Footnote 301: Wallace, _The Children of the Chapel at Blackfriars_, p. 39, note 1.]

The ceiling of these two rooms must have been of unusual height. The Infirmary, which was below the Parliament Chamber at the south, was three stories high; and the windows of the Parlor, if we may believe Pierce the Ploughman, were "wrought as a chirche":

An halle for an heygh kinge an household to holden, With brode bordes abouten y-benched well clene, With windowes of glas wrought as a chirche.

[Ill.u.s.tration: REMAINS OF BLACKFRIARS

This remnant of the old monastery was discovered in 1872 on the rebuilding of the offices of _The Times_. It ill.u.s.trates the substantial character of the Blackfriars buildings, and may even be a part of the old Frater, for _The Times_ occupies that portion of the monastery. The windows of the Frater, according to Pierce the Ploughman, were "wrought as a chirche." (From a painting in the Guildhall Museum.)]

As a result Burbage was able to construct within the auditorium at least two galleries,[302] after the manner of the public theatres.

The Parliament Chamber above was kept, as I have stated, for residential purposes. This is why the various legal doc.u.ments almost invariably refer to the playhouse as "that great hall or room, with the rooms over the same."[303]

[Footnote 302: Mr. Wallace, _The Children of the Chapel at Blackfriars_, p. 42, quotes from the Epilogue to Marston's _The Dutch Courtesan_, acted at Blackfriars, "And now, my fine Heliconian gallants, and you, my wors.h.i.+pful friends in the middle region," and adds that the "reference to 'the middle region' makes it clear there were three" galleries. Does it not, however, indicate that there were only two galleries?]

[Footnote 303: See the doc.u.ments printed in Fleay's _A Chronicle History of the London Stage_, pp. 211, 215, 240, etc. Mr. Wallace, however (_The Children of the Chapel at Blackfriars_, p. 40 ff.), would have us believe that an additional story was added: "the roof was changed, and rooms, probably of the usual dormer sort, were built above." I am quite sure he is mistaken.]

The main entrance to the playhouse was at the north, over the "great yard" which extended from the Pipe Office to Water Lane.[304] The stage was opposite this entrance, or at the southern end of the hall, as is shown by one of the doc.u.ments printed by Mr. Wallace.[305] Since the building was not, like the other playhouses of London, open to the sky, the illumination was supplied by candles, hung in branches over the stage; as Gerschow noted, after visiting Blackfriars, "alle bey Lichte agiret, welches ein gross Ansehen macht."[306] The obvious advantage of artificial light for producing beautiful stage effects must have added not a little to the popularity of the Blackfriars Playhouse.

[Footnote 304: Cf. Playhouse Yard in the London of to-day.]

[Footnote 305: _The Children of the Chapel at Blackfriars_, p. 43, note 3.]

[Footnote 306: _The Diary of the Duke of Stettin-Pomerania_, in _Transactions of the Royal Historical Society_ (1892), VI, 26.]

The cost of all the alterations and the equipment could hardly have been less than 300, so that the total cost of the property was at least 900, or in modern valuation approximately $35,000. Burbage's sons, in referring to the building years later, declared that their father had "made it into a playhouse with great charge."

"And," they added significantly, "with great trouble." The aristocratic inhabitants of the Blackfriars precinct did not welcome the appearance in their midst of a "public," or, as some more scornfully designated it, a "common," playhouse; and when they discovered the intentions of Burbage, they wrote a strong pet.i.tion to the Privy Council against the undertaking. This pet.i.tion, presented to the Council in November, 1596, I quote below in part:

To the right honorable the Lords and others of Her Majesty's most honorable Privy Council.--Humbly shewing and beseeching your honors, the inhabitants of the precinct of the Blackfriars, London, that whereas one Burbage hath lately bought certain rooms in the same precinct near adjoining unto the dwelling houses of the right honorable the Lord Chamberlaine [Lord Cobham] and the Lord of Hunsdon, which rooms the said Burbage is now altering, and meaneth very shortly to convert and turn the same into a common playhouse, which will grow to be a very great annoyance and trouble, not only to all the n.o.blemen and gentlemen thereabout inhabiting, but also a general inconvenience to all the inhabitants of the same precinct, both by reason of the great resort and gathering together of all manner of vagrant and lewd persons ... as also for that there hath not at any time heretofore been used any common playhouse within the same precinct, but that now all players being banished by the Lord Mayor from playing within the city ... they now think to plant themselves in liberties, etc.[307]

[Footnote 307: For the full doc.u.ment see Halliwell-Phillipps, _Outlines_, I, 304. For the date, see The Malone Society's _Collections_, I, 91.]

The first person to sign the pet.i.tion was the Dowager Lady Elizabeth Russell; the second was none other than George Cary, Lord Hunsdon, at the time the patron of Burbage's company of actors.[308] It is not surprising, therefore, that as a result of this pet.i.tion the Lords of the Privy Council (of which Lord Cobham was a conspicuous member) issued an order in which they "forbad the use of the said house for plays."[309] This order wrecked the plans of Burbage quite as effectively as did the stubbornness of Gyles Alleyn.

[Footnote 308: Shortly after this he was appointed Lord Chamberlain, under which name his troupe was subsequently known.]

[Footnote 309: Pet.i.tion of 1619, The Malone Society's _Collections_, I, 91.]

Possibly the mental distress Burbage suffered at the hands of the Privy Council and of Gyles Alleyn affected his health; at least he did not long survive this last sling of fortune. In February, 1597, just before the expiration of the Alleyn lease, he died, leaving the Theatre to his son Cuthbert, the bookseller, Blackfriars to his actor-son, Richard, the star of Shakespeare's troupe, and his troubles to both. With good reason Cuthbert declared many years later that the ultimate success of London theatres had "been purchased by the infinite cost and pains of the family of Burbages."

When later in 1597 the Lord Chamberlain's Players were forced to leave Cuthbert's Theatre, Richard Burbage was not able to establish them in his comfortable Blackfriars house; instead, they first went to the old Curtain in Sh.o.r.editch, and then, under the leaders.h.i.+p of the Burbage sons, erected for themselves a brand-new home on the Bankside, called "The Globe."

The order of the Privy Council had summarily forbidden the use of Blackfriars as a "public" playhouse. Its proprietor, however, Richard Burbage, might take advantage of the precedent established in the days of Farrant, and let the building for use as a "private" theatre.[310]

Exactly when he was first able to lease the building as a "private"

house we do not know, for the history of the building between 1597 (when it was completed) and 1600 (when it was certainly occupied by the Children of the Chapel) is very indistinct. We have no definite evidence to connect the Chapel Children, or, indeed, any specific troupe, with Blackfriars during these years. Yet prior to 1600 the building seems to have been used for acting. Richard Burbage himself seems to say so. In leasing the building to Evans, in 1600, he says that he considered "with himself that" Evans could not pay the rent "except the said Evans could erect and keep a company of playing-boys or others to play plays and interludes in the said playhouse in such sort _as before time had been there used_."[311] Now, unless this refers to Farrant's management of the Chapel Boys in Blackfriars--nearly a quarter of a century earlier--it means that before 1600 some actors, presumably "playing-boys," had used Burbage's theatre. Moreover, there seems to be evidence to show that the troupe thus vaguely referred to was under the management of Evans; for, in referring to his lease of Blackfriars in 1600, Evans describes the playhouse as "then or late in the tenure or occupation of your said oratour."[312] What these vague references mean we cannot now with our limited knowledge determine.

But there is not sufficient evidence to warrant the usual a.s.sumption that Evans and Giles had opened the Blackfriars with the Children of the Chapel in 1597.[313]

[Footnote 310: The constables and other officers in the Pet.i.tion of 1619 say: "The owner of the said playhouse, doth under the name of a private house ... convert the said house to a public playhouse." (The Malone Society's _Collections_, I, 91.)]

[Footnote 311: Fleay, _A Chronicle History of the London Stage_, p.

234.]

[Footnote 312: _Ibid._, p. 211.]

[Footnote 313: This theory has been urged by Fleay, by Mr. Wallace in _The Children of the Chapel at Blackfriars_, and by others.]

The known history of Blackfriars as a regular theatre may be said to begin in the autumn of 1600. On September 2 of that year, Henry Evans signed a lease of the playhouse for a period of twenty-one years, at an annual rental of 40. This interesting step on the part of Evans calls for a word of explanation as to his plans.

The Children of the Chapel Royal, who had attained such glory at Blackfriars during the Farrant-Hunnis-Evans-Oxford-Lyly regime, had thereafter sunk into dramatic insignificance. Since 1584, when Lyly was forced to give up his playhouse, they had not presented a play at Court. Probably they did not entirely cease to act, for they can be vaguely traced in the provinces during a part of this period; but their dramatic glory was almost wholly eclipsed. Evans, who had managed the Boys under Hunnis, Oxford, and Lyly, hoped now to reestablish the Children of the Chapel at Blackfriars as they had been in his younger days. Like James Burbage, he was a man of ideas. His plan was to interest in his undertaking the Master of the Chapel, Nathaniel Giles, who had succeeded to the office at the death of Hunnis in 1597, and then to make practical use of the patent granted to the Masters of the Children to take up boys for Her Majesty's service. Such a patent, in the normal course of events, had been granted to Giles, as it had been to his predecessors. It read in part as follows:

Elizabeth, by the grace of G.o.d, &c., to all mayors, sheriffs, bailiffs, constables, and all other our officers, greeting. For that it is meet that our Chapel Royal should be furnished with well-singing children from time to time, we have, and by these presents do authorize our well-beloved servant, Nathaniel Giles, Master of our Children of our said Chapel, or his deputy, being by his bill subscribed and sealed, so authorized, and having this our present commission with him, to take such and so many children as he, or his sufficient deputy, shall think meet, in all cathedral, collegiate, parish churches, chapels, or any other place or places, as well within liberty as without, within this our realm of England, whatsoever they be.[314]

[Footnote 314: The full commission is printed in Wallace, _The Children of the Chapel at Blackfriars_, p. 61.]

In such a commission Evans saw wonderful possibilities. He reasoned that since the Queen had forced upon the Chapel Children the twofold service of singing at royal wors.h.i.+p and of acting plays for royal entertainment, this twofold service should be met by a twofold organization, the one part designed mainly to furnish sacred music, the other designed mainly to furnish plays. Such a dual organization, it seemed to him, was now more or less necessary, since the number of boy choristers in the Chapel Royal was limited to twelve, whereas the acting of plays demanded at least twice as many. Once the principle that the Chapel Royal should supply the Queen with plays was granted, the commission could be used to furnish the necessary actors; and the old fiction, established by Farrant and Hunnis, of using a "private"

playhouse as a means of exercising or training the boys for Court service, would enable the promoters to give public performances and thus handsomely reimburse themselves for their trouble.

Such was Evans's scheme, based upon his former experience with the Children at Farrant's Blackfriars, and suggested, perhaps, by the existence of Burbage's Blackfriars now forbidden to the "common"

players. He presented his scheme to Giles, the Master of the Children; and Giles, no doubt, presented it at Court; for he would hardly dare thus abuse the Queen's commission, or thus make a public spectacle of the royal choristers, without in some way first consulting Her Majesty, and securing at least her tacit consent. That Giles and Evans did secure royal permission to put their scheme into operation is certain, although the exact nature of this permission is not clear.

Later, for misdemeanors on the part of the management, the Star Chamber ordered "that all a.s.surances made to the said Evans concerning the said house, or plays, or interludes, should be utterly void, and to be delivered up to be cancelled."[315]

[Footnote 315: Fleay, _A Chronicle History of the London Stage_, p.

248.]

Armed with these written "a.s.surances," and with the royal commission to take up children, Evans and Giles began to form their company. This explains the language used by Heminges and Burbage: "let the said playhouse unto Henry Evans ... who intended then presently to erect or set up a company of boys."[316] Their method of recruiting players may best be told by Henry Clifton, in his complaint to the Queen:

But so it is, most excellent Sovereign, that the said Nathaniel Giles, confederating himself with one James Robinson, Henry Evans, and others,[317] yet unto Your Majesty's said subject unknown how [many], by color of Your Majesty's said letters patents, and the trust by Your Highness thereby to him, the said Nathaniel Giles, committed, endeavoring, conspiring, and complotting how to oppress diverse of Your Majesty's humble and faithful subjects, and thereby to make unto themselves an unlawful gain and benefit, they, the said confederates, devised, conspired, and concluded, for their own corrupt gain and lucre, to erect, set up, furnish, and maintain a playhouse, or place in the Blackfriars, within Your Majesty's city of London; and to the end they might the better furnish their said plays and interludes with children, whom they thought most fittest to act and furnish the said plays, they, the said confederates, abusing the authority and trust by Your Highness to him, the said Nathaniel Giles, and his deputy or deputies, by Your Highness's said letters patents given and reposed, hath, sithence Your Majesty's last free and general pardon, most wrongfully, unduly, and unjustly taken diverse and several children from diverse and sundry schools of learning and other places, and apprentices to men of trade from their masters, no way fitting for Your Majesty's service in or for your Chapel Royal, but the children have so taken and employed in acting and furnis.h.i.+ng of the said plays and interludes, so by them complotted and agreed to be erected, furnished, and maintained, against the wills of the said children, their parents, tutors, masters, and governors, and to the no small grief and oppressions [of]

Your Majesty's true and faithful subjects. Amongst which numbers, so by the persons aforesaid and their agents so unjustly taken, used and employed, they have unduly taken and so employed one John Chappell, a grammar school scholar of one Mr. Spykes School near Cripplegate, London; John Motteram, a grammar scholar in the free school at Westminster; Nathaniel Field, a scholar of a grammar school in London kept by one Mr. Monkaster;[318] Alvery Trussell, an apprentice to one Thomas Gyles; one Phillipp Pykman and [one] Thomas Grymes, apprentices to Richard and George Chambers; Salmon Pavy,[319] apprentice to one Peerce; being children no way able or fit for singing, nor by any the said confederates endeavoured to be taught to sing, but by them, the said confederates, abusively employed, as aforesaid, only in plays and interludes.[320]

[Footnote 316: _Ibid._, p. 234. Note that Evans is not to "continue" a troupe there, as Fleay and Wallace believe, but to "erect" one.]

[Footnote 317: Possibly Robinson and the "others" were merely deputies.]

[Footnote 318: Field became later famous both as an actor and playwright. His portrait is preserved at Dulwich College.]

[Footnote 319: Salathiel Pavy, whose excellent acting is celebrated in Jonson's tender elegy, quoted in part below.]

[Footnote 320: Star Chamber Proceedings, printed in full by Fleay, _op. cit._, p. 127.]

In spite of the obvious animosity inspiring Clifton's words, we get from his complaint a clear notion of how Evans and Giles supplemented the Children of the Chapel proper with actors. In a short time they brought together at Blackfriars a remarkable troupe of boy-players, who, with Jonson and Chapman as their poets, began to astonish London.

For, in spite of certain limitations, "the children" could act with a charm and a grace that often made them more attractive than their grown-up rivals. Middleton advises the London gallant "to call in at the Blackfriars, where he should see a nest of boys able to ravish a man."[321] Jonson gives eloquent testimony to the power of little Salathiel Pavy to portray the character of old age: