Shakespearean Playhouses Part 27

[Footnote 491: Hazlitt's Dodsley, XV, 408. If the Kirkham picture represents the interior of any playhouse, it more likely represents the c.o.c.kpit, which was standing at the time of the Restoration.]

The building, as I have indicated, seems to have been completed in or before 1605; but exactly when the Queen's Men moved thither from the Curtain is not clear. The patent issued to the company on April 15, 1609, gives them license to play "within their now usual houses, called the Red Bull in Clerkenwell, and the Curtain in Holywell."[492]

Since they would hardly make use of two big public playhouses at the same time, we might suspect that they were then arranging for the transfer. Moreover, Heath, in his _Epigrams_, printed in 1610 but probably written a year or two earlier, refers to the three important public playhouses of the day as the Globe, the Fortune, and the Curtain. Yet, that the Queen's Men were playing regularly at the Red Bull in 1609 is clear from Dekker's _Raven's Almanack_,[493] and they may have been playing there at intervals after 1605.

[Footnote 492: The Malone Society's _Collections_, I, 270.]

[Footnote 493: Dekker's _Works_ (ed. Grosart), IV, 210-11. I cannot understand why Murray (_English Dramatic Companies_, I, 152-53) and others say that Dekker refers to the Fortune, the Globe, and the Curtain. His puns are clear: "_Fortune_ must favour some ... the _whole world_ must stick to others ... and a third faction must fight like _Bulls_."]

Dekker, in the pamphlet just mentioned, predicted "a deadly war"

between the Globe, the Fortune, and the Red Bull. And he had good reasons for believing that the Queen's Men could successfully compete with the two other companies, for it numbered among its players some of the best actors of the day. The leader of the troupe was Thomas Greene, now chiefly known for the amusing comedy named, after him, _Greene's Tu Quoque_, but then known to all Londoners as the cleverest comedian since Tarleton and Kempe:

_Scat._ Yes, faith, brother, if it please you; let's go see a play at the Globe.

_But._ I care not; any whither, so the clown have a part; for, i' faith, I am n.o.body without a fool.

_Gera._ Why, then, we'll go to the Red Bull; they say Green's a good clown.[494]

[Footnote 494: _Greene's Tu Quoque_, Hazlitt's Dodsley, XI, 240. In May, 1610, there was "a notable outrage at the Playhouse called the Red Bull"; see _Middles.e.x County Records_, II, 64-65.]

The chief playwright for the troupe was the learned and industrious Thomas Heywood, who, like Shakespeare, was also an actor and full sharer in his company. Charles Lamb, who was an ardent admirer of Heywood's plays, enthusiastically styled him "a prose Shakespeare"; and Wordsworth, with hardly less enthusiasm, declared him to have been "a great man."

In 1612 Thomas Greene died, and the leadership of the troupe was taken over by Christopher Beeston, a man well known in the theatrical life of the time. Late in February, 1617, Beeston transferred the Queen's Men to his new playhouse in Drury Lane, the c.o.c.kpit; in little more than a week the sacking of the c.o.c.kpit drove them back to their old quarters, where they remained until the following June. But even after this they seem not to have abandoned the Red Bull entirely.

Edward Alleyn, in his _Account Book_, writes: "Oct. 1, 1617, I came to London in the coach and went to the Red Bull"; and again under the date of October 3: "I went to the Red Bull, and received for _The Younger Brother_ but 3 6_s._ 4_d._"[495] What these two pa.s.sages mean it is hard to say, for they const.i.tute the only references to the Red Bull in all the Alleyn papers; but they do not necessarily imply, as some have thought, that Alleyn was part owner of the playhouse; possibly he was merely selling to the Red Bull Company the ma.n.u.script of an old play.[496]

[Footnote 495: Malone, _Variorum_, III, 223; Young, _The History of Dulwich College_, II, 51; Warner, _Catalogue_, p. 165; Collier, _Memoirs of Edward Alleyn_, p. 107.]

[Footnote 496: The play is not otherwise known; a play with this t.i.tle, however, was entered on the Stationers' Register in 1653.]

At the death of Queen Anne, March 2, 1619, the company was deprived of its "service," and after attending her funeral on May 13, was dissolved. Christopher Beeston joined Prince Charles's Men, and established that troupe at the c.o.c.kpit;[497] the other leading members of Queen Anne's Men seem to have continued at the Red Bull under the simple t.i.tle "The Red Bull Company."

[Footnote 497: For details of this change, and of the quarrels that followed, see the chapter on the c.o.c.kpit.]

In April, 1622, a feltmaker's apprentice named John Gill,[498] while seated on the Red Bull stage, was accidentally injured by a sword in the hands of one of the actors, Richard Baxter. A few days later Gill called upon his fellow-apprentices to help him secure damages. In the forenoon he sent the following letter, now somewhat defaced by time, to Baxter:

Mr. Blackster [_sic_]. So it is that upon Monday last it ...

to be upon your stage, intending no hurt to any one, where I was grievously wounded in the head, as may appear; and in the surgeon's hands, who is to have x_s._ for the cure; and in the meantime my Master to give me maintenance ... [to my]

great loss and hindrance; and therefore in kindness I desire you to give me satisfaction, seeing I was wounded by your own hand ... weapon. If you refuse, then look to yourself and avoid the danger which shall this day ensue upon your company and house. For ... as you can, for I am a feltmaker's prentice, and have made it known to at least one hundred and forty of our ... who are all here present, ready to take revenge upon you unless willingly you will give present satisfaction. Consider there ... think fitting. And as you have a care for your own safeties, so let me have answer forthwith.[499]

[Footnote 498: The name is also given, incorrectly, as Richard Gill.]

[Footnote 499: Jeaffreson, _Middles.e.x County Records_, II, 165-66; 175-76.]

Baxter turned the letter over to the authorities of Middles.e.x (hence its preservation), who took steps to guard the playhouse and actors.

The only result was that prentices "to the number of one hundred persons on the said day riotously a.s.sembled at Clerkenwell, to the terror and disquiet of persons dwelling there."

On July 8, 1622, the Red Bull Company secured a license "to bring up children in the quality and exercise of playing comedies, histories, interludes, morals, pastorals, stage-plays and such like ... to be called by the name of the Children of the Revels."[500] The Children of the Revels occupied the Red Bull until the summer of the following year, 1623, when they were dissolved. The last reference to them is in the Herbert Ma.n.u.script under the date of May 10, 1623.[501]

[Footnote 500: Malone, _Variorum_, III, 62; The Malone Society's _Collections_, I, 284.]

[Footnote 501: Chalmers, _Supplemental Apology_, p. 213.]

In August, 1623, we find the Red Bull occupied by Prince Charles's Men,[502] who, after the dissolution of the Revels Company, had moved thither from the less desirable Curtain.

[Footnote 502: _Ibid._, pp. 213-14.]

Two years later, in 1625, Prince Charles became King, and took under his patronage his father's troupe, the King's Men. Some of the members of the Prince Charles Troupe were transferred to the King's Men, and the rest const.i.tuted a nucleus about which a new company was organized, known simply as "The Red Bull Company."

About this time, it seems, the playhouse was rebuilt and enlarged. The Fortune had been destroyed by fire in 1621, and had just been rebuilt in a larger and handsomer form. In 1625 one W.C., in _London's Lamentation for her Sins_, writes: "Yet even then, Oh Lord, were the theatres magnified and enlarged."[503] This doubtless refers to the rebuilding of the Fortune and the Red Bull. Prynne specifically states in his _Histriomastix_ (1633) that the Fortune and Red Bull had been "lately reedified [and] enlarged." But nothing further is known of the "re-edification and enlargement" of the Red Bull.

[Footnote 503: Quoted by Collier, _The History of English Dramatic Poetry_ (1879), III, 121.]

After its enlargement the playhouse seems to have acquired a reputation for noise and vulgarity. Carew, in 1630, speaks of it as a place where "noise prevails" and a "drowth of wit," and yet as always crowded with people while the better playhouses stood empty. In _The Careless Shepherdess_, acted at Salisbury Court, we read:

And I will hasten to the money-box, And take my shilling out again; I'll go to the Bull, or Fortune, and there see A play for two-pence, and a jig to boot.[504]

[Footnote 504: Malone, _Variorum_, III, 70.]

In 1638, a writer of verses prefixed to Randolph's _Poems_ speaks of the "base plots" acted with great applause at the Red Bull.[505] James Wright informs us, in his _Historia Histrionica_, that the Red Bull and the Fortune were "mostly frequented by citizens and the meaner sort of people."[506] And Edmund Gayton, in his _Pleasant Notes_, wittily remarks: "I have heard that the poets of the Fortune and Red Bull had always a mouth-measure for their actors (who were terrible tear-throats) and made their lines proportionable to their compa.s.s, which were sesquipedales, a foot and a half."[507] Probably the ill repute of the large public playhouses at this time was chiefly due to the rise of private playhouses in the city.

[Footnote 505: Randolph's _Works_ (ed. Hazlitt), p. 504.]

[Footnote 506: Hazlitt's Dodsley, XV, 407.]

[Footnote 507: _Pleasant Notes on Don Quixote_, p. 24.]

In 1635 the Red Bull Company moved to the Fortune, and Prince Charles's Men occupied the Red Bull.

Five years later, at Easter, 1640, Prince Charles's Men moved back to the Fortune, and the Red Bull Company returned to its old home. In a prologue written to celebrate the event,[508] the members of the company declared:

Here, gentlemen, our anchor's fix't.

[Footnote 508: J. Tatham, _Fancies Theatre_. For a fuller discussion of the shifting of companies in 1635 and 1640 see the chapter on "The Fortune."]

This proved true, for the company remained at the Red Bull until Parliament pa.s.sed the ordinance of 1642 closing the playhouses and forbidding all dramatic performances. The ordinance, which was to hold good during the continuance of the civil war, was renewed in 1647, with January 1, 1648, set as the date of its expiration. Through some oversight a new ordinance was not immediately pa.s.sed, and the actors were prompt to take advantage of the fact. They threw open the playhouses, and the Londoners flocked in great crowds to hear plays again. At the Red Bull, so we learn from the newspaper called _Perfect Occurrences_, was given a performance of Beaumont and Fletcher's _Wit Without Money_.

But on February 9, 1648, Parliament made up for its oversight by pa.s.sing an exceptionally severe ordinance against dramatic exhibitions, directing that actors be publicly flogged, and that each spectator be fined the sum of five shillings.

During the dark years that followed, the Red Bull, in spite of this ordinance, was occasionally used by venturous actors. James Wright, in his _Historia Histrionica_, tells us that upon the outbreak of the war the various London actors had gone "into the King's army, and, like good men and true, served their old master, though in a different, yet more honourable capacity. Robinson was killed at the taking of a place (I think Basing House) by Harrison.... Mohun was a captain.... Hart was cornet of the same troop, and Shatterel quartermaster. Allen, of the c.o.c.kpit, was a major.... The rest either lost or exposed their lives for their king."[509] He concludes the narrative by saying that when the wars were over, those actors who were left alive gathered to London, "and for a subsistence endeavoured to revive their old trade privately." They organized themselves into a company in 1648 and attempted "to act some plays with as much caution and privacy as could be at the c.o.c.kpit"; but after three or four days they were stopped by soldiers. Thereafter, on special occasions "they used to bribe the officer who commanded the guard at Whitehall, and were thereupon connived at to act for a few days at the Red Bull, but were sometimes, notwithstanding, disturbed by soldiers."[510] To such clandestine performances Kirkman refers in his Preface to _The Wits, or Sport upon Sport_ (1672): "I have seen the Red Bull Playhouse, which was a large one, so full that as many went back for want of room as had entered; and as meanly as you may now think of these drolls, they were then acted by the best comedians then and now in being." Not, however, without occasional trouble. In Whitelocke's _Memorials_, p. 435, we read: "20 Dec., 1649. Some stage-players in St. John's Street were apprehended by troopers, their clothes taken away, and themselves carried to prison"; again, in _The Perfect Account_, December 27-January 3, 1654-1655: "Dec. 30, 1654.--This day the players at the Red Bull, being gotten into all their borrowed gallantry and ready to act, were by some of the soldiery despoiled of all their bravery; but the soldiery carried themselves very civilly towards the audience."[511] In the _Weekly Intelligencer_, September 11-18, 1655, we find recorded still another sad experience for the actors: "Friday, September 11, 1655.--This day proved tragicall to the players at the Red Bull; their acting being against the Act of Parliament, the soldiers secured the persons of some of them who were upon the stage, and in the tiring-house they seized also upon their clothes in which they acted, a great part whereof was very rich."[512]

[Footnote 509: Hazlitt's Dodsley, XV, 409.]

[Footnote 510: _Ibid._, 409-10.]

[Footnote 511: Cited by C.H. Firth, in _Notes and Queries_, August 18, 1888, series VII, vol. VI, p. 122.]

[Footnote 512: _Ibid._]

On this occasion, however, the soldiers, instead of carrying themselves "very civilly" towards the audience, undertook to exact from each of the spectators the fine of five shillings. The ordinance of Parliament, pa.s.sed February 9, 1648, read: "And it is hereby further ordered and ordained, that every person or persons which shall be present and a spectator at such stage-play or interlude, hereby prohibited, shall for every time he shall be present, forfeit and pay the sum of five shillings to the use of the poor of the parish."[513]