Shakespearean Playhouses Part 34

From the _Middles.e.x County Records_ (III, 282), we learn that one of their important actors, Thomas Lilleston, was held under bond for having performed "a public stage-play this present 4th of February [1659-60] in the c.o.c.kpit in Drury Lane in the parish of St.

Giles-in-the-Fields, contrary to the law in that case made"; and in the Parish Book[619] of St. Giles we find the entry: "1659. Received of Isack Smith, which he received at the c.o.c.kpit playhouse of several offenders, by order of the justices, 3 8_s._ 6_d._" Shortly after this, it is to be presumed, the company under Rhodes's management secured the "license of the then governing state" mentioned by Downes, and continued thereafter without interruption. The star of this company was Betterton, whose splendid acting at once captivated London. Pepys went often to the theatre, and has left us some interesting notes of his experiences there. On August 18, 1660, he writes:

Captain Ferrers, my Lord's Cornet, comes to us, who after dinner took me and Creed to the c.o.c.kpit play, the first that I have had time to see since my coming from sea, _The Loyall Subject_, where one Kinaston, a boy, acted the Duke's sister, but made the loveliest lady that ever I saw in my life, only her voice not very good.

[Footnote 618: For his troubles with the Master of the Revels see Halliwell-Phillipps, _A Collection of Ancient Doc.u.ments_, p. 26.]

[Footnote 619: Parton, _op. cit._, p. 236.]

Again on October 11, 1660, he writes:

Here in the Park we met with Mr. Salisbury, who took Mr.

Creed and me to the c.o.c.kpit to see _The Moor of Venice_, which was well done. Burt acted the Moor, by the same token a very pretty lady that sat by me called out to see Desdemona smothered.

The subsequent history of the c.o.c.kpit falls outside the scope of the present treatise. The reader who desires to trace the part the building played in the Restoration would do well to consult the numerous doc.u.ments printed by Malone from the Herbert Ma.n.u.script.[620]

[Footnote 620: Malone, _Variorum_, III, 244 ff.]

CHAPTER XIX

SALISBURY COURT

The Salisbury Court Playhouse[621] was projected and built by two men whose very names are unfamiliar to most students of the drama--Richard Gunnell and William Blagrove. Yet Gunnell was a distinguished actor, and was a.s.sociated with the ownership and management of at least two theatres. Even so early as 1613 his reputation as a player was sufficient to warrant his inclusion as a full sharer in the Palsgrave's Company, then acting at the Fortune. When the Fortune was rebuilt after its destruction by fire in 1621, he purchased one of the twelve shares in the new building, and rose to be manager of the company.[622] In addition to managing the company he also, as we learn from the Herbert Ma.n.u.script, supplied the actors with plays. In 1623 he composed _The Hungarian Lion_, obviously a comedy, and in the following year _The Way to Content all Women, or How a Man May Please his Wife_.[623] Of William Blagrove I can learn little more than that he was Deputy to the Master of the Revels. In this capacity he signed the license for Glapthorne's _Lady Mother_, October 15, 1635; and his name appears several times in the Herbert Ma.n.u.script in connection with the payments of various companies.[624] Possibly he was related to Thomas Blagrove who during the reign of Elizabeth was an important member of the Revels Office, and who for a time served as Master of the Revels.

[Footnote 621: The playhouse discussed in this chapter was officially known as "The Salisbury Court Playhouse," and it should always be referred to by that name. Unfortunately, owing to its situation near the district of Whitefriars, it was sometimes loosely, though incorrectly, called "Whitefriars." Since it had no relation whatever to the theatre formerly in the Manor-House of Whitefriars, a perpetuation of this false nomenclature is highly undesirable.]

[Footnote 622: Malone, _Variorum_, III, 66.]

[Footnote 623: Chalmers's _Supplemental Apology_, pp. 216-17. He may also have been the author of a play called _The Masque_, which Herbert in 1624 licensed: "For the Palsgrave's Company, a new play called _The Masque_." In the list of ma.n.u.script plays collected by Warburton we find the t.i.tle _A Mask_, and the authorship ascribed to R. Govell.

Since "R. Govell" is not otherwise heard of, we may reasonably suppose that this was Warburton's reading of "R. Gunell." Gunnell also prefixed a poem to the Works of Captain John Smith, 1626.]

[Footnote 624: Malone, _Variorum_, III, 66, 122, 176, 177.]

What threw these two men together in a theatrical partnership we do not know. But in the summer of 1629 they decided to build a private playhouse to compete with the successful Blackfriars and c.o.c.kpit; and for this purpose they leased from the Earl of Dorset a plot of ground situated to the east of the precinct of Whitefriars. The ground thus leased opened on Salisbury Court; hence the name, "The Salisbury Court Playhouse." In the words of the legal doc.u.ment, the Earl of Dorset "in consideration that Richard Gunnell and William Blagrove should at their costs and charges erect a playhouse and other buildings at the lower end of Salisbury Court, in the parish of St. Bridges, in the ward of Farringdon Without, did demise to the said Gunnell and Blagrove a piece of ground at the same lower end of Salisbury Court, containing one hundred and forty foot in length and forty-two in breadth ... for forty-one years and a half." The lease was signed on July 6, 1629. Nine days later, on July 15, the Earl of Dorset, "in consideration of nine hundred and fifty pounds paid to the said late Earl by John Herne, of Lincoln's Inn, Esquire, did demise to hire the said piece of ground and [the] building [i.e., the playhouse]

thereupon to be erected, and the rent reserved upon the said lease made to Gunnell and Blagrove." Herne's lease was for a term of sixty-one years. The effect of this second lease was merely to make Herne, instead of the Earl of Dorset, the landlord of the players.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A PLAN OF THE SALISBURY COURT PROPERTY

To ill.u.s.trate the lease. (Drawn by the author.)]

The plot of ground selected for the playhouse is described with exactness in the lease printed below. The letters inserted in brackets refer to the accompanying diagram (see page 371):

All that soil and ground whereupon the Barn {A}, at the lower end of the great back court, or yard of Salisbury Court, now stands; and so much of the soil whereupon the whole south end of the great stable in the said court or yard stands, or contains, from that end of that stable towards the north end thereof sixteen foot of a.s.size, and the whole breadth of the said stable {B}; and all the ground and soil on the east and west side of that stable lying directly against the said sixteen foot of ground at the south end thereof between the wall of the great garden belonging to the mansion called Dorset House and the wall that severs the said Court from the lane called Water Lane {C and D}; and all the ground and soil being between the said walls on the east and west part thereof, and the said barn, stable, and ground on both side the same on the south and north parts thereof {E}. Which said several parcells of soil and ground ... contain, in the whole length ... one hundred and forty foot of a.s.size, and in breadth ... forty and two foot of a.s.size, and lies together at the lower end of the said Court.

This plot, one hundred and forty feet in length by forty-two in breadth, was small for its purpose, and the playhouse must have covered all the breadth and most of the length of the leased ground;[625] there was no actual need of leaving any part of the plot vacant, for the theatre adjoined the Court, and "free ingress, egress, and regress" to the building were stipulated in the lease "by, through, and on any part of the Court called Salisbury Court."

[Footnote 625: The Blackfriars auditorium was sixty-six feet in length and forty-six feet in breadth.]

At once Gunnell and Blagrove set about the erection of their playhouse. They may have utilized in some way the "great barn" which occupied most of their property; one of the legal doc.u.ments printed by Cunningham contains the phrase: "and the great barn, which was afterwards the playhouse."[626] If this be true--I think it very doubtful--the reconstruction must have been thorough, for Howes, in his continuation of Stow's _Annals_ (1631), speaks of Salisbury Court as "a new, fair playhouse";[627] and in all respects it seems to have ranked with the best.

[Footnote 626: Cunningham, _The Shakespeare Society's Papers_, IV, 104. In his _Handbook for London_ Cunningham says that the Salisbury Court Playhouse "was originally the 'barn.'"]

[Footnote 627: _Annals_ (1631), p. 1004. In 1633 Prynne (_Histriomastix_) refers to it as a "new theatre erected."]

We know very little of the building. But Wright, in his _Historia Histrionica_, informs us that it was "almost exactly like" the two other private houses, the Blackfriars and the c.o.c.kpit:

_True._ The Blackfriars, c.o.c.kpit, and Salisbury Court were called private houses, and were very small to what we see now. The c.o.c.kpit was standing since the Restoration, and Rhodes' company acted there for some time.

_Love._ I have seen that.

_True._ Then you have seen the other two in effect, for they were all three built almost exactly alike for form and bigness.[628]

[Footnote 628: Collier, _The History of English Dramatic Literature_ (1879), III, 106, thought that Salisbury Court was a round playhouse, basing his opinion on a line in Sharpe's _n.o.ble Stranger_ acted at "the private house in Salisbury Court": "Thy Stranger to the Globe-like theatre."]

In spite of what Wright says, however, there is some reason for believing that Salisbury Court was smaller than the other two private houses. The Epilogue to _Totenham Court_ refers to it as "my little house"; and the Epistle affixed to the second edition of _Sir Giles Goosecappe_ is said to convey the same impression of smallness.[629]

[Footnote 629: I have not been able to examine this. In the only copy of the second edition accessible to me the Epistle is missing.]

According to Malone, Sir Henry Herbert, the Master of the Revels, was "one of the proprietors" of the house, and held a "ninth share" in the profits.[630] This, however, is not strictly accurate. Sir Henry, by virtue of his power to license playhouses, demanded from each organization of players an annual fee. The King's Men gave him two benefit performances a year; Christopher Beeston, on behalf of the c.o.c.kpit in Drury Lane, paid him 60 a year; as for the rest, Herbert tells us that he had "a share paid by the Fortune Players, and a share by the Bull Players, and a share by the Salisbury Court Players."[631]

It seems, therefore, that the Salisbury Court organization was divided into eight shares, and that of the profits an extra, or ninth, share was set aside as a fee for the Master of the Revels.

[Footnote 630: Malone, _Variorum_, III, 178.]

[Footnote 631: Halliwell-Phillipps, _A Collection of Ancient Doc.u.ments_, p. 27.]

The playhouse was ready for use in all probability in the autumn of 1629; and to occupy it a new company of actors was organized, known as "The King's Revels." The chief members of this company were George Stutville, John Young, William Cartwright, William Wilbraham, and Christopher Goad; Gunnell and Blagrove probably acted as managers. In the books of the Lord Chamberlain we find a warrant for the payment of 30 to William Blagrove "and the rest of his company" for three plays acted by the Children of the Revels, at Whitehall, 1631.[632] The Children continued at Salisbury Court until about December, 1631, when they abandoned the playhouse in favor of the much larger Fortune, surrendered by the Palsgrave's Men.

[Footnote 632: See Mrs. Stopes's extracts from the Lord Chamberlain's books, in the Shakespeare _Jahrbuch_ (1910), XLVI, 97. This entry probably led Cunningham to say (_The Shakespeare Society's Papers_, IV, 92) that Blagrove was "Master of the Children of the Revels in the reign of Charles I."]

The Palsgrave's Men, who for many years had occupied the Fortune, seem to have fallen on bad times and to have disbanded. They were reorganized, however, possibly by their old manager, Richard Gunnell, and established in Salisbury Court. The Earl of Dorset, who took a special interest in Salisbury Court, obtained for the troupe a patent to play under the name of the infant Prince Charles, then little more than a year old.[633] The patent bears the date of December 7, 1631; and "The Servants of the High and Mighty Prince Charles" opened at Salisbury Court very soon after[634] with a play by Marmion ent.i.tled _Holland's Leaguer_. The Prologue refers to the going of the King's Revels to the Fortune, and the coming of the new troupe to Salisbury Court:

Gentle spectators, that with graceful eye Come to behold the Muses' colony New planted in this soil, forsook of late By the inhabitants, since made _Fortunate_.

[Footnote 633: For Dorset's interest in the matter see Cunningham, _The Shakespeare Society's Papers_, IV, 96.]

[Footnote 634: In December, 1631; see Malone, _Variorum_, III, 178.]

The Prologue closes thus:

That on our branches now new poets sing; And when with joy he shall see this resort Phoebus shall not disdain to styl't his _Court_.

But the audiences at Salisbury Court were not large. For six performances of the play, says Malone, Sir Henry Herbert received "but one pound nineteen shillings, in virtue of the ninth share which he possessed as one of the proprietors of the house."[635]

[Footnote 635: Malone, _Variorum_, III, 178.]

Of the "new poets" referred to by the Prologue, one, of course, was Marmion himself. Another, I venture to say, was James Shirley, who, as I think, had been engaged to write the company's second play. This was _The Changes_, brought out at Salisbury Court on January 10. The Prologue is full of allusions to the company, its recent misfortunes, and its present attempt to establish itself in its new quarters: