Shakespearean Playhouses Part 4

This deponent, being servant, in Bucklersbury, aforesaid, to one Robert Kenningham, grocer, in which street the said John Brayne dwelled also, and of the same trade, he, the said Brayne, at the time he joined with the said James Burbage in the aforesaid lease, was reputed among his neighbors to be worth one thousand pounds at the least, and that after he had joined with the said Burbage in the matter of the building of the said Theatre, he began to slack his own trade, and gave himself to the building thereof, and the chief care thereof he took upon him, and hired workmen of all sorts for that purpose, bought timber and all other things belonging thereunto, and paid all. So as, in this deponent's conscience, he bestowed thereupon for his owne part the sum of one thousand marks at the least, in so much as his affection was given so greatly to the finishing thereof, in hope of great wealth and profit during their lease, that at the last he was driven to sell to this deponent's father his lease of the house wherein he dwelled for 100, and to this deponent all such wares as he had left and all that belonged thereunto remaining in the same, for the sum of 146 and odd money, whereof this deponent did pay for him to one Kymbre, an ironmonger in London, for iron work which the said Brayne bestowed upon the said Theatre, the sum of 40. And afterwards the said Brayne took the matter of the said building so upon him as he was driven to borrow money to supply the same, saying to this deponent that his brother Burbage was not able to help the same, and that he found not towards it above the value of fifty pounds, some part in mony and the rest in stuff.[52]

[Footnote 52: Wallace, _op. cit._, p. 136.]

In reading the next deposition, one should bear in mind the fact that the deponent, Robert Myles, was closely identified with the Brayne faction, and was, therefore, a bitter enemy to the Burbages. Yet his testimony, though prejudiced, gives us a vivid picture of Brayne's activity in the building of the Theatre:

So the said John Brayne made a great sum of money of purpose and intent to go to the building of the said playhouse, and thereupon did provide timber and other stuff needful for the building thereof, and hired carpenters and plasterers for the same purpose, and paid the workmen continually. So as he for his part laid out of his own purse and what upon credit about the same to the sum of 600 or 700 at the least. And in the same time, seeing the said James Burbage nothing able either of himself or by his credit to contribute any like sum towards the building thereof, being then to be finished or else to be lost that had been bestowed upon it already, the said Brayne was driven to sell his house he dwelled in in Bucklersbury, and all his stock that was left, and give up his trade, yea in the end to p.a.w.n and sell both his own garments and his wife's, and to run in debt to many for money, to finish the said playhouse, and so to employ himself only upon that matter, and all whatsoever he could make, to his utter undoing, for he saieth that in the latter end of the finishing thereof, the said Brayne and his wife, the now complainants, were driven to labor in the said work for saving of some of the charge in place of two laborers, whereas the said James Burbage went about his own business, and at sometimes when he did take upon him to do some thing in the said work, he would be and was allowed a workman's hire as other the workman there had.[53]

[Footnote 53: Brayne _v._ Burbage, 1592. Printed in full by Wallace, _op cit._ p. 141.]

The last fling at Burbage is quite gratuitous; yet it is probably true that the main costs of erecting the playhouse fell upon the shoulders of Brayne. The evidence is contradictory; some persons a.s.sert that Burbage paid half the cost of the building,[54] others that Brayne paid nearly all,[55] and still others content themselves with saying that Brayne paid considerably more than half. The last statement may be accepted as true. The a.s.sertion of Gyles Alleyn in 1601, that the Theatre was "erected at the costs and charges of one Brayne and not of the said James Burbage, to the value of one thousand marks,"[56] is doubtless incorrect; more correct is the a.s.sertion of Robert Myles, executor of the Widow Brayne's will, in 1597: "The said John Brayne did join with the said James [Burbage] in the building aforesaid, and did expend thereupon greater sums than the said James, that is to say, at least five or six hundred pounds."[57] Since there is evidence that the playhouse ultimately cost about 700,[58] we might hazard the guess that of this sum Brayne furnished about 500,[59] and Burbage about 200. To equalize the expenditure it was later agreed that "the said Brayne should take and receive all the rents and profits of the said Theatre to his own use until he should be answered such sums of money which he had laid out for and upon the same Theatre more than the said Burbage had done."[60]

[Footnote 54: Wallace, _op. cit._, pp. 213, 217, 263, 265, _et al._]

[Footnote 55: Wallace, _op. cit._, pp. 137, 141, 142, 148, 153.]

[Footnote 56: Alleyn _v._ Burbage, Star Chamber Proceedings, 1601-02; printed by Wallace, _op. cit._, p. 277.]

[Footnote 57: Myles _v._ Burbage and Alleyn, 1597; printed by Wallace, _op. cit._, p. 159; cf. pp. 263, 106, 152.]

[Footnote 58: See Wallace, _op. cit._, p. 277.]

[Footnote 59: This agrees with the claim of Brayne's widow.]

[Footnote 60: Wallace, _op. cit._, p. 120.]

But if Burbage at the outset was "nothing able to contribute any"

great sum of ready money towards the building of the first playhouse, he did contribute other things equally if not more important. In the first place, he conceived the idea, and he carried it as far towards realization as his means allowed. In the second place, he planned the building--its stage as well as its auditorium--to meet the special demands of the actors and the comfort of the audience. This called for bold originality and for ingenuity of a high order, for, it must be remembered, he had no model to study--he was designing the first structure of its kind in England.[61] For this task he was well prepared. In the first place, he was an actor of experience; in the second place, he was the manager of one of the most important troupes in England; and, in the third place, he was by training and early practice a carpenter and builder. In other words, he had exact knowledge of what was needed, and the practical skill to meet those needs.

[Footnote 61: Mr. E.K. Chambers (_The Mediaeval Stage_, I, 383, note 2; II, 190, note 4) calls attention to a "theatre" belonging to the city of Ess.e.x as early as 1548. Possibly the Latin doc.u.ment he cites referred to an amphitheatre of some sort near the city which was used for dramatic performances; at any rate "in theatro" does not necessarily imply the existence of a playhouse (cf., for example, _op.

cit._, I, 81-82). There is also a reference (quoted by Chambers, _op.

cit._, II, 191, note 1, from _Norfolk Archaeology_, XI, 336) to a "game-house" built by the corporation of Yarmouth in 1538 for dramatic performances. What kind of house this was we do not know, but the corporation leased it for other purposes, with the proviso that it should be available "at all such times as any interludes or plays should be ministered or played." Howes, in his continuation of Stow's _Annals_ (1631), p. 1004, declares that before Burbage's time he "neither knew, heard, nor read of any such theatres, set stages, or playhouses as have been purposely built, within man's memory"; and Cuthbert Burbage confidently a.s.serted that his father "was the first builder of playhouses"--an a.s.sertion which, I think, cannot well be denied.]

The building that he designed and erected he named--as by virtue of priority he had a right to do--"The Theatre."

Of the Theatre, unfortunately, we have no pictorial representation, and no formal description, so that our knowledge of its size, shape, and general arrangement must be derived from scattered and miscellaneous sources. That the building was large we may feel sure; the cost of its erection indicates as much. The Fortune, one of the largest and handsomest of the later playhouses, cost only 520, and the Hope, also very large, cost 360. The Theatre, therefore, built at a cost of 700, could not have been small. It is commonly referred to, even so late as 1601, as "the great house called the Theatre," and the author of _Skialetheia_ (1598) applied to it the significant adjective "vast." Burbage, no doubt, had learned from his experience as manager of a troupe the pecuniary advantage of having an auditorium large enough to receive all who might come. Exactly how many people his building could accommodate we cannot say. The Reverend John Stockwood, in 1578, exclaims bitterly: "Will not a filthy play, with the blast of a trumpet, sooner call thither a thousand than an hour's tolling of the bell bring to the sermon a hundred?"[62] And Fleetwood, the City Recorder, in describing a quarrel which took place in 1584 "at Theatre door," states that "near a thousand people" quickly a.s.sembled when the quarrel began.

[Footnote 62: The rest of his speech indicates that he had the Theatre in mind. The pa.s.sage, of course, is rhetorical.]

In shape the building was probably polygonal, or circular. I see no good reason for supposing that it was square; Johannes de Witt referred to it as an "amphitheatre," and the Curtain, erected the following year in imitation, was probably polygonal.[63] It was built of timber, and its exterior, no doubt, was--as in the case of subsequent playhouses--of lime and plaster. The interior consisted of three galleries surrounding an open s.p.a.ce called the "yard." The German traveler, Samuel Kiechel, who visited London in the autumn of 1585, described the playhouses--i.e., the Theatre and the Curtain--as "singular [_sonderbare_] houses, which are so constructed that they have about three galleries, one above the other."[64] And Stephen Gosson, in _Plays Confuted_ (_c._ 1581) writes: "In the playhouses at London, it is the fashion for youths to go first into the yard, and to carry their eye through every gallery; then, like unto ravens, where they spy the carrion, thither they fly, and press as near to the fairest as they can." The "yard" was unroofed, and all persons there had to stand during the entire performance. The galleries, however, were protected by a roof, were divided into "rooms," and were provided for the most part with seats. Gyles Alleyn inserted in the lease he granted to Burbage the following condition:

And further, that it shall or may [be] lawful for the said Gyles and for his wife and family, upon lawful request therefor made to the said James Burbage, his executors or a.s.signs, to enter or come into the premises, and there in some one of the upper rooms to have such convenient place to sit or stand to see such plays as shall be there played, freely without anything therefor paying.[65]

[Footnote 63: One cannot be absolutely sure, yet the whole history of early playhouses indicates that the Theatre was polygonal (or circular) in shape. The only reason for suspecting that it might have been square, doubtfully presented by T.S. Graves in "The Shape of the First London Theatre" (_The South Atlantic Quarterly_, July, 1914), seems to me to deserve no serious consideration.]

[Footnote 64: Quoted by W.B. Rye, _England as Seen by Foreigners_, p.

88.]

[Footnote 65: Wallace, _op. cit._, p. 177.]

The stage was a platform, projecting into the yard, with a tiring-house at the rear, and a balcony overhead. The details of the stage, no doubt, were subject to alteration as experience suggested, for its materials were of wood, and histrionic and dramatic art were both undergoing rapid development.[66] The furnishings and decorations, as in the case of modern playhouses, seem to have been ornate. Thus T[homas] W[hite], in _A Sermon Preached at Pawles Crosse, on Sunday the Thirde of November, 1577_, exclaims: "Behold the sumptuous Theatre houses, a continual monument of London's prodigality"; John Stockwood, in _A Sermon Preached at Paules Cross, 1578_, refers to it as "the gorgeous playing place erected in the Fields"; and Gabriel Harvey could think of no more appropriate epithet for it than "painted"--"painted theatres," "painted stage."

[Footnote 66: There is no reason whatever to suppose, with Ordish, Mantzius, Lawrence, and others, that the stage of the Theatre was removable; for although the building was frequently used by fencers, tumblers, etc., it was never, so far as I can discover, used for animal-baiting.]

The building was doubtless used for dramatic performances in the autumn of 1576, although it was not completed until later; John Grigges, one of the carpenters, deposed that Burbage and Brayne "finished the same with the help of the profits that grew by plays used there before it was fully finished."[67] Access to the playhouse was had chiefly by way of Finsbury Field and a pa.s.sage made by Burbage through the brick wall mentioned in the lease.[68]

[Footnote 67: Wallace, _op. cit._, p. 135.]

[Footnote 68: For depositions to this effect see Halliwell-Phillipps, _Outlines_, I, 350 ff.]

The terms under which the owners let it to the actors were simple: the actors retained as their share the pennies paid at the outer doors for general admission, and the proprietors received as their share the money paid for seats or standings in the galleries.[69] Cuthbert Burbage states in 1635: "The players that lived in those first times had only the profits arising from the doors, but now the players receive all the comings in at the doors to themselves, and half the galleries."[70]

[Footnote 69: I suspect that the same terms were made with the actors by the proprietors of the inn-playhouses.]

[Footnote 70: Halliwell-Phillipps, _Outlines_, I, 317.]

Before the expiration of two years, or in the early summer of 1578, Burbage and Brayne began to quarrel about the division of the money which fell to their share. Brayne apparently thought that he should at once be indemnified for all the money he had expended on the playhouse in excess of Burbage; and he accused Burbage of "indirect dealing"--there were even whispers of "a secret key" to the "common box" in which the money was kept.[71] Finally they agreed to "submit themselves to the order and arbitrament of certain persons for the pacification thereof," and together they went to the shop of a notary public to sign a bond agreeing to abide by the decision of the arbitrators. There they "fell a reasoning together," in the course of which Brayne a.s.serted that he had disbursed in the Theatre "three times at the least as much more as the sum then disbursed by the said James Burbage." In the end Brayne unwisely hinted at "ill dealing" on the part of Burbage, whereupon "Burbage did there strike him with his fist, and so they went together by the ears, in so much," says the notary, "that this deponent could hardly part them." After they were parted, they signed a bond of 200 to abide by the decision of the arbitrators. The arbitrators, John Hill and Richard Turnor, "men of great honesty and credit," held their sessions "in the Temple church,"

whither they summoned witnesses. Finally, on July 12, 1578, after "having thoroughly heard" both sides, they awarded that the profits from the Theatre should be used first to pay the debts upon the building, then to pay Brayne the money he had expended in excess of Burbage, and thereafter to be shared "in divident equally between them."[72] These conditions, however, were not observed, and the failure to observe them led to much subsequent discord.

[Footnote 71: Wallace, _op. cit._, pp. 142, 148.]

[Footnote 72: For the history of this quarrel, and for other details of the award see Wallace, _op. cit._, pp. 102, 119, 138, 142, 143, 148, 152.]

The arbitrators also decided that "if occasion should move them [Burbage and Brayne] to borrow any sum of money for the payment of their debts owing for any necessary use and thing concerning the said Theatre, that then the said James Burbage and the said John Brayne should _join_ in p.a.w.ning or mortgageing of their estate and interest of and in the same."[73] An occasion for borrowing money soon arose.

So on September 26, 1579, the two partners mortgaged the Theatre to John Hide for the sum of 125 8_s._ 11_d._ At the end of a year, by non-payment, they forfeited the mortgage, and the legal t.i.tle to the property pa.s.sed to Hide. It seems, however, that because of some special clause in the mortgage Hide was unable to expel Burbage and Brayne, or to dispose of the property to others. Hence he took no steps to seize the Theatre; but he constantly annoyed the occupants by arrest and otherwise. This unfortunate transference of the t.i.tle to Hide was the cause of serious quarreling between the Burbages and the Braynes, and finally led to much litigation.

[Footnote 73: Wallace, _op. cit._, p. 103.]

In 1582 a more immediate disaster threatened the owners of the Theatre. One Edmund Peckham laid claim to the land on which the playhouse had been built, and brought suit against Alleyn for recovery. More than that, Peckham tried to take actual possession of the playhouse, so that Burbage "was fain to find men at his own charge to keep the possession thereof from the said Peckham and his servants," and was even "once in danger of his own life by keeping possession thereof." As a result of this state of affairs, Burbage "was much disturbed and troubled in his possession of the Theatre, and could not quietly and peaceably enjoy the same. And therefore the players forsook the said Theatre, to his great loss."[74] In order to reimburse himself in some measure for this loss Burbage retained 30 of the rental due to Alleyn. The act led to a bitter quarrel with Alleyn, and figured conspicuously in the subsequent litigation that came near overwhelming the Theatre.

[Footnote 74: See Wallace, _op. cit._, pp. 201, 239, 240, 242.]

In 1585 Burbage, having spent the stipulated 200 in repairing and rebuilding the tenements on the premises, sought to renew the lease, according to the original agreement, for the extended period of twenty-one years. On November 20, 1585, he engaged three skilled workmen to view the buildings and estimate the sum he had disbursed in improvements. They signed a formal statement to the effect that in their opinion at least 220 had been thus expended on the premises.

Burbage then "tendered unto the said Alleyn a new lease devised by his counsel, ready written and engrossed, with labels and wax thereunto affixed, agreeable to the covenant." But Alleyn refused to sign the doc.u.ment. He maintained that the new lease was not a verbatim copy of the old lease, that 200 had not been expended on the buildings, and that Burbage was a bad tenant and owed him rent. In reality, Alleyn wanted to extort a larger rental than 14 for the property, which had greatly increased in value.

On July 18, 1586, Burbage engaged six men, all expert laborers, to view the buildings again and estimate the cost of the improvements.

They expressed the opinion in writing that Burbage had expended at least 240 in developing the property.[75] Still Alleyn refused to sign an extension of the lease. His conduct must have been very exasperating to the owner of the Theatre. Cuthbert Burbage tells us that his father "did often in gentle manner solicit and require the said Gyles Alleyn for making a new lease of the said premises according to the purporte and effect of the said covenant." But invariably Alleyn found some excuse for delay.

[Footnote 75: Wallace, _op. cit._, pp. 229, 234, 228, 233.]

The death of Brayne, in August, 1586, led John Hide, who by reason of the defaulted mortgage was legally the owner of the Theatre, to redouble his efforts to collect his debt. He "gave it out in speech that he had set over and a.s.signed the said lease and bonds to one George Clough, his ... father-in-law (but in truth he did not so),"

and "the said Clough, his father-in-law, did go about to put the said defendant [Burbage] out of the Theatre, or at least did threaten to put him out." As we have seen, there was a clause in the mortgage which prevented Hide from ejecting Burbage;[76] yet Clough was able to make so much trouble, "divers and sundry times" visiting the Theatre, that at last Burbage undertook to settle the debt out of the profits of the playhouse. As Robert Myles deposed in 1592, Burbage allowed the widow of Brayne for "a certain time to take and receive the one-half of the profits of the galleries of the said Theatre ... then on a sudden he would not suffer her to receive any more of the profits there, saying that he must take and receive all till he had paid the debts. And then she was constrained, as his servant, to gather the money and to deliver it unto him."[77]

[Footnote 76: Wallace, _op. cit._, p. 55.]

[Footnote 77: _Ibid._, p. 105.]

For some reason, however, the debt was not settled, and Hide continued his futile demands. Several times Burbage offered to pay the sum in full if the t.i.tle of the Theatre were made over to his son Cuthbert Burbage; and Brayne's widow made similar offers in an endeavor to gain the entire property for herself. But Hide, who seems to have been an honest man, always declared that since Burbage and Brayne "did jointly mortgage it unto him" he was honor-bound to a.s.sign the property back to Burbage and the widow of Brayne jointly. So matters stood for a while.