Shakespearean Playhouses Part 6

The following episode tends to prove the same thing. On June 18, 1584, William Fleetwood, Recorder, wrote to Lord Burghley:[96]

Right honorable and my very good lord. Upon Whitsunday there was a very good sermon preached at the new churchyard near Bethelem, whereat my Lord Mayor was with his brethren; and by reason no plays were the same day, all the city was quiet. Upon Monday I was at the Court.... That night I returned to London and found all the wards full of watchers; the cause thereof was for that very near the Theatre or Curtain, at the time of the plays, there lay a prentice sleeping upon the gra.s.s; and one Challes, at Grostock, did turn upon the toe upon the belly of the same prentice.

Whereupon the apprentice start up.

[Footnote 96: The letter is printed in full in The Malone Society's _Collections_, I, 164.]

In the altercation that followed, Challes remarked that "prentices were but the sc.u.m of the world." This led to a general rising of apprentices, and much disorder throughout the city. Fleetwood records the upshot thus:

Upon Sunday my Lord [Mayor] sent two aldermen to the court for the suppressing and pulling down of the Theatre and Curtain. All the Lords [of the Privy Council] agreed thereunto saving my Lord Chamberlain and Mr.

Vice-Chamberlain. But we obtained a letter to suppress them all. Upon the same night I sent for the Queen's Players [at the Theatre?] and my Lord Arundel's Players [at the Curtain?] and they all willingly obeyed the Lords's letters.

The chiefest of Her Highness's Players advised me to send for the owner of the Theatre [James Burbage[97]], who was a stubborn fellow, and to bind him. I did so. He sent me word he was my Lord of Hundson's man, and that he would not come at me; but he would in the morning ride to my lord.

[Footnote 97: This could not have been Hide, as usually stated. Hide had nothing to do with the management of the Theatre, and was not "my Lord of Hunsdon's man." Hide's connection with the Theatre as sketched in this chapter shows the absurdity of such an interpretation of the doc.u.ment.]

The natural inference from all this is that the Queen's Men and Lord Arundel's Men were then playing _outside the city_ where they could be controlled only by "the Lords's Letters"; that the Queen's Men were occupying the Theatre, and that James Burbage was (as we know) not a member of that company, but merely stood to them in the relation of "owner of the Theatre."

What Burbage meant by calling himself "my Lord of Hunsdon's man" is not clear. Mr. Wallace contends that when Leicester's Men were dissolved, Burbage organized "around the remnants of Leicester's Company" a troupe under the patronage of Lord Hunsdon, and that this troupe, and not the Queen's Men, occupied the Theatre thereafter.[98]

But we hear of Hunsdon's Men at Ludlow in July, 1582; and we find them presenting a play at Court on December 27, 1582. Since Leicester's troupe is recorded as acting at Court as late as February 10, 1583, it seems unlikely that Mr. Wallace's theory as to the origin of Hunsdon's Men is true. It may be, however, that after the dissolution of Leicester's Men, Burbage a.s.sociated himself with Hunsdon's Men, and it may be that he allowed that relatively unimportant company to occupy the Theatre for a short time. Hunsdon's Men seem to have been mainly a traveling troupe; Mr. Murray states that notices of them "occur frequently in the provinces," but we hear almost nothing of them in London. Indeed, at the time of the trouble described by Fleetwood, Hunsdon's Men were in Bath.[99] If Burbage was a member of the troupe, he certainly did not accompany them on their extended tours; and when they played in London, if they used the Theatre, they must have used it jointly with the Queen's Men.

[Footnote 98: Wallace, _op. cit._, p. 11.]

[Footnote 99: Murray, _English Dramatic Companies_, I, 321.]

Late in 1585 the Theatre was affiliated with the adjacent Curtain.

Burbage and Brayne made an agreement with the proprietor of that playhouse whereby the Curtain might be used "as an easore" [easer?] to the Theatre, and "the profits of the said two playhouses might for seven years s.p.a.ce be in divident between them." This agreement, we know, was carried out, but whether it led to an exchange of companies, or what effect it had upon the players, we cannot say. Possibly to this period of joint management may be a.s.signed the witticism of d.i.c.k Tarleton recorded as having been uttered "at the Curtain" where the Queen's Men were then playing.[100] It may even be that as one result of the affiliation of the two houses the Queen's Men were transferred to the Curtain.

[Footnote 100: _Tarlton's Jests_, ed. by J.O. Halliwell, p. 16.

Tarleton died in 1588.]

In 1590, as we learn from the deposition of John Alleyn, the Theatre was being used by the Admiral's Men.[101] This excellent company had been formed early in 1589 by the separation of certain leading players from Worcester's Men, and it had probably occupied the Theatre since its organization. Its star actor, Edward Alleyn, was then at the height of his powers, and was producing with great success Marlowe's splendid plays. We may suppose that the following pa.s.sage refers to the performance of the Admiral's Men at the Theatre:

He had a head of hair like one of my devils in _Dr.

Faustus_, when the old Theatre crackt and frightened the audience.[102]

[Footnote 101: Wallace, _op. cit._, pp. 101, 126.]

[Footnote 102: _The Black Booke_, 1604.]

Late in 1590 the Admiral's Men seem to have been on bad terms with Burbage,[103] and when John Alleyn made his deposition, February 6, 1592, they had certainly left the Theatre. Mr. Greg, from entirely different evidence, has concluded that they were dispersed in 1591,[104] and this conclusion is borne out by the legal doc.u.ment cited above.

[Footnote 103: Wallace, _op. cit._, p. 101.]

[Footnote 104: Greg, _Henslowe's Diary_, II, 83. The Admiral's Men were reorganized in 1594, and occupied the Rose under Henslowe's management.]

The next company that we can definitely a.s.sociate with the Theatre was the famous Lord Chamberlain's Men. On April 16, 1594, Lord Strange, the Earl of Derby, died, and the chief members of his troupe--William Shakespeare, Richard Burbage, John Heminges, William Kempe, Thomas Pope, George Bryan, and Augustine Phillips--organized a new company under the patronage of the Lord Chamberlain. For ten days, in June, 1594, they acted at Newington b.u.t.ts under the management of Philip Henslowe, then went, probably at once, to the Theatre, which they made their home until the Burbage lease of the property expired in the spring of 1597. Here, among other famous plays, they produced the original _Hamlet_, thus referred to by Lodge in _Wit's Miserie_, 1596:

He looks as pale as the visard of the ghost which cries so miserably at the Theatre, like an oyster-wife, "Hamlet, revenge!"

And here, too, they presented all of Shakespeare's early masterpieces.

Their connection with the building ceased in 1597 at the expiration of the Burbage lease; but their a.s.sociation with the proprietors of the Theatre was permanent. Their subsequent history, as also the history of the Burbage brothers, will be found in the chapters dealing with the Globe and the Second Blackfriars.[105]

[Footnote 105: For other but unimportant references to the Theatre see The Malone Society's _Collections_, vol. I: disorder at, October, 1577, p. 153; disorder at, on Sunday, April, 1580, p. 46; fencing allowed at, July, 1582, p. 57; fencing forbidden at, May, 1583, p. 62; to be closed during infection, May, 1583, p. 63; complaint against, by the Lord Mayor, September, 1594, p. 76. And see Halliwell-Phillipps, _Outlines_, I, 363, for a special performance there by a "virgin,"

February 22, 1582.]

CHAPTER IV

THE CURTAIN

Although James Burbage was, as his son a.s.serted, "the first builder of playhouses," a second public playhouse followed hard on the Theatre, probably within twelve months. It was erected a short distance to the south of the Theatre,--that is, nearer the city,--and, like that building, it adjoined Finsbury Field.[106] To the two playhouses the audiences came trooping over the meadows, in "great multidudes," the Lord Mayor tells us; and the author of _Tarlton's Newes out of Purgatory_ (_c._ 1589) describes their return to London thus: "With that I waked, and saw such concourse of people through the fields that I knew the play was done."[107]

[Footnote 106: The site is probably marked by Curtain Court in Cha.s.serau's survey of 1745, reproduced on page 79.]

[Footnote 107: Ed. by J.O. Halliwell, for The Shakespeare Society (1844), p. 105.]

The new playhouse derived its name from the Curtain estate, on which it was erected.[108] This estate was formerly the property of the Priory of Holywell, and was described in 1538 as "scituata et existentia extra portas ejusdem nuper monasterii prope pasturam dicte nuper Priorisse, vocatam _the Curteine_."[109] Why it was so called is not clear. The name may have been derived from some previous owner of the property; it may, as Collier thought, have come from some early a.s.sociation with the walls (_curtains_) or defenses of the city; or, it may have come, as Tomlins suggests, from the mediaeval Latin _cortina_, meaning a court, a close, a farm enclosure.[110] Whatever its origin--the last explanation seems the most plausible--the interesting point is that it had no connection whatever with a stage curtain.

[Footnote 108: The Rose and the Red Bull derived their names in a similar way from the estates on which they were erected.]

[Footnote 109: Halliwell-Phillipps, _Outlines_, I, 364.]

[Footnote 110: Tomlins, _Origin of the Curtain Theatre, and Mistakes Regarding It_, in The Shakespeare Society's Papers (1844), p. 29.]

The building was probably opened to the London public in the summer or autumn of 1577. The first reference to it is found in T[homas]

W[hite]'s _Sermon Preached at Pawles Crosse on Sunday the Thirde of November, 1577_: "Behold the sumptuous theatre houses, a continual monument of London's prodigality and folly";[111] and a reference to it by name appears in Northbrooke's _A Treatise_, licensed December, 1577: "Those places, also, which are made up and builded for such plays and interludes, as the Theatre and Curtain."[112]

[Footnote 111: J.D. Wilson, _The Cambridge History of English Literature_, VI, 435, says that this sermon was "delivered at Paul's cross on 9 December, 1576 and, apparently, repeated on 3 November in the following year." This is incorrect; White did preach a sermon at Paul's Cross on December 9, but not the sermon from which this quotation is drawn.]

[Footnote 112: Ed. by J.P. Collier, for The Shakespeare Society (1843), p. 85.]

Like the Theatre, the Curtain was a peculiarly shaped building, specially designed for acting; "those playhouses that are erected and built _only for such purposes_ ... namely the Curtain and the Theatre,"[113] writes the Privy Council; and the German traveler, Samuel Kiechel, who visited London in 1585, describes them as "_sonderbare_" structures. They are usually mentioned together, and in such a way as to suggest similarity of shape as well as of purpose. We may, I think, reasonably suppose that the Curtain was in all essential details a copy of Burbage's Theatre.[114] Presumably, then, it was polygonal (or circular) in shape,[115] was constructed of timber, and was finished on the outside with lime and plaster. The interior, as the evidence already cited in the chapter on the Theatre shows, consisted of three galleries surrounding an open yard. There was a platform projecting into the middle of the yard, with dressing-rooms at the rear, "heavens" overhead, and a flagpole rising above the "heavens." That some sign was displayed in front of the door is likely. Malone writes: "The original sign hung out at this playhouse (as Mr. Steevens has observed) was the painting of a curtain striped."[116] Aubrey records that Ben Jonson "acted and wrote, but both ill, at the Green Curtain, a kind of nursery or obscure playhouse somewhere in the suburbs, I think towards Sh.o.r.editch or Clerkenwell."[117] By "at the Green Curtain" Aubrey means, of course, "at the sign of the Green Curtain"; but the evidence of Steevens and of Aubrey is too vague and uncertain to warrant any definite conclusions.

[Footnote 113: Dasent, _Acts of the Privy Council_, XXVII, 313.]

[Footnote 114: It seems, however, to have been smaller than the Theatre.]

[Footnote 115: Johannes de Witt describes the Theatre and the Curtain along with the Swan and the Rose as "amphitheatra" (see page 167). It is quite possible that Shakespeare refers to the Curtain in the Prologue to _Henry V_ as "this wooden O," though the reference may be to the Globe.]

[Footnote 116: Malone, _Variorum_, III, 54; cf. also Ellis, _The Parish of St. Leonard_.]

[Footnote 117: Did Steevens base his statement on this pa.s.sage in Aubrey?]

Of the early history of the Curtain we know little, mainly because it was not, like certain other playhouses, the subject of extensive litigation. We do not even know who planned and built it. The first evidence of its ownership appears fifteen years after its erection, in some legal doc.u.ments connected with the Theatre.[118] In July, 1592, Henry Lanman, described as "of London, gentleman, of the age of 54 years," deposed: "That true it is about 7 years now shall be this next winter, they, the said Burbage and Brayne, having the profits of plays made at the Theatre, and this deponent having the profits of the plays done at the house called the Curtain near to the same, the said Burbage and Brayne, taking the Curtain as an esore[119] to their playhouse, did of their own motion move this deponent that he would agree that the profits of the said two playhouses might for seven years s.p.a.ce be in divident between them."[120]