A Book of the Play. Dutton Cook
For a long time the actors had been restricted to the mansions of the nobility, and to the larger inn-yards of the city. In 1574, however, the Earl of Leicester, through his influence with Queen Elizabeth, obtained for his company of players, among whom was included James Burbadge, the father of the famous Shakespearean actor, Richard Burbadge, a patent, under the Great Seal, empowering the actors, "during the queen's pleasure, to use, exercise, and occupy the art and faculty of playing tragedies, comedies, interludes, and stage plays, as well for the recreation of the queen's subjects as for her own solace and pleasure, within the city of London and its liberties, and within any cities, towns, and boroughs throughout England." This most important concession to the players was strenuously opposed by the Lord Mayor and Corporation, who maintained that "the playing of interludes and the resort to the same" were likely to provoke "the infection of the plague," were "hurtfull in corruption of youth," were "great wasting both of the time and thrift of many poor people," and "great withdrawing of the people from publique prayer and from the service of God." At last they proposed, as a compromise, that the players of the queen, or of Lord Leicester—for these titles seem to have been bestowed upon the actors indifferently—should be permitted to perform within the city boundaries upon certain special conditions, to the effect that their names and number should be notified to the Lord Mayor and the Justices of Middlesex and Surrey, and that they should not divide themselves into several companies; that they should be content with playing in private houses, at weddings, &c., without public assemblies, or "if more be thought good to be tolerated," that they should not play openly till the whole deaths in London had been for twenty days under fifty a week; that they should not play on the Sabbath or on holy days until after evening prayer; and that no playing should be in the dark, "nor continue any such time but as any of the auditoire may returne to their dwellings in London before sonne-set, or at least before it be dark." These severe restrictions so far defeated the objects of the civic powers, that they led in truth to the construction of three theatres beyond the Lord Mayor's jurisdiction, but sufficiently near to its boundaries to occasion him grave disquietude. About 1576 Burbadge built his theatre in the Liberty of the Blackfriars—a precinct in which civic authority was at any rate disputed. Within a year or so The Curtain and The Theatre, both in Shoreditch, were also opened to the public. The Mayor and Corporation persistently endeavoured to assert authority over these establishments, but without much practical result. It may be added that the Blackfriars Theatre was permanently closed in 1647, part of the ground on which it stood, adjoining Apothecaries' Hall, still bearing the name of Playhouse Yard; that The Theatre in Shoreditch was abandoned about 1598 (it was probably a wooden erection, and in twenty years might have become untenantable); and that The Curtain fell into disuse at the beginning of the reign of Charles I.
The prices of admission to the theatres varied according to the estimation in which they were held, and were raised on special occasions. "Twopenny rooms," or galleries, were to be found at the larger and more popular theatres. In Goffe's "Careless Shepherdess," 1656, acted at the Salisbury Court Theatre, appear the lines:
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 twopence and a jig to boot.
The money received was placed in a box, and there seems to have been one person specially charged with this duty. Dekker, dedicating one of his plays to his "friends and fellows," the queen's servants, wishes them "a full audience and one honest doorkeeper." Even thus early the absolute integrity of the attendants of the theatre would appear to have been a subject of suspicion. "Penny galleries" are referred to by some early writers, and from a passage in the "Gull's Horn Book," 1609—"Your groundling and gallery commoner buys his sport for a penny"—it is apparent that the charges for admission to the yard, where the spectators stood, and to the galleries, where they sat on benches, were the same. In Dekker's "Satiromastix," one of the characters speaks scornfully of "penny bench theatres," where a gentleman or an honest citizen "might sit with his squirrel by his side cracking nuts." But according to the Induction to Ben Jonson's "Bartholomew Fair," first acted in 1614, at the Hope, a small dirty theatre on the Bankside, which had formerly been used for bear-baiting, the prices there ranged from sixpence to half-a-crown. "It shall be lawful for any man to judge his six pen'worth, his twelve pen'worth, so to his eighteen pence, two shillings, half-a-crown, to the value of his place; provided always his place get not above his wit … Marry, if he drop but sixpence at the door, and will censure a crown's worth, it is thought there is no conscience or justice in that." It is probable, however, that the dramatist was referring to the prices charged at the first representation of his play. Sixpence might then be the lowest admission; on other occasions, twopence, or even one penny. The prologue to "Henry VIII." states:
Those that come to see
Only a show or two, and so agree,
The play may pass; if they be still and willing,
I'll undertake, may see away their shilling
Richly in two short hours.
And there is evidence that in Shakespeare's time one shilling was the price of admission to the best rooms or boxes. Sir Thomas Overbury writes in his "Characters," published in 1614: "If he have but twelve pence in his purse he will give it for the best room in a playhouse." And the "Gull's Horn Book," 1609, counsels, "At a new play you take up the twelvepenny room next the stage, because the lords and you may seem to be hail-fellow well met!"
But it is plain that the tariff of admission was subject to frequent alterations, and that as money became more abundant, the managers gradually increased their charges. In the "Scornful Lady" "eighteen pence" is referred to as though it were the highest price of admission to the Blackfriars Theatre. Sir John Suckling writes, about the middle of the seventeenth century:
The sweat of learned Jonson's brain,
And gentle Shakespeare's easier strain,
A hackney-coach conveys you to,
In spite of all that rain can do,
And for your eighteenpence you sit,
The lord and judge of all fresh wit.
It must always be doubtful, however, as to the precise portion of the theatre these writers intended to designate. As Mr. Collier suggests, the discordances between the authorities on this question arise, probably, from the fact that "different prices were charged at different theatres at different periods."
In our early theatres, the arrangements for receiving the money of the playgoers were rather of a confused kind. There would seem to have been several doors, one within the other, at any of which visitors might tender their admission money. It was understood that he who, disapproving the performance, withdrew after the termination of the first act of the play, was entitled to receive back the amount he had paid for his entrance. This system led to much brawling and fraud. The matter was deemed important enough to justify royal intervention. An order was issued in 1665, reciting that complaints had been made by "our servants, the actors in the Royal Theatre," of divers persons refusing to pay at the first door of the said theatre, thereby obliging the doorkeepers to send after, solicit, and importune them for their entrance-money, and stating it to be the royal will and pleasure, for the prevention of these disorders, and so that such as are employed by the said actors might have no opportunity of deceiving them, that all persons thenceforward coming to the said theatre should at the first door pay their entrance-money, which was to be restored to them again in case they returned the same way before the end of the act. The guards attending the theatre, and all others whom it might concern, were charged to see that this order was obeyed, and to return to the Lord Chamberlain the names of such persons as offered "any violence contrary to this our pleasure."
Apparently the royal decree was not very implicitly obeyed by the playgoers. At any rate we find, under date January 7th, 1668, the following entry in Mr. Pepys's "Diary" bearing upon the matter: "To the Nursery, but the house did not act to-day; and so I to the other two playhouses, into the pit to gaze up and down, and there did by this means for nothing see an act in the 'School of Compliments,' at the Duke of York's house, and 'Henry IV.' at the King's House; but not liking either of the plays, I took my coach again and home." At the trial of Lord Mohun,