SEARCH FOR THE NORTHWEST PASSAGE BY FROBISHER
A.D. 1576
GEORGE BEST
Martin Frobisher, the English navigator, was born in Yorkshire about 1535. When a lad he went to sea, and seems early to have dreamed of a shorter route to China through the Arctic Ocean. He became the pioneer in the long search for a northwest passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific by the northern coasts of the American continent. He even contemplated the planting of English colonies on the Pacific shore of the New World.Columbus had found the western way to China barred by the continent of America. Magellan discovered a southwest passage around that continent. Half a century later Frobisher entered upon the northern quest.Frobisher was poorly educated, and wrote with difficulty. The narrative of his first voyage was written by George Best from an account furnished by Frobisher himself, whom Best accompanied on his second and third voyages. The present narrative has therefore all the value of a first-hand record, and it is included in thePrincipal Navigationsof Hakluyt.Although over two hundred voyages have now been made in search of this passage, which in 1850-1854 was achieved by Sir Robert McClure, the long-cherished hopes of its advantages have not been realized. The route, for commercial purposes, is thus far quite useless, owing to arctic conditions. Great gains, however, through these expeditions, have been made in scientific knowledge.
Martin Frobisher, the English navigator, was born in Yorkshire about 1535. When a lad he went to sea, and seems early to have dreamed of a shorter route to China through the Arctic Ocean. He became the pioneer in the long search for a northwest passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific by the northern coasts of the American continent. He even contemplated the planting of English colonies on the Pacific shore of the New World.
Columbus had found the western way to China barred by the continent of America. Magellan discovered a southwest passage around that continent. Half a century later Frobisher entered upon the northern quest.
Frobisher was poorly educated, and wrote with difficulty. The narrative of his first voyage was written by George Best from an account furnished by Frobisher himself, whom Best accompanied on his second and third voyages. The present narrative has therefore all the value of a first-hand record, and it is included in thePrincipal Navigationsof Hakluyt.
Although over two hundred voyages have now been made in search of this passage, which in 1850-1854 was achieved by Sir Robert McClure, the long-cherished hopes of its advantages have not been realized. The route, for commercial purposes, is thus far quite useless, owing to arctic conditions. Great gains, however, through these expeditions, have been made in scientific knowledge.
Which thing being well considered and familiarly known to our General, Captain Frobisher, as well for that he is thoroughly furnished of the knowledge of the sphere and all other skills appertaining to the art of navigation, as also for the confirmation he hath of the same by many years' experience both by sea and land; and being persuaded of a new and nearer passage to Cataya[1]than by Cabo de Buona Sperança, which the Portugals yearly use, he began first with himself to devise, and then with his friends to confer, and laid a plain plot unto them that that voyage was not only possible by the northwest, but also, he could prove, easy to be performed. And further, he determined and resolved with himself to go make full proof thereof, and to accomplish or bring true certificate of the truth, or else never to return again; knowing this to be the only thing of the world that was left yet undone, whereby a notable mind might be made famous and fortunate.
But although his will were great to perform this notable voyage,[2]whereof he had conceived in his mind a great hope by sundry sure reasons and secret intelligence, which here, for sundry causes, I leave untouched; yet he wanted altogether means and ability to set forward and perform the same. Long time he conferred with his private friends of these secrets, and made also many offers for the performing of the same in effect unto sundry merchants of our country, above fifteen years before he attempted the same, as by good witness shall well appear, albeit some evil-willers, which challenge to themselves the fruits of other men's labors, have greatly injured him in the reports of the same, saying that they have been the first authors of that action, and that they have learned him the way, which themselves as yet have never gone. But perceiving that hardly he was hearkened unto of the merchants, which never regard virtue without sure, certain, and present gains, he repaired to the court, from whence, as from the fountain of our common wealth, all good causes have their chief increase and maintenance, and there laid open to many great estates and learned men the plot and sum of his device. And among many honorable minds which favored his honest and commendable enterprise, he was specially bound and beholding to the Right Honorable Ambrose Dudley, Earl of Warwick, whose favorable mind and good disposition hath always been ready to countenance and advance all honest actions, with the authors and executers of the same. And so by means of my lord his honorable countenance he received some comfort of his cause, and by little and little, with no small expense and pain, brought his cause to some perfection, and had drawn together so many adventurers and such sums of money as might well defray a reasonable charge to furnish himself to sea withal.
He prepared two small barks of twenty and five-and-twenty ton apiece, wherein he intended to accomplish his pretended voyage. Wherefore, being furnished with the aforesaid two barks, and one small pinnace of ten ton burden, having therein victuals and other necessaries for twelve months' provision, he departed upon the said voyage from Blackwall, the 15. of June,[3]Anno Domini 1576.
One of the barks wherein he went was named the Gabriel, and the other the Michael; and, sailing northwest from England upon the 11. of July he had sight of an high and ragged land, which he judged to be Frisland,[4]whereof some authors have made mention; but durst not approach the same by reason of the great store of ice that lay alongst the coast, and the great mists that troubled them not a little. Not far from thence he lost company of his small pinnace, which by means of the great storm he supposed to be swallowed up of the sea; wherein he lost only four men. Also the other bark, named the Michael, mistrusting the matter, conveyed themselves privily away from him, and returned home, with great report that he was cast away.
The worthy captain, notwithstanding these discomforts, although his mast was sprung and his topmast blown overboard with extreme foul weather, continued his course toward the northwest, knowing that the sea at length must needs have an ending and that some land should have a beginning that way; and determined therefore at the least to bring true proof what land and sea the same might be so far to the northwestward, beyond any that man hath heretofore discovered. And the 20. of July he had sight of an high land, which he called "Queen Elizabeth's Foreland,"[5]after her majesty's name. And sailing more northerly alongst that coast, he descried another foreland,[6]with a great gut, bay, or passage, dividing as it were two main lands or continents asunder. There he met with store of exceeding great ice all this coast along, and, coveting still to continue his course to the northward, was always by contrary wind detained overthwart these straits, and could not get beyond.
Within few days after, he perceived the ice to be well consumed and gone, either there engulfed in by some swift currents or indrafts, carried more to the southward of the same straits, or else conveyed some other way; wherefore he determined to make proof of this place, to see how far that gut had continuance, and whether he might carry himself through the same into some open sea on the back side, whereof he conceived no small hope; and so entered the same the one-and-twentieth of July, and passed above fifty leagues therein, as he reported, having upon either hand a great main or continent. And that land upon his right hand as he sailed westward he judged to be the continent of Asia, and there to be divided from the firm of America, which lieth upon the left hand over against the same.
This place he named after his name, "Frobisher's Straits,"[7]like as Magellanus at the southwest end of the world, having discovered the passage to the South Sea, where America is divided from the continent of that land, which lieth under the south pole, and called the same straits "Magellan's Straits."
After he had passed sixty leagues into this aforesaid strait, he went ashore, and found signs where fire had been made. He saw mighty deer, that seemed to be mankind, which ran at him; and hardly he escaped with his life in a narrow way, where he was fain to use defence and policy to save his life. In this place he saw and perceived sundry tokens of the peoples resorting thither. And being ashore upon the top of a hill, he perceived a number of small things fleeting in the sea afar off, which he supposed to be porpoises, or seals, or some kind of strange fish; but coming nearer, he discovered them to be men in small boats made of leather. And before he could descend down from the hill, certain of those people had almost cut off his boat from him, having stolen secretly behind the rocks for that purpose; where he speedily hastened to his boat, and bent himself to his halberd, and narrowly escaped the danger, and saved his boat.
Afterward he had sundry conferences with them, and they came aboard his ship, and brought him salmon and raw flesh and fish, and greedily devoured the same before our men's faces. And to show their agility, they tried many masteries upon the ropes of the ship after our mariners' fashion, and appeared to be very strong of their arms and nimble of their bodies. They exchanged coats of seals' and bears' skins, and such like, with our men, and received bells, looking-glasses, and other toys in recompense thereof again. After great courtesy and many meetings, our mariners, contrary to their captain's direction, began more easily to trust them; and five of our men going ashore were by them intercepted with their boat, and were never since heard of to this day again; so that the captain being destitute of boat, bark, and all company, had scarcely sufficient number to conduct back his bark again.
He could now neither convey himself ashore to rescue his men, if he had been able, for want of a boat; and again the subtle traitors were so wary, as they would after that never come within our men's danger. The captain, notwithstanding, desirous of bringing some token from thence of his being there, was greatly discontented that he had not before apprehended some of them; and, therefore, to deceive the deceivers, he wrought a pretty policy. For knowing well how they greatly delighted in our toys, and specially in bells, he rang a pretty loud bell, making signs that he would give him the same who would come and fetch it. And because they would not come within his danger for fear, he flung one bell unto them, which of purpose he threw short, that it might fall into the sea and be lost. And to make them more greedy of the matter he rang a louder bell, so that in the end one of them came near the ship side to receive the bell. Which when he thought to take at the captain's hand, he was thereby taken himself; for the captain, being readily provided, let the bell fall, and caught the man fast, and plucked him with main force, boat and all, into his bark out of the sea. Whereupon, when he found himself in captivity, for very choler and disdain he bit his tongue in twain within his mouth; notwithstanding, he died not thereof, but lived until he came in England, and then he died of cold which he had taken at sea.
Now with this new prey, which was a sufficient witness of the captain's far and tedious travel toward the unknown parts of the world, as did well appear by this strange infidel, whose like was never seen, read, nor heard of before, and whose language was neither known nor understood of any, the said Captain Frobisher returned homeward, and arrived in England, in Harwich, the second of October following, and thence came to London, 1576, where he was highly commended of all men for his great and notable attempt, but specially famous for the great hope he brought of the passage to Cataya.
And it is especially to be remembered that at their first arrival in those parts there lay so great store of ice all the coast along, so thick together, that hardly his boat could pass unto the shore. At length, after divers attempts, he commanded his company, if by any possible means they could get ashore, to bring him whatsoever thing they could first find, whether it were living or dead, stock or stone, in token of Christian possession, which thereby he took in behalf of the Queen's most excellent majesty, thinking that thereby he might justify the having and enjoying of the same things that grew in these unknown parts.
Some of his company brought flowers, some green grass; and one brought a piece of black stone, much like to a sea coal in color, which by the weight seemed to be some kind of metal or mineral. This was a thing of no account in the judgment of the captain at first sight; and yet for novelty it was kept, in respect of the place from whence it came. After his arrival in London, being demanded of sundry his friends what thing he had brought them home out of that country, he had nothing left to present them withal but a piece of this black stone. And it fortuned a gentlewoman, one of the adventurer's wives, to have a piece thereof, which by chance she threw and burned in the fire, so long that at the length being taken forth, and quenched in a little vinegar, it glistened with a bright marquesite of gold. Whereupon the matter being called in some question, it was brought to certain gold-finers in London to make assay thereof, who gave out that it held gold, and that very richly for the quantity.[8]Afterward the same gold-finers promised great matters thereof if there were any store to be found, and offered themselves to adventure for the searching of those parts from whence the same was brought. Some that had great hope of the matter sought secretly to have a lease at her majesty's hands of those places, whereby to enjoy the mass of so great a public profit unto their own private gains.
In conclusion, the hope of more of the same gold ore to be found kindled a greater opinion in the hearts of many to advance the voyage again. Whereupon preparation was made for a new voyage against the year following, and the captain more specially directed by commission for the searching more of this gold ore than for the searching any further discovery of the passage. And being well accompanied with divers resolute and forward gentlemen, her majesty then lying at the Right Honorable the Lord of Warwick's house, in Essex, he came to take his leave; and kissing her highness' hands, with gracious countenance and comfortable words departed toward his charge.
BUILDING OF THE FIRST THEATRE IN ENGLAND
A.D. 1576
KARL MANTZIUS
A History of the Theatre, the scholarly work of Mantzius, has had no time to become a classic—published 1904—but certainly the author has delved into his subject with a minuteness and presented it with a lively interest which fully justify the selection of his work for presentation here.The theatre has become so prominent an institution among us that its origin must be of interest to all; and the building of the first theatre is inextricably interwoven with the larger and vaguer story of the rise of the modern drama itself. The dramatic arts of Greece and Rome had never been wholly forgotten. Their traditions survived in Italy in the crude pantomime performances of the common people. Practically, however, the Middle Ages invented a new dramatic art of their own, developed from the gorgeous religious pantomime of the church services. The theatre was born of the cathedral; the stage, of the altar.The plays, at first purely religious, rapidly developed a comic side, which by degrees became their central theme. The moral purpose of the performance was forgotten; and the Church disowned its evil changeling. To none of these early plays can the term "drama" be accurately applied; for each and all of them lack plot. They are merely a series of disconnected scenes, pictures having small connection and less development. The idea of pursuing a single, slowly developing story to its climax and conclusion dawns upon the modern stage only with the English Elizabethan drama.Despite our imperfect knowledge of the plays and players of that time, one feels almost justified in saying that the modern drama was created about 1580 by Christopher Marlowe and was raised to the highest point of its development about 1600 by William Shakespeare.
A History of the Theatre, the scholarly work of Mantzius, has had no time to become a classic—published 1904—but certainly the author has delved into his subject with a minuteness and presented it with a lively interest which fully justify the selection of his work for presentation here.
The theatre has become so prominent an institution among us that its origin must be of interest to all; and the building of the first theatre is inextricably interwoven with the larger and vaguer story of the rise of the modern drama itself. The dramatic arts of Greece and Rome had never been wholly forgotten. Their traditions survived in Italy in the crude pantomime performances of the common people. Practically, however, the Middle Ages invented a new dramatic art of their own, developed from the gorgeous religious pantomime of the church services. The theatre was born of the cathedral; the stage, of the altar.
The plays, at first purely religious, rapidly developed a comic side, which by degrees became their central theme. The moral purpose of the performance was forgotten; and the Church disowned its evil changeling. To none of these early plays can the term "drama" be accurately applied; for each and all of them lack plot. They are merely a series of disconnected scenes, pictures having small connection and less development. The idea of pursuing a single, slowly developing story to its climax and conclusion dawns upon the modern stage only with the English Elizabethan drama.
Despite our imperfect knowledge of the plays and players of that time, one feels almost justified in saying that the modern drama was created about 1580 by Christopher Marlowe and was raised to the highest point of its development about 1600 by William Shakespeare.
At the date of Shakespeare's birth, 1564, no permanent theatre as yet existed in England. But there had long existed a class of professional actors, descended partly from the mystery and the miracle-playing artisans of the Middle Ages, partly from the strolling players, equilibrists, jugglers, and jesters. Professional Italian actors, players of thecommedia dell' arte, who in the sixteenth century spread their gay and varied art all over Europe, also supplied English players with that touch of professional technique in which their somewhat vacillating and half-amateurish arts were still wanting.
While, however, as far as France is concerned, the Italian influence must strike everybody who studies the stage history of the country, the evidence of a fertilization of English scenic art by the commedia dell' arte is scanty. Yet I think it is sufficient to deserve more attention than has hitherto been bestowed upon it.
In any case there is sufficient evidence to prove that Italian professional actors penetrated into England and exercised their art there.
In January, 1577, an Italian comedian came to London with his company. The English called him Drousiano, but his real name was Drousiano Martinelli, the same who, with his brother Tristano, visited the court of Philip II, and there is no reason to suppose that he was either the first or the last of his countrymen who tried to carry off English gold from merry London. The typical Italian masks are quite well known to the authors of that period. Thus Thomas Heywood mentions all these doctors, zanies, pantaloons, and harlequins, in which the French, and still more the Italians, distinguished themselves. In Kyd'sSpanish Tragedy, and in Ben Jonson'sThe Case is Altered, mention is made of the Italian improvised comedy, and a few of the well-known types of character in the dramatic literature of the time bear distinct traces of having been influenced by Italian masks,e.g., Ralph Roister Doister in Udall's comedy of that name; as well as the splendid Captain Bobadill and his no less amusing companion, Captain Tucca, in Ben Jonson'sEvery Man in his HumourandThe Poetaster, all of which are reproductions of the typicalcapitano.
However, it is not these literary testimonies that I consider the most striking evidence of the influence of Italian professional technique on English professional actors. It is a remarkable discovery made by the highly esteemed Shakespearean archaeologist, Edmund Malone, about a century ago, in Dulwich College, that mine of ancient English dramatic research, founded by the actor Edward Alleyn.
Among the notes left by the old pawnbroker and theatrical manager, Henslowe, and the various papers, letters, parts, accounts, etc., of his son-in-law, the famous and very wealthy actor Alleyn, among these rare documents, to which we owe a great part of our knowledge of the Shakespearean stage, Malone found four remarkable card-board tables, on which the plots of as many plays were put down, together with the names of the persons represented, their entrances and exits, cues for music, sonnets, etc.
According to Collier's description, these tables—one of which only is preserved, the three others having disappeared through the carelessness and disorder which at that time prevailed in the Dulwich treasury—were about fifteen inches in length and nine in breadth. They were divided into two columns, and between these, toward the top of the table, there was a square hole for hanging it up on a hook or some such thing. They bore the following titles:
The last-mentioned play is known for certain to have been composed by the excellent comic actor, Richard Tarlton. Gabriel Harvey, the astrologist, and the implacable antagonist of Thomas Nash, tells us in his letters how Tarlton himself in Oxford invited him to see his celebrated play onThe Seven Deadly Sins; Harvey asked him which of the seven was his own deadly sin, and he instantly replied, "By G——, the sinne of other gentlemen, lechery."
Tarlton died in the year 1588, and some of the other plays, especiallyThe Dead Man's Fortune, are considered to be a good deal older than his. They belong, therefore, to an early period of the English Renaissance stage.
These four tables caused considerable trouble to Malone and his contemporary Steevens, as well as to later investigators, as they are without equals in the archæology of the English stage. If these men had known that such tables, containing the plot of the piece which was acted at the time, were always hung upon the stage of the Italian commedia dell' arte in order to assist the memory of the improvising actors, they would have seen instantly that their essential historical importance to us consists in their showing by documentary evidence how the early Elizabethan scenic art in its outer form was influenced and improved by the Italians.
The fact that one of the principal characters in the oldest scenario,The Dead Man's Fortune, bears the name of "Panteloun" further confirms this supposition.
This is not the place to investigate how far the English were influenced by Italian professional dramatic art. At any rate, the English national character differed too much from the Italian to allow it to receive more than an outward and formal stamp. And even this superficial effect is much less significant in England than in France. Still, we are certainly not mistaken in assuming that it helped to strengthen English dramatic art, which already possessed no small amount of power; and we may take it for granted that about the time of Shakespeare's birth London possessed a socially and professionally organized class of actors, in spite of the fact that they did not yet possess a theatre of their own.
Before proper theatres were built, and after the time of the great mysteries, the actors found a refuge for their art chiefly in the inns, those splendid and expensive old public-houses which convey to our minds the idea of old-fashioned and picturesque comfort; where the nobility and clergy sought their quarters in winter, and where the carriers unloaded their goods in the large square yards, which were surrounded on all sides by the walls of the inn. On these walls there were galleries running all round, supported by wooden pillars and with steep picturesque ladders running up to them.
It was in these yards of the Cross Keys in Gracechurch Street, of The Bull in Bishopsgate Street, La Belle Sauvage on Ludgate Hill, or the Tabbard Inn in Southwark that the actors set up their stages. Perhaps it was this very circumstance that became one of the indirect reasons why they finally were obliged to build a house for themselves.
Certainly the inns offered advantages to the actors; they were meeting-places for the public, frequented by lords and other persons of distinction; probably the companies paid next to nothing for the use of them. In themselves they afforded good room for the audience, with a natural pit for ordinary people in the yard, and with more comfortable "boxes" for the more distinguished part of the audience on the surrounding balconies and at the windows facing the yard.
On the other hand, these inn-theatres had their drawbacks. In the first place, the actors were not on their own ground, and so, after all, they were only tolerated. Secondly, it must have been very difficult for them to keep to regular prices, and especially to secure the payment of the entrance fee, as they had probably to collect the money during or after the performance, thus depending on the liberality of the public for their remuneration. And finally, worst of all, they were led into quarrels with the lord mayor and with the citizens.
Indeed, it is not unlikely that these performances in the inns caused a good deal of noise and disturbance in the quarters where they took place, and that the joyous, but by no means refined or quiet, "pit," when going home, excited by one of Tarlton's jigs and by the strong ale of the inn, was not animated by very respectful feelings toward their sour Puritan fellow-citizens, who were scandalized as they watched "merry London" crowding past their windows. Nor is it improbable that these anything but respectful feelings vented themselves in some of the coarse expressions in which the plays of those times abound, where Puritanism, the sworn enemy, is concerned; "this barbarous sect," as it is called by a modern English author, "from whose inherited and contagious tyranny this nation is as yet but imperfectly released."
It is certain, at any rate, that the Puritan citizens entertained a deep and sincere hatred of anything connected with plays and actors, and if it had been in their power to do what they liked, the world would once for all have been relieved of such pernicious and wicked vagabonds as William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, and Ben Jonson.
Fortunately, however, this power did not lie with the Puritans only.
Luckily, this sect, which like a malicious growth seemed to have gathered to itself all the stubbornness, insensibility, and rude obstinacy of the nation, was counterbalanced by a refined and intellectual nobility, which was inspired by the new artistic and philosophical thought of the Renaissance, and seemed to foresee, if not fully to recognize, what a mine of poetry the English theatre of those times was destined to be. Thanks to men like Sir Francis Walsingham, Lords Leicester, Nottingham, Strange, and Sussex, the drama resisted for a time the violent and unwearied attacks of the Puritans. Most fortunately for the actors also, Queen Elizabeth, as well as her successors, James I and Charles I, was fond of plays and favorably inclined toward their performers.
Elizabeth rendered a great service to the actors by placing them under the patronage of the nobility. The municipal authorities, who were frequently Puritan, considered neither dramatic art nor dramatic poetry as an acceptable means of livelihood; consequently, those who cultivated these noble arts easily exposed themselves to being treated as "masterless men," unless they could give a reference to some distinguished aristocratic name.
The Queen ordered by law—in a statute which has often been misunderstood—"that all common players of interludes wandering abroad, other than players of interludes belonging to any baron of this realme, or any other honorable personage of greater degree, to be authorized to play under the hand and seale of arms of such baron or personage, shall be adjudged and deemed rogues and vagabonds"; in other words, the Queen urged all actors, for their own sakes, to place themselves under the patronage of some nobleman, in order to protect them against the persecution of the Puritan citizens.
But even such mighty protection could not entirely shield them, and it was this very power of the London corporation to injure the actors that caused the establishment of the first London theatre.
In the year 1572 the plague broke out in London; it killed many thousands of people, and kept recurring at certain intervals during the next twenty or thirty years, carrying horror and death with it. Under these circumstances all dramatic performances were prohibited for a time in London, a precaution which was reasonable enough, as the dense crowding of people might have helped to spread the disease. But the magistrate seems to have caught eagerly at this opportunity of interfering.
In Harrison'sDescription of Englandthe event is reported as follows: "Plaies are banished for a time out of London, lest the resort unto them should ingender a plague, or rather disperse it, being already begonne. Would to God these comon plaies were exiled for altogether as seminaries of impiety, and their theatres pulled downe as no better than houses of baudrie. It is an evident token of a wicked time when plaiers wexe so rich that they can build suche houses. As moche I wish also to our comon beare baitinges used on the Sabaothe daies."
We cannot help noticing the predilection of the Puritans for the coarse bear-fights, which in their opinion were only displeasing to God when performed on a Sabbath, whereas the playhouses at any time were no better than the "ill-famed stews" in Southwark. It cannot be denied, however, that under the prevailing circumstances it was quite right that the playhouses should be temporarily forbidden.
But the sudden and unwarranted expulsion of all dramatic performances from the precincts of London a few years later, 1575, cannot be accounted for otherwise than by the increasing popularity which these plays enjoyed among the non-Puritan public, and the envy with which the clergy saw the people crowding much more to the places where actors interpreted the rising poets than to those where the preachers themselves enunciated their gloomy doctrine.
In the year 1574 the actor James Burbage, with four other actors, all belonging to the retinue of the Earl of Leicester, had received permission from the Queen to perform all kinds of plays anywhere in England, "for the recreation of her beloved subjects as well as for her own comfort and pleasure, if it should please her to see them."
Perhaps it was a counter-move on the part of the Puritan community when the lord mayor and the corporation in the following year straightway forbade all plays within the precincts of the town. If so, it proved a failure. James Burbage resolutely hired a liberty outside the city, and here, in 1576, on the premises of an ancient Roman Catholic priory, he built the first English playhouse, which he named "The Theatre."
In the following year The Theatre gained an ally in "The Curtain," which was built in the same neighborhood, both, of course, causing great indignation among the Puritans. In 1577, the year after the first playhouse had been erected, there appeared a furious pamphlet, by John Northbrooke, against "dicing, dancing, plays and interludes as well as other idle pastimes."
No doubt all possible means were taken to have plays forbidden and the playhouses pulled down, but though the attack of the Black Army never ceased for a moment, the Puritans did not succeed in getting the better of the theatres till the year 1642, when they acquired political power through the civil war; and, fortunately for the part of mankind which appreciates art, this precious flower of culture, one of the richest and most remarkable periods in the life of dramatic art, had developed into full bloom before the outbreak of the war.
In a sermon of 1578 we read the following bitter and deep-drawn sigh by the clergyman John Stockwood: "Wyll not a fylthye playe wyth the blast of a trumpette sooner call thyther a thousande than an houres tolling of a bell bring to the sermon a hundred?—nay, even heere in the Citie, without it be at this place and some other certaine ordinarie audience, where shall you finde a reasonable company?—whereas, if you resort to the Theatre, The Curtayne, and other places of playes in the Citie, you shall on the Lord's Day have these places, with many other that I cannot reckon, so full as possible they can throng."
That the bold defiance with which James Burbage and the other actors met the lord mayor and the corporation should prove so successful lay almost in the nature of things. The prohibition of plays within the bounds of the city of London did not mean that they were looked upon with animosity by the people, but merely that a majority of the corporation was unfriendly to them. It was soon shown that, though the wise city fathers could easily forbid the actors to perform their plays in London, they could not prevent the enthusiastic public from walking in crowds a mile out of town in order to see such performances, especially as people were quite accustomed to the journey. Burbage, who was a business-like man, had chosen his ground quite close to the public places, where the Londoners practised their open-air sports and amused themselves with tennis and football, stone-throwing, cock fights, and archery.
Although Burbage called his new building "The Theatre," the title was not intended to meanthetheatrepar excellence, for the word "theatre" was not then commonly used to denote a building in which dramatic representations were performed. It is more probable that he thought he had succeeded in choosing an elegant name with a certain suggestion of the old classics, which was euphonious and not quite common.
The usual name for a theatre was the playhouse, a house intended for all kinds of games and sport, such as fencing, bear-fights, bull-fights, jigs, morris-dances, and pantomimes, as well as for dramatic performances.
It cannot be sufficiently emphasized that the theatrical entertainments of those times were something more or less literary; anyhow, something quite apart from the dramatic performances of the present day. They were meant to satisfy mixed desires in the nation; but, besides satisfying its craving for beautiful, picturesque language, fine spectacles, and merry jests, they also gratified its desire for the display of physical strength, for shallow rhyming tricks and competitions, graceful exercises of the body, indeed for all that might be included under the notion of sport and give opportunity for betting.
Therefore, the plays, properly so called, alternated with fights between animals, in which bears and bulls were baited by great blood-thirsty bulldogs, or with fencing-matches fought by celebrated English and foreign fencing-masters, with rope-dancing, acrobatic tricks, and boxing. Even the serious performances ended with a more or less absurd jig, in which the clown sang endless songs about the events of the day, and danced interminable morris-dances.
Shakespeare and his contemporaries, whose works are now reckoned among the first literature—so much so that they are scarcely read any longer—at the time of which we are speaking were nothing but practical playwrights, and Shakespeare was so far from dreaming that the time would come when his plays would be counted among the most precious treasures of posterity that, as we know, he did not even take the trouble to have a printed edition of his works published.
The many fighting-scenes in the plays of the time, in Shakespeare's among the rest, the wrestling-match inAs You Like It, the duel between Macduff and Macbeth, the fencing-scene between Hamlet and Laertes, no doubt afforded opportunities for magnificent displays of skill in the use of arms and in physical exercises, and we may be sure that the spectators followed those scenes with an interest which was perhaps more of a sporting than of a literary nature.
It was according to a well-calculated plan, therefore, that the elder Burbage erected his playhouse north of the city, in Finsbury Fields, where from ancient times the people had been accustomed to see and practise military exercises and other sports, and where the soldiers were still in the habit of practising archery and musketry.
And it was with equally sound calculation that he gave the theatre its particular form, which remained essentially the same in all the playhouses of the Shakespearean period.
Before the establishment of the permanent theatres there had long existed amphitheatres for the performance of fights between animals, the so-called "rings." These rings—the auditorium as well as the arena—were open all round, and the seats, like those of the ancient Greek theatre, were placed according to the natural formation of the ground.
Burbage retained the circular amphitheatrical form; being a joiner as well as an actor and manager, he was no doubt his own architect in his new theatrical enterprise.
But instead of the roofless, open-air auditorium, he constructed a covered circular wooden building with stories or galleries, which was made so as to contain a number of boxes for the distinguished and well-paying public, and which entirely enclosed the open, uncovered arena, which, as it recalled the inn-yards, was called the "yard," or afterward, perhaps on account of the high pitlike construction surrounding it, the "pit," whence the poorest and humblest spectators enjoyed the performances.
Finally, he built a covered "tire-house"—or "tiring-house," as it was called in those times—for the actors, a place in which also all the requisites and the so-called "properties" were kept. This tiring-house stood within the circle, and its roof towered up above the auditorium.
From the tiring-house the stage—a simple wooden platform resting on rams—was pushed forward, and it might be removed when the arena was to be used for fights between animals, etc., instead of dramatic performances.
By this reform of the building—a reform which became epoch-making to the whole Shakespearean period—James Burbage obtained a threefold advantage: more comfortable seats for the more distinguished portion of the audience, where they were sheltered from wind and weather; the use of the house both for plays and the baiting of animals; and the power to oblige the public to pay their admission at certain doors of his building, which spared him the unpleasant and unsafe collection of money from spectators, who might not always be very willing to pay.
But this result was not obtained without considerable expense.
Though we are not so fortunate as to possess a drawing of the outside or inside of The Theatre, about the shape of which, therefore, we must partly draw our conclusions from analogy with other playhouses, we are comparatively well informed as to its outward history till it was pulled down, in 1598-1599.
Thus we know that the enterprise cost James Burbage six hundred sixty-six pounds thirteen shillings fourpence, a considerable sum in those days, which would be equal to about eightfold that amount in our own time.
This money Burbage borrowed of his father-in-law, John Braynes, to whom he had to pay high interest, and it represented only the cost of the building itself, for he did not buy the ground on which it stood. This ground belonged to one Giles Allen, and in the contract between him and Burbage it was settled, among other points, that if, in the course of the first ten years after the drawing up of the lease, Burbage spent a sum of two hundred pounds or more on the building, he should have a right to remove it after the expiration of the lease.
The lease was drawn up in the year 1576, for a period of twenty-one years. In spite of many pecuniary difficulties, which the heavy rent and high interest naturally entailed on Burbage—who for some time even seems to have been obliged to mortgage his entire property—and innumerable annoyances from the Puritans, Burbage succeeded in keeping his theatre above water till the expiration of the lease and till his own death, which occurred in 1597.
But before this date he had been negotiating with the proprietor, Giles Allen, about a prolongation of the lease. Allen, who was evidently as grasping as he was difficult to deal with, and who may not unjustly be suspected of having been an instrument in the hands of the Puritan authorities, had caused him a good deal of trouble in the course of years. On seeing how people crowded to the theatre, he had tried, for one thing, to press Burbage for a higher rent, and partly for religious, partly for moral reasons, had threatened to forbid the running of a playhouse on his property. The negotiations about the new lease had not come to an end when the elder Burbage died, and left his two sons, Cuthbert, who was a bookseller, and Richard, who was the leading actor of his time, not only burdened with the playhouse, the long lease of which had expired, but opposed by a proprietor with whom it was impossible to come to terms, and by a magistrate who was more eager than ever to deal a blow at the playhouses.
In the same year, when the two brothers took on The Theatre, the lord mayor of London actually succeeded in inducing the privy council to issue an order of suppression against it and other playhouses. The order begins as follows: "Her Majestie being informed that there are verie greate disorders committed in the common playhouses both by lewd matters that are handled on the stages, and by resorte and confluence of bad people, hathe given direction that not onlie no playes shall be used within London or about the Citty, or in any public place, during this tyme of sommer, but that all those playhouses that are erected and built only for suche purposes shall be plucked downe, namelie The Curtayne and The Theatre nere to Shorditch, or any other within that county."
It is not known whether the order was withdrawn or whether the disregard of it was winked at—the court very likely was not particularly inclined to see the sentence or condemnation carried out. At all events, neither The Curtain nor The Theatre was pulled down at the time. But the order shows how much power the Puritans possessed, and what difficulties the brothers Burbage had to contend with.
They seem, however, to have inherited their father's resolute character. Since it seemed quite impossible to come to terms with the grasping proprietor, Allen, the brothers were sensible enough to avail themselves of the clause in the now expired lease, which permitted them to pull down and remove the buildings they had erected on the premises, in case they had spent at least two hundred pounds on them during the first ten years. This sum had been much exceeded at the time, and one day, to the great consternation and anger of the astonished Giles Allen, they simply removed The Theatre.
One of the paragraphs in the account of the subsequent lawsuit between Allen and the Burbages gives a very vivid idea of this remarkable removal. Allen accuses Cuthbert Burbage of "unlawfully combininge and confederatinge himselfe with the sayd Richard Burbage, and one Peter Streat, William Smyth and divers other persons, to the number of twelve, to your subject unknowne, did aboute the eight and twentyth daye of December in the one and fortyth yeere of your Highnes raygne (1598) ryotouslye assemble themselves together, and then and there armed themselves with dyvers and manye unlawfull and offensive weapons, as, namelye, swordes, daggers, billes, axes, and such like, and so armed, did then repayre unto the sayd Theatre, and then and there, armed as aforesayd, in verye ryotous, outragious and forcyble manner, and contrarye to the lawes of your highnes realme, attempted to pull down the sayd Theatre, whereupon divers of your subjectes, servauntes, and farmers, there goinge aboute in peaceable manner to procure them to desist from that their unlawfull enterpryse, they the sayd ryotous persons aforesayd notwithstanding procured then therein with greate vyolence, not only then and there forcyblye and ryotouslye resisting your subjectes, servauntes, and farmers, but also then and there pulling, breaking, and throwing downe the sayd Theatre in verye outragious, violent, and riotous sort, to the great disturbance and terrefyeing not onlye of your subjectes sayd servauntes and farmers, but of divers others of your Majesties loving subjectes there neere inhabitinge; and having so done, did then alsoe in most forcible and ryotous manner take and carrye away from thence all the wood and timber thereof, unto the Bancksyde in the parishe of St. Marye Overyes, and there erected a newe playehouse with the sayd timber and wood."
Such was the end of the first short-lived London playhouse. But the new house, which was built out of its materials on the "Bankside," was the celebrated "Globe," the name of which is inseparably connected with that of Shakespeare.
As we said above, James Burbage, the creator of The Theatre, belonged to the company which played under the patronage of Lord Leicester, and therefore went under the name of "Lord Leicester's Servants" or "Men." The four other actors, who in 1574 received a royal license to act from Queen Elizabeth, were John Perkin, John Lanham, William Jonson, and Robert Wilson.
While James Burbage was no doubt the leader of the company, Robert Wilson is supposed to have been its chief actor, at all events of comic parts, and he was the only one among the five who was also a dramatic author. Under his name, but after his death, Cuthbert Burbage published, in 1594,The Prophecy of the Cobbler; and among anonymous plays the following are ascribed to him:Fair Eve, The Miller's Daughter from Manchester, The Three Ladies of London, etc.
Most likely some of Wilson's plays were acted in The Theatre. With this exception the internal history of this playhouse is rather obscure, and very little is known of itsrépertoire. A few titles may be found in contemporary literature, such asThe Blacksmith's Daughter, mentioned by the Puritan Gosson in hisSchool of Abuse, as "containing the treachery of Turks, the honorable bounty of a noble mind, the shining of virtue in distress,"The Conspiracy of Catilina, Cæsar and Pompey, andThe Play about the Fabians.
All these must have belonged to the earliest répertoire of The Theatre, for Gosson'sSchool of Abuseappeared in 1579.
It is of more interest that Thomas Lodge mentions the original pre-ShakespeareanHamletas having been acted in The Theatre. He speaks of one who "looks as pale as the visard of the ghost which cries so miserably at The Theatre, like an oister-wife, 'Hamlet revenge.'"
The same company, originally "Lord Leicester's Servants," continued to act in The Theatre till it was pulled down. But the company several times changed its patron and consequently its name. In 1588 Lord Leicester died, and after his death Ferdinando Stanley, Lord Strange, became the patron of the company; till 1592, therefore, the actors were called "Lord Strange's Men." But in 1592 Lord Strange was created earl of Derby; consequently the troupe became for two years "The Earl of Derby's Men." In 1594 the Earl of Derby died, and Henry Carey, first Lord Hunsdon and lord chamberlain, undertook to become patron of the company, which, therefore, adopted the name of "The Lord Chamberlain's Servants." The son of Lord Hunsdon, George Carey, second Lord Hunsdon, after his father's death (in 1596) also inherited the patronage of the actors, and for almost a year they had to content themselves with being called "Lord Hunsdon's Men," until Lord Hunsdon became lord chamberlain, like his father, and allowed the company to resume the title of "The Lord Chamberlain's Servants," 1597. This name the actors retained until the accession of King James, in 1603, after which they were promoted to the title of "The King's Players"; this title put them in the first rank, which, indeed, they had long held in reality, and which they kept till the suppression of the playhouses in 1642.
It is no slight task for one who desires to study theatrical affairs in the time of Shakespeare, to make himself acquainted with the varying names of the companies of actors; but without such knowledge it would be very difficult to pursue the thread of the history even of the leading companies.
About the year 1590 our company received an addition in the person of a young man, who was not only a skilled and useful actor, but who also possessed the accomplishment of being able to adapt older plays to the taste of the times, and even proved to have the gift of writing tolerably good plays himself, though older and jealous colleagues might hint at their not being altogether original. This young man, whose capacities became of no slight use to the company and The Theatre, was named William Shakespeare.
At this time the leading actors of The Theatre were the great tragedian Richard Burbage, who was then quite a young man, Henry Condell, and John Heminge, who continued to be the mainstays of the company. There was also the clown, Augustine Phillips, an excellent comic actor of the old school. These four became the most intimate friends of Shakespeare, and to Condell and Heminge posterity owes special gratitude, since it was they who, after the death of Shakespeare, undertook the publication of the first printed collection of his plays.
It is impossible to decide definitely which of Shakespeare's plays belonged to the repertoire of The Theatre. It is probable that his first plays,Love's Labor Lost, The Comedy of Errors, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and his first tragedy,Romeo and Juliet, saw the light on this stage between 1589 and 1591. Afterward, between 1594 and 1597, these were possibly increased byA Midsummer Night's Dream, Richard the Second, King John, The Merchant of Venice, andHenry IV.
The repertoire of The Theatre also included the so-called "jigs," merry after-plays, mostly consisting of songs and dances, with frequent allusions to the events of the day, sneering at the Puritans, the magistrates, and other enemies of the playhouses.
It has been briefly mentioned above that not long after the establishment of The Theatre—at the latest in the following year—this playhouse gained a companion in The Curtain, which thus became the second of its kind in London.
The two playhouses were very close to each other, but for this very reason it seems natural to suppose that they were rather meant to support than to rival each other. They were like a kind of double-barrelled gun directed against the corporation, and they seem, indeed, to an equal extent, to have roused the anger of the Puritans, for they are generally mentioned together in the Puritan pamphlets directed against playhouses and all other wickedness.
However, the history of The Curtain is almost unknown to us. While we know a good deal about the outward circumstances of The Theatre on account of the constant troubles which the Burbage family had to endure from the proprietor of the ground and the municipal authorities, and of the subsequent lawsuit, the reports we find about The Curtain are extremely meagre. We know neither when nor by whom it was built nor when it was pulled down.
By a mistake which is natural enough, its name has been connected with the front curtain of the stage. We shall see later that no such curtain existed in the time of Shakespeare, and we do not know that the background draperies of that period had the fixed name of "curtain."
Anyhow, the possibility of this derivation is absolutely excluded by the fact that the spot on which the second London playhouse was built, for some unknown reason, bore the name of "Curtayne Close." So the playhouse was simply named after the spot on which it was built.
As long as The Theatre stood close beside it, the two companies shared almost the same fate. We have seen that in 1597 an order was issued to pull down both playhouses; this order, however, was never carried out. But after the removal of The Theatre to Bankside, The Curtain seems to have gone its own way. The actors, on the whole, were not afraid of pleading their cause from the stage, and of retorting on the attacks of their assailants by lashing them with the whip of caricature, and it seems that those of The Curtain had gone a little too far in their Aristophanic parodies of their worthy fellow-citizens and chief magistrate; for in May, 1601, the justices of the peace for the county of Middlesex received the following admonition from the privy council: "We doo understand that certaine players that used to recyte their playes at the Curtaine in Moorefeilds, do represent upon the stage in their interludes the persons of some gent of good desert and quality that are yet alive under obscure manner, but yet in such sorte that all the hearers may take notice both of the matter and the persons that are meant thereby. This beinge a thinge verye unfitte, offensive and contrary, to such direction as have been heretofore taken, that no plaies should be openly shewed but such as were first perused and allowed, and that minister no occasion of offence or scandall, wee do hereby require you that you do forthwith forbidd those players to whomsoever they appertaine that do play at the Curtaine in Moorefeildes to represent any such play, and that you will examine them who made that play and to shew the same unto you, and as you in your discrecions shall thincke the same unfitte to be publiquely shewed to forbidd them from henceforth to play the same eyther privately or publiquely; and if upon veiwe of the said play you shall finde the subject so odious and inconvenient as is informed, wee require you to take bond of the chiefest of them to aunswere their rashe and indiscreete dealing before us."
We know nothing of the result of this prosecution, but we may be allowed to assume that it did not result in very severe measures. We seem to read a certain concealed sympathy in the writ of the great lords, and we cannot help suspecting that it was the Puritan citizens who felt themselves hit and who brought the complaint. If the lords had been the butt of the mockery, no doubt the proceeding of the actors would have appeared to them much worse than "rashe and indiscreete."
Until the Globe theatre was built, the Burbages most likely possessed a share in The Curtain. At any rate, their company used that building alternately with their own; no doubt, for instance, during the period between the pulling down of The Theatre and the building of the Globe. During this period they played (as "The Lord Chamberlain's Men"), among other things, no less famous a piece than Ben Jonson'sEvery Man in His Humour, which, according to old tradition, was accepted on the recommendation of Shakespeare, after having been put aside contemptuously by the other leading actors. This splendid play had an enormous success. Of Shakespeare's plays,Much Ado about NothingandThe Second Part of King Henry IVwere acted.
There is scarcely any reason for assuming, with Halliwell-Phillipps and Ordish, that the first performance ofHenry Vtook place at The Curtain. At the appearance of this play, in 1599, the Globe theatre was built, and we cannot doubt that it was here that this popular play saw the light. So the frequently mentioned "wooden O" in the prologue does not allude to The Curtain, but to the Globe.
The outward shape of The Curtain we must imagine to have been, like that of The Theatre, circular, and unroofed in the centre. It is generally supposed to have been somewhat smaller than Burbage's first theatre.
The last period of the existence of The Curtain is enveloped in obscurity. But there is no reason to suppose that it did not continue to exist till all playhouses were put down, during the civil war, 1642-1647. If The Curtain was preserved as long as that, its life was longer than that of any other playhouse of the Shakespearean period.