John Doran - Their Majesties' Servants. Annals of the English Stage (Volume 1 of 3)

Elizabeth's face shone upon the actors, and rehearsals went actively on before the Master of the Revels. The numbers of the players, however, so increased and spread over the kingdom, that the government, when Shakspeare was eight years of age, enacted that startling statute which is supposed to have branded dramatic art and artists with infamy. But the celebrated statute of 1572 does not declare players to be "rogues and vagabonds." It simply threatens to treat as such all acting companies who presume to set up their stage without the license of "two justices of the peace at least." This was rather to protect the art than to insult the artist; and a few years subsequent to the publication of this statute, Elizabeth granted the first royal patent conceded in England to actors – that of 1576. 6 6 Should be 1574. It is dated 7th May 1574. By this authority Lord Leicester's servants were empowered to produce such plays as seemed good to them, "as well," says the Queen, "for the recreation of our loving subjects as for our solace and pleasure , when we shall think good to see them." Sovereign could scarcely pay a more graceful compliment to poet or to actor.

This royal patent sanctioned the acting of plays within the liberties of the city; but against this the city magistrates commenced an active agitation. Their brethren of Middlesex followed a like course throughout the county. The players were treated as the devil's missionaries; and such unsavoury terms were flung at them and at playwrights, by the city aldermen and the county justices, that thereon was founded that animosity which led dramatic authors to represent citizens and justices as the most egregious of fools, the most arrant of knaves, and the most deluded of husbands.

Driven from the city, Burbage and his gay brotherhood were safe in the shelter of Blackfriars, adjacent to the city walls. Safe, but neither welcome nor unmolested. The devout and noble ladies who had long resided near the once sacred building, clamoured at the audacity of the actors. Divine worship and sermon, so they averred, would be grievously disturbed by the music and rant of the comedians, and by the debauched companions resorting to witness those abominable plays and interludes.

This cry was shrill and incessant, but it was unsuccessful. The Blackfriars' was patronised by a public whose favours were also solicited by those "sumptuous houses" the "Theatre" and the "Curtain" in Shoreditch. Pulpit logicians reasoned, more heedless of connection between premises and conclusion than Grindal or Gosson. "The cause of plagues is sin," argues one, "and the cause of sin are plays; therefore, the cause of plagues are plays." Again: "If these be not suppressed," exclaims a Paul's Cross preacher, "it will make such a tragedy that all London may well mourn while it is London." 7 7 These quotations are both from the same sermon. But for the sympathy of the Earl of Leicester it would have gone ill with these players. He has been as ill-requited by authors and actors as their earlier friend, Richard of Gloucester. To this day the stage exhibits the great earl, according to the legend contrived by his foes, as the murderer of his wife.

Sanctioned by the court, befriended by the noble, and followed by the general public, the players stood their ground, but they lacked the discretion which should have distinguished them. They bearded authority, played in despite of legal prohibitions, and introduced forbidden subjects of state and religion upon their stage. Thence ensued suspensions for indefinite periods, severe supervision when the suspension was rescinded, and renewed transgression on the part of the reckless companies, even to the playing on a Sunday, in any locality where they conjectured there was small likelihood of their being followed by a warrant.

But the most costly of the theatrical revels of King James took place at Whitehall, at Greenwich, or at Hampton Court, on Sunday evenings – an unseemly practice, which embittered the hatred of the Puritans against the stage, all belonging to it, and all who patronised it. James was wiser when he licensed Kirkham, Hawkins, Kendall, and Payne to train the Queen's children of the revels, and to exercise them in playing within the Blackfriars' or elsewhere all plays which had the sanction of old Samuel Danyell. His queen, Anne, was both actress and manager in the masques performed at court, the expenses of which often exceeded, indeed were ordered not to be limited to, £1000. "Excellent comedies" were played before Prince Charles and the Prince Palsgrave 8 8 Or, Prince Palatine. at Cambridge; and the members of St. John's, Clare, and Trinity, acted before the King and court in 1615, when the illustrious guests were scattered among the colleges, and twenty-six tuns of wine consumed within five days!

The lawyers alone were offended at the visits of the court to the amateurs at Cambridge, especially when James went thither to see the comedy of Ignoramus , in which law and lawyers are treated with small measure of respect. When James was prevented from going to Cambridge, he was accustomed to send for the whole scholastic company to appear before him, in one of the choicest of their pieces, at Royston. Roving troops were licensed by this play-loving king to follow their vocation in stated places in the country, under certain restrictions for their tarrying and wending – a fortnight's residence in one town being the time limited, with injunction not to play "during church hours."

Then there were unlicensed satirical plays in unlicensed houses. Sir John Yorke, his wife and brothers, were fined and imprisoned, because of a scandalous play acted in Sir John's house, in favour of Popery. On another occasion, in 1617, we hear of a play, in some country mansion, in which the King, represented as a huntsman, observed that he had rather hear a dog bark than a cannon roar. Two kinsmen, named Napleton, discussed this matter, whereupon one of them remarked that it was a pity the King, so well represented, ever came to the crown of England at all, for he loved his dogs better than his subjects. Whereupon the listener to this remark went and laid information before the council against the kinsman who had uttered it!

The players could, in James's reign, boast that their profession was at least kindly looked upon by the foremost man in the English Church. "No man," says Hacket, "was more wise or more serious than Archbishop Bancroft, the Atlas of our clergy, in his time; and he that writes this hath seen an interlude well presented before him, at Lambeth, by his own gentlemen, when I was one of the youngest spectators." The actors thus had the sanction of the Archbishop of Canterbury in James's reign, as they had that of Williams, Archbishop of York, in the next. Hacket often alludes to theatrical matters. "The theatres," he says, in one of his discourses made during the reign of Charles II., when the preacher was Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, "are not large enough nowadays to receive our loose gallants, male and female, but whole fields and parks are thronged with their concourse, where they make a muster of their gay clothes." Meanwhile, in 1616, the pulpit once more issued anathemas against the stage. The denouncer, on this occasion, was the preacher of St. Mary Overy's, named Sutton, whose undiscriminating censure was boldly, if not logically, answered by the actor, Field. There is a letter from the latter in the State Paper Office, in which he remonstrates against the sweeping condemnation of all players. The comedian admits that what he calls his trade has its corruptions, like other trades; but he adds, that since it is patronised by the King, there is disloyalty in preaching against it, and he hints that the theology of the preacher must be a little out of gear, seeing that he openly denounces a vocation which is not condemned in Scripture!