southern or Surrey bank of the Thames, in order to be out of the jurisdiction of the municipality of the city, which, having been from a very early period strongly infected with the gloomy doctrines of Puritanism, was violently opposed to theatrical entertainments, and carried on against the players and the playhouses a constant war, in which their opponents repelled the persecutions of authority with all the petulance of wit and caricature. of these theaters were cockpits or arenas for bullbaiting and bear-baiting, either transformed into regular playhouses, or alternately employed for theatrical and other spectacles: but the Globe, and probably others as well, were specifically erected for the purpose of the drama. They were all, how ever, very poor and squalid, as compared with the magnificent theaters of the present day, and retained in their form and arrangement many traces of the ancient modelthe inn-yard. The building was octagon, and entirely uncov Some actors) and Edward Alleyn, the most unselfish of comedians. It was a wooden tenement, situated between Whitecross Street and Golden Lane, which was burned down in 1621, and replaced by a circular brick edifice. It was, however, again destroyed in 1649 by some fanatical Puritan soldiers and the site was soon covered by dwelling houses. The most remarkable peculiarity of the ancient English theaters was the total absence of painted scenery, which in more recent times has been carried to such a height of artistic splendor and illusion. A few traverses, as they were called, or screens of cloth or tapestry, gave the actors the op THE FORTUNE THEATER. ered, excepting over the stage, where a thatched roof protected the actors from the weather; and this thatched roof was, in 1613, the cause of the total destruction of the Globe, in consequence of the wadding of a chamber, or small cannon, lodging in it, fired during the representation of Shakspeare's Henry VIII. The boxes or rooms, as they were then styled, were of course arranged nearly as in the present day, but the musicians, instead of being placed, as now, in the orchestra, or space between the pit and the stage, were established in a lofty gallery over the scene. The old Fortune Theater was erected for Philip Henslowe (the pawnbroker and money-lender to portunity of making their exits and entrances; and in order to give the audience an idea of the place where the action was supposed to be, they employed the singularly primitive expedient of exhibiting a placard, bearing the name of Rome, Athens, London, or Florence, as the case might be. So exceedingly rude an expedient as this is the more singular as the English drama is remarkable for its frequent changes of scene. But though they were forced to content themselves with this very inartificial mode of indicating the place of the action, the details of the locality could be represented with a much more accurate imitation. Thus, if a bedroom were to be supposed, a bed was pushed forward on the stage; a table covered with bottles and tankards, and surrounded with benches, easily suggested a tavern; a gilded chair surmounted by a canopy, and called a state, gave the idea of a palace, an altar of a church, and the like. At the back of the stage was erected a permanent wooden construction, like a scaffold or a high wall; and this served for those innu merable incidents where one of the dramatis persona is to overhear the others without being himself seen, and also represented an infinity of objects according to the requirements of the piece, such as the wall of a castle or a beseiged city, the outside of a house, as when a dialogue is to take place between one person at a window and another on the exterior. Thus in the admirable garden scene of Romeo and Juliet, Juliet probably spoke either from the summit of this wall or from a window established in it, while Romeo stood on the ground outside; in the same way the "men of Angiers" spoke to the besieging English from the top of their wall, and the storming of Harfleur divided the action between Henry and his troops upon the stage and the defenders of the city upon the platform. In those accessories to scenic illusion which in the language of the English stage are called properties, the old Elizabethan theaters were better provided than could have been expected, as may be seen from very curious lists of such articles which have accidentally descended to us from the ancient greenrooms. In point of costume very little attention was paid to chronological or national accuracy. The dramatis persona of all ages and countries were in general habited in the dress of the period; this was fortunately a graceful, rich, and picturesque costume; and we may judge, from the innumerable philippics of divines and moralists against the luxury of the actors, that a very considerable degree of splendor in theatrical dress was common. The employment of the contemporary costume in plays whose action was supposed to take place in Greece, Rome, or Persia, naturally led into gross anachronisms and absurdities, arming the assassins of Cæsar with Spanish rapiers, or furnishing Carthaginian. senators with watches; but these anachronisms were not likely to strike in a very offensive manner the mixed and uncritical spectators of those times. may indeed be said that the meager material aids to the illusion of the scene which were then at the disposal of the dramatic author were in reality of the greatest service to the poetical and imaginative department of his art. Not being able to depend upon the scene-painter and the machinist, he was obliged to trust to his own resources, and to describe in words what could not be seen with the naked eye. It is to this circumstance that we owe those inimitable pictures of natural and artificial objects and It 66 scenery with which the dramas of this age are so prodigally adorned. Though the majority of the characters were clothed in the habit of the day, there were certain conventional attributes always associated with particular supernatural personages, such as angels, devils, ghosts, and so on. Thus a roobe for to goo invisibell is one of the items in the lists of properties to which we have alluded above; and in all probability the spectral armor of the Ghost in Hamlet was to be found in the wardrobe of the ancient theaters. It appears that the dresses and properties belonged to persons who derived their livelihood from hiring these articles at a fixed price per night to the performers. The curtain, that essential appendage to every theater, is supposed to have opened perpendicularly in the middle, instead of being wound up and let down as at present; and besides this principal curtain there seems to have been others occasionally drawn so as to divide the stage into several apartments, and withdrawn to exhibit one of the characters as in a tent or closet. The cost of admission to the theaters was small, and it was possible to secure the use of a private box or room; for it was then considered hardly proper for a lady to be present at the representations of the public theaters: it was certainly long before any of our sovereigns deigned to witness any of those performances. Whenever the monarch desired to see a play the actors were summoned to court; and the accounts of the chamberlain's office furnish abundant entries of the recompenses ordered to be distributed on such occasions among the performers. Several of the companies of actors were under the immediate patronage of the sovereign, of different members of the royal family and other great personages of the realm: they were bound to "exercise themselves industriously in the art and quality of stage-playing," in order to be always ready to furnish entertainment to their employer, and in return for these services they were protected against interlopers and rivals, and above all against the implacable hostility of the puritanical municipality of London. The usual hour of representation was anciently very early, in accordance with the habit of dining before midday, and the signal was given by the hoisting of a flag at the summit of the theater, which remained floating during the whole performance. The piece commenced with three flourishes of a trumpet, and at the third sounding, as it was called, the prologue was declaimed by a solemn personage whose regular costume was a long black velvet cloak. At the end of the piece, or occasionally perhaps between the acts, the clown or jester performed what was called a jig, a species of entertainment in which our ancestors seem to have delighted. This was a kind of comic ballad or declamation in doggerel verse, either really or professedly an improvisation of the moment, introducing any person or event which was exciting the ridicule of the day, and accompanied by the performer with tabor and pipe and with grotesque and farcical dancing. As the comic actors who performed the clowns and jesters, then indispensable personages in all pieces, tragic and comic, were allowed to introduce extemporary witticisms at their pleasure, they were probably a clever and inventive class; and the enormous popularity of several of them, as Tarlton, Kempe, and Armin, seems to prove that their drollery must have been intensely amusing. these shareholders being limited, whatever additional assistance the society required was obtained by engaging the services of hired men, who usually acted the inferior parts. Many bonds stipulating the terms of such engagements are in existence; and one of the conditions usually was that the actor so engaged should give his services at a fixed price, and should undertake to perform for no other company during the time specified in his engagement. These men had no right to any share in the profits of the society. That these profits were very considerable and constant, and that the career of an actor of eminence was often a very lucrative one, is abundantly proved, not only by the frequent allu RICHARD BURBAGE. During the representation of a deep tragedy the whole stage was sometimes hung with black; a very singular custom, to which innumerable allusions are made in our older pieces. On ordinary occasions the stage was strewed with rushes, as indeed were rooms generally in those days; and on these rushes, or on stools brought for the purpose, it was customary for the fine gentlemen to sit, amid the full business of the stage, displaying their splendid clothes, smoking clay pipes, which was then the height of fashion, exchanging repartees and often coarse abuse with the audience before the curtain, and criticising in a loud voice the actors and the piece. In England, as in Spain, the companies of players have been generally, from time immemorial, private and independent associations. The property and profits of the theater were divided into a number of shares, as in a joint-stock company; and the number of sions to the pride, luxury and magnificence in dress of the successful performers, which are met with in the sermons, pamphlets and satires of the day, but still more decisively by the wills left by many of these actors, specifying the large fortunes they sometimes accumulated by the practice of their art. Examples of this will be found in the cases of Shakspeare, the great tragedian Burbage, and the wellknown charitable institution due to the philanthropy and piety of Edward Alleyn. It must never be lost sight of, by any one who wishes to form a clear notion of the elder English drama, that the female parts were invariably acted by boys or young men. No woman appeared on our stage till about the time of the Restoration, and then, singularly enough, the earliest part acted by a female was the Desdemona of the great dramatist. This innovation was at first considered as something shocking and monstrous; but the evident advantages and propriety of the change soon silenced all opposition. The novelty itself first originated in Italy. We must not, however, imagine that because the parts of women were intrusted to male representatives they were necessarily ill performed; there are abundant proofs that some of the young actors who devoted themselves to this line of their art, attained by practice to a high degree both of elegance and pathos. They were often singing-boys of the royal chapel, and as long as their falsetto voices remained pure, not "cracked i' the ring," as Hamlet says, they were no unfit representatives of the graceful and beautiful heroines of Shakspeare, Ford or Fletcher. The testimony of contemporaries proves that some of them, as, for example, the famous Kynaston, so admirably seized all the details of the characters they personated, that the illusion was complete; and they were no unworthy rivals of the great artists of those days. It is true that this custom of the female parts being acted by boys may have in some degree exaggerated that tendency to double entendre and indecent equivoque which has unfortunately been but too universally the vice of the stage; but even this objection will lose some of its weight when we reflect that the habitual appearance of women on the stage seems, so far from checking, absolutely to have aggravated the frightful profligacy and immorality which defiled society and the literature of the country at the epoch of the Restoration, and which reached its highest intensity in compositions destined for the stage. ACTORS AND AUTHORS. Perhaps the most remarkable peculiarity of the dramatic profession at this period of our literary history was the frequent combination, in one and the same person, of the qualities of player and dramatic author. We do not mean to imply, of course, that all the actors of this splendid epoch were dramatists; but nearly all the dramatic authors were actors by profession. This circumstance must have obviously exerted a mighty influence in modifying the dramatic productions composed under such conditions-an influence not of course exclusively favorable, but which must have powerfully contributed to give to those productions that strong and individual character, that goût du terroir, which renders them so inimitable. It is evident that a dramatic writer, however great his genius, unacquainted practically with the mechanism of the stage, will frequently fail in giving to his work that directness and vivacity which is the essential element of popular success. Such a poet, writing in his closet under the influence not of scenic but of merely literary emotions, may produce admirable declamation, delicate anatomy of character, profound exhibition of human passion; but the most valuable element of scenic success, viz., dramatic effect, may be entirely absent. This precious quality may be possessed by a writer with not a tithe of the genius of the former, and for the absence of this quality no amount of abstract literary merit can compensate. A striking example of this may be found in the French theater. All the admirable qualities of Racine and Corneille have not been able to preserve their tragedies from comparative neglect as tragedies, i. e., in a theatrical point of view. .As literary compositions they will always be studied and admired by every one who desires to make acquaintance with the higher qualities of the French language and poetry; but as tragedies, few persons can now witness their performance without experiencing a sensation of weariness which they may attempt to disguise, but which they certainly cannot escape. It has been the fashion to explain this by attributing it to changes in the manners and habits of society; but how happens it that the scenes of Molière always retain their freshness and vivacity? The reason is, that Molière, himself a skillful actor, as well as an unequaled painter of that range of comic character which he has delineated, gave to his pieces the element of scenic effect; an element which will successfully replace the absence of much higher literary qualities, and which can be acquired only by the instinct of the stage. An immense majority of the dramatists of our Elizabethan theater were actors, and this is why their writings are so often defiled by very gross faults of coarseness, violence, buffoonery, bombast, bad taste, and extravagance-such faults, in short, as were naturally to be expected from actor-authors writing in great haste, addressing themselves to a very miscellaneous public, and thinking not of future glory, but of immediate profit and success; but at the same time it is the reason why their writings, despite all these, and even graver faults, invariably possess intense dramatic interest, and an effectiveness for the absence of which no purely literary merit can in any way compensate. But though professional actors, this brilliant constellation of writers, by a chance which has never been repeated in literary history, consisted of men of liberal and often of learned education. Generally young men of strong passions, frequently of gentle birth, they in many cases left the university for the theater, where they hoped to obtain an easy subsistence at a time when both writing for the stage. and acting were well recompensed by the public, and where the joyous and irregular mode of life possessed such charms for ardent passions and lax morality. Their career was, in too many cases, a miserable succession of revelry and distress, of gross debauchery and ignoble privation; but the examples of many showed that prudence and industry would be rewarded in this career with the same certainty as in others, and the success of Burbage, Alleyn, and Shakspeare can be put forward as the contrast to the debauched lives and miserable deaths of Marlowe, Greene, and Nash. This very irregularity of life, however, may have contributed to give to the works of this time that large spirit of observation, that universality of painting, which certainly distinguished them. The career of these men, at least in its commencement and general outlines, was the same. They attached themselves, in the double quality of actors and poets, to one of the numerous companies then existing; and in many instances began their literary labors by rewriting and rearranging plays already exhibited to the public, and which a little alteration could often render more suitable to the peculiar resources of the company. Having by this comparatively humble work of making rechauffés acquired skill and facility, the dramatic aspirant would bring out 'an original work, either alone or in partnership with some brother playwright; and in this way he would be fairly started as a writer. It was of course very much to the interest of a company of actors to possess an exclusive right to the services of an able or popular dramatist; and his productions, while they remained in manuscript, continued to be the exclusive property of the company. the public in many cases surreptitiously, and in direct contravention to the wishes and interests of the author. It must be confessed that in the sixteenth century in England theatrical writing was considered the very lowest branch of literature, if indeed it was regarded as literature at all. The profession of actor, though often profitable, and exercised by many individuals with dignity and respectability, was certainly not looked upon by society in a very favorable light. The vices and profligacy of many of its members seemed almost to justify the infamy stamped on the occupation by the old law, which classed players with "rogues and vagabonds." Placed in such a social atmosphere, and exposed to such powerful and opposing influencies the dramatic author of those times was likely to exhibit precisely the tendencies which we actually find characterizing his works and recorded in his life. Thus the troops of actors had the very strongest motive for taking every precaution that their pieces should not be printed, publication instantly annihilating their monopoly, and allowing rival companies to profit by their labors; and this is the reason why comparatively so few of the dramas of this period, in spite of their unequaled merit and their great popularity, were committed to the press, during the lives, at least, of their authors. It also explains the singularly careless execution of such copies as were printed, these having been given to EARLY DRAMATISTS. We will now give a rapid sketch of the principal English playwrights anterior to Shakspeare. JOHN LYLY (b. about 1554) composed several Court plays and pageants, and is supposed to have enjoyed in some degree the favor of Elizabeth, for we know that he was at one time a petitioner for the reversion of the office of Master of the Revels. His few plays were written upon classical, or rather mythological subjects, as the story of Endymion, Sappho and Phaon, and Alexander and Campaspe. He has a rich and fantastic imagination, and his writings exhibit genius and elegance, though strongly tinctured with a peculiar kind of affectation with which he infected the language of the Court, the aristocracy, and even to a considerable degree literature itself, till it fell under the ridicule of Shakspeare, like the parallel absurdity in France, the Phébus of the Hôtel de Rambouillet, under the lash of the Précieuses Ridicules and the Critique de l'Ecole des Femmes. Lyly was the English Gongora; and his absurd though ingenious jargon, like the estilo culto in Spain, became the fashionable affectation of the day. It consisted in a kind of exaggerated vivacity of imagery and expression; the remotest and most unexpected analogies were sought for, and crowded into every sentence. The reader may form some notion of this mode of writing (which was called Euphuism, from Lyly's once fashionable book en |