AMUSEMENTS.
“The shows of things are better than themselves,
How doth it stir this airy part of us
To hear our poets tell imagin’d fights,
And the strange blows that feigned courage gives.”
_The Tragedy of Nero._
In dealing with the amusements of Pepys’s day, we find how pre-eminent
a position the theatre held in popular esteem. The presentation of a
new play was looked upon as an event of the greatest moment, and the
various appearances of favourite actors were chronicled in the “Diary”
with considerable regularity.
Immediately after the Restoration, two companies of actors were
organized, who acted at two different houses: one theatre was known
as the King’s house, and the other as the Duke’s house. Sir William
Davenant obtained a patent for his company under the name of “The
Duke’s servants,” and as he had succeeded during the Commonwealth
in performing certain dramatic pieces under cover of a musical
accompaniment, his theatre was sometimes known as “The Opera.” A patent
for “The King’s servants” was granted to Tom Killigrew, whose house
was for distinction’s sake called “The Theatre.” Pepys has registered
as many as 145 plays which he saw acted, some of them several times
over, and there is every reason to believe that he saw many more
during the period over which the “Diary” extends, that he has omitted
to mention.[362] When the theatres were first opened, the old plays
were revived until the living dramatists had time to produce new ones,
but several of the old masterpieces held their ground for many years.
Among the revived dramatists were Marlowe, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson,
Beaumont and Fletcher, Ford, Massinger, and Shirley. In the whole of
Evelyn’s “Diary,” Hamlet is the only play of Shakespeare which the
author mentions as having seen acted, and his observation upon this is
that “now the old plays begin to disgust this refined age, since his
Majesty’s been so long abroad.”[363] Yet, in the one month of December,
1660, Pepys had seen two distinct plays of Shakespeare, and after
the date of Evelyn’s entry, he saw Henry IV., Hamlet, Twelfth Night,
Merry Wives, Romeo and Juliet, Midsummer Night’s Dream, Henry VIII.,
Macbeth, Othello, Taming of a Shrew, and Tempest, which proves that
Shakespeare was more generally appreciated than is usually supposed.
Here we have eleven plays, which is the largest number of plays by one
dramatist, with the exception of Fletcher, whose separate productions
and joint ones with Beaumont number as many as twenty-four. Shirley
comes next with nine, then Ben Jonson with five, Ford with two, and
Massinger with the same number. We have already seen how little Pepys
appreciated Shakespeare’s genius, but it seems as if he could not
enough express his delight in the plays of Ben Jonson. He describes the
“Alchymist” as “a most incomparable play,”[364] and the “Silent Woman”
as “the best comedy, I think, that ever was wrote;”[365] of “Every Man
in His Humour,” he writes, “wherein is the greatest propriety of speech
that ever I read in my life.”
Although some of the actors had gained experience on the stage of
Charles I.’s reign, most of them were novices, and it is therefore
remarkable to find such an array of talent at both houses.
Most of the old players were attached to the King’s company. Hart,
Mohun, and Burt were all fine actors, and they had acted female parts
before the suppression of the theatre, but Betterton, one of the
greatest actors that ever lived, was a host in himself and the mainstay
of the Duke’s house. Pepys was never tired of lauding his powers, and
delighted in seeing him act. His Hamlet was “beyond imagination,”[366]
and his Henry V. “incomparable.”[367] Mrs. Knipp was one of those
actresses of whom little or nothing is known outside the “Diary,” but
who makes a considerable figure there. Pepys was very partial to this
free-and-easy lady, and when we read of his behaviour to her we need
not be surprised to find Mr. Knipp alluded to as a “jealous-looking
fellow.”[368] This is the place to expose a cruel slander against a
worthy man, which Pepys has embalmed in his pages and which has not
been corrected by the editors. Pepys having occasion to mention Anne
and Beck Marshall, the well-known actresses, he sets down that Mrs.
Pierce told him how they were the daughters of Stephen Marshall, the
great Presbyterian, and then reports Nell Gwyn’s often-quoted speech
to Beck as to the difference in the education of the two; the latter
being “a Presbyter’s praying daughter.”[369] With such an authority it
is not surprising that Lord Braybrooke should reproduce the statement
in a note to another passage,[370] but on investigation the whole
bubble bursts. Stephen Marshall died on the 19th of November, 1655,
and was buried in Westminster Abbey. At the date of his will his wife
was dead, and five of his daughters were already married, three of
them at least to clergymen. The remaining daughter, Susan, who was
unmarried, must have been more than twenty-one years of age at the
time of her father’s death, as she proved his will. These important
facts were discovered by Colonel Chester, and set forth in his
remarkable volume, “Westminster Abbey Registers.” It did not concern
the Colonel to discover the parents of Anne and Rebecca, but he proved
very conclusively that they were not the children of the Rev. Stephen
Marshall. Another blunder is made in the “Memoirs of Count Grammont,”
where “Roxolana” in Davenant’s “Siege of Rhodes,” is confused with
“Roxana” in Lee’s “Rival Queens,” and in the notes it is inferred that
one of these Mrs. Marshalls was seduced by Aubrey de Vere, last Earl of
Oxford, of that name. The “Roxolana” who was deceived by Lord Oxford
with a false marriage, was Elizabeth (or Frances) Davenport, who is
frequently mentioned by Pepys.
At the revival of the stage after the Restoration, a more lavish
expenditure on scenery and dresses became common. Pepys tells us that
when Ben Jonson’s “Catiline” was acted at the King’s House, Charles
II. gave the actors _£_500 for robes which were required.[371] We
also learn that “the gallants do begin to be tired with the vanity
and pride of the theatre actors, who are indeed grown very proud
and rich.”[372] But a few years afterwards, when Pepys stepped up
to Harris’s dressing-room after the play, he observed “much company
come to him and the wits, to talk and to assign meetings.”[373] When
Kynaston was beaten by Sir Charles Sedley for imitating him, the
manager of the King’s theatre was forced to read Kynaston’s part in
“The Heiress,” much to the disadvantage of the _vraisemblance_ of the
play. Pepys writes, “but it was pleasant to see Beeston come in with
others supposing it to be dark, and yet he is forced to read his part
by the light of candles, and this I observing to a gentleman that
sat by me, he was mightily pleased therewith, and spread it up and
down.”[374] Pepys had occasional talks with Tom Killigrew on the state
of the stage, and heard from him of the scheme for setting up a nursery
of young actors in Moorfields, where plays should be acted; “but four
operas it shall have in the year, to act six weeks at a time; where we
shall have the best scenes and machines, the best music and everything
as magnificent as in Christendom.” For this purpose Killigrew “sent for
voices and painters and other persons from Italy,”[375] but all this
fine project came to naught, and two years afterwards he explained to
Pepys all that he had done for the theatre and what he proposed still
to do. He said “that the stage is now by his pains a thousand times
better and more glorious than ever heretofore. Now wax-candles and
many of them; then not above 3 lbs. of tallow: now all things civil,
no rudeness anywhere; then, as in a bear-garden: then, two or three
fiddlers; now, nine or ten of the best: then, nothing but rushes upon
the ground, and everything else mean; now, all otherwise: then, the
Queen seldom, and the King never would come; now, not the King only for
state, but all civil people do think they may come as well as any.”[376]
The theatres were open in the afternoon, three o’clock being the usual
hour for performance, and the plays were therefore acted by daylight
during the summer. The roof consisted of skylights made of thin glass,
which let the wet into the pit in times of heavy rain. Pepys felt the
inconvenience on one occasion, and he wrote: “Before the play was done
it fell such a storm of hail, that we in the middle of the pit were
fain to rise, and all the house in a disorder.”[377] A few years after
this the very same inconvenience was experienced. “A disorder in the
pit by its raining in from the cupola at top,” and this must often have
happened.[378]
When plays were acted at court, the performances took place at night,
probably because the actors were then free after acting at the
theatres. Sometimes even the King had to wait, as we read, “after all
staying above an hour for the players, the King and all waiting, which
was absurd, saw ‘Henry V.’ well done by the Duke’s people, and in most
excellent habits, all new vests, being put on but this night.... The
play continued till twelve at night.”[379]
It is here necessary to guard readers of the “Diary” against a mistake
very easily fallen into in respect to the various theatres, as the
editors have given no explanation to guide them. Davenant’s, or the
Duke’s, company occupied the old “Cockpit” in Drury Lane for a short
time after the Restoration, until they removed to Lincoln’s Inn Fields,
in the spring of 1662. Now Pepys frequently mentions the plays acted
at the Cockpit, but these were performed at night, and apparently the
Cockpit alluded to was the one at Whitehall, not that in Drury Lane.
This seems evident by an entry under date Nov. 20, 1660: “I found my
Lord in bed late, he having been with the King, Queen and Princess
at the Cockpit all night, where General Monk treated them; and after
supper a play;” because the Duke of Albemarle lived at the Cockpit
in St. James’s Park. Peter Cunningham mentions in the “Handbook of
London,” that he found in the records of the Audit Office a payment of
xxxˡⁱ. per annum, “to the Keeper of our playhouse called the Cockpitt,
in St. James’s Park,” but he gives no further particulars and does not
appear to have noticed how far the entries in the “Diary” illustrate
this appointment. On December 1st, 1662, the Duke’s company acted
before the King at the Cockpit, and January 5th, 1662–63, the King’s
company acted in the same place, but Pepys did not think the latter at
all equal to “the Duke’s people.”
All the entries in the “Diary” relating to the stage require more
investigation than they have yet received, as the notes of the
editors are quite insufficient. We have seen how the allusions to
the “Cockpit” in the years 1660–62, might either refer to the Duke’s
theatre or to the Court theatre, and the same confusion might easily
be made in respect to the Lincoln’s Inn theatre. Pepys says that on
November 20th, 1660, he and Mr. Shepley went “to the new play-house
near Lincoln’s Inn Fields (which was formerly Gibbon’s tennis-court).”
This was the home of the King’s company from 1660 till 1663, when they
went to Drury Lane. As already stated, the Duke’s company removed to
Portugal Street in 1662, so that for a short period the two rival
theatres were close together in the neighbourhood of Lincoln’s Inn
Fields. Pepys visited all parts of the house, and did not much care
where he sat so that he got in: thus on November 7, 1667, he was
“forced to sit in the side balcony over against the music-room, close
by my Lady Dorset and a great many great ones;” and some years before
he was somewhat troubled to be seen by two or three of his clerks,
who were in the half-crown box, while he was in an eighteenpenny
place.[380] The price of a pit seat was 2_s._ 6_d._, and in spite of
the inconvenience of the place in wet weather, it was frequented by
people of fashion; for instance, the Duke of Buckingham sat there,
and was surrounded by Lord Buckhurst, Sir Charles Sedley, Sir George
Etherege, and other poets;[381] and “a company of fine ladies” was not
absent.[382] But even at that time “citizens, ’prentices and others”
jostled their betters. Pepys writes: “I do not remember that I saw so
many, by half, of the ordinary ’prentices and mean people in the pit
at 2_s._ 6_d._ apiece as now; I going for several years no higher than
the 12_d._ and then the 18_d._ places, though I strained hard to go in
when I did.”[383] The theatres were generally crowded, and on special
occasions it was difficult to find a place. When Etherege’s “She
Would if She Could” was first acted, 1,000 persons were turned away
because there was no room in the pit an hour before the performance
commenced.[384] An ingenious plan for keeping seats which was in vogue
for many subsequent years is mentioned by Pepys. On May 2, 1668, he
writes: “To the Duke of York’s play house at a little past twelve,
to get a good place in the pit for the new play, and there setting a
poor man to keep my place, I out and spent an hour at Martin’s, my
bookseller’s, and so back again, where I find the house quite full. But
I had my place.”
When the theatre built for the King’s company in Drury Lane, was opened
in 1663, Pepys found some faults in the construction, one of these
being the narrowness of the passages in and out of the pit. He did
not approve also of the placing of the orchestra under the stage, by
which means the basses could not be heard at all, and the trebles very
faintly.[385]
Pepys does not mention Fop’s Corner in the King’s theatre, a name which
recalls the better-known Fop’s Alley of Her Majesty’s Opera House, but
it is alluded to in Dryden’s epilogue spoken at the new house in Drury
Lane on March 26th, 1674:
“So may Fop Corner full of noise remain,
And drive far off the dull attentive train.”
Pepys does, however, tell us how loudly people of fashion talked. One
day Sir Charles Sedley had a merry discourse with two ladies, which
prevented the Diarist from hearing any of the play. His feelings were
divided between pleasure in hearing the wit and annoyance in losing the
play.[386] The manners of most of the audience, as exhibited in several
little traits, were far from commendable, but it would be difficult to
equal the following incident, which is related as if there were nothing
particularly unladylike in it: “I sitting behind in a dark place [in
the theatre], a lady spit backward upon me by mistake, not seeing me,
but after seeing her to be a very pretty lady, I was not troubled at it
at all.”[387]
One of the institutions of the theatre was Orange Moll, who is
frequently mentioned in the “Diary.” The orange girls stood with their
backs to the stage, and the beaux in the pit broke jests with them.
One of these women tried to impose upon Pepys by affirming that she
had delivered a dozen oranges to some ladies in a box in accordance
to his order, “which was wholly untrue, but yet she swore it to be
true.” He denied the charge, and would not pay, but for quiet bought
four shillings’ worth of oranges at 6_d._ apiece.[388] This was the
usual price, as we learn from the prologue to Mrs. Behn’s “Young King,”
1698:--
“Half crown my play, sixpence my orange cost.”
The mistress or superior of these women was named, for distinction,
Orange Moll.
Pepys makes a passing allusion to the old practice of placing the
notices of performances on posts, but the editors have left the passage
without explanation. He writes: “I went to see if any play was acted,
and I found none upon the post, it being Passion week.”[389] This is
well illustrated by an anecdote:--“Master Field, the player, riding up
Fleet Street a great pace, a gentleman called him, and asked what play
was played that day? He (being angry to be stayed upon so frivolous
a demand) answered that he might see what play was to be played upon
every _post_. I cry you mercy (said the gentleman) I took you for a
_post_ you rode so fast.”
The other amusements mentioned by Pepys sink into insignificance by
the side of the theatre, but a short enumeration of some of them may
be given here. The cock-pit, in Shoe Lane, was a well-known place of
resort for sporting men, and Pepys went to see some cock-fighting
there, but he soon had enough of it, although he was glad to have seen
“the strange variety of people.”[390] He went on one occasion to the
Bear Garden, on the Bankside, “and saw some good sport of the bull’s
tossing of the dogs: one into the very boxes,” but he did not much
like the company, and on the whole he thought it “a very rude and
nasty pleasure.”[391] At another time he went to the same place to see
a prize fight, but being ashamed to be seen, he went in a back way
(getting among the bulls, and fearing to be too near the bears) and sat
with his cloak before his face.[392]
Pepys did not practise athletic sports himself, but he liked to
see them practised by others. He was a spectator at a very serious
fencing-match where the combatants cut each other rather severely
both in the head and legs.[393] The King was a good player at tennis,
but Pepys thought it “a loathsome sight” to see his play “extolled
without any cause at all.”[394] Charles was in the habit of weighing
himself before and after a game, and on a certain occasion he lost
four and a-half pounds. The best players in England were said to be
Prince Rupert, Bab May, Captain Cooke, and Mr. (afterwards Sir Thomas)
Chicheley.[395] Pepys liked a game of bowls, because he could play it
with the ladies;[396] and he sometimes condescended to have a game at
ninepins.[397] Gaming ran high at Court, and we are told that Lady
Castlemaine played _£_1,000 and _£_1,500 at a cast, winning _£_15,000
one night, and losing _£_25,000 on another night.[398] No wonder Bishop
Morley denounced this excess in play, and specially commented on the
groom-porter’s conduct in one of his sermons before the Court.[399]
There are several references in the “Diary” to games of cards, but in
most instances the particular game played is not mentioned. Cribbage,
handycap (a game like loo), and gleek (played by three persons with
forty-four cards), are, however, all specially alluded to.[400]
Pepys played at shuttlecock on January 11th, 1659–60; at shuffle (or
shovel) board on July 30th, 1662, and on April 1st, 1665, and at
tables or backgammon on September 11th and 16th, 1665. Among the minor
amusements must be mentioned the crying of forfeits,[401] blindman’s
buff,[402] and crambo or tagging of rhymes.[403]
Dancing was in high repute, and Pepys describes the various balls
pretty fully. On the 31st of December, 1662, there is some lively
dancing at Whitehall. The King (a good dancer) opens the ball with the
Duchess of York, and the dancing commences with the Bransle or “brawl,”
of Shakespeare and Gray. Then follows the swift coranto, and the
country dances. When the King stood up, all the ladies, even the Queen
herself, rose. A few years later a gallant company again meet at the
palace, and the same order of proceeding is followed. First comes the
brawl, then the coranto, and last of all a dance from France, which the
King calls the “new dance.”[404]
Pepys learns the coranto himself in May, 1663, and two years afterwards
he disputes with Captain Taylor on the best way of dancing it.[405] At
first Pepys’s Puritan leanings led him to look rather unfavourably upon
dancing, but in the end he became tolerably fond of it. On January 6th,
1667–68, he had a party for which he engaged four fiddlers at a cost of
_£_3, and everything went off very satisfactorily in consequence. All
that Pepys has to say about amusements is to be found in the “Diary,”
for his letters contain no information respecting the stage or the
balls at Court. This is only another indication of how much we have
lost by the discontinuance of the “Diary,” for it is scarcely possible
to believe that the man who exhibited so absorbing an interest in the
proceedings of the theatre, should suddenly have ceased to visit it.
FOOTNOTES:
[362] These entries are of so much importance in dramatic history, as
giving definite dates for the performance of the various plays, that I
have thought it well to give a complete list in the Appendix.
[363] Evelyn’s “Diary,” Nov. 26, 1661.
[364] “Diary,” June 22, 1661.
[365] Sept. 19, 1665.
[366] “Diary,” Aug. 24, 1661.
[367] Aug. 13, 1664.
[368] Dec. 8, 1665.
[369] Oct. 26, 1667.
[370] Feb. 1, 1663–64.
[371] “Diary,” Dec. 11, 1667.
[372] Feb. 23, 1660–61.
[373] April 29, 1668.
[374] “Diary,” Feb. 2, 1668–69.
[375] Aug. 2, 1664.
[376] “Diary,” Feb. 12, 1666–67.
[377] June 1, 1664.
[378] May 1, 1668.
[379] Dec. 28, 1666.
[380] “Diary,” Jan. 19, 1660–61.
[381] Feb. 6, 1667–68.
[382] March 31, 1660–61.
[383] “Diary,” Jan. 1, 1667–68.
[384] Feb. 6, 1667–68.
[385] May 8, 1663.
[386] “Diary,” Feb. 18, 1666–67.
[387] Jan. 28, 1660–61.
[388] May 11, 1668.
[389] “Diary,” March 24, 1662.
[390] Dec. 21, 1663.
[391] Aug. 14, 1666.
[392] Sept. 9, 1667.
[393] “Diary,” June 1, 1663.
[394] Dec. 28, 1663; Jan. 4, 1663–64.
[395] Sept. 2, 1667.
[396] May 1, 1661.
[397] April 28, 1660.
[398] Feb. 14, 1667–68.
[399] Dec. 25, 1662.
[400] _Cribbage_, Jan. 2, 1659–60, May 15, 1660; _handycap_, Sept. 19,
1660; _gleek_, Jan. 13, Feb. 17, 1661–62.
[401] “Diary,” Feb. 4, 1660–61.
[402] Dec. 26, 1664.
[403] May 19, 1660.
[404] Nov. 15, 1666.
[405] April 23, 1665.
[Illustration: Decoration]
[Illustration: Decoration]