THE HOSTILITY OF THE CITY
As the actors rapidly increased in number and importance, and as
Londoners flocked in ever larger crowds to witness plays, the
animosity of two forces was aroused, Puritanism and Civic
Government,--forces which opposed the drama for different reasons, but
with almost equal fervor. And when in the course of time the Governors
of the city themselves became Puritans, the combined animosity thus
produced was sufficient to drive the players out of London into the
suburbs.
The Puritans attacked the drama as contrary to Holy Writ, as
destructive of religion, and as a menace to public morality. Against
plays, players, and playgoers they waged in pulpit and pamphlet a
warfare characterized by the most intense fanaticism. The charges they
made--of ungodliness, idolatrousness, lewdness, profanity, evil
practices, enormities, and "abuses" of all kinds--are far too numerous
to be noted here; they are interesting chiefly for their
unreasonableness and for the violence with which they were urged.
And, after all, however much the Puritans might rage, they were
helpless; authority to restrain acting was vested in the Lord Mayor,
his brethren the Aldermen, and the Common Council. The attitude of
these city officials towards the drama was unmistakable: they had no
more love for the actors than had the Puritans. They found that "plays
and players" gave them more trouble than anything else in the entire
administration of municipal affairs. The dedication of certain "great
inns" to the use of actors and to the entertainment of the
pleasure-loving element of the city created new and serious problems
for those charged with the preservation of civic law and order. The
presence in these inns of private rooms adjoining the yard and
balconies gave opportunity for immorality, gambling, fleecing, and
various other "evil practices"--an opportunity which, if we may
believe the Common Council, was not wasted. Moreover, the proprietors
of these inns made a large share of their profits from the beer, ale,
and other drinks dispensed to the crowds before, during, and after
performances (the proprietor of the Cross Keys, it will be recalled,
was described as "citizen and brewer of London"); and the resultant
intemperance among "such as frequented the said plays, being the
ordinary place of meeting for all vagrant persons, and masterless men
that hang about the city, theeves, horse-stealers, whoremongers,
cozeners, cony-catching persons, practicers of treason, and such other
like,"[25] led to drunkenness, frays, bloodshed, and often to general
disorder. Sometimes, as we know, turbulent apprentices and other
factions met by appointment at plays for the sole purpose of starting
riots or breaking open jails. "Upon Whitsunday," writes the Recorder
to Lord Burghley, "by reason no plays were the same day, all the city
was quiet."[26]
[Footnote 25: So the Lord Mayor characterized playgoers; see _The
Remembrancia_, in The Malone Society's _Collections_, I, 75.]
[Footnote 26: The Malone Society's _Collections_, I, 164.]
Trouble of an entirely different kind arose when in the hot months of
the summer the plague was threatening. The meeting together at plays
of "great multitudes of the basest sort of people" served to spread
the infection throughout the city more quickly and effectively than
could anything else. On such occasions it was exceedingly difficult
for the municipal authorities to control the actors, who were at best
a stubborn and unruly lot; and often the pestilence had secured a full
start before acting could be suppressed.
These troubles, and others which cannot here be mentioned, made one of
the Lord Mayors exclaim in despair: "The Politique State and
Government of this City by no one thing is so greatly annoyed and
disquieted as by players and plays, and the disorders which follow
thereupon."[27]
[Footnote 27: _The Remembrancia_, in The Malone Society's
_Collections_, I, 69.]
This annoyance, serious enough in itself, was aggravated by the fact
that most of the troupes were under the patronage of great noblemen,
and some were even high in favor with the Queen. As a result, the
attempts on the part of the Lord Mayor and his Aldermen to regulate
the players were often interfered with by other or higher authority.
Sometimes it was a particular nobleman, whose request was not to be
ignored, who intervened in behalf of his troupe; most often, however,
it was the Privy Council, representing the Queen and the nobility in
general, which championed the cause of the actors and countermanded
the decrees of the Lord Mayor and his brethren. One of the most
notable things in the City's _Remembrancia_ is this long conflict of
authority between the Common Council and the Privy Council over actors
and acting.
In 1573 the situation seems to have approached a crisis. The Lord
Mayor had become strongly puritanical, and in his efforts to suppress
"stage-plays" was placing more and more obstacles in the way of the
actors. The temper of the Mayor is revealed in two entries in the
records of the Privy Council. On July 13, 1573, the Lords of the
Council sent a letter to him requesting him "to permit liberty to
certain Italian players"; six days later they sent a second letter,
repeating the request, and "marveling that he did it not at their
first request."[28] His continued efforts to suppress the drama
finally led the troupes to appeal for relief to the Privy Council. On
March 22, 1574, the Lords of the Council dispatched "a letter to the
Lord Mayor to advertise their Lordships what causes he hath to
restrain plays." His answer has not been preserved, but that he
persisted in his hostility to the drama is indicated by the fact that
in May the Queen openly took sides with the players. To the Earl of
Leicester's troupe she issued a special royal license, authorizing
them to act "as well within our city of London and liberties of the
same, as also within the liberties and freedoms of any our cities,
towns, boroughs, etc., whatsoever"; and to the mayors and other
officers she gave strict orders not to interfere with such
performances: "Willing and commanding you, and every of you, as ye
tender our pleasure, to permit and suffer them herein without any your
lets, hindrances, or molestation during the term aforesaid, any act,
statute, proclamation, or commandment heretofore made, or hereafter to
be made, to the contrary notwithstanding."
[Footnote 28: Dasent, _Acts of the Privy Council_, VIII, 131, 132.]
This license was a direct challenge to the authority of the Lord
Mayor. He dared not answer it as directly; but on December 6, 1574, he
secured from the Common Council the passage of an ordinance which
placed such heavy restrictions upon acting as virtually to nullify the
license issued by the Queen, and to regain for the Mayor complete
control of the drama within the city. The Preamble of this remarkable
ordinance clearly reveals the puritanical character of the City
Government:
Whereas heretofore sundry great disorders and inconveniences
have been found to ensue to this city by the inordinate
haunting of great multitudes of people, specially youths, to
plays, interludes, and shews: namely, occasion of frays and
quarrels; evil practises of incontinency in great inns
having chambers and secret places adjoining to their open
stages and galleries; inveigling and alluring of maids,
specially orphans and good citizens' children under age, to
privy and unmeet contracts; the publishing of unchaste,
uncomly, and unshamefaced speeches and doings; withdrawing
of the Queen's Majesty's subjects from divine service on
Sundays and holy days, at which times such plays were
chiefly used; unthrifty waste of the money of the poor and
fond persons; sundry robberies by picking and cutting of
purses; uttering of popular, busy, and seditious matters;
and many other corruptions of youth, and other enormities;
besides that also sundry slaughters and maimings of the
Queen's subjects have happened by ruins of scaffolds,
frames, and stages, and by engines, weapons, and powder used
in plays. And whereas in time of God's visitation by the
plague such assemblies of the people in throng and press
have been very dangerous for spreading of infection.... And
for that the Lord Mayor and his brethren the Aldermen,
together with the grave and discreet citizens in the Common
Council assembled, do doubt and fear lest upon God's
merciful withdrawing his hand of sickness from us (which God
grant), the people, specially the meaner and most unruly
sort, should with sudden forgetting of His visitation,
without fear of God's wrath, and without due respect of the
good and politique means that He hath ordained for the
preservation of common weals and peoples in health and good
order, return to the undue use of such enormities, to the
great offense of God....[29]
[Footnote 29: For the complete document see W.C. Hazlitt, _The English
Drama and Stage_, p. 27.]
The restrictions on playing imposed by the ordinance may be briefly
summarized:
1. Only such plays should be acted as were free from all unchastity,
seditiousness, and "uncomely matter."
2. Before being acted all plays should be "first perused and allowed
in such order and form, and by such persons as by the Lord Mayor and
Court of Aldermen for the time being shall be appointed."
3. Inns or other buildings used for acting, and their proprietors,
should both be licensed by the Lord Mayor and the Aldermen.
4. The proprietors of such buildings should be "bound to the
Chamberlain of London" by a sufficient bond to guarantee "the keeping
of good order, and avoiding of" the inconveniences noted in the
Preamble.
5. No plays should be given during the time of sickness, or during any
inhibition ordered at any time by the city authorities.
6. No plays should be given during "any usual time of divine service,"
and no persons should be admitted into playing places until after
divine services were over.
7. The proprietors of such places should pay towards the support of
the poor a sum to be agreed upon by the city authorities.
In order, however, to avoid trouble with the Queen, or those noblemen
who were accustomed to have plays given in their homes for the private
entertainment of themselves and their guests, the Common Council
added, rather grudgingly, the following proviso:
Provided alway that this act (otherwise than touching the
publishing of unchaste, seditious, and unmeet matters) shall
not extend to any plays, interludes, comedies, tragedies, or
shews to be played or shewed in the private house, dwelling,
or lodging of any nobleman, citizen, or gentleman, which
shall or will then have the same there so played or shewed
in his presence for the festivity of any marriage, assembly
of friends, or other like cause, without public or common
collections of money of the auditory or beholders thereof.
Such regulations if strictly enforced would prove very annoying to the
players. But, as the Common Council itself informs us, "these orders
were not then observed." The troupes continued to play in the city,
protected against any violent action on the part of the municipal
authorities by the known favor of the Queen and the frequent
interference of the Privy Council. This state of affairs was not, of
course, comfortable for the actors; but it was by no means desperate,
and for several years after the passage of the ordinance of 1574 they
continued without serious interruption to occupy their inn-playhouses.
The long-continued hostility of the city authorities, however, of
which the ordinance of 1574 was an ominous expression, led more or
less directly to the construction of special buildings devoted to
plays and situated beyond the jurisdiction of the Common Council. As
the Reverend John Stockwood, in _A Sermon Preached at Paules Crosse,
1578_, indignantly puts it:
Have we not _houses of purpose_, built with great charges
for the maintenance of plays, and that _without the
liberties_, as who would say "_There, let them say what they
will say, we will play!_"
Thus came into existence playhouses; and with them dawned a new era in
the history of the English drama.
[Illustration: THE SITE OF THE FIRST PLAYHOUSES
Finsbury Field and Holywell. The man walking from the Field towards
Shoreditch is just entering Holywell Lane.
(From Agas's _Map of London_, representing the city as it was about
1560.)]