THE RED BULL
The builder of the Red Bull Playhouse[484] was "one Aaron Holland,
yeoman," of whom we know little more than that he "was utterly
unlearned and illiterate, not being able to read."[485] He had leased
"for many years" from Anne Beddingfield, "wife and administratrix of
the goods and chattles of Christopher Beddingfield, deceased," a small
plot of land, known by the name of "The Red Bull." This plot of land,
which contained one house, was situated "at the upper end of St.
John's Street" in the Parish of St. James, Clerkenwell, the exact
location being marked by "Red Bull Yard" in Ogilby and Morgan's _Map
of London_, printed in 1677. The property was not much more distant
from the heart of the city than the Fortune property, and since it
could be easily reached through St. John's Gate, it was quite as well
situated for dramatic purposes as was the Fortune.
[Footnote 484: This playhouse is not to be confused with the famous
Bull Tavern in Bishopsgate Street, for many years used as a theatre.]
[Footnote 485: These statements are based upon the Woodford _v._
Holland documents, first discovered by Collier, later by Greenstreet,
and finally printed in full by Wallace, _Three London Theatres_.]
[Illustration: THE SITE OF THE RED BULL PLAYHOUSE
The site is indicated by Red Bull Yard. (From Ogilby and Morgan's _Map
of London_, 1677.)]
In or before 1605[486] Holland erected on this plot of ground "a
playhouse for acting and setting forth plays, comedies, and
tragedies." We may suspect that he did this at the instigation of the
Earl of Worcester's Men, who had just been taken under the patronage
of the Queen, and had been selected by the Privy Council as one of
three companies to be "allowed." The warrant of the Privy Council,
April 9, 1604, orders the Lord Mayor to "permit and suffer the three
companies of players to the King, Queen, and Prince publickly to
exercise their plays in their several and usual houses for that
purpose, and no other, viz. the Globe, situate in Maiden Lane on the
Bankside in the county of Surrey, the Fortune in Golding Lane, and the
Curtain, in Holywell."[487] Among these three companies, as Dekker
tells us, there was much rivalry.[488] No doubt the Queen's Men,
forced to occupy the old Curtain Playhouse, suffered by comparison
with the King's Men at the handsome Globe, and the Prince's Men at the
new and magnificent Fortune; and this, I suspect, furnished the
immediate cause for the erection of the Red Bull. In a draft of a
license to the Queen's Men, made late in 1603 or early in 1604, the
fact is disclosed that the actors, of whom Thomas Greene was the
leader, were contemplating a new playhouse. The company was licensed
to use any "playhouse not used by others, by the said Thomas Greene
elected, _or by him hereafter to be built_."[489] Whether or no Greene
and his fellows had some understanding with Holland, we cannot say.
But in 1605 we find Holland disposing of one share in the new
playhouse to Thomas Swynnerton, a member of Queen Anne's Troupe; and
he may at the same time have disposed of other shares to other
members, for his transaction with Swynnerton comes to our notice only
through a subsequent lawsuit. The words used in the documents
connected with the suit clearly suggest that the playhouse was
completed at the time of the purchase. From the fact that Holland
granted "a seventh part of the said playhouse and galleries, with a
gatherer's place thereto belonging or appertaining, unto the said
Thomas Swynnerton for diverse years,"[490] it appears that the
ownership of the playhouse had been divided into seven shares, some of
which, according to custom, may have been subdivided into half-shares.
[Footnote 486: Sir Sidney Lee (_A Life of William Shakespeare_, p. 60)
says that the Red Bull was "built about 1600." He gives no evidence,
and the statement seems to be merely a repetition from earlier and
unauthoritative writers.]
[Footnote 487: The original warrant is preserved at Dulwich, and
printed by Greg, _Henslowe Papers_, p. 61. Cf. also Dasent, _Acts of
the Privy Council_, XXXII, 511.]
[Footnote 488: _Raven's Almanack_ (1609); Dekker's _Works_ (ed.
Grosart), IV, 210.]
[Footnote 489: The Malone Society's _Collections_, I, 265.]
[Footnote 490: Wallace, _Three London Theatres_, p. 18.]
The name of the playhouse, as in the case of the Rose and the Curtain,
was taken from the name of the estate on which it was erected. Of the
building we have no pictorial representation; the picture in Kirkman's
_The Wits_ (1672), so often reproduced by scholars as "The Interior
of the Red Bull," has nothing whatever to do with that building. The
Kirkman picture shows a small enclosed room, with a narrow stage
illuminated by chandeliers and footlights; the Red Bull, on the
contrary, was a large, open-air building, with its stage illuminated
by the sun. It is thus described in Wright's _Historia Histrionica_
(1699): "The Globe, Fortune, and Bull were large houses, and lay
partly open to the weather."[491] Before its door was displayed a sign
on which was painted a red bull; hence the playhouse is sometimes
referred to simply as "at the sign of the Red Bull."
[Footnote 491: Hazlitt's Dodsley, XV, 408. If the Kirkham picture
represents the interior of any playhouse, it more likely represents
the Cockpit, which was standing at the time of the Restoration.]
The building, as I have indicated, seems to have been completed in or
before 1605; but exactly when the Queen's Men moved thither from the
Curtain is not clear. The patent issued to the company on April 15,
1609, gives them license to play "within their now usual houses,
called the Red Bull in Clerkenwell, and the Curtain in Holywell."[492]
Since they would hardly make use of two big public playhouses at the
same time, we might suspect that they were then arranging for the
transfer. Moreover, Heath, in his _Epigrams_, printed in 1610 but
probably written a year or two earlier, refers to the three important
public playhouses of the day as the Globe, the Fortune, and the
Curtain. Yet, that the Queen's Men were playing regularly at the Red
Bull in 1609 is clear from Dekker's _Raven's Almanack_,[493] and they
may have been playing there at intervals after 1605.
[Footnote 492: The Malone Society's _Collections_, I, 270.]
[Footnote 493: Dekker's _Works_ (ed. Grosart), IV, 210-11. I cannot
understand why Murray (_English Dramatic Companies_, I, 152-53) and
others say that Dekker refers to the Fortune, the Globe, and the
Curtain. His puns are clear: "_Fortune_ must favour some ... the
_whole world_ must stick to others ... and a third faction must fight
like _Bulls_."]
Dekker, in the pamphlet just mentioned, predicted "a deadly war"
between the Globe, the Fortune, and the Red Bull. And he had good
reasons for believing that the Queen's Men could successfully compete
with the two other companies, for it numbered among its players some
of the best actors of the day. The leader of the troupe was Thomas
Greene, now chiefly known for the amusing comedy named, after him,
_Greene's Tu Quoque_, but then known to all Londoners as the cleverest
comedian since Tarleton and Kempe:
_Scat._ Yes, faith, brother, if it please you; let's go see
a play at the Globe.
_But._ I care not; any whither, so the clown have a part;
for, i' faith, I am nobody without a fool.
_Gera._ Why, then, we'll go to the Red Bull; they say
Green's a good clown.[494]
[Footnote 494: _Greene's Tu Quoque_, Hazlitt's Dodsley, XI, 240. In
May, 1610, there was "a notable outrage at the Playhouse called the
Red Bull"; see _Middlesex County Records_, II, 64-65.]
The chief playwright for the troupe was the learned and industrious
Thomas Heywood, who, like Shakespeare, was also an actor and full
sharer in his company. Charles Lamb, who was an ardent admirer of
Heywood's plays, enthusiastically styled him "a prose Shakespeare";
and Wordsworth, with hardly less enthusiasm, declared him to have been
"a great man."
In 1612 Thomas Greene died, and the leadership of the troupe was taken
over by Christopher Beeston, a man well known in the theatrical life
of the time. Late in February, 1617, Beeston transferred the Queen's
Men to his new playhouse in Drury Lane, the Cockpit; in little more
than a week the sacking of the Cockpit drove them back to their old
quarters, where they remained until the following June. But even after
this they seem not to have abandoned the Red Bull entirely.
Edward Alleyn, in his _Account Book_, writes: "Oct. 1, 1617, I came to
London in the coach and went to the Red Bull"; and again under the
date of October 3: "I went to the Red Bull, and received for _The
Younger Brother_ but L3 6_s._ 4_d._"[495] What these two passages mean
it is hard to say, for they constitute the only references to the Red
Bull in all the Alleyn papers; but they do not necessarily imply, as
some have thought, that Alleyn was part owner of the playhouse;
possibly he was merely selling to the Red Bull Company the manuscript
of an old play.[496]
[Footnote 495: Malone, _Variorum_, III, 223; Young, _The History of
Dulwich College_, II, 51; Warner, _Catalogue_, p. 165; Collier,
_Memoirs of Edward Alleyn_, p. 107.]
[Footnote 496: The play is not otherwise known; a play with this
title, however, was entered on the Stationers' Register in 1653.]
At the death of Queen Anne, March 2, 1619, the company was deprived of
its "service," and after attending her funeral on May 13, was
dissolved. Christopher Beeston joined Prince Charles's Men, and
established that troupe at the Cockpit;[497] the other leading members
of Queen Anne's Men seem to have continued at the Red Bull under the
simple title "The Red Bull Company."
[Footnote 497: For details of this change, and of the quarrels that
followed, see the chapter on the Cockpit.]
In April, 1622, a feltmaker's apprentice named John Gill,[498] while
seated on the Red Bull stage, was accidentally injured by a sword in
the hands of one of the actors, Richard Baxter. A few days later Gill
called upon his fellow-apprentices to help him secure damages. In the
forenoon he sent the following letter, now somewhat defaced by time,
to Baxter:
Mr. Blackster [_sic_]. So it is that upon Monday last it ...
to be upon your stage, intending no hurt to any one, where I
was grievously wounded in the head, as may appear; and in
the surgeon's hands, who is to have x_s._ for the cure; and
in the meantime my Master to give me maintenance ... [to my]
great loss and hindrance; and therefore in kindness I desire
you to give me satisfaction, seeing I was wounded by your
own hand ... weapon. If you refuse, then look to yourself
and avoid the danger which shall this day ensue upon your
company and house. For ... as you can, for I am a
feltmaker's prentice, and have made it known to at least one
hundred and forty of our ... who are all here present, ready
to take revenge upon you unless willingly you will give
present satisfaction. Consider there ... think fitting. And
as you have a care for your own safeties, so let me have
answer forthwith.[499]
[Footnote 498: The name is also given, incorrectly, as Richard Gill.]
[Footnote 499: Jeaffreson, _Middlesex County Records_, II, 165-66;
175-76.]
Baxter turned the letter over to the authorities of Middlesex (hence
its preservation), who took steps to guard the playhouse and actors.
The only result was that prentices "to the number of one hundred
persons on the said day riotously assembled at Clerkenwell, to the
terror and disquiet of persons dwelling there."
On July 8, 1622, the Red Bull Company secured a license "to bring up
children in the quality and exercise of playing comedies, histories,
interludes, morals, pastorals, stage-plays and such like ... to be
called by the name of the Children of the Revels."[500] The Children
of the Revels occupied the Red Bull until the summer of the following
year, 1623, when they were dissolved. The last reference to them is in
the Herbert Manuscript under the date of May 10, 1623.[501]
[Footnote 500: Malone, _Variorum_, III, 62; The Malone Society's
_Collections_, I, 284.]
[Footnote 501: Chalmers, _Supplemental Apology_, p. 213.]
In August, 1623, we find the Red Bull occupied by Prince Charles's
Men,[502] who, after the dissolution of the Revels Company, had moved
thither from the less desirable Curtain.
[Footnote 502: _Ibid._, pp. 213-14.]
Two years later, in 1625, Prince Charles became King, and took under
his patronage his father's troupe, the King's Men. Some of the
members of the Prince Charles Troupe were transferred to the King's
Men, and the rest constituted a nucleus about which a new company was
organized, known simply as "The Red Bull Company."
About this time, it seems, the playhouse was rebuilt and enlarged. The
Fortune had been destroyed by fire in 1621, and had just been rebuilt
in a larger and handsomer form. In 1625 one W.C., in _London's
Lamentation for her Sins_, writes: "Yet even then, Oh Lord, were the
theatres magnified and enlarged."[503] This doubtless refers to the
rebuilding of the Fortune and the Red Bull. Prynne specifically states
in his _Histriomastix_ (1633) that the Fortune and Red Bull had been
"lately reedified [and] enlarged." But nothing further is known of the
"re-edification and enlargement" of the Red Bull.
[Footnote 503: Quoted by Collier, _The History of English Dramatic
Poetry_ (1879), III, 121.]
After its enlargement the playhouse seems to have acquired a
reputation for noise and vulgarity. Carew, in 1630, speaks of it as a
place where "noise prevails" and a "drowth of wit," and yet as always
crowded with people while the better playhouses stood empty. In _The
Careless Shepherdess_, acted at Salisbury Court, we read:
And I will hasten to the money-box,
And take my shilling out again;
I'll go to the Bull, or Fortune, and there see
A play for two-pence, and a jig to boot.[504]
[Footnote 504: Malone, _Variorum_, III, 70.]
In 1638, a writer of verses prefixed to Randolph's _Poems_ speaks of
the "base plots" acted with great applause at the Red Bull.[505] James
Wright informs us, in his _Historia Histrionica_, that the Red Bull
and the Fortune were "mostly frequented by citizens and the meaner
sort of people."[506] And Edmund Gayton, in his _Pleasant Notes_,
wittily remarks: "I have heard that the poets of the Fortune and Red
Bull had always a mouth-measure for their actors (who were terrible
tear-throats) and made their lines proportionable to their compass,
which were sesquipedales, a foot and a half."[507] Probably the ill
repute of the large public playhouses at this time was chiefly due to
the rise of private playhouses in the city.
[Footnote 505: Randolph's _Works_ (ed. Hazlitt), p. 504.]
[Footnote 506: Hazlitt's Dodsley, XV, 407.]
[Footnote 507: _Pleasant Notes on Don Quixote_, p. 24.]
In 1635 the Red Bull Company moved to the Fortune, and Prince
Charles's Men occupied the Red Bull.
Five years later, at Easter, 1640, Prince Charles's Men moved back to
the Fortune, and the Red Bull Company returned to its old home. In a
prologue written to celebrate the event,[508] the members of the
company declared:
Here, gentlemen, our anchor's fix't.
[Footnote 508: J. Tatham, _Fancies Theatre_. For a fuller discussion
of the shifting of companies in 1635 and 1640 see the chapter on "The
Fortune."]
This proved true, for the company remained at the Red Bull until
Parliament passed the ordinance of 1642 closing the playhouses and
forbidding all dramatic performances. The ordinance, which was to hold
good during the continuance of the civil war, was renewed in 1647,
with January 1, 1648, set as the date of its expiration. Through some
oversight a new ordinance was not immediately passed, and the actors
were prompt to take advantage of the fact. They threw open the
playhouses, and the Londoners flocked in great crowds to hear plays
again. At the Red Bull, so we learn from the newspaper called _Perfect
Occurrences_, was given a performance of Beaumont and Fletcher's _Wit
Without Money_.
But on February 9, 1648, Parliament made up for its oversight by
passing an exceptionally severe ordinance against dramatic
exhibitions, directing that actors be publicly flogged, and that each
spectator be fined the sum of five shillings.
During the dark years that followed, the Red Bull, in spite of this
ordinance, was occasionally used by venturous actors. James Wright, in
his _Historia Histrionica_, tells us that upon the outbreak of the war
the various London actors had gone "into the King's army, and, like
good men and true, served their old master, though in a different, yet
more honourable capacity. Robinson was killed at the taking of a place
(I think Basing House) by Harrison.... Mohun was a captain.... Hart
was cornet of the same troop, and Shatterel quartermaster. Allen, of
the Cockpit, was a major.... The rest either lost or exposed their
lives for their king."[509] He concludes the narrative by saying that
when the wars were over, those actors who were left alive gathered to
London, "and for a subsistence endeavoured to revive their old trade
privately." They organized themselves into a company in 1648 and
attempted "to act some plays with as much caution and privacy as could
be at the Cockpit"; but after three or four days they were stopped by
soldiers. Thereafter, on special occasions "they used to bribe the
officer who commanded the guard at Whitehall, and were thereupon
connived at to act for a few days at the Red Bull, but were sometimes,
notwithstanding, disturbed by soldiers."[510] To such clandestine
performances Kirkman refers in his Preface to _The Wits, or Sport upon
Sport_ (1672): "I have seen the Red Bull Playhouse, which was a large
one, so full that as many went back for want of room as had entered;
and as meanly as you may now think of these drolls, they were then
acted by the best comedians then and now in being." Not, however,
without occasional trouble. In Whitelocke's _Memorials_, p. 435, we
read: "20 Dec., 1649. Some stage-players in St. John's Street were
apprehended by troopers, their clothes taken away, and themselves
carried to prison"; again, in _The Perfect Account_, December
27-January 3, 1654-1655: "Dec. 30, 1654.--This day the players at the
Red Bull, being gotten into all their borrowed gallantry and ready to
act, were by some of the soldiery despoiled of all their bravery; but
the soldiery carried themselves very civilly towards the
audience."[511] In the _Weekly Intelligencer_, September 11-18, 1655,
we find recorded still another sad experience for the actors: "Friday,
September 11, 1655.--This day proved tragicall to the players at the
Red Bull; their acting being against the Act of Parliament, the
soldiers secured the persons of some of them who were upon the stage,
and in the tiring-house they seized also upon their clothes in which
they acted, a great part whereof was very rich."[512]
[Footnote 509: Hazlitt's Dodsley, XV, 409.]
[Footnote 510: _Ibid._, 409-10.]
[Footnote 511: Cited by C.H. Firth, in _Notes and Queries_, August 18,
1888, series VII, vol. VI, p. 122.]
[Footnote 512: _Ibid._]
On this occasion, however, the soldiers, instead of carrying
themselves "very civilly" towards the audience, undertook to exact
from each of the spectators the fine of five shillings. The ordinance
of Parliament, passed February 9, 1648, read: "And it is hereby
further ordered and ordained, that every person or persons which shall
be present and a spectator at such stage-play or interlude, hereby
prohibited, shall for every time he shall be present, forfeit and pay
the sum of five shillings to the use of the poor of the parish."[513]
But the spectators did not submit to this fine without a struggle.
Jeremiah Banks wrote to Williamson on September 16, 1655: "At the
playhouse this week many were put to rout by the soldiers and had
broken crowns; the corporal would have been entrapped had he not been
vigilant."[514] And in the _Weekly Intelligencer_, September 11-18, we
read: "It never fared worse with the spectators than at this present,
for those who had monies paid their five shillings apiece; those who
had none, to satisfy their forfeits, did leave their cloaks behind
them. The Tragedy of the spectators was the Comedy of the soldiers.
There was abundance of the female sex, who, not able to pay five
shillings, did leave some gage or other behind them, insomuch that
although the next day after the Fair was expected to be a new fair of
hoods, of aprons, and of scarfs; all which, their poverty being made
known, and after some check for their trespass, were civilly again
restored to the owners."[515]
[Footnote 513: Hazlitt, _The English Drama and Stage_, p. 69.]
[Footnote 514: _The Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1655_, p.
336.]
[Footnote 515: For a further account of this episode see _Mercurius
Fumigosus_, No. 69.]
At the period of the Restoration the Red Bull was among the first
playhouses to reopen. John Downes, in his _Roscius Anglicanus_,
writes: "The scattered remnant of several of these houses, upon King
Charles' Restoration, framed a company, who acted again at the
Bull."[516] Apparently the company was brought together by the famous
old Elizabethan actor, Anthony Turner. From the _Middlesex County
Records_ (III, 279) we learn that at first the players were
interrupted by the authorities:
12 May, 1659.--Recognizances, taken before Ra: Hall, esq.
J.P., of William Wintershall and Henry Eaton, both of
Clerkenwell, gentlemen, in the sum of fifty pounds each;
"Upon condition that Antony Turner shall personally appear
at the next Quarter Sessions of the Peace to be holden at
Hicks Hall for the said County of Middlesex; for the
unlawful maintaining of stage-plays and interludes at the
Red Bull in St. John's Street, which house he affirms that
they hire of the parishioners of Clerkenwell at the rate of
twenty shillings a day over and above what they have agreed
to pay towards the relief of their poor and repairing their
highways, and in the meantime to be of good behaviour and
not to depart the Court without license.--Ra: Hall." Also
similar Recognizances, taken on the same day, before the
same J.P., of the same William Wintershall and Henry Eaton,
gentlemen, in the same sum of fifty pounds each; for the
appearance of Edward Shatterall at the next. Q.S.P. for
Middlesex at Hicks Hall, "to answer for the unlawful
maintaining of stage-plays and interludes at the Red Bull in
St. John's Street &c." S.P.R., 17, May, 1659.
[Footnote 516: Cf. Wright, _Historia Histrionica_, p. 412; and for the
general history of the actors at the Red Bull during this period see
the Herbert records in Halliwell-Phillipps, _A Collection of Ancient
Documents_.]
Later, it seems, they secured a license from the authorities, and
thenceforth acted without interruption. Samuel Pepys made plans "to go
to the Red Bull Playhouse" with Mrs. Pierce and her husband on August
3, 1660, but was prevented by business. An account of his visit there
on March 23, 1661, is thus given in his _Diary_:
All the morning at home putting papers in order; dined at
home, and then out to the Red Bull (where I had not been
since plays came up again), but coming too soon I went out
again and walked up and down the Charterhouse Yard and
Aldersgate Street. At last came back again and went in,
where I was led by a seaman that knew me, but is here as a
servant, up to the tiring-room, where strange the confusion
and disorder that there is among them in fitting themselves,
especially here, where the clothes are very poor and the
actors but common fellows. At last into the pit, where I
think there was not above ten more than myself, and not one
hundred in the whole house. And the play, which is called
_All's Lost by Lust_, poorly done; and with so much
disorder, among others, that in the musique-room, the boy
that was to sing a song not singing it right, his master
fell about his ears and beat him so, that it put the whole
house in an uproar.
The actors, however, did not remain long at the Red Bull. They built
for themselves a new theatre in Drury Lane, whither they moved on
April 8, 1663;[517] and after this the old playhouse was deserted. In
Davenant's _The Play-House to Be Let_ (1663), I, i, we read:
Tell 'em the Red Bull stands empty for fencers:[518]
There are no tenants in it but old spiders.
[Footnote 517: After November 8, 1660, they acted also in Gibbon's
Tennis Court in Clare Market, which they had fitted up as a theatre;
see Halliwell-Phillipps, _A Collection of Ancient Documents_, p. 34.]
[Footnote 518: See Pepys' _Diary_, April 25, 1664.]