STROLLING PLAYERS.
It is rather the public than the player that strolls nowadays. The
theatre is stationary--the audience peripatetic. The wheels have been
taken off the cart of Thespis. Hamlet's line, "Then came each actor on
his ass," or the stage direction in the old "Taming of the Shrew"
(1594), "Enter two players with packs on their backs," no longer
describes accurately the travelling habits of the histrionic
profession. But of old the country folk had the drama brought as it
were to their doors, and just as they purchased their lawn and
cambric, ribbons and gloves, and other raiment and bravery of the
wandering pedlar--the Autolycus of the period--so all their playhouse
learning and experience they acquired from the itinerant actors. These
were rarely the leading performers of the established London
companies, however, unless it so happened that the capital was
suffering from a visitation of the plague. "Starring in the provinces"
was not an early occupation of the players of good repute. As a rule,
it was only the inferior actors who quitted town, and as Dekker
contemptuously says, "travelled upon the hard hoof from village to
village for cheese and buttermilk." "How chances it they travel?"
inquires Hamlet concerning "the tragedians of the city"--"their
_residence_ both in reputation and profit were better both ways." John
Stephens, writing in 1615, and describing "a common player," observes,
"I prefix the epithet 'common' to distinguish the base and artless
appendants of our City companies, which oftentimes start away into
rustical wanderings, and then, like Proteus, start back again into
the City number." The strollers were of two classes, however. First,
the theatrical companies protected by some great personage, wearing
his badge or crest, and styling themselves his "servants"--just as to
this day the Drury Lane troop, under warrant of Davenant's patent,
still boast the title of "Her Majesty's Servants"--who attended at
country seats, and gave representations at the request or by the
permission of the great people of the neighbourhood; and secondly, the
mere unauthorised itinerants, with no claim to distinction beyond such
as their own merits accorded to them, who played in barns, or in large
inn-yards and rooms, and against whom was especially levelled the Act
of Elizabeth declaring that all players, &c., "not licensed by any
baron or person of high rank, or by two justices of the peace, should
be deemed and treated as rogues and vagabonds."
The suppression of the theatres by the Puritans reduced all the
players to the condition of strollers of the lowest class. Legally
their occupation was gone altogether. Stringent measures were taken to
abolish stage-plays and interludes, and by an Act passed in 1647, all
actors of plays for the time to come were declared rogues within the
meaning of the Act of Elizabeth, and upon conviction were to be
publicly whipped for the first offence, and for the second to be
deemed incorrigible rogues, and dealt with accordingly; all stage
galleries, seats, and boxes were to be pulled down by warrant of two
justices of the peace; all money collected from the spectators was to
be appropriated to the poor of the parish; and all spectators of
plays, for every offence, fined five shillings. Assuredly these were
very hard times for players, playhouses, and playgoers. Still the
theatre was hard to kill. In 1648, a provost-marshal was nominated to
stimulate the vigilance and activity of the lord mayor, justices, and
sheriffs, and among other duties, "to seize all ballad-singers and
sellers of malignant pamphlets, and to send them to the several
militias, and to suppress stage-plays." Yet, all this notwithstanding,
some little show of life stirred now and then in the seeming corpse of
the drama. A few players met furtively, assembled a select audience,
and gave a clandestine performance, more or less complete, in some
obscure quarter. Secret Royalists and but half-hearted Puritans
abounded, and these did not scruple to abet a breach of the law, and
to be entertained now and then in the old time-honoured way.
With the Restoration, however, Thespis enjoyed his own again, and sock
and buskin became once more lawful articles of apparel. Charles II.
mounted the throne arm-in-arm, as it were, with a player-king and
queen. The London theatres reopened under royal patronage, and in the
provinces the stroller was abroad. He had his enemies, no doubt.
Prejudice is long-lived, of robust constitution. Puritanism had struck
deep root in the land, and though the triumphant Cavaliers might hew
its branches, strip off its foliage, and hack at its trunk, they could
by no means extirpate it altogether. Religious zealotry, strenuous and
stubborn, however narrow, had fostered, and parliamentary enactments
had warranted, hostility of the most uncompromising kind to the player
and his profession. To many he was still, his new liberty and
privileges notwithstanding, but "a son of Belial"--ever of near kin to
the rogue and the vagabond, with the stocks and the whipping-post
still in his immediate neighbourhood, let him turn which way he would.
And then, certainly, his occupation had its seamy side. With this the
satirists, who loved censure rather for its wounding than its healing
properties, made great play. They were never tired of pointing out and
ridiculing the rents in the stroller's coat; his shifts, trials,
misfortunes, follies, were subjects for ceaseless derision. What Grub
Street and "penny-a-lining" have been to the vocation of letters,
strolling and "barn-strutting" became to the histrionic profession--an
excuse for scorn, underrating, and mirth, more or less bitter.
Still strolling had its charms. To the beginner it afforded a kind of
informal apprenticeship, with the advantage that while a learner of
its mysteries, he could yet style himself a full member of the
profession of the stage, and share in its profits. He was at once bud
and flower. What though the floor of a ruined barn saw his first crude
efforts, might not the walls of a patent theatre resound by-and-by
with delighted applause, tribute to his genius? It was a free, frank,
open vocation he had adopted; it was unprotected and unrestricted by
legislative provisions in the way of certificates, passes,
examinations, and diplomas. There was no need of ticket, or voucher,
or preparation of any kind to obtain admission to the ranks of the
players. "Can you shout?" a manager once inquired of a novice. "Then
only shout in the right places, and you'll do." No doubt this implied
that even in the matter of shouting some science is involved. And
there may be men who cannot shout at all, let the places be right or
wrong. Still the stage can find room and subsistence of a sort for
all, even for mutes. But carry a banner, walk in a procession, or form
one of a crowd, and you may still call yourself actor, though not an
actor of a high class, certainly. The histrionic calling is a ladder
of many rungs. Remain on the lowest or mount to the highest--it is
only a question of degree--you are a player all the same.
The Thespian army had no need of a recruiting-sergeant or a press-gang
to reinforce its ranks. There have always been amateurs lured by the
mere spectacle of the foot-lights, as moths by a candle. Crabbe's
description of the strollers in his "Borough" was a favourite passage
with Sir Walter Scott, and was often read to him in his last fatal
illness:
Of various men these marching troops are made,
Pen-spurning clerks and lads contemning trade;
Waiters and servants by confinement teased,
And youths of wealth by dissipation eased;
With feeling nymphs who, such resource at hand,
Scorn to obey the rigour of command, &c. &c.
And even to the skilled and experienced actors a wandering life
offered potent attractions. Apart from its liberty and adventure, its
defiance of social convention and restraint, ambition had space to
stir, and vanity could be abundantly indulged in the itinerant
theatre. Dekker speaks of the bad presumptuous players, who out of a
desire to "wear the best jerkin," and to "act great parts, forsake the
stately and more than Roman city stages," and join a strolling
company. By many it was held better to reign in a vagrant than to
serve in an established troop--preferable to appear as Hamlet in the
provinces than to play Horatio or Guildenstern in town. And then, in
the summer months, when the larger London houses were closed,
strolling became a matter of necessity with a large number of actors;
they could gain a subsistence in no other way. "The little theatre in
the Haymarket," as it was wont to be called, which opened its doors in
summer, when its more important neighbours had concluded their
operations, could only offer engagements to a select few of their
companies. The rest must needs wander. Whatever their predilections,
they were strollers upon compulsion.
Indeed, strolling was only feasible during summer weather. Audiences
could hardly be moved from their firesides in winter, barns were too
full of grain to be available for theatrical purposes, and the players
were then glad to secure such regular employment as they could,
however slender might be the scale of their remuneration. There is a
story told of a veteran and a tyro actor walking in the fields early
in the year, when, suddenly, the elder ran from the path, stopped
abruptly, and planting his foot firmly upon the green-sward, exclaimed
with ecstasy: "Three, by heaven! _That_ for managers!" and snapped his
fingers. His companion asked an explanation of this strange conduct.
"You'll know before you have strutted in three more barns," said the
"old hand." "In winter, managers are the most impudent fellows living,
because they know we don't like to travel, don't like to leave our
nests, fear the cold, and all that. But when I can put my foot upon
three daisies--summer's near, and managers may whistle for me!"
The life was not dignified, perhaps, but it had certain picturesque
qualities. The stroller toiling on his own account, "padding the
hoof," as he called journeying on foot--a small bundle under his arm,
containing a few clothes and professional appliances--wandered from
place to place, stopping now at a fair, now at a tavern, now at a
country-house, to deliver recitations and speeches, and to gain such
reward for his labours as he might. Generally he found it advisable,
however, to join a company of his brethren and share profits with
them, parting from them again upon a difference of opinion or upon the
receipts diminishing too seriously, when he would again rely upon his
independent exertions. Sometimes the actor was able to hire or
purchase scenes and dresses, the latter being procured generally from
certain shops in Monmouth Street dealing in cast clothes and tarnished
frippery that did well enough for histrionic purposes; then, engaging
a company, he would start from London as a manager, to visit certain
districts where it was thought that a harvest might be reaped. The
receipts were divided among the troop upon a prearranged method. The
impresario took shares in his different characters of manager,
proprietor, and actor. Even the fragments of the candles that had
lighted the representations were divided amongst the company.
Permission had always to be sought of the local magnates before a
performance could be given; and the best-dressed and most
cleanly-looking actor was deputed to make this application, as well as
to conciliate the farmer or innkeeper, whose barn, stable, or great
room was to be hired for the occasion. Churchill writes:
The strolling tribe, a despicable race,
Like wandering Arabs, shift from place to place.
Vagrants by law, to justice open laid,
They tremble, of the beadle's lash afraid;
And fawning, cringe for wretched means of life
To Madame Mayoress or his worship's wife.
"I'm a justice of the peace and know how to deal with strollers," says
Sir Tunbelly, with an air of menace, in "The Relapse." The
magistrates, indeed, were much inclined to deal severely with the
wandering actor, eyeing his calling with suspicion, and prompt to
enforce the laws against him. Thus we find in "Humphrey Clinker," the
mayor of Gloucester eager to condemn as a vagrant, and to commit to
prison with hard labour, young Mr. George Dennison, who, in the guise
of Wilson, a strolling player, had presumed to make love to Miss Lydia
Melford, the heroine of the story.
In truth, the stroller's life, with all its seeming license and
independence, must always have been attended with hardship and
privation. If the player had ever deemed his art the "idle calling"
many declared it to be, he was soon undeceived on that head. There was
but a thin partition between him and absolute want; meanwhile his
labour was incessant. The stage is a conservative institution,
adhering closely to old customs, manners, and traditions, and what
strolling had once been it continued to be almost for centuries. "A
company of strolling comedians," writes the author of "The Road to
Ruin," who had himself strolled in early life, "is a small kingdom, of
which the manager is the monarch. Their code of laws seems to have
existed, with little variation, since the days of Shakespeare." Who
can doubt that Hogarth's famous picture told the truth, not only of
the painter's own time, but of the past and of the future? The poor
player followed a sordid and wearisome routine. He was constrained to
devote long hours to rehearsal and to the study of various parts,
provided always he could obtain a sight of the book of the play, for
the itinerant theatre afforded no copyist then to write neatly out
each actor's share in the dialogues and speeches. Night brought the
performance, and, for the player engaged as "utility," infinite change
of dress and "making-up" of his face to personate a variety of
characters. The company would, probably, be outnumbered by the
_dramatis personæ_, in which case it would devolve upon the actor to
assume many parts in one play. Thus, supposing Hamlet to be announced
for representation, the stroller of inferior degree might be called
upon to appear as Francisco, afterwards as a lord-in-waiting in the
court scenes, then as Lucianus, "nephew to the king," then as one of
the grave-diggers, then as a lord again, or, it might be, Osric, the
fop, in the last act. Other duties, hardly less arduous, would fall to
him in the after-pieces. "I remember," said King, the actor famous as
being the original Sir Peter Teazle and Lord Ogleby, "that when I had
been but a short time on the stage, I performed one night King
Richard, sang two comic songs, played in an interlude, danced a
hornpipe, spoke a prologue, and was afterwards harlequin, in a sharing
company; and after all this fatigue my share came to threepence and
three pieces of candle!" A strolling manager of a later period was
wont to boast that he had performed the complete melodrama of "Rob
Roy" with a limited company of five men and three women. Hard-worked,
ill-paid, and, consequently, ill-fed, the stroller must have often led
a dreary and miserable life enough. The late Mr. Drinkwater Meadows
used to tell of his experiences with a company that travelled through
Warwickshire, and their treasury being empty, depended for their
subsistence upon their piscatorial skill. They lived for some time,
indeed, upon the trout streams of the county. They plied rod and line,
and learned their parts at the same time. "We could fish and study,
study and fish," said the actor. "I made myself perfect in Bob Acres
while fishing in the Avon, and committed the words to my memory quite
as fast as I committed the fish to my basket."
The straits and necessities of the strollers have long been a source
of entertainment to the public. In an early number of the "Spectator,"
Steele describes a company of poor players then performing at Epping.
"They are far from offending in the impertinent splendour of the
drama. Alexander the Great was acted by a fellow in a paper cravat.
The next day the Earl of Essex seemed to have no distress but his
poverty; and my Lord Foppington wanted any better means to show
himself a fop than by wearing stockings of different colours. In a
word, though they have had a full barn for many days together, our
itinerants are so wretchedly poor that the heroes appear only like
sturdy beggars, and the heroines gipsies." It is added that the stage
of these performers "is here in its original situation of a cart." In
the "Memoirs of Munden" a still stranger stage is mentioned. A
strolling company performing in Wales had for theatre a bedroom, and
for stage a large four-post bed! The spaces on either side were
concealed from the audience by curtains, and formed the tiring-rooms
of the ladies and gentlemen of the troop. On this very curious stage
the comedian afterwards famous as Little Knight, but then new to his
profession, appeared as Acres in "The Rivals," and won great applause.
Goldsmith's Strolling Player is made to reveal many of the smaller
needs and shifts of his calling, especially in the matter of costume.
"We had figures enough, but the difficulty was to dress them. The same
coat that served Romeo, turned with the blue lining outwards, served
for his friend Mercutio: a large piece of crape sufficed at once for
Juliet's petticoat and pall; a pestle and mortar from a neighbouring
apothecary answered all the purposes of a bell; and our landlord's own
family, wrapped in white sheets, served to fill up the procession. In
short, there were but three figures among us that might be said to be
dressed with any propriety; I mean the nurse, the starved apothecary,
and myself." Of his own share in the representation the stroller
speaks candidly enough: "I snuffed the candles, and, let me tell you,
that without a candle-snuffer the piece would lose half its
embellishments." But there has always been forthcoming a very abundant
supply of stories of this kind, not always to be understood literally,
however, concerning the drama under difficulties, and the comical side
of the player's indigence, distresses, and quaint artifices to conceal
his poverty.
A word should be said as to the courage and enterprise of our early
strollers. Travelling is nowadays so easy a matter that we are apt to
forget how solemnly it was viewed by our ancestors. In the last
century a man thought about making his will as a becoming preliminary
to his journeying merely from London to Edinburgh. But the strollers
were true to themselves and their calling, though sometimes the
results of their adventures were luckless enough. "Our plantations in
America have been voluntarily visited by some itinerants, Jamaica in
particular," writes Chetwood, in his "History of the Stage" (1749). "I
had an account from a gentleman who was possessed of a large estate in
the island that a company in the year 1733 came there and cleared a
large sum of money, where they might have made moderate fortunes if
they had not been too busy with the growth of the country. They
received three hundred and seventy pistoles the first night of the
'Beggar's Opera,' but within the space of two months they buried their
third Polly and two of their men. The gentlemen of the island for some
time took their turns upon the stage to keep up the diversion; but
this did not hold long; for in two months more there were but one old
man, a boy, and a woman of the company left. The rest died either with
the country distemper or the common beverage of the place, the noble
spirit of rum-punch, which is generally fatal to new-comers. The
shattered remains, with upwards of two thousand pistoles in bank,
embarked for Carolina, to join another company at Charlestown, but
were cast away in the voyage. Had the company been more blessed with
the virtue of sobriety, &c., they might perhaps have lived to carry
home the liberality of those generous islanders."
It is to be observed that the strolling profession had its divisions
and grades. The "boothers," as they are termed, have to be viewed as
almost a distinct class. These carry their theatre, a booth, about
with them, and only pretend to furnish very abridged presentments of
the drama. With them "Richard III.," for instance, is but an
entertainment of some twenty minutes' duration. They are only anxious
to give as many performances as possible before fresh assemblies of
spectators in as short a time as may be. "Boothers" have been known to
give even six distinct exhibitions on Saturday nights. And they
certainly resort to undignified expedients to lure their audiences.
They parade in their theatrical attire, dance quadrilles and
hornpipes, fight with broadswords, and make speeches on the external
platform of their booth. Histrionic art is seen to little advantage
under these conditions, although it should be said that many notable
players have commenced the study of their profession among the
"boothers." The travelling circus is again a distinct institution, its
tumblers and riders only in a very distant and illegitimate way
connected with even the humblest branches of the great Thespian
family.
But strolling, in its old sense, is fast expiring. Barns have ceased
to be temples of the drama. The railways carry the public to the
established theatres; London stars and companies travelling in
first-class carriages, with their secretary and manager, visit in turn
the provincial towns, and attract all the playgoers of the
neighbourhood. The country manager, retaining but a few "utility
people," is well content to lend his stage to these dignified players,
who stroll only nominally, without "padding the hoof," or the least
chance of hardship or privation attending their rustical wanderings.
Their travels are indeed more in the nature of royal progresses. Even
for the "boothers" times have changed. Waste lands on which to "pitch"
their playhouses are now hard to find; the "pleasure fairs," once
their chief source of profit, become more and more rare; indeed, there
is a prevalent disposition nowadays to abolish altogether those
old-fashioned celebrations. And worse than all, perhaps, the audiences
have become sophisticated and critical, and have not so much simple
faith and hearty goodwill to place at the disposal of the itinerants.
Centralisation has now affected the stage. The country is no longer
the nursery and training-school of the player. He commences his career
in London, and then regales the provinces with an exhibition of his
proficiency. The strollers are now merged in the "stars." The
apprentice has become the master, which may possibly account for the
fact, that the work accomplished is not invariably of first-rate
quality.