Roaring Boys (17 page)

A play’s a true transparent crystal mirror,
To show good minds their mirth, the bad their terror.

Thomas Heywood,
Apology for Actors
(1607)

T
heatre was now fully professional, employing substantial numbers of actors, dramatists, apprentices, stage staff, scenery, costume and wig makers. But what of the vital element without which it would all have been pointless? Enter the audience. So who were they? Playhouse audiences crossed every social and economic boundary, from the patron and his noble friends (although he could also arrange for his players to perform at one of his houses), to the ‘groundling’, hard-pressed to scrape a living sufficient to give him one good meal a day. Certainly there would have been the well off and those who had been to college or, at the very least, were able to read and write but the majority would have been illiterate, which is why very often a play is preceded either by a dumbshow giving a brief résumé of the plot (as in the play within the play in
Hamlet
), or an actor coming on (as described by Dekker) to present a Prologue speech explaining the nature of the piece the audience is about to see. A good example of this is the Chorus in Shakespeare’s
Henry V
. What was being offered, in fact, was the equivalent of today’s programme notes.

While we know that audiences were often noisy and that many of them might choose bear-baiting or a Tyburn hanging as their next choice of entertainment, what almost all of them most certainly had was an ability to listen. Their attention span was far greater than that of an average audience, indeed the average person today for obvious reasons. There was no Elizabethan equivalent of zapping around the television stations or surfing the net. They were used to taking in information through their ears, not least because from childhood they were forced to listen to long sermons of a Sunday.

As for the language of Shakespeare or the King James Bible, considered far too difficult for most of today’s students, it was not even then normal everyday speech, as we know from exchanges between the women in the
Merry Wives of Windsor
or the mechanicals in
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
. But the rich verse and heightened prose of Marlowe and Shakespeare and the convoluted texts of Ben Jonson were accepted and understood, along with the wordplay and punning so beloved of the Elizabethans. Most of all, people loved a good story at a time when the oral tradition remained strong and folk still told each other tales on a winter’s night. As a consequence, when spectacle was added to narrative, along with fighting, tearing passions, great deeds, and strong, declamatory acting, then an audience would give a play their best attention.

A typical visit to the theatre at the end of the sixteenth century might go something like this. A single would-be playgoer, most likely a man since it was rare for women to go unaccompanied, having seen the latest bill posted for a performance at the Rose, will start making his way to the Bankside towards the end of the morning. By the time the first trumpet has sounded to advertise that the show will commence in an hour’s time, a substantial number of people are purposefully making their way towards the playhouse, many having crossed over from the north side of the Thames either by ferry or walking across London Bridge. Some might have arranged to go as a party, others recognise friends among the crowd and link up with them. Carriages too are pushing their way through the crowds, a danger to life and limb, to deposit members of the nobility or wealthy merchants at the door.

Those with little money to spare will stand to see the show, but unless they are important or wealthy enough to have commandeered a box in advance, for those who want to sit down it is first come, first served; there are no reserved seats. As our man finally arrives outside the playhouse he is at once beset by sellers of pies, bread and cheese and fruit, although oranges, along with bottle ale will also be on sale inside. Finally he buys himself a pie to stop being pestered any further and, no, he tells a persistent whore, he does not intend to lose any chance he might have of a good seat by going behind the theatre with her for fourpence.

Time passes and still the crowd moves only slowly. The trumpet sounds again to mark the half hour. The delay is largely because everyone has to pay the entrance money for himself or his party to the gatherer on the door, who might sometimes have an assistant, but even if that is the case there will always be those without the right money or who will query their change. Then, of course, there are further delays as important parties are ushered through in front of him. Finally, with fifteen minutes to spare, our playgoer reaches the door. It costs a penny to stand, tuppence or thruppence for a seat in one of the galleries (with an additional penny or tuppence to hire a cushion), sixpence to sit on the stage and considerably more for a box. He has no wish to stand and pays his thruppence, rents himself a cushion from the cushion-hirer, and looks around the rapidly filling galleries to decide where he should sit.

He decides to make for the second gallery directly in front of the stage. To get to where he wants to go, he will have to fight his way through the milling crowds in the pit, possibly buying a couple of bottles of ale en route. Also, unless he is very green, he will be keeping a careful grasp of his purse as mingling with the throng are, of course, the denizens of the Elizabethan underworld, ‘the common haunters . . . apt for pilfery, perjury, forgery, or any roguery, the very scum of rascality and baggage of the people, thieves, cutpurses, shifters, cozeners; briefly an unclean generation and spawn of vipers’, as Robert Greene put it. Their easiest prey is the groundlings who can have their purses cut or pockets picked while standing absorbed in what is happening on stage. Actors dread it when a victim realises what has happened and tries to pursue a robber through the crowd yelling ‘stop thief!’

Finally our man reaches the foot of the steps and looks up at the second gallery. Most of the front rows of benches are already full which is not good news. Given that a considerable amount of body heat is lost through the head, almost without exception, everyone will be wearing a hat. And what hats! Stubbes describes the hats of those attending a play in graphic detail. ‘Sometimes they use them sharp on the crown, perking up like the sphere or shaft of a steeple, standing a quarter of a yard about the crown of their heads. Othersome be flat, and broad in the crown like the battlements of a house . . . and another sort are content with no kind of Hat without great bunches of feathers of diverse and sundry colours.’
¹
Politely requesting the person in front of you to remove their headgear was at best likely to be met either with a straight ‘no’ or a blunt response to the effect that if he dislikes his seat then he knows what he can do about it. As Andrew Gurr points out in
Playgoing in Shakespeare’s London
it would be an unusually modest, considerate – or warm-blooded – playgoer in any of the playhouses, indoors or out, who would remove his or her headgear during a performance.

Our man finally finds himself a space on the bench behind the front row after persuading those already occupying it to move up a bit. There was little more than eighteen inches allowed for each person on the gallery seats and a playgoer was likely to be uncomfortably squashed, not least because the average woman’s dress of the day was exceedingly bulky. It is unlikely that even the wealthiest lady would attend a theatrical performance in the huge farthingales which were the height of fashion at Court, but most women would be wearing a substantial number of petticoats, have their hips padded out with buckram and, since they were eager both to see and be seen, be wearing one of their best gowns overall with a wide ruff or high collar which would add to their bulk and further impede the view of those behind; not to mention having also draped their cloaks around them; the playhouse is, after all, open to the elements even though they are under cover. As Samuel Rowlands put it in l600:

A Buske, a Mask, a Fanne, a monstrous Ruffe,
A Boulster for their Buttockes and such stuffe.

Finally, our man settles uncomfortably on the end of a bench where he will just about be able to see what is going on. He will have to make the best of it and hopes it will not be as bad as all that for he is likely to be in the theatre for anything up to three hours or more. From the information available in the new Globe Theatre, it is suggested that there was no interval, the play being played through straight which led to a certain amount of coming and going during a performance. One reason was that public toilets in any way we might understand them did not exist, yet many of those attending the show will have drunk several pints of ale or cups of wine beforehand and so might well need to relieve themselves. Buckets were provided for this, reasonably easy for gentlemen to urinate in but how women managed is anybody’s guess.

As he waits, he looks around. Some repainting has been done since his last visit, the ‘heavens’, the canopy over the stage, is a brilliant blue on which are painted a glittering golden sun and silver moon and stars, and the pillars holding it up boast new gilt paint. It is all very grand. Finally, the last trumpet sounds and the play begins with a spoken prologue. Audiences rather liked an actor welcoming them into the playhouse and thanking them for coming to see the play. It made them realise that his words were addressed to all those present, rich and poor alike, that each was an individual spectator of equal importance to the actors. For the same reason they also enjoyed an epilogue, especially when it was given by a player in the role of a king or duke pleading with them to show by their applause how the play had been received. It was also what turned this particular kind of entertainment into something more than an alternative to an afternoon at the bear-baiting or cockfight. It was what made it a performance.

So, for now, we will leave our man sitting on his cushion cheek-by-jowl with his neighbour, clutching his pie and his bottle ale and hoping he will not have to make use of the buckets until the end of the show.

We know that as well as being enthralled by the story and the acting, audiences expected the productions to look good, as is evident from the inventories of costumes listed in Henslowe’s
Diaries
, and that many were extremely fine, made from quality materials, not cheap imitations, and that they cost a good deal. There are accounts for the buying of fine cambric for smocks and shirts, velvet and lace for caps and hats and dozens of pairs of silk long hose and silk stockings. Scores of costumes are inventoried. Among the outerwear are cloaks of ‘fine green velvet’, ‘turquoise taffeta’, ‘black silk’ and ‘a fine . . . velvet cape bound with bugle lace and tufted lace’, ‘a white short cloak of satin laid with lace and lined with velvet’. There are lists of fine gowns for the women characters: ‘a purple gown of silk laid with lace’; ‘a yellow branched-damask petticoat with an overgown of golden taffeta with rich lace’; a ‘fine morning gown for a woman and round kirtle of “buffen”, pinked with “gardes” of satin’; ‘a gown of silk and branched velvet embroidered in gold thread’ are but a few examples.

But it was the men who were truly magnificent. Productions were, of course, played in what was then ‘modern dress’, although Caesar might well have worn a toga over his doublet and breeches to suggest ancient Rome or Macbeth a plaid, but the lovers who are lost in a wood near Athens in
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
would be dressed in the fashion of well-off young people of the time. As for actors playing kings or nobility, they were fully expected to look the part and certainly did. Among the many male costumes listed are ‘an orange tawny doublet, laid thick with gold lace’, ‘one blue taffeta suit’, ‘a pair of silver hose with satin panels’, ‘Tamburlaine’s coat with copper lace’, ‘a peach satin doublet’, ‘a black satin doublet layered thick with black and gold lace’, ‘a carnation satin doublet layered with gold lace’ and ‘a flame-coloured doublet, pinked’. An inventory for l598 lists a ‘black velvet jerkin laid thick with black silk lace and “caneyanes” of cloth of silver’ and ‘a pair of hose of cloth of gold layered thick with black silk lace’.

Sometimes it is possible to follow the progress of a production through
Diary
entries. Sometime in November l598 Henslowe notes that he bought the ‘book’ of a play called
The Two Angry Women of Abingdon
, presumably a potboiler, written by someone called Harry Porter. Here we run into the problems caused by those still using the old dating system when the New Year began in March, for following this we learn in ‘January l598’, which in modern dating would be January l599, that Henslowe paid out money for costumes for the piece including a sum ‘to buy taffeta for women’s gowns for the
Two Angry Women of Abingdon
’. In February, Henslowe paid Porter the rest of the money for the ‘book’ of the play and on the twelfth of the month provided more cash for various props ‘and things needed’ for the production. We must assume that the show was finally put on since there is nothing to suggest it was not and it must have been well received for a little while later ‘the company’ persuaded Henslowe to part with money for what presumably was a sequel entitled
The Merry Women of Abingdon
.

As already noted, basic stage scenery and props also played a major part in the productions. It has been suggested that there might well have been some crude method of ‘flying in’ scenery using the tower, but there do not seem to be any accounts of it. Some of the bigger pieces needed would, no doubt, have been set up in advance, while stage furniture would be brought in and taken off as needed. Again we have some idea of what was in regular use from the
Diary
inventories. It includes, as well as the Hell Mouth and the cauldron for the Jew, ‘Old Mahommet’s Head, one rock, one cave, one tomb of Guido, one tomb of Dido, one bedstead, eight lances and one pair of stairs for Phaeton, a chime of bells and a beacon, one globe, a sceptre, a golden fleece, a bay tree, a tree of golden apples, a head of Cerberus and eight other heads, Mercury’s wings and dragons’ and ‘one chain of dragons’, green hats for Robin Hood, green coats for Robin Hood and a hobby horse, imperial crowns and ghost crowns, and something simply described as ‘the City of Rome’. Some of the jewellery seems to have been real for there are several items listed as ‘gold rings’. There was also expenditure on rapiers, daggers and the ‘hangars’ on which swords were suspended. There are also payments for musical instruments; whether for the use of company members or by musicians hired in for the occasion is not stated, but we know that music often played a part in the productions of the day. The audience, in fact, had good value for its money.