A Book of the Play by Dutton Cook

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A BOOK OF THE PLAY

_Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character._

BY

DUTTON COOK,

AUTHOR OF

"ART IN ENGLAND," "HOBSON'S CHOICE," "PAUL FOSTER'S DAUGHTER,"
"BANNS OF MARRIAGE" ETC. ETC.

_THIRD AND REVISED EDITION._

In One Volume

London:

SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE, & RIVINGTON,
CROWN BUILDINGS, FLEET STREET.

1881.

CHARLES DICKENS AND EVANS,
CRYSTAL PALACE PRESS.

PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION.

This book, as I explained in the preface to its first edition,
published in 1876, is designed to serve and entertain those interested
in the transactions of the Theatre. I have not pretended to set forth
anew a formal and complete History of the Stage; it has rather been my
object to traverse by-paths connected with the subject--to collect and
record certain details and curiosities of histrionic life and
character, past and present, which have escaped or seemed unworthy the
notice of more ambitious and absolute chroniclers. At most I would
have these pages considered as but portions of the story of the
British Theatre whispered from the side-wings.

Necessarily, the work is derived from many sources, owes much to
previous labours, is the result of considerable searching here and
there, collation, and selection. I have endeavoured to make
acknowledgment, as opportunity occurred, of the authorities I stand
indebted to, for this fact or that story. I desire, however, to make
express mention of the frequent aid I have received from Mr. J. Payne
Collier's admirable "History of English Dramatic Poetry" (1831),
containing Annals of the Stage to the Restoration. Mr. Collier, having
enjoyed access to many public and private collections of the greatest
value, has much enriched the store of information concerning our
Dramatic Literature amassed by Malone, Stevens, Reed, and Chalmers.
Referring to numberless published and unpublished papers, to sources
both familiar and rare, Mr. Collier has been enabled, moreover, to
increase in an important degree our knowledge of the Elizabethan
Theatre, its manners and customs, ways and means. I feel that I owe
to his archaeological studies many apt quotations and illustrative
passages I could scarcely have supplied from my own unassisted
resources.

Some additions to the text I have deemed expedient. The few
errors--they were very few and unimportant--discovered in the first
edition I have corrected in the present publication; certain
redundancies I have suppressed; here and there I have ventured upon
condensation, and generally I have endeavoured to bring my statements
into harmony with the condition of the stage at the present moment.
Substantially, however, the "Book of the Play" remains what it was at
the date of its original issue, when it was received by the reading
public with a kindness and cordiality I am not likely to forget.

DUTTON COOK.

69, GLOUCESTER CRESCENT, REGENT'S PARK, N.W.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.
PLAYGOERS

CHAPTER II.
THE MASTER OF THE REVELS

CHAPTER III.
THE LICENSER OF PLAYHOUSES

CHAPTER IV.
THE EXAMINER OF PLAYS

CHAPTER V.
A BILL OF THE PLAY

CHAPTER VI.
STROLLING PLAYERS

CHAPTER VII.
"PAY HERE"

CHAPTER VIII.
IN THE PIT

CHAPTER IX.
THE FOOTMEN'S GALLERY

CHAPTER X.
FOOT-LIGHTS

CHAPTER XI.
"COME, THE RECORDERS!"

CHAPTER XII.
PROLOGUES

CHAPTER XIII.
THE ART OF "MAKING-UP"

CHAPTER XIV.
PAINT AND CANVAS

CHAPTER XV.
THE TIRING-ROOM

CHAPTER XVI.
"HER FIRST APPEARANCE"

CHAPTER XVII.
STAGE WHISPERS

CHAPTER XVIII.
STAGE GHOSTS

CHAPTER XIX.
THE BOOK OF THE PLAY

CHAPTER XX.
"HALF-PRICE AT NINE O'CLOCK"

CHAPTER XXI.
THE DRAMA UNDER DIFFICULTIES

CHAPTER XXII.
STAGE BANQUETS

CHAPTER XXIII.
STAGE WIGS

CHAPTER XXIV.
"ALARUMS AND EXCURSIONS"

CHAPTER XXV.
STAGE STORMS

CHAPTER XXVI.
"DOUBLES"

CHAPTER XXVII.
BENEFITS

CHAPTER XXVIII.
THUNDERS OF APPLAUSE

CHAPTER XXIX.
REAL HORSES

CHAPTER XXX.
THE "SUPER"

CHAPTER XXXI.
"GAG"

CHAPTER XXXII.
BALLETS AND BALLET-DANCERS

CHAPTER XXXIII.
CORRECT COSTUMES

CHAPTER XXXIV.
HARLEQUIN AND CO.

CHAPTER XXXV.
"GOOSE"

CHAPTER XXXVI.
EPILOGUES

A BOOK OF THE PLAY.

* * * * *

CHAPTER I.

PLAYGOERS.

The man who, having witnessed and enjoyed the earliest performance of
Thespis and his company, followed the travelling theatre of that
primeval actor and manager, and attended a second and a third
histrionic exhibition, has good claim to be accounted the first
playgoer. For recurrence is involved in playgoing, until something of
a habit is constituted. And usually, we may note, the playgoer is
youthful. An old playgoer is almost a contradiction in terms. He is
merely a young playgoer who has grown old. He talks of the plays and
players of his youth, but he does not, in truth, visit the theatre
much in his age; and invariably he condemns the present, and applauds
the past. Things have much degenerated and decayed, he finds; himself
among them, but of that fact he is not fully conscious. There are no
such actors now as once there were, nor such actresses. The drama has
declined into a state almost past praying for. This is, of course, a
very old story. "Palmy days" have always been yesterdays. Our
imaginary friend, mentioned above, who was present at the earliest of
stage exhibitions, probably deemed the second and third to be less
excellent than the first; at any rate, he assuredly informed his
friends and neighbours, who had been absent from that performance,
that they had missed very much indeed, and had by no means seen
Thespis at his best. Even nowadays, middle-aged playgoers, old enough
to remember the late Mr. Macready, are trumped, as it were, by older
playgoers, boastful of their memories of Kemble and the elder Kean.
And these players, in their day and in their turn, underwent
disparagement at the hands of veterans who had seen Garrick. Pope,
much as he admired Garrick, yet held fast to his old faith in
Betterton. From a boy he had been acquainted with Betterton. He
maintained Betterton to be the best actor he had ever seen. "But I
ought to tell you, at the same time," he candidly admitted, "that in
Betterton's time the older sort of people talked of Hart's being his
superior, just as we do of Betterton's being superior to those now."
So in the old-world tract, called "Historia Histrionica"--a dialogue
upon the condition of the early stage, first published in
1699--Trueman, the veteran Cavalier playgoer, in reply to Lovewit, who
had decided that the actors of his time were far inferior to Hart,
Mohun, Burt, Lacy, Clun, and Shatterel, ventures to observe: "If my
fancy and memory are not partial (for men of age are apt to be
over-indulgent to the thoughts of their youthful days), I dare assure
you that the actors I have seen before the war--Lowin, Taylor,
Pollard, and some others--were almost as far beyond Hart and his
company as those were beyond these now in being." In truth, age brings
with it to the playhouse recollections, regrets, and palled appetite;
middle life is too much prone to criticism, too little inclined to
enthusiasm, for the securing of unmixed satisfaction; but youth is
endowed with the faculty of admiring exceedingly, with hopefulness,
and a keen sense of enjoyment, and, above all, with very complete
power of self-deception. It is the youthful playgoers who are ever the
best friends of the players.

As a rule, a boy will do anything, or almost anything, to go to a
theatre. His delight in the drama is extreme--it possesses and absorbs
him completely. Mr. Pepys has left on record Tom Killigrew's "way of
getting to see plays when he was a boy." "He would go to the 'Red
Bull' (at the upper end of St. John Street, Clerkenwell), and when the
man cried to the boys--'Who will go and be a devil, and he shall see
the play for nothing?' then would he go in and be a devil upon the
stage, and so get to see plays." In one of his most delightful papers,
Charles Lamb has described his first visit to a theatre. He "was not
past six years old, and the play was 'Artaxerxes!' I had dabbled a
little in the 'Universal History'--the ancient part of it--and here
was the Court of Persia. It was being admitted to a sight of the past.
I took no proper interest in the action going on, for I understood not
its import, but I heard the word Darius, and I was in the midst of
'Daniel.' All feeling was absorbed in vision. Gorgeous vests, gardens,
palaces, princesses, passed before me. I knew not players. I was in
Persepolis for the time, and the burning idol of their devotion almost
converted me into a worshipper. I was awe-struck, and believed those
significations to be something more than elemental fires. It was all
enchantment and a dream. No such pleasure has since visited me but in
dreams." Returning to the theatre after an interval of some years, he
vainly looked for the same feelings to recur with the same occasion.
He was disappointed. "At the first period I knew nothing, understood
nothing, discriminated nothing. I felt all, loved all, wondered
all--'was nourished I could not tell how.' I had left the temple a
devotee, and was returned a rationalist. The same things were there
materially; but the emblem, the reference was gone! The green curtain
was no longer a veil drawn between two worlds, the unfolding of which
was to bring back past ages, to present a 'royal ghost'--but a certain
quantity of green baize, which was to separate the audience for a
given time from certain of their fellow-men who were to come forward
and pretend those parts. The lights--the orchestra lights--came up a
clumsy machinery. The first ring, and the second ring, was now but a
trick of the prompter's bell--which had been, like the note of the
cuckoo, a phantom of a voice; no hand seen or guessed at which
ministered to its warning. The actors were men and women painted. I
thought the fault was in them; but it was in myself, and the
alteration which those many centuries--of six short twelvemonths--had
wrought in me." Presently, however, Lamb recovered tone, so to speak,
as a playgoer. Comparison and retrospection soon yielded to the
present attraction of the scene, and the theatre became to him, "upon
a new stock, the most delightful of recreations."

Audiences have always been miscellaneous. Among them not only youth
and age, but rich and poor, wise and ignorant, good and bad, virtuous
and vicious, have alike found representation. The gallery and the
groundlings have been catered for not less than the spectators of the
boxes and private rooms; yet, upon the whole, the stage, from its
earliest period, has always provided entertainment of a reputable and
wholesome kind. Even in its least commendable condition--and this, so
far as England is concerned, we may judge to have been during the
reign of King Charles II.--it yet possessed redeeming elements. It was
never wholly bad, though it might now and then come very near to
seeming so. And what it was, the audience had made it. It reflected
their sentiments and opinions; it accorded with their moods and
humours; it was their creature; its performers were their most
faithful and zealous servants.

Playgoers, it appears, were not wont to ride to the theatre in coaches
until late in the reign of James I. Taylor, the water-poet, in his
invective against coaches, 1623, dedicated to all grieved "with the
world running on wheels," writes: "Within our memories our nobility
and gentry could ride well mounted, and sometimes walk on foot,
gallantly attended with fourscore brave fellows in blue coats, which
was a glory to our nation, far greater than forty of these leathern
tumbrels! Then, the name of coach was heathen Greek. Who ever saw, but
upon extraordinary occasions, Sir Philip Sidney and Sir Francis Drake
ride in a coach? They made small use of coaches; there were but few in
those times; and they were deadly foes to sloth and effeminacy. It is
in the memory of many when, in the whole kingdom, there was not one!
It is a doubtful question whether the devil brought tobacco into
England in a coach, for both appeared at the same time." According to
Stow, coaches were introduced here 1564, by Guilliam Boonen, who
afterwards became coachman to the queen. The first he ever made was
for the Earl of Rutland; but the demand rapidly increased, until there
ensued a great trade in coach-making, insomuch that a bill was brought
into Parliament, in 1601, to restrain the excessive use of such
vehicles. Between the coachmen and the watermen there was no very
cordial understanding, as the above quotation from Taylor sufficiently
demonstrates. In 1613 the Thames watermen petitioned the king, that
the players should not be permitted to have a theatre in London, or
Middlesex, within four miles of the Thames, in order that the
inhabitants might be induced, as formerly, to make use of boats in
their visits to the playhouses in Southwark. Not long afterwards
sedans came into fashion, still further to the prejudice of the
watermen. In the Induction to Ben Jonson's "Cynthia's Revels,"
performed in 1600, mention is made of "coaches, hobby-horses, and
foot-cloth nags," as in ordinary use. In 1631 the churchwardens and
constables, on behalf of the inhabitants of Blackfriars, in a petition
to Laud, then Bishop of London, prayed for the removal of the
playhouse from their parish, on the score of the many inconveniences
they endured as shopkeepers, "being hindered by the great recourse to
the playes, especially of coaches, from selling their commodities, and
having their wares many times broken and beaten off their stalls."
Further, they alleged that, owing to the great "recourse of coaches,"
and the narrowness of the streets, the inhabitants could not, in an
afternoon, "take in any provision of beere, coales, wood, or hay;" the
passage through Ludgate was many times stopped up, people "in their
ordinary going" much endangered, quarrels and bloodshed occasioned,
and disorderly people, towards night, gathered together under pretence
of waiting for those at the plays. Christenings and burials were many
times disturbed; persons of honour and quality dwelling in the parish
were restrained, by the number of coaches, from going out or coming
home in seasonable time, to "the prejudice of their occasions;" and it
was suggested that, "if there should happen any misfortune of fire,"
it was not likely that any order could possibly be taken, since, owing
to the number of the coaches, no speedy passage could be made for
quenching the fire, to the endangering both of the parish and of the
city. It does not appear that any action on the part of Laud or the
Privy Council followed this curious petition.

It seems clear that the Elizabethan audiences were rather an unruly
congregation. There was much cracking of nuts and consuming of pippins
in the old playhouses; ale and wine were on sale, and tobacco was
freely smoked by the upper class of spectators, for it was hardly yet
common to all conditions. Previous to the performance, and during its
pauses, the visitors read pamphlets or copies of plays bought at the
playhouse-doors, and, as they drank and smoked, played at cards. In
his "Gull's Horn Book," 1609, Dekker tells his hero, "before the play
begins, fall to cards;" and, winning or losing, he is bidden to tear
some of the cards and to throw them about, just before the entrance of
the prologue. The ladies were treated to apples, and sometimes applied
their lips to a tobacco-pipe. Prynne, in his "Histriomastix," 1633,
states that, even in his time, ladies were occasionally "offered the
tobacco-pipe" at plays. Then, as now, new plays attracted larger
audiences than ordinary. Dekker observes, in his "News from Hell,"
1606, "It was a comedy to see what a crowding, as if it had been at a
new play, there was upon the Acherontic strand." How the spectators
comported themselves upon these occasions, Ben Jonson, "the Mirror of
Manners," as Mr. Collier well surnames him, has described in his
comedy "The Case is Altered," acted at Blackfriars about 1599. "But
the sport is, at a new play, to observe the sway and variety of
opinion that passeth it. A man shall have such a confused mixture of
judgment poured out in the throng there, as ridiculous as laughter
itself. One says he likes not the writing; another likes not the plot;
another not the playing; and sometimes a fellow that comes not there
past once in five years, at a Parliament time or so, will be as
deep-mired in censuring as the best, and swear, by God's foot, he
would never stir his foot to see a hundred such as that is!" The
conduct of the gallants, among whom were included those who deemed
themselves critics and wits, appears to have usually been of a very
unseemly and offensive kind. They sat upon the stage, paying sixpence
or a shilling for the hire of a stool, or reclined upon the rushes
with which the boards were strewn. Their pages were in attendance to
fill their pipes; and they were noted for the capriciousness and
severity of their criticisms. "They had taken such a habit of dislike
in all things," says Valentine, in "The Case is Altered," "that they
will approve nothing, be it ever so conceited or elaborate; but sit
dispersed, making faces and spitting, wagging their upright ears, and
cry: 'Filthy, filthy!'" Ben Jonson had suffered much from the censure
of his audiences. In "The Devil is an Ass," he describes the demeanour
of a gallant occupying a seat upon the stage. Fitsdottrell says:

To day I go to the Blackfriars playhouse,
Sit in the view, salute all my acquaintance;
Rise up between the acts, let fall my cloak;
Publish a handsome man and a rich suit--
And that's a special end why we go thither.

Of the cutpurses, rogues, and evil characters of both sexes who
frequented the old theatres, abundant mention is made by the poets and
satirists of the past. In this respect there can be no question that
the censure which was so liberally awarded was also richly merited.
Mr. Collier quotes from Edmund Gayton, an author who avowedly "wrote
trite things merely to get bread to sustain him and his wife," and who
published, in 1654, "Festivous Notes on the History of the renowned
Don Quixote," a curious account of the behaviour of our early
audiences at certain of the public theatres. "Men," it is observed,
"come not to study at a playhouse, but love such expressions and
passages which with ease insinuate themselves into their
capacities.... On holidays, when sailors, watermen, shoemakers,
butchers, and apprentices are at leisure, then it is good policy to
amaze those violent spirits with some tearing tragedy full of fights
and skirmishes ... the spectators frequently mounting the stage, and
making a more bloody catastrophe among themselves than the players
did." Occasionally, it appears, the audience compelled the actors to
perform, not the drama their programmes had announced, but some other,
such as "the major part of the company had a mind to: sometimes
'Tamerlane;' sometimes 'Jugurtha;' sometimes 'The Jew of Malta;' and,
sometimes, parts of all these; and, at last, none of the three taking,
they were forced to undress and put off their tragic habits, and
conclude the day with 'The Merry Milkmaids.'" If it so chanced that
the players were refractory, then "the benches, the tiles, the lathes,
the stones, oranges, apples, nuts, flew about most liberally; and as
there were mechanics of all professions, everyone fell to his own
trade, and dissolved a house on the instant, and made a ruin of a
stately fabric. It was not then the most mimical nor fighting man
could pacify; prologues nor epilogues would prevail; the Devil and the
Fool [evidently two popular characters at this time] were quite out of
favour; nothing but noise and tumult fills the house," &c. &c.

Concerning the dramatist of the time, upon the occasion of the first
performance of his play, his anxiety, irascibility, and peculiarities
generally, Ben Jonson provides sufficient information. "We are not so
officiously befriended by him," says one of the characters in the
Induction to "Cynthia's Revels," "as to have his presence in the
tiring-house, to prompt us aloud, stamp at the bookholder [or
prompter], swear at our properties, curse the poor tireman, rail the
musick out of tune, and sweat for every venial trespass we commit as
some author would." While, in the Induction to his "Staple of News,"
Jonson has clearly portrayed himself. "Yonder he is," says Mirth, in
reply to some remark touching the poet of the performance, "within--I
was in the tiring-house awhile, to see the actors dressed--rolling
himself up and down like a tun in the midst of them ... never did
vessel, or wort, or wine, work so ... a stewed poet!... he doth sit
like an unbraced drum, with one of his heads beaten out," &c. The
dramatic poets, it may be noted, were admitted gratis to the theatres,
and duly took their places among the spectators. Not a few of them
were also actors. Dekker, in his "Satiromastix," accuses Jonson of
sitting in the gallery during the performance of his own plays,
distorting his countenance at every line, "to make gentlemen have an
eye on him, and to make players afraid" to act their parts. A further
charge is thus worded: "Besides, you must forswear to venture on the
stage, when your play is ended, and exchange courtesies and
compliments with the gallants in the lords' rooms (or boxes), to make
all the house rise up in arms, and cry: 'That's Horace! that's he!
that's he! that's he that purges humours and diseases!'"

Jonson makes frequent complaint of the growing fastidiousness of his
audience, and nearly fifty years later, the same charge against the
public is repeated by Davenant, in the Prologue to his "Unfortunate
Lovers." He tells the spectators that they expect to have in two hours
ten times more wit than was allowed their silly ancestors in twenty
years, who

to the theatre would come,
Ere they had dined, to take up the best room;
There sit on benches not adorned with mats,
And graciously did vail their high-crowned hats
To every half-dressed player, as he still
Through the hangings peeped to see how the house did fill.
Good easy judging souls! with what delight
They would expect a jig or target fight;
A furious tale of Troy, which they ne'er thought
Was weakly written so 'twere strongly fought.

As to the playgoers of the Restoration we have abundant information
from the poet Dryden, and the diarist Pepys. For some eighteen years
the theatres had been absolutely closed, and during that interval very
great changes had occurred. England, under Charles II., seemed as a
new and different country to the England of preceding monarchs. The
restored king and his courtiers brought with them from their exile in
France strange manners, and customs, and tastes. The theatre they
favoured was scarcely the theatre that had flourished in England
before the Civil War. Dryden reminds the spectators, in one of his
prologues--

You now have habits, dances, scenes, and rhymes,
High language often, ay, and sense sometimes.

There was an end of dramatic poetry, as it was understood under
Elizabeth. Blank verse had expired or swooned away, never again to be
wholly reanimated. Fantastic tragedies in rhyme, after the French
pattern, became the vogue; and absolute translations from the French
and Spanish for the first time occupied the English stage. Shakespeare
and his colleagues had converted existing materials to dramatic uses,
but not as did the playwrights of the Restoration. In the Epilogue to
the comedy of "An Evening's Love; or, The Mock Astrologer," borrowed
from "Le Feint Astrologue" of the younger Corneille, Dryden, the
adapter of the play, makes jesting defence of the system of
adaptation. The critics are described as conferring together in the
pit on the subject of the performance:

They kept a fearful stir
In whispering that he stole the Astrologer:
And said, betwixt a French and English plot,
He eased his half-tired muse on pace and trot.
Up starts a Monsieur, new come o'er, and warm
In the French stoop and pull-back of the arm:
"Morbleu," dit-il, and cocks, "I am a rogue,
But he has quite spoiled the 'Feigned Astrologue!'"

The poet is supposed to make excuse:

He neither swore, nor stormed, as poets do,
But, most unlike an author, vowed 'twas true;
Yet said he used the French like enemies,
And did not steal their plots but made them prize.

Dryden concludes with a sort of apology for his own productiveness,
and the necessity of borrowing that it involved:

He still must write, and banquier-like, each day
Accept new bills, and he must break or pay.
When through his hands such sums must yearly run,
You cannot think the stock is all his own.

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