OPPOSITION FROM THE CITY. 273 vided for the total prohibition of theatrical performances in public within the City-bounds, upon the score of their ungodliness. This Order of the Common Council, had it taken full effect, would have nullified the Queen's Licence. What gave further importance to the matter was, that the Justices of Middlesex made common cause with the Corporation; and it seemed not improbable that the players would be driven far off into the country. Leicester's servants, therefore, seeing their privileges threatened with extinction, sent up a petition (in which they styled themselves 'the Queen's Majesty's Poor Players') to the Privy Council. This was answered, point by point, in a Memorandum addressed by the Corporation to the same body. The actors argued that they needed practice in public, in order that they might acquire proficiency enough to play before the Queen at Court. Their livelihood was being taken from them. Their dramatic performances were honest recreations, fit for holydays. London was the proper place for theatrical exhibitions, inasmuch as disorders would certainly arise on winter evenings from persons flocking to and from the stages in the fields. Though it was right and proper to suspend play-acting in times of the plague, it ought to be clearly defined what rate of mortality constituted a general and dangerous sickness. Lastly, they claimed the monopoly of acting, which seemed to have been granted them. To these pleas the Recorder responded. It is not decent that the Queen should witness shows which had been 'commonly played in open stages before all the basest assemblies in London and Middlesex ;' there T 1 fore, if the players need practice, they must take it in the private residences of their masters. The art of acting is not a profession by itself, but is only tolerable as a recreation exercised by men using other honest and lawful arts, or retained in honest services.' Holydays are abused by such folk, who do not respect the regulation respecting service time; and it may be noted how uncomely it is for youth to run straight from prayer to plays, from God's service to the Devil's.' 1 If the fields are too far off to serve their turn, 'the remedy is ill conceived to bring them into London; it would be far better to put a stop to them altogether. With regard to the Plague, it were desirable, Plague or no Plague, to be quit of plays; yet, if the point has to be considered, the right data for deciding it are these: the common rate of mortality in London is between forty and fifty per week, or more often under forty; if then the death-rate for two or three weeks together has not exceeded fifty, it may be assumed that there is no immediate peril on the score of infection. Finally, if there must be players, a monopoly extended to one company may be regarded as a blessing. In that case let the Queen's Servants be scheduled, man by man; for as it is, the town is infested with companies, all of which call themselves Queen's Players. From this contention between the Players and the Corporation, it appears that the latter despaired of suppressing the Drama altogether, though they would have liked to do so. They scouted the notion that 1 In the tract called The Second and Third Blast of Retreat from Plays, the author says of Holidays: Then all Hell breaks loose.' DISPUTE BETWEEN COURT AND CITY. 275 Actors could be treated like the craftsmen of a recognised trade. They had indeed to tolerate them in great men's houses. But they were resolved to drive them beyond the City bounds into the fields or country, to silence them in Plague-time, and to restrain them from performing on Sundays and holydays. It is also clear that the strong point in the actor's case was the Queen's partiality for the drama. This circumstance is confirmed by an order sent from the Privy Council, December 24, 1578, to the Lord Mayor, commanding him to suffer six companies-the Children of the Chapel Royal and S. Paul's, and the Servants of the Lord Chamberlain, Lord Warwick, Lord Leicester, and Lord Essex-to play in London by reason that they are appointed to play this Christmas before her Majesty.'1 III. Open warfare on the subject of the Drama was thus declared between the Court and the City. But it was conducted upon terms of mutual respect and cautious circumspection. Both parties took the tone of armed. neutrality rather than one of active hostility. The Queen's patronage of Leicester's men, her known partiality for stage-shows, and the privilege claimed by the nobility, rendered it impossible for the Common Council to prosecute their case with vigour. While 1 The Second and Third Blast, printed in 1580, 'allowed by Authority,' and adorned with the shield of the City, forms an important manifesto against plays and theatres from the side of the Corporation. A long section is directed against the privilege of Noblemen to maintain players, and their abuse of this privilege by omitting to support them and turning them over to the public as their source of income. See Roxburghe Library Reprint, pp. 133 et seq. protesting, they were forced to tolerate. The Court, upon the other hand, was glad to temporise. It formed no part of the Crown's policy to tamper with the ancient freedom of the City; and the attitude assumed by the burghers of London showed that the matter in debate was one of no slight moment to them. Instead, therefore, of fighting out the battle, both sides consented to a compromise. Instead of defining the situation by fixed statute, it was left indefinite. The players took the best line which was open to them. Relying on the favour of the Court, bending to the authority of the Corporation, they established themselves in permanent buildings outside the strict limits of the City. This was a conclusion of the struggle which the City can hardly have foreseen. Hitherto plays had been acted in the yards and galleries of inns on scaffolds erected for the purpose. The Orders of the Common Council had been directed chiefly against scandals thence ensuing. Now they found themselves obliged to tolerate a far more formidable nuisance. In Shoreditch, at Blackfriars, on Bankside, in the best frequented and most accessible suburbs, the players, whom the burghers wished to extirpate, began to erect theatres. The debatable lands which these persistent servants of the public and the Court had chosen for their settlement, illustrated in geographical terms the compromise upon which their future existence depended. Those outlying districts were neither in the City nor the fields. Comprehended for certain purposes within the jurisdiction of the Mayor, they still formed no parcel of his undisputed, indefeasible domains. The suburbs savoured of the country, to which the Corporation sought THEATRES BUILT IN THE SUBURBS. 277 to relegate play-acting. Yet they lay convenient to the public, and were handy to the gallants of the Court. It was under the tacit, if unwilling, consent of the Mayor, though not without explicit protest from distinguished inhabitants of the invaded quarters, that the first selfstyled Theatres were built in 1576. The decisive issue in this contest between the Court and players on the one hand and the Corporation on the other, resulting in the banishment of the players from the City and their erection of permanent stages, is commemorated in the following popular rhyme : List unto my ditty! Alas, the more the pity, From Troynovant's old city Have driven each poor player! What the ballad leaves unnoticed, because it was not then apparent, is that this expulsion of the players from the City, with their ensuing settlement in the suburbs, decided the fortunes of our Drama, and advanced it from the state of nomadism to that of urbane and accredited civility. The year 1576, following that in which the Corporation made its unsuccessful onslaught on play-acting, may be regarded as the birth-year of the English Drama. Three theatres, at least, were then established in the purlieus of the City. The first of these was styled 'The Theatre;' the second took its name, in all probability, from the plot of ground on which it stood, and was called The Curtain.' Both were in Shoreditch, and both soon obtained a bad reputation 1 Curtina in base Latin means a little court. |
