his players sixty-three pounds for costumes worth forty; devilishly unscrupulous, his enemies would say, but not so bad a devil after all, ever lending a willing ear to the complaints of the ever-famished purveyors of his stages, and supplying them with funds. Of little learning, he allows "Titus Andronicus" to appear in his register as "Titus and Ondronicus," Pontius Pilate as "Ponesciones Pillett," and Cressida as "Cresse Daye." He himself realised that his knowledge of literature was but scanty, and before paying would have the manuscripts of plays read by Alleyn or some other of his better informed actors, and abide by their opinion. A sort of rudimentary "comité de lecture," as at the Comédie Française" in our own days, thus decided the choice. How rudimentary may be judged from the following letter:-" To Phil. Hinchloe.-I have harde fyve shetes of a playe of the Conquest of the Indes, and I dow not doute but it wylle be a verye good playe; tharefore I praye ye delyver them fortye shyllynges in earneste of it and take the papers into your one hands and on easter eve thaye promise to make an ende of all the reste.— Samuell Rowlye." Henslowe considering himself sufficiently informed about Haughton, Day and Smith's “Conquest of the West Indies," wrote below: "Lent, the 4 of and wealthy Alleyn, when he withdrew from theatrical life, founded as a refuge for destitute old people and a school for children. Twenty-four old men or women are still harboured there, and over seven hundred boys receive their instruction; the revenues have increased so much that four-fifths of them are applied to other charities. Alleyn, b. 1566, had married Elizabeth Woodward, daughter of Henslowe's wife by her first husband, he died in 1626 and is buried in the chapel of his college. The Alleyn Papers" and "The Diary of Philip Henslowe," Shaksp. Soc. 1843, 1845, were ed. by J. P. Collier, who inserted in them some of his famous forgeries (the ink he used looks old, but though it is sometimes paler and sometimes darker, there is no other like it in the Diary, and it is easily detected when attention has once been drawn to it); cf. Warner, "Catalogue of the MSS. at Dulwich College," 1881. Only good ed.: W. W. Greg, "Henslowe's Diary," Lond., 1904-08, 2 vols. 4to, and "Henslowe's Papers," 1907. Henslowe d. in 1616; his diary covers the period 1591-1609. Aprell, 1601, 40s." I Of no very exacting conscience as it seems, worthy Henslowe, without giving up the profits he drew from houses of less than indifferent repute, never missed a sermon, became vestryman and churchwarden of the great church of St. Mary Overy's (St. Saviour's), Southwark, and was buried there, as a dignitary of the place, not far from rose-crowned Gower. Here and there, in the intermediary space between the northern and southern groups of theatres, several other stages attracted the public, periodically opened, closed, and reopened, some being an adjunct of hostelries, such as the Red Bull; others having a separate existence, such as the famous Blackfriars, built in 1596, and maintained in spite of the protests of the neighbourhood, which complained of the immorality of its frequenters, the blocking of the streets, the noise of the drums and trumpets, that troubled them when attending services in the church near by. So considerable, they declared, is the "multitude of coaches bringing people of all sortes that sometimes all their streetes cannot conteyne them, that they endanger one another, breake downe stalles, throw downe men's goodes from their shopps, hinder the passage of the inhabitantes there to and from their howses." Citizens are kept within doors like prisoners, and tradesmen can scarcely succeed in bringing them "their necessary provisions." If by chance they trust themselves out, they risk "their lives and Warner, "MSS. at Dulwich," p. 21. Other similar letters, among the same papers: "We have heard their booke and lyke yt; their pryce is eight poundes, which I pray, pay now to Mr. Wilson, according to our promysse." Shaw to Henslowe, Nov. 8, 1599, "Henslowe Papers," p. 49 A subsequent hearing by the "generall company" is mentioned by Daborne, 16 May, 1613. According to Mr. Greg, such purchases were simply made on behalf of the company. But Henslowe's part must have consisted in something more than mere money lending; else why the literary information given him? That he actually dealt in plays is certain, as shown by the Daborne letters and by some data referring to the early days at the Rose, Diary, i. 111, n. I. lyms." Sentenced to destruction, the Blackfriars survived none the less and gave shelter to some of Shakespeare's greatest dramas. This theatre, and some others opened in the same intermediary space ("Cockpit," "Salisbury Court"), were called "private theatres," a way of speaking, for they were of course as public as any, and it was not always easy, even then, to draw the line between the public and private playhouses: "The owner of the said play howse within the Blackfryers, under the name of a private howse, hath converted the same to a publique play howse."2 The private theatres were, as a rule, much smaller than the others; in their pit, not so ill-frequented, the audience was seated; they had a roof covering the whole structure, and a stage lit partly by candles (though the performances took place there as elsewhere in the afternoon), partly by means of windows.3 Beauty decks herself, said Wither, with jewels that cannot adorn her: You may liken every gem To those lamps which, at a play, To what Titan gave before.4 The combined glare of "Titan" and of the candles was toned down at need by curtains drawn before the windows, Order by the Corporation of the City of London, January 21, 161[9], referring to a petition of November, 1596. Texts in Halliwell-Phillipps, "Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare," 1898, i. pp. 304, 311. 2 Same document, ibid. p. 311. 3 "The Blackfriars, Cockpit, and Salisbury Court were called private houses and were very small to what we see now. . . . Here they had pits for the gentry and acted by candle light. The Globe, Fortune, and Bull were large houses and lay partly open to the weather, and there they always acted by daylight."-James Wright, "Historia Histrionica . . . in Dialogue," 1699 (describing the theatres of the beginning of the century) in Hazlitt's Dodsley, "Old Plays," vol. xv. 4 "The Mistress of Philarete," Arber, "English Garner," vol. iv. p. 411, 1st ed. 1622, but written " many yeares agone." to obtain the partial darkness appropriate to scenes of gloom. Dekker describes the streets of the city as looking with all their lights, when evening comes, "like a private Play-house when the windowes are clapt downe, as if some nocturnall or dismall tragedy were presently to be acted." Thus endowed, theatrical London outshone all the cities of the Continent. Paris had then one single theatre, the quadrangular hall, built in 1548 by the Confraternity of the Passion on the grounds of the Hôtel formerly belonging to the Dukes of Burgundy, whose name it retained. Provided with a monopoly which proved disastrous to the development of dramatic art in the capital, the Passion Brothers let their theatre to companies of players more than they occupied it themselves; they prosecuted the infringers of their privilege and had them fined and chastised with so much success that Paris "la grand' ville," had only in 1629 a second permanent playhouse2 in the same year London was building its seventeenth.3 Several of Italy's artistic centres also had their theatres, real jewels sometimes, like the famous "Olympic Theatre," erected at Vicenza after Palladio's designs, and the one at Sabbioneta raised shortly after, by Scamozzi, in 1588.4 But they were works of magnificence, built by a prince or a society of learned men, and meant for select audiences, not for the vulgar. The theatre at Vicenza was erected for the Academy of the Olimpici, hence its name; and was inaugurated before an élite of elegant and scholarly people by a performance of "Edipus Tyrannus."5 1 "Seven Deadly Sinnes of London," 1606, chap. iii. 2 Rigal, "Le Théâtre français avant la Période classique," 1901, p. 81. 3 Annals of Stow, continued by Edm. Howes, 1631, p. 1004. 4 "Vespasien de Gonzague, Duc de Sabbioneta," in Revue de Paris, July 15, 1889, p. 391. 5 See A. Magrini, "Il Teatro Olimpico," Padua, 1847. Fynes Moryson saw this theatre when it was yet new, in the last years of the sixteenth century; he Great indeed was the difference with London; travellers wondered at it, and noted the number of theatres and the throngs of people there as one of the curiosities of England. "There are in London," wrote the Dutchman John de Witt in 1596," four amphitheatres of conspicuous beauty; they are named after the emblem on their signs, and they offer, each day, a varied show to the people. The two best are on the south of the Thames, and are called, after the signs overhanging them, the Rose and the Swan. Two others are outside the town, on the north; they can be reached by following the street which passes the Episcopalian Gate, called Biscopgat in the native speech. . . . The largest and stateliest of all is the one with the sign of a Swan (in the native speech: te theatre off te cijn), for three thousand men can be accommodated there." The Swan was then the most recent of the London playhouses; it had just been finished when De Witt saw it, and he considered this building so extraordinary that he drew a sketch of the interior. A copy of his drawing, a document unique at this date, has luckily been preserved. "London," observed on his side Hentzner, a was struck by its rare elegance : "The theater at Vicenza now standing and in use for comedies is faire and stately. The theaters, in London in England for stage plaies, are more remarkable for the number and for the capacity then for the building."- Itinerary," 1617, fol. 3rd part, p. 68. Amphitheatra Londinii sunt iv visendæ pulchritudinis quæ a diversis intersigniis diversa nomina sortiuntur: in iis varia quotidie scæna populo exhibetur. Horum duo excellentiora ultra Tamisim ad meridiem sita sunt, a suspensis signis Rosa et Cygnus nominata: Alia duo extra urbem ad septentrionem sunt, viâ quâ itur per Episcopalem portam vulgariter Biscopgat nuncupatam. Theatrorum autem omnium prestantissimum est et amplissimum id cujus intersignium est cygnus (vulgo te theatre off te cijn), quippe quod tres mille homines in sedilibus admittat." The text and the accompanying sketch were discovered in 1888 by Dr. Gaedertz, of Berlin, in the commonplace book of Arend van Buchell, now preserved in the University Library at Utrecht. Van Buchell seems to have copied them in his own book, "ex observationibus Londinensibus Johannis de Witt," as runs the title of his notes; up to the last sentence the text was apparently transcribed word for word, as the author --that is, De Witt-speaks twice in the first person, alluding to his sketch in |