(The author has indicated in heavy black lines the Great Cloister, the Porter's Lodge, the Buttery, and the Frater.) three stories high; and the windows of the Parlor, if we may believe Pierce the Ploughman, were "wrought as a chirche": An halle for an hey; kinge an household to holden, With windowes of glas . wrought as a chirche. The As a result Burbage was able to construct within the auditorium at least two galleries, after the manner of the public theatres. Parliament Chamber above was kept for residential purposes. This is why the various legal documents almost always refer to the playhouse as "that great hall or room, with the rooms over the same." The entrance to the playhouse was at the north, over the "great yard" which extended from the Pipe Office to Water Lane. The stage, of course, would be erected at the opposite or southern end of the hall; and that this was the case is shown by one of the documents printed by Mr. Wallace. Since this stage could not, as in the openair amphitheatres, be illuminated by the sun, chandeliers were hung overhead. Gershow, after a visit to the Blackfriars playhouse, wrote: "alle bey Lichte agiret, welches ein gross Ansehen macht." The advantage of artificial light for producing beautiful stage effects must have added not a little to the popularity of the Blackfriars performances. The history of the playhouse-in the hands of the child actors until 1608, and in the hands of Shakespeare's troupe from then until the closing of the theatres in 1642-cannot be narrated here. I may add, however, a note from the Phillipps's annotated copy of Stow's Annals, which gives us an account of the destruction of the building: "The Blackfriars players's playhouse in Blackfriars, London, which had stood many years, was pulled down to the ground on Monday the 6 day of August, 1655, and tenements built in the room. Cornell University. Mr. Wallace, op. cit., 42, quotes from the Epilogue to Marston's The Dutch Courtesan, acted at Blackfriars: "And now, my fine Heliconian gallants, and you, my worshipful friends in the middle region," and adds that the "reference to 'the middle region' makes it clear there were three" galleries. To me, however, it indicates that there were only two galleries. 6 See the documents printed in Fleay's History of the Stage, pp. 211, 215, 240, etc. Mr. Wallace, op. cit. p. 40 ff., suggests that "the roof was changed, and rooms, probably of the usual dormer sort, were built above" the theatre. In this, I am sure, he is mistaken. But my interpretation of the documents and reconstruction of the theatre are entirely different from Mr. Wallace's. "Op. cit., p. 43, note 3. The Academy, 1882, p. 314. "PLAYENG IN THE DARK" DURING THE ELIZABETHAN PERIOD BY THORNTON SHIRLEY GRAVES Some time ago I published a little note entitled Night Scenes in the Elizabethan Theatres, prefacing it with the remark that I hoped the evidence therein contained would occasion "some slight modification" of the conclusions advanced by Mr. W. J. Lawrence in a more elaborate discussion of the subject. Recently Mr. Lawrence, in a reply at some length,3 has given my note more attention than it deserves; but since he has obviously misunderstood radically certain statements which I made, and in consequence has somewhat confused the issue, I feel that I ought, in justice to both him and myself, to restate my chief contention more clearly and to support it with considerable evidence, some of which was not in my possession when the original note was written. This chief contention was this: Performances were sometimes given in the Elizabethan public, or open, theatres at such times of darkness (late afternoon and night) as to make imperative the use of artificial lights otherwise than episodically as "a factor of the scene"; therefore it is reasonable to suppose that, during certain scenes of such performances requiring artificial illumination, the stage was sometimes slightly darkened-as it was in the private, or roofed, theatres as a means of suggesting night to the spectators. Now for the evidence which proves that plays were given in the public theatres at such times of darkness. I shall first discuss performances which began, or were in progress, at late hours of the afternoon during winter, after which I shall supplement the evidence already given by Mr. Lawrence and myself to show that plays were sometimes given at night in the regular London playhouses. To what extent such night performances were confined to private theatres, it is impossible to say. Mr. Lawrence argues that my use of evidence indicating that the London officials objected to plays after evening prayers involves 'Englische Studien, 47, pp. 63 ff. Ibid., 45, pp. 181 ff. Ibid., 48, pp. 213-30. 4 Probably by removing the stage lights or by shading them. Such a method, I admit, would have been clumsy and slow, but no more so than the "clapping down" of windows in the private theatres. a "serious misconception" of the term evening prayers (p. 221); and he even takes the trouble to explain that evening prayers were really afternoon services. That they were anything else never entered my mind. Mr. Lawrence will note that, when I asserted that "allusions to plays beginning after evening prayers are frequent," I was discussing performances at "late hours," not performances at night; and as a matter of fact when I made the assertion above, I had in mind the very passages-as my reference to Miss Gildersleeve's book indicates-which he has used to show that evening prayers were afternoon prayers. And plays after evening prayers, in winter at any rate, can truly be called plays at late hours." Now to show that plays really did begin after evening prayers on Sundays and holy days-when all persons were expected to attend services both in London and the suburbs, and that some of these plays continued until "inconvenient time of night," it will be necessary to go rather fully into government regulations of the drama and to give the proper background to certain documents, which, quoted by Regarding the time of evensong, or evening prayer, during the Elizabethan period, there is considerable uncertainty. As long as the old canonical hours were observed, the proper hour for evensong was six o'clock; and some recent writers urge that this remains the proper hour for evening prayer. Others, however, argue that when the old offices were condensed into morning and evening prayer, no regular hours were fixed for saying either, the hours being left to the officiating ministers (Wheatley, Illustrations of Book of Common Prayer, ed. 1867, pp. 80, 195 note). 5 Whether the hours varied according to season, or whether they differed appreciably in cathedrals and parish churches, I do not know, but the statement by Harrison in his Description of England (ed. 1585, chap. i) to the effect that "times of morning and evening prayer remain as in times past" implies more or less regularity in the time of services. Now, from various sources of evidence, it seems that evening prayers during Elizabeth's reign commonly began about three o'clock. Bayne (Shakespeare's England, I, 62), discussing Edwin Sandys' articles issued in 1571 for the London diocese, says that the "due and convenient hours" set by authority for evening prayer meant generally "2 to 3 P. M." But certain evidence points to a later hour. William Percy's "Memorandum," for example, to his Necromantes, intended to be acted by the Children of Paul's, states that performances by the Children were "not to begin before foure, after prayers" and it will be remembered that Herbert and Nicholas Farrer very carefully observed in their prayers "the canonical hours of ten and four." Finally, Harrison in his Description of England (ed. Furnivall-Withington, p. 105) says: "For the nobility, gentlemen, and merchantmen, especially at great meetings, do sit commonly [at meals] till two or three of the clock at afternoon, so that with many it is a hard matter to rise from the table to go to evening prayers and return from thence to come time enough to supper." |