Page images
PDF
EPUB

DETAILS

CONNECTED WITH THE PERFORMANCE

OF

PLAY S.

PUBLIC AND PRIVATE THEATRES.

[ocr errors]

OUR old Theatres were either public or private: 'what (says Malone *) were the distinguishing marks of a 'private playhouse it is not easy to ascertain. We know only that it was smaller than those which were called public theatres, and that in the private theatres, plays were usually presented by candle-light.'

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

From various authorities, I find that there were seven 'distinguishing marks of a private playhouse.'

1. Private theatres were of smaller dimensions than public theatres.

2. They were entirely roofed in from the weather, while public theatres were open to the sky, excepting over the stage and boxes, or rooms.

3. The performances at private theatres were by candle or torch light.

4. They had pits, furnished with seats; and not yards, as they were called in public theatres, where the spectators stood to behold the play.

5. The audiences at private theatres usually consisted of a superior class of persons.

6. The visiters there had a right to sit upon the stage during the performances.

7. The boxes or rooms of private theatres were inclosed and locked.

* Shakespeare by Boswell, iii. 61.

[ocr errors]

The first distinction depends rather upon inference than upon positive testimony. Wright, in his Historia Histrionica, 1699, mentions that the three private houses, the Blackfriars, the Cockpit in Drury Lane, and the theatre in Salisbury Court, were built almost exactly alike, for form and bigness.' Nabbes's Comedy of Tottenham Court (printed in 1638) was acted at Salisbury Court, in 1633, and from the epilogue we find that, compared with others, it was a small theatre: the author says:—.

[ocr errors]

'If I win

'Your kind commands, 'twill bring more custom in:
'When others' fill'd rooms with neglect disdain ye,

• My little house (with thanks) shall entertain ye.'

Wright informs us, in the same paragraph from which I have above quoted, that the large public theatres, the Globe, Fortune, and Bull, 'lay partly open to the weather.' Had the private theatres been exposed in the same manner, it would have been almost impossible to have carried on the performances by means of candles or torches.

It does not follow, because the plays at private theatres were acted by candle or torch light, that the performances took place at night. On the contrary, according to the remedies' proposed by the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of London, about the period when the Blackfriars theatre was built, it was recommended that the performance of plays should conclude at such an hour that the audience might return home before sun-set, or, at least, before it be dark.' It is true that this order then principally applied to the exhibitions in inn-yards; but we may conclude, from a passage in Dekker's Seven Deadly Sins of London, 1606, that the windows of private play-houses were put down, when it was intended that the stage should

[ocr errors]

represent night: the torches were probably also then partly extinguished, or removed for the same purpose, as light seems to have been derived from both his words are: all the city looked like a private playhouse, when the windows are clapped down, as if some nocturnal or 'dismal tragedy were presently to be acted.' Marston's What you Will, 1607, was most likely performed at Blackfriars, but certainly at a private theatre; and in the Induction, Doricus and Philomuse, who are supposed to be part of the audience, are directed to sit a good while on the stage before candles are lighted. When, just afterwards, Doricus exclaims, Let there be no deeds of darkness done among us,' he must, of course, refer to the comparative obscurity of the house before the candles were lighted. That torches were also used at Blackfriars, we find from Francis Lenton's Young Gallant's Whirligig, 1629:

'all his spangled, rare, perfum'd attires,

'Which once so glister'd at the torchy Friars,

'Must to the broker's.'

The Prologue to Shirley's Doubtful Heir, performed before 1646, may be quoted for the double purpose of showing that in the pits of private theatres the audience were accommodated with seats, and that the visitors consisted of a superior class to the ordinary attendants of public theatres. That play, designed for the Blackfriars, was, in fact, performed at the Globe; and the author tells the spectators plainly, that he did not calculate it for that meridian,' and advises them to suppose they were not at the Globe, but at the Blackfriars :

' and sit

'As you were now in the Blackfriars' pit.' VOL. III.

N

« PreviousContinue »