The Great Events by Famous Historians [Volumes 1-14]

The fact that one of the principal characters in the oldest scenario, The Dead Man's Fortune, bears the name of "Panteloun" further confirms this supposition.

This is not the place to investigate how far the English were influenced by Italian professional dramatic art. At any rate, the English national character differed too much from the Italian to allow it to receive more than an outward and formal stamp. And even this superficial effect is much less significant in England than in France. Still, we are certainly not mistaken in assuming that it helped to strengthen English dramatic art, which already possessed no small amount of power; and we may take it for granted that about the time of Shakespeare's birth London possessed a socially and professionally organized class of actors, in spite of the fact that they did not yet possess a theatre of their own.

Before proper theatres were built, and after the time of the great mysteries, the actors found a refuge for their art chiefly in the inns, those splendid and expensive old public-houses which convey to our minds the idea of old-fashioned and picturesque comfort; where the nobility and clergy sought their quarters in winter, and where the carriers unloaded their goods in the large square yards, which were surrounded on all sides by the walls of the inn. On these walls there were galleries running all round, supported by wooden pillars and with steep picturesque ladders running up to them.

It was in these yards of the Cross Keys in Gracechurch Street, of The Bull in Bishopsgate Street, La Belle Sauvage on Ludgate Hill, or the Tabbard Inn in Southwark that the actors set up their stages. Perhaps it was this very circumstance that became one of the indirect reasons why they finally were obliged to build a house for themselves.

Certainly the inns offered advantages to the actors; they were meeting-places for the public, frequented by lords and other persons of distinction; probably the companies paid next to nothing for the use of them. In themselves they afforded good room for the audience, with a natural pit for ordinary people in the yard, and with more comfortable "boxes" for the more distinguished part of the audience on the surrounding balconies and at the windows facing the yard.

On the other hand, these inn-theatres had their drawbacks. In the first place, the actors were not on their own ground, and so, after all, they were only tolerated. Secondly, it must have been very difficult for them to keep to regular prices, and especially to secure the payment of the entrance fee, as they had probably to collect the money during or after the performance, thus depending on the liberality of the public for their remuneration. And finally, worst of all, they were led into quarrels with the lord mayor and with the citizens.

Indeed, it is not unlikely that these performances in the inns caused a good deal of noise and disturbance in the quarters where they took place, and that the joyous, but by no means refined or quiet, "pit," when going home, excited by one of Tarlton's jigs and by the strong ale of the inn, was not animated by very respectful feelings toward their sour Puritan fellow-citizens, who were scandalized as they watched "merry London" crowding past their windows. Nor is it improbable that these anything but respectful feelings vented themselves in some of the coarse expressions in which the plays of those times abound, where Puritanism, the sworn enemy, is concerned; "this barbarous sect," as it is called by a modern English author, "from whose inherited and contagious tyranny this nation is as yet but imperfectly released."

It is certain, at any rate, that the Puritan citizens entertained a deep and sincere hatred of anything connected with plays and actors, and if it had been in their power to do what they liked, the world would once for all have been relieved of such pernicious and wicked vagabonds as William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, and Ben Jonson.

Fortunately, however, this power did not lie with the Puritans only.

Luckily, this sect, which like a malicious growth seemed to have gathered to itself all the stubbornness, insensibility, and rude obstinacy of the nation, was counterbalanced by a refined and intellectual nobility, which was inspired by the new artistic and philosophical thought of the Renaissance, and seemed to foresee, if not fully to recognize, what a mine of poetry the English theatre of those times was destined to be. Thanks to men like Sir Francis Walsingham, Lords Leicester, Nottingham, Strange, and Sussex, the drama resisted for a time the violent and unwearied attacks of the Puritans. Most fortunately for the actors also, Queen Elizabeth, as well as her successors, James I and Charles I, was fond of plays and favorably inclined toward their performers.

Elizabeth rendered a great service to the actors by placing them under the patronage of the nobility. The municipal authorities, who were frequently Puritan, considered neither dramatic art nor dramatic poetry as an acceptable means of livelihood; consequently, those who cultivated these noble arts easily exposed themselves to being treated as "masterless men," unless they could give a reference to some distinguished aristocratic name.