OUR EARLIEST THEATRES.

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of the Elizabethan drama. The profanity, blasphemy, and licentious indecency of these exhibitions were such that in 1542 Bishop Bonner forbade all ecclesiastics henceforth appearing upon the public stage.

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The Interlude, of which John Heywood was the inventor, somewhere in the third decade of the sixteenth century, was another step towards the modern drama; it was, however, merely a piece of gross buffoonery, half extemporaneous, although it was the immediate predecessor of our first English comedy, if that term can be applied to such a work as Ralph Roister Doister," written in the reign of Edward the Sixth. But the "Moralities" continued to be represented by guilds and mechanics down to the end of Elizabeth's reign. In "A Midsummer Night's Dream Shakespeare has bequeathed us an exquisitely comic picture of such actors.

The theatre was usually an inn-yard, and the galleries that surrounded the ancient hostelries gave the first idea of the subsequent buildings. Even in Shakespeare's time the pit was indifferently called the pit or the yard. There were attempts, even as far back as the Miracle plays, at scenic effects and stage properties. In a drawing of the time of Henry the Sixth, we are shown a scene in a "Morality' where there are five stages and a castle in the centre. In one entitled "Mary Magdalen," mention is made of the introduction of a castle and a ship. In another, "Cain," the action necessitated a change of

scene from the exterior to the interior of a cottage, in which a peasant's wife was discovered in bed, with an infant in a cradle beside her. According to a stage direction in "Noah's Flood," Noah goes into the ark, which is ordered to be boarded round about, and painted with all the various kinds of beasts and fowls. In a play on the conversion of St. Paul, there is a direction for the use of thunder.

The first legislative enactment in which the profession of actor is mentioned is one of the reign of Edward the Fourth, which exempts all players from the sumptuary laws. In a book of expenses of the reign of Henry the Seventh, there is an entry of one hundred shillings given as a reward to the King's players. In the household books of this sovereign, from 1492 to 1509, several companies are mentioned -that of the King, of the Duke of Buckingham, of the Earls of Oxford and Northumberland; and according to the same authority a company was attached to each of the following cities and towns: London, Coventry, Wycombe, Mile End, Wymborne Minster, and Kingston. These, however, were only the actors of the guilds, or servants of the nobility, trained to represent Moralities and Mummeries, and not at all answering to the modern idea of theatrical companies. Licenses for performing plays were granted by Henry the Eighth and Queen Mary, and in the latter reign, Strype, in his Memorials, speaks of "certain lewd persons naming themselves to be

GREAT INCREASE OF ACTORS.

the servants of Sir Francis Lake, and wearing his livery or badge on their sleeves," wandering in the north and representing plays and interludes, reflecting on the queen and her consort, and the formalities of the mass. In 1526 theatrical amusements had become so fashionable, that it was usual, on the celebration of any notable event in families of distinction, and on all festivals and holidays, either to have a play represented by the performers attached to the house, retainers of some kind trained to that purpose, or to hire such substitutes as Bottom and his companions.

An Elizabethan writer distinctly states that before 1570,"he neither knew nor read of any such theatres, set stages or playhouses as have been purposely built within man's memory." Unless the performances were given in private houses or the Universities, inn-yards still sufficed, as they had done a century and more previously. In 1572, so greatly had the number of players increased, that it was enacted that all who could not show licences signed by two justices of the peace should be dealt with as rogues and vagabonds. The servants and mechanics, some from pride, some from idleness,

* The custom of introducing living persons upon the stage and holding them up to abuse and ridicule still obtained in Shakespeare's time, and is glanced at by Hamlet in the lines to Polonius: "After your death you had better have a bad epitaph, than their (the players) ill report while you live."

some because they felt within them the stirrings of nobler talents, had deserted their legitimate and taken up wholly with their occasional callings. Such was no doubt the origin of the earliest theatrical companies. In 1586 Walsingham mentions two hundred players as being in or near London; this statement is perhaps an exaggeration, and of course includes not only the regular companies but the unlicensed troupes who played in inn-yards.

In 1574 the first royal license, still extant, was granted to James Burbadge (the father of Richard) and other players of Lord Leicester's, giving them the right to play within the city of London and its liberties, or any cities or boroughs, throughout England. This was strongly opposed by the mayor and aldermen of London, already tainted with puritanism, and it would seem to a certain extent effectually, for it is doubtful whether the actor ever obtained a footing within the jurisdiction of those potentates. In 1575 we find the players petitioning to be allowed to carry out the terms of their license if only in the winter months. The reply of the city would seem to confirm the view I have taken of the origin of the profession. "It hath not been used nor thought meet heretofore, that players have or should make their lyving on the art of playing; but men for their lyving using other and lawful arts, or retayned in honest services, have by companies learned some interludes for some in

THE CITY AND THE PLAYERS.

crease to their profits, by other men's pleasures, in vacant times of recreation." It has been surmised that the opposition of the city to plays being performed in the inn-yards within its boundaries first brought about the construction of regular theatres. This opposition continued to vent itself in petitions and complaints to the sovereign, setting forth that the great concourse of people the players brought prevented customers from getting to their shops, impeded marriages, burials, &c. In 1600 an order was issued in council to limit the theatres to two, the Fortune and the Globe; but there seems to have been no attempt to carry it out, for in 1616 we find the mayor calling attention to this order, and directing the suppression of the Blackfriars. "There is so great a multitude of coaches," says the document, whereof many are hackney coaches, bringing people of all sorts that sometimes all the streets cannot contain them." But James, who was always friendly to the players, paid little heed to these puritanical whinings; in 1603 he had given a license to the company of the Globe and Blackfriars, and from that time they called themselves His Majesty's Servants, having been before known as the Servants of the Lord Chamberlain.

The rapidity with which the public profession of actor advanced in estimation and position is noticed in the following passage from the continuation of Stowe's Chronicle by Howes: "Comedians and