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  The Privy Council got wind of what was afoot and Norfolk was sent for and shrewdly advised to be honest with the Queen. Later, as he faced execution, he wished he had been. Instead, what followed was the abortive Northern Rebellion which was put down with great savagery, some eight hundred of the Earl’s followers being hanged. Northumberland fled to Scotland but was later returned to England and executed. Elizabeth refused to act against Mary on the grounds that there was no certain proof that she had been party to the plot, but so major an insurrection thoroughly unnerved both the Queen and her government, and matters were soon to deteriorate further. In February 1570 Pope Pius V issued his notorious Bull of Excommunication against the Queen, the result of which was to make it almost impossible for her government to separate faith from politics as had hitherto been the case. The Pope had put English Catholics in an impossible position: if they remained loyal to the Queen they were disobedient to the commands of the Holy Father in Rome, yet if they obeyed his edict it followed that they were traitors to the Queen. The Bull made the position quite clear: all the subjects of the English realm were freed from their oaths of allegiance ‘and all manner of duty, fidelity and obedience’. But even that was not enough. The Pope ‘commanded and enjoined all and every subject and people whatsoever that they shall not once dare to obey her or her laws, directions or commands, binding under the same curse those who do anything to the contrary’. In other words those remaining loyal to the Crown faced automatic excommunication. More than that, it was now open season for assassins.

  In 1572 the Ridolfi Plot led finally to the execution of the Earl of Norfolk, a deed accompanied by a demand from Parliament for Mary’s head. Again Elizabeth refused. Then in August, while she was staying at Warwick Castle, the news was brought to her of the horrific massacre of Huguenots which had taken place on St Bartholomew’s Eve, first in Paris then spreading out to other towns and cities, bringing with it an influx of asylum seekers into England. By the 1580s storm clouds were gathering from every direction. In 1583 there were two more plots, those of Somerville and Throgmorton, both designed to pave the way for a Spanish invasion. That both failed was due in no small part to the intelligence-gathering skills of Sir Francis Walsingham’s agents. Then, in 1586, intelligence reached the Queen’s spymaster of yet another, the initiator being a naive country gentleman by the name of Antony Babington. The government had had enough and were absolutely determined that Mary should go. To ensure this she had to be implicated beyond any shadow of doubt; Walsingham therefore infiltrated into the circle of the conspirators his own best secret agent, Robert Poley. The result, as everyone knows, was not only the downfall and unpleasant deaths of the plotters but the eventual execution of Mary, Queen of Scots.

  But no sooner had one hazard been put behind her than the Queen was beset by others. Although ‘the Spanish Armada’ of 1588 is usually referred to as the single attempt by Philip II to conquer the English, Spain had actually prepared for an invasion the previous year, not with flotillas of galleons but by vessels towing barges full of soldiers over from the Low Countries; and it might well have succeeded had it not been for the English raid on Cadiz which destroyed some of the fleet. The real Spanish Armada was a far more hazardous venture for the Spaniards than the first would have been and was soundly defeated by a combination of superior English seamanship in more manoeuvrable ships and the appalling weather. Her leadership of the country during that time and the vanquishing of the Armada was Elizabeth’s finest hour, her speech at Tilbury worthy of Shakespeare. But Spain’s determination to invade did not end there; there were at least two other abortive attempts afterwards, with Ireland being used as a base. No one can pretend that what England did in Ireland during the last half of the sixteenth century was anything of which to be proud, but it should also be remembered that the government considered their western neighbour to be their Achilles’ heel.

  The great flowering of the dramatists in the 1590s was therefore accompanied by increasing paranoia on the part of the government, the implementation of draconian laws against Catholic ‘Mass priests’, along with other repressive legislation to deal with civil unrest. In 1593 the latter would catch in its net both Thomas Kyd and Christopher Marlowe, at the scene of whose murder we come across once again that very same Robert Poley who played such a vital role in the bringing to justice of the Babington plotters. From then until the Queen’s death in 1603, there was war in Ireland, continuing uncertainty as to the succession since Elizabeth refused to name King James of Scotland as her heir, and the abortive final plot, that of the Queen’s last great favourite, the inept Earl of Essex, whose arrogance finally brought him to the block. Nor did the death of the Queen and the subsequent coronation of James VI of Scotland as James I of England make the profession of dramatist any less hazardous. Anti-Catholic feeling became even more ferocious, factionalism even more intense at Court where the King was swayed by a succession of favourites. It was an age in which almost anything could be bought.

  Throughout it all, mostly unaware, or uncaring, of the affairs of state (with the exception of the threat from the Armada), the people of London packed the playhouses. The times might be dangerous but the people were well able to live with that. Death was ever present and, in Marlowe’s words, they lived ‘on the slicing edge’ of it: death from disease, particularly from the regular epidemics of plague, death at the hands of a robber in the street, or following a quarrel at a time when insults led easily to fights and men routinely wore swords and daggers, while for women there was always the very real fear of death in childbirth or the dreaded puerperal fever associated with it.

  Their idea of entertainment, however, was a broad one. The very same audiences which crowded into the Rose and the Globe to laugh at The Shoemaker’s Holiday or enjoy the poetry of Twelfth Night were equally happy to visit the Bear Pit the following day or stand at the front of the crowd at Tyburn to watch the public hangings. But theatre opened up for them whole new worlds: those of kingship and its power and responsibilities in the great historical epics, of hubris followed by nemesis as portrayed in the characters of Marlowe’s great over-reachers, of betrayal and murder set alongside the foibles of humanity in the great tragedies and comedies of Shakespeare – not to mention the nature of love.

  ONE

  The New Professionals

  A play’s a true transparent crystal mirror,

  To show good minds their mirth, the bad their terror.

  Thomas Heywood, Apology for Actors (1612)

  By the time Heywood wrote these words a visitor to London could have joined audiences at eight or nine playhouses and even if, as was likely, not all of them were open for business at the same time, he or she might well have had the choice of anything up to a dozen plays from which to choose within the space of a week. Hundreds, indeed thousands, of people might pack into any one performance at a large theatre such as the Globe when it was full to capacity, a good many of them, of course, standing for the privilege. Shrewd actors such as Edward Alleyn and playwrights like William Shakespeare had become very wealthy men; there was money to be made in the theatre for both actors and writers even if all too many of them let it slip through their fingers and drank or gambled it away. The actor Richard Burbage was just as much a star to the audiences of his day as Sir Laurence Olivier or Sir Ian McKellen four hundred years later.

  However, by then theatre had become properly established. It was nothing like as easy for the pioneers of a quarter of a century earlier; indeed it would have been almost impossible for them to imagine what the future might hold. Companies of players did not, of course, suddenly appear from nowhere once playhouses started being built. Plays had been regularly, if seasonally, performed since early medieval times by the various guilds, and cycles of religious dramas such as those of the York, Wakefield, Coventry and Chester Mysteries and the Cornish ‘Ordinalia’ were popular and provided a welcome break in the working year. No doubt some of those craftsmen taking part were talented actors but they
were quite definitely amateurs. At major festivals such as Christmas or May Day there was lighter fare like the Mummers’ plays which might well incorporate, along with their regular characters, those of Robin Hood and Maid Marian. Noblemen and other wealthy landowners would also keep among their servants those able to perform ‘interludes’ for the entertainment of guests, though these were hardly theatrical performances as we understand them and often took place while everyone was eating, drinking and chatting.

  Gradually the repertoire grew, first with the appearance of the morality plays, of which the best known example is Everyman, though still as the name suggests with a religious theme; then, mainly for private consumption within schools and colleges, broader and more adventurous drama. In 1534, when Henry VIII was still on the throne, Nicholas Udall became headmaster of Eton College. He had a keen interest in drama and wrote a number of plays for the boys, one of which, Ralph Roister Doister, still survives. It was immensely popular and there are references to it being performed years later. Its comic theme was to influence a whole generation of professional playwrights, for the main character, Doister himself, is a swaggering, roistering, woman-chasing, cowardly buffoon with a high opinion of himself, who gets his comeuppance at the hands of a determined lady. Doister is a likely prototype for the Falstaff of The Merry Wives of Windsor.

  By the time Elizabeth came to the throne, bands of players along with tumblers and musicians were travelling around the countryside playing in the towns and villages, especially at fairs and on public holidays, offering drama which was pure entertainment. The general population loved the arrival of the players and flocked to see the plays but their betters took a very different view of the matter. Players were considered no better than the ‘sturdie beggars’, tinkers, vagabonds, thieves and masterless men who roamed the countryside in bands. As to what they performed, plays were ‘the Devil’s sermons’ and those who performed them should be whipped out of town with the other travelling scum. Such was the prejudice that actors realised drastic action was needed if they were to survive, and it was fortunate that the growing wealth and ostentation of the aristocracy was set to provide it. Actors were suddenly in demand as it became the fashion for a lord or earl to have his own company of players as part of the household. Their patrons’ desire to advertise their wealth and success thus enabled the actors to perform legally and without fear of the consequences, so long as they were officially known by the name of their patron as, for example, the Earl of Leicester’s Men.1

  Under the auspices of a powerful patron, players were able to continue touring so long as they were available to perform for him whenever they were required to do so, and we know of a number of inns and taverns, particularly in London, regularly visited by acting companies ‘where money is paid or demanded for hearing plays’. In 1567 John Brayne, a grocer, and the brother-in-law of James Burbage (father of the famous Richard), paid out £8 10s for scaffolding for plays performed at the Red Lion in Stepney. ‘James Burbage was a joiner’, notes M.C. Bradbrook in The Rise of the Common Player, ‘and knew all about scaffolding’. Another inn, the Bell, was so often used by players that they stored their costumes there, while the landlord set about acquiring stage props and properties which could be hired out to acting companies for a fee. Some inns became particularly associated with individual companies and we know that the Earl of Leicester’s Men played regularly at the Cross Keys in Gracechurch Street.2

  Faced with the growing number of actors’ companies and in an attempt to gain some control of what was going on, in 1572 the government brought in the notorious Vagabonds Act, which lumped together all the various groups travelling around the countryside, however loosely organised. According to the Statute:

  all Fencers, Bearwards, Common Players in Enterludes & Minstrels not belonging to any Baron of this Realme or towards any other honourable Personage of greater Degree; all Jugglers, Pedlars, Tinkers and Petty Chapmen, and have not Licence of two Justices of the Peace at the least, whereof one to be of the Quorum when and in what Shire they shall happen to wander . . . shall be taken and adjudged to be deemed Rogues, Vagabonds and Sturdie Beggars.

  It was, therefore, absolutely essential to have a patron, with the result that theatre flourished.

  Two years later, as Bradbrook points out, in the March of 1574, it struck someone at Court that since whatever the prohibitions brought in and the dire punishments threatened, such entertainment now appeared to be here to stay, instead of continuing to put obstacles in its way, why not try and make some money out of it for the Exchequer?3 How would it be if the government offered licences for places in which plays could legitimately be performed? That way money could be made in the form of a new tax, while an eye could also be kept on the content of the plays that were being put on. The Lord Chamberlain, therefore, wrote a civil letter to the Lord Mayor of London putting forward this excellent notion and requesting that it immediately be put into practice, only to be met by an outright refusal. The principal reason given for this was that the City Fathers, and they alone, had the power to restrict assembly and keep control of what went on in the City and such a power therefore could not be delegated to anyone else. However, when the situation was looked into further, it appeared that the City had already seen the money-making possibilities of such a scheme and were themselves busily collecting money from players ‘for poor relief’ by allowing them the privilege of playing within the city walls and that this was a practice they had no intention of giving up.

  For a while, the Lord Chamberlain continued to negotiate, suggesting ways and means by which such poor relief could continue, but when the Lord Mayor remained adamant, he overruled his objections and the first Letters Patent were given to the Earl of Leicester’s Men under the Great Seal of England on behalf of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth I. They were granted to James Burbage, John Perkyn, John Laneham, William Johnson and Robert Wilson:

  to use, exercise, and occupy the art and faculty of playing comedies tragedies interludes stage plays and such other like as they have already used and studied or hereafter shall use and study as well for the recreation of your loving subjects as for our solace and pleasure . . . as also to use and occupy all such instruments as they have already practised . . . to shew publish exercise and occupy to their best commodity . . . as well within our City of London and liberties of the same, as also within the liberties and freedoms of any of our cities, towns and boroughs, etc. as without the same, any act statute proclamation or commandment to the contrary not withstanding, provided the said comedies tragedies interludes and stage plays be by the Master of our Revels (for the time being) before seen and allowed and that the same be not published or shewen [sic] in the time of common prayer or in the time of great and common plague in our said City of London.

  It was the first ever official recognition by the establishment of theatre as we know and understand it today and it remains unique. The Letters Patent overrode the ancient rights of the city to determine what took place within its boundaries in the face of dire warnings from the objectors as to the horrors about to be unleashed on an unsuspecting public. There would be, without doubt

  the inordinate haunting of great multitudes of people, especially youth, to plays, interludes and shows, leading to affrays, quarrels, and evil practices of incontinency in great Inns, having chambers and secret places adjoining to their open stages and galleries, thus inveigling and alluring maids, especially orphans and good Citizens’ children [who are] under age, to privy and unmeet shows, the publishing of unchaste, uncomely and unashamed fast speeches and doings and the withdrawing of Her Majesty’s subjects from divine service and holy days.

  Not only that, such entertainments would lead to the ‘unthrifty waste of money by the poor, sundry robberies by pickpockets and cutpurses, the uttering of popular, busy and seditious matters and many other corruptions of youth and other enormities’, not to mention the possible ‘slaughters and mayhems of the Queen’s subjects by falling scaffolding, breaking fra
mes and stages and the use of gunpowder’.4

  The Earl of Leicester’s Men had therefore achieved their aim of official recognition not only for themselves but on behalf of other such companies. Thus emboldened, on 13 May 1576 James Burbage signed a 21-year lease on a building plot in Holywell on the public road between Shoreditch and Bishopsgate not far from Finsbury Fields and at once set about building the first custom-built playhouse. He called it simply The Theatre. His lease contained a clause which said that if he spent £200 or more on the building, he could take it down when the lease expired. He was also supposed to be offered an automatic extension of the lease if he wanted it, although the terms would have to be renegotiated. Within a year The Theatre was joined by a second playhouse, The Curtain, close by. The memory of The Curtain, which remained in use for over thirty years, still lingers on in ‘Curtain Road’ which runs between Old Street and Great Eastern Street. We do not know who built The Curtain but it has been suggested that it was a syndicate of actors and that the two playhouses complemented each other, possibly sharing wardrobe and other storage facilities.

  We have no description or sketches of what they were like but theatre historian Andrew Gurr considers it likely that The Theatre was closely based on the design of the rectangular and galleried inn yards in which Burbage and the Earl of Leicester’s company usually played, while The Curtain was more like the ‘wooden O’ familiar from prints of the later Bankside theatres.5 However, unless the foundations of one or the other are discovered during building excavations, as happened with the Rose Theatre in Southwark, we are unlikely ever to know. Although all authorities give The Theatre as the first proper playhouse, other excavations have revealed that there is a possibility that there was an earlier one, the Red Lion in Whitechapel built by John Brayne in about 1567; if this were the case it was not built specifically for the performance of plays but mainly for bear-baiting. While The Theatre and The Curtain were primarily for the production of plays, the stages were also used for a wide variety of other events such as exhibitions of sword-fighting, wrestling, tumbling, vaulting, something referred to as ‘rope dancing’, and possibly, on occasion, even bear-baiting, although that is by no means certain. Even after the building of the two theatres, acting companies continued to give performances regularly in the yards of inns such as the Bell, the Cross Keys and the Bull to the north of the City, the Belsavage in the west and the George in Southwark.