CHAPTER XVIII

THE DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME— IV Ralph Rojsler Dajsler end Garbadtte
SN my last lecture young William Shak- spere, being then a boy of eighteen on his first visit to London, was left standing amid the crowd which had assembled at Paul's Cross on a certain Sunday in the year 1582 to hear the sermon.
I am sorry to say that the young man did not stay as long as reverence demands after the last amen of the services. The sermon had been lengthy : it was now growing afternoon, and there was barely time to reach the inn and snatch a hasty dinner be- fore the play would begin. It was the custom at this period for a theatrical performance to commence at three o'clock in the afternoon ; evening performances were not permitted, for the reason that they brought crowds on the streets at night, and in these days a crowd on the street in London meant brawls and troubles.
Shakspere's dinner was matter of small moment under these circumstances. He disposed of it in a few i+S
146 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
minutes, and hastily made his way to the Blackfriars Theatre. Here, as he mingled with the crowd at the doors, a grave discussion went on within his mind. The price of admission to the " yard " or pit of the theatre, where he would have to stand throughout the perform- ance in the midst of a motley throng of people, was six- pence (it varied from one penny to sixpence), while the better places were from a shilling to two shillings, the best, half a crown. Shakspere had but a half-crown in all the world ; yet an imperious desire to see the play unin- terrupted and to the best advantage possessed him ; he felt a dim prophecy of new plays smouldering in his heart; what was a mere trifle and amusement to other people was matter of life and death to him. It was therefore with a sort of sublime reliance upon the God who takes care of genius — a reliance all the more sublime since it was purely instinctive, and not explicit or formu- lated in any way — that the young man advanced, handed forth his whole earthly fortune, and asked for a place in one of the boxes, or " rooms," as they were then called.
As he entered the " room " he observed that a hand- some young cavalier, of charming form but slight in stature, passed lightly in behind him and seated himself modestly somewhat in the background. Beyond these circumstances, however, Shakspere noticed nothing; the crowd, the novelty of the playhouse, all that wild fascina- tion of the theatre which is plain enough to those who have felt it and wholly unintelligible to those who have not — these wrapped him away into an ecstasy of content. He was not anxious for the play to begin: he could have sat for hours so ; an indescribable glory and sweet- ness of potential fame filled the air about him ; it was as if he caught a breath from that perfect altar of love and reverence which all the ages were to distil for him.
The Stage in th« Red Bull PUyhoi
^
DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 147
Sitting so, in a great calm, large-eyed, observant, Shakspere heard the trumpet sound for the third time, and recognised it as the customary signal for the play to begin.
The large platform at the other end of the theatre which now appeared before Shakspere's eyes was a very much simpler aflfair than a modern stage. There were no tall scenes, no complex arrangements of grooves and pul- leys and " flies " and painted scenery such as constitute the accessories of the most modest theatre in our time. As the curtain parted in the middle and drew back to each side, the actors appeared upon a platform which was hung with arras, while, above, a hanging of some blue stuff rep- resented the heavens. Projecting over the stage in the background was a sort of porch or balcony which had uses as various as the plays which were enacted before it, ranging from Mount Olympus to the battlements of a castle. There were at this time no painted scenes, such as ours : when the place of the action changed the new locality was conveyed to the audience by hanging out a board with the name of the city or land painted on it ; thus in one act a board would be hung out with " Milan " on it, in large letters ; in the next act another board might appear with "Verona" inscribed.^ If the scenes were interiors, then some little simple stage property might indicate changes : the appearance of a bed, for instance, might indicate Dame Custance's apart- ment ; a throne on some part of the stage might convert it into a king's chamber of audience ; and so on. A little later, however, I fancy that somewhat more elaborate stage
1 *' What childc is there that com- Thebes ?" See also page 63 ft seq,
ming to a Play, and seeing Thebes of the Apologie for Players, Cf.
written in great letters upon an masque scene in Gondihert (Lon-
olde doore, doth believe that it is don, 1672), page 380.
148 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
properties were used. In the Prologue to Ben Jonson's Every Man in his Humour I find some comical allusions to certain stage devices which were in use at the time that play was written, and which appear to have excited great disgust in the soul of the irascible Ben by their trans- parent absurdity. I give you this Prologue here with the less hesitation because it connects itself very pleasantly with our hero's career as an actor afterwards, Shakspere himself having played one of the parts in this comedy of Jonson's in after years, probably that of Knowell.
Jonson, you observe, commences in the very Prologue to abuse directly some of those vices of shallow artifice and pretence which his comedy of Every Man in his Hu- mour was intended to satirise indirectly :
Though need make many poets, and some such As art and nature have not bettered much \ Yet ours for want hath not so loved the stage As he dare serve the ill customs of the age. Or purchase your delight at such a rate As for it, he himself must justly hate.
And having thus generally condemned the playwrights who truckled to the taste of the groundlings, he proceeds to detail some of their absurd violations of the unities of time and space :
To make a child now swaddled to proceed Man, and then shoot up in one beard and weed Past threescore years ; or, with three rusty swords And help of some few foot and half-foot words Fight over York and Lancaster's long jars And in the tyring house bring wounds to scars. He rather prays you will be pleased to see One such to-day as other plays should be ;
TRAGEDIES
AND
COMEDIES
COLLECTED INTO ONE VOLVME. Vfc. , ■
1. Attttni/i ntU MeUidA.
2, t^Ktoitu?! Rivinge. }. ThtTrtiedit tf Sofhtnisia. . 4. rrhMtpMiftU.
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t. Tit Dutch CturtnM. ':'-% t5:
ii
LONDON, I
Primed by i^.jK (orVf^iBimSttdHt,
«t the Harrow in Bi-ininti 'Zui-fft. ■ « « J 3.
• 1
Tule-page of Ben Jonson's " Tragedies and Comedie
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DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 149
Where neither chorus wafts you o'er the seas, Nor creaking throne comes down the boys to please ; Nor nimble squib is seen to make afeard The gentlewomen ; nor tempestuous drum Rumbles to tell you when the storm doth come ; But deeds and language such as men do use And persons such as comedy would choose When she would shew an image of the times And sport with human follies, not with crimes.
With these hints of the appearance of the stage as Shak- spere saw it in 1582, 1 am now to set before you the play which he saw. In selecting for this purpose some repre- sentative of the drama as it existed before Shakspere began to write, I have found great trouble with the embarrass- ment of riches. Perhaps the most popular play about this time was The Spanish Tragedy^ by Thomas Kyd, a play which has probably more bloodshed and red horror in it than any other that ever was written.
I should have liked, also, to make you witness along with Shakspere some play of his rival and good hater, Robert Greene. If I could read to you Greene's Edward 11^ or one of his comedies, I think you would agree with me that he is quite the loveliest, brightest, and most musi- cal writer that preceded Shakspere. He was only four years older than Shakspere, but seems to have taken to authorship earlier. Greene died in 1592, being then only thirty-two years old. It was on his death-bed that he ex- pressed that bitter hatred of Shakspere which has come down to us. This expression was in the form of a pam- phlet which Greene wrote in the course of his last illness, and which was published by his executor, Henry Chettle, soon after he died, under the title of Greene s Groatsworth of Wit Bought with a Million of Repentance. In this pamphlet occurs the following famous sentence, in which
I50 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
Greene warns the players of his time against such fellows as Shakspere : " Yes, trust them not ; for there is an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tygers heart wrapt in a Players hide, supposes he is as well able to bumbast out a blanke verse as the best of you ; and being an absolute Johannes fac totum^ is in his owne conceit the onely Shake-scene in a countrie." The propriety of calling Shakspere a Johannes factotum was that he could not only play but could write plays, either original or adapted ; and the words " Tygers heart wrapt in a Players hide" point to a line — "Oh tyger's heart wrapt in a woman's hide" — which occurs in the third part of King Henry VI^ and thus was probably intended by Greene to hint at Shakspere's plagiarism from himself.
It is gratifying to record that this Henry Chettle who published Greene's aspersion upon Shakspere almost im- mediately retracted his own part in that business and apologised for it in the most liberal way. It was only some three months after the appearance of Greene's pam- phlet that Chettle published one of his own, called Kind- Harts Dreanij in which he takes occasion to say, regarding his former injury to Shakspere : " I am as sory as if the originall fault had beene my owne, because my selfe have scene his [Shakspere's] demeanor no lesse civill, than he exelent in the qualitie he professes ; besides, divers of worship have reported his uprightness of dealing, which argues his honesty, and his facetious grace in writting, that aprooves his art."
I think, as I said, you would have found it interesting to trace a distinct influence of Greene upon Shakspere after seeing some of Greene's work. But I remember that I have not yet brought before you either the first English comedy or the first English tragedy : and these two works are so important — as the most striking phase
DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 151
in that transition from the old moralities and interludes to Shakspere's plays which I have been endeavouring to trace out before you — that I have concluded to avail myself of this last opportunity to acquaint you with them. Let us suppose, then, that young William Shakspere — whom we have kept all this time in his " room " or box at the Blackfriars, waiting for the play to begin — during this visit to the theatre saw the play called Ralph Royster Doy- ster^ which is the first clearly developed English comedy, and that on the following Sunday he went again to the theatre and saw Gorboduc^ otherwise called F err ex and For- rexj which is the first clearly developed English tragedy.
The comedy of Ralph Royster Doyster was written by Nicholas Udall. His name is written also Woddall and Woodall, and I think likely was called Woodall, which is a good English name still existing within my knowledge. The date of its composition was for some time uncertain ; but about sixty years ago Mr. Collier happened to dis- cover that in the third edition of Thomas Wilson's Rule of Reason^ conteinyng the Arte of Logique^ the author quotes a very artful and comical letter written by one of the char- acters in Udall's comedy (which I will presently read to you) as an example of " Ambiguitie," that is, of " suche doubtful writing, which by reason of poincting mai have double sense, and contrari meaning," and mentions that the letter is " taken out of an enterlude made by Nicholas Udall." As Wilson's book was entered at Stationers' Hall in 1 551, it fixes the date of Udall's play as before that time. Udall was born in 1504 — sixty years, you observe, before Shakspere. He was head-master of Eton ;
^Gabriel Harvey says in one of his again: ''If the world should ap-
letters: ''I . . . have seen the mad- plaud to such roister-doisterly van-
brainest roister-doister in a country ity," etc. dashed out of countenance." And
152 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
and it is a little surprising, in view of the genial nature of his comedy, to find that he was a pedagogue who did not spare the rod on his boys. Old Thomas Tusser's Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandries IS73> hints at Udall's severity in a couple of stanzas which record Tusser's own experience at Udall's school :
From Powles I went, to Acton sent
To learne straight wayes the Latin ph raise,
Where fiftie three stripes given to mec
At once I had : For faut but small, or none at all. It came to passe, thus beat I was ; See Udall see, the mercy of thee
To me poore lad.
Udall, though an intense Protestant, was in favour with Queen Mary and helped her to translate Erasmus's Para- phrase of the New Testament from the Latin into English. He seems to have been altogether a worthy and faithful man ; wrote several other plays and interludes which are lost ; and died a few years before Shakspere was born.
The comedy of Ralph Royster Doyster was published in 1566, though it was acted probably twenty years before. The following are the dramatis persons as they appear in the published play :
Ralph Royster Doyster.
Mathew Merygreeke.
Gawyn Goodluck, affianced to Dame Custance.
Tristram Trustie, his friend.
DoBiNET DouGHTiE, boy to Royster Doyster.
Tom Trupenie, servant to Dame Custance,
Sym Suresby, servant to Goodluck.
Scrivener,
Harpax.
DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 153
Dame Christian Custance, a widrnv. Margerie Mumblecrust, her nurse, Tibet Talkapace,
CE,1
, her maidens. Annot Alyface
Time^ about two days.
After the Prologue, which is in praise of mirth, — declar- ing, among other things, that the author knows
Nothing more commendable for a man's recreation Than Mirth which is used in an honest fashion. For Myrth prolongeth lyfe and causeth health, Mirth recreates our spirites and voydeth pensiveness. Mirth increaseth amitie, not hindering our wealth. Mirth is to be used both of more and lesse, Being mixed with vertue in decent comlynesse, —
comes " Actus j, Scsena j," in which
Mathewe Merygreeke entreth singing :