BEFORE the building of regular playhouses the itinerant troupes of actors were accustomed, except when received into private homes, to give their performances in any place that chance provided, such as open street-squares, barns, town-halls, moot-courts, schoolhouses, churches, and—most frequently of all, perhaps—the yards of inns. These yards, especially those of carriers' inns, were admirably suited to dramatic representations, consisting as they did of a large open court surrounded by two or more galleries. Many examples of such inn-yards are still to be seen in various parts of England; a picture of the famous White Hart, in Southwark, is given opposite page 4 by way of illustration. In the yard a temporary platform—a few boards, it may be, set on barrel-heads[1]—could be erected for a stage; in the adjacent stables a dressing-room could be provided for the actors; the rabble—always the larger and more enthusiastic part of the audience—could be accommodated with standing-room about the stage; while the more aristocratic members of the audience could be comfortably seated in the galleries overhead. Thus a ready-made and very serviceable theatre was always at the command of the players; and it seems to have been frequently made use of from the very beginning of professionalism in acting.

One of the earliest extant moralities, Mankind, acted by strollers in the latter half of the fifteenth century, gives us an interesting glimpse of an inn-yard performance. The opening speech makes distinct reference to the two classes of the audience described above as occupying the galleries and the yard:

O ye sovereigns that sit, and ye brothers that stand right up.

The "brothers," indeed, seem to have stood up so closely about the stage that the actors had great difficulty in passing to and from their dressing-room. Thus, Nowadays leaves the stage with the request:

Make space, sirs, let me go out!

New Gyse enters with the threat:

Out of my way, sirs, for dread of a beating!

While Nought, with even less respect, shouts:

Avaunt, knaves! Let me go by!

Language such as this would hardly be appropriate if addressed to the "sovereigns" who sat in the galleries above; but, as addressed to the "brothers," it probably served to create a general feeling of good nature. And a feeling of good nature was desirable, for the actors were facing the difficult problem of inducing the audience to pay for its entertainment.

This problem they met by taking advantage of the most thrilling moment of the plot. The Vice and his wicked though jolly companions, having wholly failed to overcome the hero, Mankind, decide to call to their assistance no less a person than the great Devil himself; and accordingly they summon him with a "Walsingham wystyle." Immediately he roars in the dressing-room, and shouts:

I come, with my legs under me!

There is a flash of powder, and an explosion of fireworks, while the eager spectators crane their necks to view the entrance of this "abhomynabull" personage. But nothing appears; and in the expectant silence that follows the actors calmly announce a collection of money, facetiously making the appearance of the Devil dependent on the liberality of the audience:

And with such phrases as "God bless you, master," "Ye will not say nay," "Let us go by," "Do them all pay," "Well mote ye fare," they pass through the audience gathering their groats, pence, and twopence; after which they remount the stage, fetch in the Devil, and continue their play without further interruption.

AN INN-YARD

The famous White Hart, in Southwark. The ground-plan shows the arrangement of a carriers' inn with the stabling below; the guest rooms were on the upper floors.

In the smaller towns the itinerant players might, through a letter of recommendation from their noble patron, or through the good-will of some local dignitary, secure the use of the town-hall, of the schoolhouse, or even of the village church. In such buildings, of course, they could give their performances more advantageously, for they could place money-takers at the doors, and exact adequate payment from all who entered. In the great city of London, however, the players were necessarily forced to make use almost entirely of public inn-yards—an arrangement which, we may well believe, they found far from satisfactory. Not being masters of the inns, they were merely tolerated; they had to content themselves with hastily provided and inadequate stage facilities; and, worst of all, for their recompense they had to trust to a hat collection, at best a poor means of securing money. Often too, no doubt, they could not get the use of a given inn-yard when they most needed it, as on holidays and festive occasions; and at all times they had to leave the public in uncertainty as to where or when plays were to be seen. Their street parade, with the noise of trumpets and drums, might gather a motley crowd for the yard, but in so large a place as London it was inadequate for advertisement among the better classes. And as the troupes of the city increased in wealth and dignity, and as the playgoing public grew in size and importance, the old makeshift arrangement became more and more unsatisfactory.

At last the unsatisfactory situation was relieved by the specific dedication of certain large inns to dramatic purposes; that is, the proprietors of certain inns found it to their advantage to subordinate their ordinary business to the urgent demands of the actors and the playgoing public. Accordingly they erected in their yards permanent stages adequately equipped for dramatic representations, constructed in their galleries wooden benches to accommodate as many spectators as possible, and were ready to let the use of their buildings to the actors on an agreement by which the proprietor shared with the troupe in the "takings" at the door. Thus there came into existence a number of inn-playhouses, where the actors, as masters of the place, could make themselves quite at home, and where the public without special notification could be sure of always finding dramatic entertainment.

Richard Flecknoe, in his Discourse of the English Stage (1664), goes so far as to dignify these reconstructed inns with the name "theatres." At first, says he, the players acted "without any certain theatres or set companions, till about the beginning of Queen Elizabeth's reign they began here to assemble into companies, and set up theatres, first in the city (as in the inn-yards of the Cross Keys and Bull in Grace and Bishop's Gate Street at this day to be seen), till that fanatic spirit [i.e., Puritanism], which then began with the stage and after ended with the throne, banished them thence into the suburbs"—that is, into Shoreditch and the Bankside, where, outside the jurisdiction of the puritanical city fathers, they erected their first regular playhouses.

The "banishment" referred to by Flecknoe was the Order of the Common Council issued on December 6, 1574. This famous document described public acting as then taking place "in great inns, having chambers and secret places adjoining to their open stages and galleries"; and it ordered that henceforth "no inn-keeper, tavern-keeper, nor other person whatsoever within the liberties of this city shall openly show, or play, nor cause or suffer to be openly showed or played within the house yard or any other place within the liberties of this city, any play," etc.

How many inns were let on special occasions for dramatic purposes we cannot say; but there were five "great inns," more famous than the rest, which were regularly used by the best London troupes. Thus Howes, in his continuation of Stow's Annals (p. 1004), in attempting to give a list of the playhouses which had been erected "within London and the suburbs," begins with the statement, "Five inns, or common osteryes, turned to playhouses." These five were the Bell and the Cross Keys, hard by each other in Gracechurch Street, the Bull, in Bishopsgate Street, the Bell Savage, on Ludgate Hill, and the Boar's Head, in Whitechapel Street without Aldgate.[2]

Although Flecknoe referred to the Order of the Common Council as a "banishment," it did not actually drive the players from the city. They were able, through the intervention of the Privy Council, and on the old excuse of rehearsing plays for the Queen's entertainment, to occupy the inns for a large part of each year.[3] John Stockwood, in a sermon preached at Paul's Cross, August 24, 1578, bitterly complains of the "eight ordinary places" used regularly for plays, referring, it seems, to the five inns and the three playhouses—the Theatre, Curtain, and Blackfriars—recently opened to the public.

Richard Reulidge, in A Monster Lately Found Out and Discovered (1628), writes that "soon after 1580" the authorities of London received permission from Queen Elizabeth and her Privy Council "to thrust the players out of the city, and to pull down all playhouses and dicing-houses within their liberties: which accordingly was effected; and the playhouses in Gracious Street [i.e., the Bell and the Cross Keys], Bishopsgate Street [i.e., the Bull], that nigh Paul's [i.e., Paul's singing school?], that on Ludgate Hill [i.e., the Bell Savage], and the Whitefriars[4] were quite put down and suppressed by the care of these religious senators."

MAP OF LONDON SHOWING THE INN-PLAYHOUSES

1. The Bell Savage; 2. The Cross Keys; 3. The Bell; 4. The Bull; 5. The Boar's Head.

[Enlarge]

Yet, in spite of what Reulidge says, these five inns continued to be used by the players for many years.[5] No doubt they were often used surreptitiously. In Martin's Month's Mind (1589), we read that a person "for a penie may have farre better [entertainment] by oddes at the Theatre and Curtaine, and any blind playing house everie day."[6] But the more important troupes were commonly able, through the interference of the Privy Council, to get official permission to use the inns during a large part of each year.

There is not enough material about these early inn-playhouses to enable one to write their separate histories. Below, however, I have recorded in chronological order the more important references to them which have come under my observation.

1557. On September 5 the Privy Council instructed the Lord Mayor of London "that some of his officers do forthwith repair to the Boar's Head without Aldgate, where, the Lords are informed, a lewd play called A Sackful of News shall be played this day," to arrest the players, and send their playbook to the Council.[7]

1573. During this year there were various fencing contests held at the Bull in Bishopsgate.[8]

1577. In February the Office of the Revels made a payment of 10d. "ffor the cariadge of the parts of ye well counterfeit from the Bell in gracious strete to St. Johns, to be performed for the play of Cutwell."[9]

1579. On June 23 James Burbage was arrested for the sum of £5 13d. "as he came down Gracious Street towards the Cross Keys there to a play." The name of the proprietor of this inn-playhouse is preserved in one of the interrogatories connected with the case: "Item. Whether did you, John Hynde, about xiii years past, in anno 1579, the xxiii of June, about two of the clock in the afternoon, send the sheriff's officer unto the Cross Keys in Gratious Street, being then the dwelling house of Richard Ibotson, citizen and brewer of London," etc.[10] Nothing more, I believe, is known of this person.

1579. Stephen Gosson, in The Schoole of Abuse, writes favorably of "the two prose books played at the Bell Savage, where you shall find never a word without wit, never a line without pith, never a letter placed in vain; the Jew and Ptolome, shown at the Bull ... neither with amorous gesture wounding the eye, nor with slovenly talk hurting the ears of the chast hearers."[11]

1582. On July 1 the Earl of Warwick wrote to the Lord Mayor requesting the city authorities to "give license to my servant, John David, this bearer, to play his profest prizes in his science and profession of defence at the Bull in Bishopsgate, or some other convenient place to be assigned within the liberties of London." The Lord Mayor refused to allow David to give his fencing contest "in an inn, which was somewhat too close for infection, and appointed him to play in an open place of the Leaden Hall," which, it may be added, was near the Bull.[12]

1583. William Rendle, in The Inns of Old Southwark, p. 235, states that in this year "Tarleton, Wilson, and others note the stay of the plague, and ask leave to play at the Bull in Bishopsgate, or the Bell in Gracechurch Street," citing as his authority merely "City MS." The Privy Council on November 26, 1583, addressed to the Lord Mayor a letter requesting "that Her Majesty's Players [i.e., Tarleton, Wilson, etc.] may be suffered to play within the liberties as heretofore they have done."[13] And on November 28 the Lord Mayor issued to them a license to play "at the sign of the Bull in Bishopsgate Street, and the sign of the Bell in Gracious Street, and nowhere else within this City."[14]

1587. "James Cranydge played his master's prize the 21 of November, 1587, at the Bellsavage without Ludgate, at iiij sundry kinds of weapons.... There played with him nine masters."[15]

Before 1588. In Tarlton's Jests[16] we find a number of references to that famous actor's pleasantries in the London inns used by the Queen's Players. It is impossible to date these exactly, but Tarleton became a member of the Queen's Players in 1583, and he died in 1588.

The several "jests" which follow these introductory sentences indicate that the inn-yards differed in no essential way from the early public playhouses.

1588. "John Mathews played his master's prize the 31 day of January, 1588, at the Bell Savage without Ludgate."[17]

1589. In November Lord Burghley directed the Lord Mayor to "give order for the stay of all plays within the city." In reply the Lord Mayor wrote:

According to which your Lordship's good pleasure, I presently sent for such players as I could hear of; so as there appeared yesterday before me the Lord Strange's Players, to whom I specially gave in charge and required them in Her Majesty's name to forbear playing until further order might be given for their allowance in that respect. Whereupon the Lord Admiral's Players very dutifully obeyed; but the others, in very contemptuous manner departing from me, went to the Cross Keys and played that afternoon.[18]