A Book of the Play | Page 4

their stalls." Further, they alleged that,
owing to the great "recourse of coaches," and the narrowness of the
streets, the inhabitants could not, in an afternoon, "take in any provision
of beere, coales, wood, or hay;" the passage through Ludgate was many
times stopped up, people "in their ordinary going" much endangered,
quarrels and bloodshed occasioned, and disorderly people, towards
night, gathered together under pretence of waiting for those at the plays.
Christenings and burials were many times disturbed; persons of honour
and quality dwelling in the parish were restrained, by the number of
coaches, from going out or coming home in seasonable time, to "the
prejudice of their occasions;" and it was suggested that, "if there should
happen any misfortune of fire," it was not likely that any order could
possibly be taken, since, owing to the number of the coaches, no
speedy passage could be made for quenching the fire, to the
endangering both of the parish and of the city. It does not appear that
any action on the part of Laud or the Privy Council followed this
curious petition.
It seems clear that the Elizabethan audiences were rather an unruly
congregation. There was much cracking of nuts and consuming of
pippins in the old playhouses; ale and wine were on sale, and tobacco
was freely smoked by the upper class of spectators, for it was hardly
yet common to all conditions. Previous to the performance, and during
its pauses, the visitors read pamphlets or copies of plays bought at the
playhouse-doors, and, as they drank and smoked, played at cards. In his
"Gull's Horn Book," 1609, Dekker tells his hero, "before the play
begins, fall to cards;" and, winning or losing, he is bidden to tear some
of the cards and to throw them about, just before the entrance of the

prologue. The ladies were treated to apples, and sometimes applied
their lips to a tobacco-pipe. Prynne, in his "Histriomastix," 1633, states
that, even in his time, ladies were occasionally "offered the
tobacco-pipe" at plays. Then, as now, new plays attracted larger
audiences than ordinary. Dekker observes, in his "News from Hell,"
1606, "It was a comedy to see what a crowding, as if it had been at a
new play, there was upon the Acherontic strand." How the spectators
comported themselves upon these occasions, Ben Jonson, "the Mirror
of Manners," as Mr. Collier well surnames him, has described in his
comedy "The Case is Altered," acted at Blackfriars about 1599. "But
the sport is, at a new play, to observe the sway and variety of opinion
that passeth it. A man shall have such a confused mixture of judgment
poured out in the throng there, as ridiculous as laughter itself. One says
he likes not the writing; another likes not the plot; another not the
playing; and sometimes a fellow that comes not there past once in five
years, at a Parliament time or so, will be as deep-mired in censuring as
the best, and swear, by God's foot, he would never stir his foot to see a
hundred such as that is!" The conduct of the gallants, among whom
were included those who deemed themselves critics and wits, appears
to have usually been of a very unseemly and offensive kind. They sat
upon the stage, paying sixpence or a shilling for the hire of a stool, or
reclined upon the rushes with which the boards were strewn. Their
pages were in attendance to fill their pipes; and they were noted for the
capriciousness and severity of their criticisms. "They had taken such a
habit of dislike in all things," says Valentine, in "The Case is Altered,"
"that they will approve nothing, be it ever so conceited or elaborate; but
sit dispersed, making faces and spitting, wagging their upright ears, and
cry: 'Filthy, filthy!'" Ben Jonson had suffered much from the censure of
his audiences. In "The Devil is an Ass," he describes the demeanour of
a gallant occupying a seat upon the stage. Fitsdottrell says:
To day I go to the Blackfriars playhouse, Sit in the view, salute all my
acquaintance; Rise up between the acts, let fall my cloak; Publish a
handsome man and a rich suit-- And that's a special end why we go
thither.
Of the cutpurses, rogues, and evil characters of both sexes who

frequented the old theatres, abundant mention is made by the poets and
satirists of the past. In this respect there can be no question that the
censure which was so liberally awarded was also richly merited. Mr.
Collier quotes from Edmund Gayton, an author who avowedly "wrote
trite things merely to get bread to sustain him and his wife," and who
published, in 1654, "Festivous Notes on the History of the renowned
Don Quixote," a curious account of