A Book of the Play | Page 5

the behaviour of our early
audiences at certain of the public theatres. "Men," it is observed, "come
not to study at a playhouse, but love such expressions and passages
which with ease insinuate themselves into their capacities.... On
holidays, when sailors, watermen, shoemakers, butchers, and
apprentices are at leisure, then it is good policy to amaze those violent
spirits with some tearing tragedy full of fights and skirmishes ... the
spectators frequently mounting the stage, and making a more bloody
catastrophe among themselves than the players did." Occasionally, it
appears, the audience compelled the actors to perform, not the drama
their programmes had announced, but some other, such as "the major
part of the company had a mind to: sometimes 'Tamerlane;' sometimes
'Jugurtha;' sometimes 'The Jew of Malta;' and, sometimes, parts of all
these; and, at last, none of the three taking, they were forced to undress
and put off their tragic habits, and conclude the day with 'The Merry
Milkmaids.'" If it so chanced that the players were refractory, then "the
benches, the tiles, the lathes, the stones, oranges, apples, nuts, flew
about most liberally; and as there were mechanics of all professions,
everyone fell to his own trade, and dissolved a house on the instant, and
made a ruin of a stately fabric. It was not then the most mimical nor
fighting man could pacify; prologues nor epilogues would prevail; the
Devil and the Fool [evidently two popular characters at this time] were
quite out of favour; nothing but noise and tumult fills the house," &c.
&c.
Concerning the dramatist of the time, upon the occasion of the first
performance of his play, his anxiety, irascibility, and peculiarities
generally, Ben Jonson provides sufficient information. "We are not so
officiously befriended by him," says one of the characters in the
Induction to "Cynthia's Revels," "as to have his presence in the
tiring-house, to prompt us aloud, stamp at the bookholder [or prompter],

swear at our properties, curse the poor tireman, rail the musick out of
tune, and sweat for every venial trespass we commit as some author
would." While, in the Induction to his "Staple of News," Jonson has
clearly portrayed himself. "Yonder he is," says Mirth, in reply to some
remark touching the poet of the performance, "within--I was in the
tiring-house awhile, to see the actors dressed--rolling himself up and
down like a tun in the midst of them ... never did vessel, or wort, or
wine, work so ... a stewed poet!... he doth sit like an unbraced drum,
with one of his heads beaten out," &c. The dramatic poets, it may be
noted, were admitted gratis to the theatres, and duly took their places
among the spectators. Not a few of them were also actors. Dekker, in
his "Satiromastix," accuses Jonson of sitting in the gallery during the
performance of his own plays, distorting his countenance at every line,
"to make gentlemen have an eye on him, and to make players afraid" to
act their parts. A further charge is thus worded: "Besides, you must
forswear to venture on the stage, when your play is ended, and
exchange courtesies and compliments with the gallants in the lords'
rooms (or boxes), to make all the house rise up in arms, and cry: 'That's
Horace! that's he! that's he! that's he that purges humours and
diseases!'"
Jonson makes frequent complaint of the growing fastidiousness of his
audience, and nearly fifty years later, the same charge against the
public is repeated by Davenant, in the Prologue to his "Unfortunate
Lovers." He tells the spectators that they expect to have in two hours
ten times more wit than was allowed their silly ancestors in twenty
years, who
to the theatre would come, Ere they had dined, to take up the best room;
There sit on benches not adorned with mats, And graciously did vail
their high-crowned hats To every half-dressed player, as he still
Through the hangings peeped to see how the house did fill. Good easy
judging souls! with what delight They would expect a jig or target fight;
A furious tale of Troy, which they ne'er thought Was weakly written so
'twere strongly fought.
As to the playgoers of the Restoration we have abundant information

from the poet Dryden, and the diarist Pepys. For some eighteen years
the theatres had been absolutely closed, and during that interval very
great changes had occurred. England, under Charles II., seemed as a
new and different country to the England of preceding monarchs. The
restored king and his courtiers brought with them from their exile in
France strange manners, and customs, and tastes. The theatre they
favoured was scarcely the theatre that had flourished in England before
the Civil War. Dryden reminds the spectators, in one of his prologues--
You now have habits,