Shakespearean Playhouses. Joseph Quincy Adams

to have been mainly a traveling troupe; Mr. Murray states that notices of them "occur frequently in the provinces," but we hear almost nothing of them in London. Indeed, at the time of the trouble described by Fleetwood, Hunsdon's Men were in Bath.[99] If Burbage was a member of the troupe, he certainly did not accompany them on their extended tours; and when they played in London, if they used the Theatre, they must have used it jointly with the Queen's Men.

      Late in 1585 the Theatre was affiliated with the adjacent Curtain. Burbage and Brayne made an agreement with the proprietor of that playhouse whereby the Curtain might be used "as an easore" [easer?] to the Theatre, and "the profits of the said two playhouses might for seven years space be in divident between them." This agreement, we know, was carried out, but whether it led to an exchange of companies, or what effect it had upon the players, we cannot say. Possibly to this period of joint management may be assigned the witticism of Dick Tarleton recorded as having been uttered "at the Curtain" where the Queen's Men were then playing.[100] It may even be that as one result of the affiliation of the two houses the Queen's Men were transferred to the Curtain.

      In 1590, as we learn from the deposition of John Alleyn, the Theatre was being used by the Admiral's Men.[101] This excellent company had been formed early in 1589 by the separation of certain leading players from Worcester's Men, and it had probably occupied the Theatre since its organization. Its star actor, Edward Alleyn, was then at the height of his powers, and was producing with great success Marlowe's splendid plays. We may suppose that the following passage refers to the performance of the Admiral's Men at the Theatre:

      He had a head of hair like one of my devils in Dr. Faustus, when the old Theatre crackt and frightened the audience.[102]

      Late in 1590 the Admiral's Men seem to have been on bad terms with Burbage,[103] and when John Alleyn made his deposition, February 6, 1592, they had certainly left the Theatre. Mr. Greg, from entirely different evidence, has concluded that they were dispersed in 1591,[104] and this conclusion is borne out by the legal document cited above.

      The next company that we can definitely associate with the Theatre was the famous Lord Chamberlain's Men. On April 16, 1594, Lord Strange, the Earl of Derby, died, and the chief members of his troupe—William Shakespeare, Richard Burbage, John Heminges, William Kempe, Thomas Pope, George Bryan, and Augustine Phillips—organized a new company under the patronage of the Lord Chamberlain. For ten days, in June, 1594, they acted at Newington Butts under the management of Philip Henslowe, then went, probably at once, to the Theatre, which they made their home until the Burbage lease of the property expired in the spring of 1597. Here, among other famous plays, they produced the original Hamlet, thus referred to by Lodge in Wit's Miserie, 1596:

      He looks as pale as the visard of the ghost which cries so miserably at the Theatre, like an oyster-wife, "Hamlet, revenge!"

      And here, too, they presented all of Shakespeare's early masterpieces.

      Their connection with the building ceased in 1597 at the expiration of the Burbage lease; but their association with the proprietors of the Theatre was permanent. Their subsequent history, as also the history of the Burbage brothers, will be found in the chapters dealing with the Globe and the Second Blackfriars.[105]

CHAPTER IV

       Table of Contents

THE CURTAIN

       Table of Contents

       ALTHOUGH James Burbage was, as his son asserted, "the first builder of playhouses," a second public playhouse followed hard on the Theatre, probably within twelve months. It was erected a short distance to the south of the Theatre—that is, nearer the city—and, like that building, it adjoined Finsbury Field.[106] To the two playhouses the audiences came trooping over the meadows, in "great multidudes," the Lord Mayor tells us; and the author of Tarlton's Newes out of Purgatory (c. 1589) describes their return to London thus: "With that I waked, and saw such concourse of people through the fields that I knew the play was done."[107]

      The new playhouse derived its name from the Curtain estate, on which it was erected.[108] This estate was formerly the property of the Priory of Holywell, and was described in 1538 as "scituata et existentia extra portas ejusdem nuper monasterii prope pasturam dicte nuper Priorisse, vocatam the Curteine."[109] Why it was so called is not clear. The name may have been derived from some previous owner of the property; it may, as Collier thought, have come from some early association with the walls (curtains) or defenses of the city; or, it may have come, as Tomlins suggests, from the mediæval Latin cortina, meaning a court, a close, a farm enclosure.[110] Whatever its origin—the last explanation seems the most plausible—the interesting point is that it had no connection whatever with a stage curtain.

      The building was probably opened to the London public in the summer or autumn of 1577. The first reference to it is found in T[homas] W[hite]'s Sermon Preached at Pawles Crosse on Sunday the Thirde of November, 1577: "Behold the sumptuous theatre houses, a continual monument of London's prodigality and folly";[111] and a reference to it by name appears in Northbrooke's A Treatise, licensed December, 1577: "Those places, also, which are made up and builded for such plays and interludes, as the Theatre and Curtain."[112]

      

      Like the Theatre, the Curtain was a peculiarly shaped building, specially designed for acting; "those playhouses that are erected and built only for such purposes … namely the Curtain and the Theatre,"[113] writes the Privy Council; and the German traveler, Samuel Kiechel, who visited London in 1585, describes them as "sonderbare" structures. They are usually mentioned together, and in such a way as to suggest similarity of shape as well as of purpose. We may, I think, reasonably suppose that the Curtain was in all essential details a copy of Burbage's Theatre.[114] Presumably, then, it was polygonal (or circular) in shape,[115] was constructed of timber, and was finished on the outside with lime and plaster. The interior, as the evidence already cited in the chapter on the Theatre shows, consisted of three galleries surrounding an open yard. There was a platform projecting into the middle of the yard, with dressing-rooms at the rear, "heavens" overhead, and a flagpole rising above the "heavens." That some sign was displayed in front of the door is likely. Malone writes: "The original sign hung out at this playhouse (as Mr. Steevens has observed) was the painting of a curtain striped."[116] Aubrey records that Ben Jonson "acted and wrote, but both ill, at the Green Curtain, a kind of nursery or obscure playhouse somewhere in the suburbs, I think towards Shoreditch or Clerkenwell."[117] By "at the Green Curtain" Aubrey means, of course, "at the sign of the Green Curtain"; but the evidence of Steevens and of Aubrey is too vague and uncertain to warrant any definite conclusions.

Of the early history of the Curtain we know little, mainly because it was not, like certain other playhouses, the subject of extensive litigation. We do not even know who planned and built it. The first evidence of its ownership appears fifteen years after its erection, in some legal documents connected with the Theatre.[118] In July, 1592, Henry Lanman, described as "of London, gentleman, of the age of 54 years," deposed: "That true it is about 7 years now shall be this next winter, they, the said Burbage and Brayne, having the profits of plays made at the Theatre, and this deponent having the profits of the plays done at the house called the Curtain near to the same, the said Burbage and Brayne, taking the Curtain as an esore[119] to their playhouse, did of their own motion move this deponent that he would agree that the profits of the said two playhouses might for seven years space be in divident between them."[120]