toward the field."* In a sermon by John Stockwood, in 1578, the Theatre is called a "gorgeous playing place." Stubbes, in 1583, rails bitterly against these public playhouses: "Mark the flocking and running to Theatres and Curtains." The early history of the less important theatres is necessarily involved in great obscurity. There were playhouses on the Bankside, against the Immoralities of which, particularly as to playing on Sundays, the inhabitants of Southwark complained to the authorities in 1587; but it is not known when Henslowe's playhouse, the Rose, which was in that neighbourhood, was erected. The Swan and the Hope, also theatres of the Bankside, were probably, as wel as the Rose, mean erections in the infancy of the stage, which afterwards grew into importance. There was an ancient theatre also at Newington, which offered its attractions to the holiday-makers who sallied out of the City to practise i the Butts.

:

In the continuation of Stow's Chronicle,' by Edmund Howes, there is a very curious passage, which carries us back from the period in which he was writing (631) for sixty years. He describes the destruction of the Globe by fire in 613, the burning of the Fortune Playhouse four years after, the rebuilding of both theatres, and the erection of "a new fair playhouse near the Whitefriars." He then adds," And this is the seventeenth stage, or common playhouse, which hath been new made within the space of threescore years within London and the suburbs, viz. five inns, or common hostelries, turned to playhouses, one Cockpit, St. Paul's singing-school, one in the Blackfriars, and one in the Whitefriars, which was built last of all, in the year one thousand six hundred twenty-nine. All the rest not named were erected only for common playhouses, besides the new-built Bear-garden, which was built as well for plays, and fencers' prizes, as bull-baiting; besides one in former time at Newington Butts. Before the space of threescore years abovesaid I neither knew, heard, nor read of any such theatres, set stages, or playhouses, as have been purposely built within man's memory." It would appear, as far as we can judge from the very imperfect materials which exist, that in the early period of Shakspere's connection with the Blackfriars it was the only private theatre. At a subsequent period the Cockpit, or Phoenix, in Drury Lane, was a private theatre; and so was the theatre in Salisbury Court,-the "new fair playhouse near the Whitefriars" of Howes. What then was the distinction between the private theatre of the Blackfriars, of which Shakspere was a shareholder in 1589, and the permanent and temporary public theatres with which it entered into competition? It is natural to conclude that the proprietors of this theatre, being the Queen's servants, not merely nominally, but the sworn officers of her household, were the most respectable of their vocation; conformed to the ordinances of the state with the utmost scrupulousness; endeavoured to attract a select audience rather than an uncritical multitude; and received higher prices for

Mr. Collier, who originally pointed out this passage, by comparing the printed copy with Stow's manuscript in the British Museum, found that "activities" (tumbling) were mentioned as performed at the theatres, as weil as plays.

admission than were paid at the public theatres. The performances at the Blackfriars were for the most part in the winter. Whether the performances were in the day or evening, artificial lights were used. The audience in what we now call the pit (then also so called) sat upon benches, and did not stand as in the yard open to the sky of the public playhouses. There were small rooms corresponding with the private boxes of existing theatres. A portion of the audience, including those who aspired to the distinction of critics, sat upon the stage. "Though you be a magistrate of wit, and sit on the stage at Blackfriars to arraign plays daily," says the preface to the first folio of Shakspere. The passage we have quoted from Lambarde gives us a notion of the prices of admission at the very early theatres. Those who paid a penny for the "entry of the scaffold" had, of course, privileges not obtained by those who merely paid “the penny at the gate;" and those who, when they had reached the scaffold, had to pay another penny "for quiet standing," had no doubt the advantage of some railed-off space, in some degree similar to the stalls of the modern pit. But the mass of the audience must have been the penny payers. The passages in old plays and tracts which allude to the prices of admission, for the most part belong to the high and palmy period of the stage. But we learn from one of Lyly's tracts, in 1590, that the admission at "The Theatre" was twopence, and at St. Paul's fourpence; though a penny still seems from other authorities to have been the common price. It is possible, and indeed there is some evidence, that the rate of admission even then varied according to the attraction of the performance; and we may be pretty sure that a company like that of Shakspere's generally charged at a higher rate than the larger theatres, which depended more upon the multitude. At a much later period, Ben Jonson and Fletcher mention a price as high as half-a-crown; and the lowest price which Jonson mentions is sixpence. At a later period still, Jonson speaks of the sixpenny mechanics of the Blackfriars. Those who sat upon the stage, it would appear, paid sixpence for a stool, in addition to their payment for admission. It is scarcely worth while to enter more minutely into the evidence on this point, which may be consulted by the curious in Malone's Historical Account of the English Stage,' and more fully in Mr. Collier's Annals of the Stage.' With these preliminary notices we may proceed to the picture of a new play at the Blackfriars, about a year or so before the period when it has been ascertained that Shakspere was one amongst the sixteen shareholders of that company, with four other shareholders, and those not unimportant persons, below him on the list.

On the posts of the principal thoroughfares of the City a little bill is affixed, announcing that a new History will be performed at the private theatre of the Blackfriars. The passengers are familiar with such bills; they were numerous enough in the year 1587 to make it of sufficient importance that one printer should be licensed by the Stationers' Company for their production. At an early hour in the afternoon the watermen are actively landing their passengers at the Blackfriars Stairs; and there are hasty steps along the narrow thoroughfaies to the south of Lud Gate. The pit of the Blackfriars is soon filled. The

people for the most part wait for the performance in tolerable quiet, but now and then a disturbance takes place. If we may judge from sober documents and allusive satires, London was never so full of cheats and bullies as about

this period. There is a curious passage in Henry Chettle's Kind-Harte's Dream," printed in 1593, in which tract the author, "sitting alone not long since, not far from Finsbury, in a taphouse of antiquity, attending the coming of such companions as might wash care away with carousing," falls asleep, and has a vision of five personages, amongst whom is Tarleton, the famous clown In the discourse which Tarleton makes is this passage: And let Tarleton entreat the young people of the city, either to abstain altogether from plays, or at their coming thither to use themselves after a more quiet order. In a place so civil as this city is esteemed, it is more than barbarously rude to see the shameful disorder and routs that sometimes in such public meetings are used. The beginners are neither gentlemen nor citizens, nor any of both their servants, but some lewd mates that long for innovation; and when they see advantage that either servingmen or apprentices are most in number they will be of either side. Though indeed they are of no side, but men beside all honesty, willing to make booty of cloaks, hats, purses, or whatever they can lay hold on in a hurley-burley. These are the common causers of discord in public places. If otherwise it happen, as it seldom doth, that any quarrel be between man and man, it is far from manhood to make so public a place their field to fight in: no men will do it but cowards that would fain be parted, or have hope to have many partakers." Amongst the quiet audience the sellers of nuts and pippins are gliding. Ever and anon a cork bounces out of a bottle of ale. Tobacco was not as yet. While the audience are impatiently waiting for the three soundings of trumpet that precede the prologue, a noise of many voices is heard behind the curtain which separates them from the stage. The noise is not of the actors; but of the crowd of spectators who have entered by the tiring-room door, and are struggling for places, or in eager groups communicating their expectations of the performance, and their opinions of the author. Amongst this crowd would be the dramatic writers of the time, who in all probability then, as without doubt at a subsequent period, had a free admission to the theatres generally, the stage being their prescriptive place.† We may venture to sketch the group of compeers that would be collected on this occasion, to witness the new production of one of Burbage's men, who, if we are not greatly mistaken, was not even then wholly unknown to fame as a dramatic writer.

Robert Greene has been described by his friend Henry Chettle as “a man of indifferent years, of face amiable, of body well-proportioned, his attire after the habit of a scholarlike gentleman, only his hair somewhat long." At the period of which we are now writing Greene was probably under thirty years of age, for he took his degree of Bachelor of Arts at Cambridge in 1578. The "somewhat long hair" is scarcely incompatible with the "attire after the habit

* This indicates a state of quarrel between serving-men and apprentices.

+ See Ben Jonson's Induction to Cynthia's Revels.

Kind Horte's Dream.

of a scholar." Chettle's description of the outward appearance of the man would scarcely lead us to imagine, what he has himself told us, that "his company were lightly the lewdest persons in the land." Greene took his degree of Master of Arts in 1583. In one of his posthumous tracts: The Repentance of Robert Greene,' which Mr. Dyce, the editor of his works, holds to be genuine, he says, "I left the University and away to London, where (after I had continued some short time, and driven myself out of credit with sundry of my friends) I became an author of plays, and a penner of love pamphlets, so that I soon grew famous in that quality, that who for that trade grown so ordinary about London as Robin Greene? Young yet in years, though old in wickedness, I began to resolve that there was nothing bad that was profitable: whereupon I grew so rooted in all mischief, that I had as great a delight in wickedness as sundry hath in godliness; and as much felicity I took in villainy as others had in honesty." The whole story of Greene's life renders it too probable that Gabriel Harvey's spiteful caricature of him had much of that real resemblance which renders a caricature most effective: "I was altogether unacquainted with the man, and never once saluted him by name: but who in London hath not heard of his dissolute and licentious living; his fond disguising of a Master of Art with ruffianly hair, unseemly apparel, and more unseemly company; his vainglorious and Thrasonical braving; his fripperly extemporizing and Tarletonizing; his apish counterfeiting of every ridiculous and absurd toy; his fine cozening of jugglers, and finer juggling with cozeners; his villainous cogging and foisting; his monstrous swearing and horrible forswearing; his impious profaning of sacred texts; his other scandalous and blasphemous raving; his riotous and outrageous surfeiting; his continual shifting of lodgings; his plausible mustering and banqueting of roysterly acquaintance at his first coming; his beggarly departing in every hostess's debt; his infamous resorting to the Bankside, Shoreditch, Southwark, and other filthy haunts; his obscure lurking in basest corners; his pawning of his sword, cloak, and what not, when money came short; his impudent pamphleting, fantastical interluding, and desperate libelling, when other cozening shifts failed?"* This is the bitterness of revenge, not softened even by the penalty which the wretched man had paid for his offence, dying prematurely in misery and solitariness, and writing from his lodging at a poor shoemaker's these last touching lines to the wife whom he had abandoned: "Doll, I charge thee by the love of our youth, and by my soul's rest, that thou wilt see this man paid for if he and his wife had not succoured me, I had died in the streets." This catastrophe happened some four years after the time of which we are writing. Robert Greene is now surrounded by a group who are listening with delight to his eloquence and wit. Sometimes he extemporizes in a vein of lofty imagery; then he throws around him his sarcasms and invectives, heedless where they fall; and suddenly he breaks off into a licentious anecdote, which makes the better-minded, who had gathered round him to wonder at his facility, turn aside with pity or contempt. He is indifferent, so that his passionate love of Four Letters, &c., especially touching Robert Greene 1592.

display can be gratified; and, as he tells us, provided he continued to be "be loved of the more vainer sort of people." As a writer he is one amongst the most popular of his day. His little romances of some fifty pages each were the delight of readers for amusement for half a century. They were the companions of the courtly and the humble, eagerly perused by the scholar of the University and the apprentice of the City. They reached the extreme range of popularity. In Anthony Wood's time they were "mostly sold on balladmonger's stalls;" and Sir Thomas Overbury describes his Chambermaid as reading "Greene's works over and over." Some of these tales are full of genius, ill-regulated no doubt, but so pregnant with invention, that Skakspere in the height of his fame did not disdain to avail himself of the stories of his early contemporary.* The dramatic works of Greene were probably much more numerous than the few which have come down to us; and the personal character of the man is not unaptly represented in these productions. They exhibit great pomp and force of language; passages which degenerate into pure bombast from their ambitious attempts to display the power of words; slight discrimination of character; incoherence of incident; and an entire absence of that judgment which results in harmony and proportion. His extravagant pomp of language was the characteristic of all the writers of the early stage except Shakspere; and equally so were those attempts to be humorous which sank into the lowest buffoonery. In the lyrical pieces which are scattered up and down Greene's novels, there is occasionally a quiet beauty which exhibits the real depths of the man's genius. Amidst all his imperfections of character, that genius is fully acknowledged by the best of his contemporaries.

By the side of Greene stands Thomas Lodge, his senior in age, and greatly his superior in conduct. He has been a graduate of Oxford; next a player, though probably for a short time; and is now a member of Lincoln's Inn. He is probably hovering in the choice of a profession between physic and the law; for a successful physician of the name of Thomas Lodge is held to be identical with Lodge the poet. He is the author of a tragedy, The Wounds of Civil War: lively set forth in the true Tragedies of Marius and Sylla.' He had become a writer for the stage before the real power of dramatic blank verse had been adequately conceived. His lines possess not the slightest approach to flexibility; they invariably consist of ten syllables, with a pause at the end of every line" each alley like its brother;" the occasional use of the triplet is the only variety. Lodge's tragedy has the appearance of a most correct and laboured performance; and the result is that of insufferable tediousness. With Greene he is an intimate. In conjunction with him he wrote, probably about this time, 'A Looking Glass for London,' one of the most extraordinary productions of that period of the stage, the character of which is evidently derived not from any desire of the writers to accommodate themselves to the taste of an unrefined audience, but from an utter deficiency of that common sense which could alone recommend their learning and their satire to the popular apprehension. For pedantry and absurdity The Looking-Glass for London'

See Introductory Notice to A Winter's Tale.