hose, and his scented beard; scornfully asking some acquaintance whose play it was, or railing at the unknown author. By this publicity, knightly gallants obtained mistresses, and Fleet Street gentlemen a wife; here the fop would talk to the stage boys, learn anecdotes of the actors, know what part they would take, and what dress they would wear; the boys or the fop's own page running for a light for his pipe. If their gestures were too fantastic, or their oaths or conversation were too loud, the rabble would hiss, and sometimes even pelt them.

The real beau never entered the theatre till the trumpets were blowing for the prologue, for when the house was only half full, the richness of his dress could not be sufficiently applauded; then, as if he was one of the proprietors, or had dropped from the hangings, he crept from behind the arras, a three-legged stool in one hand and the tester to pay the boy in the other. The real blasé man of fashion never appeared amused; the more miserable and unmoved, the more fashionable. His cue was, in the midst of the saddest scenes of Lear or Othello, to turn away, as if he had seen the thing before at Court. The aim of such fools was to talk and laugh so loud that the eyes of the whole house should be drawn upon them that the poets

might be provoked into writing an epigram that would make them talked of, or that the players might recognise and point them out in the street.

THE THEATRICAL CRITIC.

19

The fashionable's great desire was not to seem to resort to the Globe or the Rose, as if hungry for such vulgar pleasures, but only as an idle gentleman, to waste a foolish hour or so when he could do nought else. Sometimes the gallant went to hiss and condemn an enemy's play; sometimes to appear literary, and induce a poet to dedicate some sonnet to him, to procure his favour and forbearance.

If the dramatist was one who had epigrammatised our friend, or brought his red beard or thin legs on the stage, his whole action from the first entrance would be scornful and contemptuous. At entrance he would draw out his three sorts of tobacco and his light; or pulling a pack of cards from his hose, fall to Primero, tearing up a court card or two in a rage, to the astonishment of the pit, just as the prologue entered.

If the actor was sitting on the stage, the critic would then bring out his tables (pocket-book) and write sneering notes of pointless passages; or, in the midst of the play, with a screwed and discontented face, would take up his stool to be gone, drawing away a whole troop of friends, who were lying round him. If he could not get out, or his companions were unwilling to join him, the malcontent would pick up a rush and tickle the ears of those who sat before him, till they laughed louder than the tragedian could sigh and groan. He would find fault with the

music, declare the jests were stale, whistle at the songs, and curse the manager, because one of the actors wore a hat and feather just like that for which he (the fop) had but that morning given 40s.*

The critical gallant carried a note-book to collect the best jokes, to use again at the ordinary or at the court suppers. If he were needy, under this pretext of notetaking, he would perhaps turn brachygrapher (reporter), and take down the play in shorthand for the use of the pirate publishers that race detested by the actors of the day, whom Webster denounces, and from whom Shakspere materially suffered. Most gallants who affected to be literary kept commonplace books for their extracts from plays.

Of the groundlings' behaviour we know less. The 'prentices, the terror of the actors, whom they would, at small provocations, hiss and pelt, smoked, fought for bitten apples, cracked nuts, and drank bottled ale. The lower class of women sometimes smoked. There was flocking and running to get in, and noise and tumult to get out. At Shrove Tuesday and such Saturnalian seasons, there were turbulent cries for particular plays, much as there are now at the minor theatres on Boxing Night. Stubbes, the

* Marston's Scourge of Villainy; Gosson's School of Abuse, 1587.

RUSHES ON THE STAGE.

21

Puritan, speaks with horror of the laughing and shouting. "Such hissing and buzzing," says he. "Such chipping and cutting, such winks and glancing of wanton eyes, such heaving and shoving," adds another writer of the same sour, unloving sect; "such pulling and shouldering to sit by the women, such care of their garments that they be not trod on, such eyes on their laps that no chips litter on them, such pillowing of their back that they take no hurt, such masking of their ears that no cold come, such giving them pipes to pass the time, such playing the fool with cards, such tickling and toying, such smiling and winking, and such manning them home when the play is ended, that it is a right comedy to mark their behaviour."

Shakspere's stage was strewn with green rushes, just as private rooms were in the richest houses, for carpets were as yet seldom used. Sometimes it was matted over, as it was for the play of Henry VIII. the night the Globe was burnt down. The curtains of silk or worsted did not draw up as they do now, or let down as in the Roman theatres, but opened in the middle, and sliding with rings attached to an iron rod, drew back like window or bed curtains of the present day.* The boys of the theatre lent out stools at 6d. each to those gallants who wished to dazzle the

* Malone's Shakspere, vol. iii. p. 79.

groundlings who stood in the yard or pit. Some lay on the rushes, and played at cards or smoked; others drank wine or beer. The 'prentices, in the cheap 2d. gallery, cracked nuts and nibbled apples just as they do now."

*

The prologue was generally spoken by an actor who wore a long black velvet cloak, perhaps, originally intended to indicate that a tragedy was to follow, and then worn indiscriminately to usher in either comedy or tragedy; a trumpet-blown three times preceded his appearance, and a trumpet served also as a signal for the music, that was not placed, as now, in a row before the footlights, but in stations over the stage-boxes.

In the rear of the stage there was a raised platform, or balcony †, and this had also curtains which could be drawn so as to conceal the actors who were in it; here Christopher Sly would sit to see the "Taming of the Shrew," Julia receive her adventurous lover, and Henry VIII. to watch the insults heaped upon Cranmer.

There was never but one play performed in the day, and that was acted in about two hours. This, perhaps, is the chief cause of the greatness of the Elizabethan drama. Sometimes Tarleton, or Kemp, the best low comedians of the day, came in between the acts, dressed

* P. C. Collier's Dramatic Poetry, vol. iii. p. 346.

† Ibid. p. 74.