in a new building erected in Gibbon's Tennis Court near Clare-Market ; and April 8th, 1663, opened a more convenient edifice in Drury-Lane, which Theatre was first destroyed by fire 1672, and was last rebuilt in 1809. The Duke's Company performed first at the Cockpit, then at a new house in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and, in November 1671, at another new and splendid building called the Duke's Theatre in Dorset-Gardens, Fleet-Street. This was abandoned upon the opening of the grand Opera-House in the Haymarket, April 9th, 1705, but in 1720 the Little Theatre was built in the same part of London, to remedy it's inconveniences. Covent Garden Theatre was originally erected in 1733, and occupied by John Rich's company from Lincoln's Inn Fields; and it was last rebuilt in 1809 after the fire of the preceding year.

The engravings at the commencement and conclusion of this sketch will furnish some notion of the interiors of the old English Theatres. They appear to have been hung with tapestry, and lighted by cressets, lanthorns, or wax-lights about 1661, in branches or circular wooden frames but after Garrick's return from France in 1765, the present invisible side-lamps were adopted. Curtains of silk or woollen, parting in the middle, hung in the rear of the stage, through which the performers entered; and above was a balcony, or upper stage, eight or nine feet from the lower, which was frequently required in various performances, as for the Court during the play in Hamlet, or the Citizens of Angiers above the gate in King John, &c. The old stages were separated from the audience by pales or a ballustrade, which is particularly shewn in the wood-cut on page xvi, taken from the title-page to Dr. William Alabaster's Latin Tragedy of Roxana, printed in 1632. It does not appear that there were any painted scenes previously to 1605, when Inigo Jones exhibited them in three plays before James I. at Oxford but the name of the place supposed, seems to have been written on a suspended board, and during the representation of tragedies the stage was hung with black. Female parts were originally played by boys or young men, the first woman on the English Stage probably appearing at the Theatre in Vere Street, near Clare Market, as Desdemona, on Saturday, December 8th, 1660, and tradition reports her name to have been Saunderson; but Kynaston still remained celebrated for similar parts. The price of admission at the ancient principal Theatres to the pit and galleries, or scaffolds, was generally 6d., though in some inferior it was only one penny or two-pence; yet even in Shakspeare's time the best rooms or boxes were 1s., and at the Duke's Theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields, they were 2s. 6d. Plays commenced at one o'clock in the afternoon, and usually occupied about two hours; but in the time of Charles II. they did not begin till four, and lasted longer, the practice of performing two pieces together having been introduced after the Restoration.

The time cannot now be ascertained, when the profession of a Player became common and established; but Stow remarks that when Edward IV. shewed himself in state, he went to his palace at St. John's, to see "the City Actors." In the Exchequer are several entries proving that both French and English actors were attached to the Court_of_Henry VII., and licenses were granted to comedians by Henry VIII., Edward VI., and Mary; the latter of whom retained "eight players of interludes" in her household, at 66s. 8d. each yearly. In 1574, Queen Elizabeth gave authority to Thomas Burbage and four others, servants to

AND IMPROVEMENT OF THE ENGLISH STAGE.

the Earl of Leicester, to exhibit all kinds of stage-plays, during pleasure, in any part of England. In January 1583-84, soon after the puritans had made a violent attack upon the stage, twelve performers were selected from the principal Companies then existing, under the protection of various noblemen, and were sworn her Majesty's servants. There were then eight principal Companies in London, each performing twice or thrice in the week; but about the latter part of Shakspeare's life, there were five only, the chief being the performers of the Globe and Black-Friars Theatres, to whom James I. gave a license in 1603, when they received the name of "the King's Servants." The other companies were the Prince's Servants, who played at the Curtain ; the Palsgrave's Servants, at the Fortune; the Players of the Revels at the Red Bull; and the Lady Elizabeth's, or Queen of Bohemia's Servants, at the Cockpit. In this state the players continued until February 11th, 1647, when the Parliament issued an ordinance declaring them rogues and vagrants, liable to the ordinary penalties: the Theatres, also, were ordered to be destroyed, and a fine of 5s. was imposed on every person present at a play. The greater part of the performers, therefore, took up arms for the King; and though in the winter of 1648 some of them ventured to act at the Cockpit, they were soon interrupted by the soldiers, who took them into custody in the middle of a performance, and committed them to prison. By connivance or bribery of the commanding officer at Whitehall, they privately represented a few plays at a short distance from town, and occasionally entertained some of the nobility at their country-seats; especially acting at Holland-House, Kensington, private information being given to the friends of the Drama. They were sometimes also permitted to play publicly at the Red Bull, though not always without interruption, since the soldiers stripped and fined them at pleasure, seized upon their wardrobes, and reduced them to perform in suits of painted cloth. In their distress they were often obliged to publish several of those excellent manuscript pieces, which had till then remained the sole property of their respective Companies; and fifty of these dramas appeared in one year.

At the worst period of their persecution, the humorous Robert Cox devised a new dramatic entertainment, blended with rope-dancing, &c. to disguise the acting; which entirely filled the capacious Red Bull Theatre. His performance was chiefly a combination of the richest comic scenes of Marston, Shirley, Shakspeare, &c. into single pieces, called HUMOURS, or DROLLERIES, which were printed in 1662 for the use of performers at fairs. An engraving attached to this very rare and curious work, is supposed to represent the interior of the Red Bull Theatre; and a part of it is copied in the cut at the commencement of the present Introduction, as giving some notion of the features of an old English Playhouse. In 1656, Sir William Davenant made another effort for the Drama at Rutland House, where he exhibited entertainments of declamation and music, in the manner of the ancients; removing two years after to the Cockpit in Drury-Lane, where he remained until the eve of the Restoration. About the time that General Monk led the Scots' army to London, in 1659, a bookseller named Rhodes, formerly wardrobe-keeper at the Black-Friars Theatre, fitted up the Cockpit; and the other actors re-assembled at the Red Bull. After the Restoration two new patents were issued, one to Sir William Davenant, a renewal of that given him by Charles I., and the other to

333333

ESTABLISHMENT OF THE ENGLISH STAGE.

Thomas Killegrew: the former company was joined by the Red Bull actors, and was called the King's Servants; and the latter included the old performers, under the protection of the Duke of York. The subsequent alterations of these Patents, is the most intricate, and the least generally interesting, part of theatrical history; and it will therefore not be consistent with either the space or character of this Introduction to enter into any detail of them.

A brief retrospect of the Origin and Improvement of the English Stage has now been given; and the present sketch shall be concluded with a very few remarks upon the spirit and genius of the Drama at it's principal eras. The most illustrious of these was during the reign of Elizabeth, when Literature was advancing under the influence of the Reformation, and the works of the British Dramatists began to be stamped with that boldness and energy, that graceful simplicity and exquisite nature, which were so entirely their own. This is the character of the best words of the best authors"; whilst the coarse jests and gross language which frequently deform some of their finest and most serious scenes, must be attributed to the imperfection of manners, the slow advance of general civilisation, and the remains of that rude humour, which introduced it's dissolute and profane merriment into even the sacred stories of the Scripture-Mysteries. Much of the old poetical spirit remained until the Civil Wars, when the Drama was overthown in the confusion and violence which ravaged the country; and the Restoration brought over that French taste which had been so long familiar to the English exiles. The tide of foreign extravagance and obscenity, of unnatural declamation and unmeaning frivolity, was too powerful for opposition, and even Dryden's splendid talents yielded to the vicious fashion; though their lustre continually breaks forth, notwithstanding their prostitution. With more or less of the same characteristics, the English Drama was supported by Otway, Southerne, and Rowe; and afterwards by the many excellent Comic and Tragic authors of the last century. Slowly and gradually it became purified from it's dissolute and profane wit, and if at present the talents of the olden time be no longer evident, the immorality attending them has also departed.

33

LITERARY AND GRAPHICAL

Illustrations

OF

SHAKSPEARE

AND THE

BRITISH DRAMA.

THE TEMPEST:

A PLAY, BY WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.

THE learning and research so long employed upon the illustration of Shakspeare, have hitherto failed in discovering all the original materials of the present drama: the magical portion of it being said to belong to some old Italian Novel, the name of which was forgotten by those who had read it. Mr. Douce and Mr. Malone have attributed the outlines of the storm and the Enchanted Island, to Silvester Jourdan's Discovery of the Burmudas, otherwise called the Island of Divels, 1610, 4to., which also contains an account of the shipwreck of Sir George Somers; and to William Strachey's Laws, &c. of the English Colony in Virginia, 1612, 4to. The idea of Caliban has been traced to the account of a savage in Robert Eden's Historie of Travaile, 1577, 4to.; and the remainder of the plot to Robert Greene's Comical History of Alphonsus, King of Arragon, 1597, 4to., and one of George Turberville's Tragical Tales, translated from Boccaccio, and published in 1587. The scene is laid upon the sea, in a vessel, and afterwards on the Enchanted Island; and the action is supposed to occupy about four hours.

There was not any edition of this play before the First Folio of Shakspeare's Works, in 1623; but it is supposed to have been written about 1611, and is generally received as almost the very last of his pieces, though usually printed the first. It most probably appeared in the latter part of 1612, or the beginning of 1613, when it was performed before Prince Charles, the Princess Elizabeth, and the Prince Palatine. Dr. Johnson has celebrated the diversity of characters, boundless invention, profound skill in nature, and variety of scenes and incidents, exhibited in the Tempest; and Warburton calls it one of the noblest efforts of that sublime and amazing imagination peculiar to Shakspeare. On the contrary, it has been observed, that the actions of the human beings of the drama are scarcely sufficient to make human beings anxious about them: and therefore, in 1670, an alteration of the Tempest by Dryden and Sir William Davenant, was produced at the Dorset Gardens' Theatre, with the additional characters of Dorinda and Hippolyto; a woman who had never seen a man, a man who had never beheld a woman, and a female monster. In 1756, Garrick produced it as an Opera, with new songs; and, in 1777, Sheridan revived it nearly in it's original form as a play. The drama, however, was best adapted to the modern stage by the late J. P. Kemble, the finest representative of Prospero, and produced by him at Drury-Lane on October 13th, 1789; and, with additions, at Covent-Garden on December 8th, 1806.