All the Plays Not Fit to Perform: Theatrical Censorship in London

By Lauren Beglin

In 1909, the Lord Chamberlain banned a play by George Bernard Shaw. The play included the following exchange about what the government should do regarding suffragettes:

BALSQUITH: But you can’t shoot them down! Women, you know!
MITCHENER: Yes you can. Strange as it may seem to you as a civilian, Balsquith, if you point a rifle at a woman and fire it, she will drop exactly as a man drops.

The play, Press Cuttings, was banned from public performance. This was due not to suggesting the government should murder protesters but that the Prime Minister character bore too close a likeness to the then-sitting Prime Minister.

And so went the censorship of London’s theatres.

Parliament’s earliest known interference with theatres dates to 1530 and was intended to curb potential mob violence. Censoring plays due to subject matter began not quite a decade and a half later in 1543. As part of the English Reformation, Parliament banned plays that involved any sort of religious indoctrination, including interludes and mystery plays. Put another way: If a performance could be viewed as pro-Catholic, best not to stage it.

Modern censorship, as it were, began on June 24, 1737, courtesy of Prime Minister Robert Walpole and his Licensing Act. Playwrights and managers were required, at least fourteen days before performance, to submit plays to the Lord Chamberlain for approval. Anyone who did not would be considered “a rogue and a vagabond” and potentially fined.

Examiners of Plays read the plays and flagged those that required the Lord Chamberlain’s attention. Examiners were not required to provide any reason for censoring a play. While some did, those who did not left playwrights guessing as to what needed to be altered for a play to reach the general public. What was allowed and what was forbidden seemed an ever-moving target. Comedies had more leeway than drama, and censorship was pre-production and limited to a play’s text.

Even these generalities had exceptions, as demonstrated by Arthur Wing Pinero’s A Wife Without a Smile. This 1904 comedy included a doll that one reporter wrote “acts as indicator of the different degrees of amorousness of persons using the couch.” Upon reading a review that referenced this dancing doll, one man wrote to the Lord Chamberlain and demanded the play be closed for being “repugnant to every sense of decency.” The gentleman in question had not seen the production, but the Lord Chamberlain had and initially allowed the play to continue. Public outrage and pressure, however, caused the Lord Chamberlain to withdraw the play’s license.

These events occurred alongside a widening divide between public performances, which required the Lord Chamberlain’s approval, and private performances, which did not. The latter were not amateur performances done in residential drawing rooms but clever legal fictions. Private theatre clubs were usually subscription based and sometimes presented at major London venues. For those in the know, these clubs were the best way to see controversial productions. Earning the Lord Chamberlain’s disapproval came to be considered a badge of honor. Press Cuttings became the Edwardian version of a cult favorite in private performances.

Other notable plays that earned the Lord Chamberlain’s disapproval included:

• Waste by Harley Granville-Barker. Originally written in 1906 about a politician’s affair with a married woman and her subsequent abortion.
• Mrs. Warren’s Profession by George Bernard Shaw. Completed in 1894 and focusing on a young woman who discovers her gilded existence is thanks to her mother being a member of the world’s oldest profession.
• Lorelei by Jacques Deval. A 1938 anti-Nazi drama never granted a license for fear of offending the German head of state.
• Phyl by Cicely Hamilton. Centers on a governess who turns to prostitution, and licensed in London in 1911 but not performed after it ran afoul of the censor in Oxford.
• Vectia by Marie Stopes. Banned due to its central theme of couple’s lack of marital relations stemming from the man’s disinterest.

Granville-Barker rewrote Waste, and the updated version premiered in the 1930s. Mrs. Warren’s Profession reached a limited audience via private performances in London before causing an uproar following its 1905 New York premiere (a story unfortunately beyond the scope of this essay).

1918 Production of Mrs Warren's Profession

Stopes recorded her thoughts on censorship in the 1926 printed edition of Vectia. That Vectia was published demonstrates one of the oddities of the censorship laws: books did not fall under the Licensing Act. Similar to private performances, books became another avenue for writers to bring their work to at least part of the public.

With what one assumes was unintended irony, in the same essay where she argued against banning her play, Stopes ended by supporting the status quo on the basis of limiting theatre’s liability. By taking this position, she sided with theatre owners and managers rather than playwrights.

Beginning in the late Victorian Era, writers and actors had chafed against being limited by one man’s tastes, morals, and convictions. The importation of plays such as Hedda Gabler had increased the demand for dramas that tackled social issues. The sometimes arbitrary system of censorship made creating such plays tricky as those who write for money are unlikely to devote time to projects unlikely to reach an audience.

Parliament convened a joint select committee to study theatrical censorship in 1909. In the course of hearings, several well-known members of the theatrical community spoke. George Bernard Shaw, Harley Granville Barker, JM Barrie, Arthur Wing Pinero, and John Galsworthy all argued in favor of artistic freedom.

Suggestions were made. A report was issued. Nothing of substance was done.

World War I ended the push to curtail the Lord Chamberlain’s powers. The issue was not taken up again until after World War II. Not until 1968 would theatres be allowed to stage whatever filth and controversy they desired.

For trivia buffs: The last censored play was Hair. Once the Theatres Act 1968 passed, the musical went onto a run of 1,997 performances, ended only by the theatre’s roof collapsing.

These days, plays sent to the Lord Chamberlain’s office before 1968 can be referenced at the British Library. Some now in the public domain are available online (see below).

Returning to the Edwardian Age, which has been the focus of my research, censorship had an unintentional side effect of aiding the movement towards realism and modernism in the twentieth-century English theatre. The forbidden fruit, after all, is that much sweeter.


Sources
Fraser, Neil. Theatre History Explained. Ramsbury, UK: Crowood, 2004.
Granville-Barker, Harley. Three Plays. New York: Mitchell Kennerley, 1909.
Ellis, Samantha. “Pinero's A Wife Without a Smile, October 1904.” The Guardian, June 11, 2003. https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2003/jun/11/theatre.samanthaellis
Hamilton, Cicely. Diana of Dobson’s: A Romantic Comedy in Four Acts. London: Century Co., 1908. Reprinted with preface and notes by Diane F. Gillespie and Doryjane Birrer. Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview, 2003.
Licensing Act 1737. 10 George 2 c. 28. Available at http://statutes.org.uk/site/the-statutes/eighteenth-century/1737-10-george-2-c-28-the-licensing-act/
Shaw, George Bernard. Mrs. Warren’s Profession. With an introduction by Leonard Conolly. Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview Press, 2005.
Shaw, George Bernard. Press Cuttings: a topical sketch compiled from the editorial and correspondence columns of the daily papers. Reprint of the 1913 London Constable edition, Project Gutenberg. http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5723
Shellard, Dominic. The Lord Chamberlain Regrets … : A History of British Theatre Censorship. London: British Library, 2004.
Stopes, Marie C. A Banned Play and a Preface on the Censorship. London: John Bale, Sons & Danielson, 1926.
Theatres Act 1968. c. 54. Available at https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1968/54

Plays Available Online
Mrs. Warren’s Profession
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101064790387&view=1up&seq=11
Press Cuttings https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc2.ark:/13960/t7hq42c8r&view=1up&seq=7
Waste
https://archive.org/details/wasteplayinfoura00gran/page/n8/mode/2up
A Wife Without a Smile: A Comedy in Disguise
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc2.ark:/13960/t2q52hv6n&view=1up&seq=7

~~~~~~~~~~

Lauren Beglin is based in Los Angeles. Her current manuscript is a comedic novel set in Edwardian London. Although unable to travel to England for research, she did visit the Library of Congress, the Folger Shakespeare Library, and the Belmont-Paul House in Washington, DC. In Los Angeles, she’s become a regular fixture at several libraries, most notably the Los Angeles Central Library and its fabulous collection of plays, including several first editions circa 1900.

The aforementioned institutions are not to blame for any errors in the preceding paragraphs.

For updates on her road to publication or to connect with her via social media, please visit: laurenbeglin.com
Twitter: @lauren_beglin
Instagram: laurenbeglin

Playing the Provinces: 18th Century Actors on the Move, Part 2 (York, Bristol & Bath)

by Margaret Porter   This is the second part of Playing the Provinces. Follow this link to Part 1, featuring the provincial theatres of Liverpool & Manchester.

 

York

 

Tate Wilkinson

This city's Theatre Royal (patented in 1759) was managed by Tate Wilkinson, who left behind verbose and entertaining memoirs of his theatrical career and the personalities he encountered. He was an actor, but as mentor he nurtured the talents of many of the era's greatest players--and never failed to take credit for it. He was proprietor not of a single theatre, but of an entire circuit that included lesser Yorkshire theatres: Leeds, Hull, Wakefield, Doncaster, and Pontefract. He had an interest in the Edinburgh theatre as well, and his company also performed in Halifax, Beverley, Sheffield, and Newcastle. His 'theatrical army' as he termed it, in the 1770s and '80s included Sarah Siddons, John Philip Kemble, Stephen Kemble, Frances Kemble, Elizabeth Kemble, Dorothy Jordan, Elizabeth Inchbald, Dicky Suett, and Mrs Baddeley. Eventually he surrendered them to the Theatres Royal in London, but occasionally they returned for special engagements.

The York circuit followed the racing calendar, performing during the race week in its various towns. Wilkinson prided himself on his ability to offer actors year-round employment, rather than only for a summer season as at other provincial theatres, e.g. Liverpool. Among the London acts he lured to York 1785 was Signior Scaglioni, who, 'with his dancing dogs from Sadlers Wells, performed seven or eight nights at York theatre, and were really followed, and brought full houses...I can with truth say they entertained me, and I laughed immoderately at almost the whole of their performances: Indeed I received double entertainment to any other spectator, for I not only was pleased with the dogs in the theatre, but had my bow for the money they occasioned into my pocket before supper.'

Kemble rejoined the York company for a week in the summer of 1791, for which he received £150, in today's currency about £8700 or $12,600. He re-visited York in 1799.
 

Bath/Bristol

 

Bath's theatre was located in Orchard Street, dating from 1750. It lacked dressing rooms for the actors until expansion in 1767, and the following year its proprietor obtained the third royal licence in existence, after Drury Lane and Covent Garden, and the very first issued to a provincial theatre. Further enlargement took place in 1774. 

Orchard Street Theatre, Bath

 
In 1783 a performer connected to Bath declared that its theatre 'boasted the Best company out of London....The Bath audience had long maintained being the most elegant and judicious in the kingdom.' Some of that audience would have been local, but Bath's reputation as a fashionable watering place, especially in winter months, ensured that many theatre attendees were the same aristocratic and wealthy patrons of London's Drury Lane and Covent Garden.

A performance in the Orchard Street Theatre

During the 18th century, Bristol's hot wells made it a popular resort, and the Jacob's Well Theatre opened in 1729. In 1766 the King Street theatre opened, and in 1778 received its royal licence. John Palmer, the Bath proprietor, negotiated a lease of the Bristol theatre in 1779, and the relationship between the two sites continued until 1817. The design of the Bristol theatre copied London's Drury Lane.

The popular Hotwells social season was in summer, which complemented Bath's winter one. Also advantageous, these two theatres were geographically close and could be yoked. In September and October the company played in Bristol for three nights, and in Bath on Saturdays, and Mondays in Bristol. According to Tate Wilkinson, 'The Bath company perform at Bristol every Monday evening, from November till the end of May.'  Palmer, instrumental in developing the Royal Mail system, devised a lengthy 'caterpillar' coach that could carry twelve persons and their luggage, and these conveyed the players back and forth. Regular members of the company received a salary and a benefit night in each location if desired.
 

Sarah Siddons as The Grecian Daughter

In autumn of 1778, after her Liverpool, Manchester, and York years, and her recovery from her humbling Drury Lane failure, Sarah Siddons was engaged at the Orchard Street Theatre. She became a sensation--attendance at Thursday night balls suffered as fashionable society was drawn instead to the theatre to see the remarkable young actress. She performed at Bath and Bristol for a further three seasons, playing over 100 characters. It was there she encountered the budding artist Thomas Lawrence. At that time he worked in pastels, and in later years he often painted her portrait, and her brother's--and caused two of her daughters much romantic strife.


Sarah's ghost is said to haunt the theatre in Bristol, where she first appeared in March of 1779.

As at other provincial theatres, London actors performed in Bath and Bristol with regularity. In the summer of 1777, many members of the Drury Lane company performed at Bath. Other celebrated visitors included Signora Anna-Selina (Nancy) Storace, known as 'Mozart's Muse'; and George Frederick Cooke. John Philip Kemble, who appeared in Bath in 1799 and 1807, gave a farewell performance in Bristol in January 1817, prior to his retirement from the stage in June of that year.

With the construction of Bath's new (and current) Theatre Royal in Beaufort Square in 1805, the Orchard Street venue was abandoned; it served as a Roman Catholic chapel and lately as a Masonic Hall and museum.

Orchard Street Theatre today

Original columns and sole remaining box

Bristol's Theatre Royal is the longest continually running theatre in Britain, and houses the Bristol Old Vic company. In 1972 the theatre incorporated the adjacent Cooper's Hall, now serving as the iconic entrance to the refurbished 18th century space.

The Bristol Old Vic

 

Conclusion

Certainly there were other provincial theatres and circuits, but here I have presented the primary ones. Benefits to a player of performing outside of London were several. First and foremost, smaller theatres provided income at times of year when Drury Lane and Covent Garden were closed. Additionally, these places were already familiar to those who began careers in the provinces, who had previously established a relationship with the local audiences.

The theatres were more compact, the spectators closer to the stage, allowing greater intimacy. In London the major theatres had expanded to truly massive proportions, accommodating grand spectacles and visual effects but inhibiting their actors. Of necessity the performing style grew broader, resulting in the loss of nuance in voice and gesture. It must have been a relief to act in smaller venues, although of course the dressing rooms and green room spaces were cramped.

Another consideration: at a distance from the metropolis there were far fewer newspapers and critics, of which London had so many. Interest in theatrical matters--on stage and off--was high in all parts of Britain. Surely when performing at the lesser theatres the players appreciated the absence of the journalists who carped at any deficiencies in production!

For these reasons, and more, former provincial players who achieved a lasting reputation in London returned frequently to the places where they gained crucial experience as neophytes.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Margaret Porter is the award-winning and bestselling author of twelve period novels, whose other publication credits include nonfiction and poetry. A Pledge of Better Times, her highly acclaimed novel of 17th century courtiers Lady Diana de Vere and Charles Beauclerk, 1st Duke of St. Albans, is her latest release, available in trade paperback and ebook. Margaret studied British history in the UK and the US. As historian, her areas of speciality are social, theatrical, and garden history of the 17th and 18th centuries, royal courts, and portraiture. A former actress, she gave up the stage and screen to devote herself to fiction writing, travel, and her rose gardens.

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Playing the Provinces: 18th Century Actors on the Move, Part 1 (Liverpool & Manchester)

by Margaret Porter
During the Georgian era, the performance season at Drury Lane and Covent Garden, London's two Theatres Royal, concluded in June. Actors and actresses therefore sought employment elsewhere, resulting in mass migration of theatrical personnel towards provincial theatres. During the summer months, England's most celebrated players augmented their income in the distant cities in which they had first honed their talents. From afar they also negotiated their terms for the next London season, commencing in September.

Liverpool

 

Ned Shuter

From the 1750s, Liverpool's Drury Lane Theatre offered summer entertainment to prosperous visitors flocking there for the bathing season. As no playbills are extant, little is known about its company or the performances. In 1756 the newspaper alerted the public to the arrival of 'Comedians from the Theatres Royal in London at the Theatre in Liverpool. During the months of June, July, and August next, will be perform'd variety of the best plays. N.B. The days of acting will be Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.' On 4th June the season opened with The Constant Couple, or a Trip to the Jubilee, followed by the farce The Virgin Unmask'd. Seats in the pit cost two shillings and the gallery one shilling. At that time there were no boxes, although they were added during a subsequent renovation, with seats offered at three shillings. For many years the theatre attracted London players, including famous comic actor Ned Shuter as well as John Palmer, Thomas King, and Miss Pope.

The fortunes of the Liverpool theatre improved in 1771 when, by Act of Parliament, a licence was granted. In the Letters Patent, the location of the Theatre Royal would be Williamson Square.

Williamson Square, Liverpool

Facade of the Theatre Royal

  

After the opening 5th June, 1772,  the summer season proceeded  with a company populated primarily by London performers. In 1775 Charles Macklin appeared as Shylock, his most famous character. Prior to his retirement from the stage the great David Garrick also trod the boards in Every Man in His Humour by Ben Jonson. The Georgian theatre repertory relied heavily on plays from prior centuries.

 

Macklin as Shylock, The Merchant of Venice

 
During late 1770s, Sarah Kemble Siddons was a mainstay of the theatre. The daughter of provincial players, she had disappointed them by becoming an actress and compounded her error by wedding an actor. She began her career in provincial theatres and eventually David Garrick of Drury Lane hired her. After her inauspicious debut and departure after a single London season, she accepted employment in Liverpool, where her brother John Philip Kemble joined her.

 

Sarah Siddons & John Philip Kemble in Macbeth

In 1782 her second attempt to establish herself in London was hugely successful. After her metropolitan triumph, on her way to a summer engagement in Dublin, she stopped to perform in Liverpool. She returned in 1785, 1789, 1797, and 1809.

The popular comedienne Mrs Jordan performed there in 1786. She delighted local audiences as Hippolyta in She Wou'd and She Wou'd Not, and in The Romp, one of her most popular roles. 

Mrs Jordan as Hippolyta

Kemble, who had risen to succeed Garrick as actor-manager at London's Drury Lane, spent the summer of 1786 in Liverpool. Three years later he became a co-lessee (with Francis Aickin) of the Theatre Royal. In his diary he records: 'This day [1st January] I agreed to take the Liverpool Theatre with Mr F. Aickin for several years. Our rent is to be 360 Pounds per ann. We are to use the Theatre for six months of the twelve and are to pay down twelve hundred pounds for the purchase of wardrobe, etc.' He was present on 15th June to open its summer season with an address, but due to his London responsibilities was an absent manager, leaving most responsibilities to Aickin. Their partnership failed, and after losing money Kemble gave it up.

Harriot Mellon

Another player of that period who achieved popularity in Liverpool was Harriot Mellon, who wrote, 'When I was a poor girl, working very hard for my thirty shillings a week, I went down to Liverpool during the holidays [from London's Drury Lane], where I was always kindly received.' Harriot later wed her devoted and elderly admirer, wealthy banker Thomas Coutts. After his death she chose the much younger, impoverished Duke of St Albans as her second husband.

By 1803 the Theatre Royal had been rebuilt and given a graceful curved facade, reopening in June of that year. Actor Charles Mathews left a rich description of the theatre and his experiences in the city:

The theatre is beautiful...the prices are now lowered, and we play to houses of £90 or £100, which is thought to be bad; the pit is usually well attended. They had little opinion of any actor who has not appeared in London...The town I like; the situation is beautiful. I have ridden seven miles on the sands; the sea on one side, the town and harbour on the other. The opposite Cheshire coast and distant Welsh mountains for altogether a most enchanting prospect. Prince William [of Gloucester] is here....He has bespoken plays three times.

The improved theatre continued to draw the most eminent players of the late Georgian and Regency periods: Edmund Kean, Charles Mayne Young, Robert Elliston, George Frederick Cooke, Master Betty ('The Young Roscius'), and Miss O'Neill.

In the waning days of his long career John Philip Kemble returned for a farewell performance as Corialanus. On 12 July, 1816, in his remarks at the conclusion of the performance, he expressed his appreciation of the Liverpool audiences, emotion overcoming him as he declared:

Ladies and gentlemen, I have tonight appeared before you for the last time, and cannot take my leave without expressing my high sense of the liberal support that I have always received from you....It was on this stage that I first adapted this play of Shakespeare's for representation, and the success which it met with in the fostering smile of your approbation encouraged me to persevere in my profession and determined me to pursue an industrious and methodical study of my art....Ladies and gentlemen, I wish you all a very good night, and every prosperity and happiness to this town.

There remains a theatre in Williamson Square in a slightly different location. The site of the 18th century one now looks like this:

 

Manchester

An early theatre located at King and Marsden Streets housed a repertory company and occasionally hosted concerts, oratorios, balls, and auctions. In the summer of 1762 it welcomed the first London actors, 'His Majesty's Servants from the Theatres Royal,' who performed three times a week from June to September, and every night during the August race meeting.

In 1764 the theatre was described by Thomas Wilks (sometimes Snagg) as 'plain and unadorned, having been newly built....the manager had a room to himself, the first male performer likewise a separate room; the useful plebians, of which I made one, a general apartment for habiting. The heroines and principal ladies had likewise an attiring room, and the underlings their cockloft....'  The following summer an actress relatively new to London's Drury Lane established herself in Manchester, Mrs Baddeley, whom Wilks admired as 'an extremely beautiful woman. She played the ladies in most comedies and operas, and I...was often allotted to be her lover before the curtain, which brought an intimacy, with many a cup of tea and private walk with her, where I have been charmed with her melodious voice...I'll venture to say she was the best and most beautiful Ophelia I ever saw.' Nearly a decade passed before London players returned to Manchester.

In 1775, Lord Lyttelton sponsored a bill for a licenced Theatre Royal in Manchester: 'to establish a Theatre in Manchester, to keep a company of comedians for His Majesty's service, and to act such Tragegies, Plays, Operas, and Entertainments only as had been or should be licenced by the Lord Chamberlain of His Majesty's Household.' The licence was granted to Joseph Younger and George Mattocks (managers of the Liverpool theatre), and subscriptions were raised to construct a brick building at the corner of York Street and Spring Gardens, with boxes, pit, and gallery. The season in Manchester was not intended to overlap the summer season in Liverpool. 

Manchester's Theatre Royal, York Street & Spring Gardens

 
The theatre opened June 5, 1775, with Othello--Younger playing the lead. Performance nights were Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The regular season commenced the following October. Sarah Siddons and her brother John Kemble spent time at Manchester in the winter of 1776, as did Elizabeth Farren and Elizabeth Inchbald. All were destined to gain greater fame--and notoriety--in London. Farren left the Drury Lane stage to marry her lover, the Earl of Derby, and was transformed from actress to countess.

Elizabeth Farren

A German resident in the 1780s left a description of the theatre and its audiences:

The gallery is here, as everywhere in England, unbearably unashamed; they throw apples, pomegranates, nut-shells on the stage, in the pit and the boxes they cry out and make a lot of noise; I know people who refuse to sit in the front seat of the boxes. With ladies they are more polite. Many years ago a flask flew from the gallery into the pit, striking a man's skull. This shrieking and din and all this bad behaviour is difficult in the intervals...during the play itself the gallery is quieter than I have heard in any other place, and the applause and laughter in the middle of speeches does not last so long that one loses the thread or misses the climax...Of battles and murders they are especially fond.

The Liverpool company sometimes performed in Manchester during the summer, bringing with them luminaries from Drury Lane and Covent Garden. Those who turned up in Manchester included George Frederick Cooke and comedian Dicky Suett. John Philip Kemble returned in 1784 after achieving success in Dublin and prior to emulating his sister's fame in London. He reappeared periodically, whenever playing at Liverpool. In May 1785 his sister Sarah Siddons, by then London's leading actress, returned, prompting a sudden rise in prices for her two performances--to five, three, and two shillings for box, pit, and gallery respectively. 

Anna Maria Crouch

The Manchester theatre was rebuilt in 1790. The next year, playwright/librettist Charles Dibdin's son joined the company for its winter season. George Frederick Cooke was present, as he was in most years, for Race Week, and stayed on. In some years there was a brief September season. Kemble returned for Race Week in the summer of 1798. By this time, the theatre was often used in summer for special events--a one-off performance by a well-known player, or singers such as Charles Incledon, Michael Kelly, and Mrs Crouch, Mr and Mrs Charles Dibdin, and Madame Mara. 

Near the turn of the century John Ducrow 'The Flemish Hercules'--a clown who performed thrilling acrobatic feats--came to town. He posted a notice in the newspaper, informing the public of his intent in to display 'those wonderful leaps from the Trampoline in particular one over Eighteen Grenadiers, with shouldered firelocks and fixed bayonets; also through a hogshead of Real Fire, and will fly over a grand Pyramid of Light.'

A banking establishment was built on the site of Manchester's Theatre Royal, a building that has since become a restaurant.

Coming next: Part 2 of this article, featuring the theatres of York, Bristol and Bath, follows on 14 June 2016 and you can read it here.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Margaret Porter is the award-winning and bestselling author of twelve period novels, whose other publication credits include nonfiction and poetry. A Pledge of Better Times, her highly acclaimed novel of 17th century courtiers Lady Diana de Vere and Charles Beauclerk, 1st Duke of St. Albans, is her latest release, available in trade paperback and ebook. Margaret studied British history in the UK and the US. As historian, her areas of speciality are social, theatrical, and garden history of the 17th and 18th centuries, royal courts, and portraiture. A former actress, she gave up the stage and screen to devote herself to fiction writing, travel, and her rose gardens.

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A Player's Walk through Elizabethan Theatre

by Dean Hamilton

What were Elizabethan theatres really like?

It seems strange, but the boisterous, bustling, familiar precincts of London that Shakespeare trod have mostly vanished from sight. The Great Fire that devastated London in 1666 swept the core of the City into ash and ruin. Almost every building or church of note that lay west of the Tower, with the exceptions of the areas around Bishopsgate and Aldgate, were laid to waste. From the Tower to the Fleet, Tudor London was mostly devastation. The London we see today was built on its bones.

To understand the London of the playing troupes, you must first seek the roots of the city, the ebb and flow of its tides, particularly the torrent of change that was engulfing it throughout the reign of the Tudors....and what London meant for players, playwrights and theatre.

Rooted in commerce & trade, fed by the river Thames, inculcated with a sense of purpose and centrality and commercial drive, London was the dominant metropolis of Britain. 400 years later Disraeli coined it well when he described the City as "that great cesspool into which all the loungers of the Empire are irresistibly drained”.

Prior to the 15th century London had not been a large or overly populous city in a thousand years. London in the Tudor era had a dense, noisome population estimated between 160,000 and 200,000 people, all crammed into a few square miles of buildings. This density of population achieved during the Tudor era opened up the opportunity for a more robust and permanent situated forms of entertainment rather than the opportunistic and transactional formats previously used. In short, an audience was now waiting.

Dominated by the Tower to the east and the impressive bulk of St. Paul's Cathedral to the west, London proper was surrounded by the London Wall, a protective fortification originally built by the Romans, pierced by seven gates: Ludgate, Newgate, Aldersgate, Cripplegate, Bishopsgate, Aldgate and Moorgate. Suburbs spilled out along major roadways and gates – Holburn, Smithfield, Shoreditch, Aldgate and, most infamously, Southwark which sprawled along the Thames at the southern end of London Bridge.

The suburbs were crucial to the development of London theatre because they were outside the jurisdiction of the London Court of Aldermen that governed the city. Plays were widely considered to be immoral, degenerate and depraved. This is partially due to their roots in the traditional Catholic “mystery cycles”, a series of religious moral motifs and pageants held in many market towns on religious holidays and feast days. These performances were decried by many ardent Protestant supporters and were banned in 1534, although they continued in many rural locations for many years after. London’s Court of Aldermen in the Elizabethan era was of a notoriously Puritan bent. The immorality and sinfulness of theatrical entertainment would continue to be a Puritan rallying cry until all the London theatres were finally closed and banned in 1642.

Plays were widely seen as being potential flashpoints for plague, crime, riots and political or religious dissent. Closures of inn yards and playing houses were frequent. It was the banning of inn yard performances in London in 1572 and the subsequent “banning” of actors in 1575 that spurred the eventual development of the first permanent theatres.

Sir John Spencer, Lord Mayor of London in 1594 described the theatres as "places of meeting for all vagrant persons and maisterles men that hang about the Citie, theeves, horsestealers, whoremoongers, coozeners, connycatching persones, practizers of treason and other such lyke."

Philip Stubbs, author of Anatomie of Abuses published in 1583, was one of the more ardent critics of playgoing:“if you will learn to condemn God and all his laws, to care neither for heaven nor hell, and to commit all kind of sin and mischief, you need to go to no other school, for all these good examples may you see panted before your eyes in interludes and plays.”

Even Anthony Munday, an actor, playwright and sometime provocateur who informed on the Catholic exile community, had little good to say about London’s theatres, describing them as having "no want of young ruffians, nor lack of harlots utterly past all shame, who press to the fore-front of the scaffolds to the end to show their impudency and to be as an object to all men's eyes".

The first permanent theatre in London was The Theatre, which opened in Shoreditch in 1576 on property from the dissolved Holywell priory. Several previous attempts at creating a permanent theatre (notably The Red Lion, which was a converted farm, located in Whitechapel) had foundered. The Theatre, built by James Burbage and John Brayne, was a polygonal timber and plaster building, with three high inward-facing galleries surrounding a yard with a stage, a design that borrowed heavily from both the general architectural design of inn yards and more established bearbaiting rings. By 1577, a second theatre had opened nearby, The Curtain, similar in design.

The Swan

By 1587, the Rose Theatre, the first of a number of newer playhouses, had sprouted up in Southwark. It was followed by the Swan and, most famously, by the Globe, which was constructed partially out of the disassembly of The Theatre when a property dispute arose and forced the shareholders to move.

Southwark was a particularly opportune locale for the playhouses. The area lay outside of London proper, yet was easily accessible to playgoers via London Bridge or a quick boat-ride across the Thames. Southwark was a notorious collection of inns, gaming houses, brothels, bear-baiting and, of course, theatre. The majority of the land fell under the ownership and ecclesiastical authority of the Bishop of Winchester, making one of London’s most powerful figures the nominal landlord for the dense, vice-ridden, pox-infested stews and brothels that lay at the southern end of London Bridge. “Wincester geese” was a nickname for the whores that plied their trade in Southwark.

The Globe's interior

At its height, London had almost a dozen playhouses and inn yards actively performing. Playgoing was a broad and common entertainment with each theatre showing an estimated twenty to thirty plays per year. For example, The Lord Admiral’s Men performed 38 plays in 1594-95. The Globe was estimated to hold almost 2,000 people per performance, so the economic scale of the theatre industry in Elizabethan London was considerable. Additional private performances for the Queen, the Court, leading nobility and wealthy merchants were also common. Elizabethan theatre was a great leveler within society, in the sense that it was popular and frequently enjoyed by a wide range of social classes and peoples.

Performances were daytime activities, running six days a week except on religious holidays or when forced to shut down due to plague. Playgoers had the option of gallery seating or to stand in the open yard with the “groundlings”. Wealthier attendees could reserve a gallery box or even a choice seat onstage. Crowds were dense, noisy and often impatient, with catcalls and shouts at the play-actors being a common motif. The theatres had a reputation for pickpockets, lewd behavior (with prostitutes sometimes working the audience) and thievery. As with today’s multiplexes, snacks were available, in the form of hawkers selling apples, nuts, beer, ale, and oranges to attendees.

Plays themselves had evolved from the moralizing, scripture-based mystery cycles into a much more robust secular content focused on historical and moral themes. Tragedies and comedies were also popular. Popular staples could be repeated and resurrected, however the majority of the plays being performed were often new. 21 out of the 38 plays The Lord Admiral’s Men performed in 1594-95 were new plays. They rarely performed the same plays in a row.

Playing companies varied in size and capabilities, depending on their patronage and connections. Patronage of the nobility was a necessity. Play-actors were generally regarded as slightly lower than vagabonds, and performers without the protections and permissions that came from patronage soon found themselves in difficulty. The death of patrons, shifting allegiances and politics often threw things askew. The Admiral’s Men eventually became Prince Henry’s Men, while the Lord Chamberlain’s Men evolved into the King’s Men with the advent of King James I.

Most troupes consisted of sharers - players with an ownership stake in either the theatre or the troupe - and hired actors, who may have had longer term roles as permanent members or on a for-hire basis. Given the frequent turnover of plays, the workload around mastering lines for actors must have been tremendous. Women were not permitted to perform in plays until 1660, so female roles were performed by male actors, often younger boys.

Likely William Shakespeare

It has been noted that the while the Renaissance in Italy was expressed in art, the Renaissance in England found its true expression and greatness in the literary explosion of the theatre. This article has provided only the briefest of overviews of the extent of Elizabethan theatre, I recommend you read on!

“As in a theatre, the eyes of men, After a well-graced actor leaves the stage, Are idly bent on him that enters next…” – William Shakespeare, Richard II

For more information I recommend the following:

• Elizabeth’s London: Everyday Life in Elizabethan London, Liza Picard. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2003
• Shakespeare: The Biography, Peter Ackroyd. Chatto & Windus, 2005
• Shakespeare’s England: Life in Elizabethan & Jacobean Times, R.E. Pritchard, Editor. Sutton Publishing, 1999
• Soul of the Age: A Biography of the Mind of William Shakespeare, Jonathan Bate. Random House, 2009
• The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century, Ian Mortimer, Touchstone Press, 2011
• Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare, Stephen Greenblatt. W.M Norton & Co. 2004

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Dean Hamilton was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He spent the first half of his childhood chasing around the prairies and western Canada before relocating to Toronto, Ontario. He has three degrees (BA, MA & MBA), reads an unhealthy amount of history, works as a marketing professional by day and prowls the imaginary alleyways of the Elizabethan era in his off-hours. Much of his winter is spent hanging around hockey arenas and shouting at referees.

He is married with a son, a dog, four cats and a turtle named Tortuga. THE JESUIT LETTER is his first novel of a planned series THE TYBURN FOLIOS.

Books: THE JESUIT LETTER
BLACK DOG (novella)
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Twitter: @Tyburn__Tree
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THE JESUIT LETTER: Ex-soldier turned play-actor Christopher Tyburn thought he had left bloodshed and violence behind him when he abandoned the war against the Spanish in Flanders, but fate has different and far bloodier plans waiting.

When Tyburn accidentally intercepts a coded latter from a hidden Jesuit priest in Warwickshire, he is entangled in a murderous and deadly conspiracy. Stalked by unknown enemies, he must race to uncover the conspiracy and hunt down the Jesuit to clear his name. . . or die a traitor's death.

BLACK DOG: London, 1574. Hangings were always a good draw. When the Earl of Worcester’s Men take advantage of the crowds drawn to a mass execution, they hoped for a strong turn-out and a fat payday. They didn’t expect to run afoul of London’s most notorious prison rooker, the Black Dog. Now with one of the troupe facing slow death in gaol or penury in the face of the Black Dog’s threats, the troupe must turn to its newest member for help. Christopher Tyburn, ex-soldier turned play-actor, must dive into cesspool of London’s back-alleys, pursuing the Black Dog’s secrets in order to turn the tables on the deadly blackmailer.

But you don’t stalk the Black Dog without consequences….