Part 13 (1/2)
To rest! To rest! The herald of the day, Bright Phosphorus commands you hence. Obey.
They quickly dance their last dance, one by one getting into the Palace.
Then the Star vanishes, the day breaks, and while the last song is sung the 'machine closes'--i.e. the Palace becomes a wall of the room and the show is over. This is the pretty song which ends the Masque:
O yet how early and before her time, The envious morning up doth climb, Though she not love her bed!
What haste the jealous sun doth make His fiery horses up to take And once more show his head!
Lest, taken with the brightness of this night, The world should wish it last and never miss his light.
49. PLAYS AND PAGEANTS.
PART IV.
Through the Religious Drama, the Pageant, the Masque, we work our way to the Play itself. The first beginnings of the modern Drama must here be pa.s.sed over: there were the rough and unformed comedies such as 'Gammer Gurton's Needle,' performed in a college hall: or the tragedy played on boards spread over a waggon in the courtyard of an inn. Let us suppose that we are past the beginnings and are in Shakespeare's time--i.e. the end of Queen Elizabeth and the whole reign of James I.
The first theatre was built in 1570. Thirty years after there were seven. The Queen had companies of children to play before her. They were the boys of the choirs of St. Paul's, Westminster, Whitehall, and Windsor. The actors called themselves the servants of some great lord.
Lord Leicester, Lord Warwick, Lord Pembroke, Lord Howard, the Earl of Ess.e.x, and others all had their company of actors--not all at the same time. The princ.i.p.al Houses were those at Southwark, and especially at Bank Side, where there were three, including the famous Globe: the Blackfriars Playhouse: the Fortune in Golden Lane, and the Curtain at Sh.o.r.editch. If you will look at the map you will observe that not one of these theatres is within the City--that at Blackfriars was in the former precinct of the Dominicans and outside the City. No theatre was allowed in the City. Thus early sprang up the prejudice against actors. Probably this was of old standing, and first belonged to the time when the minstrel and the tumbler, the musician and the dancing girl, the buffoon and the contortionist, wandered about the country free of rule and discipline, leading careless and lawless lives.
The theatre was octagonal in shape but circular within. What we call the pit was called the 'yarde.' The stage projected into the 'yarde,' about three or four feet high. The people who filled the 'yarde' were called groundlings. Round the house were three galleries, the lowest of which contained 'rooms' or private boxes: what we call the upper circle and the gallery were above. There were no seats in the pit, nor apparently in the upper circles. On either side of the stage sat or lay gentlemen, chiefly of the younger kind, who smoked pipes of tobacco and talked loudly, disturbing the performance. At the back of the stage was a kind of upper stage, supported on columns, which gave the players a tower, gallery, wall, a town, or an upper story of a house, or anything of the kind that they wanted. There was a great sale of apples, nuts, and ale before the play began and between the acts: boys hawked the newest books about the 'rooms': the people while they waited smoked pipes, played cards. Above the stage on one side was the 'music.' Three times the trumpets sounded. At the first, those who were outside hurried in to get a place: at the second, the card-players left off their games: at the third, those who bawled apples and ale and shouted the name of the new book became silent: the audience settled down: the Play began. Not much costume was wanted: that of the Elizabethan--n.o.ble--courtier--young knight--clown--fitted any and every age. There was little scenery required: blue hangings above meant day: black hangings night: the actors came out upon the advanced stage and played their parts. No doubt the illusion was as complete as we can contrive with all our scenery, mounting, and correctness of costume.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE GLOBE THEATRE.]
The parts of women were taken by boys. No women appeared on the stage until the reign of Charles II. The Play began with the Prologue, spoken by an actor dressed in a long black velvet coat bowing very humbly to the audience. After the Play was over the clowns began to tumble and to sing. In short, a farce succeeded a tragedy. The time of performance was one o'clock, and the performance lasted until five.
In the year 1610 the Lord Mayor and Aldermen being alarmed at the increasing popularity of the Play, ordered that there should be only two theatres, the Fortune in Golden Lane and the Globe at Bankside. This order, however, like so many other laws, was only pa.s.sed to satisfy a pa.s.sing scare and does not seem to have been carried into effect. It was in such a theatre as this and with such scenery that the immortal plays of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson were acted. When next you read a play of Shakespeare, remember the stage projecting into the pit; the people in the pit all standing, the gallants on the stage talking and smoking, the ladies in the boxes, the boys enjoying apples and nuts and ale and new books, and the actors playing partly on the stage advanced and partly on the stage behind.
50. THE TERROR OF THE PLAGUE.
PART I.
You have seen the City as it appeared to one who walked about its streets and watched the people. It was free, busy and prosperous, except at rare intervals, when its own internal dissensions, or the civil wars of the country, or the pretensions of the Sovereign, disturbed the peace of the City. Behind this prosperity, however, lay hid all through the middle ages, and down to two hundred years ago, four great and ever-present terrors. The first was the Terror of Leprosy: the second the Terror of Famine: the third was the Terror of Plague: the last was the Terror of Fire.
[Ill.u.s.tration: CIVIL COSTUME ABOUT 1620.
(_From a contemporary broadside._)]
[Ill.u.s.tration: COSTUME OF A LAWYER.
(_From a broadside, dated 1623._)]
As for the first two, we have seen how lazar houses were established outside every town, and how public granaries were built. Let us consider the third. The Plague broke out so often that there was hardly any time between the tenth and the seventeenth century when some living person could not remember a visitation of this awful scourge. It appeared in London first--i.e. the first mention of it occurs in history--in the year 962: again in 1094: again in 1111: then there seems to have been a respite for 250 years. In the year 1348 the Plague carried off many thousands: in 1361 it appeared again: in 1367 and in 1369. In 1407 30,000 were carried off in London alone by the Plague. In 1478 a plague raged throughout the country, which was said to have destroyed more people than the Wars of the Roses. But we must accept all mediaeval estimates of numbers as indicating no more than great mortality. With the sixteenth century began a period of a hundred and sixty years, marked with attacks of the Plague constantly recurring, and every time more fatal and more widespread. Nothing teaches the conditions of human life more plainly than the history of the Plague in London. We are placed in the world in the midst of dangers, and we have to find out for ourselves how to meet those dangers and to protect ourselves. Thus a vast number of persons were crowded together within the walls of the City. The streets were all narrow: the houses were generally of three or more stories, built out in front so as to obstruct the light and air; there were many courts, in which the houses were mere hovels: there was no drainage: refuse of all kinds lay about the streets: everything that was required for the daily life was made in the City, which added a thousand noisome smells and noxious refuse. Then the Plague came and carried off its thousands and disappeared. Then the survivors went on their usual course. Nothing was changed. Yet the Plague was a voice which spoke loudly. It said 'Clean yourselves: cease to defile the soil of the City with your decaying matter: build your houses in wider streets: do not shut out the suns.h.i.+ne--which is a splendid purifier--or light and air. Keep yourselves clean--body and raiment, and house and street.' The voice spoke, but no one heard. Then came the Plague again.
Still no one heard the voice. It came again and again. It came in 1500, in 1525, in 1543, in 1563, in 1569, in 1574, in 1592, in 1603 (when 30,575 died), in 1625 (when 35,470 died), in 1635 (when 10,400 died), and lastly, in 1665. And in all that time no one understood that voice, and the City was never cleansed. All that was done was to light bonfires in the street in order to increase the circulation of the air. After the last, and worst attack, in 1666 the City was burned, and in the purification of the flames it emerged clean, and the Plague has never since appeared. The same voice speaks to mankind still in every visitation of every new pestilence. It used to cry aloud in time of Plague: it cries aloud now in time of typhoid, diphtheria, and cholera.