A First Performance in Shakespeare's Time

[THE young Govaert, at his London lodgings, sits down to the composition of a letter to his countryman. Date, 1599.]

You will recall, my dear Martyn, that in a previous letter, which so barely escaped the depths of ocean, I claimed to have discovered a man. Like Diogenes, I had searched for him since my unhappy departure from Holland. You know me for a fanatic on prejudice and convention, on religious irreligion and the general inversion of nature in mankind. I shall not repeat my eulogy on William Shakespeare, to which you hardly assented. It is my present purpose, in accordance with the promise of writing you all my experiences, to describe a visit to an English theatre ; for to-day I witnessed one of my friend’s plays. It was a novel experience, and I presume it will interest you.

Leaving my lodgings at about two in the afternoon, I made my way toward Shoreditch, the northernmost playground of London. Northward I trudged through crooked Holywell High Street, with its dingy shops and dwellings. I observed but a few straggling pedestrians, as the hour was yet early for theatre - goers. Halting a little short of the Old Street Road, which strikes Holywell High Street and a toper’s tavern simultaneously, and then lurches tipsily off in another direction, I turned to the left into Holywell Lane. It is short and narrow. On the north side is the previous location of Holywell Priory, named from a sacred spring. Defiantly glaring at it from the south side, in token of the rising religious warfare against places of amusement, stands the Curtain Theatre, named from the ground it covers.¹ It was in quest of this, the second resort of its kind in England, that I had wandered forth.

It consists of a circular outside wall three stories high. On entering (as a privileged person, I entered early), I found myself still in the open air, on a dirt floor from fifty to seventy feet in diameter. This is called “ the pit.” Against the wall are arranged three galleries. The lowest is slightly elevated, and joined to the ground by steps. Over the top tier a shedlike roof projects inward from the main wall, while the floors of the upper tiers serve as roofs to the lower. These galleries are partitioned off into so-called “ boxes. ’ As I entered the door, I faced the square, rush-covered stage directly opposite, the galleries being there discontinued to make room for it. Part of it recedes under the roof and part projects into the pit, exposed on three sides and covering about a quarter of the ground. The front is removable, and rests on stilts as high as your knees. The onepenny spectators stand about it during performances. Doors at the back communicate with the actors’ dressing-room. Above is an actors’ balcony, on a line with the second gallery. Still higher, the roof over the uppermost gallery is carried further in, to protect the forward part of the platform ; and directly under this projection, supported by two oaken pillars, is a diminutive house, from which boards are suspended, from time to time, explaining whether a palace or a forest is represented as the place of action.

These London resorts are the response to an increasing public desire for amusement. The people were formerly satisfied with sitting in the galleries about an inn court, and watching the grotesque performance of a body of strolling clowns, who used a cart at one end of the yard for their stage. This explains the shape and equipment of the present theatre.

With considerable time at my disposal, I stepped out. Strolling on some distance, I reached the former site of the Curtain’s forerunner, called “ The Theatre.” It was recently removed to Bankside. In the field beyond, I divided my attention between some boisterous fellows charging the quintain and the motley throng which was gathering from all quarters toward the playhouse. The majority of the latter were low idlers, and idling dandies jingling their polished rapiers. The dandies were promenading in flaming silken hose of endless shades, with short cloaks thrown loosely over their shoulders to exhibit the expensive linings and i*eveal the fantastic slashes in their doublets. Of these fops, many cannot read, more are in hourly dread of creditors, and all are dissolute. You might have heard one on a prancing palfrey discoursing loudly to a companion about his “ friend Lord Soand-So” (probably fictitious), or expounding the superiority of R. Allen over Will Shakespeare. Some of the crowd around the entrance view the ostentatious exhibition with open-mouthed wonder, while others express their admiratiou in shouts, or disapproval in jeers.

With upturned noses, the bloods were entering to occupy their twelvepenny stools on the sides of the stage, where they can be seen to best advantage. I followed, for by this time, as the hour of three was approaching, the audience was assembling within. The boys in the field were deserting their football and quintain, and those fortunate enough to possess pennies made for the theatre. Passing the doorkeeper with a wink in lieu of a fee, I joined the groundlings.

You have already inferred that the theatre is disreputable. However, it is improving. Occasionally some honest John Tugby entered one of the twopenny boxes with his family. Under Shakespeare’s influence, the more refined are gradually becoming interested in dramatic amusements. There is that element in his plays which appeals to the intellectual while retaining the interest of the lower classes. Indeed, since last you heard from me, I fear my admiration for Shakespeare the dramatist has outstripped my admiration for Shakespeare the man. What I then called a clever accomplishment I now call a wonderful “ art.” I shall define it later. The drama scheduled for to-day was a history of the military achievements of Henry V., a sequel to Henry IV., whose story I told you. My friend has made better plays, but none which has met such unqualified success as this. To appreciate it, turn Englishman; assume that astonishing national pride that has filled England’s breast since a certain Spanish fool became the self-appointed champion of the Deity — and came to grief.

But to return to the pit. It was rapidly filling with the rabble, which crowded me forward to the stage. A cloud in the summer sky, which at first made my unsheltered neighbors uneasy, had cleared away. Vying with the din of voices and shuffling of feet in the galleries were heard the loud tongues of the dandies. Some of them, in lower tones, were plotting to disconcert the company by stalking out in the midst of the performance. This is their method of wreaking vengeance for personal slurs of playwright or actor. I failed to catch the cause of their present wrath, for, on either side of me, an apple-woman and a tobacco-vender were screeching and bellowing respectively in my already deafened ears. Finding me no buyer, they essayed to flounder, porpoise-like, through the assembled mass, calling down imprecations from sundry persons who fancied their toes had Some rights.

The unusual restlessness of the audience, which now packed the house six or seven hundred strong, at last called my attention to the fact that the appointed hour was past. Five minutes, ten, fifteen, went by, and no change in the situation. Evidently something had gone amiss, for the Burbage and Shakespeare Company are famous for punctuality. An impatient scuffling began, which developed into a steady tramp, tramp, tramp, in the galleries, shaking the building to its foundations. Twice Shakespeare’s anxious face appeared from the loft under the stage-roof. His glance was directed toward an empty box near the stage. Presently it was entered by three masked ladies, attended. Their elaborate angular head-gear and extensive ruffs, their open skirts, exposing brilliant underdresses and hung on gigantic farthingales which spread in a circular shelf from the hips, betrayed high degree. One of the visitors, who seemed to excel the others in rank, wore at her girdle a gorgeous pendant of diamonds.

Before a derisive murmur could result in a hiss, a loud striking together of two boards heralded the opening of the play. There was silence in a moment. The surrounding wall of faces in the galleries and the sea of faces in the pit turned by common impulse toward the stage. These countenances were universally heavy-featured, but wore a variety of expressions, anywhere on the graded scale between enormous grins and jaws dropped in a rapture of expectancy. A youthful chorus stepped forth, and, with a familiar smile and conversational ease which won his audience immediately, recited a few preliminary lines. Apologizing for the farce of representing two armies " within this wooden O,” he besought us to use our imaginations for lack of adequate imagery.

After he had withdrawn, the signboard was hung out denoting a part of the palace. Two solemn archbishops entered, robed in fourteenth-century style. In lavish terms they praised the regal virtues of the young Henry, marveling at his apparently sudden reform. They then began plotting to urge, with great offers of money, his expedition after the French crown. This was to divert him from a bill of the commons taxing the Church treasuries.

The dignitaries retire, and the signboard announces the presence chamber. Henry enters in state, attended by the nobility in sumptuous costumes. This is what the audience has been awaiting. “ There a’ comes ! ” " There’s our Harry ! ” are the gleeful whispers about me. Before anything can proceed, the bishops are summoned, and a debate on the French adventure is held. There are a few dissenting voices, which simply serve to offset the subtle persuasion and scriptural misinterpretation of the astute churchmen. The dispute settled, ambassadors from the Dauphin tell the monarch, in view of his claims,

“ there ’s naught in France

That can be with a nimble galliard won,” presenting him with a tun of tennis-balls in contemptuous reference to his past life. This calls out a scornful reply from Henry, making the Dauphin appear a puerile trifler, and eliciting the huzzas of the crowd.

Thus ended the first act with a flourish. After the storm of clapping had subsided, the multitude began like a flock of magpies, and soon the theatre was a confusion of sound and tobacco smoke. The masked ladies were the target of many surmises. As to the play, I discerned a tone of disappointment. “ Ah, but Harry ’s changed, man,” muttered a beetling-browed giant near me ; “ a’ cares no more for poor tavern-folk, stuck up on his throne there ! ” Yet no inclination to leave was manifest among these dissenters. The adroit introduction of the Dauphin’s insult had aroused their ire and their curiosity about the upshot. They were well rewarded in remaining, for Henry the king soon captivated them more completely than had Harry the prince.

Forget that this ruler, as a matter of history, had no better claim to the British throne than you or I; believe his still more atrocious assumption that he owned France was just : then you can perhaps view him as the London public does, without that insinuating suspicion that his religious fervor is more conceited than humble. Shakespeare represents him as the ripe product resulting from sterling character after a youth of folly. Touched by his father’s sorrows, he has assumed the responsibility of atoning for a parent’s guilt. He is hence deep and reverent, full of compassion, and by nature open and warm as the sun. His wild youth has given him a splendid personal knowledge of people. He is quick to recognize hypocrisy in the great, and greatness in the lowly. He is businesslike, yet sincere and wholehearted in love ; full of sentiment, yet not sentimental. But Henry is king. It is a king’s greatness that these qualities especially enhance, because so seldom found in a king. His pure humanness and sense of humor, the hale fellow often shining through his seriousness, echo the people’s sentiments without lowering his dignity. His sympathy with plebeian nature is accepted as the gracious condescension of a higher order of being. In the fourth act he played a joke on a private soldier, and then rewarded the honest man’s courage and loyalty with a glove of money. After that, the audience would have deemed any humiliation at the royal hands a privilege.

The other characters of interest were those introduced to amuse. They succeeded. The gloomiest of misanthropes could not resist the merriest of laughs at the hot-headed yet warm-hearted general in the last acts, with his extraordinary way of expressing pride at sharing Welsh blood with Henry: “ I am your majesty’s countryman, I care not who know it; I will confess it to all the world: I need not pe ashamed of your majesty, praised pe Got, so long as your majesty is an honest man.”

The great fat man of Henry IV. fame was reported to have died “ babbling² of green fields.” The news was a disappointment. The audience wanted more of him ; but Shakespeare never overdoes a good thing. However, Bardolph of the fiery face, with Nym and Mistress Quickly’s new husband Pistol, appeared in a street in the first scene of Act II. These apologies for men prove to be bound for the war; but Nym and Pistol quarrel with drawn swords ; Bardolph acts as peacemaker ; and as all three are unconscionable cowards, the situation provoked shrieks of laughter from these Britons, who love nothing better than a good fight. Pistol, ranting in doggerel blank verse laden with alliteration, slays his foe with such lines as these : —

— whatever that means. After Bardolph, seconded by the genuine disinclination of the wranglers, has made reconciliation, Nym says at Pistol’s concession, “Well, then, that’s the humor of ’t,” and the encounter ends. This is Nym’s most solemn and ever recurring sentiment. On Pistol’s touching farewell to his spouse he invited Nym to kiss her, but that worthy replied, “ I cannot kiss, that is the humor of it,”—tickling the spectators by his squeamishness.

“ What a pox would sir Nym say, an the hostess were a woman,” remarked a fop, who was greeted with a coarse guffaw. The boys in the female parts, unencumbered by the self-consciousness of their elders, serve so well that there would really be little need for woman, even should she ever take such a freak as to appear on the stage.

In the rest of Act II., which is a sort of second preliminary, we are introduced to both sides of the situation, — the flippant French camp and Henry’s departure from Southampton. After his really powerful rebuke of three traitors, their absolutely unfeigned gratitude at the privilege of dying is a bit of improbability which panders to the people’s furious admiration for the king. It is an infrequent flaw in my ideal; but I am only astounded at the loftiness of his work when I consider the baseness of his audience.

The remainder of the play I need not detail. You know its history. Several things which befell me and others during its progress, however, are worth relating.

On one of my sojourns in the pit, a soliloquizing boy actor attacked the trade of thieves. A fellow at my elbow was so obstreperous in his approval of the youngster’s sentiments that I thought best to put my band to my belt. I found his already there. I got not his wrist nor he my purse, for the next instant I saw a pair of heels disappearing under the stage. The scamp is but one of an enterprising guild.

At a compliment to the “ Gracious Empress,” dropped by the chorus, the chief of the masked ladies attracted notice. Her mask suddenly dropped, revealing a damsel of sixty-six, —Elizabeth of England ! The look of consternation that fell like a shadow across the flirting bloods, at sight of that wrinkled visage, at first amused me. A second thought dampened my spirits; for, as her Majesty readjusted her mask, a few tried to raise the shout, “ Long live the Queen ! ” But the attempt was abortive, partly because all were not awake to her presence, but in some measure because the nation is just beginning to show signs of coldness toward this lonely old woman. Her childish frivolity is with reason not relished. Yet she has been England’s greatest monarch.

The drama concluded with Henry’s engagement to Katherine, after the starved condition of the British host had magnified its glory at Agincourt. We were, in most cases, introduced to a part of the field where fighting was not in progress. This averted a farce, while it kept us informed. But during the verbal assault on Harfleur (the besieged in the balcony) a wooden horse, mounted by an English knight, keeled over with an unearthly racket, — probably struck by a stray word. It caused the stage to tremble like a weak-kneed actor, and the king to lose his vocal ammunition.

This was restored to him with gallant courtesy by a foe on the wall, who prompted him ; and England victoriously entered the town, marching through the stage door.

It was nearly six o’clock when, after thunders of applause, the audience finally poured out. Even the fops had been entertained and had attempted no premature exodus, although they had occasionally pelted each other with apples across the stage.

You have been wondering why I call Shakespeare’s pursuit an " art.” I claim not merely an analogy, but an identity in all but materials. An artist understands the technical necessities, as the laws of symmetry; he must have, besides, a sense of fitness, a fruitful imagination, a spontaneous intuition which may be called the spark of genius, and above all must follow nature. You and I were never interested by those flights of imagination, absurd because unnatural, over which shallow seekers for sensation rave. We agreed to call him the true artist who is always natural, yet abounds in calculated effects. If a sculptor, for instance, is to place a group of animals over a portal, he is careful to make the attitudes and arrangement appear a mere accident; yet the great essence of his art is to choose an accident in conformity with the outlines of the building, — in careless symmetry, so to speak. It would be a poor sculptor who fixed his figures haphazard, — one horse with his tail toward you, another his head ; it would be an equally poor sculptor who fixed them in exact symmetry, — the outside horses the same distance below the central one, and each with his head at the same angle in reference to the others.

Now, all these functions belong to the particular class of literature which Shakespeare professes. Nature is his keynote; but the thought, the circumstance, the character, are suited to some central conception, like the building with the sculptor. The plot of his play, for instance, possesses what you may call the technical element of symmetry : the imaginary events unfold a story in a manner calculated to attract particular attention, falling in, nevertheless, with natural experience. By seeming chance the actor drops the remark which is found, at the climax, to pertain most vitally to the revelation we are awaiting.

Everything, indeed, is studied to appear unstudied. This fact was subtly exemplified by a detail in Act I. Henry was delaying to admit the French embassy till he could settle on a course. As his last scruple against the exploit was removed by his reverend adviser, he said, with emphatic satisfaction,

instead of first formally stating his conviction to the court. Nothing could more strikingly proclaim the victory of the bishop’s arguments ; yet such was not the king’s intent. His act was so spontaneous that no one realized how carefully the author had planned it. This is the consummation of art.

Shakespeare’s humor, as broad and good-natured as Sir John Falstaff himself, is also as natural. But, contrary to shallow notions, its art is vastly more difficult than that of abstruse wit. It is most appropriate when it expresses the inappropriate, as an inadvertent remark, a rubbing of incongruous characters.

Not the least of my friend’s gifts is his fine taste in seasoning his work with this spice of fun. He told me that, before a production, he knew just when and what would be the demonstrations of his audience. This is but one phase of his preëminent quality, namely, his deep and universal knowledge of human nature, and his power to express it.

Doubtless you have observed that peasants can often better understand each other than the higher classes. They have small vocabulary, but an intuition which puts them in touch with one another. They are natural, — not buried under the paraphernalia of estranging convention nor fossilized by the scholar’s reclusion. They are apt, under strong feeling, to use figurative expressions deriving some special force from the circumstances, as Henry did, when he threatened the Dauphin with his tennisballs, to

and said,

These, with Henry’s rebuke to the traitors, are the best lines in the drama. Shakespeare resembles the peasant, but, in addition, has some of the education and all of the intelligence of the scholar. Hence his faultless interpretations of his own and others’ thoughts. He is the perfect Son of Nature. Fancy my learned acquaintance Francis Bacon in a tavern with a jolly crowd of Falstaff’s calibre ! Shakespeare would be equally at home here and in the court of the Queen.

And so, human experience and human character are for him a keyboard. He is familiar with every resource of his instrument, from the deepest notes of tragedy to the lightest tinklings and ripplings of mirth. He can produce all effects, from the seething ferment of mental distress to the crystal harmonies of faith and contentment; from the wild melodies of exhilaration to the soft, sweet cooing of love. The note springs to being in perfect touch with the thought: his words in the poetic passages roll forth with an epic grandeur all his own ; we forget the sham of the stage, disparaged through his chorus, and are borne away on the billows of his imagination, on the stream of his diction, on the wings of his genius, or what you will! Your indulgent smile will broaden at what follows : this rival of the bear-gardens— this “clever Will,” as the Queen called him after her visit to-day — is to be numbered among the immortals.

Your objection is known to me as well as if you spoke it. You believe plays are trivial and transitory amusements, while the writings of the essayist, philosopher, statesman, aim at some worthy object — as a reform — which will make their books eternal. Your distinction should be reversed. These works are the transitory things : the objects they attain simply fall in line with the progress of man, and are forgotten by future generations, which have not the same external evils to contend with ; while man’s internal nature, which alters not with the ages, is the muse of this poet. Mankind may cease to take interest in the dominion of England over Ireland, but the time will never come when it will cease to be interested in itself. The law of love and the humanness of humanity are as enduring as the world. Great is that writer whose work is twined with absolute success about these subjects, for it will live as long as they. Such a writer is William Shakespeare. Seeks he to teach a lesson ? None — other than that vague one inherent in a thing of beauty. You cannot define the teaching in a strain of music or the silent eloquence of the stars; but will you deny their exalting influence?

Well-a-day! I must cease if this is to reach to-morrow’s packet-vessel. My candlelight waxes feeble. The rattle of this rickety old table under the scribbling quill has arrested the attention of an errant mouse, who sits up in the middle of the room and eyes me suspiciously. I ’ll to bed, and yield the realm to him. Good-night!

Your exiled theorist, GOVAERT.

Herbert Wescott Fisher.