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Strolling Players and Provincial Drama After Shakspere

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Alwin Thaler
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Extract

Elsewhere I have written of the actors who travelled “softly on the hoof” through the length and breadth of Shakspere's England, and I propose here to deal with their successors of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They make part—perhaps a more important part than is generally understood—of the history of the drama and theatre in a period that is full of life and interest even though the greater glory had departed. To the student of Elizabethan times the ways and means of these “weather-beaten weary travellers” are significant because the strollers were, and are, the most conservative of all players. They continued the ancient and honorable traditions of the Elizabethans long after the patent theatres, the new scenes out of France, the new comedy of manners, and, finally, the new sentimentalism, had crowded the very memory of the days of the Globe and the Blackfriars and stamped the customs and devices of those great times as subjects for mockery. But the later strollers are worthy of study in and for themselves, or at least in the light of their practical contribution to the stage history of their time. To be sure, their predecessors at Stratford-on-Avon who gave Shakspere his first glimpse of the puppets dallying, came at a more opportune moment; but those who followed made the most of their opportunities. Bright-plumed “birds of passage” were they, and wheresoever they passed most men were glad of their coming. They left long trails of debt behind them, and played more than one rather scurvy trick upon their hosts, but they brought the old plays and the new away from the cramped quarters of London's theatrical monopoly into the furthest corner of the provinces. They kept England merry England still, besides crossing the ocean and establishing the theatre in the colonies—including America.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 37 , Issue 2 , June 1922 , pp. 243 - 280
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1922

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References

1 Cf. Modern Philology, XVII, pp. 121, ff.

2 See below, n. 92.

3 Illustrative documents and further discussion of this subject appear in the writer's recent book on the theatres from Shakspere to Sheridan.

4 See below, n. 123.

5 See below, n. 129, and cf. O. S. Coad, Journ. of Engl. and Germ. Philol., XIX, pp. 201, ff.

6 Pr. 1638; Bullen's Nabbes, I, pp. 8-9.

7 Cf. Hazlitt's Dodsley, XV, p. 430.

8 Life and Times of Anthony Wood, ed. A. Clark, I, p. 405.

9 See Cooke's Memoirs of Samuel Foote, II, pp. 137-38; cf. F. C. Brown, Elkanah Settle, p. 9.

10 Life of Jo Hayns, London, 1701, p. 4: Doran, Their Majesties' Servants, II, pp. 185-86.

11 Cf. John O'Keeffe's Beggar on Horseback (1785), Act I: Scout (to Horace)—Sir, I guessed what would come of your last scamper from Oxford. Your uncle has heard of all our frolics.

Horace—The Devil!

Scout—All out, Sir,— your excursion to Abingdon and acting Captain Plume in the barn… .

12 Chetwood, General History of the Stage, pp. 87-90, 140.

13 Holcroft's Memoirs, I, pp. 246-258; Waldron's Miscellany, London, 1802, p. 47; Cooke, op. cit.; Doran, op. cit., II, 382.

14 Cf. Genest, X, p. 307; Watts, Theatrical Bristol, pp. 65, 83; Cibber's Apology, ed. Lowe, II, p. 318; Doran, II, pp. 185, 242, 381, etc.

15 See notes 1, 56, 113, and text.

16 See n. 1.

17 See n. 1. Professor F. S. Boas (Fortn. Rev., August, 1913, and May 1920) holds that the plays were given in the towns but not within the universities. Mr. W. J. Lawrence (Fortn. Rev., August, 1919) takes the contrary view.

18 Elizabethan Playhouse, II, p. 192; cf. Anthony Wood, II, p. 165.

19 II, p. 195.

20 See n. 3.

21 London Public Record Office, L. C. 7/1, f. 9; (cf. n. 3).

22 Apology, II, p. 134, n.

23 Cf. the writer's article on “The Players at Court,” Journ. of Engl. and Germ. Philol., January, 1920.

24 Downes, Roscius Anglicanus, ed. Knight, p. 29.

25 Lawrence, I, p. 151.

26 Cf. Mémoires du Comte de Grammont, 1713 (ed. 1792, p. 259).

27 The Gloucester Journal, June 18, 1728.

28 Penley, The Bath Stage, pp. 23-26.

29 This and the material immediately following is based upon Dibdin's Annals of the Edinburgh Stage, pp. 26, ff.; cf. also Doran, op. cit., I, 412.

30 Or rather, two joint Masters, Edward and James Fountanes.

31 Hayns's “Lampoon on the Greenwich Strowlers,”—Covent Garden Drollery, Malone Collection, Bodley.

32 Others, from Heraclitus Ridens, August 24-25, 1703, etc., are cited in Smith's MS. Collection towards an History of the English Stage (British Museum).

33 But such towns as Birmingham and Bristol were also on the London actors' visiting list. (See Shakespeareana, 10 ser. XI, 30, etc.)

34 Or, later, from Edinburgh and Dublin, when the theatre had become well established there.

35 Genest (IV, p. 616) notes that in 1761 Foote and Murphy in partnership rented Drury Lane from Garrick for the summer season “at a moderate price.” Murphy wrote several new pieces, and with Foote acting some of the best of his old parts, the partners had an eminently successful season, “each man clearing over £300.”

36 Genest, VI, p. 119.

37 Dibdin, op. cit., pp. 72, ff.

38 History of the Theatres of London and Dublin, 1761, I, p. 206.

39 The Czarina Catherine offered him 2,000 guineas for four performances Cf. Doran, op. cit., II, p. 85.

40 Op. cit., II, p. 251.

41 Bartholomew Faire, or Variety of Fancies. (Donce Collection, Bodley). Extracts printed in Henry Morley's Memoirs of Bartholomew Fair, pp. 144-147.

42 Cf. T. A. Cook, Tom Dogget, Deceased, and Morley, pp. 268, 283.

43 In The Taste of the Town, pp. 230-231.

44 2nd ed., pp. 235-36. Cf. Morley, pp. 264, 281 ff., 329.

45 Cf. T. A. Cook, op. cit., p. 13; F. C. Brown, op. cit., p. 35; Morley pp. 264, 277. The Daily Journal of September 15, 1722, states that “On Thursday their Royal Highnesses, the Prince and Princess, honored with their Presence Southwark Fair.”

46 The Taste of the Town, pp. 230-231.

47 II, p. 74.

48 Genest, II, pp. 603-604.

49 Md., III, p. 401.

50 Quoted from Fitzgerald, op. cit., II, p. 102.

51 p. 223.

52 See n. 1. Ralph was a second-rate playwright at one time associated with Fielding, and a voluminous pamphleteer.

53 Of the year 1572. (Cf. n. 1.)

54 Victor, I, p. 22; Colley Cibber, Apology, I, p. 229.

55 Holcroft, op. cit., I, pp. 228-31. Pasquin, ii, 1.

56 Doran, op. cit., I, p. 88.

57 See n. 1.

58 Op. cit., II, p. 381.

59 Cf. the writer's article on “The Elizabethan Dramatic Companies,” P.M. L.A., March, 1920.

60 Antony Aston's Brief Supplement to Cibber's Apology, II, p. 318.

61 I, e., just about as many as the Elizabethan companies carried. (See n. 1.)

62 A direct survival from Elizabethan times. (Cf. n. 59.)

63 Ed. Hazlitt, I, pp. 228-33.

64 Thomas Dibdin, Reminiscences, (1827) I, pp. 80-81.

65 I, 8.

66 Op. cit., I, p. 183.

67 Op. cit., I, 91-92.

68 Act I.

69 ii, 4.

70 Ibid.

71 I, pp. 255-58.

72 Cf. Chetwood, pp. 87-90; Memoirs of the Countess of Derby; and next note.

73 I, pp. 228-31.

74 “First call, new pantomime,” says Mist in Reynolds's Management, “and not an actor come to rehearsal” (Act IV). This piece alludes also to the fact that certain players were notoriously fond of strong drink. (For further material, cf. n. 3.)

75 When Cibber, Wilks, and others, revolted from Drury Lane in 1709, Christopher Rich, “to compleat his company bethought himself of calling in the most eminent of strollers from all parts of the kingdom.” (Cibber's Apology, II, p. 77.)

76 Cf. Thorndike, Shakespeare's Theater, p. 374.

77 Seen. 1.

78 All's Well, iv, 3, 300.

79 Memoirs of the Countess of Derby, pp. 12-13.

80 Cf. Maurice Jonas, Shakespeare and the Stage, p. 234, and Shakespereana, 10 Ser., XI, p. 30.

81 Act II.

82 Op. cit., p. 223.

83 London Daily Post, April 20, 1724.

84 See n. 1.

85 Reproduced from a clipping in Smith's Collection (B. M.)

86 Dibdin, Reminiscences, I, pp. 70, 85.

87 D-ry L-ne P-yh-se Broke Open. A Letter to Mr. Garrick, London, 1748, p. 21.

88 Management, Act I.

89 Op. cit., I, p. 108.

90 I, pp. 241-42.

91 See n. 31.

92 Malone Collection, Bodley.

93 Ed. 1858, p. 294.

94 Op. cit., I, pp. 246-51.

95 For the document see Dibdin, Annals of the Edinburgh Stage, p. 37; cf. Doran, I, 413.—Sometime after this article was completed, Mr. Watson Nicholson's interesting little volume entitled Anthony Aston, Stroller and Adventurer (1920), was published. The Aston notices quoted above (cf. notes 83 and 85) do not duplicate Nicholson's, whose chief contribution is a new and interesting document, A Sketch of the Life & of Mr. Anthony Aston, written by himself and found by Nicholson. The Sketch, however, does not mention, and Nicholson seems not to have been aware of, the details of Aston's career in Scotland, nor of his association with Ramsay, for Nicholson writes that beyond Aston's “bald statement … in the Sketch that Ireland and Scotland were included in his itinerary … we know little or nothing of the details of his life for some years following his adventure in London,” i. e., roughly, from 1717 to 1735 (Nicholson, pp. 33-34, 36).

96 Op. cit., I, p. 412.

97 The younger Colman sued the manager of the Richmond company in 1795, for appropriating O'Keeffe's Son-in-Law, but got no satisfaction at all. (O'Keeffe, Recollections, II, pp. 312-15.)

98 Cf. Neilson and Thorndike, The Facts about Shakespeare, pp. 132, ff. Scott-Saintsbury, Dryden, V, p. 112; O'Keeffe, op. cit., II, pp. 2, 305-37.

99 Downes, Roscius Anglicanus, p. 29; Dibdin, Annals, p. 27.

100 Dibdin, Annals, p. 42; cf. n. 27.

101 Dibdin, Annals, p. 53; Genest, IV, pp. 17-18.

102 Dibdin, Annals, pp. 38-41; Penley, Bath Stage, pp. 23-26; Dibdin, Reminiscences, I, p. 57.

103 Cf. n. 90.

104 Life and Times of Frederick Reynolds, I, pp. 302-05.

105 Wild Oats, or The Strolling Gentlemen (1791), Act. II.

106 Cf. n. 91.

107 A servant had set a candle and lantern near a heap of straw in the barn.—I quote from a newspaper clipping—which I have been unable to trace further—in Smith's Collection, vol. IV (B. M.).

108 See n. 1.

109 In Smith's Collection, vol. IV.

110 William Kelly, Notices of the Drama at Leicester, p. 273.

111 Reminiscences, I, p. 74.

112 Cf. notes immediately above and following.

113 Cf. Watts, Theatrical Bristol, pp. 17, ff.

114 Cf. Penley, Bath Stage, p. 31.

115 Ibid., p. 17.

116 Dibdin, Annals, pp. 37, ff.

117 Watts, pp. 65-83; London Weekly Journal, June 28, 1729.

118 Kelly, op. cit., pp. 297-98.

119 Penley, pp. 31-32; Dibdin, Annals, pp. 132, 145-48. Doran (II, p. 222) reports that the Edinburgh Theatre Royal cost £7,000.

120 Genest, V, p. 338; Watts, pp. 65-83.

121 Cf. n. 1.

122 Memoirs of the Countess of Derby, p. 12.

123 Memoirs, II, p. 72.

124 Lord Chamberlain's Books, 7/1, f. 10, London Public Record Office. (Cf. n. 3.)

125 Penley, p. 40; Genest, X, p. 481; Dibdin, Annals, p. 72.

126 Dibdin, Reminiscences, I, pp. 86, 57; Holcroft, Memoirs, I, pp. 241-42. (See n. 90, and text above.)

127 History of the Stage, pp. 87-90.

128 Grosart's Dekker, III, p. 81. (Cf. n. 1.)

129 An English company is said to have cleared £1,500 at a single benefit in Bengal in 1782, and others are reported to have earned huge sums in Jamaica. (Cf. Chetwood, op. cit., pp. 40-41; Percy Anecdotes, XVII, p. 145.)

130 Genest (VIII, p. 595) quotes from Touchstone, or The World as it Goes,—

Cropley— Blessy, he be turned Squire.

Prole— Squire! What do you mean? A bank director or a strolling player?

131 Management, Act IV.

132 See n. 93.

133 Frederick Reynolds (Life and Times, I, p. 97, reports this occurrence as of the year 1780; the audience was “mercifully dismissed.”

134 Cf. Doran, II, p. 315.

135 Ibid., II, p. 315.

136 Life of Jo Hayns, pp. 43-45.

137 Smith (Collection, vol. IV) quotes to this effect from a lampooning advertisement in Heraclitus Ridens, August 24, 1703.

138 Op. cit., p. 90.

139 See n. 1.

140 Op. cit., p. 61.

141 Holcroft, op. cit., I, pp. 228-31.