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On the History of Theatres in London, from their First Opening in 1576 to their Closing in 1642

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

Extract

In the time before the building of theatres the men's companies used to act in inn-yards on temporary stages; but the boys' companies seem to have had more permanent arrangements. The Paul's boys, for instance, acted in a singing room of their own till they were inhibited in 1589, and again from 1599 to 1606: the children of the Chapel also, in my opinion, acted in the Blackfriars building many years before it was rebuilt as a private theatre in 1596. But it is not with these temporary arrangements that this paper is concerned.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1882

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References

page 123 note * An old play of Day's was purchased by Henslowe, 30 July, 1598, and one of Rankine's, 3 October, 1598.

N.B.—In the dates in this table, modern notation is used: thus February, 1598–9, is written February, 1599.

page 124 note * Cf. Taylor's Penniless Pilgrimage (near the end), and Stationers' Registers, 1619.

page 126 note * This case of The Malcontent is worth special notice. It was acted first at Blackfriars, by the Chapel children, and afterwards appropriated and acted at the Globe, “with Webster's additions,” by the King's company. In the induction, Sly says, when the tireman tells him he cannot sit on the stage, “Why, we may sit on the stage at the private house” (i.e., at Blackfriars, the only private house then existing); and adds afterwards, “I am one that hath seen this play often;” and again alluding to the former performances he says, “This play hath beaten all your gallants out of the feathers; Blackfriars hath almost spoiled Blackfriars for feathers.” And again Condell says, “Why not Malevole in folio with us as Jeronimo in decimo-sexto with them? They taught us a name for our play; we call it one for another.” Decimo-sexto shows that it had been acted by a children's company; yet Mr. Collier and his followers will have it that the Admiral's company of men is intended. The mistake has arisen from the fact that when Jonson, in September, 1601, left the Chapel children and returned to the Admiral's, he took with him the play of Jeronimo (the Spanish tragedy), for which he afterward wrote additions. There is no doubt he had acted Jeronimo with the Chapel children, and that he wrote additions for it for Henslowe, in September, 1601, and June, 1602; but these additions are clearly not extant: the additions in the extant play are by quite a different hand. It is not unlikely that Jonson himself is alluded to in the following speeches.

Sinklo.—I durst lay four of mine ears the play is not so well acted as it hath been.

Condell.—Oh no, sir; nothing ad Parmenonis Suem.

He would most likely have taken the chief part in The Malcontent with the Chapel children, as he did in Jeronimo. Compare the allusion to garlic further on with what Dekker says of Jonson's garlic comedies in Satiro-mastix, Sc. 2, and ncte the allusions to Hector and Achilles, i.e., to Troilus and Cressida by Shakespeare. In 1604, when the King's men acted The Malcontent, Jonson, who had written Sejanus for them, in 1603 was satirizing their plays, Hamlet, &c., in Eastward Ho, in conjunction with Chapman and Marston. It was therefore a good joke for the King's men to retaliate by acting a play of Marston's in which Jonson had probably taken a chief part. In ary case there is not a particle of evidence that the Admiral's men ever had any right to it, or that the King's men acted i t at Blackfriars.

page 131 note * In 1614 L. Elizabeth's acted at the Hopes.