'Public' and 'Private' Playhouses in Renaissance England: The Politics of Publication

The Politics of Publication

Eoin Price

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781137494924
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Theatre History & Criticism

At the start of the seventeenth century a distinction emerged between 'public', outdoor, amphitheatre playhouses and 'private', indoor, hall venues. This book is the first sustained attempt to ask: why? Theatre historians have long acknowledged these terms, but have failed to attest to their variety and complexity. Assessing a range of evidence, from the start of the Elizabethan period to the beginning of the Restoration, the book overturns received scholarly wisdom to reach new insights into the politics of theatre culture and playbook publication. Standard accounts of the 'public' and 'private' theatres have either ignored the terms, or offered insubstantial explanations for their use. This book opens up the rich range of meanings made available by these vitally important terms and offers a fresh perspective on the way dramatists, theatre owners, booksellers, and legislators, conceived the playhouses of Renaissance London.

1

‘Public’, ‘Private’ and ‘Common’ Stages, 1559–1600

Abstract: Chapter 1 debunks one of the standard scholarly assumptions about the indoor playhouses: that they were described as ‘private’ in the sixteenth century. It shows that although ‘private’ might be used to refer to domestic performances and academic drama, it was not used in relation to the first set of Elizabethan indoor theatres. Instead, the chapter advances a more complex argument which accounts for the varying ways in which ‘public’ and ‘common’ were applied to sixteenth-century commercial playhouses. In doing so, it contextualises the early seventeenth-century emergence of the term ‘private’ in the discourse of commercial theatre. For the second set of indoor companies, the term appeared an attractive way of differentiating themselves from the ‘public’ playhouses.

Keywords: academic drama; book history; Elizabethan drama; private; public; theatre history

Price, Eoin. ‘Public’ and ‘Private’ Playhouses in Renaissance England: The Politics of Publication. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. DOI: 10.1057/9781137494924.0005.

On 16 May 1559, the recently crowned Queen Elizabeth issued a royal proclamation ‘Prohibiting Unlicensed Interludes and Plays, Especially on Religion or Policy’. It declared that ‘The Queen’s majesty straightly forbid[s] all manner [of] interludes to be played either openly or privately’, unless the performance was licensed by the appropriate authorities (Hughes and Larkin 2: 115). Almost ten years later to the day, the City of London produced a precept which called upon ‘Innkeepers, table-keepers, taverners, hall-keepers, or brewers’ to resist staging plays ‘either openly or privately’ until the last day of September. The precept elaborated that the subjects should not allow performances ‘within his or their mansion house, yard, court, garden, orchard, or other place or places whatsoever’ within the City or in its liberties and suburbs (Chambers, ES 4: 267). This order was amended in the Act of Common Council of London, issued on 6 December 1574. The Act banned ‘public shows’ within the liberties of the City and affirmed that no performances should take place without the prior perusal of the Lord Mayor and the Court of Aldermen. It made an exception, however, for ‘plays, interludes, comedies, tragedies or shows ... played or showed in the private house, dwelling, or lodging of any nobleman, citizen, or gentleman’ provided that there was no money collected from the auditors, and reserving the right of the Lord Mayor and Alderman to define what constituted a ‘private place’ for performance.¹

What this demonstrates is that from the earliest stages of Elizabeth’s reign, national and local authorities acknowledged ‘open’ and ‘private’ forms of playing and attempted to control both. This sort of distinction existed earlier, but was not articulated so clearly or frequently. On 6 August 1549 Edward VI issued a proclamation ‘Prohibiting Plays and Interludes’ which forbade ‘any kind of interlude, play, dialogue, or other matter set forth in form of play, in any place, public or private within this realm’, although it did not elaborate on what it meant by ‘public’ and ‘private’ (Hughes and Larkin 1: 478–479). Mary’s 18 August 1553 proclamation ‘Offering Freedom of Conscience; Prohibiting Religious Controversy, Unlicensed Plays, and Printing’ banned unauthorised preaching in ‘other places both public and private’, but did not specifically mention playing in the same framework (Hughes and Larkin 2: 6). An earlier proclamation, from the Henrician period, ‘Limiting Performance of Interludes and Plays’ noted that plays performed in ‘the houses of noblemen or of the Lord Mayor, Sheriffs, or Aldermen ... gentlemen, or of the substantial and said commoners or head parishioners of the same city’ were permissible, but it did not call such performances ‘private’ (Hughes and Larkin 1: 342).² These kinds of performance came to be called ‘private’ regularly in the Elizabethan period and were often contrasted with ‘open’ or ‘public shows’ but there are no records referring to plays performed on the London commercial stage as ‘private’ until the start of the seventeenth century. This chapter, then, contests the widespread assumption that sixteenth-century commercial playhouses were described as ‘private’. Instead, it advances a more complex argument which takes into account the varying ways in which ‘public’ and ‘common’ were applied to commercial theatres. In doing so, it contextualises the first recorded references to ‘private’ commercial performance and provides a fresh perspective on the emergence of that important term.

The title pages of early Elizabethan plays often allude to indoor domestic performance. It was relatively common at this time for title pages to provide playing instructions, presumably to help the reader should they wish to perform the play. The title page of Thomas Preston’s Cambyses (1569), printed by John Allde, includes a chart which suggests the play may be performed by eight, William Wager’s Enough Is as Good as a Feast (1570), also printed by Allde, indicates ‘Seven may easily play this interlude’, while New Custom’s (1573) title page, printed by William How for Abraham Veale, suggests only ‘four’ are needed to play it successfully.³ These plays, and others like them, implicitly encourage ‘private’ performance, but there is one title page which made an explicit statement. Nathaniel Woodes’ The Conflict of Conscience, printed in 1581 by Richard Bradock, contains a title page which divides ‘The Actors names ... into six parts, most convenient for such as be disposed, either to show this comedy in private houses, or otherwise’. The ‘private houses’ are evidently the sort of domestic environment that the 1574 Act of Common Council declared permissible. Straznicky has drawn attention to such spaces as the site of private play readings, but there is no evidence that this particular play was ever performed and it was not a commercial play, so there is no suggestion that ‘private house’ might mean a hall playhouse, as it could do in the seventeenth century.⁴

Yet although ‘private’ was not used in a commercial performance context in the sixteenth century, it could refer to other forms of non-commercial drama, beyond the household. The only other sixteenth-century playbook title page to use the word ‘private’ offers another possible avenue of interpretation. Richard Edwards’ Damon and Pithias (1571) printed, according to the title page, by Richard Jones, announces that the play was performed before the Queen by the Children of the Chapel and that the prologue contained within it is a new addition ‘somewhat altered for the proper use of them that hereafter shall have occasion to play it, either in private, or open audience’. ‘Private’ here refers not to a past performance but to a potential, future performance. The publication predates the indoor commercial theatre by four years so it cannot refer to the Blackfriars or Paul’s playhouses, although it is not inconceivable to think that the Chapel Royal Boys, then under the stewardship of William Hunnis, might have sought a regular playing space at this time. The play was published again in 1582, when indoor commercial theatres were indeed established, and although there are minor title page alterations the text seems simply to be following the earlier edition. It is far more likely that the title page refers to another form of performance such as at one of the universities: indeed, the play had been performed at Merton College, Oxford on 21 January 1568 (Elliott 2: 848). University plays might be said to be performed ‘privately in the master’s lodging, or publicly in the college hall’ (Elliott 2: 608).

The Records of English Drama (REED) volume for Oxford does not include any references to ‘private’ performances prior to the publication of Damon and Pithias, but the Cambridge volume does offer some examples. Statutes from Trinity College Cambridge, dated 1559–1560, demonstrate how ‘nine domestic readers’ were made responsible for staging plays ‘in the hall privately or publicly’ (Nelson 2: 1113).⁵ Later, in 1573, statutes at Gonville and Caius College forbade attendance of performances outside of the college but permitted plays performed ‘privately’ within the college (Nelson 1: 267).⁶ The terms continued to be used in the seventeenth century at both universities. The title pages of academic plays sometimes affirm this distinction: so for example, Caesar and Pompey or Caesar’s Revenge (1607) claims to have been ‘Privately acted by the students of Trinity College in Oxford’ and Thomas Randolph’s Trinity College Cambridge entertainments Aristippus and The Conceited Pedlar were printed together in a 1630 collection with the title page declaration: ‘Presented in a private show’.⁷ Indeed, academic play title pages also frequently declare public performances: examples include the second part of The Return from Parnassus (1606) which was ‘Publicly acted by the students in Saint John’s College in Cambridge’ and Jasper Fisher’s Fuimus Troes (1633) which was said to have been ‘Publicly represented by the gentlemen students of Magdalen College in Oxford’. The title page of Damon and Pithias might be referring to this tradition within the universities, to a court performance, or it could be referring to the sort of performance evoked by The Conflict of Conscience, but it does not seem to refer to a commercial theatre venue. The play’s editor, Ros King, notes that the play was also performed twice at Hampton Court over the Christmas of 1564–1565 and later, perhaps, at Lincoln’s Inn, before its documented performance at Merton College, but she also shows that the play was known to the fellows of Edwards’ alma mater, Corpus Christi College, Oxford. She concludes by gesturing towards the range of potential non-commercial playhouse venues: ‘[t]here is no way of knowing how many other schools, colleges or households took up the invitation of the printed title page to perform it for “private audience”’(King 92).

There is also an intriguing reference to ‘private’ theatrical business in Henslowe’s diary. In March 1598 Henslowe recorded a payment ‘for carrying and bringing of the stuff back again when they played [as] in Fleet Street private and then our stuff was lost’ (Foakes, Henslowe 88). Paul Menzer, using this as evidence that the Admiral’s Men sometimes performed in the City of London, suggests that the event in question might be a private performance as permitted by the Act of Common Council (‘Tragedians’ 177). It could, however, refer to a rehearsal: the entry immediately preceding it records how Henslowe lent five shillings ‘unto the company for to spend at the reading of that book at the Sun in New Fish Street’ (Foakes, Henslowe 86). An earlier entry, dated 8 January 1598, shows that Henslowe lent 30 shillings ‘unto the company when they first played Dido [a lost play, rather than Marlowe’s Dido Queen of Carthage] at night’, and this, given the timing of the play, and the fact that it is listed as the ‘first’ performance, may also refer to a rehearsal (Foakes, Henslowe 86). Indeed there were various kinds of rehearsal that might be required: plays had to be vetted by the Master of the Revels in order to be performed commercially, but they would also need to be rehearsed if they were to be played at court. Records show that in November 1574, the Master of the Revels, Thomas Blagrave, authorised payment relating to the ‘perusing and reforming’ of a play by Richard Farrant (Feuillerat 238). Records also show that, in 1579/80, Edmund Tilney, his successor, sanctioned travel costs for ‘the examining and rehearsing of divers plays’ (Feuillerat 326). Equally a playwright would have to have his play read in a rehearsal prior to the play receiving commission from the company, and of course there was also rehearsal as it is more usually understood: the company rehearsing their parts to learn them by heart, a process described as ‘private’ by Tiffany Stern and Simon Palfrey (4).⁸ It is possible then that Henslowe here referred to a form of rehearsal and it is true that such forms were described as ‘private’. In 1609 the King’s Men were rewarded for their ‘private practise’ in the time of infection, and another document from the same period notes that since ‘public playing within the City’ was banned due to plague, the King’s Men ‘practised privately for his Majesty’s service’.⁹

So ‘private’ was used in a theatrical context in the sixteenth century and could symbolise a variety of different performances or events. However, there is no evidence that the term was used in relation to the indoor theatres at this point. There are numerous references in legal proceedings to both St Paul’s and Blackfriars as being a ‘house’, but there are none that describe either as a ‘private house’. The St Paul’s venue, ostensibly in the almonry house, was regularly referred to as a ‘house’: Sebastian Westcott bequeathed the ‘use of the almonry house of the said Cathedral Church of St Paul where I now dwell’ (Erler 153). On 30 November 1580 Richard Farrant left ‘the lease of [his] house in the Blackfriars in London’ to his wife Anne Farrant (Wickham, Berry and Ingram 393); Anne Farrant sublet the ‘house in Blackfriars’ to William Hunnis and John Newman around 19 September 1581 (Wickham, Berry and Ingram 394), and William More, explaining why he had seized the playhouse property, argued that Farrant ‘pretended ... to use the house only for the teaching of the Children of the Chapel but made it a continual house for plays, to the offense of the precinct’ (Wickham, Berry and Ingram 402). The last quotation is particularly interesting in that its language evokes arguments used against the outdoor theatres: namely that they cause offence and that they stage frequent performances. More was biased: he had a vested interest in reclaiming the property and criticising plays enabled him to do this, ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction
• 1  Public, Private and Common Stages, 15591600
• 2  The Emergence of the Private Theatres, 16001625
• 3  Private and Public Indoor Theatres, 16251640
• Epilogue: Privacy and Drama, 16401660
• Works Cited
• Index