Mimes of the Roman stage. The Exodiari | and Emboliariæ of the Mimes are undoubtedly the remote progenitors of the Vice and Clown of our ancient dramas.

No writer that I have met with intimates that in the time of Shakspeare it was customary to exhibit more than a single dramatic piece on one day. Had any shorter pieces of the same kind with our modern farces (beside the jigs already mentioned) been presented after the principal performance, some of them probably would have been printed; but there are none of them extant of an earlier date than the time of the Restoration. The practice, therefore, of exhibiting two dramas successively in the same afternoon, we may be assured, was not established before that period. But though our ancient audiences were not gratified by the representation of more than one drama in the same day, the entertainment in the middle of the reign of Elizabeth was diversified, and the populace diverted, by vaulting, tumbling, slight of nand, and morrice-dancing; and in the time of Shakspeare, by the extemporaneous buffoonery of the Clown, whenever he chose to solicit the attention of the audience: by singing and dancing between the acts, and either a song or the metrical jig already described at the end of the piece: a mixture not more heterogeneous than that with which we are now daily presented, a tragedy and a farce. In the dances, I believe, not only men, but boys in women's dresses, were introduced: a practice which prevailed on the Grecian stage, and in France till late in the last century.

The amusements of our ancestors, before the commencement of the play, were of various kinds. While some part of the audience entertained themselves with reading, or playing at cards, others were employed in less refined occupations; in drinking ale, or smoking tobacco; with these and nuts and apples they were furnished by male attendants, of whose clamour a satirical writer of the time of James I. loudly complains. In 1633, when Prynne published his Histriomastix, women smoked tobacco in the playhouses as well as men.

It was a common practice to carry tablebooks to the theatre, and either from curiosity, or enmity to the author, or some other motive, to write down passages of the play that was represented; and there is reason to believe that the imperfect and mutilated copies of one or two of Shakspeare's dramas, which are yet extant, were taken down by the ear or in shorthand during the exhibition.

At the end of the piece, the actors, in noblemen's houses and in taverns, where plays were frequently performed, prayed for the health and prosperity of their patrons; and in the public theatres, for the king and queen. This prayer sometimes made part of the epilogue. Hence, probably, as Mr. Steevens has observed, the addition of Vivant rex et regina, to the moderu play-bills.

Plays in the time of our author began at one o'clock in the afternoon; and the exhibition was sometimes finished in two hours. Even in 1667, they commenced at three o'clock. About thirty years afterwards (in 1696) theatrical entertainments began an hour later.

We have seen that in the infancy of our stage, Mysteries were usually acted in churches; and the practice of exhibiting religious dramas in buildings appropriated to the service of religion on the Lord's day certainly continued after the Reformation.

During the reign of Queen Elizabeth plays were exhibited in the public theatres on Sundays, as well as on other days of the week. The license granted by that queen to James Burbage in 1574, which has been already printed in a former page, shows that they were then represented on that day out of the hours of prayer.

We are told indeed by John Field, in his Declaration of God's Judgment at Paris Gar den, that in the year 1580 "the magistrates of the city of London obtained from Queen Elizabeth, that all heathenish playes and enterludes should be banished upon Sabbath dayes." This prohibition, however, probably lasted but a short time; for her majesty, when she visited Oxford in 1592, did not scruple to be present at a theatrical exhibition on Sunday night, the 24th of September in that year. During the reign of James the First, though dramatic entertainments were performed at court on Sundays, I believe, no plays were publicly represented on that day; and by the statute 3 Car. I. c. 1. their exhibition on the Sabbath day was ab'solutely prohibited: yet, notwithstanding this act of parliament, both plays and masques were performed at court on Sundays, during the first sixteen years of the reign of that king, and certainly in private houses, if not on the public stage. It has been a question, whether it was formerly a common practice to ride on horseback to the playhouse: a circumstance that would scarcely deserve consideration, if it were not in some sort connected with our author's history, a plausible story having been built on

this foundation, relative to his first introduction first day that a new play was represented; a to the stage.

issued from the press without their consent. | be performed at any of the royal palaces in the The customary price of the copy of a play, in the time of Shakspeare, appears to have been twenty nobles, or six pounds thirteen shillings and four-pence. The play when printed was sold for sixpence; and the usual present from a patron, in return for a dedication, was forty shillings.

On the first day of exhibiting a new play, the prices of admission appear to have been raised, sometimes to double, sometimes to treble, prices; and this seems to have been occasionally practised on the benefit nights of authors, and on the representation of expensive plays, to the year 1726.

Dramatic poets in ancient times, as at present, were admitted gratis into the theatre.

It appears from Sir Henry Herbert's Officebook that the king's company between the years 1622 and 1641 produced either at Blackfriars or the Globe at least four new plays every year. Every play, before it was represented on the stage, was licensed by the Master of the Revels, for which he received in the time of Queen Elizabeth but a noble, though at a subsequent period the stated fee on this occasion rose to two pounds.

Neither Queen Elizabeth nor King James the First, nor Charles the First, I believe, ever went to the public theatre; but they frequently ordered plays to be performed at court, which were represented in the royal theatre called the Cockpit, in Whitehall; and the actors of the king's company were sometimes commanded to attend his majesty in his summer's progress, to perform before him in the country. Queen Henrietta Maria, however, went sometimes to the public theatre at Blackfriars. I find from the Council-books, that in the time of Elizabeth ten pounds was the payment for a play performed before her; that is, twenty nobles, or six pounds thirteen shillings and four-pence, as the regular and stated fee; and three pounds six shillings and eight-pence, by way of bounty or reward. The same sum, as I learn from the manuscriptnotes of Lord Stanhope, Treasurer of the Chamber to king James the First, continued to be paid during his reign and this was the stated payment during the reign of his successor also. Plays at court were usually performed at night, by which means they did not interfere with the regular exhibition at the public theatres, which was early in the afternoon; and thus the royal bounty was for so much a clear profit to the company but when & play was commanded to

neighbourhood of London, by which the actors were prevented from deriving any profit from a public exhibition on the same day, the fee, as appears from a manuscript in the Lord Chamberlain's office, was in the year 1630, and probably in Shakspeare's time also, twenty pounds; and this circumstance I formerly stated, as strongly indicating that the sum last mentioned was a very considerable produce on any one representation at the Blackfriars or Globe playhouse. The office-book which I have so often quoted, has fully confirmed my conjecture.

The custom of passing a final censure on plays at their first exhibition is as ancient as the time of our author; for no less than three plays of his rival, Ben Jonson, appear to have been deservedly damned;* and Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess, and The Knight of the burning Pestle, written by him and Beaumont, underwent the same fate.

It is not easy to ascertain what were the emoluments of a successful actor in the time of Shakspeare. They had not then annual benefits, as at present. The clear emoluments of the theatre, after deducting the nightly expenses for lights, men occasionally hired for the evening, etc. which in Shakspeare's house was but forty-five shillings, were divided into shares, of which part belonged to the proprietors, who were called housekeepers, and the remainder was divided among the actors according to their rank and merit. I suspect that the whole clear receipt was divided into forty shares, of which perhaps the housekeepers or proprietors had fifteen, the actors twenty-two, and three were devoted to the purchase of new plays, dresses, etc. From Ben Jonson's Poetaster, it should seem that one of the performers had seven shares and a half; but of what integral sum is not mentioned. The person alluded to (if any person was alluded to, which is not certain). must, I think, have been a proprietor, as well as a principal actor. Our poet in his Hamlet speaks of a whole share, as no contemptible emolument; and from the same play we learn that some of the performers had only half a share. Others probably had still less.

It appears from a deed executed by Thomas Killigrew and others, that in the year 1666 the whole profit arising from acting plays, masques, &c. at the King's theatre, was divided into twelve shares and three quarters, of

This offensive term appears to have been as old at least as Sir W. D'Avenant's time. C.

into forty shares, of which fifteen were appropriated to the housekeepers or proprietors, three to the purchase of copies of new plays, stage-habits, etc. and twenty-two to the actors, then the performer, who had two shares on the representation of each play, received, when the theatre was thus successful, twenty shillings. But supposing the average nightly receipt (after deducting the nightly expenses) to be about nine pounds, which we have seen to be the case, then his nightly dividend would be but nine shillings, and his weekly profit, if they played five times a week, two pounds five shillings. The acting season, I believe, at that time lasted forty weeks. In each of the companies then subsisting there were about twenty persons, six of whom probably were principal, and the others subordinate; so that we may suppose two shares to have been the reward of a principal actor; six of the second class perhaps enjoyed a whole share each; and each of the remaining eight half a share. On all these data, I think it may be safely concluded, that the performers of the first class did not derive from their profession more than ninety pounds a year at the utmost. Shakspeare, Heminge, Condell, Burbadge, Lowin, and Taylor had without doubt other shares as proprietors or leaseholders; but what the different proportions were which each of them possessed in that right, it is now impossible to ascertain. According to the supposition already stated, that fifteen shares out of forty were appropriated to the proprietors, then was there on this account a sum of six hundred and seventy-five pounds annually to be divided among them. Our poet, as author, actor, and proprietor, probably received from the theatre about two hundred pounds a year. Having after a very long search lately discovered the will of Mr. Heminge, I hoped to have derived from it some information on this subject; but I was disappointed. He indeed more than once mentions his several parts or shares held by lease in the Globe and Blackfriars play- | houses, but uses no expression by which the value of each of those shares can be ascertained His books of account, which he appears to have regularly kept, and which, he says, will show that his shares yielded him "a good yearly profit," will probably, if they shall ever be found, throw much light on our early stage history.

Thus scanty and meagre were the apparatus and accommodations of our ancient theatres, on which those dramas were first exhibited, that have since engaged the attention of so

many learned men, and delighted so many thousand spectators. Yet even then, we are told by a writer of that age,* " dramatic poesy was so lively expressed and represented on the public stages and theatres of this city, as Rome in the auge of her pomp and glory never saw it better performed; in respect of the action and art, not of the cost and sumptuousness."

THE history of the stage as far as it relates to Shakspeare, naturally divides itself into three periods: the period which preceded his appearance as an actor or dramatic writer; that during which he flourished; and the time which has elapsed since his death. Having now gone through the two former of these periods, I shall take a transient view of the stage from the death of our great poet to the year 1741, still with a view to Shakspeare, and his works.

Soon after his death, four of the principal companies then subsisting made a union, and were afterwards called The United Companies, but I know not precisely in what this union consisted. I suspect it arose from a penury of actors, and that the managers contracted to permit the performers in each house occasionally to assist their brethren in the other theatres in the representation of plays.

After the death of Shakspeare, the plays of Fletcher appear for several years to have been more admired, or at least to have been more frequently acted, than those of our poet. During the latter part of the reign of James the First, Fletcher's pieces had the advantage of novelty to recommend them. I believe, between the time of Beaumont's death in 1615 and his own in 1625, this poet produced at least twenty-five plays. Sir Aston Cokain has informed us, in his poems, that of the thirty-five pieces improperly ascribed to Beaumont and Fletcher in the folio edition of 1647, much the greater part were written after Beaumont's death; and his account is partly confirmed by Sir Henry Herbert's Manuscript, from which it appears that Fletcher produced eleven new plays in the last four years of his life. If we were possessed of the Register kept by Sir George Buck we should there, I make no doubt, find near twenty dramas written by the same author in the in

terval between 1615 and 1622.

observed, wrote an express treatise concerning the * Sir George Buck. This writer, as I have already English stage, which was never printed, and, I fear, is now irrecoverably lost.