other voyde seates are plentie. The profaning of the Sabaoth is redressed, but as badde a custome entertayned, and yet still our long suffering God for bayreth to punishe. Yt is a wofull sight to see two hundred proude players jett in their silkes, wheare five hundred pore people sterve in the streets. But yf needes this inischief must be tollerated, whereat (no doubt) the Highest frowneth, yet for God's sake (Sir) let every Stage in London pay a weekly pention to the pore, that ex hoc malo proveniat aliquod bonum: but it weare rather to be wisshed that players might be used, as Apollo did his lawghing, semel in anno.” In 1586 the Theatre and Curtain were still the only houses built for acting plays, and the Corporation of London had two or three years before succeeded in shutting out plays from City inns in which they had been acted. The choir children, who had acted before 1583 at the Blackfriars Inn, acted, perhaps, in 1586 in their own singing-school. In July, 1585, Lord Charles Howard had been appointed Lord High Admiral; and Lord Hunsdon, Chamberlain. Both of these noblemen had companies of actors, who played sometimes at Court before the queen, sometimes at The Theatre or Curtain, sometimes at an inn-yard. The Earl of Arundel had a company of actors which played at The Curtain in 1584. The Earl of Oxford's players also took for their performances sometimes The Theatre, sometimes The Curtain. There was no acting at Blackfriars before 1596, except in an inn-yard or a large room in a house. The Blackfriars Theatre was first built in 1596, and The Globe early in 1599. Shakespeare's years of training as a dramatist are not to be associated with either of these playhouses. Shakespeare had proved his genius and written at least half a dozen of his plays before the first of them was built. The third regular theatre, The Rose, was not opened until 1592. Before that time companies of players, when they did not occupy The Theatre or The Curtain, acted at some play-place that could be hired from an inn-keeper or other owner. One such place was the Bull in Bishopsgate. The record left in accounts of the Master of the Revels Plays and Masques at Court: 1574 to 1586. touching plays and masques presented at Court during the twelve years before Shakespeare came to London serves well to illustrate Sir Philip Sidney's comment on the weakness of the drama since the time of "Gorboduc." As literature, the weakness of the drama lasted for a quarter of a century after the production of "Gorboduc" in the Inner Temple; but meanwhile its popularity was growing, as a form of story-telling to the eyes and ears. The actor's art was ripening, machinery of stage management was developed, and at last houses were built specially to suit the players' purposes. All this might be called preparation of the canvas for the work of the true artists yet to come, young Marlowe and others. Their coming corresponded almost to a year with William Shakespeare's first appearance as a young and untried actor on a London stage. Between the twenty-eighth of February, 1574 (new style), and the same date in 1575, there were spent on these entertainments at Court £582 1s. 2d. The Lord Chamberlain's servants acted "The History of Phædrastus" and "Phigon and Lucia;" Lord Leicester's servants acted "Panecea ;" and Lord Clinton's, "Pretestus." There was an unnamed play by the servants of Lord Warwick; a play for the children of the Chapel by William Hunniss; a play acted by the children of Paul's; a play also by the children of Windsor Chapel, touching which there was charge for "a perriwigg of heare for King Xerxces syster." This play was by Richard Farrant, who had become in 1564 organist and master of the children in Saint George's Chapel, then passed back after five years to the Chapel Royal, in which he had formerly been enrolled as gentleman, and finally returned to Windsor. He is named twice as author of plays that are lost, but he is remembered still by sacred music of his composition, including a High Service and two anthems. There were also masques this year of Shepherds, Pedlars, Pilgrims. In the accounts of the Revels for 1576-77 nine plays are named as acted before the queen-six of them at Hampton Court, three at Whitehall. The six acted at Hampton Court were "The History of the Cenophals" (Cynocephali-people with dogs' heads), by the Lord Chamberlain's men; "The Historie of the Collyer," by the Earl of Leicester's men; "The Paynter's Daughter," by the Earl of Leicester's servants; "Toolie," by the Lord Howard's servants; "The Historie of Error," by the children of Paul's that is, a play like Shakespeare's "Comedy of Errors," based on the Menæchmi of Plautus; "The Historie of Mutius Scevola," by the children of Windsor and the Chapel. The three plays acted at Whitehall were "The Historie of the Solitarie Knight," by the Lord Howard's servants; "The Irishe Knighte," by the Earl of Warwick's servants; and "The Historie of Titus and Gisippus," by the children of Paul's. In March, 1577, Sir Thomas Benger died. John Lyly was then among the suitors for succession to his office of Master of the Revels, but it was given to Edmund Tylney on the twenty-fourth of July, 1579. Names are given of eight out of the ten plays acted between Christmas, 1578, and November, 1579. They were "The Systers of Mantua," also "The Historie of the Knight in the Burnyng Rock," both acted by the Earl of Warwick's servants; "The Crewelty of a Stepmother," also "The Historie of Murderous Michael," both acted by the Lord Chamberlain's servants; "A Pastorall or Historie of a Greeke Maide," by the Earl of Leicester's servants; "The Historie of the Rape of the Second Helene," actors not specified; "A Morall of the Mariage of Mynde and Measure," by the children of Paul's; and "The Historie of Loyalty and Bewtie," by the children of the Queen's Majesty's Chapel. There were also in this year A Masque of Amazons and A Masque of Knights. In the accounts for 1579-80, of nine plays acted seven are named. Three were presented by the Lord Chamberlain's servants, and these were "A Historie of the Duke of Millayn and the Marques of Mantua," "The History of Portio and Demorantes," and "The History of Serpedon." One play was presented by the servants of the Earl of Warwick; that was "A Historie of the Foure Sonnes of Fabyous." "The History of the Soldan and the Duke of was acted by the Earl of Derby's servants. "A History of Alucius" was acted by the children of the Chapel, and "The History of Cipio Africanus" by the children of Paul's. Among scenery for Court plays this year were paintings of seven cities and a village, a country house, a great city, a battlement, a wood, and a castle. Such scenery, it has been said, was used at Court, and was derived from the old mounting of Court masques; but there was no use of such scenery upon the public stage. Of seven plays acted before the queen in 1580-81, by the servants of the Earl of Leicester, the Earl of Sussex, and the Earl of Derby, and by the children of the Chapel and Paul's, two only are named, "A Comodie called Delight," and "A Storie of Pompey." The properties this year included "a Senate House." In 1582 there were six plays-" A Comodie of Bewtie and Huswyfery," by Lord Hunsdon's servants; "A Historie of Telomo," by the Earl of Leicester's servants; "A Historie of Ferrar" (? of Error), by the Lord Chamberlain's servants; "A Historie of Love and Fortune," by the Earl of Derby's servants; "A Comodie or Morall, devised on a Game of Cards," by the children of Her Majesty's Chapel; and "A Historie of Ariodante and Genevora," by Mr. Mulcaster's children-that is to say, by boys from Merchant Taylors' School. "Ariodante and Genevra" was a tale taken from the fifth and sixth cantos of Ariosto's "Orlando," of which there was an English version by Peter Beverley, ot Staple Inn, licensed to H. Wykes in 1565. Only two copies are now known. It was a book of ninety-one leaves, undated, and called "The Historie of Ariodante and Ieneura, daughter to the King of Scottes, in English Verse by Peter Beuerley. Imprinted at London, by Thomas East for Fraunces Coldocke." In 1584-85 twelve actors, newly chosen to serve as the Queen's Players, played five pieces—“ Phyllida and Choryn" (Corin), "The History of Felix and Philomena,” “Fyve Plays in One," an antic play, and a comedy. The Earl of Oxford's boys played also "The History of Agamemnon and Ulysses." Such lists of plays show that the stories favoured at Court were usually classical or Italian, that moral allegories were in favour, and that tales of knightly adventure were in great request. The popularity of Richard Johnson's euphuistic prose tale of the "Seven Champions of Christendom " also shows the wide prevalence of a taste for chivalrous romance, which determined Spenser's choice of the form of tale in which he would enshrine the picture of a true life set forth through the allegories of "The Faerie Queene." Of the first part of the "Seven Champions" no copies remain, and the earliest form in which it has come down to us is in copies of the second part, printed in 1596 and 1597 by Cuthbert Burbie, a printer who is not to be confounded with James Burbage's son Cuthbert. English We have from Germany reflected images showing the forms of English plays that were popular in Shakespeare's time, though some of the plays are no longer to be found in England. The travelling of English actors into Germany had a great influence upon the German drama. In the time of Shakespeare's boyhood the headquarters of the German players had been at Nuremberg, which, of all towns in Germany, made nearest approach to a great centre of life and action, with a public free enough |