The last distinctively different staging with which we can associate the Lord Chamberlain’s Men in 1594 relates to their performance of Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors at Gray’s Inn on the night of December 28 (Innocents’ Day).35 The occasion is recorded in the Gesta Grayorum (“A History of Gray’s Men”), an account evidently written close to the date but not printed until 1688. It tells the story of a much longer charade, within which that performance was almost incidental. The students of the Inn, one of the four London law schools which virtually constituted a university in the capital city, had determined to hold protracted revels over the whole Christmas period (stretching from December to February). It was to be a release of festivity after the prolonged plague. These revels took the time‐honored form in such institutions of electing a topsy‐turvey lord‐of‐misrule, who “reigned” over the Inn during this period; he had a retinue which mirrored that of the Queen’s own court, including a Lord Treasurer, Lord Chamberlain, Lord Chancellor, and many others. The student elected was Henry Helmes, dubbed the Prince of Purpoole after the manor of Portpoole in which the Inn stood. One thread running through these sophomoric revels was the intention to cement a bond of amity between Gray’s and the students of their fellow inn, the Inner Temple. Accordingly an “ambassador” of the Inner Temple was among those invited on the night of the Chamberlain’s Men’s performance.
From the Gesta Grayorum:
The next grand night was intended to be upon Innocents’ Day at night; at which time there was a great presence of lords, ladies, and worshipful personages, that did expect some notable performance at that time; which, indeed, had been effected, if the multitude of beholders had not been so exceeding great, that thereby there was no convenient room for those that were actors; by reason whereof, very good inventions and conceits could not have opportunity to be applauded, which otherwise would have been great contentation to the beholders. Against which time, our friend, the Inner Temple, determined to send their Ambassador to our Prince of State, as sent from Frederick Templarius, their Emperor, who was then busied in his wars against the Turk. The Ambassador came very gallantly appointed, and attended by a great number of brave gentlemen, which arrived at our court about nine of the clock at night. Upon their coming thither, the King at Arms gave notice to the Prince, then sitting in his chair of State in the Hall, that there was come to his court an Ambassador from his ancient friend the State of Templaria which desired to have present access unto His Highness … So he was brought in very solemnly, with sound of trumpets, the King at Arms and Lords of Purpoole making to his company, which marched before him in order. He was received very kindly of the Prince, and placed in a chair beside His Highness, to the end that he might be partaker of the sports intended. But first, he made a speech to the Prince … Our Prince made him this answer, That he did acknowledge that the great kindness of his Lord, whereby he doth invite to further degrees in firm and loyal friendship, did deserve all honourable commendations, and effectual accomplishment, that by any means might be devised … When the Ambassador was placed, as aforesaid, and that there was something to be performed for the delight of the beholders, there arose such a disordered tumult and crowd upon the stage, that there was no opportunity to effect that which was intended. There came so great a number of worshipful personages upon the stage, that might not be displaced; and gentlewomen, whose sex did privilege them from violence, that when the prince and his officers had in vain, a good while, expected and endeavoured a reformation, at length there was no hope of redress for that present. The Lord Ambassador and his train thought that they were not so kindly entertained as was before expected, and thereupon would not stay any longer at that time, but, in a sort, discontented and displeased. After their departure the throngs and tumults did somewhat cease, although so much of them continued, as was able to disorder and confound any good inventions whatsoever. In regard whereof, as also for that the sports intended were especially for the gracing of the Templarians it was thought good not to offer anything of account, saving dancing and revelling with gentlewomen; and after such sports, a Comedy of Errors (like to Plautus his Menechmus) was played by the players. So that night was begun, and continued to the end, in nothing but confusion and errors; whereupon, it was ever afterwards called, The Night of Errors.36
I have quoted at such length to give an impression of the whole occasion and its social resonances for the participants. The following day, continuing the fantasy of misrule, the Prince’s Privy Council launched an enquiry into the “great disorders and misdemeanours,” which finally led to a charge against the “sorcerer or conjurer” deemed to be responsible “that he had foisted a company of base and common fellows, to make up our disorders with a play of errors and confusions; and that night had gained to us discredit, and itself a nickname of Errors” (32–3). This was of course in jest, but in such company there lingered the conviction that the Lord Chamberlain’s Men were “a company of base and common fellows,” however grand their lord might be.
Ironically, we learn that the real cause of the disorder was that too many of those in attendance that night felt that their status warranted them a place on the stage, with the Prince. The Gesta tells us that the collegiate form of staging was followed when it describes a “Running Banquet” and specifies “a table set in the midst of the stage, before the Prince’s Seat” – imitating royal seating at court rather than (as long popularly supposed) using the lower end of the hall, with its convenient screen doors and mistrels’ gallery, as the frame of the stage (see p. 24). As Ros King comments: “The stage must have been at the opposite end of the Hall from the screen” (2004, 34). In the chaotic conditions “there arose such a disordered tumult and crowd upon the stage, that there was no opportunity to effect that which was intended. There came so great a number of worshipful personages upon the stage, that might not be displaced ….” There is no way of knowing if these really were “worshipful personages” or only so in the fantasy of Purpool, but the Elizabethan convention of seating the dignitaries “upon the stage” proved in this company to be totally impractical – so much so that the most honored guest of the evening, the “Ambassador” from the Inner Temple, left in disdain.
This same section of the Gesta jokingly lays out how the “sorcerer” “had caused … scaffolds to be reared to the top of the house, to increase expectation. And how he had caused divers ladies and gentlewomen, and others of good condition, to be invited to our sports” (32). This speaks to two points discussed elsewhere. One is that if there was scaffolded seating reaching to the ceiling, there is a good chance that they made proper provision for substantial tiring houses lower down, adjacent to the stage, such as we know were built at Queens’ College, Cambridge (see p. 22). The other is specific acknowledgment of the presence of ladies of quality in the audience. The Inns of Court, like the universities, were all‐male establishments. But theatricals at both were festive occasions when ladies were invited in. Here, as elsewhere, they were a notable factor in the audience (see p. 133, 162).
Only one text of The Comedy of Errors has survived, that in the First Folio, and it has some features that make it unusual by comparison with other Shakespeare works. It is particularly heavily indebted to its Latin source (as the author of the Gesta Grayorum noted, Plautus’s Menaechmi, “The Brothers Menaechmus”) but, more to the point its staging suggests features we do not associate with the public playhouses at this date. The action all takes place in Ephesus, and it repeatedly and pointedly circulates around the house of Antipholus of Ephesus, “the Phoenix,” the house of the Courtesan, “the Porcupine,” and the Priory where the Abbess is found.37 The principal characters are either tied to these sites or in transit between them. They seem to be fixed and known points on the stage, rather than the very provisional designation of locations in most Elizabethan drama. If we compare it with Twelfth Night, for example, another Plautine play of twins and confused identities, we see there a very fluid shifting from Orsino’s court to the seacoast (“This is Illyria, lady”: 1.2.2) to Olivia’s house, then alternating between the court and her house (or garden), or indeterminately to settings in the town or the country, as the action demands. This is what is sometimes called “successive staging,” which takes for granted a change of scene whenever the actors clear the stage. This became the norm for Elizabethan public theatre.
A possible explanation for the relative rigidity of The Comedy of Errors might be that the text reflects a very specific, old‐style staging of the play, possibly even that at Gray’s Inn (for which some scholars think it might have been purposely written) or one at court: we know that it was performed at court on December 28, 1604, but it may well have been staged there earlier.38 Academic institutions and the court are places where “houses” such as those we saw at Oxford in 1566 remained in use (see p. 2, 21; Foakes, 1962, xxxiv–xxxix; Kernodle, 1944, 160–3). Where such “houses” were deployed, the effect was quite different from what we normally expect of the Elizabethan stage, as we see from McMillin and MacLean’s discussion of the George Peele’s Queen’s Men’s play, The Old Wives Tale:
The action moves among four places: a cross, a well, Sacrapant’s study, and a hill with a light hidden behind removable turf. The system of staging uses emblematic props or “houses” to indicate the locations, and because the scenic indicators remain in view throughout the action, this has sometimes been called “simultaneous staging.” The emblematic nature of the scenic properties must be kept in mind. These are not so much acting places as indicators of location … By keeping the locations visible and within easy reach of one another, simultaneous staging implies a containable and organized world. It was perhaps for this reason that simultaneous staging was customary at court and at other institutions of authority, where the monarch might attend and be given her special seat in an auditorium which was also carefully organized. The Queen’s Men were masters of the court schedule in their early years and (help on the settings coming from the Revels office, where new canvas “houses” could be built and old ones pulled from storage) they must have performed many plays on the simultaneous system evident in The Old Wives Tale.
(McMillin and MacLean, 1999, 138–9)39
It is widely assumed that the use of “houses” and simultaneous staging declined at court as the acting conventions developed in the public amphitheaters became more prevalent. But change would not have happened overnight. As we noted, as late as the Revels accounts for 1614 we find a charge for “canvas for the booths” for Bartholomew Fair,” suggesting that those old practices had not been entirely abandoned (p. 121). Jonson may even have been deliberately evoking the old staging, as he evokes so much about old theatre in that play.
The Gray’s Inn Comedy of Errors and an account by John Manningham of a performance of Twelfth Night at the feast of Candlemas (February 2) in the Middle Temple are both well‐established pieces of Shakespearean lore (Schoenbaum, 1987, 213). It is not yet so widely known – a discovery of Alan H. Nelson in tracing the theatrical history of the Inns of Court – that once they became established as the King’s Men, Shakespeare’s company took on yearly commissions to perform at the Inner Temple on the feast of All Saints (November 1) and at Candlemas.40 They presumably saw this as a lucrative extension of their existing commitment to be available to perform for the court’s Revels season; it was clearly a further inhibition against their touring at that time of the year. These commissions lasted until the Civil War.
As this review of known theatrical venues for Shakespeare and his company in 1594 shows, they were busy and they had to be adaptable. Their plays had to be portable enough to fit a variety of stages; nothing of theirs originating from this time called, for example, for descent machinery or even a trapdoor. In most venues they would play continuously, without interruption, a convention that meant they had (for example) to plan carefully for the removal of dead bodies. Sometimes it is fully scripted, as when Falstaff carries off the dead Hotspur in 1Henry IV or Fortinbras orders “Let four captains / Bear Hamlet, like a soldier, to the stage” (5.2.397–8). The dialogue around Desdemona in Othello suggests that she lay where a curtain could be pulled to hide her body, either on the bed itself or at the mouth of the discovery space: “The object poisons sight; / Let it be hid” (5.2.375–6). That was easily arranged in the playhouse, of course, but would have called for special preparations on the road – as, for example, when Othello was performed at Oxford in the summer of 1610 – or in a private household. But in other instances their removal was evidently a charge for minor players, something assigned in rehearsal. In these same plays there is no indication of how Sir Walter Blunt, or Claudius or Laertes, or Roderigo, leaves the stage – but it seems not to have been acceptable to breach the suspension of disbelief by having the actors unaided discreetly withdraw, as often happens today. The players had themselves to be as adaptable as their plays, since these different venues all had different social conventions, histories, and expectations. One wonders what this “company of base and common fellows,” who were now used to conducting a large, successful and profitable business at the Theatre, made of their reveling patrons at Gray’s Inn on that Night of Errors.
The commissions to perform at the Inns of Court should also remind us that the actors did also at times perform plays from their regular repertoire for more private occasions in London. The most notorious example of such a private commission was that by the supporters of the Earl of Essex on the eve of his rebellion in February 1601. They prevailed upon the Chamberlain’s Men to perform “the play of the deposing and killing of King Richard” (in all probability Shakespeare’s Richard II) in their usual way at the Globe, despite the players’ protests that it was old and would draw no audience. They were promised “40s more than their ordinary [regular share of the profits] to play it” (ES, 2: 205; see p. 153).
Most special commissions were far less dramatic and usually involved performances in private houses. Rowland White’s regular reports to his master, Sir Robert Sidney, included the information that Sir Walter Ralegh, the Earl of Southampton and others feasted Sir Robert Cecil, with “plays,” before a mission to France (January 30, 1598); that Sir Gelly Meyrick, the Earl of Essex’s steward, laid on “a very great supper” for numerous lords and ladies: “They had 2 plays, which kept them up till 1 o’clock after midnight” (February 15, 1598); and that Lord Chamberlain Hunsdon entertained the Flemish Ambassador, Louis Verreyken, “and there in the afternoon his players acted, before Verreyken, Sir John Oldcastle, to his great contentment” (March 8, 1600: Collins, 1746, 2: 86; 2:90; 2: 175). At the end of December 1601 Hunsdon also called on his players to entertain the Queen at his Blackfriars house. We hear of the letter‐writer, John Chamberlain, going to a play at the house of Sir Robert Cecil’s close associate, Sir Walter Cope (Chamberlain, 1939, 1.457). Earlier in the reign Sir Walter went to great lengths on Cecil’s behalf to find entertainment for Queen Anne, when James was out of town; the King’s Men offered a revival of Love’s Labour’s Lost, but it was already “appointed to be played tomorrow night at my Lord of Southampton’s.” Southampton and Cecil apparently came to some kind of accord over the play; they both entertained the Queen, and her brother the Duke of Holstein, two nights apart in early January 1605, and one or other of them had Love’s Labour’s Lostperformed (Kernan, 1995, 69). In 1613 Sir Robert Rich arranged a play for the ambassador from Savoy (ES, 1: 220, n. 3). Clearly only the wealthy could afford to pay for private performances by the players in this way, but it seems likely there was much more of this than we have record of.
Notes
1 There are repeated references at least until 1603 of the ban on Sunday playing not being enforced. See, for example, ES, 1: 314–15; 4: 3045, 307, 310, 335.2 There is evidence that the boy companies only performed one day a week, Saturdays. The epilogue to Eastward Ho!, for example, performed at the Blackfriars in 1605, concludes with the wish: “May this [pageant] attract you, hither, once a week” (Jonson 2012e, line 8).3 Henslowe’s Diary contains several entries later than 1594 detailing performances on holy‐days, including May Day in 1596, and Candlemas and Shrove Tuesday in 1597 (Henslowe, 36, 56). But there is no information about the time those performances began.4 A note in the manuscript plays of the amateur playwright, William Percy, addressed to “the Master of the Children of Paul’s”, explains how they might be trimmed if needs be, “the children not to begin before four, after prayers, and the gates of Paul’s shutting at six” (ES, 2: 21). It is not clear exactly when this was written, but if it was after that playhouse reopened in 1599 it would reflect special circumstances under which it operated. Evensong might well be celebrated every day at St Paul’s and the boy’s company, performing in its precinct, may have been required to respect it even if other companies no longer had to.5 See Figure 3.2. You can also locate the sites of the Elizabethan theatres in modern London by consulting the Shakespearean London Theatres project site: http://shalt.dmu.ac.uk/locations.html.6 Tilney was required to vacate the old priory/palace in 1607 and his office later settled in Blackfriars.7 As played by Simon Callow, Tilney is pompous, self‐important, narrow minded, and uses his position to obtain sexual favors. It makes for good comedy, but it is pure fantasy.8 This runs together quotations from a letter of the Lord Mayor of London, Sir John Harte, and the minute of a Privy Council letter (ES, 4: 305, 306).9 The key documents relating to the history of the Theatre are conveniently collected in EPF, 330–87; see also Egan, 2009.10 In the 1592 alterations it was made rather more rectangular, and moved some 6 feet 6 inches further north.11 It is usually assumed that this refers to an ur‐Hamlet that preceded Shakespeare’s play, though some scholars hold that the Q1 text of Shakespeare’s Hamletrepresents that early version. See, for example, Bourus, 2014.12 Dr Faustus may be an exception. Middleton writes in The Black Book: “He had a head of hair like one of my devils in Dr Faustus when the old Theatre cracked and frighted the audience” (lines 156–7; 2007a). But the play was in the repertoire of the Admiral’s Men at the Rose for nearly a decade before it was first printed in 1604 and probably reflects the staging there. In fact, although it calls for a wide range of properties and effects, including a “chafer of coals”, deer’s horns, fireworks, thunder and lightning, and a detachable leg, it makes minimal demands on a stage. A discovery space was presumably used for Faustus’s study, but there is no call for an upper stage. The ending may or may not call for a trapdoor, depending on how it is played. When Faustus says “Ugly hell, gape not” (5.2.114) it is not clear if there is an actual representation of hell on stage, like an old‐fashioned hell‐mouth, or whether Faustus evokes these horrors for himself. (The 1616 text is much more explicit that “Hell is discovered” (5.2.114), though that is at an earlier point in the rewritten scene.) There is an aptness to making the discovery space the opening to hell, since Faustus’s studies were his road to it. References to all Marlowe’s plays are to Marlowe, 1995.13 For example, in the witchcraft scene of 2 Henry VI (1.4) “Enter Eleanor aloft”, while 4.5 directs “Enter Lord Scales upon the Tower, and in 4.9 “Enter King, Queen, and Somerset, on the terrace”; there are entrances “on the walls” in both 5.1 and 5.6 of 3Henry VI. See Hosley, 1957.14 Scholars have long since abandoned the notion of an “inner stage” in Elizabethan theatres, used for indoor scenes. Large parts of the audience would not have been able to see into it at all, and the visibility even for those who could would have been very limited, in the absence of artificial lighting. The use of the discovery space was doubtless conditioned by the need to make what happened there visible to most of the audience.15 The Fortune contract expressly stipulated that the builder, Peter Street, should not be responsible for any of the painting, presumably because specialist painters would be commissioned for that purpose.16 Bart Van Es’s Shakespeare in Company (2013) is in part an extended study of this situation.17 For the mildly salacious tale in John Manningham’s Diary (March 13, 1602) of Shakespeare supposedly getting the better of a sexual assignation Burbage had planned with a lady infatuated with him in the role of Richard III, see Schoenbaum, 1987, 204–5.18 The best account of Kemp as a clown remains Wiles, Shakespeare’s Clown, 1987.19 In Samuel Rowlands’s The Letting of Humour’s Blood in the Head‐Vein, satire 4, Pope is linked with John Singer, a clown in the Admiral’s Men: “What means Singer, then, / And Pope, the clown, to speak so boorish, when / They counterfeit the clowns upon the stage?”20 There were doubtless many, but the number of plays and playwrights we can associate with the early Chamberlain’s/King’s Men is painfully small: see Appendix.21 This is clearly “plot” in a different sense from the pasted boards which offered a running schedule of the play as staged (see p. 113). Here it seems to mean something like “outline.”22 In the period when Chettle was writing The Stepmother’s Tragedy Dekker also received payment for his involvement with plays called Better Late Than Never (August 1), Page of Plymouth (August 10 and September 2, co‐authored with Jonson), and Robert 2, King of Scots (aka The Scots Tragedy; September 3, 15, 16, 27, co‐authored with Jonson and Chettle). Their writing schedules and commitments must have been chaotic.23 See the entry on the part at the Henslowe–Alleyn Digitization Project website: http://www.henslowe‐alleyn.org.uk/essays/orlando.html.24 This is Henslowe’s only use of “cutter”, which could relate to /one of several trades. Tailor is most likely, though it could refer to a carver or sculptor.25 The differences between Q1 and Q2 can be accounted for in many ways. The dominant view used to be that Q1 is a clumsy, cut‐down version of Q2. My own view is that Q2 is an expansion of the text behind the Q1, possibly created for performance at court. See Dutton, 2016, 211–25.26 This section is particularly indebted to Kathman, 2009b and c; also EPF, 295‐305.27 The metric equivalents of these measurements are, respectively, 42.67m, 24.38m, 9.75m, and 14.63 × 9.75 m.28 Astington, 1999, 38. This section is heavily indebted to John Astington’s work.29 The illustration shows pp. 156–7 from a volume known as Vincents Presidents, preserved by the College of Arms (Vincent 151). Reproduced by courtesy of the College of Arms. Leslie Hotson famously argued that Shakespeare’s company performed Twelfth Nighton January 6, 1601, largely because of the presence in the audience of Virginio Orsino, Duke of Bracciano, whose name echoes that of the duke in the play. But the records show that multiple companies were paid for performing that night: the Chamberlain’s, Admiral’s and Derby’s Men, together with the Children of the Chapel, in some kind of “show” (ES, 4: 113; Streitberger, 2016, 188, 287). They either collaborated in something spectacular or each offered entertaining scenes rather than a whole play.30 Sir Gerrard Herbert, writing to Sir Dudley Carleton, quoted in Chambers, 1930, 2.346. I am grateful to John Astington for drawing this account to my attention. Voiders were baskets or trays for serving or removing food; “chiney” presumably means these were of (expensive) china, perhaps platters.31 f. OED “banquet”, n. 3a. “A course of sweetmeats, fruit, and wine, served either as a separate entertainment, or as a continuation of the principal meal … a dessert.”32Other marriages suggested for A Midsummer Night’s Dream include that of the Earl of Essex to Sir Philip Sidney’s widow, Frances; and that of Sir Thomas Heneage, Treasurer of the Chamber, to Mary, Countess of Southampton and mother of the man to whom Shakespeare dedicated Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. None can produce a certified performance.33 Honigmann, 1985, 63–4. The whole chapter, “Shakespeare and Lord Strange’s Men”, 59–76, is relevant to this paragraph.34 Barbara Freedman (1994) did everything necessary to kill off the 1597 hypothesis. Unfortunately, like so many Shakespearean myths, it refuses to die – especially with editors, the people with the greatest power to perpetuate it.35 On the dating, see p. 82.36 Based on Gesta Grayorum, 1968, 29–32.37 The inn where Antipholus and Dromio of Syracuse are supposed to be staying, “the Centaur”, appears to be offstage – no one is seen to enter or exit it.38 See Andrews, 1987, 324, which reproduces the court record of “Shaxberd Errors” being performed that night.39 Alan H. Nelson suggests an alternative staging model: “the localized setting of an academic theatre, in which the stage platform represents a street in the city of Ephesus, with the stage houses (not necessarily limited to three) ranged on either side” (1997, 66).40 Nelson, 2009, 286. The Middle Temple also established a similar pattern of commissions, but with various companies over time.