But, at its core, the Globe was a playhouse of the spoken word, catering first to hearing (audience) and secondly to eyes (spectators). The trio of Shakespeare, Burbage, and Armin virtually assured that. So what kind of acting did this iconic theatre, the Globe, produce or encourage? This has long been a very contentious issue. It is not that we have no evidence, but that the evidence is susceptible to various forms of construction. The argument is sometimes framed in distinctions between “presentational” and “representational” acting, otherwise expressed as between “formal” and “naturalistic” (Thompson, 1997, 329ff). What is fundamentally at issue is whether Elizabethan actors were trained in a rigid set of conventions and gestures whereby they formally “presented” emotional states and appropriate social behavior to their audiences, or whether they naturalistically inhabited the mindset and personal histories of individuals, to “represent” people in their living complexity. As Marvin Rosenberg provocatively framed the argument, were they men or marionettes (1968)?
In many respects it is easier to argue the case that they were marionettes. Most of the “characters” in Elizabethan drama were defined socially by the clothing they wore before they even spoke – servants, lords and ladies, soldiers, priests – which is why costumes were always so important to the players. And in a repertory system which demanded a different play virtually every afternoon, a completely new play approximately every three weeks, lines learned separately in individual “parts,” and precious little time to rehearse together – it is tempting to suppose that this must have relied on “presentational,” formalistic acting and typecasting: something mechanical and familiar that ran within predictable parameters.
And the case for this seems, on the face of it, to be reinforced by the metatheatricality of Elizabethan plays, with their prologues and choruses, their dumb shows, clowns who wander “out of character,” plays‐within‐plays, references to “this wooden O” or “this brave o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire,” and actors who directly address the audience, denying the illusion of a dividing line between the staged event and the wider theatrical experience. Shakespeare’s audiences were never allowed to forget that they were watching – or, more to the point part of – a fictive experience in which Burbage is always Burbage, “presenting” Hamlet, Othello or Lear, not incarnating them. Our examination of Lady Mary Wroth’s depictions of boy actors tended towards this same conclusion (p. 187–8).
A passage often cited in the debate is this by Buckingham in Richard III:
Tut, I can counterfeit the deep tragedian,
Speak and look back, and pry on every side,
Tremble and start at wagging of a straw;
Intending deep suspicion, ghastly looks
Are at my service, like enforced smiles;
And both are ready in their offices,
At any time, to grace my stratagems.
(3.5.5–11)23
Is the actor playing Buckingham slyly imitating Burbage here, who was playing Richard III – the person to whom the speech was delivered? Does this not suggest that there were a set of poses and mannerisms that in effect constituted “the deep tragedian,” reducing his individual interpretation of a role to a set of pre‐scripted gestures?
The most developed argument along these lines was that advanced by B. L. Joseph, an extreme formalist, in his Elizabethan Acting (1951).24 He saw the acting of the period as an extension of rhetoric and oratory, key classroom skills in a humanist education, where command over language was an essential attribute of the ruling classes: “That what is applied to acting in oratory also applied to acting on the stage is evident in the description of [the ‘character of’] An Excellent Actor … ‘Whatsoever is commendable to the grave Orator, is exquisitely perfect in him’” (p. 1).25 He also cites Richard Flecknoe’s claim in the preface to Love’s Kingdom that Burbage “had all the parts of an excellent orator” (102). He supports this thesis by reference to John Bulwer’s Chirologia and Chironomia, published together in 1644 as a manual of rhetorical delivery. The full title of these works explains their main arguments, based on empirical study of body movement in communication: Chirologia: or the natural language of the hand. Composed of the speaking motions, and discoursing gestures thereof. Whereunto is added Chironomia: or, the art of manual rhetoric. Consisting of the natural expressions, digested by art in the hand, as the chiefest instrument of eloquence. They contain pictures showing how hand, arm, and fingers might consistently and effectively be used in speech. Acting is thus reduced to a stylized eloquence, a mechanical use of predictable gestures, such as those proposed in the preface to the anonymous Caroline play, The Cyprian Conqueror: “The other part of the action is in gesture, which must be various as required; in a sorrowful part, the head must hang down; in a proud, the head must be lofty; in an amorous, closed eyes, hanging down looks, and crossed arms; in a hasty, fumbling and scratching the head etc.” (cited in Plett, 2004, 441).
Others, however, turn such arguments on their head and argue that paradoxically the self‐referentiality of Elizabethan drama creates the perfect conditions for what Coleridge dubbed “the willing suspension of disbelief”: the audience, literally all around the players, is taken so far with them through the looking glass as to experience their acting as an authentic “representation” of reality. When we hear “This is Illyria, lady” we are right there with Viola, and have already even forgotten – or rendered irrelevant – the fact that “she” is a boy. We meet the actors more than half way in their attempts to represent their characters’ realities.
So Marvin Rosenberg enjoyed himself demolishing Joseph’s argument, quoting further from Flecknoe, where he says “Burbage was a delightful Proteus, so wholly transforming himself in to his part, and putting off himself with his clothes, as he never (not so much as in the tiring‐house) assumed himself again until the play was done” (103). This sounds something akin to the teaching of Stanislavski or even Method acting, which in the terms of this argument would be an extreme version of “representational” acting, identifying entirely with the thing itself.26 The Cyprian Conqueror looks as though it was written by an amateur, who may not have understood professional acting. Indeed, if we look back to the Buckingham speech at the head of this train of argument, we may ask ourselves just how “presentational” it is. Given the levels of irony and duplicity involved in this conversation between King Richard and his supposed ally, may this not be a “representational” account of “presentational” acting, which “Buckingham” is far too sophisticated actually to engage in – a double bluff? Of course, in the long run, “Richard” proves the better actor of the two, so the point is moot.
Peter Thompson is surely right to advise us against “any assumption that there was a single, uniform acting style on the Elizabethan stage. On the contrary, the professional stage accommodated a range of styles. Like all popular entertainment, it was not purist but eclectic” (334). The very mixed styles of the plays we have reviewed surely bear this out. This would in part be because theatre was evolving, and at a great pace. Acting styles were in flux; indeed, one way of reading Buckingham’s speech is to see it as a recitation of old‐fashioned expectations about acting, which are contradicted by the presence of new‐style acting in the person of Richard III. When Falstaff is to play King Henry he demands “Give me a cup of sack to make my eyes look red, that it may be thought I have wept; for I must speak in passion, and I will do it in King Cambyses” vein” (1 Henry IV, 2.4.380–3). He paradoxically intends to be more convincing by playing in a style from the 1560s – which, however, was evidently still familiar to everyone thirty years later. Its essence is perhaps best conveyed by a stage direction in the old play when King Cambyses is mortally wounded: “Here let him quake and stir.” When Hamlet warns the actors against over‐acting, we all know that he is steering them away from an old, Cambyses‐like style of acting: “a robustious periwig‐pated fellow tear[ing] a passion to tatters … It out‐Herods Herod. Pray you, avoid it” (3.2. 8–14). Nevertheless they continue to use the dumb‐show, with its dated and stylized conventions of enacting the “plot” of the play wordlessly prior to presenting the spoken version.
It is too simplistic to suppose that Elizabethan acting in general had renounced the old excesses and conventions in favor of Hamlet’s own preferences: “suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance, that you o’erstep not the modesty of nature. For anything so o’erdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is to hold, as ’twere the mirror up to nature, to show virtue her feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure” (17–24). This is suspect as a generalized statement of Shakespeare’s ideal or intention precisely because it speaks so exactly to Hamlet’s own condition, a man continually failing to suit his actions to his words. It may be a kind of wish fulfilment, likely to be achieved only sporadically at best while many players hung on to older or less challenging ways, and indeed when playwrights scripted them characters built on old foundations, as Falstaff is built upon the Vice as well as Cambyes (see p. 43).
Yet Peter Thompson spells out the potential in such construction:
the blending of Vice and human protagonist is at its most vivid in Richard III. It is my contention that the reference was metatheatrically reinforced when Richard III was first performed. Only five years dead, Tarlton was not forgotten. Most of the audience would have seen him, hunchbacked and outstandingly ugly, easily imitated by a shape‐shifting actor like, say, Burbage. This, surely, is the man who strides across the platform stage at the explosive opening of Richard III to declare himself a Vice [he quotes Richard III, 1.1.18–30, concluding “I am determined to prove a villain”]. It is a fraught moment in the playhouse. Burbage as Tarlton as future king as Vice/Clown: the new drama encasing the old. The player is addressing the audience directly, partly as Burbage, partly as Tarlton, and only partly as the Duke of Gloucester. (335)
It was indeed in the great tragedians of the day that commentators saw what modern scholars have interpreted as something different, something perhaps akin to “representational” acting, or naturalism. Jonson tried to pin what was so special about Alleyn in saying “others speak, but only thou dost act” (Epigrams 59, line 10), as if (perhaps) he transcended mere oratory and took on a three‐dimensional reality. Others might, however, conclude that Jonson is saying Alleyn’s skill lay in infusing his delivery with the energeiawhich Aristotle had insisted was essential for moving the emotions of listeners. The evidence is never clear cut.
Whatever exactly prompted the departure of Kemp from the Chamberlain’s Men as they entered the Globe, the moment seems symbolically apt. Clowns like Kemp built on old routines to cultivate a persona which transcended any particular play. They were only actors by special definition – always more Kemp than Bottom or Dogberry. But the stage was passing to “new” actors, like Alleyn and Burbage. And in recruiting Armin to replace Kemp, the Chamberlain’s/ King’s Men recruited a comedian whose style would complement that of Burbage, not be (as some might conclude) at odds with it: Hamlet and the gravedigger, Lear and his fool, and (as some of us believe) Othello and Iago (see, p. 276 Note 30). Eventually Alleyn and Burbage would be replaced by a new generation in the same tradition, like Nathan Field (Figure 6.2), and the King’s Men’s great trio of the 1630s, John Lowin, Joseph Taylor, and Eliart (or Eyllaerdt) Swanston. But the tradition essentially ended with them, since the proscenium stage of the Restoration called for a completely different set of acting conventions. We can do our best to rebuild the physical Globe, but we can never recreate the social, aesthetic, and material conditions that produced precisely that style of acting.
Figure 6.2 Portrait of Nathan Field.
Source: Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, UK / Bridgeman Images.
Jacalyn Royce has most fully argued the case for the Theatre/Globe being the true making of Burbage (Figure 6.3), their proportions, size of stage and intimate relationship with the audience being what allowed this new style of acting.27 She focuses on a different sequence in the “character” of An Excellent Actor: “what we see him personate, we think truly done before us” (N2r). There are good grounds for supposing that Webster was specifically thinking of Burbage here, since he speaks of the actor being “much affected to painting,” and there are several contemporary references to his being a skilled “limner,” including payments of 44s. by the Earl of Rutland to both Shakespeare “about my lord’s impresa” and to Burbage “for painting and making it.”28 Only the year before, Webster had written the role of Duke Ferdinand in The Duchess of Malfi for Burbage, so he knew better than most what he was talking about.
Figure 6.3 Portrait of Richard Burbage. Source: Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, UK / Bridgeman Archives.
Royce takes “personate” here to be the key term, a synonym for what we have been calling “representational” or naturalistic acting. She argues that the “stability provided by James Burbage’s Theatre precipitated a change in working conditions that revolutionized theatrical methods, particularly the methods of the company that called the Theatre its home. Staying in London presented conditions that made the shift to naturalistic acting possible,” adding that “Shakespeare’s dialogue provides much evidence of plausible body language and gesture, capitalizing on the visibility of the actor’s body in the Globe’s performance space.” She concludes: “The Globe theater enabled actors to achieve an unprecedented level of physical verisimilitude by providing a new possibility for ‘truth’ in the visibility – or visible body – of a character” (484, 490, 495).
We can add a tiny detail which bears out the cases of both Thompson and Royce. Richard III was the role that made Burbage a star. In The Letting of Humour’s Blood Samuel Rowlands, almost certainly thinking of that performance, describes gallants who would “like Richard the usurper, swagger, / That had his hand continual on his dagger” (1600, A2). Shakespeare had built his character of Richard from the brilliant if biased account by Sir Thomas More, which is embedded in the Chronicles of both Edward Halle and Raphael Holinshed: “when he stood musing, he would bite and chew busily his nether lip; as who said, that his fierce nature in his cruel body always chafed, stirred, and was ever unquiet: beside that, the dagger that he wore he would, when he studied, with his hand pluck up and down in the sheath to the midst, never drawing it fully out” (Bullough, 1957–75, 3: 300). Rowlands’ gallants were evidently imitating Burbage in the role. But nothing in the text of the play tells us that he did this with his dagger, even though the dagger is indeed mentioned (3.1.110). Shakespeare must have communicated the detail to Burbage in rehearsal, helping to turn this frame‐breaking role into a memorable – indeed a star‐making – piece of naturalistic acting.
It is perhaps sensible to put all this in perspective by heeding the final sentence of An Excellent Actor: “But to conclude, I value a worthy actor by the corruption of some few of the quality, as I would do gold in the ore; I should not mind the dross, but the purity of the metal” (see p. 180 on “the quality”). There was only one Burbage and it was Shakespeare’s rare good fortune to work in harness with him for at least twenty years. It is difficult to believe that they did not inspire and reinforce each other’s strengths. Shakespeare left gold rings in his will to Burbage, Heminge, and Condell – the last survivors of the old team. Burbage outlived him by only three years. His passing elicited much comment, notably the Earl of Pembroke’s touching grief: the Lord Chamberlain and richest man in England declined to attend the performance of Pericles we mentioned earlier, “which I being tender‐hearted could not endure to see so soon after the death of my old acquaintance Burbage” (ES, 2: 308; see p. 122).
A Funeral Elegy for Richard Burbage, March 1619 was sadly corrupted by forgery in the nineteenth century. Some versions are palpably false, crediting him with roles such as Frankford in A Woman Killed With Kindness (Heywood) and Brachiano in The White Devil (Webster), which were never in the King’s Men’s repertory. This must also cast doubts on suggestions that he played “young Romeo” and “the red‐haired Jew,” for which we have no further sanction. The version printed in English Professional Theatre, 1530–1660, however, appears to be authentic (its invocation to a limner – a painter – once more rings true) and it pays sufficient tribute:
Some skillful limner help me; if not so,
Some sad tragedian help t’express my woe.
But O he’s gone, that could both best; both limn
And act my grief …
He’s gone, and with him what a world are dead,
Which he reviv’d, to be revived so.
No more young Hamlet, old Hieronimo.
Kind Lear, the grieved Moor, and more beside
That lived in him, have now forever died.
Oft have I seen him leap into the grave,
Suiting the person, which he seem’d to have,
Of a sad lover, with so true an eye
That there I would have sworn he meant to die …
(1–4, 12–20)29
A more pithy epitaph said only “Exit Burbage.”