The move to the Globe thus coincided with a whole new, and possibly unanticipated, London theatrical marketplace. A much‐mythologized symptom of this, in the early years of the new century, was the so‐called War of the Theatres, in which a number of dramatists – notably Jonson, Marston, Chapman, and Dekker – traded boasts and insults in their plays. Scholars used to expend a lot of ink tracking these insults and the supposed personal rancour behind them. It is now more common to see the whole thing as a commercial publicity exercise, though informed by a keen sensitivity to new styles and experimentation, in which the boy companies sought to establish niche places within this new theatrical economy (see, in particular, Knutson, 2001; Bednarz, 2001; Steggle, 1998). It succeeded as well as it did not least because Jonson invested his considerable ego in championing the Children of the Chapel at the Blackfriars, who staged his next two plays.
Whether Shakespeare joined him and the others in this is something of a moot point. In The Second Part of the Return to Parnassus, a student satirical play written for festivities at St John’s College, Cambridge (circa 1601/2), “Dick Burbage” and “Will Kemp” purportedly appear as themselves, and the latter says “Why here’s our fellow Shakespeare puts them all down, aye and Ben Jonson too. O that Ben Jonson is a pestilent fellow; he brought up Horace giving the poets a pill, but our fellow Shakespeare hath given him a purge that made him beray his credit” (Anon, 1949, 4.3.1769–73). How much students at Cambridge really knew about London theatre is not easy to determine. But the reference to “Horace giving the poets a pill” is apt enough, referring to a scene in Jonson’s Poetaster (5.3), one of the central texts in the “War,” in which the urbane Roman satirist administered pills to thinly disguised versions of Marston and Dekker, to make them belch up their turgid language. What “purge,” if any, Shakespeare may have administered to Jonson has been a matter of much unresolved debate.
But the sense of a celebrity culture reflected in the student play (where Burbage, Kemp, Shakespeare and Jonson are all familiar names – though the authors seem not to know that Kemp and Shakespeare have parted company) does make it the more likely that London audiences entered into the spirit of these authorial and company antagonisms, and this may have boosted attendances for all concerned. An illuminating sidelight on the whole affair is cast by Thomas Dekker’s Satiromastix, or, The Untrussing of the Humorous Poet, which tells us on its title‐page that “it hath been presented publicly by the Right Honourable, the Lord Chamberlain his Servants, and in private by the Children of Paul’s.” This was a unique collaboration / cross‐over, which must have been very different in style and resonance as presented in the two houses. But it makes sense. The Blackfriars operation was a threat to both of these companies, who were not really a threat to each other. Dekker at this date usually wrote for the Admiral’s Men. But he had been one of Jonson’s clear targets in Poetaster, and to an extent the satire of that play is aimed at both of the duopoly companies.
Satiromastix, staged later in 1601, is a clear riposte – the poet whose “humour” is to be “untrussed” is “Horace,” a thinly veiled Jonson. But in addition to the ad hominem (but actually quite humorous) attacks on Dekker and Marston, Poetaster contains much darker satire, aimed at various constituencies. One of these is the adult players, Histrio and Aesop, who are associated with “your Globes and your triumphs” (3.4.163) and so, inevitably, with the Chamberlain’s Men. They act as informers for the asinine magistrate, Asinius Lupus, and for this Aesop is promised “a monopoly of playing confirmed to thee and thy covey under the emperor’s broad seal” (5. 3.103–4). Even the ultra‐cautious E. K. Chambers is led to wonder whether this can be an allusion to the part Augustine Phillips played in speaking to the authorities about the Richard II performance given on the eve of the Essex rebellion (ES, 1: 385n: see p. 153). Is the suggestion that the Chamberlain’s Men have secured their privileged playing position by acting as informers to the government?
If so, Jonson must certainly also have had in mind his own experience in respect of The Isle of Dogs (see p. 221). He later told of how, when he was imprisoned for it, “his judges could get nothing of him to all his demands but ‘ay’ and ‘no.’ They placed two damned villains to catch advantage of him, with him, but he was advertised by his keeper” (Jonson 2012 k, lines 194–6). One agenda in the Isle of Dogs affair was clearly to preserve the Privy Council’s privileges for its chosen acting companies. Government informers and the preservation of the “duopoly” would naturally go together in Jonson’s mind. The whole arrangement rankled deeply with him – and doubtless with others outside the charmed circle – whose opportunities to perform in London were seriously circumscribed. The timely reappearance of the boy companies must have seemed a godsend to Jonson.
Dekker turns all of Jonson’s self‐righteous indignation back on itself. He has Tucca remind Horace / Jonson of his humble beginnings as a player and what has made him the scornful poet he is today:
I ha’ seen thy shoulders lapped in a player’s old cast cloak, like a sly knave as thou art: and when thou ranst mad for the death of Horatio, thou borrowedst a gown of Roscius the stager, (that honest Nicodemus) and sent’st it home lousy, didst not? (1.2.354–8)
thou put’st up a supplication to be a poor journeyman player, and hadst been still so, but that thou couldst not set a good face upon’t. Thou hast forgot how thou amblest (in leather pilch) by a play‐wagon, in the highway, and took’st mad Jeronimo’s part, to get service among the mimics. And when the stagerites banished thee into the Isle of Dogs, thou turn’dst ban‐dog (villainous guy) and ever since bitest; therefore I ask if th’ast been at Paris‐garden, because thou hast such a good mouth. Thou bait’st well; read, lege, save thy self and read. (4.1.128–36)
Dekker’s review of Jonson’s humble beginnings as an actor casts an interesting light on the profession. He had evidently been a player in an itinerant troupe, without a London base, and was remembered for playing Hieronimo in The Spanish Tragedy, though he was only a journeyman or hireling, not a sharer; he had worn a distinctive rough leather outer‐garment (“pilch”), the mark of a laborer – perhaps sneering at his former trade as a bricklayer. If there is any truth in the tale of the borrowed cloak, returned infected with lice, “Roscius” would have to one of the very finest actors – perhaps Alleyn or Burbage.
Dekker traces Jonson’s current pretensions as a satirist “ban‐dog” (attack‐dog, such as would be used for bear‐baiting in Paris Garden) specifically to the Isle of Dogs business. He turns the knife savagely in the exhortation to “read, lege, save thy self and read” – the touch of Latin making it clear that he is recalling the reading of “neck‐verse” by which Jonson escaped hanging for the death of Gabriel Spencer (p. 39). And he rubs salt in this wound again later, referring to his “white neck‐verse” and pronouncing a death sentence on him: “that presently he be had from hence, to his place of execution, and there be stabbed, stabbed, stabbed. (He stabs at him)” (4.3.105‐6, 27–9). A man who has killed a fellow‐actor should perhaps think twice before criticizing others of “the quality.” If the “War of the Theaters” was at heart a publicity exercise among rivals finding their feet in the new marketplace, it was nevertheless fueled by genuine anxieties and antagonisms.
Notes
1 See The Tempest, 4.1.153.2 The original document can be seen at http://www.henslowe‐alleyn.org.uk/images/Muniments‐Series‐1/Group‐022/01r.html, courtesy of the Henslowe–Alleyn Digitization Project.3 The modern day reconstruction known as Shakespeare’s Globe, on the Bankside, was built on the assumption that the original was 20‐sided and 100 feet in diameter. The other major differences from the original are that it is some 750 feet from the original site, is further from the Thames – which was much wider in Shakespeare’s day – and can only hold an audience of about 1,500, compared with 3,000 in 1599 (see n. 276 Note 34).4 Note the complaint in the 1635 Sharers’ Papers about the profits which the housekeepers derived from the galleries “and of the tiring house door at the Globe” (Gurr 2004a: 273).5 It is not beyond dispute that the lords’ rooms were in this position. Gabriel Egan argues that “the Lords Room was in the lowest gallery at the side of the stage” (1997, 308). With respect, I think he takes over‐literally a passage in Dekker’s The Gull’s Horn‐Bookwhich speaks of the practice of sitting on the stage as it were upstaging the lords’ rooms, rendering them “but the stage’s suburbs” (see p. 295). He reasons that “the Lords Room is not in the stage balcony because such a position could not be obscured” (306). But surely it is at least as likely that Dekker means metaphorically overshadowed as literally obscured.6Strictly speaking Hollar’s pictures are of the second Globe, built after the original burned down. But we know that it was built on the foundations of the original and so must have been very similar in size.7 Paul’s Boys were a much smaller operation than the Blackfriars and never really seen as a threat. In the so‐called “War of the Theaters” they collaborated with the Chamberlain’s Men in both staging Dekker’s Satiromastix, a reply to Jonson’s self‐aggrandizement in his Blackfriars plays.8 By 1603 Prince Henry’s Men (formerly the Admiral’s) were using Henslowe’s Fortune playhouse, and Queen Anne’s Men (formerly Worcester’s) the Rose. The latter left circa 1606 to take over the new Red Bull playhouse, which was not owned by Henslowe.9 Hotson also argues, much more eccentrically, that this arrangement rendered a tiring house non‐viable in the position which we normally take it to have occupied, and that it was consequently placed underground. Skeptics would say it is perhaps surprising that the Fortune contract makes no mention of anything like this.10 The contract calls this measurement the “length”, but it clearly refers to the width at the front edge of the stage.11 We may have to enter an exception for the public inns which the players used, in part because we know so little about their staging. It is clear that some of them, at least, had galleries for which patrons doubtless paid higher prices. But whether any of those patrons became a focus of attention for the rest of the audience, as I argue was the case at the Globe and elsewhere, we simply do not know.12 Barnes, 1999, 5–6. (There is no lineation.) Note that I have not adopted editorial amendments, made in square brackets, but kept to the original text.13 The burning of incense was a charged issue during the Counter‐Reformation, but it was relatively common in the theatres. Elizabeth Williamson notes: “In at least ten plays [performed between 1573 and 1642] incense is used onstage during performance” (2016, 20). She includes Jonson’s Sejanus, a Globe play, and Shakespeare and Fletcher’s The Two Noble Kinsmen and Fletcher’s Bonduca, both of which were either Globe or Backfriars plays, or both.14 Cf. The Merry Devil of Edmonton (pub. 1608): “Enter Sir Ralph Clare and Sir Arthur Jeringham, trussing their points new up”; “Enter Blague trussing his points.”15 Cf. Q2 Romeo and Juliet calls for “torchbearers” (1.4.0 SD); The London Prodigal (pub. 1605): “Enter a citizen’s wife with a torch before her.”16 The first quarto of Hamlet does not call for music; the second quarto specifies trumpets. Lucy Munro makes the point that when the adult companies moved into indoor playhouses, like the Blackfriars, they began “to use quieter instruments such as recorders, cornets, and hautboys more extensively” (2009, 549). All of the Shakespearean instances cited here occur in texts first printed in the 1623 folio, so they may reflect usage in the Blackfriars rather than the Globe. This is not to say that hautboys may not have been used at the Globe, only that their use was probably rarer than it was to be in the indoor playhouse.17 If the first Globe did not have descent machinery there is a good chance that the 1614 replacement would have had it, so that it could accommodate plays written for the Blackfriars, which clearly did have it.18 The Revenger’s Tragedy was published as by Cyril Tourneur, but modern scholarship generally favors Middleton as the author.19 The bear in The Winter’s Talewas a man in a bear suit: see p. 313.20 The Queen in 2 Henry VI does enter “with her hawk on her fist”, as the early version tells us (The First Part of the Contention”, C1v); this is at 2.1.0 in modern texts. But the hawk is never involved in the action – its purpose is to symbolize royal power – and it is a moot point whether it was a live bird.21 In A Larum for London (pub. 1602), the villainous Duke D’Alva pretends to be dead and is “carried upon a horse covered with black.” But he is later clearly on a hearse, so it is possible that the earlier reading was a mistranscription.22 All three plays were reprinted during Shakespeare’s time at the Globe, in 1611, 1608, and 1609 respectively, a possible mark that they were revived at that time (Knutson, 1991, 12–13, 81). None would require more than a portion of the lords’ rooms.23 Richard III was one of the most reprinted of all Shakespeare’s plays, suggesting that it remained firmly in the repertoire in playhouse after playhouse. It first appeared in 1597 and then again the next year. During Shakespeare’s Globe years it was reprinted in 1602, 1605, and 1612.24 Joseph is much less hardline about all this in the second edition of his book (1964).25 “An Excellent Actor” was included in Sir John Overbury’s Characters (1615), but it is generally agreed to have been written by the dramatist John Webster. “Characters” of the kind presented by Overbury and others were prose essays modeled on the work of the classical Greek writer, Theophrastus, offering brief sketches of human types who demonstrate particular faults, such as vanity, toadying, or churlishness. English examples did not restrict themselves to characters embodying faults, but they retained the emphasis on typicality – human nature is conceived of predominantly as a matter of conforming to type, not of expressing individual complexity and difference. See p. 257ff.26 I am aware that, in relation to modern acting, the Stanislavski approach is sometimes called “presentational”, which is confusing. I am trying to be consistent to the terms used about early modern acting.27 Royce, 2009. The Theatre, of course, only became “home” to the Chamberlain’s Men some twenty years after it was built. Joyce’s argument is that having a fixed venue of these proportions allowed the new style of Burbage and others to flourish, after the peripatetic lifestyle of being traveling players.28 “These imprese were insignia, allegorical or mythical, with appropriate mottoes, the whole painted on paper shields” and carried in the Accession day tilts at court (Schoenbaum, 1987, 272).29 On the reference to Hieronimo (i.e. Jeronimo) – the central character in Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy – see p. 281–4.30 The possibility that he originated the role of Iago as a kind of “diabolical” fool is given some credence by an eighteenth‐century report that the role was first played by a comedian. See Wills, 2011, 88–90.31 A ninth, King John, is the one outlier in terms of historical sequence.32 I have slightly amended Chambers’s translation, especially replacing “characters” with “persons.” The German is personen. Platter is surely commenting on the number of actors, not on their roles.33 A publisher tried to register Troilus and Cressida for printing in February 1603, but was required to get further authority (ES, 3: 487).34 The Epilogue to Jonson, Chapman and Marston’s Eastward Ho! (1605) concludes “May this [play] attract you, hither, once a week” (Jonson 2012e, line 8). On estimates of seating at the Blackfriars, see p. 270. De Witt estimated the capacity of the Swan as 3,000 spectators. When A Game at Chess played at the second Globe in August 1624, the Spanish Ambassador reported that “during these last four days more than 12,000 persons have all heard the play” (quoted in Middleton, 1993, 197).