Shakespeare and the Modern Stage Part 2

As the Ghost vanished and the air rang mysteriously with his piercing words "Remember me," we would like to imagine the whole intelligence of Elizabethan England responding to that cry as it sprang on its first utterance in the theatre from the great dramatist's own lips.

Since that memorable day, at any rate, the whole intelligence of the world has responded to that cry with all Hamlet's ecstasy, and with but a single modification of the phraseology:--

Remember thee!

Ay, thou _great soul_, while memory holds a seat In this distracted globe.

III

There is a certain justification, in fact, for the fancy that the _plaudites_ were loud and long, when Shakespeare created the role of the "poor ghost" in the first production of his play of _Hamlet_ in 1602. There is no doubt at all that Shakespeare conspicuously caught the ear of the Elizabethan playgoer at a very early date in his career, and that he held it firmly for life. "These plays," wrote two of his professional a.s.sociates of the reception of the whole series in the playhouse in his lifetime--"These plays have had their trial already, and stood out all appeals." Matthew Arnold, apparently quite unconsciously, echoed the precise phrase when seeking to express poetically the universality of Shakespeare's reputation in our own day.

Others abide our judgment, thou art free,

is the first line of Arnold's well-known sonnet, which attests the rank allotted to Shakespeare in the literary hierarchy by the professional critic, nearly two and a half centuries after the dramatist's death. There was no narrower qualification in the apostrophe of Shakespeare by Ben Jonson, a very critical contemporary:--

Soul of _the age_, The applause, delight, and wonder of _our stage_.

This play of _Hamlet_, this play of his "which most kindled English hearts," received a specially enthusiastic welcome from Elizabethan playgoers. It was acted within its first year of production repeatedly ("divers times"), not merely in London "and elsewhere," but also--an unusual distinction--at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. It was reprinted four times within eight years of its birth.

Thus the charge sometimes brought against the Elizabethan playgoer of failing to recognise Shakespeare's sovereign genius should be reckoned among popular errors. It was not merely the recognition of the critical and highly educated that Shakespeare received in person. It was by the voice of the half-educated populace, whose heart and intellect were for once in the right, that he was acclaimed the greatest interpreter of human nature that literature had known, and, as subsequent experience has proved, was likely to know. There is evidence that throughout his lifetime and for a generation afterwards his plays drew crowds to pit, boxes, and gallery alike. It is true that he was one of a number of popular dramatists, many of whom had rare gifts, and all of whom glowed with a spark of the genuine literary fire. But Shakespeare was the sun in the firmament: when his light shone, the fires of all contemporaries paled in the contemporary playgoer's eye. There is forcible and humorous portrayal of human frailty and eccentricity in plays of Shakespeare's contemporary, Ben Jonson. Ben Jonson was a cla.s.sical scholar, which Shakespeare was not.

Jonson was as well versed in Roman history as a college tutor. But when Shakespeare and Ben Jonson both tried their hands at dramatising episodes in Roman history, the Elizabethan public of all degrees of intelligence welcomed Shakespeare's efforts with an enthusiasm which they rigidly withheld from Ben Jonson's. This is how an ordinary playgoer contrasted the reception of Jonson's Roman play of _Catiline's Conspiracy_ with that of Shakespeare's Roman play of _Julius Caesar_:--

So have I seen when Caesar would appear, And on the stage at half-sword parley were Brutus and Ca.s.sius--oh! how the audience Were ravished, with what wonder they went thence; When some new day they would not brook a line Of tedious though well-laboured Catiline.

Shakespeare was the popular favourite. It is rare that the artist who is a hero with the mult.i.tude is also a hero with the cultivated few.

But Shakespeare's universality of appeal was such as to include among his wors.h.i.+ppers from the first the trained and the untrained playgoer of his time.

IV

Very early in his career did Shakespeare attract the notice of the cultivated section of Elizabeth's Court, and hardly sufficient notice has been taken by students of the poet's biography of the earliest recognition accorded him by the great queen, herself an inveterate lover of the drama, and an embodiment of the taste of the people in literature. The story is worth retelling. In the middle of December 1594, Queen Elizabeth removed from Whitehall to Greenwich to spend Christmas at that palace of Greenwich in which she was born sixty-one years earlier. And she made the celebration of Christmas of 1594 more memorable than any other in the annals of her reign or in the literary history of the country by summoning Shakespeare to Court. It was less than eight years since the poet had first set foot in the metropolis.

His career was little more than opened. But by 1594 Shakespeare had given his countrymen unmistakable indications of the stuff of which he was made. His progress had been more sure than rapid. A young man of two-and-twenty, burdened with a wife and three children, he had left his home in the little country town of Stratford-on-Avon in 1586 to seek his fortune in London. Without friends, without money, he had, like any other stage-struck youth, set his heart on becoming an actor in the metropolis. Fortune favoured him. He sought and won the humble office of call-boy in a London playhouse; but no sooner had his foot touched the lowest rung of the theatrical ladder than his genius taught him that the topmost rung was within his reach. He tried his hand on the revision of an old play, and the manager was not slow to recognise an unmatched gift for dramatic writing.

It was not probably till 1591, when Shakespeare was twenty-seven, that his earliest original play, _Love's Labour's Lost_, was performed. It showed the hand of a beginner; it abounded in trivial witticisms. But above all, there shone out clearly and unmistakably the dramatic and poetic fire, the humorous outlook on life, the insight into human feeling, which were to inspire t.i.tanic achievements in the future.

Soon after, Shakespeare scaled the tragic heights of _Romeo and Juliet_, and he was hailed as the prophet of a new world of art.

Fas.h.i.+onable London society then, as now, befriended the theatre.

Cultivated n.o.blemen offered their patronage to promising writers for the stage, and Shakespeare soon gained the ear of the young Earl of Southampton, one of the most accomplished and handsome of the queen's n.o.ble courtiers, who was said to spend nearly all his time in going to the playhouse every day. It was at Southampton's suggestion, that, in the week preceding the Christmas of 1594, the Lord Chamberlain sent word to The Theatre in Sh.o.r.editch, where Shakespeare was at work as playwright and actor, that the poet was expected at Court on two days following Christmas, in order to give his sovereign on the two evenings a taste of his quality. He was to act before her in his own plays.

It cannot have been Shakespeare's promise as an actor that led to the royal summons. His histrionic fame had not progressed at the same rate as his literary repute. He was never to win the laurels of a great actor. His most conspicuous triumph on the stage was achieved in middle life as the Ghost in his own _Hamlet_, and he ordinarily confined his efforts to old men of secondary rank. Ample compensation was provided by his companions for his personal deficiencies as an actor on his first visit to Court; he was to come supported by actors of the highest eminence in their generation. Directions were given that the greatest of the tragic actors of the day, Richard Burbage, and the greatest of the comic actors, William Kemp, were to bear the young actor-dramatist company. With neither of these was Shakespeare's histrionic position then or at any time comparable. For years they were leaders of the acting profession.

Shakespeare's relations with Burbage and Kemp were close, both privately and professionally. Almost all Shakespeare's great tragic characters were created on the stage by Burbage, who had lately roused London to enthusiasm by his stirring presentation of Shakespeare's _Richard III._ for the first time. As long as Kemp lived, he conferred a like service on many of Shakespeare's comic characters; and he had recently proved his worth as a Shakespearean comedian by his original rendering of the part of Peter, the Nurse's graceless attendant, in _Romeo and Juliet_. Thus stoutly backed, Shakespeare appeared for the first time in the royal presence-chamber of Greenwich Palace on the evening of St Stephen's Day (the Boxing Day of subsequent generations) in 1594.

Extant doc.u.mentary evidence attests that Shakespeare and his two a.s.sociates performed one "comedy or interlude" on that night of Boxing Day in 1594, and gave another "comedy or interlude" on the next night but one; that the Lord Chamberlain paid the three men for their services the sum of 13, 6s. 8d., and that the queen added to the honorarium, as a personal proof of her satisfaction, the further sum of 6, 13s. 4d. These were substantial sums in those days, when the purchasing power of money was eight times as much as it is to-day, and the three actors' reward would now be equivalent to 160.

Unhappily the record does not go beyond the payment of the money. What words of commendation or encouragement Shakespeare received from his royal auditor are not handed down, nor do we know for certain what plays were performed on the great occasion. All the scenes came from Shakespeare's repertory, and it is reasonable to infer that they were drawn from _Love's Labour's Lost_, which was always popular in later years at Elizabeth's Court, and from _The Comedy of Errors_, where the farcical confusions and horse-play were after the queen's own heart and robust taste. But nothing can be stated with absolute certainty except that on December 29 Shakespeare travelled up the river from Greenwich to London with a heavier purse and a lighter heart than on his setting out. That the visit had in all ways been crowned with success there is ample indirect evidence. He and his work had fascinated his sovereign, and many a time during her remaining nine years of life was she to seek delight again in the renderings of plays by himself and his fellow-actors at her palaces on the banks of the Thames. When Shakespeare was penning his new play of _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ next year, he could not forbear to make a pa.s.sing obeisance of gallantry (in that vein for which the old spinster queen was always thirsting) to "a fair vestal throned by the West," who pa.s.sed her life "in maiden meditation, fancy free."

Although literature and art can flourish without royal favour and royal patronage, still it is rare that royal patronage has any other effect than that of raising those who are its objects in the estimation of contemporaries. The interest that Shakespeare's work excited at Court was continuous throughout his life. When James I.

ascended the throne, no author was more frequently honoured by "command" performances of his plays in the presence of the sovereign.

And then, as now, the playgoer's appreciation was quickened by his knowledge that the play they were witnessing had been produced before the Court at Whitehall a few days earlier. Shakespeare's publishers were not above advertising facts like these, as may be seen by a survey of the t.i.tle-pages of editions published in his lifetime. "The pleasant conceited comedy called _Love's Labour's Lost_" was advertised with the appended words, "as it was presented before her highness this last Christmas." "A most pleasant and excellent conceited comedy of _Sir John Falstaff and the Merry Wives of Windsor_" was stated to have been "divers times acted both before her majesty and elsewhere." The great play of _Lear_ was advertised, "as it was played before the king's majesty at Whitehall on St Stephen's night in the Christmas holidays."

V

Although Shakespeare's illimitable command of expression, his universality of knowledge and insight, cannot easily be overlooked by any man or woman of ordinary human faculty, still, from some points of view, there is ground for surprise that the Elizabethan playgoer's enthusiasm for Shakespeare's work was so marked and unequivocal as we know that it was.

Let us consider for a moment the physical conditions of the theatre, the methods of stage representation, in Shakespeare's day. Theatres were in their infancy. The theatre was a new inst.i.tution in social life for Shakespeare's public, and the whole system of the theatrical world came into being after Shakespeare came into the world. In estimating Shakespeare's genius one ought to bear in mind that he was a pioneer--almost the creator or first designer--of English drama, as well as the practised workman in unmatched perfection. There were before his day some efforts made at dramatic representation. The Middle Ages had their miracle plays and moralities and interludes. But of poetic, literary, romantic drama, England knew nothing until Shakespeare was of age. Marlowe, who in his early years inaugurated English tragedy, was Shakespeare's senior by only two months. It was not till 1576, when Shakespeare was twelve, that London for the first time possessed a theatre--a building definitely built for the purpose of presenting plays. Before that year, inn-yards or platforms, which were improvised in market-places or fields, served for the performance of interludes or moralities.

Nor was it precisely in London proper that this primal theatre, which is known in history simply as The Theatre, was set up. London in Shakespeare's day was a small town, barely a mile square, with a population little exceeding 60,000 persons. Within the circuit of the city-walls vacant s.p.a.ces were spa.r.s.e, and public opinion deprecated the erection of buildings upon them. Moreover, the puritan clergy and their pious flocks, who const.i.tuted an active section of the citizens, were inclined to resist the conversion of any existing building into such a Satanic trap for unwary souls as they believed a playhouse of necessity to be.

It was, accordingly, in the fields near London, not in London itself, that the first theatre was set up. Adjoining the city lay pleasant meadows, which were bright in spring-time with daisies and violets.

Green lanes conducted the wayfarer to the rural retreat of Islington, and citizens went for change of air to the rustic seclusion of Mary-le-bone. A site for the first-born of London playhouses was chosen in the s.p.a.cious fields of Finsbury and Sh.o.r.editch, which the Great Eastern Railway now occupies. The innovation of a theatre, even though it were placed outside the walls of the city, excited serious misgiving among the G.o.dly minority. But, after much controversy, the battle was finally won by the supporters of the play, and The Theatre was launched on a prosperous career. Two or three other theatres quickly sprang up in neighbouring parts of London's environment. When Shakespeare was reaching the zenith of his career, the centre of theatrical life was transferred from Sh.o.r.editch to the Southwark bank of the river Thames, at the south side of London Bridge, which lay outside the city's boundaries, but was easy of access to residents within them. It was at the Globe Theatre on Bankside, which was reached by bridge or by boat from the city-side of the river, that Shakespearean drama won its most glorious triumphs.

VI

Despite the gloomy warnings of the preachers, the new London theatres had for the average Elizabethan all the fascination that a new toy has for a child. The average Elizabethan repudiated the jeremiads of the ultra-pious, and instantaneously became an enthusiastic playgoer.

During the last year of the sixteenth century, an intelligent visitor to London, Thomas Platter, a native of Basle, whose journal has recently been discovered,[6] described with ingenuous sympathy the delight which the populace displayed in the new playhouses.

[Footnote 6: Professor Binz of Basle printed in September 1899 some extracts from Thomas Platter's unpublished diary of travels under the t.i.tle: _Londoner Theater und Schauspiele im Jahre 1599_. Platter spent a month in London--September 18 to October 20, 1599. Platter's ma.n.u.script is in the Library of Basle University.]

Some attractions which the theatres offered had little concern with the drama. Their advantages included the privileges of eating and drinking while the play was in progress. After the play there was invariably a dance on the stage, often a brisk and boisterous Irish jig.

Other features of the entertainment seem to have been less exhilarating. The ma.s.s of the spectators filled the pit, where there was standing room only; there were no seats. The admission rarely cost more than a penny; but there was no roof. The rain beat at pleasure on the heads of the "penny" auditors; while pickpockets commonly plied their trade among them without much hindrance when the piece absorbed the attention of the "house." Seats or benches were only to be found in the two galleries, the larger portions of which were separated into "rooms" or boxes; prices there ranged from twopence to half-a-crown.

If the playgoer had plenty of money at his command he could, according to the German visitor, hire not only a seat but a cus.h.i.+on to elevate his stature; "so that," says our author, "he might not only see the play, but"--what is also often more important for rich people--"be seen" by the audience to be occupying a specially distinguished place.

Fas.h.i.+onable playgoers of the male s.e.x might, if they opened their purses wide enough, occupy stools on the wide platform-stage. Such a practice proved embarra.s.sing, not only to the performers, but to those who had to content themselves with the penny pit. Standing in front and by the sides of the projecting stage, they could often only catch glimpses of the actors through c.h.i.n.ks in serried ranks of stools.

The histrionic and scenic conditions, in which Shakespeare's plays were originally produced, present a further series of disadvantages which, from our modern point of view, render the more amazing the unqualified enthusiasm of the Elizabethan playgoer.

There was no scenery, although there were crude endeavours to create scenic illusion by means of "properties" like rocks, tombs, caves, trees, tables, chairs, and pasteboard dishes of food. There was at the outset no music, save flourishes on trumpets at the opening of the play and between the acts. The scenes within each act were played continuously without pause. The bare boards of the platform-stage, which no proscenium nor curtain darkened, projected so far into the auditorium, that the actors spoke in the very centre of the house.

Trap-doors were in use for the entrance of "ghosts" and other mysterious personages. At the back of the stage was a raised platform or balcony, from which often hung loose curtains; through them the actors pa.s.sed to the forepart of the stage. The balcony was pressed into the service when the text of the play indicated that the speakers were not actually standing on the same level. From the raised platform Juliet addressed Romeo in the balcony scene, and the citizens of Angers in _King John_ held colloquy with the English besiegers. This was, indeed, almost the furthest limit of the Elizabethan stage-manager's notion of scenic realism. The boards, which were bare save for the occasional presence of rough properties, were held to present adequate semblance, as the play demanded, of a king's throne-room, a chapel, a forest, a s.h.i.+p at sea, a mountainous pa.s.s, a market-place, a battle-field, or a churchyard.

The costumes had no pretensions to fit the period or place of the action. They were the ordinary dresses of various cla.s.ses of the day, but were often of rich material, and in the height of the current fas.h.i.+on. False hair and beards, crowns and sceptres, mitres and croziers, armour, helmets, s.h.i.+elds, vizors, and weapons of war, hoods, bands, and ca.s.socks, were mainly relied on to indicate among the characters differences of rank or profession.

The foreign observer, Thomas Platter of Basle, was impressed by the splendour of the actors' costumes. He accounted for it in a manner that negatives any suggestion of dramatic propriety:--

"The players wear the most costly and beautiful dresses, for it is the custom in England, that when n.o.blemen or knights die, they leave their finest clothes to their servants, who, since it would not be fitting for them to wear such splendid garments, sell them soon afterwards to the players for a small sum."

The most striking defect in the practice of the Elizabethan playhouse, according to accepted notions, lies in the allotment of the female roles. It was thought unseemly for women to act at all. Female parts were played by boys or men--a subst.i.tution lacking, from the modern point of view, in grace and seemliness. But the standard of propriety in such matters varies from age to age. Shakespeare alludes quite complacently to the appearance of boys and men in women's parts. He makes Rosalind say, laughingly and saucily, to the men of the audience in the epilogue to _As You Like It_: "If I were a woman I would kiss as many of you as had beards that pleased me." "_If I were_ a woman," she says. The jest lies in the fact that the speaker was not a woman but a boy. Similarly, Cleopatra on her downfall in _Antony and Cleopatra_, (V. ii. 220), laments

the quick comedians Extemporally will stage us ... and I shall see Some squeaking Cleopatra _boy_ my greatness.

The experiment of entrusting a boy with the part of Ophelia was lately tried in London not unsuccessfully; but it is difficult to realise how a boy or young man could adequately interpret most of Shakespeare's female characters. It seems almost sacrilegious to conceive the part of Cleopatra, the most highly sensitised in its minutest details of all dramatic portrayals of female character,--it seems almost sacrilegious to submit Cleopatra's sublimity of pa.s.sion to interpretation by an unfledged representative of the other s.e.x. Yet such solecisms were imperative under the theatrical system of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Men taking women's parts seem to have worn masks, but that can hardly have improved matters.

Flute, when he complains that it would hardly befit him to play a woman's part because he had a beard coming, is bidden by his resourceful manager, Quince, play Thisbe in a "mask." At times actors who had long lost the roses of youth masqueraded in women's roles.

Thereby the ungainliness, which marked the distribution of the cast in Elizabethan and Jacobean playhouses, was often forced into stronger light.

It was not till the seventeenth century was well advanced that women were permitted to act in public theatres. Then the gracelessness of the masculine method was acknowledged and deplored. It was the character of Desdemona which was first undertaken by a woman, and the absurdity of the old practice was noticed in the prologue written for this revival of _Oth.e.l.lo_, which was made memorable by the innovation.

Some lines in the prologue describe the earlier system thus:--

For to speak truth, men act, that are between Forty or fifty, wenches of fifteen, With bone so large and nerve so uncompliant, When you call Desdemona, enter Giant.