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Introduction
A History of the Theatre, the scholarly work of Mantzius, has had no time to become a classic–published 1904–but certainly the author has delved into his subject with a minuteness and presented it with a lively interest which fully justify the selection of his work for presentation here.
The theatre has become so prominent an institution among us that its origin must be of interest to all; and the building of the first theatre is inextricably interwoven with the larger and vaguer story of the rise of the modern drama itself. The dramatic arts of Greece and Rome had never been wholly forgotten. Their traditions survived in Italy in the crude pantomime performances of the common people. Practically, however, the Middle Ages invented a new dramatic art of their own, developed from the gorgeous religious pantomime of the church services. The theatre was born of the cathedral; the stage, of the altar.
The plays, at first purely religious, rapidly developed a comic side, which by degrees became their central theme. The moral purpose of the performance was forgotten; and the Church disowned its evil changeling. To none of these early plays can the term “drama” be accurately applied; for each and all of them lack plot. They are merely a series of disconnected scenes, pictures having small connection and less development. The idea of pursuing a single, slowly developing story to its climax and conclusion dawns upon the modern stage only with the English Elizabethan drama.
Despite our imperfect knowledge of the plays and players of that time, one feels almost justified in saying that the modern drama was created about 1580 by Christopher Marlowe and was raised to the highest point of its development about 1600 by William Shakespeare.
This selection is by Karl Mantzius.
Time: 1576
Place: London
At the date of Shakespeare’s birth, 1564, no permanent theatre as yet existed in England. But there had long existed a class of professional actors, descended partly from the mystery and the miracle-playing artisans of the Middle Ages, partly from the strolling players, equilibrists, jugglers, and jesters. Professional Italian actors, players of the _commedia dell’arte_, who in the sixteenth century spread their gay and varied art all over Europe, also supplied English players with that touch of professional technique in which their somewhat vacillating and half-amateurish arts were still wanting.
While, however, as far as France is concerned, the Italian influence must strike everybody who studies the stage history of the country, the evidence of a fertilization of English scenic art by the commedia dell’ arte is scanty. Yet I think it is sufficient to deserve more attention than has hitherto been bestowed upon it.
In any case there is sufficient evidence to prove that Italian professional actors penetrated into England and exercised their art there.
In January, 1577, an Italian comedian came to London with his company. The English called him Drousiano, but his real name was Drousiano Martinelli, the same who, with his brother Tristano, visited the court of Philip II, and there is no reason to suppose that he was either the first or the last of his countrymen who tried to carry off English gold from merry London. The typical Italian masks are quite well known to the authors of that period. Thus Thomas Heywood mentions all these doctors, zanies, pantaloons, and harlequins, in which the French, and still more the Italians, distinguished themselves. In Kyd’s _Spanish Tragedy_, and in Ben Jonson’s _The Case is Altered_, mention is made of the Italian improvised comedy, and a few of the well-known types of character in the dramatic literature of the time bear distinct traces of having been influenced by Italian masks, _e.g._, Ralph Roister Doister in Udall’s comedy of that name; as well as the splendid Captain Bobadill and his no less amusing companion, Captain Tucca, in Ben Jonson’s _Every Man in his Humour_ and _The Poetaster_, all of which are reproductions of the typical _capitano_.
However, it is not these literary testimonies that I consider the most striking evidence of the influence of Italian professional technique on English professional actors. It is a remarkable discovery made by the highly esteemed Shakespearean archaeologist, Edmund Malone, about a century ago, in Dulwich College, that mine of ancient English dramatic research, founded by the actor Edward Alleyn.
Among the notes left by the old pawnbroker and theatrical manager, Henslowe, and the various papers, letters, parts, accounts, etc., of his son-in-law, the famous and very wealthy actor Alleyn, among these rare documents, to which we owe a great part of our knowledge of the Shakespearean stage, Malone found four remarkable card-board tables, on which the plots of as many plays were put down, together with the names of the persons represented, their entrances and exits, cues for music, sonnets, etc.
According to Collier’s description, these tables–one of which only is preserved, the three others having disappeared through the carelessness and disorder which at that time prevailed in the Dulwich treasury–were about fifteen inches in length and nine in breadth. They were divided into two columns, and between these, toward the top of the table, there was a square hole for hanging it up on a hook or some such thing. They bore the following titles:
1. The Plotte of the Deade Man’s Fortune. 2. The Plotte of the First Parte of Tamar Cain. 3. The Plotte of Frederick and Basilea. 4. The Plotte of the Second Parte of the Seven Deadlie Sinns.
The last-mentioned play is known for certain to have been composed by the excellent comic actor, Richard Tarlton. Gabriel Harvey, the astrologist, and the implacable antagonist of Thomas Nash, tells us in his letters how Tarlton himself in Oxford invited him to see his celebrated play on _The Seven Deadly Sins_; Harvey asked him which of the seven was his own deadly sin, and he instantly replied, “By G—-, the sinne of other gentlemen, lechery.”
Tarlton died in the year 1588, and some of the other plays, especially _The Dead Man’s Fortune_, are considered to be a good deal older than his. They belong, therefore, to an early period of the English Renaissance stage.
These four tables caused considerable trouble to Malone and his contemporary Steevens, as well as to later investigators, as they are without equals in the archæology of the English stage. If these men had known that such tables, containing the plot of the piece which was acted at the time, were always hung upon the stage of the Italian commedia dell’ arte in order to assist the memory of the improvising actors, they would have seen instantly that their essential historical importance to us consists in their showing by documentary evidence how the early Elizabethan scenic art in its outer form was influenced and improved by the Italians.
The fact that one of the principal characters in the oldest scenario, _The Dead Man’s Fortune_, bears the name of “Panteloun” further confirms this supposition.
This is not the place to investigate how far the English were influenced by Italian professional dramatic art. At any rate, the English national character differed too much from the Italian to allow it to receive more than an outward and formal stamp. And even this superficial effect is much less significant in England than in France. Still, we are certainly not mistaken in assuming that it helped to strengthen English dramatic art, which already possessed no small amount of power; and we may take it for granted that about the time of Shakespeare’s birth London possessed a socially and professionally organized class of actors, in spite of the fact that they did not yet possess a theatre of their own.
Before proper theatres were built, and after the time of the great mysteries, the actors found a refuge for their art chiefly in the inns, those splendid and expensive old public-houses which convey to our minds the idea of old-fashioned and picturesque comfort; where the nobility and clergy sought their quarters in winter, and where the carriers unloaded their goods in the large square yards, which were surrounded on all sides by the walls of the inn. On these walls there were galleries running all round, supported by wooden pillars and with steep picturesque ladders running up to them.
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