Building the First Theatre in England – 6

Today’s installment concludes Building the First Theatre In England,
our selection by Karl Mantzius.

If you have journeyed through all of the installments of this series, just one more to go and you will have completed a selection from the great works of six thousand words. Congratulations!

Previously in Building the First Theatre In England.

Time: 1576
Place: London

The repertoire of The Theatre also included the so-called “jigs,” merry after-plays, mostly consisting of songs and dances, with frequent allusions to the events of the day, sneering at the Puritans, the magistrates, and other enemies of the playhouses.

It has been briefly mentioned above that not long after the establishment of The Theatre–at the latest in the following year–this playhouse gained a companion in The Curtain, which thus became the second of its kind in London.

The two playhouses were very close to each other, but for this very reason it seems natural to suppose that they were rather meant to support than to rival each other. They were like a kind of double-barrelled gun directed against the corporation, and they seem, indeed, to an equal extent, to have roused the anger of the Puritans, for they are generally mentioned together in the Puritan pamphlets directed against playhouses and all other wickedness.

However, the history of The Curtain is almost unknown to us. While we know a good deal about the outward circumstances of The Theatre on account of the constant troubles which the Burbage family had to endure from the proprietor of the ground and the municipal authorities, and of the subsequent lawsuit, the reports we find about The Curtain are extremely meagre. We know neither when nor by whom it was built nor when it was pulled down.

By a mistake which is natural enough, its name has been connected with the front curtain of the stage. We shall see later that no such curtain existed in the time of Shakespeare, and we do not know that the background draperies of that period had the fixed name of “curtain.”

Anyhow, the possibility of this derivation is absolutely excluded by the fact that the spot on which the second London playhouse was built, for some unknown reason, bore the name of “Curtayne Close.” So the playhouse was simply named after the spot on which it was built.

As long as The Theatre stood close beside it, the two companies shared almost the same fate. We have seen that in 1597 an order was issued to pull down both playhouses; this order, however, was never carried out. But after the removal of The Theatre to Bankside, The Curtain seems to have gone its own way. The actors, on the whole, were not afraid of pleading their cause from the stage, and of retorting on the attacks of their assailants by lashing them with the whip of caricature, and it seems that those of The Curtain had gone a little too far in their Aristophanic parodies of their worthy fellow-citizens and chief magistrate; for in May, 1601, the justices of the peace for the county of Middlesex received the following admonition from the privy council: “We doo understand that certaine players that used to recyte their playes at the Curtaine in Moorefeilds, do represent upon the stage in their interludes the persons of some gent of good desert and quality that are yet alive under obscure manner, but yet in such sorte that all the hearers may take notice both of the matter and the persons that are meant thereby. This beinge a thinge verye unfitte, offensive and contrary, to such direction as have been heretofore taken, that no plaies should be openly shewed but such as were first perused and allowed, and that minister no occasion of offence or scandall, wee do hereby require you that you do forthwith forbidd those players to whomsoever they appertaine that do play at the Curtaine in Moorefeildes to represent any such play, and that you will examine them who made that play and to shew the same unto you, and as you in your discrecions shall thincke the same unfitte to be publiquely shewed to forbidd them from henceforth to play the same eyther privately or publiquely; and if upon veiwe of the said play you shall finde the subject so odious and inconvenient as is informed, wee require you to take bond of the chiefest of them to aunswere their rashe and indiscreete dealing before us.”

We know nothing of the result of this prosecution, but we may be allowed to assume that it did not result in very severe measures. We seem to read a certain concealed sympathy in the writ of the great lords, and we cannot help suspecting that it was the Puritan citizens who felt themselves hit and who brought the complaint. If the lords had been the butt of the mockery, no doubt the proceeding of the actors would have appeared to them much worse than “rashe and indiscreete.”

Until the Globe theatre was built, the Burbages most likely possessed a share in The Curtain. At any rate, their company used that building alternately with their own; no doubt, for instance, during the period between the pulling down of The Theatre and the building of the Globe. During this period they played (as “The Lord Chamberlain’s Men”), among other things, no less famous a piece than Ben Jonson’s _Every Man in His Humour_, which, according to old tradition, was accepted on the recommendation of Shakespeare, after having been put aside contemptuously by the other leading actors. This splendid play had an enormous success. Of Shakespeare’s plays, _Much Ado about Nothing_ and _The Second Part of King Henry IV_ were acted.

There is scarcely any reason for assuming, with Halliwell-Phillipps and Ordish, that the first performance of _Henry V_ took place at The Curtain. At the appearance of this play, in 1599, the Globe theatre was built, and we cannot doubt that it was here that this popular play saw the light. So the frequently mentioned “wooden O” in the prologue does not allude to The Curtain, but to the Globe.

The outward shape of The Curtain we must imagine to have been, like that of The Theatre, circular, and unroofed in the centre. It is generally supposed to have been somewhat smaller than Burbage’s first theatre.

The last period of the existence of The Curtain is enveloped in obscurity. But there is no reason to suppose that it did not continue to exist till all playhouses were put down, during the civil war, 1642-1647. If The Curtain was preserved as long as that, its life was longer than that of any other playhouse of the Shakespearean period.

This ends our series of passages on Building the First Theatre In England by Karl Mantzius. This blog features short and lengthy pieces on all aspects of our shared past. Here are selections from the great historians who may be forgotten (and whose work have fallen into public domain) as well as links to the most up-to-date developments in the field of history and of course, original material from yours truly, Jack Le Moine. – A little bit of everything historical is here.

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