Shakespeare, page 40
On the stage of the Globe an actor would enter at one door and exit at another. When a character or characters left the stage, they would not be the first to appear in the subsequent scene. These were important principles, designed to lend the impression of a dramatic world in process; theatrical life continued, as it were, “behind the scene.” There was an illusion of a flowing imaginative world, of which the actors on the stage were the visible token. It is also an indication of the formal fluency of Elizabethan drama, depending as it does upon contrast and symmetry, balance and opposition, of finely poised forces. The wide space allowed for speed and flexibility of plot. It is possible that the words were spoken much more quickly than in any modern performance. There were no acts, only scenes signalled by the various exits and entrances of the actors themselves. Act breaks were not introduced until approximately 1607. After a general exit, for example, a stage-property might be carried on by stagehands (wearing their blue livery) before other characters entered. The Elizabethan stage was not self-conscious about its procedures, the mechanics of stage “business,” and of course neither were the plays themselves. There was no appetite for realism, or naturalism, in any of its current senses.
The drama of the Globe, then, was largely built upon a succession of scenes. The sequence of scenes conforms to the English love of interdependent units, a series of variations upon a theme that encourages variety rather than concentration and heterogeneity rather than intensity. That is why a new entrance was always significant, and why it is heavily emphasised in the stage-directions. “Enter Cassandra with her hair aboute her eares … Enter a Troian in his night-gowne all vnready … Enter Godfrey as newly landed & halfe naked … Enter Charles all wet with his sword … Enter Er-cole with a letter …” These were defining moments in the creation of a scene. They represented purpose and character, setting in motion the subsequent action. The presence of the actor, what was known as “the ability of body,” was the paramount element of the dramatic entertainment. It is also possible that the player sometimes made his entry from the yard, perhaps from one of the entrances to the theatre, and then vaulted onto the stage.
The actor would come forward, and then deliver his lines to the audience. He did not enter a particular location; he entered in order to address or confront another actor. Speakers were also separated from non-speakers in the dramatic space. There were set patterns for scenes of greeting and of parting; there were stage conventions for kneeling and embracing. There were no doubt also accepted theatrical codes for asides and soliloquies, perhaps a particular placing of the body on stage. At the close of the performance the highest-ranking character left on stage delivered the final lines. The audience loved processions and marches and dumb-shows; it loved colour and display. There is a large element of ceremony or ritual about this theatre, in other words, which remained an important part in its staging.
It was a general setting, a blank space that actor and playwright could manipulate with perfect imaginative freedom. It has been suggested by some theatrical historians that place cards were set up to inform the audience of a particular setting, but this is perhaps too prescriptive. It was enough for the actor to announce his location. And of course the nature of the costumes also determined the nature of place. The green garment of a forester would signify a wood, a set of gaoler’s keys a prison. Costume was a most important theatrical device. In a visual culture it was the key to all levels of society and all forms of occupation. Elizabethan actors, and audiences, also delighted in disguise as a plot device. More was spent on costumes than on texts or actors’ salaries, and the inventory of the company wardrobe includes robes, cloaks, jerkins, doublets, breeches, tunics and nightshirts. And of course there was always a need for armour. In one of his inventories Henslowe also lists a range of more exotic costumes—a suit for a ghost and a senator’s gown, a coat for Herod as well as apparel for a devil and a witch. A good wardrobe master kept cast-offs and oddments of clothes, and there is reason to believe that the companies were sometimes given the remnants of a nobleman’s wardrobe of worn-out clothes and garments that had gone out of fashion. Clothing also determined the identity of the character. There were conventional costumes for the Jew and the Italian, the doctor and the merchant. A canvas suit indicated a sailor, and a blue coat was the token of a servant. Virgins wore white, and doctors were dressed in scarlet gowns. The female characters sometimes wore masks, as an overtly theatrical way of disguising their fundamentally male identity. In that sense the Elizabethan theatre has affiliations with classical Greek and Japanese drama.
There was no scenery as such, but on occasions painted cloths were used. In Henslowe’s theatrical accounts there is a description of “a clothe of the Sone & Moone.” They were not naturalistic, but were designed to convey an atmosphere or to suggest a theme. When romances were to be played, for example, there were cloths painted with cupids. When tragedies were to be performed, the stage was hung in black draperies.
There were a few stage-properties for each production, notably beds or tables and chairs. Allusions in play texts to trees may refer to the two pillars, holding up the canopy, which could be employed for a multitude of purposes. Realism was not an issue. Stools were left on stage for histrionic use; an actor might wish to sit upon them or to brandish them at an opponent. A scaffold could double as a monument or a pulpit. The list of properties for the Lord Admiral’s Men has survived; among them are noted a rock, a cave, a tomb, a bedstead, a bay tree, a boar’s head, a lion’s skin, a black dog and a wooden leg. Bladders of sheep’s blood were readily available for murders and battle scenes. It has been calculated, however, that 80 per cent of Shakespearian scenes written for the Globe needed no props at all.1 Shakespeare was content with a bare space in which to create his dramatic narratives. It is a very clear indication of his bounding imaginative energy.
CHAPTER 62
Then Let the Trumpets Sound
Words were not the only theatrical reality. There was much music. The little group of musicians in the balcony, no more than six or seven, would have included a trumpeter and a drummer, as well as players of horns, recorders, “hoboyes” or “hautboys” and lutes. There are also reports of actors playing instruments upon the stage itself. Alleyn was a lutanist, for example, and on his death Augustine Phillips bequeathed a bass viol, bandore, cittern and lute. The players certainly performed songs and ballads on stage, and they were chosen in part for the quality of their voices. Certain plays must have resembled “musicals” rather than dramas. Music was associated on the stage with sleep and healing, with love and death. It was employed as a prelude to supernatural visitations. And of course it accompanied the numerous dances of Shakespearian drama. In the combination of music and movement we may glimpse the harmony of the spheres.
Many of the lyrics of the songs in Shakespeare’s plays were written by the dramatist himself, and there is evidence in his later life of collaboration with such skilled musicians as Thomas Morley and Robert Johnson. Morley had been his neighbour in Bishopsgate, and was also part of the circle around the Countess of Pembroke; so there were many opportunities for their meeting. It was Morley who wrote the musical setting for one of Shakespeare’s most famous songs, “It was a lover and his lass.” Robert Johnson was related, as we have seen, to Emilia Lanier, who through her influence had him indentured to Sir George Carey; he collaborated extensively with Shakespeare in the music of the late plays. Johnson is largely remembered for two songs from The Tempest, “Full fathom five” and “Where the bee sucks,” but at the time he played a not inconsiderable role in the staging and effects of dramas such as Cymbeline and The Winter’s Tale. It is significant that when Shakespeare does import songs from other sources, however, he generally chooses the popular ballad material of sixteenth-century England. These were the ballads he had heard in childhood.
From the references in his drama it is clear that Shakespeare had a technical knowledge of music and of musical terms. This was almost a commonplace skill in the period, where music-making was an indispensable aspect of social life; sight-reading of music was a familiar accomplishment. All the evidence suggests that Shakespeare possessed an acute and sensitive ear. He was a hater of discord in all its forms, even though his plays thrive upon a kind of harmonious discord. He would in any case have been required to sing, and perhaps also to play an instrument, upon the stage. His characters frequently burst into song, among them such unlikely vocalists as Hamlet and Iago, and there are endless references in his plays to the power and sweetness of music. The songs of Ophelia and of Desdemona are employed to touch the scenes of tragedy with eternal harmonies. The music of The Winter’s Tale and of The Tempest is an important part of their meaning. It can be argued, in fact, that Shakespeare was the first English dramatist to make song an integral part of the drama, apart from the anonymous chants of the medieval Mysteries, and can thus be seen as the begetter of the musical theatre. In that, as in so many other matters, he was a divining rod for the nation’s genius. It is worth remarking that he was the contemporary of two of the greatest composers in the history of English music, William Byrd and Orlando Gibbons. It was an epoch of profound musical accomplishment. It has been said that England was once “a nest of singing birds,” and it was a matter of particular comment among foreign visitors that music was closely woven within London stage performances.
Towards the end of Shakespeare’s career, the “outdoor” playhouses were being replaced by “indoor” theatres. In those quieter surroundings, there was music between the recently introduced “acts”—in fact acts may have been devised solely for the purpose of affording musical accompaniments—and there was often a musical performance before the play actually began. Conditions at the Globe, in the open air and in front of a larger and more restive audience, were not conducive to such refined entertainment.
The stage itself was full of noises. Plays were acccompanied by the simulated sound of horses’ hooves and of birdsong, of bells and of cannons. Voices off-stage amplified battle scenes with cries of “Kill, kill, kill,” loud shouts, shrieks and general clamour. There were fireworks available, for lightning, and smoke was used to imitate fog or mist. When the directions called for “thunder” a sheet of metal was shaken vigorously, and squibs were let off, behind the scene. The sound of pebbles in a drum could counterfeit the sea, and a piece of canvas tied to a wheel could mimic the wind. The sound of dried peas upon a metal sheet would substitute for rain.
Lighting was another source of stage-effects. Torches or tapers were used to signify night. There were certain scenes where supernumeraries would come upon the stage carrying candles as an indication of a night-time banquet or meeting. On occasions lights were placed behind bottles of coloured water to provide sinister or supernatural illumination. In the late sixteenth century the stage was the centre of public enchantment.
CHAPTER 63
Why There You Toucht
the Life of Our Designe
The repertoire of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men at the Globe was extensive and various. Quite apart from Shakespeare’s plays they seem to have owned approximately one hundred other dramas ranging from Cloth Breeches and Velvet Hose to Stuhlweissenburg, from The London Prodigal to The Fair Maid of Bristol. In all of these plays it is likely that Shakespeare played his part. It is not clear how long it required to stage a revival, but it took between two and three weeks to prepare a new play. Since on average fifteen new plays were performed each year, the schedule of business was extremely tight. The records of the Globe have not survived but related material from the Rose suggests that the players there gave 150 performances of thirty separate plays during one winter season. In any week a different play was performed each afternoon. Nothing can better capture the vitality and excitement of the new medium. The constant demand was for novelty.
There was a tested procedure for the production of these new plays. The author or authors, as we have noted, would approach the playhouse with a skeleton narrative for a new play. On the basis of this scenario the playhouse might commission the drama, with a series of part payments followed by the remainder when a satisfactory manuscript or “book-of-the-play” was delivered. At the time of its final delivery the players met in order to listen to the playwright reading out the entire text. There is a note in Philip Henslowe’s diary, in May 1602, for two shillings “layd owt for the companye when they read the playe of Jeffa for wine at the tavern.” It may have been at this juncture, or slightly later, that the “book-keeper” prepared a “plot” or outline of the action in which the names of the actors, the stage-props required, and the requisite stage-noises, were written down. But by far the most important function of the “plot” was to list the sequence of entries, and thus the number of scenes. It was a way of adjusting the play, in other words, to the available resources and numbers of the company. One task, for example, was carefully to allot the roles to individual actors so that “doubling” (one actor taking two parts) became easily achieved. The player, however skilled, could not be in two places on the same stage. The plot was divided into individual scenes by the simple expedient of a line ruled across the various columns, and each scene began with the direction “Enter.” This was also placed on pasteboard and hung in the tiring-house behind the stage as an aide-memoire to players.
A member of the company, perhaps the book-keeper himself, also copied down the individual actor’s parts on a “scroll” or long strips of paper. It was this that the player carried about with him and memorised. One of those given to Edward Alleyn, for the part of Orlando in Robert Greene’s Orlando Furioso, has survived. It is made up of fourteen half-sheets of paper pasted together so that it forms a continuous roll some 17 feet in length and 6 inches in width. The speeches are given “cues” in the last words of the previous speaker, and there are occasional directions.
The author’s original manuscript became the “play-book,” known also as the “Book.” It was used to adapt the manuscript for theatrical performance, but such was the speed and professionalism of the theatrical company that in practice little was done. In certain circumstances stage-action was simplified and speeches shortened. But these were rare interventions. The more usual notes were simply concerned with the traffic of the stage. The author’s list of characters, for example, was substituted by the names of individual actors. The stage-properties, and the “noises off,” were incorporated. The author’s own stage-directions were occasionally revised; entrances, for example, were marked earlier so that the actor had more time to cross the stage. Other stage-directions by the author were left, although they must often have been ignored. His vision was no longer important. It had become a collective reality.
It seems likely that the “book-keeper” also superintended the rehearsals of the play, with prompt-copy in hand, and also acted as prompter during the performance itself. The prompter did not perform his modern task of whispering lines to an actor who was “out”; his role was to co-ordinate entrances and expedite the use of properties and “noises off.” There is a reference in Ben Jonson’s Every Man in His Humour to a choleric gentleman who “would swear like an Elephant, and stamp and stare (God blesse us) like a play-house book-keeper when the actors misse their entrance.” We may only conclude that the book-keeper was sometimes also the prompter, and sometimes not. The player himself, however, was assisted neither by prompter nor by bookkeeper. Once he was on the stage he relied upon his own resources and his own professionalism, as well as the support of the rest of the players, who no doubt covered any lapse of memory or mistake in timing.
Before any play could be performed, the finished text had to be despatched to the Master of the Revels in Clerkenwell for possible alteration and censorship. For a fee, which rose steadily through the years from 7 shillings to £1, the Master licensed each drama for public performance. With his signature appended to the manuscript it became the “allowed” book, available for performance throughout England. It was a most important document indeed and one that in ordinary circumstances the company would keep within its possession.
Obvious allusions to current events were of course examined very carefully by the Master of the Revels. Any challenge to the established authorities, overt or implied, was taken out. As the authors and actors of The Isle of Dogs discovered, there were also civil penalties for public disrespect. That is why the deposition scene of the monarch in Richard II was removed during Elizabeth’s lifetime. To the book of Sir Thomas More the Master of the Revels has added: “Leave out the insurrection wholy & the cause thereoff”; the caution was necessary in a period when the threat of civic violence in London was strong. Blasphemy was of course forbidden. One manuscript is marked by the command to remove “Oathes, prophaness & publick Ribaldry.” 1 The evidence, however, suggests that relations between the theatrical companies and the Revels Office were generally good. They were, in a sense, in the same business.
