Shakespeare

Since the doors of the playhouses were shut for eighteen months, from the summer of 1608, it may seem a strange time for the King’s Men to be engaged in a very expensive theatrical speculation. Nevertheless at the beginning of August 1608, just when the theatres had closed down, Shakespeare and six of his colleagues leased the Blackfriars Theatre for a period of twenty-one years. The Children of the Chapel Royal had been disbanded, after a particularly contentious production that had scandalised the French Ambassador, and so their venue was available for hire.

Each “sharer” among the King’s Men paid a seventh part of the annual rent of £40 to Cuthbert Burbage. There was also the cost of necessary repairs. Very little had been done during the last years of the childrens’ occupancy, and the playhouse “ran far into decay for want of reparations.”¹ It may have seemed a tempting prospect, but the King’s Men must also have had great faith in the long-term financial health of the London drama. It may be that they were also trying to circumvent the ban on public playing at a time of plague by using a “private” playhouse; there is a note of a reward from the king in January 1609 “for their private practise in the time of infeccon.”² This suggests that they did perform plays, under the cover that they were rehearsing for the court dramas of the Christmas season.

Their purchase is in any case a measure of the supremacy of the King’s Men in the London theatre. No adult company had ever leased an indoors theatre, and no adult company had ever before played within the walls of the city. The playhouse was in a wealthy and respectable neighbourhood, too, close to the playgoing members of the Inns of Court. Ben Jonson lived here as did Shakespeare’s friend, Richard Field; it was also a haven of painters’ studios and the workshops of feather-makers. It is also worth observing that no other company had ever boasted the proprietorship of two theatres, or extended itself to the purchase of an indoors “winter” theatre and an outdoors “summer” theatre. As it turned out, the financial gamble of the new “sharers” paid off, and their profit at the Blackfriars playhouse was almost twice that of their profit from the Globe.

The cost of a token at the Blackfriars playhouse was 6 pence for the gallery, contrasted with a penny or 2 pence for the Globe. A shilling purchased a bench in the pit, closer to the level of the stage, and a half-crown bought a box. Gallants and devotees could hire a stool and sit upon the stage for 2 shillings; this was a habit apparently detested by the actors themselves, for obvious reasons, but it seems to have made economic sense. There was no standing room. Yet the Blackfriars Theatre had attractions of its own. Its use of music, in a closed space, was more elaborate. It had indoor illumination, with candles or torches, and was much more appropriate for formal and masque-like effects. The candles were hung from candelabra which could be lowered for “mending” or trimming, but for afternoon performances the windows allowed natural light to enter the proceedings. There was no curtain and there were no “footlights”; the auditorium was as brightly illuminated as the stage.

It has often been suggested that Shakespeare’s dramaturgy changed after the removal to the Blackfriars Theatre, and that he increased the spectacular and the ritual elements of his drama. It is an interesting supposition but of course his use of Blackfriars postdates the highly ritualistic Pericles, which was performed at the Globe; it should also be remembered that in subsequent years his drama was to be seen at the Globe as well as at Blackfriars. There was no sudden or wholesale change in his art. Yet he was a skilful and professional man of the stage, and he made some alterations for the production of his plays in the private theatre. It is even possible that he added songs and music to old “favourites” such as Macbeth. The intimacy of the new theatre, which held some seven hundred spectators instead of the thousands at the Globe, may also have prompted him to make some changes in action and in dialogue. Many of these changes were not noted in the published versions of the plays, and are thus irrecoverable.