104-437: A New Way to Pay Old Debts (c. 1625, printed 1633) is an English Renaissance drama , the most popular play by Philip Massinger . Its central character, Sir Giles Over-reach, became one of the more popular villains on English and American stages through the 19th century. Massinger probably wrote the play in 1625, though its debut on stage was delayed a year as the theatres were closed due to bubonic plague . In its own era it
208-509: A Civil War, call for all possible Means to appease and avert the Wrath of God, appearing in these Judgements; among which, Fasting and Prayer, having been often tried to be very effectual, having been lately and are still enjoined; and whereas Public Sports do not well agree with Public Calamities, nor Public Stage-plays with the Seasons of Humiliation, this being an Exercise of sad and pious Solemnity, and
312-778: A better view of the stage or to be more separate from the crowd, they would pay more for their entrance. Due to inflation that occurred during this time period, admission increased in some theaters from a penny to a sixpence or even higher. Commercial theaters were largely located just outside the boundaries of the City of London , since City authorities tended to be wary of the adult playing companies, but plays were performed by touring companies all over England. English companies even toured and performed English plays abroad, especially in Germany and in Denmark . Upper class spectators would pay for seats in
416-453: A devoted servant to the thrice noble family of your incomparable Lady," that lady being Anna Sophia Herbert, daughter of Philip Herbert, 4th Earl of Pembroke , then serving as Lord Chamberlain . Massinger's connection to the Herbert family, derived from his father, is well known; whether Carnarvon responded in any positive way to the dedication is obscure. The 1633 quarto was the only edition of
520-432: A distracted state of mind. The stresses of his reversal of fortune have caused him to lose his sanity, and he is taken into protective custody. Welborn decides to demonstrate his reformation by taking a military commission in the regiment Lovell commands. Lovell and Lady Allworth have agreed to marry. Allworth and Margaret state that they will turn control of Over-reach's estates to Lord Lovell, to make reparations for all to
624-536: A drama in which the dominant figure is not a traditional protagonist or hero but his antagonist, a figure of evil. In the context of English Renaissance drama, the villain play grew out of the "ranting Herod" of the Medieval morality play . In the Elizabethan era, Christopher Marlowe was the great innovator in the villain play, with Tamburlaine , Doctor Faustus , and The Jew of Malta ; Shakespeare 's Richard III
728-532: A favour of her instead. The request is made in a whisper; the audience discovers its nature as the plot progresses. Over-reach is shown with Marall, discussing his plan to marry his daughter Margaret to Lord Lovell. He also gives a first glimpse into the ruthless way he conducts his business affairs. Welborn seeks out Over-reach, but Sir Giles refuses to speak with him; Marall mocks his poverty. Yet Marall has to change his tune when he sees Lady Allworth come out of mourning to meet Welborn. When she kisses Welborn, Marall
832-481: A licence to find and recover "concealed" Crown lands (i.e., property over which the Crown 's rights as landlord had fallen into abeyance or had not yet fully been realised). Any lands he discovered valued at less than £200 were his to keep, and those above were to be regulated, with fees, rents, and charges for ingress and egress. Naturally, Mompesson undervalued the lands he "found," consistently discovering them to be under
936-655: A licensed acting company, they were allowed to dress above their standing in society for specific roles in a production. The growing population of London, the growing wealth of its people, and their fondness for spectacle produced a dramatic literature of remarkable variety, quality and extent. About 3,000 plays were written for the Elizabethan stage, and although most of them have been lost, at least 543 remain. The people who wrote these plays were primarily self-made men from modest backgrounds. Some of them were educated at either Oxford or Cambridge , but many were not. Although William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson were actors,
1040-414: A little under 12 shillings per week—roughly twice as much as the average artisan's income of 1 s . per day. At the end of his career, Thomas Heywood would famously claim to have had "an entire hand, or at least a main finger" in the authorship of some 220 plays. A solo artist usually needed months to write a play (though Jonson is said to have done Volpone in five weeks); Henslowe's Diary indicates that
1144-426: A lower-class figure: he is a knight and a rich man with large country estates, who lives the lavish lifestyle of the landed gentry. There is even a family connection between hero and villain: Frank Welborn is the nephew of Sir Giles' late wife. Yet Sir Giles himself expresses the conflict by noting that he is a "city" man—he comes from the financial milieu of the City of London with its worldly and materialistic values,
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#17328949146921248-435: A means to bolster Charles I's finances independent of Parliament. The lands were worked for iron ore and timber. During riots aimed at destroying the enclosures and returning the lands to common in 1631, an effigy of the "odious projector" Sir Giles was thrown into the iron ore pits and buried as they were filled in by the rioters. Another agent in his employ was shot at and his house burnt. During his later years, his name
1352-669: A performance of Gorboduc , the first English play using blank verse , at the Inner Temple during the Christmas season of 1561—and the ban on theatrical plays enacted by the English Parliament in 1642. In a strict sense "Elizabethan" only refers to the period of Queen Elizabeth's reign (1558–1603). English Renaissance theatre may be said to encompass Elizabethan theatre from 1562 to 1603, Jacobean theatre from 1603 to 1625, and Caroline theatre from 1625 to 1642. Along with
1456-492: A small sum, "eight pieces", to relieve his immediate wants, but Welborn indignantly rejects the offer from a junior contemporary; he says that as his own vices have led to his fall, he will rely on his own wits for his recovery. Tom Allworth's widowed mother, Lady Allworth, retains her country house; she is visited there by neighbours and prospective suitors, including Sir Giles. While she has her servants greet these guests with appropriate hospitality, she remains "cloister'd up" in
1560-547: A team of four or five writers could produce a play in as little as two weeks. Admittedly, though, the Diary also shows that teams of Henslowe's house dramatists— Anthony Munday , Robert Wilson , Richard Hathwaye , Henry Chettle , and the others, even including a young John Webster —could start a project, and accept advances on it, yet fail to produce anything stageworthy. Short yellow lines indicate 27 years—the average age these authors began their playwriting careers Genres of
1664-426: Is Over-reach's rejection of those tradition moral and ethical standards, his embrace of ruthless competition, that makes him a villain. Set in rural Nottinghamshire , the play opens with its protagonist, Frank Welborn, being ejected from an alehouse by Tapwell and Froth, the tavernkeeper and his wife. Welborn has been refused further service ("No booze? nor no tobacco?"); he quarrels with the couple and beats them, but
1768-464: Is another obvious example in the subgenre. In A New Way to Pay Old Debts , Massinger took the villain play in a new direction of social realism: his villain is not a king or a conqueror but a credible figure from contemporary life. The play's dominating character, Sir Giles Over-reach, is based on the real-life Sir Giles Mompesson . (Sir Giles' assistant in villainy, Justice Greedy, was suggested by Mompesson's associate Sir Francis Michell.) The power of
1872-558: Is convinced that the two will marry. When Marall informs Over-reach of what he's seen, however, Over-reach refuses to believe him, and even beats him. Eventually, though, Over-reach himself sees Welborn and Lady Allworth together, and accepts the "truth" of their connection. Sir Giles favours their marriage, since he is sure that once Welborn possesses the Lady's remaining property he can cheat the dissolute man of this property too. Margaret Over-reach has no interest in marrying Lord Lovell, since she
1976-462: Is in love with Tom Allworth, as he is with her. Lord Lovell knows of his page's affections, and is willing to act as a go-between for the two. Young Allworth is nervous at this, suspecting that his patron will not be able to resist Margaret's charms; but Lovell is an honourable man, and sincerely promotes their match. Over-reach thinks that Allworth is carrying messages between the Lord and his daughter, though
2080-417: Is interrupted by Tom Allworth. The conversations in the scene supply the play's backstory , indicating that Welborn and Allworth are both members of the local gentry who have fallen victim to the financial manipulations of Sir Giles Over-reach. Welborn has lost his estates and been reduced to penury, while young Allworth has been forced to become the page of a local nobleman, Lord Lovell. Allworth offers Welborn
2184-764: Is presented with a character they might meet in their own lives, to their own cost. The play illustrates the hardening of class distinctions that characterised the early Stuart era, leading up to the outbreak of the Civil War. In Elizabethan plays like The Shoemaker's Holiday (1599), it was acceptable and even admirable that a young nobleman marry a commoner's daughter; other plays of the era, like Fair Em (c. 1590) and The Merry Wives of Windsor (c. 1597–9), share this liberal attitude toward social mobility through marriage. In A New Way to Pay Old Debts , in contrast, Lord Lovell would rather see his family line go extinct than marry Over-reach's daughter Margaret, even though she
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#17328949146922288-444: Is young, beautiful, and virtuous. In Act IV, scene i, Lovell specifies that his attitude is not solely dependent on his loathing of the father's personal vices, but is rooted in class distinction. Lovell rejects the idea of his descendants being "one part scarlet" (aristocratic) and "the other London blue" (common). The drama's class conflict can seem obscure to the modern reader, since Sir Giles Over-reach appears as an upper-class, not
2392-576: The Long Parliament , pushed by the Parliamentarian party , under Puritan influence, banned the staging of plays in the London theatres though it did not, contrary to what is commonly stated, order the closure, let alone the destruction, of the theatres themselves: Whereas the distressed Estate of Ireland, steeped in her own Blood, and the distracted Estate of England, threatened with a Cloud of Blood by
2496-520: The Red Bull (1604). Elsewhere, the Vagabonds Act 1572 left itinerant actors liable to prosecution as vagrants and caused them to seek wealthy sponsors who could provide a permanent play house for them. At the same time, members of the aristocracy found it useful to have a playing company available to entertain royal or noble guests and thus advance their social status. Archaeological excavations on
2600-449: The Red Lion , opened in 1567 but it was a short-lived failure. The first successful theatres, such as The Theatre , opened in 1576. The establishment of large and profitable public theatres was an essential enabling factor in the success of English Renaissance drama. Once they were in operation, drama could become a fixed and permanent, rather than transitory, phenomenon. Their construction
2704-888: The Whitefriars (1608) and the Cockpit (1617). With the building of the Salisbury Court Theatre in 1629 near the site of the defunct Whitefriars, the London audience had six theatres to choose from: three surviving large open-air public theatres—the Globe, the Fortune, and the Red Bull—and three smaller enclosed private theatres: the Blackfriars, the Cockpit, and the Salisbury Court. Audiences of
2808-510: The 1400s, dramas were often restricted to mummer plays with someone who read out all the parts in Latin. With the rediscovery and redistribution of classical materials during the English Renaissance , Latin and Greek plays began to be restaged. These plays were often accompanied by feasts. Queen Elizabeth I viewed dramas during her visits to Oxford and Cambridge. A well-known play cycle which
2912-508: The 1630s benefited from a half-century of vigorous dramaturgical development; the plays of Marlowe and Shakespeare and their contemporaries were still being performed on a regular basis, mostly at the public theatres, while the newest works of the newest playwrights were abundant as well, mainly at the private theatres. Around 1580, when both the Theater and the Curtain were full on summer days,
3016-506: The Elizabethan court included St. George’s Chapel , the Chapel Royal, and St. Paul’s . These schools performed plays and other court entertainments for the Queen. Between the 1560s and 1570s these schools had begun to perform for general audiences as well. Playing companies of boy actors were derived from choir schools. John Lyly is an earlier example of a playwright contracted to write for
3120-406: The Elizabethan era was to make up for the lack of scenery, set, and props on stage. It created a visual effect for the audience, and it was an integral part of the overall performance. Since the main visual appeal on stage were the costumes, they were often bright in colour and visually entrancing. Colours symbolized social hierarchy, and costumes were made to reflect that. For example, if a character
3224-480: The Elizabethan era, research has been conclusive about how many actors and troupes there were in the 16th century, but little research delves into the roles of the actors on the English renaissance stage. The first point is that during the Elizabethan era, women were not allowed to act on stage. The actors were all male; in fact, most were boys. For plays written that had male and female parts, the female parts were played by
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3328-519: The Old One (c. 1605), it transcends mere imitation to achieve a powerful dramatic effectiveness – verified by the fact that, apart from the Shakespearean canon, it was almost the only pre-Restoration play that was continuously in the dramatic repertory through much of the modern era. After David Garrick 's 1748 revival, the play remained popular throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth. (It
3432-540: The Swan. Theatres were also constructed to be able to hold a large number of people. A different model was developed with the Blackfriars Theatre , which came into regular use on a long-term basis in 1599. The Blackfriars was small in comparison to the earlier theatres and roofed rather than open to the sky. It resembled a modern theatre in ways that its predecessors did not. Other small enclosed theatres followed, notably
3536-459: The anti-hero of Philip Massinger 's 1625 play A New Way to Pay Old Debts , is based on Mompesson. Mompesson was born in Wiltshire . He grew up into a small, swarthy individual with black hair. He entered Hart Hall, Oxford in 1600, but left without a degree the next year for Lincoln's Inn ; he later departed there without becoming a lawyer. In 1606 or 1607, he married Katherine, the daughter of
3640-664: The ban to be temporary ("... while these sad causes and set Times of Humiliation do continue, Public Stage Plays shall cease and be forborn") but does not assign a time limit to it. Even after 1642, during the English Civil War and the ensuing Interregnum ( English Commonwealth ), some English Renaissance theatre continued. For example, short comical plays called drolls were allowed by the authorities, while full-length plays were banned. The theatre buildings were not closed but rather were used for purposes other than staging plays. The performance of plays remained banned for most of
3744-677: The children's companies; Lyly wrote Gallathea , Endymion , and Midas for Paul’s Boys. Another example is Ben Jonson , who wrote Cynthia’s Revels . Academic drama stems from late medieval and early modern practices of miracles and morality plays as well as the Feast of Fools and the election of a Lord of Misrule . The Feast of Fools includes mummer plays . The universities, particularly Oxford and Cambridge , were attended by students studying for bachelor's degrees and master's degrees, followed by doctorates in Law, Medicine, and Theology. In
3848-569: The clothes back to theatre companies. In the Tudor and Elizabethan eras, there were laws stating that certain classes could only wear clothing fitting of their status in society. There was a discrimination of status within the classes. Higher classes flaunted their wealth and power through the appearance of clothing, however, courtesans and actors were the only exceptions – as clothing represented their 'working capital', as it were, but they were only permitted to dress so while working . If actors belonged to
3952-681: The denouement of the final scene.) Marall sees Welborn's apparent ascension in fortune, and, chafing at Over-reach's insulting and brutal treatment of him, decides to switch allegiances; his command of Over-reach's legal papers gives Marall a key advantage in seeking his own revenge. When Over-reach believes that Lovell and Margaret are married, he enters a state of near rapture: "My ends! my ends are compass'd! . . . I can scarce contain myself, / I am so full of joy; nay, joy all over!" The play's final scene shows his sudden reversal, when he realises that he has been fooled and that Margaret has married Allworth. Enraged, he demands that Welborn provide security for
4056-449: The different roles simultaneously. The reason for this was for the acting companies to control salary costs, or to be able to perform under conditions where resources such as other actor companies lending actors were not present. There were two acting styles implemented: formal and natural. Formal acting is objective and traditional, while natural acting attempts to create an illusion for the audience by remaining in character and imitating
4160-415: The different roles they played. At some points, the bookkeeper would not state the narrative of the scene, so the audience could find out for themselves. In Elizabethan and Jacobean plays, the plays often exceeded the number of characters/roles and did not have enough actors to fulfil them, thus the idea of doubling roles came to be. Doubling roles is used to reinforce a plays theme by having the actor act out
4264-401: The dissolute Welborn; but Welborn forces his way into her presence, and reminds her of his relationship with her late husband. When the late Allworth had been down on his luck, Welborn had supported him, even seconding him in all his duels . The recollection makes Lady Allworth repent her harsh attitude toward the reprobate Welborn, and she offers him financial help; he rejects this, but requests
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4368-410: The domain of nascent capitalism in contrast to the older social order rooted in feudalism . He observes that there is "More than a feud, a strange antipathy / Between us", the men of money, "and true gentry". For a conservative moralist like Massinger, the upper classes, the "true gentry", have a right to run society insofar as they fulfil the moral and ethical obligations of their traditional roles. It
4472-447: The economics of the profession, the character of the drama changed towards the end of the period. Under Elizabeth, the drama was a unified expression as far as social class was concerned: the Court watched the same plays the commoners saw in the public playhouses. With the development of the private theatres, drama became more oriented towards the tastes and values of an upper-class audience. By
4576-545: The era survived not in printed texts but in manuscript form. The rising Puritan movement was hostile toward theatre, as they felt that "entertainment" was sinful. Politically, playwrights and actors were clients of the monarchy and aristocracy, and most supported the Royalist cause. The Puritan faction, long powerful in London, gained control of the city early in the First English Civil War , and on 2 September 1642,
4680-491: The existence of major English playing companies from 1572 (" Acte for the punishment of Vacabondes ", which legally restricted acting to players with a patron of sufficient degree) to 1642 (the closing of the theatres by Parliament ). A variety of strolling players, and even early London-based troupes existed before 1572. The situations were often fluid, and much of this history is obscure; this timeline necessarily implies more precision than exists in some cases. The labels down
4784-452: The fees that he could charge to license an inn were similarly up to his own judgment. His only constraint was that four-fifths of the money was to go to the Treasury . On 18 November 1616, James knighted Mompesson, giving him more authority when dealing with innkeepers. Mompesson's performance of his job was aggressive and avaricious. He expanded his brief to license taverns, which was clearly
4888-408: The fictional circumstances. The formal actor symbolises while the natural actor interprets. The natural actor impersonates while the formal actor represents the role. Natural and formal are opposites of each other, where natural acting is subjective. Overall, the use of these acting styles and the doubled roles dramatic device made Elizabethan plays very popular. One of the main uses of costume during
4992-555: The foundations of the Rose and the Globe in the late 20th century showed that all the London theatres had individual differences, but their common function necessitated a similar general plan. The public theatres were three stories high and built around an open space at the centre. Usually polygonal in plan to give an overall rounded effect, although the Red Bull and the first Fortune were square. The three levels of inward-facing galleries overlooked
5096-520: The galleries, using cushions for comfort. In the Globe Theatre, nobles could sit directly by the side on the stage. The acting companies functioned on a repertory system: unlike modern productions that can run for months or years on end, the troupes of this era rarely acted the same play two days in a row. Thomas Middleton 's A Game at Chess ran for nine straight performances in August 1624 before it
5200-599: The historical realm of the Justices of the peace, and he trespassed into the jurisdiction of the Justices in other ways as well. Justices of the Peace were responsible for keeping the domestic peace, and Mompesson would allow taverns closed for ill repute and bad behaviour to reopen if they paid him a stiff bribe/fee. In 1617, Mompesson proposed to Villiers and received a scheme to raise £10,000 in four years by selling decayed timber from royal estates. For performing this public service, he
5304-499: The inn licensures and Lords the gold thread. Among other damning evidence, there was one account of one of Mompesson's agents showing up at a tavern, claiming emergency, begging for a place to sleep, and then, the next morning, prosecuting the tavern keeper for running an unlicensed inn . Sir Edward Coke found that Mompesson had prosecuted over 3,320 inns and taverns on regulations dating back to Henry VIII . Lords found that Mompesson had been guilty of extortion . Mompesson's response
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#17328949146925408-478: The late Sir John St. John, who had been one of the most prominent men in Wiltshire. Through the influence of his brother-in-law, Sir John St John, 1st Baronet , Mompesson became a Member of Parliament for Great Bedwyn in Wiltshire in 1614. Another daughter of John St. John (and thus Mompesson's sister-in-law) married Edward Villiers , the half-brother of George Villiers , and Mompesson's connection to George Villiers
5512-417: The later part of the reign of Charles I , few new plays were being written for the public theatres, which sustained themselves on the accumulated works of the previous decades. The English grammar schools , like those on the continent, placed special emphasis on the trivium : grammar, logic, and rhetoric . Though rhetorical instruction was intended as preparation for careers in civil service such as law,
5616-446: The left indicate the most common names for the companies. The bar segments indicate the specific patron. In the case of children's companies (a distinct legal situation) some founders are noted. Giles Mompesson Giles Mompesson (c. 1583 – 1663) was an English office holder and courtier who sat in the House of Commons between 1614 and 1621, when he was sentenced for corruption. He
5720-451: The loan of £1000 from the Lady's estates; Welborn rejects this, and demands that Over-reach return possession of his lands. Sir Giles dismisses this as folly—but discovers that the text of his deed to Welborn's lands has mysteriously faded away (thanks to the trickery of Marall). Over-reach is ready to work his revenge with his sword, but Welborn, Lovell, and the Lady's servants altogether are too formidable for him. He storms out, but returns in
5824-474: The majority do not seem to have been performers, and no major author who came on to the scene after 1600 is known to have supplemented his income by acting. Their lives were subject to the same levels of danger and earlier mortality as all who lived during the early modern period: Christopher Marlowe was killed in an apparent tavern brawl, while Ben Jonson killed an actor in a duel. Several were probably soldiers. Playwrights were normally paid in increments during
5928-475: The new hybrid subgenre of the tragicomedy enjoyed an efflorescence, as did the masque throughout the reigns of the first two Stuart kings, James I and Charles I . Plays on biblical themes were common, Peele's David and Bethsabe being one of the few surviving examples. Only a minority of the plays of English Renaissance theatre were ever printed. Of Heywood's 220 plays, only about 20 were published in book form. A little over 600 plays were published in
6032-472: The next eighteen years, becoming allowed again after the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660. The theatres began performing many of the plays of the previous era, though often in adapted forms. New genres of Restoration comedy and spectacle soon evolved, giving English theatre of the later seventeenth century its distinctive character. English Renaissance playing company timeline This timeline charts
6136-528: The open centre, into which jutted the stage: essentially a platform surrounded on three sides by the audience. The rear side was restricted for the entrances and exits of the actors and seating for the musicians. The upper level behind the stage could be used as a balcony , as in Romeo and Juliet and Antony and Cleopatra , or as a position from which an actor could harangue a crowd, as in Julius Caesar . The pit
6240-745: The other being Spectacles of Pleasure, too commonly expressing lascivious Mirth and Levity: It is therefore thought fit, and Ordained, by the Lords and Commons in this Parliament assembled, That, while these sad causes and set Times of Humiliation do continue, Public Stage Plays shall cease, and be forborn, instead of which are recommended to the People of this Land the profitable and seasonable considerations of Repentance, Reconciliation, and Peace with God, which probably may produce outward Peace and Prosperity, and bring again Times of Joy and Gladness to these Nations. The Act purports
6344-705: The peace were in charge of granting licences to taverns, but there was ambiguity about inns. While Fulke Greville , the Chancellor of the Exchequer , disapproved of the legal standing of Mompesson's plan, Sir Francis Bacon , then the Attorney General , felt that it was within the king's powers, and Villiers urged the king to press the exchequer to approve the plan. Mompesson thus became one of three commissioners of inns in 1617. The fines that he could levy against inn-keepers out of compliance were left to his discretion, and
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#17328949146926448-520: The people Sir Giles has cheated and oppressed. The play's prominence in theatrical history has won it the attention of scholars and critics. Some of the criticism has been favourable; one editor judged it "a highly finished, integrated piece of work, with everything handsomely symmetrical about it." Yet critics have not been shy about finding faults; one called Sir Giles Over-reach "the character whom his author could not control." Massinger's blending of lighter dramatic materials, like comedy of intrigue, with
6552-408: The period as a whole, most commonly in individual quarto editions. (Larger collected editions, like those of Shakespeare's , Ben Jonson's , and Beaumont and Fletcher's plays, were a late and limited development.) Through much of the modern era, it was thought that play texts were popular items among Renaissance readers that provided healthy profits for the stationers who printed and sold them. By
6656-452: The period included the history play , which depicted English or European history. Shakespeare 's plays about the lives of kings, such as Richard III and Henry V , belong to this category, as do Christopher Marlowe 's Edward II and George Peele 's Famous Chronicle of King Edward the First . History plays also dealt with more recent events, like A Larum for London which dramatizes
6760-416: The play in the seventeenth century. Its later popularity onstage guaranteed frequent reprints, with 52 editions between 1748 and 1964 (not counting collections); others have followed since. Dramaturgically, A New Way to Pay Old Debts contains elements of melodrama , comedy of manners , realism , and social satire, in a distinctive combination. The play also falls into the category of the "villain play",
6864-428: The play's more serious aspects, has also been faulted. English Renaissance theatre Dutch Renaissance and Golden Age The English Renaissance theatre or Elizabethan theatre was the theatre of England from 1558 to 1642. Its most prominent playwrights were William Shakespeare , Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson . The term English Renaissance theatre encompasses the period between 1562—following
6968-513: The public theatres (like the Globe) took place in the afternoon with no artificial lighting, but when, in the course of a play, the light began to fade, candles were lit. In the enclosed private theatres (like the Blackfriars) artificial lighting was used throughout. Plays contained little to no scenery as the scenery was described by the actors or indicated by costume through the course of the play. In
7072-601: The rest of his life. Katherine died in 1633. Mompesson erected a monument to her in St Mary's, the parish church of Lydiard Tregoze , Wiltshire. Mompesson was again using his family connections through his sister-in-law Barbara Villiers around 1631, this time employed as her agent managing an area of newly enclosed lands in her possession at the Forest of Dean . Such enclosures and grants of former royal forest were commonly made to courtiers in return for substantial sums of money, as
7176-538: The rhetorical canons of memory ( memoria ) and delivery ( pronuntiatio ), gesture and voice, as well as exercises from the progymnasmata , such as the prosopopoeia , taught theatrical skills. Students would typically analyse Latin and Greek texts, write their own compositions, memorise them, and then perform them in front of their instructor and their peers. Records show that in addition to this weekly performance, students would perform plays on holidays, and in both Latin and English. Choir schools connected with
7280-547: The role of Sir Giles may lie in Massinger's success in depicting a blatant villain who has a quality of everyday believability. Sir Giles is down-to-earth in his cold malice: I'll therefore buy some cottage near his manor, Which done, I'll make my men break ope his fences, Ride o'er his standing corn, and in the night Set fire on his barns, or break his cattle's legs. These trespasses draw on suits, and suits expenses, Which I can spare, but will soon beggar him. The audience
7384-599: The sack of Antwerp in 1576. A better known play, Peele's The Battle of Alcazar (c. 1591), depicts the battle of Alcácer Quibir in 1578. Tragedy was a very popular genre. Marlowe's tragedies were exceptionally successful, such as Dr. Faustus and The Jew of Malta . The audiences particularly liked revenge dramas , such as Thomas Kyd 's The Spanish Tragedy . The four tragedies considered to be Shakespeare's greatest ( Hamlet , Othello , King Lear and Macbeth ) were composed during this period. Comedies were common, too. A subgenre developed in this period
7488-543: The season, The First Part of Hieronimo , based on Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy , 15 times. They never played the same play two days in a row, and rarely the same play twice in a week. The workload on the actors, especially the leading performers like Richard Burbage or Edward Alleyn , must have been tremendous. One distinctive feature of the companies was that only men or boys performed. Female parts were played by adolescent boy players in women's costume. Some companies were composed entirely of boy players. Performances in
7592-402: The seclusion of her mourning. When Sir Giles visits, he is accompanied by his two prime henchmen, the lawyer Jack Marall and Justice Greedy, the local justice of the peace . Together, Greedy and the Lady's servants provide most of the play's comic relief . Greedy is a lean man with an enormous appetite; a gourmand and a glutton, he is obsessed with food. Lady Allworth instructs her son to avoid
7696-498: The social and economic life of the era. Those who were purely playwrights fared far less well: the biographies of early figures like George Peele and Robert Greene , and later ones like Brome and Philip Massinger , are marked by financial uncertainty, struggle and poverty. Playwrights dealt with the natural limitation on their productivity by combining into teams of two, three, four, and even five to generate play texts. The majority of plays written in this era were collaborations, and
7800-467: The solo artists who generally eschewed collaborative efforts, like Jonson and Shakespeare, were the exceptions to the rule. Dividing the work, of course, meant dividing the income; but the arrangement seems to have functioned well enough to have made it worthwhile. Of the 70-plus known works in the canon of Thomas Dekker , roughly 50 are collaborations. In a single year (1598) Dekker worked on 16 collaborations for impresario Philip Henslowe, and earned £30, or
7904-593: The time period of the play. The most expensive pieces were given to higher class characters because costuming was used to identify social status on stage. The fabrics within a playhouse would indicate the wealth of the company itself. The fabrics used the most were: velvet, satin, silk, cloth-of-gold, lace and ermine. For less significant characters, actors would use their own clothes. Actors also left clothes in their will for following actors to use. Masters would also leave clothes for servants in their will, but servants weren't allowed to wear fancy clothing, instead, they sold
8008-459: The time. Elizabethan actors never played the same show on successive days and added a new play to their repertoire every other week. These actors were getting paid within these troupes so for their job, they would constantly learn new plays as they toured different cities in England. In these plays, there were bookkeepers that acted as the narrators of these plays and they would introduce the actors and
8112-408: The total theater capacity of London was about 5000 spectators. With the building of new theater facilities and the formation of new companies, London's total theater capacity exceeded 10,000 after 1610. Ticket prices in general varied during this time period. The cost of admission was based on where in the theatre a person wished to be situated, or based on what a person could afford. If people wanted
8216-469: The turn of the 21st century, the climate of scholarly opinion shifted somewhat on this belief: some contemporary researchers argue that publishing plays was a risky and marginal business —though this conclusion has been disputed by others. Some of the most successful publishers of the English Renaissance, like William Ponsonby or Edward Blount , rarely published plays. A small number of plays from
8320-607: The university, the Inns of Court elected their own Lord of Misrule . Other activities included participation in moot court , disputation , and masques . Plays written and performed in the Inns of Court include Gorboduc , Gismund of Salerne , and The Misfortunes of Arthur . An example of a famous masque put on by the Inns was James Shirley 's The Triumph of Peace . Shakespeare 's The Comedy of Errors and Twelfth Night were also performed here, although written for commercial theater. The first permanent English theatre,
8424-404: The workload. Shakespeare produced fewer than 40 solo plays in a career that spanned more than two decades: he was financially successful because he was an actor and, most importantly, a shareholder in the company for which he acted and in the theatres they used. Ben Jonson achieved success as a purveyor of Court masques , and was talented at playing the patronage game that was an important part of
8528-494: The writing process, and if their play was accepted, they would also receive the proceeds from one day's performance. However, they had no ownership of the plays they wrote. Once a play was sold to a company, the company owned it, and the playwright had no control over casting, performance, revision or publication. The profession of dramatist was challenging and far from lucrative. Entries in Philip Henslowe 's Diary show that in
8632-399: The years around 1600 Henslowe paid as little as £6 or £7 per play. This was probably at the low end of the range, though even the best writers could not demand too much more. A playwright, working alone, could generally produce two plays a year at most. In the 1630s Richard Brome signed a contract with the Salisbury Court Theatre to supply three plays a year, but found himself unable to meet
8736-416: The young lovers. To facilitate the marriage of Welborn and Lady Allworth, Sir Giles advances Welborn a thousand pounds. He also discusses his plans with Lovell, revealing more of his intentions and his dark character, so that Lovell breaks into a "cold sweat" listening to him. (With each of his appearances in the play, Over-reach's expressions of his villainy become more flagrant and overwrought, leading up to
8840-413: The young page is actually pursuing his own romance. Together, the young couple manages to fool Sir Giles into thinking that Lovell wants a reluctant Margaret to elope with him; Over-reach pressures his daughter to conform, and even sends hurried written instructions to a compliant clergyman at the village of Gotham , to marry his daughter to "this man." Of course he means Lovell, though the ambiguity favours
8944-401: The youngest boy players. Stronger female roles in tragedies were acted by older boy players because they had more experience. As a boy player, many skills had to be implemented such as voice and athleticism (fencing was one). In Elizabethan entertainment, troupes were created and they were considered the actor companies. They travelled around England as drama was the most entertaining art at
9048-427: The £200 threshold, and farmers were at high risk. The sentiment against Mompesson was very high in 1620, and Bacon warned Villiers to take away Mompesson's licensing of inns, in particular. Buckingham, however, continued to support him. Mompesson was re-elected MP for Great Bedwyn in 1621. In February 1621, the House of Commons and House of Lords began investigating him on separate matters, with Commons investigating
9152-478: Was closed by the authorities; but this was due to the political content of the play and was a unique, unprecedented and unrepeatable phenomenon. The 1592 season of Lord Strange's Men at the Rose Theatre was far more representative: between 19 February and 23 June the company played six days a week, minus Good Friday and two other days. They performed 23 different plays, some only once, and their most popular play of
9256-769: Was constructed in Shoreditch in 1576 by James Burbage with his brother-in-law John Brayne (the owner of the unsuccessful Red Lion playhouse of 1567) and the Newington Butts playhouse was set up, probably by Jerome Savage, some time between 1575 and 1577. The Theatre was rapidly followed by the nearby Curtain Theatre (1577), the Rose (1587), the Swan (1595), the Globe (1599), the Fortune (1600), and
9360-476: Was entangled. Commons ordered that all of Mompesson's gains be forfeit, except for the New River annuity, which would go to Katherine. The fine devolved to John St. John. In 1623, Charles gave Mompesson three months to be in England, a period which was later extended. The House of Commons ordered him out of the country on 8 February 1624, but he was back in the country soon after. He lived in Wiltshire in retirement for
9464-530: Was first published in 1633 in quarto by stationer Henry Seyle (his shop was "in S. Pauls Church-yard, at the signe of the Tygers head"). The 1633 quarto carries a dedication of "this trifle" to Robert Dormer, 1st Earl of Carnarvon , Master Falconer of England (he'd succeeded to his hereditary title, Chief Avenor and Keeper of the King's Hawks and Falcons, at the age of six). In this dedication, Massinger states that he "born
9568-409: Was given the power to imprison those found guilty of producing gold and silver thread without a licence. He immediately set about extorting money from goldsmiths in London. In 1619, Mompesson obtained a position as a surveyor of the profits of James I's New River Company , with a £200 annuity taken from the royal profits. In 1620, Mompesson was granted a licence to make charcoal from coal and, finally,
9672-402: Was officially a "notorious criminal" whose career was based on speculation and corruption . His name came to be regarded as a synonym for official corruption, because he used nepotism to gain positions for licensing businesses by which he pocketed the fees. In the reaction against Charles I , Mompesson's name was invoked as a symbol of all that was wrong with aristocracy . Sir Giles Overreach,
9776-483: Was ordered to pay a £10,000 fine, lose his knighthood, and ride down the Strand facing backwards from his horse, and then be imprisoned for life. A few days later, they added banishment for life to the penalty. Further, he was decried as an eternally notorious criminal. His wife, Katherine, stayed in England. She petitioned Charles I for relief, asking that her husband be allowed to return to dispense with his estate, since it
9880-538: Was praised by Thomas Jefferson .) Edmund Kean 's version of Sir Giles, which debuted in 1816, was in particular a tremendous popular success, and drove the play's reputation through the remainder of the century. The play remains in the active theatrical repertory; modern stagings are usually amateur or student productions, though the Royal Shakespeare Company performed the play in 1983, directed by Adrian Noble and with Emrys James as Sir Giles. The play
9984-619: Was prompted when the Mayor and Corporation of London first banned plays in 1572 as a measure against the plague, and then formally expelled all players from the city in 1575. This prompted the construction of permanent playhouses outside the jurisdiction of London, in the liberties of Halliwell/Holywell in Shoreditch and later the Clink , and at Newington Butts near the established entertainment district of St. George's Fields in rural Surrey. The Theatre
10088-591: Was royalty, their costume would include purple. The colours, as well as the different fabrics of the costumes, allowed the audience to know the status of each character when they first appeared on stage. Costumes were collected in inventory. More often than not, costumes wouldn't be made individually to fit the actor. Instead, they would be selected out of the stock that theatre companies would keep. A theatre company reused costumes when possible and would rarely get new costumes made. Costumes themselves were expensive, so usually players wore contemporary clothing regardless of
10192-589: Was staged by Queen Henrietta's Men at the Cockpit Theatre in Drury Lane . It was continuously in the repertory there and at the Red Bull Theatre , under the managements of Christopher Beeston , William Beeston , and Sir William Davenant , down to the closing of the theatres at the start of the English Civil War in 1642. Though Massinger's play shows obvious debts to Thomas Middleton 's A Trick to Catch
10296-525: Was the city comedy , which deals satirically with life in London after the fashion of Roman New Comedy . Examples are Thomas Dekker 's The Shoemaker's Holiday and Thomas Middleton 's A Chaste Maid in Cheapside . Though marginalised, the older genres like pastoral ( The Faithful Shepherdess , 1608), and even the morality play ( Four Plays in One , ca. 1608–13) could exert influences. After about 1610,
10400-400: Was the key to his later despotism. George Villiers became James I 's favourite (and alleged lover), rising to the rank of Duke of Buckingham by 1616, and Mompesson was quick to use his family connections. His infamous career was tied directly to that of George Villiers and James I. In 1616, Mompesson used his influence to propose to Villiers that there be a commissioner of inns. Justices of
10504-468: Was the place where the poorest audience members could view the show. Around the 1600s a new area was introduced into the theaters, a 'gullet'. A gullet was an invisible corridor that the actors used to go to the wings of the stage where people usually changed clothes quickly . The playhouses were generally built with timber and plaster. Individual theatre descriptions give additional information about their construction, such as flint stones being used to build
10608-489: Was to admit his guilt and plead for mercy . He then attempted to blame Bacon for finding the inn scheme legal in the first place. Commons preferred charges to Lords, waiting sentencing, and Mompesson was ordered to attend every day and to be guarded by the Sergeant-at-Arms . On 3 March 1621, Mompesson fled to France. A Royal Proclamation was issued demanding his apprehension. The next week, the sentence came down. Mompesson
10712-528: Was to receive £1,000 personally in the first year, with another £1,000 due at the end of four years. Evidence would later show that he made over £10,000 profit beyond what he gave to the Treasury, as well as the £2,000 due to him. By the next year, his reputation was such that there was a backlash. Mompesson was given a second monopoly, to investigate the production of gold and silver thread and to charge licensing fees to those who produced it. Furthermore, Mompesson
10816-663: Was written and performed in the universities was the Parnassus Plays . Upon graduation, many university students, especially those going into law, would reside and participate in the Inns of Court . The Inns of Court were communities of working lawyers and university alumni. Notable literary figures and playwrights who resided in the Inns of Court include John Donne , Francis Beaumont , John Marston , Thomas Lodge , Thomas Campion , Abraham Fraunce , Sir Philip Sidney , Sir Thomas More , Sir Francis Bacon , and George Gascoigne . Like
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