"On each wall and corner poast": Playbills, Title-pages, and Advertising in early modern London

English Literary Renaissance

Volumn 36, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 57-89

  Stern, Tiffany ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 61149487712     PISSN: 00138312     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1475-6757.2006.00072.x     Document Type: Article

References (97)

1. Tiffany Stern, Rehearsal from Shakespeare to Sheridan (Oxford, 2000), pp. 113-20
2. See John Orrell, "The London Stage in the Florentine Correspondence 1604-18," Theatre Research International 3 (1977-1978), 171. Moseley's prefatory verses to Beaumont and Fletcher's Comedies and Tragedies (1647), sig. F6, mentions that "after th' Epilogue there comes some one / To tell Spectators what shall next be shown." An example of the audience changing the play performed during performance itself is given by Edmund Gayton, Pleasant Notes upon Don Quixote (1654): "I have known . . . at Shrove-tide, where the Players have been appointed, notwithstanding their bils to the contrary, to act what the major part of the company had a mind to; sometimes Tamerlane, sometimes Jugurth, sometimes the Jew of Malta, and sometimes parts of all these" (p. 271)
3. Samuel Ward, Balme from Gilead (1622): "Come and see. Were it . . . but a company of Players, riding through a Market, A Drum, a Trumpet, or the least call would serve . . . to draw us out to the sight" (pp. 47-48)
4. See also W. J. Lawrence, "The Ceremony of the Drum and Trumpet" in Old Theatre Days and Ways (1935), pp. 11-21, who suggests that after about 1600 the drum and trumpet were only used to herald country performances. See also Jerzy Limon, Gentlemen of a Company (Cambridge, Eng., 1985), pp. 28-29, on English players' continued use of drum and trumpet abroad up until the 1640s
5. Henry Fitzgeffrey, Certain Elegies (1618), sig. D6
6. Reproduced in Eleanore Boswell, "A Playbill of 1687," The Library, 4 th series 11: 4 (1931), 501
7. W. J. Lawrence, The Elizabethan Playhouse and Other Studies (Stratford-Upon-Avon, 1913), pp. 57-91. Lawrence's misleading title may account for E. K. Chambers' failure to assimilate the evidence provided
8. The Spanish bill is described by Hugo Albert Rennert, The Spanish Stage (New York, 1909), p. 133, who also records the existence of two fragments of Spanish bills probably dating from 1637
9. From Mery Tales, Wittie Questions, and Quicke Answeres (1567), reproduced in Shakspeare's Jest Book ed. Samuel Weller Singer (Chiswick, 1814), II: 15-18
10. Marjorie Plant, The English Book Trade (London, 1965), p. 248
11. For the wide spread of libel bills even earlier, on posts around medieval London, see Wendy Scase, "'Strange and Wonderful Bills': Bill-Casting and Political Discourse in Late Medieval England" New Medieval Literatures 2 (1998), 225-47
12. George Gerrard, February 1636/1637, in Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, Letters and Dispatches, ed. William Knowler, 2 vols. (1739), II, 56. See also the letter from Robert Some VC and Heads to Lord Burghley, Chancellor of September 18, 1592, in Records of Early English Drama: Cambridge, ed. Alan H. Nelson, 2 vols. (Toronto, 1989), I, 340: "by reason of the rifenes of the plague . . . wee sent A warrant . . . to inhibite certaine Players . . . How slightly that warrant was regarded . . . appeared by theire bills sett up upon our Colledge gates, and by theire playeinge in Chesterton." In [John Marston's?] Histriomastix (1610), an actor enters "setting uppe billes," indicating that the players are ready to perform (fol. 2a)
13. Edward Arber, A Transcript of the Registers of the Company of Stationers of London (1875- 1884), II, 477. For this entire section I am grateful for the help of Peter Blayney
14. quot;The Printer to the Reader," in John Lyly's Endimion (1591), sig. A2
15. W. W. Greg & E. Boswell, Records of the Court . . . 1576 to 1602 from Register B (London, 1930), p. 46
16. Arber, Transcript, II, 652, "plaies" corrected to "plaiirs" by Peter Blayney, private correspondence
17. Arber, Transcript, IV, 182
18. Taken from W. W. Greg, The Shakespeare First Folio: its Bibliographical and Textual History (Oxford, 1955), pp. 22-23. Greg here corrects some of the errors regarding playbills in Edwin E. Willoughby, A Printer of Shakespeare (London, 1934)
19. Henslowe's Diaries provide no clear reference to paying the playbill printers, so they cannot confirm this assumption
20. An incomplete study of the ornaments owned by Charlewood, Roberts, Jaggard and Cotes has not, so far, revealed "signs" for all the theatres, but it is possible that special fixed templates were used for playbills
21. BL C 18 e 2 / 74, real size 5 13/16 by 7 inches. Reproduced in Van Lennep, "Some English Playbills," Harvard Library Bulletin 8.2 (1954), 239. The printer is identified wrongly as Jaggard by F. S. Ferguson in that same article, and as Cotes by Peter Blayney in private correspondence
22. This "Wine Street" performance would presumably take place in the theater of that name in Bristol, thought until now to have ceased operating in around 1625. See Siobhan Keenan, Travelling Players in Shakespeare's England (Basingstoke, 2002), pp. 144-51. The Bristol Wine Street theater must have still been a performance venue during or after 1627, the date when Cotes started printing bills
23. The French bill, for Théophile de Scudéry's Ligdamon et Lidias (1629), is reproduced in W. J. Lawrence's "The World's Oldest Playbills," in The Stage Year Book, ed. L. Carson (London, 1920), pp. 23-30
24. Reproduced as plate 2 in Albert Cohn, Shakespeare in Germany (London, 1865)
25. For a reference to a French bill of 1599 in which the clown was a major lure, see W. L. Wiley, The Early Public Theatre in France (Cambridge, Mass., 1960), who writes of an agreement drawn between Bonoist Petit and Valleran le Conte on January 4, 1599. Petit demanded Valleran's assurance that he would perform; otherwise, "the said Petit will not be able in any way to name the said Valleran in the posters that will be put up" (p. 219)
26. The bill is part of the collection of papers left by the great actor Edward Alleyn to Dulwich College, and is kept with the advertisement of a prize shooting that is printed. W. W. Greg, Henslowe Papers, 3 vols. (London, 1907), III, 106. It is reproduced in The Oxford Illustrated History of Shakespeare on Stage, ed. Jonathan Bate and Russell Jackson (Oxford, 1996), p. 3
27. John Taylor, "Taylors Water-Worke," in All the Workes of John Taylor the Water-Poet, 3 vols. (1630), III, 24
28. Greg, Henslowe Papers, III, 71
29. John Chamberlain, letter of November 19, 1602, in The Letters of John Chamberlain ed. Norman Egbert McClure, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1939), I, 172
30. John Northbrooke, A Treastise wherein Dicing, Dauncing, Vaine plaies . . . are reproved . . . (1579), p. 36
31. Letter from a soldier to Secretary Sir Francis Walsingham, January 25, 1586/1587, quoted in E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, 4 vols. (Oxford, 1923), IV, 303-04
32. Robert Chamberlain, Jocabella (1640), sigs. B11v-B12
33. George Wither[s], Abuses (1614), sig. O4
34. quot;Taylors Revenge," II, 145: "One swears and stormes, another laughs & smiles, / Another madly would pluck off the tiles. / . . . One valiantly stept out upon the Stage, / And would teare downe the hangings in his rage."
35. quot;Taylors Revenge," II, 147. Fennor's response see "Fennors Defence" in Taylor's Workes that he himself had once been placed in the same situation but had handled it better, provides more information about advertising challenges. Fennor had challenged Kendall the actor to a battle of wits on the Fortune stage and "to the world did publish printed Bills, / With promise that we both would shew our skills" (p. 151). Kendell had not shown up but Fennor had simply entertained the audience with his extemporal wit. "Kendall" is probably William Kendall, a member of the Admiral's Men in the 1590s. See Edwin Nungezer, A Dictionary of Actors (New Haven, 1929), pp. 223-24
36. See Tiffany Stern, Rehearsal, p. 115
37. Charles Welch, "The City Printers," Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, 14 (1918), 179
38. Nicholas Breton, Fantasticks: Serving for a Perpetuall Prognostication (1626), sigs. E4, F1. Cf. letter from anon to secretary Sir Francis Walsingham in 1586/1587 in Chambers, Elizabethan Stage, which draws attention to the fact that "every day in the weake the players billes are sett upp" (IV, 303)
39. John Marston, Scourge of Villanie (1598), sig. B2. See also James Shirley, Poems in The Dramatic Works and Poems, ed. W. Gifford and A. Dyce, 6 vols. (1833), VI, 493
40. John Taylor, "A Kicksey Winsey" in All the Works, II, 40. That notices continued to be posted for perusal while urinating is confirmed by later references. In The Transproser Rehears'd (1673), Richard Leigh refers to the "Author of most of those ingenious Labours which curious Readers admire at Pissing times in their passage between White-hall and Temple-bar" (p. 1)
41. Sir Aston Cokain, The Obstinate Lady (1658), 4.1. 360
42. Richard Flecknoe, Miscellania (1653), p. 141. See also John Stephens, New Essays and Characters (1631): "I shall but . . . / . . . repeate things mention'd long before / Nay things prefixt upon each Play-house doore" (p. 20); [Marston?], Histriomastix, sig. E4: "it is as dangerous to read his name at a playe-dore, As a printed bil on a plague dore."
43. See, e.g., Edward Guilpin, Skialetheia (1598): "every paper-clothed post in Poules, / To thee (Deloney) mourningly doth speake" (sig. A3v)
44. Sir Benjamin Rudyerd, Le Prince d'amour, or the Prince of Love (1660), p. 80. (The "Prince d'amour" was a principal personage in the Revels performed at Christmas in the Middle Temple.)
45. Thomas Nashe, The Works, ed. R. B. McKerrow, 5 vols. (London, 1910), I, 100; Samuel Pepys, The Diary, ed. Robert Latham and William Matthews, 11 vols. (London, 1970-1983), VII, 420-21
46. Chambers, English Stage, IV, 283
47. Robert Heath, Clarastella (1650), p. 36. See also Thomas Hall, The Loathsomeness of Long Hair (1654), p. 108: "Now many professe openly their inward uncleannesse by laying open to the common view, their naked Breasts, as though it were a bill affixed to the doore-posts, to signifie to the passers by, that within that place dwells an uncleane heart." The Spanish, similarly, had a habit of posting playbills for "comedias" on the corners of houses. See N. D. Shergold, A History of the Spanish Stage (Oxford, 1967), p. 514
48. William Rankins, The Mirrour of Monsters (1587), sig. C2. The same is also said of Dublin in Ireland when Shirley writes his prologue to "Another of Master Fletcher's Plays" there. See Shirley, Poems in Dramatic Works, VI, 464
49. Richard Brathwait, Anniversaries upon his Panarete, continued (1635), sig. A6v. It was wise to get a servant to collect playbills rather than simply gather information from them. Sir Edmond Mundeford found this out to his cost when he sent a man to find out what was being played. "The Virgin Martyr was upon the Post, which the Fellow rashly Apprehending, brought his Master up word, it was the Play of the Virgin Mary," Merry Passages and Jeasts: A Manuscript Jestbook of Sir Nicholas Le Strange, ed. James Hogg (Satzburg, 1974), p. 134
50. Richard Brathwait, The English Gentlewoman (1631) [revised in Times Treasury, 1652], p. 53. See also Richard Brathwait, Astraea's Teares (1641), sigs. B6-B6v: "while their Ladies care / extended to a Play bill, a Caroach, / A compleat Usher, or Postillion Coach."
51. Ben Jonson, The Devil is an Ass, in The Works, ed. C. H. Herford and P. E. Simpson, 11 vols. (Oxford, 1925-1952), VI, 173-74
52. Richard Brathwait, Ar't Asleepe Husband? (1640), p. 163
53. Randle Cotgrave, A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues (1611), sig. 3Q1v
54. John Fletcher, The Little French Lawyer in Beaumont and Fletcher, Comedies and Tragedies (1647), sig. H2a; John Taylor, "The Fearefull Summer," I, 60; Nashe, Pierce Penilesse (1592) in Works, I, 194; Edmond Willis, An Abreviation of Writing by Character (1618), sigs. A3-A3v
55. Barten Holyday, Technogamia (1618), sig. C2. See also Joseph Hall, Virgidemiarum (1598): "Saw'st thou ever Siquis patch'd on Pauls Church dore, / To seeke some vacant Vicarage before?" (p. 39). Thomas Dekker's Guls Handbook, advises a country gentleman coming to Paul's Cathedral not to "cast an eye to Si-quis doore (pasted and plaistered up with serving-mens supplications)"; see The Non-Dramatic Works, ed. Alexander B. Grossart, 5 vols. (1885; New York, 1963), II, 235. It is on this door the church door in the left side aisle that Shift in Ben Jonson's Every Man Out posts mock bills
56. The picture comes from Joos de Damhouder's Praxis Rerum Criminalious (Antwerp, 1562), p. 398, and is reproduced as plate 13 of Adam Fox's Oral and Literate Culture in England 1500-1700 (Oxford, 2000). For other bills on doors see Fox, Oral, where a Durham man in 1607 has rhymes placed above his door (p. 38); where a Coventry man is libelled on "diverse and sundry doors, walls and posts to the intente that the same might be made knowne unto all mannor of persones whatsoever" (p. 302), p. 305, where, in 1574, a group in Rye, Sussex "affixe upon diverse men's dores certeine infamous libels and scrolls containing dishonest reproche." See also pp. 314, 317. Other places for libels in country towns and cities include roadside posts (in 1609 one of the gamekeepers of the Earl of Pembroke set up his libels "on the top of a post of certain rails" that adjoined the highway where they could be "seen and redd by all passengers that way"), also whipping-posts (in 1619 Lancashire tenants attached a libel to the whipping-post "standing in the most publicke place of . . . Newton"), See also pp. 315-16
57. Tudor Royal Proclamations, ed. Paul L Hughes and James F. Larkin, 3 vols. (New Haven, 1969), II, 546
58. In The English Book Trade (London, 1965), Marjorie Plant writes, without reference, "the title-page came to be nailed up on the whipping-posts in the streets, on the pillars in St. Paul's, and on the walls of the Inns of Courts" (p. 248)
59. Henry Parrot, The Mastive (1615), sig. A6v. See also John Eliot, Poems (1658), pp. 10-11: "If you . . . set to view / The Title of this Book on any Post, / I wish your expectation may be lost; / For common things . . . Are only fit for th'vulgar sort to buy." See also Hall, Virgidemiarum, p. 63, who disdains "Maevios" because his poetry is "Nayl'd to an hundreth postes for noveltie, / With his big title, and Italian mott"; Thomas Campion, Observations in the Art of English Poesie (1602): "Whether thus hasts my little booke so fast? . . . to stand / With one leafe like a riders cloke put up / To catch a Termer?" (sig. A4v)
60. Robert Fludd, Answer unto M. Foster, or, The Squesing of Parson Fosters Sponge (1631), sig. A3v
61. Further confirmation comes from Davies of Hereford, A Scourge for Paper-Persecuters (1625): "infant Rimers . . . pester Postes with Titles of new bookes" (p. 5)
62. Nathan Field, The Honest Man's Fortune (1647), pp. 90-92; The Account Audited (1649), sig. A2
63. A. H., A Continued Inquisition against Paper-Persecutors (1625), p. 1
64. R. B. McKerrow, "Booksellers, printers, and the stationers' trade," in Shakespeare's England, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1916), II, 231
65. Nashe, Terrors of the Night (1594), in Works, I, 343. Peter W. M. Blayney, "The Publication of Playbooks," in A New History of Early English Drama, ed. John D. Cox and David Scott Kastan (New York, 1997), points out that naming a particular shop for purchase is more useful to the buyer of wholesale books than to the retail purchaser (p. 390). Yet Nashe's confirmation that the name of the seller registered when reading title-page advertisements suggests that passers-by might also consider buying from the wholeseller's shop (it is of course also possible that retail sellers added to title-leaves the names of other places in which books could be bought)
66. Andrew Marvell, The Rehearsall Transpros'd: the Second Part (1673), reproduced in Andrew Marvell, The Rehearsal Transpros'd, ed. D. I. B. Smith (Oxford, 1971), p. 167
67. Henry Peacham, The worth of a Peny (1647), p. 3. See also Lady Alimony (1659), sig. A3v; Trillo: "The Title of your new Play, Sir?" Tim: "Every Poast may sufficiently inform you." See also Richard Brathwait, The Two Lancashire Lovers (1640), p. 196, where man's tragedy is that his "Playbill beares no better style then A Comedy of Errors."
68. Peter Heylin, Observations on the Historie of the Reign of King Charles (1656), p. 244
69. Perfect Occurrences, Thursday February 3 (1647/1648), p. 402. This kind of advertising may have become more popular during the interregnum when plays had to be mounted in secret
70. Letter from anon in 1586/1587, in Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, IV, 303-04
71. See Alan B. Farmer and Zachary Lesser, "Vile Arts: The Marketing of English Printed Drama, 1512-1660," in Research Opportunities in Renaissance Drama 39 (2000), 77-109
72. Other printed plays of the period that do not name genre on their title-pages include A Looking Glasse for London and England (1593), Mother Bombie (1594), and The Woman in the Moone (1597)
73. Printed plays of around that year that do not name genre on their title-pages include John Denham's The Sophy (1642) and John Taylor's A Pedlar and a Romish Priest (1641)
74. Lodowick Carlell, Arviragus and Philicia (1639), sig. A3. See also Sir Samuel Tuke, The Adventures of Five Hours (1663), sig. A1, in which "The Prologue Enters with a Playbill in his hand, and Reads, This Day being the 15th of December, shall be Acted a New Play, never Plai'd before, call'd The Adventures of Five Hours."
75. Thomas Campion, The Third and Fourth Booke of Ayres (1617), sig. C1
76. For examples of readers demanding new books, see H. S. Bennett, English Books and Readers 1558-1603 (Cambridge, Eng., 1965), pp. 263, 269. For continued interest in novelty as a selling-point in the early modern booktrade see his English Books and Readers 1603-1640 (Cambridge Eng., 1970), pp. 217-18
77. John Dryden, The Letters, ed. Charles E. Ward (1942; New York, 1965), p. 113
78. William Habington, The Poems, ed. Kenneth Allott (London, 1948), p. 150. See also Perfect Occurrences (October 6, 1647), for an account which seems to transcribe the playbill of a play stopped during the interregnum: "A Stage-Play was to have been acted in Salisbury Court this day (& Bills stuck up about it) called A King and no King, formerly acted at the Black-Fryers, by his Majesties servants, about 8. yeares since, written by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher." A prologue written for a performance of The Tamer Tamed on June 24. 1660, reproduced in Thomas Jordan, A Nursery of Novelties (1665), gives Fletcher's name at least in performance, and almost certainly on the bill too (p. 20). The prologue enters reading the bill and wondering "The Tamer Tam'd, what do the Players mean?" Then, still examining the bill, he explains "This Play, the Tamer tam'd, is Fletchers wit, / A man that pleas'd all pallats."
79. See David Scott Kastan, Shakespeare and the Book (Cambridge, Eng., 2001), pp. 31-35
80. For the fashion in play-books, see Farmer and Lesser, "Vile Arts," pp. 77-109
81. Bentley, The Jacobean and Caroline Stage, 7 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1941- 68), V, 1455. The bill hung on the White Horse Inn, Norwich, in April 1624
82. Thomas Overbury, A Wife now the Widdow of Sir Tho: Overburye (1614), sig. A2
83. Henry Fitzgeffrey, Satyres and Satyricall Epigrams (1617), sigs. E7-E7v
84. Reproduced in William Van Lennep, "The Earliest Known English Playbill," Harvard Library Bulletin 1: 3 (1947), 382-85
85. See, e.g., John Feeman's A Sermon Preached Without a Text (1643) which claims to have a title that is "none of mine; it had its Originall from the . . . Printers capricious conceit . . . I had no acquaintance with it, till I met it in the front of the Printed Copies" (sig. A2v)
86. See The Merchant of Venice, ed. J. R. Brown (London, 1955) and The Merchant of Venice, ed. Jay L. Halio (Oxford, 1993), in which the title-page is confined to the textual introductions; and The Merchant of Venice ed. M. M. Mahood (Cambridge, Eng., 1987) in which the title-page is in the textual analysis provided after the play itself. No editor provides the title-page anywhere near the title
87. In Lawrence, Elizabethan, p. 68
88. John Suckling, The Goblins (1646), p. 45. See also John Savile, King James his entertainment at Theobalds . . . Poeme (1603), sigs. cii-ciiv: "I cannot deeme it now a gulling toye, / Which Vennard (inspir'd) intituled Englands Joye . . . nowe's thy praesaging plaine, / King James is englands joy"; John Day, Travels of Three English Brothers (1607) in Day, Works, ed. A. H. Bullen (London, 1881): "the name [of the play] was called England Joy. Marry he was no Poet that wrote it! He drew more Connies in a purse-nette then ever were taken at any draught about London" p. 55
89. William Parkes, The Curtaine-Drawer of the World (1612). "I am made a right Englands joy, a Theater of delusion" (p. 3)
90. Henry Parrot, The Mastive (1615): "that old Cosenage of new Englands-joy" sig. F6v; William Fennor, The Compters Commonwealth (1617): "one Mr Venard (that went by the name of / Englands Joy) . . . died heere" (p. 64)
91. Henry Burton, The Baiting of the Popes Bull (1627): "the Title seem[s] improper . . . as if I meant to feed the spectators with the vaine expectation of some new English joy" (sig. 25)
92. John Taylor, "A Cast Over the Water" in All the Workes (II, 162): "poore old Vennor, that plaine dealing man, / Who acted Englands Joy first at the Swan." Herbert Berry, "Richard Vennar, England's Joy," English Literary Renaissance (2001), explains that Vennar gave Fennor £2 to resurrect Englands Joy, and suggests that the latter may have had to perform the play while Vennar was in the compter (p. 263). That may be the case: that same year in A Strappado for the Divell (1615) Richard Brathwait, refers to the prohibitively expensive nature of "that same toy . . . Fenners Englands joy (p. 185)." Possibly it was this revised performance that kept the story fresh in people's minds. Alternatively all duping performances came to be known as England's Joy
93. Chamberlain, Letters, I, 172 [November 19, 1602]
94. John Manningham, November 1602, in The diary of John Manningham of the Middle Temple, 1602-3, ed. Robert Parker Sorlien (Hanover, N. H., 1976), p. 123
95. Richard Vennar[d], An Apology (1614), p. 24
96. Ben Jonson, Masque of Augurs (1622) in Ben Jonson, VII, 633
97. John Ford, The Lovers Melancholy (1629), sig. H1