A small-beer health to his second day: Playwrights, prologues, and first performances in the early modern theater

Studies in Philology

Volumn 101, Issue 2, 2004, Pages 172-199

  Stern, Tiffany ^a  

^a OXFORD BROOKES UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 61449241928     PISSN: 00393738     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (186)

1. a.
2. See, for instance, Jocelyn Powell, Restoration Theatre Production (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984), 16;
3. Paulina Kewes, Authorship and Appropriation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 40.
4. In 1712 The Spectator recorded that "Contrary to all other Epilogues, which are dropp'd after the third Representation of the Play, this [the Epilogue to Ambrose Philips's The Distressed Mother] has already been repeated nine times. " See The Spectator, ed. Donald R. Bond, 5 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), 3:266.
5. Dates of performance are taken from Alfred Harbage and S. Schoenbaum, Annals of English Drama: 975-1700 (London: Methuen, 1964). Because prologues and epilogues cannot necessarily be assumed to be contemporary with the plays they sandwich, however, as copious a range of examples and dates as possible will be given in the footnotes to support any point made.
6. Henry Glapthorne, Poems (1639), 28;
7. Thomas Hey wood, Pleasant Dialogues and Dramas (1637), in Dramatic Works, collected by Richard Heme Shepherd, 6 vols. (London, 1874), 6:339.
8. See also epilogues referring to particular players - like Philip Massinger's Emperor of the East or Hey wood's Prologue to the revised Jew of Malta - that are relevant only at very specific stages of the performers' careers.
9. Jonson, Ben Jonson, ed. C. H. Herford and Percy Simpson, 11 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925-52), 6:15.
10. For the argument that epilogues "[accommodate] the passing fiction to some sense of the actual circumstances of its production and reception" (98), see Robert Weimann, "Performing at the Frontiers of Representation: Epilogue and Post-Scriptural Future in Shakespeare's Plays," in The Arts of Performance in Elizabethan and Early Stuart Drama: Essays for G. K. Hunter, ed. Murray Biggs (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1991), 96-112.
11. It is usual to read the epilogue to The Tempest as an important feature of Prospero's character. To pick just one instance, in Late Shakespeare (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 261-62, Simon Palfrey discusses the epilogue as a comment on the way Prospero continues to be haunted by Caliban. Similarly, Rosalind's epilogue to As You Like It is often seen as a telling reflection on devices in the play, particularly the playwright's comment on the reversibility of gender roles.
12. See Michael Shapiro, Gender in Play on the Shakespearean Stage (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994), 132-33.
13. See Peter W. M. Blayney, The First Folio of Shakespeare (Washington, DC: Folger Library Publications, 1991), 21.
14. It has been argued that the compositors of the Folio text for Romeo and Juliet, which is set from Quarto 2 (1599), omitted the prologue by mistake. See Stanley Wells, Gary Taylor et al., William Shakespeare: A Textual Companion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 375-77, for the suggestion that when casting off, someone in the print house forgot to turn back to the page that contained the prologue. But this is hard to believe: with the prologue, the play is heralded as a tragedy from the outset; without it, the play is comic until the death of Mercutio.
15. b.
16. Shirley, Poems, in Dramatic Works and Poems of James Shirley, ed. William Gifford, 6 vols. (London, 1833), 6:495.
17. George Spenser Bower, A Study of the Prologue and Epilogue (London, 1884), 8.
18. Dibdin, The Reminiscences of Thomas Dibdin, 2 vols. (London, 1827), 1 :7.
19. Mountfort, The Launching of the Mary, ed. John Henry Walter (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1933), 124.
20. b.
21. See also "On Christ-Church Play at Woodstock," in Richard Corbet, Certain Elegant Poems (1647), 71: "If we . . . have not pleased those, / Whose clamorous Judgments lie in urging No'es. "
22. b.
23. Heywood, A Maidenhead Well Lost (1634), in Works, 4:165;
24. a. Plenty of other epilogues are phrased in terms of a particular judgment not yet made.
25. See Shirley, [Love Tricks or] The School of Complement (1631 ), in Works, 1 :97: "we attend / To know if your acceptance crown the end" [1625];
26. a: "what your censures are, / If with, or against Arts industrie . . . We know not yet, 'till judgement give us ease" [1634-36];
27. b: "may / You gently quit or else condemne the Play" [1640];
28. Richard Brome, The Court Beggar, in Dramatic Works, 3 vols. (London, 1873), 1 :270: "Ladyes,. . . Tis in you to save / Him [the poet], from the rigorous censure of the rest" [1639-40]. Prologues and epilogues that mention specifically that they precede the second performance are listed later in this paper.
29. Philip Massinger, Believe as You List, in The Plays and Poems of Philip Massinger, ed. Philip Edwards and Colin Gibson, 5 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), 3 :390: "whether you / conceave wee have wth care dischargd whates due / restes yet in supposition" [1631];
30. Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, The Little French Lawyer, in The Dramatic Works in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon, ed. Fredson Bowers et al., 10 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966), 9:426: "I [Epilogue] am sent forth to enquire what you decree / Of us and our Poets" [1619-23].
31. See also their The Chances, in Dramatic Works, 4:629: "Our paines were eas'd, / Could we be confident that all rise pleas'd" [1613-25];
32. Brome, The Love-sick Court, in Works, 2:171: "Tis not the Poets art. . . / Can justly make us to presume a Play / Is good till you approv't" [c. 1639-40];
33. Heywood, A Challenge for Beauty (1636), in Works, 5:79: "your Smile or Frowne, / Can save, or spill; to make us swimme, or drowne" [1634-36].
34. b: "for the children ere I goe, / Your censure I would willing know" [1607];
35. a: "Are you resolv'd yet Gentlemen?" [1636-38].
36. Jonson, Ben fonson, 6:163;
37. a;
38. Sir William Davenant, The Dramatic Works of Sir William Davenant, ed. James Maidment and W. H. Logan, 5 vols. (London, 1872), 2:6.
39. See also Beaumont and Fletcher, The Humorous Lieutenant, in Dramatic Works, 5:303: "We have a Play, a new Play to play now, / And thus low in our Plaies behalfe we bow" [1619?];
40. Massinger, "Prologue at the Blackfriars" to Emperor of the East (1632), in Plays and Poems, 3:407: "Our Author with much willingnes would omit / This Preface to his new worke" [1631];
41. b: "Some . . . Because this new Play hath a new foundation / We feare will cry it downe" [1638];
42. b: "Our Author hopes . . . that in this Play / He . . . may / Gain liking from you all, unlesse those few / Who wil dislike, be't ne're so good, so new" [1637-41];
43. Shirley, Poems (1646), 149, not produced in Dramatic Works: "The worst that can befall at this new Play, / Is, we shall suffer, if we loose the day. "
44. Beaumont and Fletcher, Dramatic Works, 8:170, 6:452.
45. For the suggestion that the prologue to Two Noble Kinsmen might have been written for a revival, see Jeffrey Masten, Textual Intercourse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 56.
46. Even revived plays went through the motions, their second "first performances" being indicated by new prologues - as with "The Prologue at the Reviving of this Play" that fronts Beaumont and Fletcher's The Nice Valour, in Dramatic Works, 7:496. Revised-play prologues do, however, tend to refer the audience back to their initial judgment.
47. Jonson, Ben Jonson, 6:397.
48. See also Fletcher's Monsieur Thomas (1639), in Beaumont and Fletcher, Dramatic Works, 4:425, condemned "At first presenting" because "but a few [of the audience] / What was legitimate, what bastard, knew" [1610-c. 1616];
49. and Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess (1609?), in Beaumont and Fletcher, Dramatic Works, 3:491, "scornd" by its original audience [1608-9].
50. b, tells of the spectators who "for shortnesse force the Author run, / and end his Play before his Plot be done";
51. the Epilogue to Shakespeare's 2 Henry IV (1600), in The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans et al. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997), 964
52. recently concluded a "displeasing play. " Peter Hausted's The Rival Friends (1632) tells on its title page how it "was . . . Cryed downe by Boyes, Faction, Envie, and confident Ignorance, approv'd by the judicious, and now exposed to the publique censure. "
53. See also Jonson's Sejanus (1605) [1603];
54. Francis Beaumont's Knight of the Burning Pestle (1613) [1607-0 1610];
55. John Webster's The White Devil (1612) [1609-12];
56. Massinger's Emperor of the East (1632) [1631].
57. King, Poems, Elegies, Paradoxes, and Sonnets (1657), 23. The poem itself dates from no later than 1636.
58. See Henry King, The Stoughton Manuscript, facsim. ed. Mary Hobbs (Aldershot: Scolar, 1990), 168.
59. Reproduced in A Choice Ternary of English Plays, ed. William M. Baillie (Binghampton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1984), 45. The playwright, "T. W.," has not been identified. Baillie gives a late commonwealth date for this prologue, but given that theaters were closed during the time of Cromwell, the prologue probably continues to reflect Renaissance practice.
60. E. K. Chambers, William Shakespeare: A Study of Facts and Problems, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1930), 1:124.
61. a.
62. For further examples of revised plays with new stage-orations, see Gerald Eades Bentley, The Profession of Dramatist in Shakespeare's Time (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), 137.
63. a.
64. Percy, The Cuckqueans (London, 1824), 6.
65. Shirley, Poems, in Works, 6:495;
66. Nabbes, Covent Garden (1638), 3.
67. Capitals are used for the characters of Prologue and Epilogue; lower case, for what they say.
68. Reproduced in Autrey Nell Wiley, Rare Prologues and Epilogues 1642-1700 (London: G. Allen and Unwin, 1940), 4.
69. John Astington points out ("Rereading Illustrations of the English Stage," Shakespeare Survey 50 [1997]: 151-70) that the full illustration was originally designed for The Canterburie Pilgrimage (1641) and that it was also used as a frontispiece to An Exact Copy of a Eetter and A Conspiracy of the Twelve Bishops.
70. I have found an additional use of it for Sir Francis Seymor, his Honourable and Worthy Speech (1641). All are printed for H. Walker.
71. Heywood, Works, 2:165;
72. Davenant, Dramatic Works, 3:99;
73. Shirley, Works, 3:458.
74. a: "Prologues were . . . set and starcht speeches to be gravely delivered . . . by the man in the long cloak with the coloured beard. "
75. a.
76. See also Anthony Rudd, Thomas Richards, and Laurence Johnson, Misogonus, ed. R. Warwick Bond (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911), 174: "ask . . . why I decke my temples thus wth bayes" [1577];
77. Beaumont and Fletcher, The Woman Hater (1607), in Dramatic Works, 1:157: "A Prologue in Verse is as stale, as a black Velvet Cloake, and a Bay Garland. "
78. Jonson, Ben fonson, 4:205;
79. a.
80. See also the prologue to Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, in Riverside Shakespeare, 482, described as "A prologue arm'd";
81. John Marston's Antonio and Mellida has an armed epilogue. The vogue for the combative prologue has been traced to the theater wars, but given its habit of cropping up over time it is more likely simply to reflect its author's preference for threatening the audience rather than begging them.
82. Similarly, Roger Shipman's Grobiana's Nuptials: "can't our buisinesse bee done . . . but a Coxe-combe in a cloke must scrape his lease of leggs to begge Sir Tottipate's applause in dogrime verse?" [1637-41]
83. quoted by J. C. Bentley in The Jacobean and Caroline Stage, 7 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940-68), 5:1055.
84. Masten, in Textual Intercourse, 64, explains that in the Renaissance "author" might mean the "person who originates or gives existence to anything" rather than "the writer of the text. "
85. b;
86. Massinger, Emperor of the East (1632), in Plays and Poems, 3:407.
87. Eggers, "Shakespeare's Gower and the Role of the Authorial Presenter," Philological Quarterly 54 (1975): 434.
88. b.
89. Bentley, Dramatist, 135.
90. Shirley, St Patrick for Ireland (1640), in Works, 4:443: "may I stay, /And boldly ask your verdict of the play?" (1639).
91. Shakespeare, Riverside Shakespeare, 964-65.
92. For example, there is an "armed epilogue" in Marston, Antonio and Mellida (1602) [1599-1600], in The Plays of John Marston, ed. H. Harvey Wood, 3 vols. (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1934-39), 1:63.
93. Hey wood, Works, 3:430.
94. See also Chapman [actually Glapthorne?], Revenge for Honour (1659), 63.
95. Dekker, The Non-Dramatic Works, ed. Alexander B. Grossart, 5 vols. (1885; reprint, New York: Russell and Russell, 1963), 3:35; 2:118; 2:327.
96. See William B. Rye, England as Seen by Foreigners in the Days of Elizabeth and fames I (1865), 88, which paraphrases Samuel Kiechel's notes of 1585: "it may indeed happen . . . that the players take from fifty to sixty dollars, at a time, particularly if they act any thing new, when people have to pay double. "
97. For first performance admission prices before the interregnum, see E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, 4 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925), 2:532;
98. Roslyn Lander Knutson, The Repertory of Shakespeare's Company 1594-1613 (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1991), 25.
99. Entrance charges for new plays during the Restoration period are referred to in Samuel Pepys, The Diary, ed. Robert Latham and William Matthews, 11 vols. (London: Bell and Hyman, 1970-83), 2:234: "to the Opera. . . and it being the first time, the pay was doubled. "
100. For the continuance into the eighteenth century of charging doubled or at least "advanced" prices for first-night performances, see Alwin Thaler, Shakspere to Sheridan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1922), 229-33.
101. Lupton, London and the Country Carbonadoed (1632), 79.
102. Tiffany Stern, Rehearsal from Shakespeare to Sheridan (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), 49-51, 76-78.
103. b;
104. John Ford, The Lady's Trial (1639), in The Works of John Ford, ed. William Gifford, 3 vols. (London, 1895), 3:99.
105. a: "Sweet Poesye / Is oft convict, condem'd, and judg'd to die / Without just triall, by a multitude / Whose judgements are illiterate, and rude";
106. Brome, The Novella, in Works 1:104: "Hee'll 'bide his triall, and submits his cause / To you the Jury" [1632-33].
107. Jonson, "To the worthy Author M. John Fletcher," in Beaumont and Fletcher, Faithful Shepherdess (1609?), in Dramatic Works, 3:492;
108. Heywood, The Golden Age (1611), in Works 3:79 [1609-11];
109. Dekker, The Wonder of a Kingdom (1636), in The Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker, ed. Fredson Bowers, 4 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953), 3:577 [1623-31].
110. See also Dekker, Non-Dramatic, 2:249: "by being a Justice in examining of plaies, you shall put your selfe into . . . true scaenical authority";
111. Davenant, Madagascar, with Other Poems (1638), 87: "some tim'rous Poets. . . / Hope for no easie Judge";
112. Beaumont and Fletcher, The Coxcomb, in Dramatic Works, 1:269: "now 'tis to be tri'd / Before such Judges, 'twill not be deni'd / A. . . noble hearing" [1608-10];
113. b: "our feare [is], / least what our Author writes should not appeare / Fit for this Judging presence" [1637-40];
114. Shirley, The Imposture (1652), in Works, 5:181: "You, gentlemen, that sit / Our judges" [1640].
115. b: "Our Author at the Barre of Censure stands" [1635-36];
116. b: "Tis arraign'd; / And doubtful stands before your judgements barre, / Expecting what your severall censures are" [1638].
117. Dekker, Satiromastix (1602), in Dramatic Works, 1:382.
118. Dekker, Dramatic Works, 3:121.
119. Shirley, The Duke's Mistress (1638), in Works 4:274.
120. Brome wants no one to claim he "skulks behind the hangings . . . aiffaid / Of a hard censure" (English Moor, in Works, 2:86);
121. In Beaumont and Fletcher's The Lover's Progress (1647), the revising author takes on the mantle of any other first-performance author, "Still doubtfull, and perplex'd too, whether he / Hath done Fletcher right in this Historie, / The Poet sits within" (Dramatic Works, 10:527).
122. b [Paul's?, 1601-2].
123. For more on the subject, see Tiffany Stern, "Behind the Arras: The Prompter's Place in the Shakespearean Theatre," Theatre Notebook (2001): 110-18.
124. conversely John Stephens's A base Mercenary Poet, in Satirical Essays (1615), 292: "when hee heares his play hissed,. . . would rather thinke bottle-Ale is opening. "
125. Davenant, The Platonic Lovers (1636), in Dramatic Works, 2:6.
126. Shirley, Works, 5:352.
127. Massinger, Plays and Poems, 31428;
128. b.
129. Prologue to The Scholars, in Francis Beaumont, Poems by Francis Beaumont (1653), 75.
130. Dekker, Dramatic Works, 4:292.
131. Stephens, Satirical Essays, 245-46.
132. Cokain, Small Poems of Divers Sorts (1658), 410.
133. Gayton, Pleasant Notes upon Don Quixote (1654), 245-46.
134. a.
135. b;
136. Judith Milhous and Robert D. Hume, Producible Interpretation (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1985), 44;
137. b
138. b) and George Farquhar's The Constant Couple (1699), the fifth act of which was rewritten -
139. see George Farquhar, The Works (1660), 1:141-44, 361-63.
140. a: "The Second Night the particular Things objected to, being taken out, the Play was acted from Beginning to End, without one single Mark of Displeasure in the Audience. "
141. a.
142. b.
143. For more examples see Stern, Rehearsal, 187-92.
144. Middleton, The Works, ed. A. H. Bullen, 8 vols. (London, 1886), 8:77.
145. Marston, Plays, 1:11.
146. Jonson, Ben Jonson, 3:602.
147. See also his "To the Reader," in Poetaster, Ben Jonson, 4:317-24. There Jonson explains how he has accepted criticism and made revisions after the premier.
148. b.
149. Gurr, "Maximal and Minimal Texts: Shakespeare v. The Globe," Shakespeare Survey 52 (1999): 68-87.
150. Suckling, The Goblins (1646), 65.
151. a.
152. Ford, The Broken Heart (1633), in Works, 1:320.
153. See also Heywood, A Maidenhead Welt Lost (1634), in Works 4:165: "Our Play is new, but whether shaped well / In Act or Seane, Judge you, you best can tell" [1625-34];
154. a.
155. a.
156. Habington, The Poems, ed. Kenneth Allott (London: Hodder and Stouton, 1948), 150.
157. a: "I must. . . let Players know / They cannot recompence your labour: Though / They . . . take no money of you nor your Page. "
158. Davenant confirms that this was common practice in the Restoration: "[poets] pay nothing for their entrance" (The Playhouse to he Let [1673], in Dramatic Works, 4:28).
159. Joseph Hall, The Poems, ed. Arnold Davenport (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1969), 15;
160. a.
161. a.
162. Massinger, Plays and Poems, 2:197.
163. Davenant, Dramatic Works, 4:31.
164. Basing his argument on the fact that most positive contemporary references to "benefits" date from the Jacobean and Caroline period, Alwin Thaler suggests that poets' benefits were not generally granted until some point after the accession of King James ("Playwrights' Benefits, and "Interior Gathering" in the Elizabethan Theatre," Studies in Philology 16 [1919]: 189). With so little evidence extant on the subject, it is difficult either thoroughly to accept or thoroughly to reject his proposition.
165. The Smoking Age (1617), 159.
166. b.
167. See also the prologue to The Scholars in Beaumont, Poems (1653), 79: "Profit he knowes none / Unies that of your Approbation, / Which if your thoughts at going out will pay, / Hee'l not looke further for a Second Day" [1634-35?];
168. a: "He's One, whose unbought Muse did never feare / An Empty second day, or a thinne share" [1637-38?];
169. John Tatham, Ostella (1650), 111: "Our Author likes the Women well, and says . . . on his Day . . . leave them not behind" [c. 1640-50];
170. b: "You who the Poet and the Actors fright, / Lest that your Censure thin the second night";
171. a: "I shall deeme thee worthy praise, / . . .
172. When Fancie in thy Theater doth play, / And wins more credit than a second day"; and Sir John Mennes, Musarum Deliciae (1655), 80: "bring them into a Play, / . . . And Ile have the second day" (again, all plainly first-performance speeches).
173. Brome, Novella, in Works, 1:179.
174. Cartwright, The Plays and Poems, ed. G. Blakemore Evans (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1951), 514.
175. Shakespeare, Riverside Shakespeare, 965, 483, 434.
176. See Andrew Gurr's introduction to his edition of Shakespeare's Henry V (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 7.
177. For the argument that the ehorie apologies pertain to a specific court performance, see G. P. Jones, "Henry V: The Chorus and the Audience," Shakespeare Survey 31 (1978): 93-104;
178. Lawrence Danson disagrees in "Henry V: King, Chorus, and Critics," Shakespeare Quarterly 34 (1983): 27-43.
179. Heywood, Works, 3:3;
180. See also Thomas Middleton, The Family of Love (1608), in Works, 3:7: the play "passed the censure of the stage with a general applause";
181. a: "This Tragedy had at the presentment a generall Applause";
182. Massinger, The City Madam (1658), in Plays and Poems, 4:19: "this Poem was the object of. . . Commendations,. . . being . . . censured by an unerring Auditory";
183. b: "it received the rights of a good Play,. . . which were Applauses & Commendations. "
184. Davenant, Dramatic Works, 1:117. The question as to whether Shakespeare's Troilus had actually been privately performed is a complex one; no satisfactory solution has been found for the different information offered in variant Quarto title pages and in the Stationers' Register. Here I am specifically interested in the way the writer of the epistle presents his belief that the play has never been mounted.
185. Gary Taylor and John Jowett, Shakespeare Reshaped (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 237.
186. This article would never have been completed without the help of Professor Alan Dessen (The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill). I am enormously grateful to him for his advice - and patience - over the last few months. I also extend my thanks to the British Academy, which kindly provided me with a travel grant to give this article as a paper at the Shakespeare Association of America conference.