Chapter 19

SALISBURY COURT

The Salisbury Court Playhouse[621] was projected and built by two men whose very names are unfamiliar to most students of the drama--Richard Gunnell and William Blagrove. Yet Gunnell was a distinguished actor, and was associated with the ownership and management of at least two theatres. Even so early as 1613 his reputation as a player was sufficient to warrant his inclusion as a full sharer in the Palsgrave's Company, then acting at the Fortune. When the Fortune was rebuilt after its destruction by fire in 1621, he purchased one of the twelve shares in the new building, and rose to be manager of the company.[622] In addition to managing the company he also, as we learn from the Herbert Manuscript, supplied the actors with plays. In 1623 he composed _The Hungarian Lion_, obviously a comedy, and in the following year _The Way to Content all Women, or How a Man May Please his Wife_.[623] Of William Blagrove I can learn little more than that he was Deputy to the Master of the Revels. In this capacity he signed the license for Glapthorne's _Lady Mother_, October 15, 1635; and his name appears several times in the Herbert Manuscript in connection with the payments of various companies.[624] Possibly he was related to Thomas Blagrove who during the reign of Elizabeth was an important member of the Revels Office, and who for a time served as Master of the Revels.

[Footnote 621: The playhouse discussed in this chapter was officially known as "The Salisbury Court Playhouse," and it should always be referred to by that name. Unfortunately, owing to its situation near the district of Whitefriars, it was sometimes loosely, though incorrectly, called "Whitefriars." Since it had no relation whatever to the theatre formerly in the Manor-House of Whitefriars, a perpetuation of this false nomenclature is highly undesirable.]

[Footnote 622: Malone, _Variorum_, III, 66.]

[Footnote 623: Chalmers's _Supplemental Apology_, pp. 216-17. He may also have been the author of a play called _The Masque_, which Herbert in 1624 licensed: "For the Palsgrave's Company, a new play called _The Masque_." In the list of manuscript plays collected by Warburton we find the title _A Mask_, and the authorship ascribed to R. Govell. Since "R. Govell" is not otherwise heard of, we may reasonably suppose that this was Warburton's reading of "R. Gunell." Gunnell also prefixed a poem to the Works of Captain John Smith, 1626.]

[Footnote 624: Malone, _Variorum_, III, 66, 122, 176, 177.]

What threw these two men together in a theatrical partnership we do not know. But in the summer of 1629 they decided to build a private playhouse to compete with the successful Blackfriars and Cockpit; and for this purpose they leased from the Earl of Dorset a plot of ground situated to the east of the precinct of Whitefriars. The ground thus leased opened on Salisbury Court; hence the name, "The Salisbury Court Playhouse." In the words of the legal document, the Earl of Dorset "in consideration that Richard Gunnell and William Blagrove should at their costs and charges erect a playhouse and other buildings at the lower end of Salisbury Court, in the parish of St. Bridges, in the ward of Farringdon Without, did demise to the said Gunnell and Blagrove a piece of ground at the same lower end of Salisbury Court, containing one hundred and forty foot in length and forty-two in breadth ... for forty-one years and a half." The lease was signed on July 6, 1629. Nine days later, on July 15, the Earl of Dorset, "in consideration of nine hundred and fifty pounds paid to the said late Earl by John Herne, of Lincoln's Inn, Esquire, did demise to hire the said piece of ground and [the] building [i.e., the playhouse] thereupon to be erected, and the rent reserved upon the said lease made to Gunnell and Blagrove." Herne's lease was for a term of sixty-one years. The effect of this second lease was merely to make Herne, instead of the Earl of Dorset, the landlord of the players.

The plot of ground selected for the playhouse is described with exactness in the lease printed below. The letters inserted in brackets refer to the accompanying diagram (see page 371):

All that soil and ground whereupon the Barn {A}, at the lower end of the great back court, or yard of Salisbury Court, now stands; and so much of the soil whereupon the whole south end of the great stable in the said court or yard stands, or contains, from that end of that stable towards the north end thereof sixteen foot of assize, and the whole breadth of the said stable {B}; and all the ground and soil on the east and west side of that stable lying directly against the said sixteen foot of ground at the south end thereof between the wall of the great garden belonging to the mansion called Dorset House and the wall that severs the said Court from the lane called Water Lane {C and D}; and all the ground and soil being between the said walls on the east and west part thereof, and the said barn, stable, and ground on both side the same on the south and north parts thereof {E}. Which said several parcells of soil and ground ... contain, in the whole length ... one hundred and forty foot of assize, and in breadth ... forty and two foot of assize, and lies together at the lower end of the said Court.

This plot, one hundred and forty feet in length by forty-two in breadth, was small for its purpose, and the playhouse must have covered all the breadth and most of the length of the leased ground;[625] there was no actual need of leaving any part of the plot vacant, for the theatre adjoined the Court, and "free ingress, egress, and regress" to the building were stipulated in the lease "by, through, and on any part of the Court called Salisbury Court."

[Footnote 625: The Blackfriars auditorium was sixty-six feet in length and forty-six feet in breadth.]

At once Gunnell and Blagrove set about the erection of their playhouse. They may have utilized in some way the "great barn" which occupied most of their property; one of the legal documents printed by Cunningham contains the phrase: "and the great barn, which was afterwards the playhouse."[626] If this be true--I think it very doubtful--the reconstruction must have been thorough, for Howes, in his continuation of Stow's _Annals_ (1631), speaks of Salisbury Court as "a new, fair playhouse";[627] and in all respects it seems to have ranked with the best.

[Footnote 626: Cunningham, _The Shakespeare Society's Papers_, IV, 104. In his _Handbook for London_ Cunningham says that the Salisbury Court Playhouse "was originally the 'barn.'"]

[Footnote 627: _Annals_ (1631), p. 1004. In 1633 Prynne (_Histriomastix_) refers to it as a "new theatre erected."]

We know very little of the building. But Wright, in his _Historia Histrionica_, informs us that it was "almost exactly like" the two other private houses, the Blackfriars and the Cockpit:

_True._ The Blackfriars, Cockpit, and Salisbury Court were called private houses, and were very small to what we see now. The Cockpit was standing since the Restoration, and Rhodes' company acted there for some time.

_Love._ I have seen that.

_True._ Then you have seen the other two in effect, for they were all three built almost exactly alike for form and bigness.[628]

[Footnote 628: Collier, _The History of English Dramatic Literature_ (1879), III, 106, thought that Salisbury Court was a round playhouse, basing his opinion on a line in Sharpe's _Noble Stranger_ acted at "the private house in Salisbury Court": "Thy Stranger to the Globe-like theatre."]

In spite of what Wright says, however, there is some reason for believing that Salisbury Court was smaller than the other two private houses. The Epilogue to _Totenham Court_ refers to it as "my little house"; and the Epistle affixed to the second edition of _Sir Giles Goosecappe_ is said to convey the same impression of smallness.[629]

[Footnote 629: I have not been able to examine this. In the only copy of the second edition accessible to me the Epistle is missing.]

According to Malone, Sir Henry Herbert, the Master of the Revels, was "one of the proprietors" of the house, and held a "ninth share" in the profits.[630] This, however, is not strictly accurate. Sir Henry, by virtue of his power to license playhouses, demanded from each organization of players an annual fee. The King's Men gave him two benefit performances a year; Christopher Beeston, on behalf of the Cockpit in Drury Lane, paid him £60 a year; as for the rest, Herbert tells us that he had "a share paid by the Fortune Players, and a share by the Bull Players, and a share by the Salisbury Court Players."[631] It seems, therefore, that the Salisbury Court organization was divided into eight shares, and that of the profits an extra, or ninth, share was set aside as a fee for the Master of the Revels.

[Footnote 630: Malone, _Variorum_, III, 178.]

[Footnote 631: Halliwell-Phillipps, _A Collection of Ancient Documents_, p. 27.]

The playhouse was ready for use in all probability in the autumn of 1629; and to occupy it a new company of actors was organized, known as "The King's Revels." The chief members of this company were George Stutville, John Young, William Cartwright, William Wilbraham, and Christopher Goad; Gunnell and Blagrove probably acted as managers. In the books of the Lord Chamberlain we find a warrant for the payment of £30 to William Blagrove "and the rest of his company" for three plays acted by the Children of the Revels, at Whitehall, 1631.[632] The Children continued at Salisbury Court until about December, 1631, when they abandoned the playhouse in favor of the much larger Fortune, surrendered by the Palsgrave's Men.

[Footnote 632: See Mrs. Stopes's extracts from the Lord Chamberlain's books, in the Shakespeare _Jahrbuch_ (1910), XLVI, 97. This entry probably led Cunningham to say (_The Shakespeare Society's Papers_, IV, 92) that Blagrove was "Master of the Children of the Revels in the reign of Charles I."]

The Palsgrave's Men, who for many years had occupied the Fortune, seem to have fallen on bad times and to have disbanded. They were reorganized, however, possibly by their old manager, Richard Gunnell, and established in Salisbury Court. The Earl of Dorset, who took a special interest in Salisbury Court, obtained for the troupe a patent to play under the name of the infant Prince Charles, then little more than a year old.[633] The patent bears the date of December 7, 1631; and "The Servants of the High and Mighty Prince Charles" opened at Salisbury Court very soon after[634] with a play by Marmion entitled _Holland's Leaguer_. The Prologue refers to the going of the King's Revels to the Fortune, and the coming of the new troupe to Salisbury Court:

Gentle spectators, that with graceful eye Come to behold the Muses' colony New planted in this soil, forsook of late By the inhabitants, since made _Fortunate_.

[Footnote 633: For Dorset's interest in the matter see Cunningham, _The Shakespeare Society's Papers_, IV, 96.]

[Footnote 634: In December, 1631; see Malone, _Variorum_, III, 178.]

The Prologue closes thus:

That on our branches now new poets sing; And when with joy he shall see this resort Phoebus shall not disdain to styl't his _Court_.

But the audiences at Salisbury Court were not large. For six performances of the play, says Malone, Sir Henry Herbert received "but one pound nineteen shillings, in virtue of the ninth share which he possessed as one of the proprietors of the house."[635]

[Footnote 635: Malone, _Variorum_, III, 178.]

Of the "new poets" referred to by the Prologue, one, of course, was Marmion himself. Another, I venture to say, was James Shirley, who, as I think, had been engaged to write the company's second play. This was _The Changes_, brought out at Salisbury Court on January 10. The Prologue is full of allusions to the company, its recent misfortunes, and its present attempt to establish itself in its new quarters:

That Muse, whose song within another sphere[636] Hath pleased some, and of the best, whose ear Is able to distinguish strains that are Clear and Phoebean from the popular And sinful dregs of the adulterate brain, By me salutes your candour once again; And begs this noble favour, that this place, And weak performances, may not disgrace His fresh Thalia.[637] 'Las, our poet knows We have no name; a torrent overflows Our little island;[638] miserable we Do every day play our own Tragedy. But 't is more noble to create than kill, He says; and if but with his flame, your will Would join, we may obtain some warmth, and prove Next them that now do surfeit with your love. Encourage our beginning. Nothing grew Famous at first. And, gentlemen, if you Smile on this barren mountain, soon it will Become both fruitful and the Muses hill.

[Footnote 636: The Cockpit, for which Shirley had been writing.]

[Footnote 637: Cf. "new poets" of Marmion's Prologue.]

[Footnote 638: An allusion to the smallness of the Salisbury Court Playhouse?]

The similarity of this to the Prologue of _Holland's Leaguer_ is striking; and the Epilogue is written in the same vein:

Opinion Comes hither but on crutches yet; the sun Hath lent no beam to warm us. If this play Proceed more fortunate, we shall bless the day And love that brought you hither. 'T is in you To make a little sprig of laurel grow, And spread into a grove.

All scholars who have written on the subject--Collier, Fleay, Greg, Murray, etc.--have contended that the King's Revels Company did not leave Salisbury Court until after January 10, 1632, because Herbert licensed Shirley's _The Changes_ on that date,[639] and the title-page of the only edition of _The Changes_ states that it was acted at Salisbury Court by His Majesty's Revels. But Herbert records payments for six representations of Marmion's _Leaguer_ by Prince Charles's Men at Salisbury Court "in December, 1631."[640] This latter date must be correct, for on January 26 _Holland's Leaguer_ was entered on the Stationers' Register "as it hath been lately and often acted with great applause ... at the private house in Salisbury Court." According to the generally accepted theory, however, the King's Men were still at Salisbury Court, and actually bringing out a new play there so late as January 10. This error has led to much confusion, and to no little difficulty for historians of the stage; for example, Mr. Murray is forced to suppose that two royal patents were granted to Prince Charles's Company.[641] It seems to me likely that the title-page of _The Changes_ is incorrect in stating that the play was acted by the King's Revels. The play must have been acted by the new and as yet unpopular Prince Charles's Men, who had occupied Salisbury Court as early as December, and, as Herbert tells us, with poor success. The various dates cited clearly indicate this; and the Prologue and the Epilogue are both wholly unsuited for utterance by the successful Revels Company which had just been "made Fortunate," but are quite in keeping with the condition of the newly organized and struggling Prince Charles's Men, who might naturally ask the public to "encourage our beginning."

[Footnote 639: Malone, _Variorum_, III, 232. But Malone was a careless transcriber, and Herbert himself sometimes made errors. Possibly the correct date is January 10, 1631.]

[Footnote 640: _Ibid._, III, 178.]

[Footnote 641: _English Dramatic Companies_, I, 221.]

Whether Prince Charles's Men ultimately succeeded in winning the favor of the public we do not know. Presumably they did, for at some date before 1635 they moved to the large Red Bull Playhouse. Richard Heton wrote: "And whereas my Lord of Dorset had gotten for a former company at Salisbury Court the Prince's service, they, being left at liberty, took their opportunity of another house, and left the house in Salisbury Court destitute both of a service and company."[642]

[Footnote 642: Richard Heton, "Instructions for my Pattent," _The Shakespeare Society's Papers_, IV, 96.]

This person, Richard Heton, who describes himself as "one of the Sewers of Her Majesty's Chamber Extraordinary," had now obtained control of Salisbury Court, and had become manager of its affairs.[643] He apparently induced the Company of His Majesty's Revels to leave the Fortune and return to Salisbury Court, for in 1635 they acted there Richard Brome's _The Sparagus Garden_. But their career at Salisbury Court was short; on May 12 of the following year all playhouses were closed by the plague, and acting was not allowed again for nearly a year and a half. During this long period of inactivity, the Company of His Majesty's Revels was largely dispersed.

[Footnote 643: We find a payment to Richard Heton, "for himself and the rest of the company of the players at Salisbury Court," for performing a play before his Majesty at Court, October, 1635. (Chalmers's _Apology_, p. 509.) Exactly when he took charge of Salisbury Court I am unable to learn.]

When at last, on October 2, 1637, the playhouses were allowed to open, Heton found himself with a crippled troupe of actors. Again the Earl of Dorset interested himself in the theatre. Queen Henrietta's Company, which had been at the Cockpit since 1625, having "disperst themselves," Dorset took "care to make up a new company for the Queen";[644] and he placed this new company under Heton at Salisbury Court. Heton writes: "How much I have done for the upbuilding of this Company, I gave you some particulars of in a petition to my Lord of Dorset." This reorganization of the Queen's Men explains, perhaps, the puzzling entry in Herbert's Office-Book, October 2, 1637: "I disposed of Perkins, Sumner, Sherlock, and Turner, to Salisbury Court, and joyned them with the best of that company."[645] Doubtless Herbert, like Dorset, was anxious for the Queen to have a good troupe of players. This new organization of the Queen's Men continued at Salisbury Court without interruption, it seems, until the closing of the playhouses in 1642.[646]

[Footnote 644: Cunningham, _The Shakespeare Society's Papers_, IV, 96.]

[Footnote 645: Malone, _Variorum_, III, 240.]

[Footnote 646: For certain troubles at Salisbury Court in 1644 and 1648, see Collier, _The History of English Dramatic Poetry_ (1879), II, 37, 40, 47.]

In 1649 John Herne, son of the John Herne who in 1629 had secured a lease on the property for sixty-one years, made out a deed of sale of the playhouse to William Beeston,[647] for the sum of £600. But the document was not signed. The reason for this is probably revealed in the following passage: "The playhouse in Salisbury Court, in Fleet Street, was pulled down[648] by a company of soldiers set on by the sectaries of these sad times, on Saturday, the 24 day of March, 1649."[649]

[Footnote 647: William Beeston was the son of the famous actor Christopher Beeston, who was once a member of the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later manager of the Fortune, and finally proprietor of the Cockpit. In 1639 William had been appointed manager of the Cockpit Company. (See pages 358 ff.)]

[Footnote 648: That is, stripped of its benches, stage-hangings, and other appliances for dramatic performances.]

[Footnote 649: The manuscript entry in Stow's _Annals_. See _The Academy_, October 28, 1882, p. 314. On the same date the soldiers "pulled down on the inside" also the Phoenix and the Fortune.]

Three years later, however, Beeston, through his agent Theophilus Bird, secured the property from Herne at the reduced price of £408: "John Herne, by indenture dated the five and twentieth day of May, 1652, for £408, to him paid by Theophilus Bird, did assign the premises and all his estate therein in trust for the said William Beeston."[650]

[Footnote 650: Cunningham, _The Shakespeare Society's Papers_, IV, 103.]

Early in 1660 Beeston, anticipating the return of King Charles, and the reëstablishment of the drama, decided to put his building back into condition to serve as a playhouse; and he secured from Herbert, the Master of the Revels, a license to do so.[651] On April 5, 1660, he contracted with two carpenters, Fisher and Silver, "for the rebuilding the premises"; and to secure them he mortgaged the property. The carpenters later swore that they "expended in the same work £329 9_s._ 4_d._"[652]

[Footnote 651: Printed in Malone, _Variorum_, III, 243, and Halliwell-Phillipps, _A Collection of Ancient Documents_, p. 85. The language clearly indicates that Beeston was to _reconvert_ the building into a theatre.]

[Footnote 652: Cunningham, _The Shakespeare Society's Papers_, IV, 103.]

The reconstructed playhouse was opened in 1660, probably as early as June, with a performance of _The Rump_, by Tatham. It was engaged by Sir William Davenant for his company of actors until his "new theatre with scenes" could be erected in Lincoln's Inn Fields.[653] The ubiquitous Pepys often went thither, and in his _Diary_ gives us some interesting accounts of the performances he saw there. On March 2, 1661, he witnessed a revival of Thomas Heywood's _Love's Mistress, or The Queen's Masque_ before a large audience:

After dinner I went to the Theatre [i.e., Killigrew's playhouse] where I found so few people (which is strange, and the reason I did not know) that I went out again; and so to Salisbury Court, where the house as full as could be; and it seems it was a new play, _The Queen's Masque_, wherein are some good humours: among others a good jeer to the old story of the Siege of Troy, making it to be a common country tale. But above all it was strange to see so little a boy as that was to act Cupid, which is one of the greatest parts in it.

[Footnote 653: Malone, _Variorum_, III, 257; Halliwell-Phillipps, _A Collection of Ancient Documents_, p. 27.]

Again, on March 26, he found Salisbury Court crowded:

After dinner Mrs. Pierce and her husband, and I and my wife, to Salisbury Court, where coming late, he and she light of Col. Boone, that made room for them; and I and my wife sat in the pit, and there met with Mr. Lewes and Tom Whitton, and saw _The_ _Bondman_[654] done to admiration.

[Footnote 654: By Philip Massinger.]

The history of the playhouse during these years falls outside the scope of this volume. Suffice it to say that before Beeston finished paying the carpenters for their work of reconstruction, the great fire of 1666 swept the building out of existence; as Fisher and Silver declared: "The mortgaged premises by the late dreadful fire in London were totally burned down and consumed."[655]

[Footnote 655: The subsequent history of Salisbury Court is traced in the legal documents printed by Cunningham. Beeston lost the property, and Fisher and Silver erected nearer the river a handsome new playhouse, known as "The Duke's Theatre," at an estimated cost of £1000.]