B. Provincial Theatres. Outside of the London district regular theatres did not exist in Shakespeare’s time, but performances of his plays were given by his own company throughout the length and breadth of England. Various conditions made it necessary that a London company should spend a considerable part of its time in ‘traveling.’ These were the hostile attitude of the Mayor and corporation, which sometimes made it impossible to secure an acting place near the city; the discomfort and inaccessibility of the public playhouses in bad weather; periods of financial stringency, when the popularity of some rival attraction temporarily prevented a company from making expenses in London; and, most of all, the constant recurrence of the plague.
The danger of spreading plague infection was continually argued by the opponents of drama in London, and there seems to have been worked out a sort of compromise principle that plays must cease when the reported plague deaths reached the number of thirty or forty a week. 1593, 1603, and 1609 were great plague years, in which there was very little acting in London, and consequently much traveling; but even after Shakespeare’s company attained its high and assured position under the special favor of James I, there were few years in which it did not travel for a period. Allusions to this laborious and distasteful mode of life are found in the poet’s sonnets,[1] and the first edition of Hamlet specifies that the play had been acted in Cambridge and Oxford as well as London. It would seem that traveling professional companies were not permitted to use the college halls of the universities, which were the scene of the local academic plays;
- ↑ E.g. Sonnets 27, 28, 50, 51.
