freely used, especially by the gallants on the stage.[1] Books were also hawked up and down, and a game of cards might beguile the tedium of waiting.[2] The galleries were full of light women, who found them a profitable haunt, but whose presence did not altogether prevent that of ladies of position, probably in the private rooms, and possibly masked.[3]
If the audience liked a play, the actors expected a Plaudite of hand-clapping; if otherwise, they took their chance of hissing and 'mewing', or of a pointed withdrawal of spectators from the stage.[4] The device of a claque was not
- [Footnote: Overbury, Characters (ed. Rimbault, 113, A Puny-Clarke), 'Hee eats
ginger-bread at a play-house'.]*
- ↑ Cf. pp. 534, 536 and Hentzner (ch. xvi, introd.); C. Revels, ind. 122, 'I haue my three sorts of Tabacco, in my Pocket, my light by me'; K. B. P. i. 224, 'Fie, this stinking Tobacco kils men, would there were none in England, now I pray Gentlemen, what good does this stinking Tobacco? do you nothing, I warrant you make chimnies a your faces'; Dekker, G. H. B., 'By sitting on the stage, you may . . . get your match lighted'; Scornful Lady, I. ii. 52, 'They wear swords to reach fire at a play'; Sir Giles Goosecap, IV. ii. 87 (street-scene), 'By this fire, they do, my lord'. Burn, 84, cites a note by Sir J. Caesar in Lansd. MS. 160, p. 302, of a speech by James in a Star Chamber case of 1613, in which he advised gentlemen of the Temple not to frequent plays, whence the smoke of tobacco and the presence of painted ladies should deter them.
- ↑ W. Fennor, Descriptions (1616), 'I suppose this Pamphlet will hap into your hands before a Play begin, with the importunate clamour of "Buy a new Booke!" by some needy companion that will be glad to furnish you with worke for a turned teaster'. Dekker, G. H. B. (cf. App. H), recommends cards.
- ↑ V. P. xiv. 593, 599, records a charge against the ambassador Foscarini (1611-15) of pursuing a woman, and 'sometimes attending the public comedies and standing among the people on the chance of seeing her'. Foscarini said he only went three or four times to the play and that the archduke's ambassador and his wife did the same. It was given in evidence that the ambassador Giustiniani (Dec. 1605-Oct. 1608) went with the French ambassador and his wife to see Pericles at a cost of 20 crowns. This must have been at the Globe. For the presence of harlots, cf. pp. 534, 535; vol. i, p. 255.
- ↑ Dekker, G. H. B. (1609, Works, ii. 201), 'you can neither shake our
Comick Theater with your stinking breath of hisses, nor raise it with the
thunder-claps of your hands' (cf. also App. H); Isle of Gulls, ind., 'Tis
growne into a custome at playes if anyone rise (especially of any fashionable
sort) about what serious busines soeuer, the rest thinking it in dislike of
the play, tho he neuer thinks it, cry "Mew! by Jesus, vilde!" and leaue
the poore hartlesse children to speake their Epilogue to the emptie seates'.
Later a Gent. says, 'See it be baudy, or by the light I and all my friends
will hisse', and the Prologue replies, 'You shoulde not deale gentlemanlike
with us els'; E. Guilpin, Skialetheia (1598), prol. to Sat., 'It is the grand
hisse to a filthy play'; Roaring Girl, prol., 'If that he finds not here,
he mews at it'; T. and C., epil.:
my fear is this,
Some galled goose of Winchester would hiss;Downfall of Robin Hood, ad fin.:
if I fail in this,
Then let my pains be baffled with a hiss;
