even their honesty. They were dignitaries, and were not invariably treated with respect upon the boards. They were the health-authority, and even if plays did not stir the divine wrath to send a plague or an earthquake, the crowded assemblies certainly helped to spread infection, and the rickety structures brought hazard to life and limb.[1] They were responsible for the maintenance of law and order, and plays were not only the occasions for frays and riots, but also brought bad characters together, and were suspected of affording secret opportunities for the hatching of sedition. It must be borne in mind that, so far as the external abuses of theatres go, the complaints of their bitterest enemies are fairly well supported by independent evidence. The presence of improper persons in the theatres is amply testified to by the satirists, and by references in the plays themselves.[2] Intrigues and other nefarious transactions were carried on there[3]; and careful mothers, such as Lady Bacon, anxiously entreated their sons to choose more salutary neighbourhoods for their lodgings.[4] Some serious disturbances of the peace of which theatres were the centres will require attention in the next chapter, while law-court and other records preserve the memory of both grave crimes and minor misdemeanours of which they were the scenes.[5] Like the bawdy-houses, they
- ↑ Henslowe, i. 136, records a payment of 10s. by the Admiral's in May 1601, 'to geatte the boye into the ospetalle which was hurt at the Fortewne'. At St. James, Clerkenwell, was buried on 26 May 1613 (Harl. Soc. xvii. 123) 'John Brittine yt was killed with a fall in the Pley howse'. There was a shooting accident also in an Admiral's play of 1587; cf. ch. xiii.
- ↑ Cf. ch. xviii.
- ↑ One of the charges brought against the Venetian ambassador Foscarini on his return to Venice in 1616 was that he had tried to seduce the penitent of an English religious attached to the embassy, 'sometimes attending the public comedies and standing among the people on the chance of seeing her' (Venetian Papers, xiv. 593). About 1594 a diamond stolen from the loot of a Spanish carrack was bought by some goldsmiths from a mariner whom they met by chance 'at a play in the theatre at Shoreditch', and who afterwards showed them the diamond in Finsbury Fields (Cecil Papers, vii. 504).
- ↑ Cf. ch. xvi, s.v. Bull.
- ↑ In Stukeley, 610, the hero owes the bailiff of Finsbury, 'for frays and bloodshed in the Theatre fields, five marks'. The Middlesex justices had to deal with cases of stealing a purse at the Curtain in 1600, of a 'notable outrage' at the Red Bull in 1610, of abusing gentlemen at the Fortune in 1611, of stealing a purse at the Red Bull in 1613, and of stabbing at the Fortune in 1613 (Middlesex County Records, i. 205, 217, 259; ii. xlvii, 64, 71, 86, 88). On 7 July 1602 James wrote from Scotland to one James Hudson to intercede with the Council for John Henslay or Henchelawe of Grimsby, who was assaulted by Nicholas Blinstoun or Blunston at a play about the previous Whitsunday (23 May), and slew him (Scottish Papers, ii. 815; Hatfield MSS. xii. 363). Dekker (ii. 326), in Jests to
