and above all Frankfort, where the two great marts or fairs held annually at Easter and in the autumn served as a rallying-point for travellers and entertainers of every species. The early successes of the English in Germany are reported by Fynes Moryson, who was at Frankfort for the autumn fair of 1592:
'Germany hath some fewe wandring Comeydians, more deseruing
pitty then prayse, for the serious parts are dully penned, and worse
acted, and the mirth they make is ridiculous, and nothing lesse then
witty (as I formerly haue shewed). So as I remember that when some
of our cast dispised stage players came out of England into Germany,
and played at Franckford in the tyme of the Mart, hauing nether
a complete number of Actours, nor any good Appareil, nor any
ornament of the Stage, yet the Germans, not vnderstanding a worde
they sayde, both men and women, flocked wonderfully to see theire
gesture and Action, rather then heare them, speaking English which
they vnderstoode not, and pronowncing peeces and patches of English
playes, which my selfe and some English men there present could
not heare without great wearysomenes. Yea my selfe comming from
Franckford in the company of some cheefe marchants Dutch and
Flemish, heard them often bragg of the good markett they had made,
only condoling that they had not the leasure to heare the English
players.'
In the Netherlands the English players, according to
Moryson, brought themselves into a singular difficulty. Here,
too, was no native stage:
'For Commedians, they litle practise that Arte, and are the poorest
Actours that can be imagined, as my selfe did see when the Citty of
Getrudenberg being taken by them from the Spanyards, they made
bonsfyers and publikely at Leyden represented that action in a play,
so rudely as the poore Artizans of England would haue both penned
and acted it much better. So as at the same tyme when some cast
players of England came into those partes, the people not vnderstanding
what they sayd, only for theere action followed them with wonderfull
concourse, yea many young virgines fell in loue with some of the
players, and followed them from citty to citty, till the magistrates
were forced to forbid them to play any more.'[1]
Moryson's account finds confirmation in the praise lavished
upon English acting by German writers, such as Erhard Cellius
in 1605, Joannes Rhenanus about 1610, and Daniel von Wensin
in 1613.[2] Undoubtedly the German stage, which had been*
- ↑ C. Hughes, Shakespeare's Europe, 304, 373. Moryson again refers to the vogue abroad of 'stragling broken companyes' from England in his account of the London theatre; cf. ch. xvi, introduction.
- ↑ E. Cellius, Eques Auratus Anglo-Wirtembergicus (1605), 229 'Profert enim multos et praestantes Anglia musicos, comoedos, tragoedos, histrionicae peritissimos, e quibus interdum aliquot consociati sedibus suis ad
