£200, but he was fictitious. Richard Jones, in fact, sold his share in a stock of apparel, play-books, instruments, and other commodities for £37 10s. in 1589. The cost of such things has a tendency to grow. If the sums of from £50 to £80 received by retiring sharers early in the seventeenth century may be taken as representing their interests in the stocks, the total value of the contents of a tiring-house might be anything from £500 to £1,000. Henslowe sold the stock of the Lady Elizabeth's men for £400 in 1615; apparently this did not include their play-books, which they valued at £200. I reckon that in 1597-1603 Henslowe spent in all £1,317 for the Admiral's men, or about £1 for each day of playing; of this play-books accounted for £652, apparel and properties for £561, and miscellaneous expenses for £103. The garments, by Henslowe's time at least, had become costly enough, as much as £19 being given for a single cloak, while a tailor was employed to make up satin at 12s. 6d. and velvet at £1 a yard.[1] Second-hand finery was sometimes to be obtained from a serving-man or a needy courtier.[2] It was probably the lavish use of apparel, more than anything else, which led both friends and foes to dwell upon the stately furnishing of the English theatres.[3] Strictly scenic effects were limited by the structural conditions of the stage, and Henslowe's inventories do not suggest that any vast stock of movable properties was kept.[4] Animals and monsters were freely introduced.[5] Living dogs and even horses may have been trained; but your lion or bear or dragon was a creature of skin and brown paper.[6]
An old 'book' could be bought for £2, but the value to the company might be much more. A good stock piece wasj lyone; ij lyone heades; j great horse with his leages; j black dogge'. For brown paper monsters, cf. App. C, Nos. xxii, xxx, and for a controversy as to the use of live animals, ch. xx.]
- ↑ Cf. ch. xiii (Admiral's).
- ↑ Cf. the account of Platter in 1599 (ch. xvi, introduction); also Donne,
Satire, iv. 180 (ed. Muses' Library, ii. 196):
As fresh and sweet their apparels be, as be
The fields they sold to buy them. 'For a king
Those hose are,' cry the flatterers; and bring
Them next week to the theatre to sell;and Jonson, Underwoods, xxxii:
Is it for these that Fine-man meets the street
Coached, or on foot-cloth, thrice changed every day,
To teach each suit he has the ready way
From Hyde Park to the stage, where at the last
His dear and borrowed bravery he must cast. - ↑ Cf. App. C, Nos. xxx, xlvi; Case Is Altered, ii. 4, 'Theatres! ay, and plays too, both tragedy and comedy, and set forth with as much state as can be imagined'; cf. Graves, 68.
- ↑ Cf. chh. xx, xxi passim, and Henslowe Papers, 113.
- ↑ Wegener, 135.
- ↑ Henslowe Papers, 117, 'j lyone skin; j beares skyne . . . j dragon in fostes [Faustus
