De Witt has also been criticized for giving the seating capacity of the Swan as 3,000. I dare say this is merely the exaggerated round estimate of a casual visitor, but Wheatley calculates from the drawing that the galleries might hold 2,000, and it would not be surprising if our rude forefathers sat a bit closer than we care to do. Moryson speaks even more largely of theatres 'more remarkable for the number, and the capacity, than for the building', and 'capable of many thousands', while no less than 2,000 got into Trinity College hall for the academic plays of 1615.[1] The frame of the Fortune was 80 ft. square without and 55 ft. square within. This allows a depth of 12-1/2 ft. for the galleries, and Corbin calculates a seating capacity, allowing 18 in. for a seat and 18 in. square for a standing man, of 2,138 or 2,558 at a pinch.[2] We do not know that the Swan was not larger than the Fortune, and have therefore no right to assume that De Witt was seriously out. Wright tells us that the Globe, Fortune, and Red Bull were 'large' houses; he is comparing them with the private houses of Caroline days.[3] The allusion in Old Fortunatus to the 'small circumference' of the Rose perhaps hardly indicates that it was below the average size.
The Swan drawing is our one contemporary picture of the interior of a public play-house, and it is a dangerous business to explain away its evidence by an assumption of inaccurate observation on the part of De Witt, merely because that evidence conflicts with subjective interpretations of stage-directions, arrived at in the course of the pursuit of a 'typical' stage. Still less can it be discredited on the ground that it was merely made by Van Buchell on 'hearsay evidence' from the instructions of De Witt.[4] It is a copy, like the accompanying description on the same piece of paper, of De Witt's original, which De Witt says he drew ('adpinxi') in order to bring out an analogy which had struck him between the English and the Roman theatres. It was for this reason also, no doubt, that he marked certain features of the structure on the drawing with the names of what he thought to be their classical prototypes. I do not, of course, suggest that the drawing has the authority of a photographic record. De Witt is more likely to have made it as an after-*thought in his inn than during the actual performance, and
- ↑ Cf. chh. iv, xvi (introd.).
- ↑ Atlantic Monthly (1906), xcvii. 369.
- ↑ Kirkman also says in the preface to The Wits (1672), 'I have seen the Red Bull Playhouse, which was a large one'; but he is referring, more certainly than Wright, to the rebuilt house.
- ↑ Cf. Albright, 40; Lawrence, i. 12, and E. S. xxxii. 44.
