of 1616 contains a vigorous protest.[1] But the gallant liked to be seen as well as to see, and liked to slip in and out of the tiring house and hob-nob with the players. It was not until Caroline times that the custom became intolerable.[2] On the stage stools were provided for those who did not care to sit on the rushes, and for these they paid at least sixpence and sometimes a shilling.[3] One result of the introduction of sitting on the stage appears to have been that the lord's room lost its attractiveness and consequently its status. It fell into the background, and became the haunt of a rather disreputable class of playgoer. The lords were now to be found either on the stage itself, or in the private rooms of the lower gallery. Presumably the 'grate' to which the courtier of Sir John Davies' epigram relegated himself, was in the lord's room, perhaps fitted with a casement for scenic purposes.[4] The change is chronicled by Dekker in the passage of The Gull's Horn Book, in which the gull is instructed how to behave himself in a play-house. He must by all means advance himself up to the throne of the stage.
'I meane not into the Lords roome (which is now but the Stages
Suburbs): no, those boxes, by the iniquity of custome, conspiracy of
waiting-women and Gentlemen-Ushers, that there sweat together, and
the couetousnes of Sharers, are contemptibly thrust into the reare,
- [Footnote: for the Duke to employ: every ordinary affords fools enow; and didst
not see a pair of gallants sit not far hence like a couple of bough-pots to make the room smell?']
- ↑
Yet, Grandee's, would you were not come to grace
Our matter, with allowing vs no place.
Though you presume Satan a subtill thing,
And may haue heard hee's worne in a thumbe-ring;
Doe not on these presumptions, force vs act,
In compasse of a cheese-trencher. This tract
Will ne'er admit our vice, because of yours.
Anone, who, worse than you, the fault endures
That your selues make? when you will thrust and spurne,
And knocke vs o' the elbowes, and bid, turne;
As if, when wee had spoke, wee must be gone,
Or, till wee speake, must all runne in, to one,
Like the young adders, at the old ones mouth?
Would wee could stand due North; or had no South,
If that offend: or were Muscouy glasse,
That you might looke our Scenes through as they passe.
We know not how to affect you. If you'll come
To see new Playes, pray you affoord vs roome. - ↑ Wallace, ii. 142.
- ↑ Dekker, G. H. B. (1609), 'You may . . . haue a good stoole for sixpence . . . creepe from behind the Arras, with your Tripos or three-footed stoole in one hand, and a teston mounted betweene a forefinger and a thumbe in the other'; cf. pp. 535, n. 3, 536, n 2.
- ↑ Cf. ch. xx.
