available for circulation from hand to hand.[1] On 30 October 1587 John Charlwood entered in the Stationers' Register a licence for 'the onely ympryntinge of all manner of billes for players'. This passed from him to James Roberts, and was transferred by Roberts to William Jaggard on 29 October 1615.[2] No theatrical bill of the Elizabethan or Jacobean period is preserved, although a manuscript bill for the Bear Garden is amongst Alleyn's papers at Dulwich.[3] Four late seventeenth-century bills are at Claydon; they are brief announcements, which give the names of the plays, but not those of the authors or actors.[4] There is no evidence of anything corresponding to the modern programme, with its cast and synopsis of scenes.[5] The audience gathered early, as there were few, if any, reserved seats.[6] The period of waiting was spent in consuming fruit or sweatmeats and liquid refreshment, and in expressing impatience if the actors failed to make an appearance in good time.[7] Tobacco was
- [Footnote: Merry Tales, &c. (1567; cf. ch. xxiii, s.v. Vennar), 'billes . . . vpon
postes about London'; Northbrooke (1577, App. C, No. xvi), 'they use to set vp their billes vpon postes certain dayes before'; Gosson, S. A. (1579, App. C, No. xxii), 44, 'If players can . . . proclame it in their billes, and make it good in theaters'; Rankins (1587, App. C, No. xxxviii), 'sticking of their bills in London'; Marston, Scourge of Villainy (Bullen, iii. 302), 'Go read each post, view what is play'd to-day'; Histriomastix, v. 69, 'Text-bills must now be turned to iron bills'; Warning for Fair Women, (> 1599):
'Tis you have kept the Theatres so long,
Painted in play-bills upon every post.
That I am scorned of the multitude.
Wither, Abuses Stript and Whipt (1613), ii. 2:
But, by the way, a Bill he doth espy,
Which showes theres acted some new Comedy.
In Bartholomew Fair, v. iii. 6, Cokes 'reads the Bill' of the motion; cf. Lawrence (ii. 55), The Origin of the Theatre Programme.]*
- ↑ Devil an Ass, I. iv. 43, 'Hee giues him the Play-bill'.
- ↑ Arber, ii. 477; iii. 575.
- ↑ Henslowe Papers, 106.
- ↑ Lawrence, ii. 240.
- ↑ Jonson, in printing plays, and following him the editors of the Beaumont and Fletcher F_{1} often give the scene and the actors' names, and casts appear in Duchess of Malfi (1623). But these are not necessarily taken from any documents put before the audiences.
- ↑ Lawrence, ii. 154; cf. the stipulation in Burbadge's lease (p. 387), and W. Fennor, Compter's Commonwealth (1617), 8, 'he that first comes in is first seated, like those that come to see playes'.
- ↑ Cf. p. 540 (Tatham), and the notices of Hentzner and Platter (ch. xvi, introd.). In K. B. P. the wife comes with her pockets full of sweetmeats, which she bestows upon the actors, liquorice (i. 77), green ginger (ii. 279), sugar-candy (ii. 366), and her husband brings beer (iii. 631). The liquorice would open Ralph's pipes; cf. ch. xii (Westminster) and C. Revels, ind. 215, 'I would thou hadst some sugar candyed, to sweeten thy mouth';
