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 XI

THE ACTOR'S ECONOMICS

[Bibliographical Note.—The material for this chapter is mainly to be found in Book III (Companies) and Book IV (Theatres) and the works there cited. My account of Henslowe is practically all based on W. W. Greg, Henslowe's Diary (1904-8) and Henslowe Papers (1907). W. Rendle made a useful contribution in Philip Henslowe (Genealogist, n. s. iv). Since I completed this chapter, useful studies in theatrical finance have been contributed by A. Thaler, Shakespeare's Income (1918, S. P. xv. 82), Playwright's Benefits and Interior Gathering in the Elizabethan Theatre (1919, S. P. xvi. 187), The Elizabethan Dramatic Companies (1920, M. L. R. xxxv. 123).]

Withal the actors, or the more discreet of them, prospered. This fact peeps out from the diatribes of their critics, and is indeed part of the case against them. The theatres are thronged, while the churches are empty. The drones suck the honey stored up by London's laborious citizens. Already, in 1578, John Stockwood estimates the aggregate gain of eight play-houses, open but once in the week, at £2,000 by the year. The players began to ruffle it, in garments fit only for their betters. 'The very hyrelings', says Gosson in 1579, 'which stand at reuersion of vi^s by the weeke, iet under gentlemen's noses in sutes of silke, exercising themselues too prating on the stage, and common scoffing when they come abrode, where they looke askance ouer the shoulder at euery man, of whom the Sunday before they begged an almes'; and in like vein Walsingham's correspondent of 1587 bewails to him the 'wofull sight to see two hundred proude players jett in their silkes, wheare five hundred pore people sterve in the streets'. It is, however, possible to lay undue stress upon the public finery as an evidence of prosperity, for this was apt to be borrowed from the tiring-house wardrobe, and in time it was found that the advertisement earned hardly justified the detriment to the common stock of apparel. The articles signed by those joining the Lady Elizabeth's men about 1614 bound them amongst other things not to go out of the theatre with any of the apparel on their bodies. The surest economic sign of a growing industry is the capacity to spend money on building, and it was a true instinct that led Stockwood to discommend the gorgeous playing-places erected at 'great charges' in the fields, and