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Two Playgoers, and the Closing of the London Theatres, 1642

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2009

Martin Butler
Martin Butler
Affiliation:
Research Fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge
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Extract

An interesting incident at one of the London theatres, which has been overlooked by theatre historians, is recorded in the Historical Collections of Nehemiah Wallington, a citizen and turner of London. Wallington (1598–1658) operated a small independent business in Eastcheap and, in common with many other contemporaries of middling station, had a very pious cast of mind. For thirty years he compiled a collection of memorabilia of men and affairs, and particularly of events which revealed the workings of Providence. Early in 1642 he recorded the following:

Mark the judgement of God upon one that stood in defence of plays, and to maintain them.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , Summer 1984 , pp. 93 - 99
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 1984

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References

Notes

1. Wallington, N., Historical Notices (2 vols, London, 1869), II, p. 8.Google Scholar

2. I have been unable to discover which theatre it was at which the quarrel took place. The duel was fought at Acton, then a village some way out of town.

3. Coates, W. H., Young, A. S. and Snow, V. F. (eds), The Private Journals of the Long Parliament, I (New Haven, 1982), p. 182.Google Scholar

4. Reproduced (in part) in Newton, E., The House of Lyme (London, 1917), pp. 172–4.Google Scholar The letter is now among the Legh MSS at the John Rylands library. I am very grateful to the Keeper of Manuscripts, Glenise A. Matheson, for obtaining photographs of it for me.

5. Hotson, L., The Commonwealth and Restoration Stage (2nd edn, New York, 1962), p. 5.Google Scholar

6. Newton, , House of Lyme, p. 111.Google Scholar See also Keeler, M. F., The Long Parliament 1640–1641 (Philadelphia, 1954), p. 248Google Scholar; Hasler, P. W. (ed.), The House of Commons 1558–1603 (3 vols, London, 1981), II, p. 453Google Scholar; and Earwaker, J. P., East Cheshire, II (London, 1880), pp. 291–306.Google ScholarBeamont, W., A History of the House of Lyme (Warrington, 1876) is unreliable.Google Scholar

7. Newton, , House of Lyme, pp. 70–1Google Scholar; Murray, J. T., English Dramatic Companies, II (London, 1910), p. 88.Google Scholar

8. Beamont, (History of the House of Lyme, p. 138)Google Scholar identifies the man as a ‘Master Mansfield’, but the reference he gives is not to be found, and it is contradicted by the statement in the Warrington parish register (Earwaker, , East Cheshire, II, p. 299Google Scholar) and by Herbert, E., Autobiography (ed. Lee, S., 2nd edn, London, [1907]), p. 15.Google Scholar

9. Peter Legh's grandmother Dorothy Legh (née Egerton) was a great-aunt by marriage to a first cousin (Richard Herbert, later 2nd Baron of Cherbury) of Valentine Browne.

10. Venn, J. and Venn, J. A., Alumni Cantabrigienses, (4 vols, Cambridge, 1922), I, p. 239Google Scholar; Foster, J. (ed.), The Register of Admissions to Gray's Inn 1521–1889 (London, 1889), p. 223.Google Scholar

11. Hasler, , The House of Commons, I, p. 506Google Scholar; Bain, J. (ed.), The Border Papers (2 vols, Edinburgh, 1894), II, p. 68.Google Scholar See also Oldfield, E., A Topographical and Historical Account of Wainfleet (London, 1829), pp. 137, 142–7.Google Scholar

12. Sisson, C. J. (ed.), Thomas Lodge and Other Elizabethans (Cambridge, Mass., 1933), p. 199CrossRefGoogle Scholar (and pp. 175, 196, 211 for other details); Hasler, , The House of Commons, I, pp. 500–1.Google Scholar

13. Publications of the Harleian Society, 50, pp. 180–1.Google Scholar

14. Wilson, A., The Inconstant Lady (ed. Bliss, P., Oxford, 1814), p. 115.Google Scholar

15. Newton, , The House of Lyme, p. 167.Google Scholar

16. Salingar, L. G. et al. , ‘Les comédiens et leur public en Angleterrede 1520 à 1640’, in Jacquot, J. (ed.), Dramaturgie et Société, II (Paris, 1968), pp. 572–3.Google Scholar

17. Commons Journals, II (1641–1642), p. 397.Google Scholar

18. Commons Journals, II, p. 414.Google Scholar

19. Bentley, G. E., The Jacobean and Caroline Stage, I (Oxford, 1941), p. 68.Google Scholar

20. Keeler, , The Long Parliament, p. 298.Google Scholar