Playgoing in Shakespeare's London

by Andrew Gurr

Andrew Gurr's classic account of Shakespeare's historical audience assembles evidence from the writings of the time to describe the physical, social and mental conditions of playgoing. In addition to revising and adding new material which has emerged since the second edition, Gurr develops new sections about points of special interest. Fifty new entries have been added to the list of playgoers and a dozen new quotations about the experience of playgoing. Second Edition Hb (1996): 0-521-58014-5 Second Edition Pb (1996): 0-521-57449-8

Genres: Shakespeare, History, Nonfiction, Drama, Theatre, Literary Criticism

360 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

Reviews

[Ed · Rating 5 out of 5]

Andrew Gurr has written a lively account of a disparate, colorful and sometimes contentious group of people, those who attended plays at the various theaters in and around London from 1567 to 1642. The ending date of the history is obvious, the closing of the theaters by the Puritans; the beginning date when James Burbage and John Bayne built the Theatre where the owners could take money at the door and not depend on passing the hat at a market place or hiring an inn yard for an afternoon to put on a show. Gurr makes the point that “for Shakespeare’s contemporaries...London playgoers in the 1580s and 1590s created the unprecedented phenomenon of an audience paying money to hear poetry.”

Those playgoers differed from today’s in many ways the chief on being that they were an audience and not spectators, an audience attending a play to hear to words while spectators are there to see the action. Ben Jonson made no secret of his preference for the learned ears of his desired house vs. the “nutcrackers who come only for sight”.

The social classes that existed in London at the time were nobility, gentry, citizens (yeomen in the country), artisans, house servants, vagrants and vagabonds, and the attendees at plays could be found among any or all of the classes. Peers of the realm attended the same plays as their illiterate footmen and maids.

One way that Gurr discovered who was who in the crowd were court records of affrays, often young gentlemen or gentlemen to be, law students at the Inns of Court harassing, attacking or brawling with the players on the stage. Whether the gentry was found guilty and punished along with the actors, considered artisans and therefore a lower social order, depended on whether the case was heard at the Guildhall controlled by the Lord Mayor, where both knights and their servants were tried and courts appointed by the Privy Council which meted out justice only to the lower classes.

“Playgoing in Shakespeare’s London” is exhaustively researched and vividly written, a substantial, scholarly book that is fun to read. One point that Gurr makes, for example, almost in passing, is that plays had a special appeal for illiterate as leisure activity since he would only have to read (or have read to him) the playbills posted to advertise performances. A high proportion of women in the audience also showed appeal to illiterate since women were almost universally unable to read or write.

Well worth reading for anyone interested not only in the theater in the time of Shakespeare, Marlow, Jonson and Fletcher but in the social history of late Tudor and Stuart London as well.

A quick addendum, overlooked from my notes while composing the review: Among those viewed with alarm by moral scolds during Elizabeth's reign were "afternoon men". At first a euphemism for drunkard, afternoon men, according to a contribution to "Holinshed's Chronicles" of 1557, were engaged in "gaming, following harlots, drinking or seeing a Playe". This condemnation cut across the nascent class lines and included "men who were there own masters (Gentlemen of the Court, the Innes of the Courte, and a number of Capaines and Souldiers about London), idle serving men, mechanicals (working men) and apprentices absent from their work". So attending a performance of a play was, for some, no better than whoring, gambling or drinking.

[David Gray · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is really an academic study of the London theater in Shakespeare's era and parts of it are absolutely fascinating, such as the detail on the physical structure of the venues, and what these structures meant to the plays and people that used them. Also interesting to see the development of the audiences in different venues, that some seemed more "popular" and others more exclusive (a reality that modern theater managers deal with today in their choices of repertory, ticket prices etc.). And while it may not be a weakness of the book so much as the historiography, the Appendix that lists the names of every specific person that the historical record indicates attended the London theater in the period 1567-1642 comes up with only 200 names and something like a 1/4 to 1/3 are people who were arrested for "an affray" or fighting. Of course this does not mean that 1/4 to 1/3 of playgoers were the equivalent of soccer hooligans looking for a fight on any occasion, it indicates that we have a dire paucity of records of who attended the theater (the prevalence of criminal behaviour in the lists indicates the various court procedures where these complaints were heard, and therefore, recorded). Realizing this weakness, it is difficult to have faith in even the wisest analysis of the data. However, Andrew Gurr is very direct about what is fact and what is surmise and overall this book provides great insight into how plays were performed, where, and for whom.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really good overview on the audiences and different styles of writing therefore for the different London playhouses in the early modern period (1567-1642), from the 'throat-tearing' of Alleyn and his Marlovian heroes, through the different styles at the Globe and Blackfriars (for which there is very little evidence, as the plays seemed to slip between one venue (holding 4000) and the other (holding about 500) with little problem, to the differences between the Cockpit-Phoenix and the Red Bull.

From other reading I have done, some of his conclusions already seem to be slightly wrong, but this is a really good overview with some stonking evidence for what he says.

[Albie]

Playgoing in Shakespeare's London by Andrew Gurr (2004)

[Brian Willis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Complementing Gurr's landmark look at the Shakespearean Stage is this equally vital look at the physical, mental, social, and material components of the practice of attending plays in the English Renaissance. We have far more evidence and accounts and primary documents by the audience of Shakespeare's time than we do of the theatrical companies. Gurr is the expert in this area and he put them to good use to construct the world of the companies. Here we see how the ampitheatres and halls were physically constructed and modified to accommodate an audience, what the social compositions and strata of those audiences were, what their mental capacities were (did they recognize the jokes and poetic devices?) and how they reacted to plays, as well as the evolution of tastes throughout the era. In some ways, this book might be even more important than The Shakespearean Stage because we feel we are in the audience at the Globe or Blackfriars or the Rose, etc. and we understand how the theatres operated as mass entertainment. Vital and essential stuff for a student of the theatrical history of the era.