How homelessness decisively defined the birth of the early English Drama Theater.
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Hark : hark, the dogs do bark,
The beggars are coming to town;
Some in rags and some in jags,
And some in velvet gowns.
Some gave them white bread,
And some gave them brown bread,
And some gave them a horse whip,
And sent them out of town.
(Old nursery rhyme)
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But when I came to man's estate
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain:
'Gainst knaves and thieves men shut their gate,
For the rain it raineth everyday.
(The final song of the Clown from Shakespeare's “Twelfth Night”)
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Both the nursery rhyme and the song from Shakespeare's Twelfth Night demonstrate different responses to the homeless or vagabonds by people when they arrived in search of improved prospects in the cities during Tudor times. For under many harsh draconian laws a vagrant could be imprisoned, whipped, put in the stocks, be branded and made a slave and even hanged if he violated the law a second time. And the words vagrant and vagabond were often defined in a very loose way which could mean practically anyone 'on the move' without a proper document or licence. This law could be used against a profession or trade which the authorities despised and sought to ban such as actors, ballad tellers, storytellers and any street performers whose trade didn't count as 'real work.'
For instance, the 1572 laws against vagrants declared that any vagrant found without proper documents in the streets was 'to be grievously whipped, and burned through the grissel of the right ear with a hot iron' with an inch wide,' unless an 'honest householder' owning land worth twenty shillings or goods worth twenty shillings or good worth 5 pounds consented to employ him. If the offender later left his employer he could be hanged unless someone again agreed to employ him… but if he committed a third offence he would be hanged. It was a three times and you were an outlaw.
But the word vagabond could encompass many professions or trades which involved travelling around England. It might encompass peddlers, actors and minstrels. The 1572 law mentions that vagabonds encompassed 'all fencers, bearwards, common players in interludes and minstrels, not belonging to any baron of the realm or towards any other personage of greater degree.' An actor or troupe of actors could only avoid punishment if he had the protection and patronage of a nobleman who protected them and could prove this.
Alas, this alone did not suffice! They had to have special permission from two justices of the peace in the town in which they arrived.
The predicament which travelling actors found themselves was indicated by the case of Sir Walter Waller's Men when they arrived in a Kentish town in 1583. The Kentish Justice of the Peace told them their license from Sir Walter was not enough. They were arrested and warned to give up their trade and do proper work. The actors protested that they were not rogues and that 'We have no other means of making a living.'
Actors, just like other vagabonds , found themselves humiliated, insulted and driven out of towns. As Mi Su- Kim {2004} puts it 'Travelling players shared the poverty of the vagrant poor as well as their peripatetic life-style... Early modern players, before they settled in London, were associated with and identified as vagrants. They were called Popish vagabond roguish actors, immoral gypsies or obscene vagrants.'
Actors were subject to a litany of insults where they were accused of being thieves, impostors, idle and setting an 'immoral' example to the public…
At this time, acting was not deemed a respectable profession.
The problem is that most theater troupes did not have a permanent home or anchored theater. They were always on the move. An academic J.T. Murray stated that 'At least 37 great men's companies, 79 lesser men's companies, 5 players companies, and 27 town companies were active outside London between 1559 and 1641.'
Siobhan Keenan points out that the tradition of traveling actors can be traced back to the 15th century and was established by the 16th century. It is important to point out this tradition did not suddenly vanish with the establishment of the legendary permanent theaters in London such as 'The Rose' or 'the Globe' and 'The Theater' but continued after their birth. In fact, you could argue that the real roots of the early English drama theater lie not with Shakespeare's theater the Globe, and the success of playwrights such as Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Kyd and Ben Johnson but with the countless travelling troupes who carried on performing despite being branded as 'the undeserving poor' and 'doing a dishonest, vulgar and mean trade.'
It seems that many of those actors were forced to become homeless precisely because of the prejudice and harsh laws being used to deny them a permanent home. In a sense, Shakespeare and other troupes who found a permanent home in London were the lucky ones. So this accusation of being a vagrant by officials and their response turned out to be a self -fulfilling prophecy of their prejudices. "You are a vagrant, because I regard you as a vagrant...." They would deny them a permanent home by driving them out of town. Thus some actors were turned into real vagrants.
There was widespread prejudice and antipathy towards vagrants in Tudor England. You can read this in many pamphlets, articles and laws which were passed. For instance, one of the most well known books published against vagrants was Caveat by Thomas Harman in 1567. He set out to prove how vagrants were all criminals intent on stealing money from people under false pretexts. Harman argued that vagrants were nothing but 'walking theatrical spectacles' that targeted innocent people's money. As Mi Su Kim states 'This discourse of vagrancy and roguery was the cultural environment which early modern theaters developed.'
So actors were seen as synonymous with vagrants and vice versa. Many vagrants were viewed as actors, albeit at an amateurish level. Bands of vagrants were even compared to the troupes of travelling theaters. The way some wrote and spoke about vagabonds you might think that they had special transferable skills. If you want to become an actor, become homeless!
Many of those opposed to the theater had all kinds of reasons. Some were theological. The church viewed actors as being a bad influence on moral behavior, setting a bad example by their plays with a subversive message and even spreading the plague. A petition by the Lord Mayor and Alderman to the Privy Council, in July 1597 listed the 'inconveniences' that grow by staging plays in London . Actors are accused of inspiring 'lewd and unGodly practices', idle and dangerous people gather at theaters such as thieves, rogues, masterless men, and people who can commit treason, they distract apprentices from doing their trade and attending church and they can spread infection and therefore illness by gathering in huge crowds. The church also regarded the theater as competition. They strove to jealously retain their influence from other rivals.
One accusation against actors was that they lived a lie. Their trade made them insincere. They pretended to be people they were not. This would encourage spectators to also pretend to be other people for ulterior motives such as deceiving people. In other words, acting and even going to the theater were viewed as an apprenticeship in how to be a professional con artist.
Acting was not looked upon as 'real work'. This was because some thought that real work consisted of hard physical labor where a person worked on farms, or worked as miners. Actors should be doing sweatshop labor and not clowning around in bizarre costumes.
The damage which all this rhetoric did can't be underestimated. For instance, as a result of the Protestant Reformation in Scotland, the theater was banned for two centuries and under the Republic of Oliver Cromwell the theater was forbidden for around a decade.
One of the recurrent claims made by those against vagrants was that they chose to be vagrants. It was their free choice to hit the road. They only had themselves to blame for their problems. They were 'unreformed sinners' and 'criminals.' It is important to understand that the establishment sought to maintain a caste system where everyone had their appointed station and remained in it. They could not attempt to 'get above themselves' by say, wearing silk but should wear wool. They should not wear a hat allowed only by aristocrat. They could not just move around the country as they saw fit! That vagrants might have no choice but to steal or beg to survive was beyond the imagination of many self righteous preachers such as Thomas Harman who scolded a female beggar. He told her she should find a master to employ her. She retorted 'Well what can I do but beg? No master or employer will employ me!" Harman did not listen!
During the 16th century mass unemployment and vagrancy was a huge problem during Tudor times. The main reasons for those problems were not the vagrants themselves but structural economic, social as well as poor political policies by Tudor monarchs. Many nuns, monks and the poor were evicted on to the streets by the dissolution of the monasteries by King Henry the Eighth. The monasteries had acted as a kind of social welfare state to protect and assist the poor.
King Henry the 8th had mismanaged and ill spent his wealth by embarking on futile wars as well as other extravagant investments. A law passed by Tudor monarchs placed a limit on how many servants they could employ. This led to many homeless servants. You had a long process of enclosing the common land by rich farmers which resulted in many poorer owners of the land being evicted.
This and other factors such as bad harvests, and rapid inflation where prices rose 5 times during Queen Elizabeth's reign while wages fell in real value led to widespread poverty. As a result the level of vagrancy soared. One estimate claims there were 10,000 vagrants in London alone, and 2000 in Norwich in 1597.
Due to the massive scale of the problem, some people were seized by what sociologists viewed as 'a moral panic'. They thought law and order might break down and that the poor would revolt. There were riots and protests against injustice. So you had what the historian Tawney has described as 'The Terror of the Tramps.' A combination of fear, prejudice and ignorance led to an overreaction by the state against vagrants and thieves where as many as 72,000 were hanged during the reign of King Henry the 8th. If some vagrants were not hanged, they might be subject to forced labor in 'correction houses' or deported to America where they were to work as slave in the new colonies.
It is important to point out that attitudes to vagrants differed. Before the Reformation vagrants were viewed as being sanctified and had to be treated with hospitality. But later vagrants were demonized. Many judges refused to penalize vagrants because they felt sorry for them. And as the nursery rhyme states, 'Some gave them white bread, and some gave them brown bread. And some gave them a horse whip, and sent them out of town.'
How did the actors themselves respond to all this? Some did not want to be associated or labelled as vagrants. They felt ashamed of being linked to them. For instance, in “Pierce Penniless” by Thomas Nashe, you can read the following attempts by actors to distance themselves from alleged negative stereotypes -
“Our players are not as the players beyond sea, a sort of squirting bawdy comedians, that have whores and common courtesans to play women's parts, and forebear no immodest speech or unchaste action that may procure laughter.... but our representations honorable and full of gallant resolution, not consisting, like theirs, of a pantaloon, a whore and a zany, but of emperors, kings, and princes, whose true tragedies they do vaunt.” One gets the distinct impression that Nashe was attempting to make a distinction between 'the deserving actors and the undeserving actors.'
But other actors sympathized with vagrants and some even identified with their plight. You can see this in some of the plays such as Shakespeare's “Twelfth Night,” “King Lear,” and “A Winter's Tale. The Play the Jovial Theater” by Richard Brome conveys a very romantic though sympathetic view of vagrants.
You might think that with the rise of the star system that the prestige and hence economic situation of actors has improved. However, this can be highly misleading. The unemployment rate among actors may be well over 80% and actors are, as in Tudor times, still accused of being insincere and leading superficial lives. I still hear the unfair and unjust accusation that actors are either unreal or not genuine. They are always acting!
This is an odd accusation to make. If a genuine actor does not play a part without convincing the public that he is sincerely performing a role from his soul his work fails. A pretentious actor is an oxy-moron. Actors are among the most sincere people you can come across !
In a sense the birth of the early English Drama Theater would not have occurred without the baptism of being persecuted for vagrancy on the road. Without some actors bravely keeping on the move and risking being persecuted for vagrancy there would be no English Theater!
The actors often shared the same experiences and ordeal of vagrants. So it comes as no great revelation that many actors felt a special solidarity with vagrants and that this is reflected in some of their plays during this period! So vagrancy made the English theater what it was !
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Recommended reading:
Hill, Christopher, “The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution, 1991 reprint. London: Penguin History Books. The chapter on 'Masterless men' is a brilliant account of the why there was such a vagrancy problem and how people reacted to it.
Kim, Mi-Su, “Men on the Road, Beggars and Vagrants in Early Modern Drama,” 2004. Dissertation, Texas Christian University. This study can be viewed on the Internet. It is a brilliant piece of work and one of the best I have read on this topic.
Ridley, Jasper, “A Brief History of the Tudor Age,” 2002. by Constable Co and limited, Croydon, Britain, 2002. I like the chapter on costumes as well as sport. The chapter on beggars and vagabonds offers a general overview of law enforcement at the time and the impact of it.
Tames, Richard, “Shakespeare's London On Five Groats a Day,” 2009, London: Thames and Hudson. The writing, layout and illustrations are superb. An enjoyable book which you can't put down!
Wilson, A.N., “The Elizabethans,” 2012. London: Arrow Books. The chapters on the Theater and Ireland are the ones which caught my attention. It has very fascinating stories and debunks a lot of myths.
Wood, Michael, “The Story of England,” 2011. London: Penguin Books. This is a very well researched book and the account of the impact of the Reformation and Enclosures is very useful.