The History of London by Walter Besant (best classic books TXT) 📕

precinct of the Dominicans and outside the City. No theatre was allowed in the City. Thus early sprang up the prejudice against actors. Probably this was of old standing, and first belonged to the time when the minstrel and the tumbler, the musician and the dancing girl, the buffoon and the contortionist, wandered about the country free of rule and discipline, leading careless and lawless lives.

The theatre was octagonal in shape but circular within. What we call the pit was called the 'yarde.' The stage projected into the 'yarde,' about three or four feet high. The people who filled the 'yarde' were called groundlings. Round the house were three galleries, the lowest of which contained 'rooms' or private boxes: what we call the upper circle and the gallery were above. There were no seats in the pit, nor apparently in the upper circles. On either side of the stage sat or lay gentlemen, chiefly of the younger kind, who smoked pipes of tobacco and talked loudly, disturbing the performance. At the back of the stage was a kind of upper stage, supported on columns, which gave the players a tower, gallery, wall, a town, or an upper story of a house, or anything of the kind that they wanted. There was a great sale of apples, nuts, and ale before the play began and between the acts: boys hawked the newest books about the 'rooms': the people while they waited smoked pipes, played cards. Above the stage on one side was the 'music.' Three times the trumpets sounded. At the first, those who were outside hurried in to get a place: at the second, the card-players left off their games: at the third, those who bawled apples and ale and shouted the name of the new book became silent: the audience settled down: the Play began. Not much costume was wanted: that of the Elizabethan--noble--courtier--young knight--clown--fitted any and every age. There was little scenery required: blue hangings above meant day: black hangings night: the actors came out upon the advanced stage and played their parts. No doubt the illusion was as complete as we can contrive with all our scenery, mounting, and correctness of costume.

The parts of women were taken by boys. No women appeared on the stage until the reign of Charles II. The Play began with the Prologue, spoken by an actor dressed in a long black velvet coat bowing very humbly to the audience. After the Play was over the clowns began to tumble and to sing. In short, a farce succeeded a tragedy. The time of performance was one o'clock, and the performance lasted until five.

In the year 1610 the Lord Mayor and Aldermen being alarmed at the increasing popularity of the Play, ordered that there should be only two theatres, the Fortune in Golden Lane and the Globe at Bankside. This order, however, like so many other laws, was only passed to satisfy a passing scare and does not seem to have been carried into effect. It was in such a theatre as this and with such scenery that the immortal plays of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson were acted. When next you read a play of Shakespeare, remember the stage projecting into the pit; the people in the pit all standing, the gallants on the stage talking and smoking, the ladies in the boxes, the boys enjoying apples and nuts and ale and new books, and the actors playing partly on the stage advanced and partly on the stage behind.



50. THE TERROR OF THE PLAGUE.

PART I.

You have seen the City as it appeared to one who walked about its streets and watched the people. It was free, busy and prosperous, except at rare intervals, when its own internal dissensions, or the civil wars of the country, or the pretensions of the Sovereign, disturbed the peace of the City. Behind this prosperity, however, lay hid all through the middle ages, and down to two hundred years ago, four great and ever-present terrors. The first was the Terror of Leprosy: the second the Terror of Famine: the third was the Terror of Plague: the last was the Terror of Fire.

As for the first two, we have seen how lazar houses were established outside every town, and how public granaries were built. Let us consider the third. The Plague broke out so often that there was hardly any time between the tenth and the seventeenth century when some living person could not remember a visitation of this awful scourge. It appeared in London first--i.e. the first mention of it occurs in history--in the year 962: again in 1094: again in 1111: then there seems to have been a respite for 250 years. In the year 1348 the Plague carried off many thousands: in 1361 it appeared again: in 1367 and in 1369. In 1407 30,000 were carried off in London alone by the Plague. In 1478 a plague raged throughout the country, which was said to have destroyed more people than the Wars of the Roses. But we must accept all mediaeval estimates of numbers as indicating no more than great mortality. With the sixteenth century began a period of a hundred and sixty years, marked with attacks of the Plague constantly recurring, and every time more fatal and more widespread. Nothing teaches the conditions of human life more plainly than the history of the Plague in London. We are placed in the world in the midst of dangers, and we have to find out for ourselves how to meet those dangers and to protect ourselves. Thus a vast number of persons were crowded together within the walls of the City. The streets were all narrow: the houses were generally of three or more stories, built out in front so as to obstruct the light and air; there were many courts, in which the houses were mere hovels: there was no drainage: refuse of all kinds lay about the streets: everything that was required for the daily life was made in the City, which added a thousand noisome smells and noxious refuse. Then the Plague came and carried off its thousands and disappeared. Then the survivors went on their usual course. Nothing was changed. Yet the Plague was a voice which spoke loudly. It said 'Clean yourselves: cease to defile the soil of the City with your decaying matter: build your houses in wider streets: do not shut out the sunshine--which is a splendid purifier--or light and air. Keep yourselves clean--body and raiment, and house and street.' The voice spoke, but no one heard. Then came the Plague again. Still no one heard the voice. It came again and again. It came in 1500, in 1525, in 1543, in 1563, in 1569, in 1574, in 1592, in 1603 (when 30,575 died), in 1625 (when 35,470 died), in 1635 (when 10,400 died), and lastly, in 1665. And in all that time no one understood that voice, and the City was never cleansed. All that was done was to light bonfires in the street in order to increase the circulation of the air. After the last, and worst attack, in 1666 the City was burned, and in the purification of the flames it emerged clean, and the Plague has never since appeared. The same voice speaks to mankind still in every visitation of every new pestilence. It used to cry aloud in time of Plague: it cries aloud now in time of typhoid, diphtheria, and cholera. Diseases spring from ignorance and from vice. Physicians cannot cure them: but they can learn their cause and they can prevent.

The Plague of 1665 began in the autumn of the year before. It had been raging in Amsterdam and Hamburg in 1663. Precautions were taken to keep it out by stopping the importation of goods from these towns. But these proved ineffectual. Certain bales from Holland were landed and taken to a house in Long Acre, Drury Lane. Here they were opened by two Frenchmen, both of whom caught the disease and died. A third Frenchman who was seized in the same house was removed to Bearbinder Lane, St. Swithin's Lane, where he, too, died. And then the disease began to spread. A severe frost checked it for a time. But in March, when milder weather returned, it broke out again.

The disease, when it seized upon a person, brought upon him a most distressing horror of mind. This was followed by fever and delirium. But the certain signs of the plague were spots, pustules, and swellings, which spread over the whole body. Death in most cases rapidly followed. Some there were who recovered, but the majority gave themselves over for lost on the first appearance. Many of the physicians ran away from the infected City: many of the parish clergy deserted their churches. The Lord Mayor and Aldermen, however, remained, by their presence giving heart to those of the clergy and physicians who stayed, and by their prudent measures preventing a vast amount of additional suffering which would otherwise have fallen upon the unhappy people.



51. THE TERROR OF THE PLAGUE.

PART II.

In the month of May it was found that twenty City parishes were infected. Certain preventions, rather than remedies, of which there were none, were now employed by the Mayor. Infected houses were shut up: no one was allowed to go in or to come out: food was conveyed by buckets let down from an upper window: the dead bodies were lowered in the same way, from the windows: on the doors were painted red crosses with the words, 'Lord, have mercy upon us!' Watchmen were placed at the doors to prevent the unhappy prisoners from coming out. All the dogs and cats in the City, being supposed to carry about infection in their fur or hair, were slaughtered--40,000 dogs, it is stated, and 200,000 cats, which seems an impossible number, were killed. They also tried, but without success, to kill the rats and mice. Everything was tried except the one thing wanted--air and cleanliness. At the outset a great many of the better sort left the City and stayed in the country till the danger was over: others would have followed but the country people would not suffer their presence and drove them back with clubs and pikes. So they had to come back and die in the City. Then all the shops closed: all industries were stopped: men could no longer sit beside each other: the masters dismissed their apprentices and their workmen and their servants. In the river the ships lay with their cargoes half discharged: on the quays stood the bales, unopened. In the churches there were no services except where the scanty congregation sat singly and apart. The Courts of Justice were empty: there were no crimes to try: in the streets the passengers avoided each other. In the markets which had to be kept open, the buyer lifted down his purchase with a hook and dropped the money into a bowl of vinegar. Many families voluntarily shut their houses and would neither go in or out. Some of these escaped the infection; the history of one such family during their six months' imprisonment has been preserved. They thanked God solemnly every morning for continued health: they prayed three times a day for safety. Some went on board ship and, as the Plague increased, dropped down the river.

The deaths, which in the four weeks of July numbered 725, 1,089, 1,843, and 2,010, respectively, rose in August and September to three, four, five, and even eight thousand a week: but it was believed that the registers were badly kept and that the numbers were greater than appeared. Every evening carts were sent round, the drivers who smoked tobacco as a disinfectant, crying out, 'Bring out your Dead. Bring