It does not appear that any action on the part of Laud or the
Privy Council followed this curious petition.
It seems clear that the Elizabethan audiences were rather an unruly
congregation. There was much cracking of nuts and consuming of pippins
in the old playhouses; ale and wine were on sale, and tobacco was
freely smoked by the upper class of spectators, for it was hardly yet
common to all conditions. Previous to the performance, and during its
pauses, the visitors read pamphlets or copies of plays bought at the
playhouse-doors, and, as they drank and smoked, played at cards. In
his "Gull's Horn Book," 1609, Dekker tells his hero, "before the play
begins, fall to cards;" and, winning or losing, he is bidden to tear
some of the cards and to throw them about, just before the entrance of
the prologue. The ladies were treated to apples, and sometimes applied
their lips to a tobacco-pipe. Prynne, in his "Histriomastix," 1633,
states that, even in his time, ladies were occasionally "offered the
tobacco-pipe" at plays. Then, as now, new plays attracted larger
audiences than ordinary.
Pages:
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26