Chapter Four

THE ACTING

Since 1939 the debate over the style of acting in the Elizabethan theater has been argued on the grounds defined by Alfred Harbage. One of two styles could have existed, he wrote. Acting was either formal or natural.

Natural acting strives to create an illusion of reality by consistency on the part of the actor who remains in character and tends to imitate the behavior of an actual human being placed in his imagined circumstances. He portrays where the formal actor symbolizes. He impersonates where the formal actor represents. He engages in real conversation where the formal actor recites. His acting is subjective and “imaginative” where that of the formal actor is objective and traditional. Whether he sinks his personality in his part or shapes the part to his personality, in either case he remains the natural actor.[1]

Professor Harbage then, and a succession of writers subsequently,[2] have endeavored to prove that formal acting prevailed on the Elizabethan stage.

When we have sifted the various arguments presented over the years by this school of thought, we discover these common points. Oratory and acting utilized similar techniques of voice and gesture so that “whoever knows today exactly what was taught to the Renaissance orator cannot be far from knowing at the same time what was done by the actor on the Elizabethan stage.”[3] Contemporary allusions which compare the orator to the actor establish this correspondence without a doubt. This system depended upon conventional gesture, “as in a sorrowfull parte, y^e head must hange down; in a proud, y^e head must bee lofty.”[4] By learning these conventional gestures, the actors could readily symbolize all emotional states. Such symbolization was necessary since the speed of Elizabethan playing left little room for interpolated action. The result was that the actor did not so much interpret his part as recite it. His personality did not intrude, for his attention was devoted to rendering the literary qualities of the script. Although the emotions expressed in the play were usually violent, the actor projected them “by declaiming his lines with the action fit for every word and sentence.”[5] In this way he properly stressed the significant figures of speech. He played to the audience, not to his fellow actors. The final effect, several writers have concluded, was more like that of opera or ballet than modern drama.

Rejecting this theory of formal acting, a smaller but equally fervent group of scholars is sure that Elizabethan acting was “natural.”[6] Denying that oratory and acting were similar, they maintain that style was dynamic, that an older formalism gave way to a newer naturalism. Since Renaissance art sought to imitate life, the actors in harmony with this aim thought that they imitated life. To grasp how their style emerged from such a view, it is necessary first to comprehend what was the Elizabethan conception of reality. Admittedly, natural acting then was different from natural acting today in some respects, yet the intention was very much the same. “What can be said is that Elizabethan acting was thought at the time to be lifelike ... [which would suggest] a range of acting capable of greater extremes of passion, of much action, which would now seem forced or grotesque, but realistic within a framework of ‘reality’ that coincides to a large extent with ours.”[7]

Some attempt has been made to reconcile these contradictory views. Generally the reconciliation has taken the line that Elizabethan

## acting was mixed, partly formal, partly natural. Some have thought

of the mixture as a blend: a unified style midway between the rigidity of formalism and the fluidity of naturalism. It has also been thought of as an oscillation: certain scenes played in a formal manner, such as longer verse passages delivered in a rhetorical style; other scenes, such as brief exchanges of dialogue, acted in an informal manner. The scholars who have proposed this reconciliation, despite the fact that they arrive at slightly different conclusions from those of the proponents of formal or natural acting, accept the fundamental premise that Elizabethan acting can be discussed only in terms of formal or natural styles.

Until now, it is true, the research and discussion that have gone into this debate have produced careful studies of contemporary allusions to acting. But it seems unlikely that further progress can be made by considering Elizabethan acting in relation to these fixed poles of formality and reality. Brown and Foakes have undertaken a new approach by urging an evaluation of Elizabethan

## acting in terms of the Elizabethan conception of reality. But

neither has followed through. They have merely redefined what is meant by natural acting. Much of what the formalists consider conventional, they argue, represented reality to the Elizabethan. Do sudden insubstantially motivated emotional changes in _Othello_ or _Measure for Measure_ seem forced? They occurred in life and therefore were natural to the period, is their answer. The result has been confusion. The formalists describe the means at the actor’s disposal, the techniques of voice and gesture; the naturalists, the effect at which he aimed, the imitation of life.

This confusion is inherent in the original proposition. Harbage wrote about both aims and means, but without sufficiently discriminating between the two. I think that it is necessary to clarify our understanding of the aims and methods of the actor’s art in general before returning to a consideration of the Elizabethan actor’s art in particular.

At the heart of dramatic presentation stands the actor, imitating a person in a fictional situation in such a way as to hold the continuous attention of the audience in the unfolding circumstances. This holding of attention is dramatic illusion. Whether that illusion is an imitation of contemporary life, historical life, or mythical life, the action and characters must achieve a level of reality sufficient to involve us. For the children who say, “I believe in fairies,” Tinkerbell has become real. The means may be conventional and symbolic or contextual and descriptive; the effect must be an “illusion of reality.” Ultimately, we must reconstruct what that “illusion” signified and how it was achieved in order to visualize the acting of a period.

The understanding that the actor has with the audience about the relation of dramatic experience to life will determine the significance of the illusion. The common understanding that they, actor and audience, have about the characters and stories will affect the means at the actor’s disposal for creating the illusion. Consider a simple stage movement. An actor turns his back on the audience. In the context of the Théâtre-Libre or the Moscow Art Theatre this movement emphasizes the convention of the fourth wall and the illusion of the unpresent audience. The same movement employed in Molière’s _Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme_ is a deliberate artifice introduced for comic effect. Not the fixed forms, but their function and context shape the illusion of reality. Not the intent, but the created image, determines the significance of that illusion. The aim may be one, but the manifestations are many.

When an illusion of reality becomes differentiated sharply, it eventuates in a style. Not being an arithmetic total of absolute qualities, style does not remain constant. It is a dynamic interplay of many impulses brought to a point of crystallization by the creative genius of the actor. Such a complex, if distinctive and appealing enough, itself becomes an impulse for further creative activity. What we often term “formal acting” is a previous means of creating illusion which has coalesced into a fixed form imitable by later generations. Some of the impulses that led the commedia dell’arte to create a Harlequin, a Franca Trippa, and a Dottore were “realistic”; that is, the activities of Italian daily life helped to refine the stage figure. Gradually the types became stock and finally ossified so that they responded less to the impulses of contemporary life and more to the tradition from which they were derived. Perfection and variation of old roles rather than the invention of new devices and characteristics became the custom. By the time these figures came to the hand of Marivaux they had, through the loss of much of their original force, become somewhat precious and self-conscious. Illusion of reality was still achieved, but it was a new kind of illusion, less robust, more sophisticated, less aware of the cry of the street, more attuned to the repartee of the drawing room. Then the acting became “formal,” that is, traditional, conventional, “objective.” But from the germination of the improvised drama to the “decadence” of Marivaux, commedia acting went through several styles. To visualize the style of any single period we have to study a cross section of its theatrical and social conditions.

Of these conditions there are five which provide the principal clues to an understanding of the Globe acting style. First, there are general intellectual tendencies reflected in the theory and practice of Elizabethan rhetoric. Next, there is the theatrical tradition handed down to the Lord Chamberlain’s men. Thirdly, and continuing the foregoing material, there are the playing conditions under which the company operated. Fourthly, there is the conception of human character and behavior held by society. Lastly, and perhaps most important, there are the playing materials themselves, the characters and actions with which the actors were provided. Cumulatively, the study of these conditions supplies an understanding of the means at the Globe actors’ disposal for creating their “illusion of reality” and, through it, offers an insight into the significance of that illusion.

I. THE RELATION OF TUDOR RHETORIC TO ELIZABETHAN ACTING

Rhetoric played a vital role in the education and life of the Elizabethan man. From its study he could learn all that was known of the art and techniques of oral and written communication. Scholars of the school of formal acting have insisted that seventeenth century works on rhetorical delivery reflect an image of Elizabethan acting. Usually the actor is considered the transmitter, the rhetorician the receiver of influence. This contention has been disputed, as I have pointed out. For the moment, however, let us suppose that there was some connection between oratory and acting. What then does rhetoric teach us of Elizabethan acting? To answer this question Bertram Joseph relies principally upon Bulwer’s double study _Chirologia_ and _Chironomia_ (1644), a late work. But, since we have been considering acting as a dynamic art, it would be well to examine the evidence of sixteenth and early seventeenth century manuals of rhetoric.

Compassed under the heading of rhetoric in the sixteenth century were three of the five parts of classical rhetoric. _Inventio_ and _dispositio_ had been transferred to logic, particularly in the Ramist scheme. _Elocutio_, _memoria_, and _pronuntiatio_ remained. However, _memoria_ or the art of memory was generally, though not entirely, ignored. Of the two remaining parts that made up sixteenth century rhetoric, _elocutio_, or the art of eloquence, and _pronuntiatio_, or the art of speech and gesture, the former received the almost undivided attention of Elizabethan writers.

Before 1610 only Thomas Wilson in _The Art of Rhetorique_ (1553) and Abraham Fraunce in _The Arcadian Rhetorike_ (1588) treat the art of pronunciation separately. The other writers,[8] except for occasionally defining the term or citing an example, or describing the qualities of a good voice, omit the subject entirely. Even Wilson and Fraunce treat it in summary fashion.

Wilson defines the two parts of the subject, voice and gesture. A praiseworthy voice is “audible, strong, and easie, & apte to order as we liste.” Before an audience orators should start speaking softly, “use meete pausying, and being somewhat heated, rise with their voice, as the tyme & cause shal best require” (Sig. Gg1^r). For those with poor voices, attention to diet, practice in singing, and imitation of good speakers are the means of improvement. Gesture, which is a “comely moderacion of the countenaunce, and al other partes of mans body,” should agree with the voice. Altogether, the orator should be cheerful, poised, and moderate in deportment (Sig. Gg2^r).

The entire section sets up standards for good pronunciation, but it does not specifically show how they are met. The standards place emphasis on comeliness and grace, on a harmony of speech, gesture, and matter. The actual manner of delivery shall be “as the tyme & cause shal best require.”

Fraunce is both fuller and more specific in his treatment of pronunciation, although, like Wilson, he devotes the smaller portion of his book, _The Arcadian Rhetorike_, to it. Generally he reiterates the points made by Wilson: the voice must be pleasing, the speaker should begin softly and rise “as occasion serveth,” the delivery should follow the meaning. Fraunce goes further than Wilson, however, in equating a kind of voice with appropriate rhetorical form.

In figures of words which altogether consist in sweete repetitions and dimensions, is chiefly conversant that pleasant and delicate tuning of the voyce, which resembleth the consent and harmonie of some well ordred song: In other figures of affections, the voyce is more manly, yet diversly, according to the varietie of passions that are to bee expressed.[9]

His specific suggestions depend upon the equation of voice and affection, for example, “in pitie and lamentation, the voyce must be full, sobbing, flexible, interrupted.” Largely there is an association of tone of voice with a particular passion. For “feare and anger” there are additional injunctions concerning rhythm. Otherwise, these “rules” seem suggestive and general rather than imperative and specific.

In writing of gesture, Fraunce once again supplements the standards of Wilson with illustrations of his own. The truism of the age that “gesture must followe the change and varietie of the voyce,” is conditioned by the warning that it should not be done “parasiticallie as stage plaiers use, but gravelie and decentlie as becommeth men of greater calling.” This implies that the attitude may have been similar but the resulting manner different. Actual suggestions are made for the portrayal of affections; for example, “the holding downe of the head, and casting downe of the eyes betokeneth modestie.” Forbidding gesture with the head alone, Fraunce notes that its chiefest force is the countenance, and of the countenance the eyes “which expres livelilie even anie conceit or passion of the mind.” How to use the eyes is not explained. The

## particular ordering of the lips, nose, chin, and shoulders is “left

to everie mans discretion.”

Concerning the arms and hands Fraunce writes little. The right arm in being extended reinforces the flow of the speech. This action is supplemented by the moderate use of the hands and fingers which rather “follow than goe before and expresse the words.” Since the left hand alone is not used in gesture, it is joined with the right in expressing doubt, objection, and prayer. The fingers in various combinations express distinct significance.

For the body as a whole Fraunce warns against unseemliness. He associates striking the breast with grief and lamentation, striking the thigh with indignation, striking the ground with the foot with vehemency. By and large the speaker should not move more than a step or two.

In substance this is the written material on pronunciation in English before 1610. Fraunce alone shows any indication that there was a conventional system of vocal delivery and physical gesture. As early as 1531 Elyot in _The Governour_ (fol. 49) had included “the voyce and gesture of them that can pronounce comedies” in the attributes of a fine orator. This Ciceronian tradition is probably reflected in _The Arcadian Rhetorike_ so that Fraunce may be following the custom of the players except where he specifically notes a difference. But do the “rules” of Fraunce demonstrate the presence of an accepted system of convention in voice and gesture, or are they personal observations organized into a system? Writing of the affections and speech, Fraunce indicates that the correspondence _must_ be followed. In writing of the affections and gesture, he is less sure. Some matters are left to the discretion of the speaker, others must adhere to a certain convention. About the body he is suggestive. Striking the breast to express grief “is not unusuall,” but striking the thigh to express indignation “was usuall” as was stamping.’ Usual where? On the stage? In the law courts? In the pulpit? He does not specify. Keeping in mind that Fraunce alone has detailed such “conventions of voice and gesture,” it is apparent that he is regularizing the general habit current in sixteenth century England of finding external means of expression for internal conceits or passions of the mind.

A habit is not a convention, however. The gestures described by Fraunce reinforce the speech, lending harmony and vigor to the vocal expression. But there is little evidence that they were raised to the level of symbolism, that particular gestures came widely to represent particular meanings. That this was the case, is supported by a comparison of the supposed meanings of several gestures. As quoted above, Fraunce claimed that “the holding downe of the head, and casting downe of the eyes betokeneth modestie.” But the author of _The Cyprian Conqueror_ (1633), cited by Professor Harbage, asserts that “in a sorrowfull parte, y^e head must hang downe.” Lest we think that two affections were expressed by the same gesture, we must note how sorrow was expressed according to Fraunce. “The shaking of the head noteth griefe and indignation.” Obviously there was not complete agreement about the significance of a particular gesture. Nor could there be since forms of expression are usually left to the speaker’s judgment in the rhetorics.

Nevertheless, although an exact pattern of conventions cannot be discovered in Elizabethan rhetoric, general attitudes toward speech can be discerned. Wilson and Fraunce call for a pleasant voice, neither too high nor too low, but mean, capable of expressing nuances of thought. The ideal blending of speech and movement for the Elizabethan age is well presented in Baldassare Castiglione’s _Courtier_, translated by Thomas Hoby in 1561.

[What is requisite in speaking is] a good voice, not too subtill or soft, as in a woman: nor yet so boistrous and rough, as in one of the countrie, but shril, cleare, sweete, and well framed with a prompt pronunciation, and with fit maners, and gestures, which (in my minde) consist in certaine motions of all the bodie, not affected nor forced, but tempred with a manerly countenance and with a moving of the eyes that may give grace and accorde with the wordes, and (as much as he can) signifie also with gestures, the intent and affection of the speaker.[10]

Grace, dignity, and spontaneity, in short, beauty of expression, was the accepted aim of the age.

In addition to speaking pleasantly, the educated man was expected to speak meaningfully. His vocal delivery should express figures of eloquence effectively.

The consideration of voyce is to be had either in severed words, or in the whole sentence. In the particular applying of the voyce to severall words, wee make tropes that bee most excellent plainly appeare. For without this change of voyce, neither anie Ironia, nor lively Metaphore can well bee discerned.[11]

Nor must this attention to the figures of speech be lavished only upon the formal speech. In his informal _Direction for Speech and Style_ (c. 1590), John Hoskins applies the same consideration to social occasion. Included in his discussion of Agnomination, or repetition of sounds in sentence, such as “Our paradise is a pair of dice, our almes-deeds are turned into all misdeeds,” is a suggestion that “that kind of breaking words into another meaning is pretty to play with among gentlewomen, as, _you will have but a bare gain of this bargain_.” Sensitivity to the figures of eloquence was widespread; we may expect the actors to have been

## particularly attentive to their rendition.

Though scanty, indications exist that the speaker was not thought to deliver his speech by rote. As Hamlet compares his behavior with the player’s, he describes the man’s tears, distraction and broken voice,

and his whole function suiting With forms to his conceit. [II, ii, 582-583]

“The conceits of the mind are pictures of things and the tongue is interpreter of those pictures,” wrote John Hoskins to his student.[12] Just as eloquence contained figures of sentence encompassing an extended thought as well as figures of words expressing a turn of a phrase, so did delivery require an understanding of the conceit and passion as a whole as well as the appreciation of the particular literary form.

Among the figures listed by Henry Peacham in _The Garden of Eloquence_ (1593) is Mimesis:

Mimesis is an imitation of speech whereby the orator counter-faitheth not onely what one said, but also his utterance, pronunciation and gesture, imitating everything as it was, which is alwaies well performed, and naturally represented in an apt and skilfull actor.[13]

Since imitation is confined to a single figure, it probably was not expected in delivery except in special situations. But this applies to the rendering of character types, for the projection of passion in oratory was generally accepted and encouraged. Fraunce, as we have seen, describes the kinds of tones to be employed in terms of the affections to be conveyed. Sir Thomas Elyot in 1531 writes that whereas “the sterring of affections of the minde in this realme was never used, therefore ther lacketh Eloqution and pronunciation, two of the princypall parts of Rethorike.”[14] Wilson explicitly states not only the desirability of stirring affections but the necessity for the speaker to feel those affections himself.

He that will stirre affeccions to other, muste first be moved himself.

Neither can any good be doen at all, when we have saied all that ever we can, except we brying the same affeccions in owr owne harte whiche wee would the Judges should beare towardes our awne matter ... a wepying iye causeth muche moysture, and provoketh teares. Neither is it any mervaile: for such men bothe in their countenaunce, tongue, iyes, gesture, and in all their body els, declare an outwarde grief, and with wordes so vehemently and unfeinedly, settes it forward, that thei will force a man to be sory with them, and take part with their teares, even against his will. [Sig. T1^v]

Not only Elyot’s comment but also Peacham’s changes in _The Garden of Eloquence_ for the second edition in 1593 show that increased attention to stirring the emotions occurred in the last half of the sixteenth century in England.

Peacham’s omission in 1593 of the grammatical schemes he had included in the first edition of _The Garden of Eloquence_ and his addition of many figures based on appeal to the emotions may be taken as indications of a shift which had taken place in rhetoric in England between 1577 and 1593.... During these years, too, the rhetorical theories of Petrus Ramus and Audomarus Talaeus, with their emphasis on those rhetorical devices which directed their appeal to the emotions, flourished in England.[15]

In such a context, if rhetoric influenced or reflected acting, it emphasized the already present stimulation of emotion and encouraged the actor who wished to move his audience to “bryng the same affeccions” in his own heart to the stage.

That it is misleading to apply the circumstances of later rhetorical study to this earlier period is evident on two scores. First, during the first half of the seventeenth century a shift from medieval rhetoric, of which sixteenth century English rhetoric is an extension, to classical rhetoric took place, principally through the influence of Francis Bacon and Ben Jonson. This meant the reentry of _inventio_ and _dispositio_ into the framework of rhetoric, bringing about the second change. In the scheme that Francis Bacon proposed for learning, rhetoric no longer should be directed at moving the affections:

It is the business of rhetoric to make pictures of virtue and goodness, so that they may be seen. For since they cannot be showed to the sense in corporeal shape, the next degree is to show them to the imagination in as lively representation as possible, by ornament of words.

Actually, rhetoric should be brought into the attack against affections:

Reason would become captive and servile, if eloquence of persuasions did not win the imagination from the affections’ part, and contract a confederacy between the reason and imagination against them.[16]

To infer conclusions about the details of Elizabethan acting from Elizabethan rhetoric is, as we have seen, highly conjectural. Yet, in the intellectual atmosphere of which rhetoric was a part, we can discern several attitudes that probably shaped acting. Detailed study was expended on the figures of eloquence and loving care was devoted to models of fine tropes. The oral rendition of these forms was left to the judgment of the individual, for the most part. The few expositions of delivery stress grace of expression and stirring of affections. But no thoroughly accepted conventions of voice and gesture seem to have existed. Thus, although rhetorical theory was conducive to the growth of formal and traditional acting, rhetorical delivery had not solidified sufficiently by 1610 to provide a systematic method. In seeking external forms for their conceits, the orator, and probably actor, still responded more to invention than tradition.

II. THE INFLUENCE OF THEATRICAL TRADITIONS UPON ELIZABETHAN ACTING

Although Elizabethan rhetorical tradition was essentially continental, Elizabethan theatrical tradition was largely native. For the better part of a century, troupes of four men and a boy had crisscrossed the English countryside, bringing plays to village and court. Though the Queen’s men, with twelve actors, at its formation in 1583 became the largest troupe, the smaller troupes continued to flourish. The English troupe that traveled to Denmark in 1586 numbered five men, and the various companies that are portrayed in _Sir Thomas More_, _Histrio-mastix_, and _Hamlet_ all number either four or five. Naturally, when the theater became stabilized in London, increasingly so after 1575, the companies tended to grow larger. But periodic difficulties because of politics or plague caused frequent resort to the small troupe during the next twenty years.

Small companies required the actor to play several roles in one play. _Cambises_ divides thirty-eight parts among eight men, with five of the men playing either six or seven parts each. Only the Vice had fewer than three parts. _Horestes_ divides twenty-seven parts among five. Even actors of the larger companies had to play several roles. _Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes_, presented by the twelve men of the Queen’s company, contained seventeen substantial roles, plus twenty-one for supernumeraries. This tradition of doubling gave the Elizabethan actor no opportunity to develop a specialty. He could not concentrate on a specific genre, for he was called upon to play courtly men and country men, villains and saints. Probably we should except the leading comic from this stricture. Usually he played fewer roles, and through the recurrence of the Vice figure and the practice of extemporal improvisation, he had the conditions necessary to the development of a distinctive type. But the other actors had to enact all sorts of roles. Unlike the Italian comedian who devoted himself to his forte, the Elizabethan tried to become flexible and varied in his abilities. It is evident that the attention of the actor had to be concentrated on telling the story, not developing the characters. Since the shift from one character to another necessitated some change in appearance or manner, readily discernible characteristics must have distinguished each type of part. As we shall see, this kind of acting was in harmony with the generic nature of Elizabethan characterization.

Systematic training of the popular players does not seem to have been the rule either. Stephen Gosson in _Playes Confuted in five

## Actions_ (1582), describes three sources of recruitment:

Most of the Players have bene eyther men of occupations, which they have forsaken to lyve by playing, or common minstrels, or trayned up from theire childehood to this abhominable exercise.

But the latter group, for which we can reasonably assume careful training, does not seem to have supplied many actors to the professional companies before 1600. Of the six men in Leicester’s company we know the background only of James Burbage, who had been a carpenter by trade. Of the twelve in the Queen’s men, we know little more. John Dutton may have been a musician, since Lincoln’s Inn paid him for musicians in 1567-1568. Richard Tarleton, the renowned clown, tended swine, according to Fuller. But his fellow, Robert Wilson, asserted that he had been an apprentice waterbearer whose native wit led him to the stage.

When we come to the actors of the Globe company, the information is somewhat fuller. Shakespeare himself did not leave Stratford before 1584, when he was over twenty years of age, so that we can assume that he went from some craft or from a schoolhouse to the theater. Besides Shakespeare, there were thirteen other sharers in the company between 1599 and 1609: Thomas Pope, John Heminges, Augustine Phillips, Richard Cowley, Richard Burbage, William Sly, Henry Condell, and Robert Armin, all members before 1603, and Laurence Fletcher, John Lowin, Alexander Cooke, Nicholas Tooley, and Robert Goffe, all of whom became members after 1603. Of the antecedents of most of the members we know little. Thomas Pope had been one of the English players in Denmark and Germany in 1586-1587. Heminges, in his will, calls himself “citizen and grocer,” which may indicate that he, too, was an artisan turned player. Burbage presumably grew up in his father’s theater. While quite young, he appeared in the _Seven Deadly Sins_. Armin was said to have been an apprentice to a goldsmith. Condell is conjectured to have been the “Harry” of _Seven Deadly Sins_, but the identification is inconclusive. Thus, of the earlier group of actors, several seem to have come from the trades. In the later group of five, three may have been apprentice actors and one, Lowin, had been an apprentice goldsmith. Fletcher seems to have been connected with a troupe in Scotland. The evidence, inconclusive as it is, indicates that with the increased stability of the theater and the alteration in theatrical taste the source of actors shifted from adults to trained boys.

The ready transfer of a man from trade to stage in the early period argues that an elaborate training, at least at the beginning, was not expected. The ready conversion of the tradesmen into actors in _Histrio-mastix_ (Sig. B1^r), once a poet has been secured, further demonstrates that the possession of a story, not the cultivation of a manner, was requisite. What the details of early acting may have been, we do not know. The conditions of training and the methods of recruitment, however, were not conducive to the development of precisely executed conventions.

The actual skills of the early Elizabethan actors can be inferred in part from references to various actors. Tarleton and Robert Wilson were commended for their “extemporall wit.” In letters dealing with English players on the Continent in the 1580’s,

## acting is always linked with dancing, vaulting and tumbling. Thomas

Pope and George Bryan, a Lord Chamberlain’s man until the end of 1597, were among the five “instrumentister och springere” at the Danish court in 1586. These scattered allusions reinforce the opinion that simple characterization, rude playing, native wit, and physical vigor were the qualities of the early actor.

We must turn to the plays presented by the public companies before 1595 to round out the picture of the theatrical tradition. Character was not fully developed in the popular theater until Marlowe. Before his plays appeared, character had been barely differentiated from generic types, such as kings, vices, rustics, tyrants, etc. A word is necessary about generic types. Each of the generic types arises from a social class, and the characters within each type reflect their class. Differences between generic characters of the same type are not as great as similarities. Some distinctive habits of thought and behavior cluster about each type, but these are never rigidly fixed. Simple representatives of the generic type are the merchant and the potecary in John Heywood’s interludes of _The Weather_ and _The Four PP._ respectively. The generic type differs from the stock figure partly in source but mainly in definition. The stock figure tends to coalesce into a single perfect representative of each type: a Scapin, a Columbine, a Harlequin. The generic type encourages multiplicity. The stock figure, such as the doctor from Bologna, often has a regional origin. From the region of his birth he usually derives physical or social idiosyncracies, for example, a dialect, an item of apparel, or a distinctive manner. As the stock figure develops, additional external features become attached to him. Certain bits of stage business, quirks of personality, modes of dress, and style of playing, become his trade-marks. But the generic character seldom becomes fixed and traditional. Instead, he constantly undergoes change according to the demands of the story.

The early popular plays definitely show that the actors were used to playing generic characters. Thus, they were able to concentrate on the story, the sentiment, and the sententiousness of their plays. In limited ways they relied on dress to identify types of characters. Alan Downer has shown that there was some symbolism in costume. Hotson has traced the evolution of a distinctive garment for the Elizabethan “natural.”[17] Henslowe lists certain costumes which were probably generic or symbolic. But features of dress remained generalized rather than becoming attached to a stock type. Whether habits of carriage or gesture corresponded with types of roles, we do not know. But it is certain, as we found in our study of rhetoric, that no traditional, systematic scheme of vocal and physical conventions developed.

Actually, in a rudimentary way, the early plays show tendencies toward the kind of structure described in the chapter on dramaturgy. In _Cambises_, it is not the discovery or death of Sisamnes which occupies our attention, but the responses of the son, Otian, to his father’s execution. Affective display and rhetorical pronouncement occupied the center of the stage. Some time ago, Albert Walker demonstrated that the methods for expression of emotions in the pre-Shakespearean plays can be found in Shakespeare’s plays.[18] Many of the ways of portraying grief, joy, anger, rage, could be and were handed down from one theatrical generation to another. For the actor, the projection of grief in the following speeches would not be very different in each case.

OTIAN. O father dear, these words to hear --that you must die by force-- Bedews my cheeks with stilled tears. The king hath no remorse. The grievous griefs, and strained sighs My heart doth break in twain, And I deplore, most woeful child, that I should see you slain. [_Cambises_, 445-448]

NERONIS. Ah wofull sight, what is alas, with these mine eyes beheld, That to my loving Knight belongd, I view the Golden Sheeld: Ah heavens, this Herse doth signifie my Knight is slaine, Ah death no longer do delay, but rid the lives of twaine: Heart, hand, and everie sence prepare, unto the Hearse draw nie: And thereupon submit your selves, disdaine not for to die With him that was your mistresse ioy, her life and death like case, And well I know in seeking me, he did his end embrace. [_Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes_, 1532-1539]

AGA. What greater griefe had mournful Priamus, Then that he liv’d to see his Hector die, His citie burnt downe by revenging flames, And poor Polites slaine before his face? Aga, thy griefe is matchable to his, For I have liv’d to see my soveraignes death, Yet glad that I must breath my last with him. [_Selimus_, 1863-1869]

QUEEN. A sweet children, when I am at rest my nightly dreames are dreadful. Me thinks as I lie in my bed, I see the league broken which was sworne at the death of your kingly father, tis this my children and many other causes of like importance, that makes your aged mother to lament as she doth. [_The True Tragedy of King Richard III_, 802-807]

Essentially the actors were provided with methods for making emotion explicit. In the first three illustrations the characters name their emotions outright, in the last the Queen describes it. Descriptions of external manifestations of grief, such as “strained sighs,” and apostrophe, either to another (“O father dear”) or to oneself (“Aga, thy griefe”) or to abstract properties (“Ah wofull sight”), or to divinity (“Ah heavens, Ah death”) are common. The later plays were subtler in the depiction of emotion. In _Selimus_, the similarity of his state to that of Priam conveys the overwhelming grief of Aga. In _The True Tragedy_, the Queen expresses the grief of the moment through the terror of a dream. By utilizing these various methods for years, the actor had become familiar with openly rendering the character’s emotion. Furthermore, the quality of the emotion was not highly differentiated. In force and depth, the grief for the loss of a loved or revered one, in each of the instances cited, is fundamentally the same.

One major development in the acting conditions must be noted. In the plays of the 1560’s and 1570’s the verse was regular and conventional. The galloping fourteener left little opportunity for nuance. The rhythm and accent of the verse in _Cambises_, for example, intruded upon the character. It erected a barrier to the immediate impact of emotion upon the auditor. The actor who rendered such verse was encouraged in the conventional expression of emotion and the reliance upon rhythmic sweep for his success.

In the 1580’s the verse became suppler. Rhyme was abandoned, rhythm because subtler and more varied. The total effect was less stentorian and more lyrical. It was possible to utilize the superior advantages of poetic drama without the artificiality to which it is liable. For the actor the change tore down a veil. Character portrayal could be more vivid. Contact between actor and actor was easier to achieve. In a word, the actor was able to make events more “real.” At the same time, he had a more difficult task in rendering speech. Whether or not this change led to a realistic style of acting will be discussed in connection with the Globe plays. To these plays the early actor contributed experience in playing all kinds of roles before all kinds of audiences, portraying generic types through conventional means, emoting in extravagant and conventional fashion, speaking verse with vigor and sweep, and performing in the peripheral arts of dancing, tumbling, and vaulting. The picture he presents is of a rough-and-ready trouper, not a sophisticated and refined artist.

III. THE EFFECT OF PLAYING CONDITIONS UPON ELIZABETHAN ACTING

After 1592, stability and new theater construction, though continuing the earlier tradition in many respects, brought about new playing conditions, the third factor which contributed to the acting style at the Globe. Playing conditions include the structure of the theater, the arrangement of the repertory, and the organization of the company. The first two of these conditions have been discussed at length in previous chapters and the last has been treated in Professor T. W. Baldwin’s _Organization and Personnel of the Shakespearean Company_.

With the opening of the Globe playhouse the company, for the first time since its organization, had its own building. Although the Theatre may not have been very different in form, it had never served as a permanent home. How much this affected the actors is difficult to know. We found in Chapter Three that only 20 per cent of the scenes in the Globe plays made use of stage facilities. For the larger part of the play, the actor needed only a bare platform. Thus the conditions that the plays required were no different from those he had known for years.

But if the physical conditions did not change greatly, the artistic conditions did. The splendor of the stage façade enhanced the

## actions of the player. The very sumptuousness of the stage elevated

them to a level of grandeur, setting them off with elegance and opulence. In return it called for scope in delivery, grace in manner, and audacity in playing. Against a setting so dazzling only intensive and extensive action could hope to make an impression upon an audience.

Not only the design but also the plan of the stage conditioned the

## acting. The flat façade and the deeply projecting platform had a

serious effect upon the physical movement of the actor. For the moment we can assume that the actor played many scenes at the front of the stage. To do so he had to come forward twenty-five feet. The modern director would motivate such a movement, that is, provide the actor with some internal or external impulse to cause him to move forward. In some instances this must have been the same at the Globe. Often we read scenes where characters on stage describe the entrance and approach of another actor. But there are many instances where such aid is not forthcoming. In those cases one of two effects was possible. Either the movement forward was treated as a conventional action which the audience expected, or it was treated as a ceremonial action which dignified the player. Further investigation of this matter is reserved for the next chapter. Here it is sufficient to point out that in either case the actor’s entrance was theatricalized. Boldness was necessary to catch and hold attention on such a vast stage.

The sightlines of the theater also had an effect upon the acting. Essentially they were poor. We are dealing with an aural theater, not a visual one. Note how the author of _An Excellent Actor_ (1615) expresses the relation of actor and spectator:

Sit in a full Theater, and you will thinke you see so many lines drawne from the circumference of so many _eares_, whiles the Actor is the Center. [My italics.]

Gesture for specific communication rather than general reinforcement of the speech was not feasible. For example, the comic actor could not rely on a visual gag. A humorous walk or risible situation, such as the tavern scene in _I Henry IV_, could be managed. But the type of farcical routine represented by the commedia dell’arte _lazzi_ would have been lost to a large part of the audience.

The sightlines not only prohibited certain types of gestures, they also required a certain orientation of the body. Today as much as possible the actor will try to maintain the illusion that he is facing a fellow actor and not facing the audience. The flat picture frame of our theater encourages this illusion. In the Elizabethan theater the actor had to turn out, that is, orient himself to the circumference of auditors, if he were to be seen at all. This condition reinforced the conventional or ceremonial manner in

## acting.

By turning out, the actor emphasized the stage as a setting behind him rather than as an environment around him. This was in accord with the demands of the plays. As I have pointed out, most of the scenes were set in a generalized locale. The actor did not have to maintain an illusion of place. He could concentrate wholly on the

## action and the passion of a scene. To achieve verisimilitude it

was not necessary that he project time and place. Standard practice in movement and delivery would fit every play, for they would never seem out of harmony with the conventional façade. The result was that the actor did not adapt himself to every environment, as the actor does now, but translated every environment into a theatrical form.

These tendencies towards simplification and systemization were reinforced by the conditions of repertory. In Chapter One I showed how many plays were maintained actively in the Globe repertory. A member of the company, who was likely to be in every play, had to learn a new role every other week. At the same time, he had to keep in mind thirty or forty others. We do know that the players were used to preparing a script rapidly. Augustine Phillips, in the course of testimony offered on the Essex conspiracy, reveals that the Lord Chamberlain’s men had only a day or a day and a half to revive _Richard II_, a play long off the boards.[19] The fact that the play was actually presented at the Globe is proof of the actors’ adaptability.

But the player’s task was still more arduous. There was no opportunity for him to fix a role in his memory by repetition. Rarely would he play the same role two days in succession. Even in the most popular role he would not appear more than twice in one week, and then only in the first month or two of the play’s stage life. The consequences of such a strenuous repertory were twofold. First, the actor had to cultivate a fabulous memory and devote much of his time to memorization; various plays testify to the scorn of the playwright for the actor who is out of his part. Secondly, the actor had to systematize his methods of portrayal and of working with his colleagues. How far this could be done will have to be considered below in light of the variety of roles the actor played.

If we could have a glimpse of an actual rehearsal, we should learn a great deal about Elizabethan acting. The closest that we can come to such a glimpse is to examine various players’ scenes in the drama of the period. From _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_ (I, ii, 101 ff.), we learn that it was the practice to distribute the sides to the actors and, after these had been memorized, to rehearse the company. That this was normal procedure is indicated by the surviving part for Orlando from _Orlando Furioso_.[20] Used by Edward Alleyn, it embodies the system adopted by the professional companies. The part, inscribed on a narrow sheet of paper, was originally arranged on a long roll. From this roll Alleyn studied his part and from it we can learn some of his methods, particularly by comparing the part to the extant copy of the play.

The part contains Orlando’s speeches, together with the cues for each speech and some stage directions. The cues are extremely brief, consisting of no more than two or three words of the preceding actor’s speech. If the speeches of more than one actor separate two speeches of Orlando, only the last cue is inserted. Of the presence of any other actors on stage there is no indication. The stage directions, usually written in the third person, are not as descriptive as in the text of the play. Entrances of other actors are not noted. In effect, the part is shorn of almost everything but the speeches of the character.

As Dr. Greg has pointed out, the part does not rely upon quite the same text as the full copy of the play. Therefore, a word-by-word comparison cannot be made. Yet there is some evidence that short replies by the other actors were conventionalized in the part. Compare the following extract, for example:

Part.

stay villayne I tell the/_e_/ Angelica is dead, nay she is in deed ... lord but my Angelica is dead. ... my lord. [154-158]

Play.

ORL. O this it is, Angelica is dead. ORG. Why then she shall be buried. ORL. But my Angelica is dead. ORG. Why it may be so. [856-859]

In several other places short lines of the other actor have been omitted.[21] There is one instance, in an otherwise satisfactory section, where a cue is omitted (after Part, 344, compare with Play, 1311-1312). Another set of omissions involves brief interchanges between Orlando and another character. The brevity of the speeches where the omissions occur indicates that they are not cuts in the script. Perhaps these lines were picked up by the actors in rehearsal.

The uncertainty governing the relationship of part to play makes it difficult to depend too much upon the evidence of the comparison. But a few tentative deductions can be made. We must remember the little time available for rehearsal. Nowadays when extensive rehearsals in the Moscow Art Theatre manner are the ideal, the few hours that were available to the Globe actors appear to be an insurmountable obstacle to dramatic art. However, long rehearsals of an entire dramatic company are a comparatively recent innovation. In the last century, for instance, a rehearsal or two was deemed sufficient. An actress who was asked by Edwin Booth to rehearse the closet scene in _Hamlet_ was so insulted that she left the production. Concentration upon the individual player rather than the play, which this anecdote illustrates, is also reflected in the part of Orlando. It is trimmed to provide the actor with the information he needed as a solo performer, not as a member of a group. Since the full copy of the play was difficult to secure, the one copy being zealously guarded by the bookkeeper, the part was all the actor had to rely on. From it he got his familiarity with the play. In it he put the essentials of his role. The absence of more stage directions in the part than are in the play indicates that the acting was free from any but the most relevant business, an observation with which B. L. Joseph seems to agree. Altogether, the evidence points to a type of acting which emphasized the individual performer, minimized his relationship to the other actors, and placed great emphasis upon the delivery of speeches.

The organization of the Globe company may have somewhat mitigated the emphasis upon the individual. Between 1599 and 1609 the company became stabilized and won the prestige of a royal patent. From the opening of the Globe to the accession of James in 1603, the sharers, who were the principal actors, remained the same. They were Thomas Pope, John Heminges, Augustine Phillips, Richard Cowley, William Shakespeare, Richard Burbage, William Sly, Henry Condell, and Robert Armin. At the time the company received the royal patent in May, 1603, it was enlarged to twelve members. Entering at the same time was a replacement for the deceased Pope, Laurence Fletcher. The three new members were John Lowin, who had been a member of Worcester’s men in 1602-1603, Alexander Cooke, who may have been the “sander” of the _Seven Deadly Sins_ of 1592, and Nicholas Tooley, who spoke of Richard Burbage as “master.” E. K. Chambers conjectures that the Samuel Grosse whose name appears in the Folio actor list preceded Tooley into the company, but that he probably died of the plague almost at once. This history is doubtful, but even if true, it made little difference. Since it is generally accepted that Fletcher did not act with the King’s men, only three actors joined the company. One was clearly an outsider, one was probably an apprentice, who had grown up in the company, and one, Cooke, may have been an apprentice. On the death of Phillips in 1605 either Samuel Gilburne or Robert Goffe succeeded him. To account for Gilburne’s name in the Folio actor list, Chambers places him after Phillips, to be followed by Goffe before 1611. Baldwin believes that Goffe, who was Phillips’ brother-in-law, entered the company in 1605. He was possibly the “R. Go.” of _Seven Deadly Sins_, and may have remained with the company as apprentice or hired man throughout. In 1608 William Ostler replaced Pope, who was buried August 16, and John Underwood replaced Fletcher, who was buried September 12. Both men came from the Revels company, where they had been boy actors. However, since they entered during the period when plans for placing the King’s men at Blackfriars were under way, we can exclude them from our consideration. Thus, in the ten years we are treating, three new actors joined the company and one replaced a former actor. Two of the new actors had probably appeared with the company previously, another possibly had, but only one had been definitely associated with another group, and that one of the popular companies. The hired actors have not been considered, it is true, but the sharers who were the principal players made a tightly knit, relatively unchanging group.

Determination of the identity of the boys of the company who played the ladies is somewhat difficult. Baldwin lists seven names of boys who acted the female roles between 1599 and 1609.[22] In 1599 Samuel Gilburne, Ned (Shakespeare?), and Jack Wilson were boy actors. Samuel Grosse joined them in 1600, shortly after which Gilburne and Ned ceased playing women. In 1603 John Edmans, John Rich, and James Sands began playing women’s parts. Grosse in 1604 and Wilson in 1605 in their turn ceased performing as women. This rapid turnover is to be expected, since the span of a boy’s ability to play a feminine role was relatively short. However, since each of these boys was apprenticed to one of the members of the company, his training and performance would probably have harmonized with the adult acting.

What effect, then, did this closed and intimate group have upon the style of the acting? Baldwin proposed that each actor had a special character “line” to which he devoted himself and to which the playwrights, particularly Shakespeare, trimmed the roles. Baldwin points out that the same actors consistently took the major roles. In this I believe he is correct. Richard Burbage invariably played the leading role, Robert Armin the leading comic role, Robert Cowley played important secondary roles. Lowin seems to have come in to play leads or second leads just below the rank of Burbage: Baldwin gives him the role of Enobarbus to Burbage’s Antony. Although this designation may not be strictly accurate, the relation it reflects is likely. It is apparent that a modified star system obtained in the Globe company. This arrangement had two advantages. On the one hand, it enabled the company to develop virtuoso acting. On the other, it ensured a high level of general competence throughout the production. The competitive conditions which drew actors away from the King’s men after 1615 did not exist at this time, so that actors who received minor roles year after year had little opportunity to separate from the company.

The distribution of prominent roles to the same actors at all times, however, does not constitute a “line.” By a “line” Professor Baldwin seems to mean the recurrent appearance of a type of role, requiring certain definite characteristics in the player. Although he applies the conception of “line” rigorously, he never defines the term clearly. The criteria which he apparently considers in establishing a line are prominence of role, physique, age, genre, temperament, and special skills. First, actors distinguished according to prominence of role was a fact of Globe organization as we have seen. But instead of aiding the formation of an actor’s “line,” it interfered with it, for a leading actor would assume a leading role regardless of its type or nature. Secondly, Shakespeare may well have kept the physiques and ages of the actors in mind as he wrote, but, though such a practice may have aided naturalism, it hardly affected the type of role. In effect, the practice is no different from the kind of casting that occurs today. Thirdly, Baldwin distinguished an actor’s line according to the genre in which he specialized, comedy or tragedy. Probably the clown was a comic specialist who had to be given a role in most plays. But that there was any general tendency to specialize in one genre or the other is unlikely in view of the alternation of plays, some of which call for almost all comedians, others for almost all tragedians. _The Merry Wives of Windsor_ was performed about the time of _Hamlet_, and _Volpone_ about the time of _Lear_. Fourthly, special talents may be dismissed, for they involve such abilities as Kemp’s dancing. Finally, we are left with one criterion for the actor’s “line”: his temperament. Baldwin links the temperament of the actor to the temperament of the “line” that he played. Sly was the player of jolly, roisterous roles; Lowin, the player of blunt, honest soldiers. Ultimately Baldwin rests his case for a “line” upon the playwright’s adherence to distinct character types and his imitation of the actors’ temperaments.[23]

The Elizabethan playwright, however, could not adhere to types, for the actor had no tradition of playing clear-cut types, as we have seen. The actor did not specialize, but he portrayed a wide range of characters. This practice persisted into the Shakespearean era. For example, Dogberry may be regarded as a comic type, the bumbling constable. The character who most nearly approaches him in type is Elbow in _Measure for Measure_. He too is the inept comic constable, malapropisms and all. But the original actor of Dogberry, Will Kemp, was not in the company when _Measure for Measure_ was presented. Obviously, in this case at least, the type was not shaped by the actor, that is Kemp, but the actor fitted the generic type.

Nor did the playwright imitate the actors’ temperaments, for the host of different roles which a single actor was called upon to play could not have been shaped to one personality. The four Shakespearean roles that are assigned to Burbage upon reliable evidence are Richard III, Hamlet, Othello, and Lear. I think no one would care to describe the personality that could serve as a model for these four roles. Moreover, when we add to this repertory, Baldwin’s assignments to Burbage of the parts of Claudio in _Much Ado_, Ford in _Merry Wives_, and Bertram in _All’s Well_, we must give up any idea that these characters were fitted to a personality except that of a sensitive, capable actor. Instead, the Globe company seemed to have distributed roles without attention to personal traits of the actors. This is evident in _II The Return from Parnassus_. Philomusus, after he has been auditioned by Burbage and Kemp (IV, iii), is considered suitable for parts as different as a foolish justice and Richard III. The scene may be mockery, but it accurately reflects all we know about role distribution. In contrast to this method, Molière, in his public plays, kept the number and distribution of roles fairly constant, evidently to meet the needs of his company. But neither the number, distribution, nor type of role was consistently repeated by Shakespeare or any other writer for the Globe company. Consequently, I fear that Baldwin’s “line” is a fiction which bears little relation to reality. His insistence upon it betrays an ignorance of histrionic method.

We must not, however, presume that the stability of the company and the absence of rigid types gave rise to ensemble acting in the naturalistic sense. The arrangement within the plays was suitable to individual playing. Most scenes in Shakespeare’s plays involve less than five active players on stage at one time. Even where there are a large number of actors on stage, the action is confined to a scene between two or three. For example, only 24 per cent of the lines in _As You Like It_ are spoken when more than three actors are active on stage. In _Twelfth Night_ the percentage is higher, 34 per cent, but in _Hamlet_ it is only 19 per cent and in _Lear_, 31 per cent. These percentages are as high as they are because the final scene in most plays is a formal resolution of the story involving a public revelation or judgment. In _Lear_ half the lines involving more than three active players occur in the first and last scenes of the play. The actor generally had to play with one or two others. When on stage, he was involved in the action. When on stage and mute, which was rare, he was excluded from the immediate sphere of action. In most scenes, one or more of these actors were likely to be virtuosi performers, for though the Globe plays require large casts, they rely upon relatively few performers to carry the bulk of the play.

IV. ACTING AND THE ELIZABETHAN VIEW OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR

The dramatic tradition, however, affected the general type of character rather than its specific form. In evolving this form the actor was guided by two influences: his own understanding of behavior and thought and the poet’s image of behavior and thought. In the first instance we must deduce the actor’s understanding from the outlook of Elizabethan society as a whole. In the second we can analyze the poet’s image in his plays. The poet’s unique outlook, infused in his image, is still a part of society’s conception of behavior and thought, and in the case of Shakespeare has come to represent the larger conception of the age. Together, age and poet present the psychological and philosophical foundation which the actors and audience took for granted and thus upon which the actors built their roles.

Study of characterization is complicated by the absence of decisive evidence. The literary practice of the time does not encourage a ready formulation of a poet’s idea of character. As Hardin Craig says:

One sees no evidence in the field of knowledge of the art of characterization as it is known in modern criticism. The art of characterization, as distinguished from simple biographical narrative, was there, but often not as a conscious factor.

Craig goes on to relate this lack of development to the Elizabethan idea of personality:

Indeed, the conception of human character as set down in formal psychology, and often evident in literature, taught instability in the natures of men, taught that there was no such thing as consistency of character, except in so far as it might result from “complexion” or be super-induced by training.[24]

It is in the works of “formal psychology” that the most explicit statements of the Elizabethan conception of human character can be found. But in offering a detailed exposition of how Elizabethans thought man functioned, the works are inconsistent. Miss Louise Forest has pointed out the contradictions in the theories and definitions of the Elizabethan and Jacobean writers. Instead of a scientific system with which the dramatists were familiar, we find that “Elizabethan popular psychology was simply every man’s private synthesis of observations of human behavior understood in the light of whatever selections from whatever authorities appealed to him.”[25] Although her criticism has won general approbation as a healthy corrective for facile and mechanistic application of “psychological” theory to literature, it has not undermined the conviction of scholars that the evidence of Elizabethan psychology can prove illuminating in revealing not necessarily _what_ the Elizabethans thought, but how they thought.

Mr. R. A. Foakes admits that although the disagreement in detail hinders the application of Elizabethan psychology to literature, it does not hinder an understanding of “the general habit of thought from which the detail springs.”[26] The exposition of this “general habit of thought” has been set forth in part by Theodore Spencer, Lily B. Campbell, E. M. W. Tillyard, and John W. Draper, and most fully by Hardin Craig in _The Enchanted Glass_.[27] Against the broad and deep background painted by them, I shall consider the “general habit of thought” as it affected three aspects of character: decorum, motivation, and passion.

_a. Decorum_

Classical decorum in literature sought to reflect a broader decorum in life. As it came down to the playwrights of the Renaissance, however, it implied little more than a trite correspondence between character type and nature. Edwardes in The Prologue to _Damon and Pithias_ (1565-1571) refers the audience to Horace as his model in the observance of “decorum”:

In Commedies, the greatest Skyll is this, rightly to touche All thynges to the quicke: and eke to frame eche person so, That by his common talke, you may his nature rightly know: A Royster ought not preache, that were to straunge to heare, But as from vertue he doth swerve, so ought his woordes appeare: The olde man is sober, the yonge man rashe, the Lover triumphyng in ioyes, The Matron grave, the Harlot wilde and full of wanton toyes. [Prologue, 14-20]

George Whetstone seconds this propriety in his Epistle to William Fleetwood, prefixed to _Promos and Cassandra_:

For to worke a Commedie kindly, grave olde men, should instruct: yonge men, should showe the imperfections of youth: Strumpets should be lascivious: Boyes unhappy: and Clownes, should be disorderlye.

Both statements of the principle of decorum rigidly match character type with nature or behavior. By simplification of character, consistency could be assured. It is obvious that this view of dramatic character did not prevail in Elizabethan drama, but not because it was completely out of harmony with Elizabethan thought. When Timothy Bright approvingly noted that “butchers acquainted with slaughter, are accepted therby to be of a more cruell disposition: and therefore amongst us are discharged from iuries of life & death,”[28] he was reflecting a type of thinking in keeping with the principle of decorum.

It is against such Idols of the Tribe that Bacon inveighs. But even when he attacks such habits of thought, he gives us a clear concept of them.

The spirit of man (being of an equal and uniform substance) pre-supposes and feigns in nature a greater equality and uniformity than really is. Hence the fancy of the mathematicians that the heavenly bodies move in perfect circles, rejecting spiral lines. Hence also it happens, that whereas there are many things in nature unique and full of dissimilarity, yet the cogitation of man still invents for them relatives, parallels, and conjugates. Hence sprang the introduction of an element of fire, to keep square with earth, water, and air. Hence the chemists have marshalled the universe in phalanx; conceiving, upon a most groundless fancy, that in those four elements of theirs (heaven, air, water, and earth,) each species in one has parallel and corresponding species in the others.... Man is as it were the common measure and mirror of nature. For it is not credible (if all particulars be gone through and noted) what a troop of fictions and idols the reduction of the operations of nature to the similitude of human actions has brought into natural philosophy; I mean, the fancy that nature acts as man does.[29]

For the Elizabethans, as Bacon laments, external and internal experiences were manifestations of a single spirit which had parallels in the natural and moral universe. Consequently, in depicting and understanding character, the Elizabethans looked for similarities, not differences. What made one man like another and like the macrocosm was a habitual way of estimating character.

However, instead of the simple formulae of “decorum,” the Elizabethans employed a complex system of correspondences. For them, man was volatile. Potentially he was capable of absorbing concepts shared by other men. This reduced the possibility of matching thought and character. He was also capable of experiencing passions common to all mankind. This made it impossible to match nature and character. In so dynamic a philosophy the meaning of decorum had to change. Professor Lily B. Campbell has rightly pointed out that decorum in Elizabethan drama was “not a law of aesthetic theory but a law of moral philosophy.” To extend her definition, it was also a law of social organization and political life.

In the highly stratified Elizabethan society, precepts and models of behavior were strictly developed. Bearing, speech, and dress reflected class status. Ceremony was not only appropriate but necessary, for, as Sir Thomas Elyot admonished:

Lette it be also consydered, that wee bee men and not Aungelles: wherefore we know nothyng but by outwarde signification. [Honor is not everywhere perceived] but by some exterior signe, and that is eyther by lawdable reporte, or excellency in vesture, or other thing semblable.[30]

In this context ceremony is not unnatural, and in fact, to the Elizabethan, ceremony signified the natural order of the universe. Man constantly saw his corresponding reflections in the “outward signification” of society, nature, and morality.

That this central habit of thought was deeply ingrained in Elizabethan nature is reflected in Bacon himself. Despite his recognition of the fallacy of such thought, he still finds general similitude between feature and nature. He still thinks that the deformed person must be evil, although he tries to provide a scientific explanation of the causes of this correspondence. It is true that this form of logic was falling before the development of inductive thought, particularly in the sciences. Nevertheless, through most of the Renaissance and certainly in the period with which we are dealing, it prevailed.

Its effect on the decorum of character was twofold. First, character fitted into a group. Whatever his individuality might be, a man was a member of a class and his behavior conformed to the behavior of the class. Second, external features implied internal qualities. Man carried the mark of his class and his nature, in his walk, talk, features, and costume. The outer man was the inner man; therefore, the inner man tended the form and bearing of the outer man carefully. In these ways decorum still functioned in Elizabethan thought and served as a basis for the portrayal of character by the actor.

_b. Motivation_

The habit of generalized thinking operated also in the explanation of human motivation. Thinkers and writers were not concerned with the unique impulse that drove a man to certain ends but with the broad desires that all men experienced. This aspect of personality was understood in terms of the struggle between passion and reason which went on in each man.

It was an Elizabethan commonplace that reason allied man with God, passion with the beasts. Imagination, which receives images of experience and relays them, should be subordinate to reason. Unfortunately, since it is often allied with the affections, the affections rule man. As Bacon explained it:

The affections themselves carry ever an appetite to apparent good, and have this in common with reason; but the difference is that affection beholds principally the good which is present: reason looks beyond and beholds likewise the future and sum of all. And therefore the present filling the imagination more, reason is commonly vanquished and overcome.[31]

This “good which is present” is often the satisfaction of the senses or passions without concern for the consequences. When the affections, like the imagination, are under the control of reason, all is well. When the passions lead man, they often lead to disaster.

Man, therefore, was moved either by his reason or his affection. If he were learned in or persuaded by a moral or politic course, he could measure the particular good in terms of the enduring good. Thus reason, moved by consideration of ethics or policy, obeyed objective and rational motivations which, individual though they might have been in particular circumstances, had in common with all cases the attainment of goodness or power. But if affection ruled, then man was moved to satisfy it. Although his personality might make him liable to certain passions more readily than to others, he could give way to any of them. His past life did not accumulate motivations which impelled him or influenced his reception of new motivations. Instead, immediate and direct contact was effected between the object of desire and the governing passion.

Functioning in such a way, man was moved by generalized ends. The habit of seeing motivations in general terms is reflected in the titles of essays by such men as Bacon, Charron, and Sir William Cornwallis: “Of Ambition,” “Of Envy,” “Of Affections,” etc. Although a physio-psychological theory in part replaced temptation by the devil as an explanation of motivation, entities such as pride, lust, ambition, and envy, among others, continued to be regarded as genuine temptations by the Elizabethan. By and large the motives for man’s actions were taken for granted or symbolized. Often in the drama they are never made explicit. Here too correspondence was observed. Women were easily given to lust, unpromoted men to envy, young men to prodigality, Italians to revenge. An Elizabethan audience would assume or ignore the reasons for Iago’s or Antony’s or Bertram’s actions. They would be interested in what they did and how they felt.

_c. Passion_

In concentrating on what happened to the characters, the audience found its attention directed toward the passions that the characters experienced. Passions were divided in kind and number. They were either concupiscible or irascible, that is, arose either from coveting or desiring some end, such as Love, or from accomplishing or thwarting some end, such as Anger. However, there was disagreement over the number of passions. Coeffeteau lists more than fifteen, Bright only six, some writers even fewer.[32] In the matter of detail there is no concurrence, but the difference arises from the degree of subordination observed by the different writers. Behind all their thinking is the habit of regarding a passion as an autonomous quality which is either operative or not. An inclination toward or a repulsion from an object induces physiological changes in the bodily humors. These changes feed the passion so that it dominates the individual entirely. But the passion is a fixed thing. It betrays external symptoms; for example, fear leads to trembling and love to sighing. It affects internal operation, such as the contraction of the heart and the acceleration of breathing. It alters the view of reality, for passions are like “greene spectacles, which make all thinges resemble the colour of greene; even so, hee that loveth, hateth, or by anie other passion is vehemently possessed, iudgeth all things that occure in favor of that passion, to bee good and agreeable with reason.”[33]

Moreover, a particular passion was the same for all persons affected by it. Fear in one was the same as fear in another. Love in one man was not very much different from love in another. One man was not distinguished from another by the quality of a passion, but by his propensity toward it. Man was thought to have a dominant temperament or complexion. It might fall into one of four principal categories: the sanguine, the choleric, the phlegmatic, or the melancholic. The Elizabethan physiologists developed a series of correspondences, of course disagreeing among themselves, between temperament and physique, intellect and passion. Supposedly each type was liable to certain passions more readily than others. Yet, when a man is carried away by a passion uncongenial to his temperament, he assumes the quality of the passion fully. “Each passion alters the complexion of the entire body, which assumes, at least temporarily, the very qualities which excite the emotion.”[34] Thus, in Elizabethan thinking, there was a range of distinct passions and a range of distinct temperaments. Although there was a tendency for certain passions to cluster about a certain temperament, any passion could enter into any temperament. When it did, it transformed the temperament into its quality.

Some disagreement existed over the completeness and ease with which a temperament could be transformed. Bright considers the complexion strictly fixed. Other writers believe that there is a strong tendency toward a specific temperament, but that an uncongenial passion could overpower natural resistance to it. As Forest has observed of these discrepancies in the Elizabethan views about complexion, it is difficult to establish any firm conclusions about the details of the subject. Generally, it can be said that each man was thought to have some definable central temperament which arose from the disposition of humors in his system, that his external and internal faculties corresponded in a broad sense with his temperament, and that he was liable to passions which were sympathetic to his temperament. And yet it was accepted that his natural temperament could be overpowered by passions in disharmony with it, that one passion could drive out another, and that the nature of the passion was not affected by his temperament. These two groups of concepts are at bottom mutually contradictory; the first visualizes relative stability and consistency in character, the second, virtually complete subordination of the individual to immediate impulses. These views reflect the desire for similitude and order on one hand and the awareness of the power of passion on the other. Without reconciliation they continued as habits of thought throughout the English Renaissance.

Both views acknowledged the swiftness with which passion could overwhelm an individual. Professor Craig explains sudden changes in Bellafront in _The Honest Whore I_ and in Hamlet by reference to “the theory that one emotion or passion drives out another, and that the substitution is immediately operative.”[35] One passion yields readily to another, the concupiscible passion often giving way to the irascible, as hatred may give way to anger or grief to despair. Love at first sight, as R. A. Foakes points out, is a convention based on a reality and the “common and ancient thought-habit that the sight is the chief and most powerful of the senses.” Sudden emotional changes were either the daily acts of Elizabethan behavior or the usual explanation of more gradual alterations. In either case, the potential for such immediate transformation was thought to be ingrained in every man, just as at present the potential for repressed infantile conflicts is thought to exist in every man.

Furthermore, the ability to suppress the mounting passions within oneself was thought to be very slight. Once a passion subdued the reason, the reason was virtually powerless to control the passion. It coursed through the entire body, expressing itself in external signs. An individual of extraordinary will could suppress these signs, but the vast majority of people was helpless to hide the play of passion within their souls. A correspondence between the passions and the external signs was assumed, but as we found in the study of rhetoric, there was no clear codification of passions and symptoms. Instead, the habit of expecting an expression of emotion in recognizable symptoms rather than the repression of emotion in enigmatic behavior marked the Elizabethan age. The volatile and pervasive nature of passion, then, was one of the crucial assumptions of the Elizabethan period.

Thus, the Elizabethan conception of how human beings function and feel shows two principal tendencies. In a strictly regulated society such as the Elizabethan, the members were keenly aware of degree and order. So urgent was the impulse to find order in the universe, that an elaborate series of correspondences was observed between man and all other forces in nature as well as between man and all forces within himself. It was natural for the Elizabethan to look for correspondences, no matter how farfetched, and to insist on decorum, no matter how trifling. In conflict with this tendency toward order was the recognition of the tendency toward disorder. Largely, this was thought to arise from man yielding to passion. The orderly arrangement of the moral and political world could be destroyed by the unrestrained passions of man. As a result, the description and analysis of passion became a central function of Elizabethan psychology and philosophy. Bacon carries the condemnation of passion to such an extreme that he condemns love almost entirely. It is a weak passion, it is a “child of folly.” As we turn to a consideration of the plays themselves, we shall find that by and large the tendency toward order subsumed the

## actions, and the depiction of passion occupied the forefront of the

Globe stage.

V. THE EFFECT OF THE GLOBE PLAYS UPON THE ACTING

The drama that appeared on its stage is the single most important witness to the acting style of the Globe company. Through this drama the general style of acting, which was a product of the conditions I have outlined heretofore, became refined into the specific style of the company. The wide gap between the quality of the Shakespearean and non-Shakespearean plays in the repertory makes the delineation of this style extremely difficult. The differences are those of subtlety, insight, and penetration. Probably the acting wavered between the more obvious requirements of the non-Shakespearean plays and the modulations of the Shakespearean.

For the actor an important part of the drama was the distancing of the action. Almost every popular pre-Globe play is distanced in time or place or both. Plays such as _Orlando Furioso_ and _A Knack to Know an Honest Man_ are set in France and Italy respectively. _The Troublesome Reign of King John_ and _Fair Em_ are set back in English history, the latter to the days of William the Conqueror. Plays such as _Selimus_ and _The Battle of Alcazar_ are set back in time and place, to Islamic Turkey and Moorish Africa. Sometimes the action was placed in a mythical or semimythical land. But only three of the pre-Globe plays are set in London. Two are moralities of Robert Wilson, _Three Ladies of London_ and _The Three Lords and Three Ladies of London_. In these the allegory distances the

## action. Only _A Warning for Fair Women_ is placed in contemporary

England. Its realism, however, is somewhat removed by a morality framework in which Tragedy as a presenter moralizes upon the sins of lust.

This practice is followed by the Globe plays. Of the Shakespearean plays _The Merry Wives of Windsor_ is usually thought to picture contemporary England. However that may be, the action is actually placed in the days of Henry IV or Henry V. Falstaff’s presence and Page’s references to Fenton’s escapades with the young prince identify the period. The compliment bestowed at the end of the play upon the worthy owner of Windsor Castle is anachronistic. Of the non-Shakespearean plays, four may be considered as taking place in contemporary England. Three of these are prodigal son plays, still close to the morality theme. The fourth, _Every Man Out of His Humour_, is clearly set in England, as the scene at Paul’s shows. But the characters have Italianate names. The effect is one of a double image, a removed intimacy.

The characters who are distanced are also typed. Most of them fall into one of several categories: the tyrant, the tyrant-father, the gull, the beloved, the lover, and so on. Usually they stem from generic types. Unlike the practices in the commedia dell’arte where the characteristics of the stock figures dictated the plot, in the English drama, as I have shown in Chapter Two, the story dictated the handling of character. The types that existed were a function of the story. That is why the generic types did not develop into stock characters. As long as the story could wrench a character as it required, the stock type could not become solidified.

In Shakespeare the generic types are blended and enriched. An examination of all the characters in the Globe Shakespearean plays reveals the presence of a definite group of related characters. They are more than the repeated figures of any author’s art, for they hark back to the traditional types. The most frequently recurring and most sharply marked are the lovers, villains, clowns, gulls, loyal advisers, faithful friends, chaste maids, faithful wives, tyrant fathers, tyrant princes, and politic princes. One could go on multiplying subsidiary classes of characters as Polonius does classes of drama. Though certain types, such as the faithful servant (Adam, Provost in _Measure for Measure_, Corin in _As You Like It_), recur with some frequency, many do not. One type, the elderly _grande dame_, has only two representatives: the Countess in _All’s Well_, and Volumnia in _Coriolanus_. Nor do the types recur in the same form. Horatio is the faithful friend in _Hamlet_; Kent is also the faithful friend, but he has something of the court adviser in him too. From this it follows that the types are not differentiated clearly. Antony in _Julius Caesar_ has some of the faithful friend in him, but as his character develops, he reveals something of the Machiavellian politician, and in battle shows himself the honest soldier. Furthermore, the same generic type may show strong differences in temperament. Lafeu, the court adviser of _All’s Well_, is a merry gentleman; Escalus, the same type of adviser in _Measure for Measure_, is sober and serious. They are both members of the same type whose quality is dictated by the function that it performs in the story. But the full range of the character does not remain within the confines of the types.

The combination of distanced action and generic type served to romanticize and symbolize the Shakespearean stage figures. No matter how reminiscent of a contemporary Londoner a character may have been, the audience reposed in the fiction that he was an Italian, a Roman, or an ancestor. With the Elizabethan’s insularity, the fiction took on imaginative reality and tinted the action of the plays with romance. The characters of this romance, who had a generic base, were not only individuals but also symbols of the host of kings, lovers, and clowns who peopled the world. Again, this is a reflection of the Elizabethan habit of seeing similarities rather than differences in human behavior. The interaction of these two qualities alone would have elevated the action into a wondrous world of imagination, untouched by real experience. But, as we shall see, other elements were at work.

Within the broad boundaries of the generic type, individualization of character took place. But in what manner was this accomplished by the dramatists, particularly by Shakespeare? Today we place great stress on motivation. Our plays constantly search the past to explain the present. In _A Streetcar Named Desire_ Blanche is revealed and drawn in terms of her tortured past and her unfulfilled desires. In the Elizabethan period, as we found, there was little awareness of specific motivation. The plays reflect this condition. The motivation is usually generalized. Viola wishes to love and be loved, and Sir Toby wants to have an easy life. Antony wishes to love Cleopatra, Coriolanus to satisfy his pride. But little attention is directed to probing or developing these motivations. At the conclusion of these plays we do not understand the motives of these characters one whit better. Motivation is often assumed, as in Lear’s partition of his kingdom, or promised for the future, as in _Othello_ when Iago persuades Roderigo to kill Cassio. In the same type of character there is little distinction in motivation. The motives for Horatio’s loyalty to Hamlet are no different from the motives for Kent’s loyalty to Lear. In the prodigal son plays, the motivations for the prodigality are barely noted. It is considered a condition to which all youth is liable. Motives for any act were so often assumed that they could not have demanded concentrated attention by the actors.

Another way in which the modern playwright individualizes character is through speech and gesture. This does not seem to have been a regular practice at the Globe playhouse. Here and there are hints that status may have been indicated by carriage and accent. In _As You Like It_ Orlando questions “Ganymede” about his life.

ORL. Your accent is something finer than you could purchase in so removed a dwelling.

ROS. I have been told so of many. But indeed an old religious uncle of mine taught me to speak, who was in his youth an inland man. [III, ii, 359-363]

In these externals the Elizabethans maintained a strict decorum. Yet the play does not reveal any difference between Rosalind’s and Corin’s speech insofar as breeding is concerned. References to fineness in speech, as in _Twelfth Night_ (I, v, 311), place the character in a class rather than make him unique. Only in a few cases can we be certain that characteristic speech habits are used to individualize. The Hosts of _The Merry Wives of Windsor_ and _The Merry Devil of Edmonton_ have their tricks of speech; so does Corporal Nym. Edgar as Poor Tom alters his speech as an aid to his disguise. Other less certain instances are Osric in _Hamlet_ and Thersites. But more important characters are not drawn in that way. Dogberry and Elbow both use malapropisms, but the characters are not distinguished by them. In fact, the linguistic twist tends to obscure the differences of character and emphasizes the likeness in type. The distinction between the two comes from Dogberry’s fatuous self-confidence and condescension in contrast to Elbow’s alternate deference to authority and scolding of Pompey.

If neither kind of motivation nor form of speech and gesture individualized the characters, perhaps the kind of action they performed did so. In modern drama this usually happens, for the

## action comes out of the character. But the narrative nature of

Elizabethan drama, with its loose causation, makes this less possible. Plays based on the same narrative, for example, differ not so much in action as in character. _Lear_ does contain a sub-plot, the Gloucester story, not present in _King Leir_. But this addition does not affect the character of Shakespeare’s Lear very much. In a number of scenes both Lear and Leir perform the same action, but there is a world of difference in the characters. Lear proposes the division of his kingdom upon entering, and then immediately questions his daughters. At Cordelia’s muteness his emotions mount in three stages: rejection of Cordelia, banishment of Kent, and dismissal of France. From the beginning Lear demonstrates authority and pride. Leir, however, reveals two reactions: delight at the flattery of Gonerill and Ragan, anger at the bluntness of Cordelia. But he does not have Lear’s intensity of emotional expression.

In their first realization of rejection, the two men repeat these differences. Leir mourns, repenting his folly, regarding Gonerill’s treatment as payment for his sins. This is the beginning in Leir of the grief that he shows throughout the play. Lear, on the other hand, demonstrates amazement, anger, scorn, all at a great height of intensity. This too is the beginning of the barely suppressed rage which finally drives him to madness. When, near the end, Leir’s request for Cordelia’s pardon emerges as grief, he is continuing the emotional quality he attained at the beginning. Lear, however, comes to that level of humility only after having passed through the fires of rage and madness. Of the central range of passion poured out by Lear on the heath, there is no sign in _King Leir_.

For it is mainly through the depiction of the passions that Shakespeare individualizes his characters. Just as the Elizabethan age envisions reason struggling with passion, so Shakespeare reveals the individual emerging through his passions. With the possible exception of Jonson, this was the general method of the other writers for the Globe company. By them too the generic type is rendered unique when passion is freshly portrayed.

A secondary means of individualization was the presentation of a character’s mind. Many of Shakespeare’s finest characters are distinguished by a profuse and keen wit. Rosalind, warm-hearted and merry, becomes the distinct figure she is through the play of her wit.[36] Octavius Caesar in _Antony and Cleopatra_ is a man supremely guided by reason. In these cases wit or reason, rather than passion, controls the character. But in the gallery of Shakespeare’s portraits such characters are in the minority. Prepared as the actor had to be to render thought vividly, his main efforts had to be devoted to painting the varied passions of man.

The application of this interpretation will be more evident in an examination of Globe plays. For example, the faithful wife type appears in them with some frequency. In the prodigal son plays she is probably closest to a pure type. Luce in _The London Prodigal_ does not wish to marry Flowerdale, but she is forced to do so by her father. After the marriage, when Flowerdale is revealed as a wastrel, the father commands Luce to leave her husband. She replies:

LUCE. He is my husband, and his heauen doth know, With what vnwillingnesse I went to Church, But you inforced me, you compelled me too it: The holy Church-man pronounced these words but now, I must not leaue my husband in distresse: Now I must comfort him, not goe with you. LANCE. Comfort a cozoner? on my curse forsake him. LUCE. This day you caused me on your curse to take him: Doe not I pray my greiued soule oppresse, God knowes my heart doth bleed at his distresse. [Sig. E1^r]

Her grief is conventional. It is echoed by the wife in _A Yorkshire Tragedy_ and by Anabell in _Fair Maid of Bristow_. Shakespeare, however, assuming the conventional devotion, deepens the emotion of the wife. Virgilia in _Coriolanus_ is the same type of character. Her only individualizing element is her readiness to weep at the slightest hint of her husband’s danger. This sensibility serves as a strong contrast to Volumnia’s Roman pride and honor. Portia and Calpurnia in _Julius Caesar_ are other representatives of this type, yet they are distinguished from each other. Not through motivation: they both wish the well-being of their husbands. Not through action: they both try to persuade their husbands to another course of action. Portia demonstrates a stoicism, a suppression of fears, in order to persuade Brutus to reveal the reasons for his troubled state, only to give way later to her uneasiness. Calpurnia pours out her fears and forebodings, nagging and pleading in turn. Probably in manner, gait, speech, and gesture, this type would be played in the same way. Only the drawing of the different passions would transform them into distinct characters.

In many types this kind of differentiation occurs. Leonine and Thaliard are minor villains in _Pericles_. They are both commoners and servants, both are commanded to commit murder by their masters. Yet they differ from each other. In manner Thaliard is prompt, reflecting a cynical attitude toward his task. Leonine is reluctant, reflecting an innate gentleness. Dogberry and Elbow, as I have noted, are distinguished from each other by one being condescending, the other deferential. Kent and Enobarbus, faithful friends and advisers, have much in common: bluntness in speech, an unbreakable tie to their royal masters, loyalty in the face of disaster. Their abilities too are not so very different, though Enobarbus is a soldier. The distinction arises from their temperaments and passions. Enobarbus is critical and scornful, Kent is blunt and protective. But Enobarbus attains striking individuality only when he undergoes the pangs of shame for having abandoned Antony.

Implied emotion is not characteristic of the period. Today actors hint at unfathomed depths or suppressed drives which are ever on the verge of bursting forth. This was not the style of the Globe. Passions were immediately and directly presented. A character revealed the full extent of his passion at once. Our habit of seeing unplumbed depths in people may lead us to sense inner turmoil in Elizabethan plays where it does not exist. But this is in accord neither with Elizabethan thought habits nor with Elizabethan dramaturgy. Professor Albert Walker has shown that Shakespeare inherited conventional expressions of emotion and utilized them in a unique manner. A perusal of any of the Shakespearean plays will demonstrate the prevalence with which the overt expressions of emotion enumerated by Professor Walker are found.

One matter of the treatment of passion by Shakespeare remains to be considered, that of consistency. In analyzing the Elizabethan theory of passion, we discovered some dispute over the stability of temperament. Some writers believed that it was fixed and sympathetic to certain passions only. Other writers believed it was fairly flexible, that any passion could overwhelm the temperament. The same question arises in reference to the plays. Professor Draper, for example, has attempted, unsuccessfully, to prove that the Shakespearean characters fitted into one of six types of temperament. It seems to me that he attributes to a consistent temper what may only be the result of a dramatic type.[37]

Nevertheless, though it is unwise to press consistency of temperament too far, some characters seem to be controlled by a dominant passion. There is a distinction. Temperament differs from dominant passion by including a predisposition not only to a

## particular passion, but also to a specific physique, intellect,

and morality. Malvolio is moved by self-love, a form of pride; Antony, by lust; Angelo, by self-righteousness. Malvolio’s temper is never superseded by another passion; Antony often gives way to self-chastisement or grief, yet fundamentally obeys his passion; Angelo is transformed into another man by yielding to lust and still another by yielding to penitence at the conclusion. Thus the degree of consistency varies with the individuals, yet even with the most consistent characters, the interest is not directed to incidental characteristics such as physique, but to the passions to which they yield. Only here and there do we find a man of balanced temperament who does not yield to passion. As we might expect, such a man, of whom Horatio is the most famous example, shows very little individuality.

All of the foregoing conditions, verbal and physical expression, theatrical tradition, playing circumstances, thought habits, and

## acting roles shaped the Globe actor. As he took on a role, he

had to work with dispatch. In less than two weeks the show was to go on the boards. While he was studying a new role he was playing from eight to twelve others. Given a copy of his part, he depended principally upon himself for working up the role. Shakespeare might advise him about the interpretation, but in the time available not much group rehearsal could take place. Since most of the scenes in which he appeared involved only one or two other characters, little time had to be spent in worrying about blocking out the movements or about grouping.

The role he had been given most likely fell into one of several general types to which had become attached some conventions of portrayal. But these conventions were suggestive rather than absolute since the period had not developed a rigid correspondence of passion and external expression. The actor could rely on these conventions or habits because the basic outline of his character would fit into some social group. He endeavored to impersonate a typical character of this group in his walk, manner, character relationship, speech. Acutely conscious of ceremony, he infused these elements with an artistry which imitated the ideal rather than the specific. With his voice he did not attempt to imitate

## particular persons, but expressed the meaning of the speeches

by accenting the figures of language. In all this he obeyed the tendency of the age to find similarities rather than differences in behavior.

This ritualistic acting, however, contained within it specific passions which burst from these typical characters. Unto the portrayal of these passions the actor had to give himself fully. Audacity and vehemency were required. He knew he had to feel the emotions himself if he were to move his auditors. Overtly expressed, the emotions came forth without self-conscious restraint. Perhaps in other acting companies the actors relied on conventional expressions of emotions. But Shakespeare gave his actors too rich a variety of emotions of too fine a subtlety to permit them to rely upon a stock rendition of outworn conventions. Although the actor did not have to search for the emotion, as actors do now, he had to discriminate among the various emotions and individualize each of them in order to project an effective character. His conceit or idea of the passion had to be keen to make the character come to life; he knew that without a vivid comprehension, the external expression would be hollow.

On stage, he shared his experience directly with the audience. He was part of an elaborate pageant taking place in a far-off land against an opulent backdrop. Yet on an emotional level he communicated intimately and directly with the audience. In more or less unrestrained utterance he portrayed extremes of passion, passion which was so alive and real that the audience might wish to say about the Globe player what Polonius said about the player in _Hamlet_:

Look, whe’r he has not turn’d his colour, and has tears in’s eyes. Prithee no more! [II, ii, 542-543]

At the peak of his passion he might well have fitted Hamlet’s description of the player who

in a dream of passion, Could force his soul so to his own conceit That, from her working, all his visage wann’d, Tears in his eyes, distraction in’s aspect, A broken voice, and his whole function suiting With forms to his conceit. [II, ii, 578-583]

To this type of ceremonious acting, the heart of which was overwhelming passion intensively portrayed, neither the adjective formal nor natural applies. I suggest that we accept the inevitable adjective and call it romantic acting, but romantic acting understood in the finest sense before decadence and extravagance set in. The Globe company brought this art to perfection.