File:Shakspere to Sheridan; a book about the theatre of yesterday and to-day (1922) (14596651680).jpg

Identifier: shaksperetosheri00thal (find matches)
Title: Shakspere to Sheridan; a book about the theatre of yesterday and to-day
Year: 1922 (1920s)
Authors: Thaler, Alwin, 1891-
Subjects: Theater -- England History English drama -- History and criticism Actors and actresses -- England Theaters -- England London
Publisher: Cambridge : Harvard University Press (etc., etc.)
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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emy of the theatre in Shaksperes time, with the pos-sible exception of the Puritans — did not disappear withthe closing of the theatres in 1642.2 Beginning with June5, 1665, both houses were closed for almost a year and ahalf by order of the Lord Chamberlain on account of thePlague and the Great Fire.^ A hundred years later, thePlague had gone, but the theatres suffered occasionallyfrom the visitations of the influenza,* though that scourgeappears to have been less deadly then than now. Whilethe Plague raged, writes Defoe, All the Plays and Interludes, which after the Manner of theFrench Court, had been set up, and began to encrease amongus, were forbid to Act; the gaming Tables, publick danc- ^ Fitzgerald, II, 31^-317. Sheridan bought the patent for £80,000, Gar-ricks holding in 1776, and Lacys in 1778. 2 Murray, II, 171-179. Downes, Roscius Anglicanus, p. 16. * Genest, X, 459-460; Theophilus Gibber, Leder to John Highmore,1733; Autobiography of Mrs. Delany, V, 174, 177, 178, 188.
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THE MANAGERS 143 ing Rooms, and Music Houses which multiplyd, and beganto debauch the Manners of the People, were shut up andsuppressd; and the Jack-puddings, Merry-andrews, Puppet-shows, Rope-dancers, and such like doings, which had be-witchd the poor common People, shut up their Shops, findingindeed no Trade, for the Minds of the People, were agitatedwith other Things; and a kind of Sadness and Horror at theseThings, sat upon the Countenances, even of the commonPeople; Death was before their Eyes, and every Body beganto think of their Graves, not of Mirth and Diversions.^ Fires, again, had been a source of trouble in Shaksperestime; the Globe was burned down in 1613 and the For-tune in 1621. These inflictions likewise continued. In1672, for instance, the first Drury Lane Theatre wasburned to the ground, together with fifty or sixty housesadjoining,^ and as late as the end of the eighteenth cen-tury and the beginning of the nineteenth a series of con-flagrations laid waste half-a-doz

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