Daylight in the Elizabethan Private Theatres

Abstract

A CCORDING TO THE HISTORIA HISTRIONICA, an anonymously written pamphlet published as late as 1699, the large Elizabethan and Jacobean public playhouses lay partly open to the Weather, and ... alwaies Acted by Daylight, whereas private playhouses such as the Cockpit in Drury Lane, Blackfriars, and Salisbury Court were small to what we see now, . . . had Pits for the Gentry, and Acted by Candle-light.' This distinction between the lighting systems of the two kinds of theatres that Shakespeare knew is confirmed by several earlier sources which mention artificial light in connection with the private playhouses. But we must take care not to make more of a distinction than was actually the case. The Historia tells us that the public theatres employed daylight and the private theatres candlelight; but it does not say that the private theatres alwaies, that is exclusively, employed artificial light, nor does it follow that performances there regularly or even occasionally took place at night, as is sometimes asserted.2 In fact, references to the times of performances consistently indicate the afternoon; the number of candles employed was apparently not large; and such evidence as we have suggests that the auditoriums were well provided with windows, admitting substantial amounts of sunshine. The best estimate of the amount of candlelight employed indoors comes from a proposed article of agreement between housekeepers and hireling actors at Salisbury Court in 1639. In the agreement, the housekeepers promised to pay half the cost of the lights, both waxe and Tallow, wch halfe all winter is near 5s a day.3 From this figure we can make a more or less intelligent guess about the number of candles used at Salisbury Court in the winter. Depending on their size and the proportions of expensive wax candles to cheaper tallow ones, the total number works out to about two to four dozen candles for each performance-a goodly number, to be sure, but in actual brightness not even equal to the power of one 100watt light bulb.4 The amount of light would come nowhere near that produced by