More Shakespearean Playgoers

Abstract

THE census of playgoers in London between the 1590s and 1642 that I recorded in an Appendix to the third edition of Playgoing in Shakespeare's London to make a total of 250 identifiable individuals is accruing a few more names. The additional names extend both the number of known playgoers in this period and the social range. John H. Astington for instance has pointed out that Ben Jonson in the dedication of his 1616 Folio said that Esme Stuart, Lord Aubigny, was ‘(if I well remember)’ one of those present at the first performance of Sejanus at the Globe in 1603 or so.1 The Hatfield House records tell us that the fifteen-year-old Lady Ann Cecil went to see a play at the Globe in 1627.2 More substantially Bernard Capp in his trawl of evidence from the Bridewell minute-books has found quite a number of the names of more plebeian playgoers. That the Bridewell magistrates tended to charge these playgoers chiefly with sexual misdemeanours makes their records a heavily biassed sample, but their names should certainly be added to the existing assemblage of playgoing people noted en passant in correspondence and in legal documents.3 Collectively the lists of real named people provide the hardest evidence we have about who went to see the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries over the sixty or more years of Shakespearean staging. Altogether there are so far another thirty-six names to add to the 250 in Appendix I of my book, plus one case of a well-known man who went to plays in places other than the chief London venues.