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Arthur F. Kinney writes that \u201cUntil very recently \u2013 and in some scholarly circles still today \u2013 it has been argued that the working class \u2013 the journeymen, apprentices, and men and women servants sometimes known as subalterns \u2013 had neither the money nor the liberty to attend plays. There is strong documentary evidence that this is not so. Many of the journeymen and apprentices may have attended Merchant Taylors School, so that they were well educated; Thomas Heywood\u2019s play The Four Prentices of London (1594) is dedicated to \u2018the honest and high-spirited Prentices.\u201d <\/p>\n
Working classes could be troublesome. Edmund Gayton says, \u201con holy days, when sailors, watermen, shoemakers, butchers and apprentices are at leisure, then it is good policy to amaze those violent spirits, with some tearing Tragedy . . . the spectators frequently mounting the stage, and making a more bloody catastrophe amongst themselves than the players did . . . And unless this were done, and the popular humor satisfied, as sometimes it so fortuned, that the players were refractory; the benches, the tiles, the laths, the stones, oranges, apples, nuts, flew about most liberally, and as there were mechanics of all professions, who fell every one to his own trade, and dissolved the house in an instant, and made a ruin of a stately fabric.\u201d <\/p>\n
Kenney adds that attending plays was economically feasible for the working man. The penny admission to playhouse yard gave access to the working classes, even in periods of inflation. A play cost the same as \u201ca quart of the cheapest ale, one-third the cost of a small pipeload of tobacco, and one-third the price of a meal in the cheapest ordinary.\u201d Quoting Alfred Harbage, he adds that the same price got admission to a puppet show, a tour of Westminster, or a view from roof of St Paul\u2019s. Yet, attending a play was preferable for many: \u201cthese were evanescent joys, to be tasted now and then, whereas beer, ballads, plays, and animal fights were staples. A play meant over two hours\u2019 entertainment in impressive surroundings \u2013 entertainment of a quality not to be found in the beer and ballads. Craftsmen, then, with their families, journeymen, and apprentices, must have composed the vast majority of \u2018groundlings.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n
Kinney cites the work of Andrew Gurr, who worked from a list of 21 actual attendees of Shakespeare\u2019s plays: \u201cThis is an extraordinary range: a gallant, an astrologer, a student, an ambassador, a nobleman, a prince, a scholar, a gentleman, and five writers including a fellow playwright; only names for the middling class and subalterns are missing, or those least likely to have left any records.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Arthur F. Kinney writes that \u201cUntil very recently \u2013 and in some scholarly circles still today \u2013 it has been argued that the working class \u2013 the journeymen, apprentices, and men and women servants sometimes known as subalterns \u2013 had neither the money nor the liberty to attend plays. There is strong documentary evidence that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history"],"yoast_head":"\n