Were Property Booths Used in the First Performance of Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair?

Ben Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair received its first performances on successive days in 1614 in front of very different audiences. When printed in 1631, the title-page states that the play was “ACTED IN THE YEARE, 1614. By the Lady ELIZABETHS SERVANTS” (F2, A2r). The Induction to the play, written specially for its premiere (“THE INDVCTION. ON THE STAGE” [A4r]), provides information about the venue and the date: “at the Hope on the Bankeside, in the County of Surrey” (A5r; Induction.50); “the one and thirtieth day of Octob. 1614” (A5r; Induction.52).¹ The next night it was acted by the same company at Whitehall in the presence of King James. The Chamber Accounts record a payment of £10 on 11 June 1615 “To Nathan Feilde in the behalfe of himselfe and the rest of his fellowes . . . for presentinge a play called Bartholomewe faire before his Matie on the firste of November last paste” (Cook with Wilson 60). It seems most likely that the performance took place in the Banqueting House (Sturgess 174–75; Astington 249).

The Revels Accounts for 1614–15 also include an entry of “Canvas for the Boothes and other neccies for a play called Bartholmewe ffaire” (Streitberger 70), which makes it clear that, for the court performance at least, property booths were used as Fair booths. As for the staging at the Hope, it has often been suggested that a similar three-dimensional structure, or even two such structures, were also employed to represent Ursula’s pig booth and Lantern Leatherhead’s puppet playhouse. (I use “puppet playhouse” for the place in which Leatherhead’s audience sees his puppet show, adopting his and other characters’ references to the place as a “house”.²) Such canvas structures were not uncommon in contemporary commercial theatres as well as at court.³ In the Hope, however, as in all open-air amphitheatres, the stage was surrounded on three sides by the audience, and the presence on it of one or possibly two large structures throughout Acts 2–5 when all the action takes place at the Fair would almost certainly have obstructed the sightlines of spectators occupying the side positions of the auditorium.

A discovery space, were one available, would have served more conveniently as the pig booth and the entire stage could have represented the inside of the puppet playhouse, with one of the flanking doors serving as its entrance door. The play text itself provides evidence in support of this theory, as I shall try to demonstrate later. My goal, in short, is to argue that no property booth was erected on stage and that the theatrical impression of the pig booth and the puppet playhouse was achieved solely through the use of the physical features of the stage and some small properties, such as signs, which would have been brought on stage as necessary.

The first thing we need to do is try to decide whether in fact the Hope stage had a discovery space. Then we will look into some accounts of the staging of the pig booth and the puppet playhouse, to see how far they support the case that a property booth or booths were employed. And finally we will examine the play text itself for evidence of Jonson’s intentions on the matter.

The Hope stage

In this discussion, the structure of the Hope stage, in particular the number of openings in the tiring-house wall at the rear of the stage, becomes of critical importance. Was there a central discovery space between the two flanking doors? In other words, were there two or three openings for entrances and exits? The contract for building the Hope, dated 29 August 1613, stipulates that it should be a dual-purpose house, doubling as a theatre and a bear- and bull-baiting arena. Its stage was to “stand upon trestles” so that it could “be carried or taken away” when not needed, and the roof over the stage was to “be borne or carried without any posts or supporters to be fixed or set...