Clamouring crowds wreak havoc at Guildhall

As the largest of early modern England’s northern cities, with a population of around 10,000 people, York had long been a popular destination for Shakespearean players and contemporary evidence suggests that the city was famous for its taste for theatre.

York had continued to stage its traditional cycle of biblical plays long into the Elizabethan era.

There were also moves to create one of the first theatres outside London in the city in 1609, although the city authorities eventually prevented its opening, worried that the builders had attracted strangers ‘and likewise some of manuell occupacions in this Cittie who do intend to give over ther occupacions and fall to … an idle Course of life’.

After Shakespeare’s death in 1616, his company, the King’s Men, performed in York several times during the reign of Charles I, including in 1631-2, 1632-3 and 1633-4.

As was usual on these occasions, the city corporation rewarded the royal players generously, as a mark of its esteem for the players’ patron, paying them between 20 and 40 shillings at each visit. The city authorities may have been especially generous in 1633 as the city was visited that year by Charles I himself, on his royal progress to Scotland for his delayed Scottish coronation in Edinburgh.

We have no record of which plays the King’s Men performed for the people of Caroline York but there’s a good chance that it included Shakespeare’s dramas as these continued to be part of the company’s repertory in London.

In 1630, for example, we know that the troupe performed A Midsummer Night’s Dream at court; and in 1633-4 the company’s court performances included productions of Richard III, The Taming of the Shrew and A Winter’s Tale. York audiences might have been offered similar choices, as Shakespeare’s plays continued to enjoy a life on stage beyond (as well as within) London after his death.

On arriving in York, Shakespeare’s company would probably have gone to see the mayor to present their touring licence and to seek his permission to perform locally. Having secured such permission it was traditional for the players to stage a performance before the mayor and council, often at the town hall, before going on to perform in other local venues such as inns. In at least some cities, including York, it was customary for local people to be invited to see the so-called ‘mayor’s play’.

In York the usual venue for civic-sponsored play performances was the Common Hall, which survives today, little altered, as the city’s Guildhall. The crowds drawn to the performances at the Hall could be very large. Indeed, the corporation complained in 1592 that the ‘doores, lockes, keyes, wyndowes, bordes, benches & other buildinges’ of the Common Hall had been ‘greatlye impared and hurte and diverse of the same broken, shakne, Lowes and Ryven vp by people repairing thither to se and heare plays’!