Questions & Answers
2/9 - How would Charles II kiss Villiars' cheek as a greeting?
During the time Charles spent in France (or as a result of his French family), he may have picked up the common French greeting, la bise. It is a light kiss that lands 10% on the cheek, 90% on the air next to the cheek. Two people performing la bise will press their cheeks together quickly and kiss one another, very lightly and briefly, usually with two kisses: one on the right cheek, then one on the left. Traditionally, la bise is done upon entrances and exits from social gatherings and is common among all gender combinations (that said, during the time of Stage Beauty, la bise was actually declining in popularity thanks to the plague!).
[Source: L'art de la bise, by Stehli Jean-Sébastien and François Virginie]
2/7 - What would they use to light a candle during this time period?
Before the invention of formal matches and lighters in the early 1800’s, candles were lit most commonly using a tinderbox containing tinder (usually a bit of lightly charred old fabric), flint, and steel. To light a fire, the steel and flint were struck together, which made sparks. These sparks would catch the tinder ablaze, and that flame would be used to light small pieces of wood. These pieces of wood were sometimes called matches, but they were not friction matches like today; they were plain wood or else had their ends dipped in sulfur, which would make the ends burn brighter. This was then used to light the candle itself. Converted flintlock guns made the first lighters and were all the rage (amongst those who could afford them) by the late 17th century, but materials were limited. Flintlock guns were not widespread amongst commoners until the early 1700s.
A tinderbox would have likely looked something like the image on the left; on the right is an example of a 17th century flintlock lighter.
During the time Charles spent in France (or as a result of his French family), he may have picked up the common French greeting, la bise. It is a light kiss that lands 10% on the cheek, 90% on the air next to the cheek. Two people performing la bise will press their cheeks together quickly and kiss one another, very lightly and briefly, usually with two kisses: one on the right cheek, then one on the left. Traditionally, la bise is done upon entrances and exits from social gatherings and is common among all gender combinations (that said, during the time of Stage Beauty, la bise was actually declining in popularity thanks to the plague!).
[Source: L'art de la bise, by Stehli Jean-Sébastien and François Virginie]
2/7 - What would they use to light a candle during this time period?
Before the invention of formal matches and lighters in the early 1800’s, candles were lit most commonly using a tinderbox containing tinder (usually a bit of lightly charred old fabric), flint, and steel. To light a fire, the steel and flint were struck together, which made sparks. These sparks would catch the tinder ablaze, and that flame would be used to light small pieces of wood. These pieces of wood were sometimes called matches, but they were not friction matches like today; they were plain wood or else had their ends dipped in sulfur, which would make the ends burn brighter. This was then used to light the candle itself. Converted flintlock guns made the first lighters and were all the rage (amongst those who could afford them) by the late 17th century, but materials were limited. Flintlock guns were not widespread amongst commoners until the early 1700s.
A tinderbox would have likely looked something like the image on the left; on the right is an example of a 17th century flintlock lighter.
For more information on candles of the time, click here.
[Source: Once Upon A Time by Charles Knight]
2/1 - Did people cross themselves any differently in this time?
No, it was the same gesture as today (using the whole hand, moving from forehead to chest, then left shoulder to right). In the 1200s, people used three fingers to invoke the trinity and moved from left shoulder to right, which is still the method used in Orthodox Christianity, but this changed to the modern form during the middle ages. However, the sign of the cross is a gesture associated with Catholicism, especially in 17th century England. Under King Charles II, who was much more lenient about Catholicism thanks to his family, it would not have been an issue, but crossing yourself in front of Cromwell may have been dangerous!
[Sources: Making The Sign of the Cross by D. D. Emmons, The Continuity of Catholicism in the English Reformation by Christopher Haigh]
1/20 - Would plays of this time be performed in repertory?
Yes--sort of. While it is not strictly repertory, actors in the Restoration certainly worked the exhausting hours of a rep company. Sunday was a day of rest, but the other six days of the week, actors rehearsed in the morning and had performances every afternoon at 3:00 or 3:30. Sometimes they would even perform again at the Court Theatre in the evening. Revived plays were rarely performed more than two or three nights in a row and even a successful new play ran at most three to six days. In addition, if a play was revived at any time and the same actors reprised their roles, they were expected to know the part and be able to perform it at a moment's notice. This meant that actors spent a great deal of time studying their lines outside of their busy workdays. Missing rehearsal was quite serious, too: an actor could be fined a week's wages for it.
[Source: All The King's Ladies: Actresses of the Restoration by John Harold Wilson]
1/19 - When the ruffians are tried, they give the excuse that "We thought [Kynaston] was Sedley". Why did that work?
There are a few possibilities. It was suggested at rehearsal that Kynaston did not appear at court to press charges, so the charges were dropped. This is plausible. Another explanation is that Sedley denied having done it and it could not be proved that he had (historically, it does not appear that there was an actual trial; when Sedley had Kynaston beaten on 1 February, Pepys says only "they say the King is very angry with Sir Charles Sedley for his being beaten, but he do deny it" and does not make mention of the incident again until 9 February, when Kynaston is recovered enough to return to the stage. Probably the ruffians were never caught, and as Sedley denied the accusations and there was no proof, the incident merely blew over. After all, Sedley was undoubtedly much more powerful than Kynaston: when the actor John Lacy got into a fight with The Honourable Edward Howard (he insulted Howard, who slapped him with his glove, so Lacy retaliated with his stick), Lacy was arrested for a few days and the King's Company, for which he worked, was "silenced". Since incidents of that type were not uncommon, it seems likely that Kynaston had no interest in pursing Sedley, and so Hatcher took some artistic licence by including a trial at all.
[Sources: The Diary of Samuel Pepys: 1669 by Samuel Pepys, All The King's Ladies: Actresses of the Restoration by John Harold Wilson]
1/17 - In this time period, men wore wigs. What were they like, and what did the style or colour of wig indicate about their status?
Long, lush periwigs were made especially fashionable when King Charles II brought them with him upon his return from France. They had been fashionable there since the 1620s, when King Louis XIII began to wear them to cover up his premature baldness. The finest periwigs, like the finest wigs of today, were made of real human hair. A full-bottomed periwig (which was both expensive and impractical) was in vogue at the time of the Restoration; Pepys recalls setting his on fire by standing too close to a candle in 1668. Wearing a wig was practically an obligation for a man of a certain status. If you could not afford a human hair periwig, the hair of horses and goats would make for cheaper alternatives. Because of the length and style of these wigs, they were heavy and uncomfortable. However, they were not yet the white of a stereotypical men's wig--that particular fashion trend would take hold in the 18th century.
[Source: Periwigs and Painted Ladies, from the website of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, The Costumer's Manifesto by Tara Maginnis]
1/17 - In Stage Beauty, the actors are depicted as using a very formalized, gesture-based acting style. What was the dominant acting style of the time?
Gestures were indeed hugely important. Gildon, who wrote a contemporary biography of Thomas Betterton, described some of them: "Every Passion or Emotion of the Mind has from Nature its proper and peculiar Countenance, Sound, and Gesture; and the whole Body of Man, all his Looks, and every Sound of his Voice, like Strings on an Instrument, receive their Sounds from the various Impulses of the Passions..." Some of these gestures sound familiar to modern actors: the hanging down of the head indicated grief and sorrow, the raising of the head pride and arrogance, and casting your eyes away from someone indicated denial, aversion, or neglect. However, some are more bizarre, such as extending an arm to indicate pride and authority, or the notion that gestures on the left side only indicated evil while gestures on the right side only indicated good. For a complete description of acting gestures of the time, please click here and jump to page 42.
[Source: The Life of Mr. Thomas Betterton, the late eminent tragedian... by Charles Gildon]
1/16 - How did people perceive homosexuality in the time of Stage Beauty?
In the 1660s, homosexuality was not thought of in the way it is today. There was no notion of "gay men", or men who had sex exclusively with other men in relationships that were equal to those heterosexual men had with women. Officially, sodomy was described by King James I as one of the crimes "ye are bound in conscience never to forgive", and adult men who preferred to have sex with other men gained unfortunate reputations at best and were prosecuted or became transvestite prostitutes at worst (like Mistress Revels in our production). However, in practice many men engaged in sodomy on occasion with adolescents, especially their pages. King James I himself had a very close and possibly sexual (according to the gossip of the time) relationship with the first Duke of Buckingham.
[Source: A Gay History of Britain: Love and Sex Between Men Since the Middle Ages by Matt Cook]
[Source: Once Upon A Time by Charles Knight]
2/1 - Did people cross themselves any differently in this time?
No, it was the same gesture as today (using the whole hand, moving from forehead to chest, then left shoulder to right). In the 1200s, people used three fingers to invoke the trinity and moved from left shoulder to right, which is still the method used in Orthodox Christianity, but this changed to the modern form during the middle ages. However, the sign of the cross is a gesture associated with Catholicism, especially in 17th century England. Under King Charles II, who was much more lenient about Catholicism thanks to his family, it would not have been an issue, but crossing yourself in front of Cromwell may have been dangerous!
[Sources: Making The Sign of the Cross by D. D. Emmons, The Continuity of Catholicism in the English Reformation by Christopher Haigh]
1/20 - Would plays of this time be performed in repertory?
Yes--sort of. While it is not strictly repertory, actors in the Restoration certainly worked the exhausting hours of a rep company. Sunday was a day of rest, but the other six days of the week, actors rehearsed in the morning and had performances every afternoon at 3:00 or 3:30. Sometimes they would even perform again at the Court Theatre in the evening. Revived plays were rarely performed more than two or three nights in a row and even a successful new play ran at most three to six days. In addition, if a play was revived at any time and the same actors reprised their roles, they were expected to know the part and be able to perform it at a moment's notice. This meant that actors spent a great deal of time studying their lines outside of their busy workdays. Missing rehearsal was quite serious, too: an actor could be fined a week's wages for it.
[Source: All The King's Ladies: Actresses of the Restoration by John Harold Wilson]
1/19 - When the ruffians are tried, they give the excuse that "We thought [Kynaston] was Sedley". Why did that work?
There are a few possibilities. It was suggested at rehearsal that Kynaston did not appear at court to press charges, so the charges were dropped. This is plausible. Another explanation is that Sedley denied having done it and it could not be proved that he had (historically, it does not appear that there was an actual trial; when Sedley had Kynaston beaten on 1 February, Pepys says only "they say the King is very angry with Sir Charles Sedley for his being beaten, but he do deny it" and does not make mention of the incident again until 9 February, when Kynaston is recovered enough to return to the stage. Probably the ruffians were never caught, and as Sedley denied the accusations and there was no proof, the incident merely blew over. After all, Sedley was undoubtedly much more powerful than Kynaston: when the actor John Lacy got into a fight with The Honourable Edward Howard (he insulted Howard, who slapped him with his glove, so Lacy retaliated with his stick), Lacy was arrested for a few days and the King's Company, for which he worked, was "silenced". Since incidents of that type were not uncommon, it seems likely that Kynaston had no interest in pursing Sedley, and so Hatcher took some artistic licence by including a trial at all.
[Sources: The Diary of Samuel Pepys: 1669 by Samuel Pepys, All The King's Ladies: Actresses of the Restoration by John Harold Wilson]
1/17 - In this time period, men wore wigs. What were they like, and what did the style or colour of wig indicate about their status?
Long, lush periwigs were made especially fashionable when King Charles II brought them with him upon his return from France. They had been fashionable there since the 1620s, when King Louis XIII began to wear them to cover up his premature baldness. The finest periwigs, like the finest wigs of today, were made of real human hair. A full-bottomed periwig (which was both expensive and impractical) was in vogue at the time of the Restoration; Pepys recalls setting his on fire by standing too close to a candle in 1668. Wearing a wig was practically an obligation for a man of a certain status. If you could not afford a human hair periwig, the hair of horses and goats would make for cheaper alternatives. Because of the length and style of these wigs, they were heavy and uncomfortable. However, they were not yet the white of a stereotypical men's wig--that particular fashion trend would take hold in the 18th century.
[Source: Periwigs and Painted Ladies, from the website of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, The Costumer's Manifesto by Tara Maginnis]
1/17 - In Stage Beauty, the actors are depicted as using a very formalized, gesture-based acting style. What was the dominant acting style of the time?
Gestures were indeed hugely important. Gildon, who wrote a contemporary biography of Thomas Betterton, described some of them: "Every Passion or Emotion of the Mind has from Nature its proper and peculiar Countenance, Sound, and Gesture; and the whole Body of Man, all his Looks, and every Sound of his Voice, like Strings on an Instrument, receive their Sounds from the various Impulses of the Passions..." Some of these gestures sound familiar to modern actors: the hanging down of the head indicated grief and sorrow, the raising of the head pride and arrogance, and casting your eyes away from someone indicated denial, aversion, or neglect. However, some are more bizarre, such as extending an arm to indicate pride and authority, or the notion that gestures on the left side only indicated evil while gestures on the right side only indicated good. For a complete description of acting gestures of the time, please click here and jump to page 42.
[Source: The Life of Mr. Thomas Betterton, the late eminent tragedian... by Charles Gildon]
1/16 - How did people perceive homosexuality in the time of Stage Beauty?
In the 1660s, homosexuality was not thought of in the way it is today. There was no notion of "gay men", or men who had sex exclusively with other men in relationships that were equal to those heterosexual men had with women. Officially, sodomy was described by King James I as one of the crimes "ye are bound in conscience never to forgive", and adult men who preferred to have sex with other men gained unfortunate reputations at best and were prosecuted or became transvestite prostitutes at worst (like Mistress Revels in our production). However, in practice many men engaged in sodomy on occasion with adolescents, especially their pages. King James I himself had a very close and possibly sexual (according to the gossip of the time) relationship with the first Duke of Buckingham.
[Source: A Gay History of Britain: Love and Sex Between Men Since the Middle Ages by Matt Cook]