Fairs. The big continental trade fairs throughout Europe were from their earliest days associated with theatrical enterprises. Itinerant actors with their portable theatres were glad to find a ready-made audience, and in France particularly they flocked to the fairs of Saint-Germain, in the spring, and Saint-Laurent, in late August. Some companies were able in due course to replace their
booths by permanent theatres which stayed open before and after the official time-span of the actual fair. Many such theatres had a balcony built out above the main entrance, on which some of the actors would appear before the show itself, whetting the appetite of passers-by with a display of acrobatics, mime, and singing. This became known as the
parade, and provided a tenuous link with the early days of the
commedia dell'arte. It was from such backgrounds that many of the best known farce-players of the official Parisian theatres made their way. But the bulk of the
forains, as they were called, remained faithful to the fairgrounds until in the latter part of the 18th century they migrated to the small permanent theatres on the
boulevard du Temple, where they remained until the building of the great boulevards, in the 1860s, swept them away.
In London the fairs of St Bartholomew (immortalized by Ben
Jonson), Smithfield, and Southwark, as well as the smaller Greenwich and May fairs, were always connected with theatrical entertainments, particularly
puppet-shows, and when the London theatres closed during the summer, many of the actors were glad to migrate to the show-booths. Elkanah
Settle is said to have ended his days as a green dragon in a Southwark booth, and he also wrote
drolls and sketches for Bartholomew Fair; but, owing perhaps to the inclemency of the weather, there is no record of permanent theatres being built on English fairgrounds.
Of the German fairs, those of Leipzig and Frankfurt-am-Main are the best known in connection with theatrical matters; it was at Frankfurt that the
English Comedians appeared most frequently, while Leipzig saw the reforms of
Gottsched first put into practice by Carolina
Neuber. Fairs also played a large part in the development of the early Russian theatre, which however developed somewhat differently from the rest of Europe. In Italy the itinerant
commedia dell'arte troupes, and in Spain the travelling companies of such actor-managers as Lope de
Rueda, were in evidence wherever a captive audience could be found.
