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Title: Shakespearean Playhouses

Author: Joseph Quincy Adams

Release date: August 25, 2007 [eBook #22397]

Language: English

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Transcriber's Notes: The original book cites Holland's
Herωologia in several places, but consistently misspells it
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of the original title page of Herωologia at the Library of
Congress, www.loc.gov.
The original book contains a number of full-page
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Contents

Shakespearean
Playhouses

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH
THEATRES from the BEGINNINGS
to the RESTORATION

By JOSEPH QUINCY ADAMS
Cornell University

Gloucester, Mass.
PETER SMITH
1960

COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY
JOSEPH QUINCY ADAMS

REPRINTED, 1960,
BY PERMISSION OF
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN CO.

MAP OF LONDON SHOWING THE PLAYHOUSES
[Enlarge]
Blackfriars, (first) 1576-1584.
Blackfriars, (second) 1596-1655.
Curtain, 1577-after 1627.
Fortune, (first) 1600-1621.
Fortune, (second) 1623-1661.
Globe, (first) 1599-1613.
Globe, (second) 1614-1645.
Hope, 1613-after 1682.
Phoenix or Cockpit, 1617-after 1664.
Red Bull, about 1605-after 1663.
Rose, 1587-1605.
Salisbury Court, 1629-1666.
Swan, 1595-after 1632.
Theatre, 1576-1598.
Whitefriars, about 1605-1614(?).

TO

LANE COOPER

IN GRATITUDE AND ESTEEM

PREFACE

T HE method of dramatic representation in the time of Shakespeare has
long received close study. Among those who have more recently
devoted their energies to the subject may be mentioned W.J. Lawrence, T.S.
Graves, G.F. Reynolds, V.E. Albright, A.H. Thorndike, and B. Neuendorff,
each of whom has embodied the results of his investigations in one or more
noteworthy volumes. But the history of the playhouses themselves, a topic
equally important, has not hitherto been attempted. If we omit the brief
notices of the theatres in Edmond Malone's The Plays and Poems of
William Shakespeare (1790) and John Payne Collier's The History of
English Dramatic Poetry (1831), the sole book dealing even in part with the
topic is T.F. Ordish's The Early London Theatres in the Fields. This book,
however, though good for its time, was written a quarter of a century ago,
before most of the documents relating to early theatrical history were
discovered, and it discusses only six playhouses. The present volume takes
advantage of all the materials made available by the industry of later
scholars, and records the history of seventeen regular, and five temporary or
projected, theatres. The book is throughout the result of a first-hand
examination of original sources, and represents an independent
interpretation of the historical evidences. As a consequence of this, as well
as of a comparison (now for the first time possible) of the detailed records
of the several playhouses, many conclusions long held by scholars have
been set aside. I have made no systematic attempt to point out the cases in
which I depart from previously accepted opinions, for the scholar will
discover them for himself; but I believe I have never thus departed without
being aware of it, and without having carefully weighed the entire evidence.
Sometimes the evidence has been too voluminous or complex for detailed
presentation; in these instances I have had to content myself with reference
by footnotes to the more significant documents bearing on the point.
In a task involving so many details I cannot hope to have escaped errors—
errors due not only to oversight, but also to the limitations of my knowledge
or to mistaken interpretation. For such I can offer no excuse, though I may

request from my readers the same degree of tolerance which I have tried to
show other laborers in the field. In reproducing old documents I have as a
rule modernized the spelling and the punctuation, for in a work of this
character there seems to be no advantage in preserving the accidents and
perversities of early scribes and printers. I have also consistently altered the
dates when the Old Style conflicted with our present usage.
I desire especially to record my indebtedness to the researches of Professor
C.W. Wallace, the extent of whose services to the study of the Tudor-Stuart
drama has not yet been generally realized, and has sometimes been
grudgingly acknowledged; and to the labors of Mr. E.K. Chambers and Mr.
W.W. Greg, who, in the Collections of The Malone Society, and elsewhere,
have rendered accessible a wealth of important material dealing with the
early history of the stage.
Finally, I desire to express my gratitude to Mr. Hamilton Bell and the editor
of The Architectural Record for permission to reproduce the illustration and
description of Inigo Jones's plan of the Cockpit; to the Governors of
Dulwich College for permission to reproduce three portraits from the
Dulwich Picture Gallery, one of which, that of Joan Alleyn, has not
previously been reproduced; to Mr. C.W. Redwood, formerly technical
artist at Cornell University, for expert assistance in making the large map of
London showing the sites of the playhouses, and for other help generously
rendered; and to my colleagues, Professor Lane Cooper and Professor Clark
S. Northup, for their kindness in reading the proofs.

Joseph Quincy Adams
Ithaca, New York

CONTENTS
I. The Inn-Yards 1
II. The Hostility of the City 18
III. The Theatre 27
IV. The Curtain 75
V. The First Blackfriars 91
VI. St. Paul's 111
VII. The Bankside and the Bear Garden 119
VIII. Newington Butts 134
IX. The Rose 142
X. The Swan 161
XI. The Second Blackfriars 182
XII. The Globe 234
XIII. The Fortune 267
XIV. The Red Bull 294
XV. Whitefriars 310
XVI. The Hope 324
XVII. Rosseter's Blackfriars, or Porter's Hall 342
XVIII. The Phœnix, or Cockpit in Drury Lane 348
XIX. Salisbury Court 368
XX. The Cockpit-in-Court, or Theatre Royal at Whitehall 384
XXI. Miscellaneous: Wolf's Theatre in Nightingale Lane; The
Projected "Amphitheatre"; Ogilby's Dublin Theatre; The
French Players' Temporary Theatre in Drury Lane;
Davenant's Projected Theatre in Fleet Street 410
Bibliography 433
Maps and Views of London 457
Index 461

ILLUSTRATIONS
Map of London Showing the Playhouses Frontispiece
An Inn-Yard 4
Map of London Showing the Inn-Playhouses 9
The Site of the First Playhouses 27
The Site of the First Playhouses 31
A Plan of Burbage's Holywell Property 33
The Site of the Curtain Playhouse 79
Blackfriars Monastery 93
The Site of the Two Blackfriars Playhouses 94
A Plan of Farrant's Playhouse 97
The Bankside 120
The Bankside 121
The Bear- and Bull-Baiting Rings 123
The Bear Garden 127
The Bear Garden and the Rose 147
The Bear Garden and the Rose 149
Joan Woodward Alleyn 152
The Manor of Paris Garden and the Swan Playhouse 163
The Swan Playhouse 165
The Interior of the Swan Playhouse 169
Plan Illustrating the Second Blackfriars Playhouse 187
Remains of Blackfriars 196
Richard Burbage 234
William Shakespeare 238
A Plan of the Globe Property 242
The Bear Garden, the Rose, and the First Globe 245
The Bear Garden, the Rose, and the First Globe 246
The First Globe 248
The First Globe 253
Merian's View of London 256

The Second Globe 260
The Traditional Site of the Globe 262
The Site of the Fortune Playhouse 270
The Fortune Playhouse? 278
Edward Alleyn 282
The Site of the Red Bull Playhouse 294
A Plan of Whitefriars 312
Michael Drayton 314
The Sites of the Whitefriars and the Salisbury Court
318
Playhouses
The Hope Playhouse, or Second Bear Garden 326
The Hope Playhouse, or Second Bear Garden 331
The Site of the Cockpit in Drury Lane 350
A Plan of the Salisbury Court Property 371
The Cockpit at Whitehall 390
Inigo Jones's Plans for the Cockpit-in-Court 396
Fisher's Survey of Whitehall showing the Cockpit-in-Court 398
The Theatro Olympico at Vicenza 399
The Cockpit-in-Court 407

Shakespearean Playhouses

CHAPTER I
THE INN-YARDS

B EFORE the building of regular playhouses the itinerant troupes of
actors were accustomed, except when received into private homes, to
give their performances in any place that chance provided, such as open
street-squares, barns, town-halls, moot-courts, schoolhouses, churches, and
—most frequently of all, perhaps—the yards of inns. These yards,
especially those of carriers' inns, were admirably suited to dramatic
representations, consisting as they did of a large open court surrounded by
two or more galleries. Many examples of such inn-yards are still to be seen
in various parts of England; a picture of the famous White Hart, in
Southwark, is given opposite page 4 by way of illustration. In the yard a
temporary platform—a few boards, it may be, set on barrel-heads[1]—could
be erected for a stage; in the adjacent stables a dressing-room could be
provided for the actors; the rabble—always the larger and more enthusiastic
part of the audience—could be accommodated with standing-room about
the stage; while the more aristocratic members of the audience could be
comfortably seated in the galleries overhead. Thus a ready-made and very
serviceable theatre was always at the command of the players; and it seems
to have been frequently made use of from the very beginning of
professionalism in acting.
One of the earliest extant moralities, Mankind, acted by strollers in the latter
half of the fifteenth century, gives us an interesting glimpse of an inn-yard
performance. The opening speech makes distinct reference to the two
classes of the audience described above as occupying the galleries and the
yard:
O ye sovereigns that sit, and ye brothers that stand right up.
The "brothers," indeed, seem to have stood up so closely about the stage
that the actors had great difficulty in passing to and from their dressing-

room. Thus, Nowadays leaves the stage with the request:
Make space, sirs, let me go out!
New Gyse enters with the threat:
Out of my way, sirs, for dread of a beating!
While Nought, with even less respect, shouts:
Avaunt, knaves! Let me go by!
Language such as this would hardly be appropriate if addressed to the
"sovereigns" who sat in the galleries above; but, as addressed to the
"brothers," it probably served to create a general feeling of good nature.
And a feeling of good nature was desirable, for the actors were facing the
difficult problem of inducing the audience to pay for its entertainment.
This problem they met by taking advantage of the most thrilling moment of
the plot. The Vice and his wicked though jolly companions, having wholly
failed to overcome the hero, Mankind, decide to call to their assistance no
less a person than the great Devil himself; and accordingly they summon
him with a "Walsingham wystyle." Immediately he roars in the dressing-
room, and shouts:
I come, with my legs under me!
There is a flash of powder, and an explosion of fireworks, while the eager
spectators crane their necks to view the entrance of this "abhomynabull"
personage. But nothing appears; and in the expectant silence that follows
the actors calmly announce a collection of money, facetiously making the
appearance of the Devil dependent on the liberality of the audience:
New Gyse. Now ghostly to our purpose,
worshipful sovereigns,
We intend to gather money, if it please your
negligence.
For a man with a head that of great omnipotence
—

Nowadays [interrupting]. Keep your tale, in

goodness, I
pray you, good brother!

[Addressing the audience, and pointing towards
the
dressing-room, where the Devil roars again.]

He is a worshipful man, sirs, saving your
reverence.
He loveth no groats, nor pence, or two-pence;
Give us red royals, if ye will see his abominable
presence.

New Gyse. Not so! Ye that may not pay the one,
pay the other.
And with such phrases as "God bless you, master," "Ye will not say nay,"
"Let us go by," "Do them all pay," "Well mote ye fare," they pass through
the audience gathering their groats, pence, and twopence; after which they
remount the stage, fetch in the Devil, and continue their play without
further interruption.

AN INN-YARD
The famous White Hart, in Southwark. The ground-plan
shows the arrangement of a carriers' inn with the
stabling below; the guest rooms were on the upper floors.

In the smaller towns the itinerant players might, through a letter of
recommendation from their noble patron, or through the good-will of some
local dignitary, secure the use of the town-hall, of the schoolhouse, or even
of the village church. In such buildings, of course, they could give their
performances more advantageously, for they could place money-takers at
the doors, and exact adequate payment from all who entered. In the great
city of London, however, the players were necessarily forced to make use

almost entirely of public inn-yards—an arrangement which, we may well
believe, they found far from satisfactory. Not being masters of the inns, they
were merely tolerated; they had to content themselves with hastily provided
and inadequate stage facilities; and, worst of all, for their recompense they
had to trust to a hat collection, at best a poor means of securing money.
Often too, no doubt, they could not get the use of a given inn-yard when
they most needed it, as on holidays and festive occasions; and at all times
they had to leave the public in uncertainty as to where or when plays were
to be seen. Their street parade, with the noise of trumpets and drums, might
gather a motley crowd for the yard, but in so large a place as London it was
inadequate for advertisement among the better classes. And as the troupes
of the city increased in wealth and dignity, and as the playgoing public grew
in size and importance, the old makeshift arrangement became more and
more unsatisfactory.
At last the unsatisfactory situation was relieved by the specific dedication of
certain large inns to dramatic purposes; that is, the proprietors of certain
inns found it to their advantage to subordinate their ordinary business to the
urgent demands of the actors and the playgoing public. Accordingly they
erected in their yards permanent stages adequately equipped for dramatic
representations, constructed in their galleries wooden benches to
accommodate as many spectators as possible, and were ready to let the use
of their buildings to the actors on an agreement by which the proprietor
shared with the troupe in the "takings" at the door. Thus there came into
existence a number of inn-playhouses, where the actors, as masters of the
place, could make themselves quite at home, and where the public without
special notification could be sure of always finding dramatic entertainment.
Richard Flecknoe, in his Discourse of the English Stage (1664), goes so far
as to dignify these reconstructed inns with the name "theatres." At first, says
he, the players acted "without any certain theatres or set companions, till
about the beginning of Queen Elizabeth's reign they began here to assemble
into companies, and set up theatres, first in the city (as in the inn-yards of
the Cross Keys and Bull in Grace and Bishop's Gate Street at this day to be
seen), till that fanatic spirit [i.e., Puritanism], which then began with the
stage and after ended with the throne, banished them thence into the
suburbs"—that is, into Shoreditch and the Bankside, where, outside the

jurisdiction of the puritanical city fathers, they erected their first regular
playhouses.
The "banishment" referred to by Flecknoe was the Order of the Common
Council issued on December 6, 1574. This famous document described
public acting as then taking place "in great inns, having chambers and
secret places adjoining to their open stages and galleries"; and it ordered
that henceforth "no inn-keeper, tavern-keeper, nor other person whatsoever
within the liberties of this city shall openly show, or play, nor cause or
suffer to be openly showed or played within the house yard or any other
place within the liberties of this city, any play," etc.
How many inns were let on special occasions for dramatic purposes we
cannot say; but there were five "great inns," more famous than the rest,
which were regularly used by the best London troupes. Thus Howes, in his
continuation of Stow's Annals (p. 1004), in attempting to give a list of the
playhouses which had been erected "within London and the suburbs,"
begins with the statement, "Five inns, or common osteryes, turned to
playhouses." These five were the Bell and the Cross Keys, hard by each
other in Gracechurch Street, the Bull, in Bishopsgate Street, the Bell
Savage, on Ludgate Hill, and the Boar's Head, in Whitechapel Street
without Aldgate.[2]
Although Flecknoe referred to the Order of the Common Council as a
"banishment," it did not actually drive the players from the city. They were
able, through the intervention of the Privy Council, and on the old excuse of
rehearsing plays for the Queen's entertainment, to occupy the inns for a
large part of each year.[3] John Stockwood, in a sermon preached at Paul's
Cross, August 24, 1578, bitterly complains of the "eight ordinary places"
used regularly for plays, referring, it seems, to the five inns and the three
playhouses—the Theatre, Curtain, and Blackfriars—recently opened to the
public.
Richard Reulidge, in A Monster Lately Found Out and Discovered (1628),
writes that "soon after 1580" the authorities of London received permission
from Queen Elizabeth and her Privy Council "to thrust the players out of
the city, and to pull down all playhouses and dicing-houses within their
liberties: which accordingly was effected; and the playhouses in Gracious

Street [i.e., the Bell and the Cross Keys], Bishopsgate Street [i.e., the Bull],
that nigh Paul's [i.e., Paul's singing school?], that on Ludgate Hill [i.e., the
Bell Savage], and the Whitefriars[4] were quite put down and suppressed by
the care of these religious senators."

MAP OF LONDON SHOWING THE INN-
PLAYHOUSES
1. The Bell Savage; 2. The Cross Keys; 3. The Bell; 4.
The Bull; 5. The Boar's Head.
[Enlarge]

Yet, in spite of what Reulidge says, these five inns continued to be used by
the players for many years.[5] No doubt they were often used surreptitiously.
In Martin's Month's Mind (1589), we read that a person "for a penie may
have farre better [entertainment] by oddes at the Theatre and Curtaine, and
any blind playing house everie day."[6] But the more important troupes were
commonly able, through the interference of the Privy Council, to get
official permission to use the inns during a large part of each year.
There is not enough material about these early inn-playhouses to enable one
to write their separate histories. Below, however, I have recorded in

chronological order the more important references to them which have
come under my observation.
1557. On September 5 the Privy Council instructed the Lord Mayor of
London "that some of his officers do forthwith repair to the Boar's Head
without Aldgate, where, the Lords are informed, a lewd play called A
Sackful of News shall be played this day," to arrest the players, and send
their playbook to the Council.[7]
1573. During this year there were various fencing contests held at the Bull
in Bishopsgate.[8]
1577. In February the Office of the Revels made a payment of 10d. "ffor the
cariadge of the parts of ye well counterfeit from the Bell in gracious strete
to St. Johns, to be performed for the play of Cutwell."[9]
1579. On June 23 James Burbage was arrested for the sum of £5 13d. "as he
came down Gracious Street towards the Cross Keys there to a play." The
name of the proprietor of this inn-playhouse is preserved in one of the
interrogatories connected with the case: "Item. Whether did you, John
Hynde, about xiii years past, in anno 1579, the xxiii of June, about two of
the clock in the afternoon, send the sheriff's officer unto the Cross Keys in
Gratious Street, being then the dwelling house of Richard Ibotson, citizen
and brewer of London," etc.[10] Nothing more, I believe, is known of this
person.
1579. Stephen Gosson, in The Schoole of Abuse, writes favorably of "the
two prose books played at the Bell Savage, where you shall find never a
word without wit, never a line without pith, never a letter placed in vain; the
Jew and Ptolome, shown at the Bull ... neither with amorous gesture
wounding the eye, nor with slovenly talk hurting the ears of the chast
hearers."[11]
1582. On July 1 the Earl of Warwick wrote to the Lord Mayor requesting
the city authorities to "give license to my servant, John David, this bearer,
to play his profest prizes in his science and profession of defence at the Bull
in Bishopsgate, or some other convenient place to be assigned within the
liberties of London." The Lord Mayor refused to allow David to give his
fencing contest "in an inn, which was somewhat too close for infection, and

appointed him to play in an open place of the Leaden Hall," which, it may
be added, was near the Bull.[12]
1583. William Rendle, in The Inns of Old Southwark, p. 235, states that in
this year "Tarleton, Wilson, and others note the stay of the plague, and ask
leave to play at the Bull in Bishopsgate, or the Bell in Gracechurch Street,"
citing as his authority merely "City MS." The Privy Council on November
26, 1583, addressed to the Lord Mayor a letter requesting "that Her
Majesty's Players [i.e., Tarleton, Wilson, etc.] may be suffered to play
within the liberties as heretofore they have done."[13] And on November 28
the Lord Mayor issued to them a license to play "at the sign of the Bull in
Bishopsgate Street, and the sign of the Bell in Gracious Street, and nowhere
else within this City."[14]
1587. "James Cranydge played his master's prize the 21 of November,
1587, at the Bellsavage without Ludgate, at iiij sundry kinds of weapons....
There played with him nine masters."[15]
Before 1588. In Tarlton's Jests[16] we find a number of references to that
famous actor's pleasantries in the London inns used by the Queen's Players.
It is impossible to date these exactly, but Tarleton became a member of the
Queen's Players in 1583, and he died in 1588.
At the Bull in Bishops-gate-street, where the Queen's Players oftentimes
played, Tarleton coming on the stage, one from the gallery threw a pippin at
him.
There was one Banks, in the time of Tarleton, who served the Earl of Essex,
and had a horse of strange qualities; and being at the Cross Keys in
Gracious Street getting money with him, as he was mightily resorted to.
Tarleton then, with his fellows playing at the Bell by, came into the Cross
Keys, amongst many people, to see fashions.
At the Bull at Bishops-gate was a play of Henry the Fifth.
The several "jests" which follow these introductory sentences indicate that
the inn-yards differed in no essential way from the early public playhouses.
1588. "John Mathews played his master's prize the 31 day of January, 1588,
at the Bell Savage without Ludgate."[17]

1589. In November Lord Burghley directed the Lord Mayor to "give order
for the stay of all plays within the city." In reply the Lord Mayor wrote:
According to which your Lordship's good pleasure, I presently sent for such
players as I could hear of; so as there appeared yesterday before me the
Lord Strange's Players, to whom I specially gave in charge and required
them in Her Majesty's name to forbear playing until further order might be
given for their allowance in that respect. Whereupon the Lord Admiral's
Players very dutifully obeyed; but the others, in very contemptuous manner
departing from me, went to the Cross Keys and played that afternoon.[18]
1594. On October 8, Henry, Lord Hunsdon, the Lord Chamberlain and the
patron of Shakespeare's company, wrote to the Lord Mayor:
After my hearty commendations. Where my now company of players have
been accustomed for the better exercise of their quality, and for the service
of Her Majesty if need so require, to play this winter time within the city at
the Cross Keys in Gracious Street, these are to require and pray your
Lordship (the time being such as, thanks to God, there is now no danger of
the sickness) to permit and suffer them so to do.[19]
By such devices as this the players were usually able to secure permission
to act "within the city" during the disagreeable months of the winter when
the large playhouses in the suburbs were difficult of access.
1594. Anthony Bacon, the elder brother of Francis, came to lodge in
Bishopsgate Street. This fact very much disturbed his good mother, who
feared lest his servants might be corrupted by the plays to be seen at the
Bull near by.[20]
1596. William Lambarde, in his Perambulation of Kent,[21] observes that
none of those who go "to Paris Garden, the Bell Savage, or Theatre, to
behold bear-baiting, interludes, or fence play, can account of any pleasant
spectacle unless they first pay one penny at the gate, another at the entry of
the scaffold, and the third for a quiet standing."
1602. On March 31 the Privy Council wrote to the Lord Mayor that the
players of the Earl of Oxford and of the Earl of Worcester had been "joined
by agreement together in one company, to whom, upon notice of Her

Majesty's pleasure, at the suit of the Earl of Oxford, toleration hath been
thought meet to be granted." The letter concludes:
And as the other companies that are allowed, namely of me the Lord
Admiral, and the Lord Chamberlain, be appointed their certain houses, and
one and no more to each company, so we do straightly require that this third
company be likewise [appointed] to one place. And because we are
informed the house called the Boar's Head is the place they have especially
used and do best like of, we do pray and require you that the said house,
namely the Boar's Head, may be assigned unto them.[22]
That the strong Oxford-Worcester combination should prefer the Boar's
Head to the Curtain or the Rose Playhouse,[23] indicates that the inn-yard
was not only large, but also well-equipped for acting.
1604. In a draft of a license to be issued to Queen Anne's Company, those
players are allowed to act "as well within their now usual houses, called the
Curtain and the Boar's Head, within our County of Middlesex, as in any
other playhouse not used by others."[24]
In 1608 the Boar's Head seems to have been occupied by the newly
organized Prince Charles's Company. In William Kelly's extracts from the
payments of the city of Leicester we find the entry: "Itm. Given to the
Prince's Players, of Whitechapel, London, xx s."
In 1664, as Flecknoe tells us, the Cross Keys and the Bull still gave
evidence of their former use as playhouses; perhaps even then they were
occasionally let for fencing and other contests. In 1666 the great fire
completely destroyed the Bell, the Cross Keys, and the Bell Savage; the
Bull, however, escaped, and enjoyed a prosperous career for many years
after. Samuel Pepys was numbered among its patrons, and writers of the
Restoration make frequent reference to it. What became of the Boar's Head
without Aldgate I am unable to learn; its memory, however, is perpetuated
to-day in Boar's Head Yard, between Middlesex Street and Goulston Street,
Whitechapel.

CHAPTER II
THE HOSTILITY OF THE CITY

A S the actors rapidly increased in number and importance, and as
Londoners flocked in ever larger crowds to witness plays, the
animosity of two forces was aroused, Puritanism and Civic Government,—
forces which opposed the drama for different reasons, but with almost equal
fervor. And when in the course of time the Governors of the city themselves
became Puritans, the combined animosity thus produced was sufficient to
drive the players out of London into the suburbs.
The Puritans attacked the drama as contrary to Holy Writ, as destructive of
religion, and as a menace to public morality. Against plays, players, and
playgoers they waged in pulpit and pamphlet a warfare characterized by the
most intense fanaticism. The charges they made—of ungodliness,
idolatrousness, lewdness, profanity, evil practices, enormities, and "abuses"
of all kinds—are far too numerous to be noted here; they are interesting
chiefly for their unreasonableness and for the violence with which they
were urged.
And, after all, however much the Puritans might rage, they were helpless;
authority to restrain acting was vested in the Lord Mayor, his brethren the
Aldermen, and the Common Council. The attitude of these city officials
towards the drama was unmistakable: they had no more love for the actors
than had the Puritans. They found that "plays and players" gave them more
trouble than anything else in the entire administration of municipal affairs.
The dedication of certain "great inns" to the use of actors and to the
entertainment of the pleasure-loving element of the city created new and
serious problems for those charged with the preservation of civic law and
order. The presence in these inns of private rooms adjoining the yard and
balconies gave opportunity for immorality, gambling, fleecing, and various
other "evil practices"—an opportunity which, if we may believe the
Common Council, was not wasted. Moreover, the proprietors of these inns

made a large share of their profits from the beer, ale, and other drinks
dispensed to the crowds before, during, and after performances (the
proprietor of the Cross Keys, it will be recalled, was described as "citizen
and brewer of London"); and the resultant intemperance among "such as
frequented the said plays, being the ordinary place of meeting for all
vagrant persons, and masterless men that hang about the city, theeves,
horse-stealers, whoremongers, cozeners, cony-catching persons, practicers
of treason, and such other like,"[25] led to drunkenness, frays, bloodshed,
and often to general disorder. Sometimes, as we know, turbulent apprentices
and other factions met by appointment at plays for the sole purpose of
starting riots or breaking open jails. "Upon Whitsunday," writes the
Recorder to Lord Burghley, "by reason no plays were the same day, all the
city was quiet."[26]
Trouble of an entirely different kind arose when in the hot months of the
summer the plague was threatening. The meeting together at plays of "great
multitudes of the basest sort of people" served to spread the infection
throughout the city more quickly and effectively than could anything else.
On such occasions it was exceedingly difficult for the municipal authorities
to control the actors, who were at best a stubborn and unruly lot; and often
the pestilence had secured a full start before acting could be suppressed.
These troubles, and others which cannot here be mentioned, made one of
the Lord Mayors exclaim in despair: "The Politique State and Government
of this City by no one thing is so greatly annoyed and disquieted as by
players and plays, and the disorders which follow thereupon."[27]
This annoyance, serious enough in itself, was aggravated by the fact that
most of the troupes were under the patronage of great noblemen, and some
were even high in favor with the Queen. As a result, the attempts on the part
of the Lord Mayor and his Aldermen to regulate the players were often
interfered with by other or higher authority. Sometimes it was a particular
nobleman, whose request was not to be ignored, who intervened in behalf
of his troupe; most often, however, it was the Privy Council, representing
the Queen and the nobility in general, which championed the cause of the
actors and countermanded the decrees of the Lord Mayor and his brethren.
One of the most notable things in the City's Remembrancia is this long

conflict of authority between the Common Council and the Privy Council
over actors and acting.
In 1573 the situation seems to have approached a crisis. The Lord Mayor
had become strongly puritanical, and in his efforts to suppress "stage-plays"
was placing more and more obstacles in the way of the actors. The temper
of the Mayor is revealed in two entries in the records of the Privy Council.
On July 13, 1573, the Lords of the Council sent a letter to him requesting
him "to permit liberty to certain Italian players"; six days later they sent a
second letter, repeating the request, and "marveling that he did it not at their
first request."[28] His continued efforts to suppress the drama finally led the
troupes to appeal for relief to the Privy Council. On March 22, 1574, the
Lords of the Council dispatched "a letter to the Lord Mayor to advertise
their Lordships what causes he hath to restrain plays." His answer has not
been preserved, but that he persisted in his hostility to the drama is
indicated by the fact that in May the Queen openly took sides with the
players. To the Earl of Leicester's troupe she issued a special royal license,
authorizing them to act "as well within our city of London and liberties of
the same, as also within the liberties and freedoms of any our cities, towns,
boroughs, etc., whatsoever"; and to the mayors and other officers she gave
strict orders not to interfere with such performances: "Willing and
commanding you, and every of you, as ye tender our pleasure, to permit and
suffer them herein without any your lets, hindrances, or molestation during
the term aforesaid, any act, statute, proclamation, or commandment
heretofore made, or hereafter to be made, to the contrary notwithstanding."
This license was a direct challenge to the authority of the Lord Mayor. He
dared not answer it as directly; but on December 6, 1574, he secured from
the Common Council the passage of an ordinance which placed such heavy
restrictions upon acting as virtually to nullify the license issued by the
Queen, and to regain for the Mayor complete control of the drama within
the city. The Preamble of this remarkable ordinance clearly reveals the
puritanical character of the City Government:
Whereas heretofore sundry great disorders and inconveniences have been
found to ensue to this city by the inordinate haunting of great multitudes of
people, specially youths, to plays, interludes, and shews: namely, occasion
of frays and quarrels; evil practises of incontinency in great inns having

chambers and secret places adjoining to their open stages and galleries;
inveigling and alluring of maids, specially orphans and good citizens'
children under age, to privy and unmeet contracts; the publishing of
unchaste, uncomly, and unshamefaced speeches and doings; withdrawing of
the Queen's Majesty's subjects from divine service on Sundays and holy
days, at which times such plays were chiefly used; unthrifty waste of the
money of the poor and fond persons; sundry robberies by picking and
cutting of purses; uttering of popular, busy, and seditious matters; and many
other corruptions of youth, and other enormities; besides that also sundry
slaughters and maimings of the Queen's subjects have happened by ruins of
scaffolds, frames, and stages, and by engines, weapons, and powder used in
plays. And whereas in time of God's visitation by the plague such
assemblies of the people in throng and press have been very dangerous for
spreading of infection.... And for that the Lord Mayor and his brethren the
Aldermen, together with the grave and discreet citizens in the Common
Council assembled, do doubt and fear lest upon God's merciful withdrawing
his hand of sickness from us (which God grant), the people, specially the
meaner and most unruly sort, should with sudden forgetting of His
visitation, without fear of God's wrath, and without due respect of the good
and politique means that He hath ordained for the preservation of common
weals and peoples in health and good order, return to the undue use of such
enormities, to the great offense of God....[29]
The restrictions on playing imposed by the ordinance may be briefly
summarized:
1. Only such plays should be acted as were free from all unchastity,
seditiousness, and "uncomely matter."
2. Before being acted all plays should be "first perused and allowed in such
order and form, and by such persons as by the Lord Mayor and Court of
Aldermen for the time being shall be appointed."
3. Inns or other buildings used for acting, and their proprietors, should both
be licensed by the Lord Mayor and the Aldermen.
4. The proprietors of such buildings should be "bound to the Chamberlain
of London" by a sufficient bond to guarantee "the keeping of good order,
and avoiding of" the inconveniences noted in the Preamble.

5. No plays should be given during the time of sickness, or during any
inhibition ordered at any time by the city authorities.
6. No plays should be given during "any usual time of divine service," and
no persons should be admitted into playing places until after divine services
were over.
7. The proprietors of such places should pay towards the support of the poor
a sum to be agreed upon by the city authorities.
In order, however, to avoid trouble with the Queen, or those noblemen who
were accustomed to have plays given in their homes for the private
entertainment of themselves and their guests, the Common Council added,
rather grudgingly, the following proviso:
Provided alway that this act (otherwise than touching the publishing of
unchaste, seditious, and unmeet matters) shall not extend to any plays,
interludes, comedies, tragedies, or shews to be played or shewed in the
private house, dwelling, or lodging of any nobleman, citizen, or gentleman,
which shall or will then have the same there so played or shewed in his
presence for the festivity of any marriage, assembly of friends, or other like
cause, without public or common collections of money of the auditory or
beholders thereof.
Such regulations if strictly enforced would prove very annoying to the
players. But, as the Common Council itself informs us, "these orders were
not then observed." The troupes continued to play in the city, protected
against any violent action on the part of the municipal authorities by the
known favor of the Queen and the frequent interference of the Privy
Council. This state of affairs was not, of course, comfortable for the actors;
but it was by no means desperate, and for several years after the passage of
the ordinance of 1574 they continued without serious interruption to occupy
their inn-playhouses.
The long-continued hostility of the city authorities, however, of which the
ordinance of 1574 was an ominous expression, led more or less directly to
the construction of special buildings devoted to plays and situated beyond
the jurisdiction of the Common Council. As the Reverend John Stockwood,
in A Sermon Preached at Paules Crosse, 1578, indignantly puts it:

Have we not houses of purpose, built with great charges for the
maintenance of plays, and that without the liberties, as who would say
"There, let them say what they will say, we will play!"
Thus came into existence playhouses; and with them dawned a new era in
the history of the English drama.

THE SITE OF THE FIRST PLAYHOUSES
Finsbury Field and Holywell. The man walking from the
Field towards Shoreditch is just entering Holywell Lane.
(From Agas's Map of London, representing the city as it
was about 1560.)
[Enlarge]

CHAPTER III
THE THEATRE

T HE hostility of the city to the drama was unquestionably the main cause
of the erection of the first playhouse; yet combined with this were two
other important causes, usually overlooked. The first was the need of a
building specially designed to meet the requirements of the players and of
the public, a need yearly growing more urgent as plays became more
complex, acting developed into a finer art, and audiences increased in
dignity as well as in size. The second and the more immediate cause was
the appearance of a man with business insight enough to see that such a
building would pay. The first playhouse, we should remember, was not
erected by a troupe of actors, but by a money-seeking individual.[30]
Although he was himself an actor, and the manager of a troupe, he did not,
it seems, take the troupe into his confidence. In complete independence of
any theatrical organization he proceeded with the erection of his building as
a private speculation; and, we are told, he dreamed of the "continual great
profit and commodity through plays that should be used there every week."
This man, "the first builder of playhouses,"—and, it might have been added,
the pioneer in a new field of business,—was James Burbage, originally, as
we are told by one who knew him well, "by occupation a joiner; and
reaping but a small living by the same, gave it over and became a common
player in plays."[31] As an actor he was more successful, for as early as
1572 we find him at the head of Leicester's excellent troupe.
Having in 1575 conceived the notion of erecting a building specially
designed for dramatic entertainments, he was at once confronted with the
problem of a suitable location. Two conditions narrowed his choice: first,
the site had to be outside the jurisdiction of the Common Council; secondly,
it had to be as near as possible to the city.

No doubt he at once thought of the two suburbs that were specially devoted
to recreation, the Bankside to the south, and Finsbury Field to the north of
the city. The Bankside had for many years been associated in the minds of
Londoners with "sports and pastimes." Thither the citizens were
accustomed to go to witness bear-baiting and bull-baiting, to practice
archery, and to engage in various athletic sports. Thither, too, for many
years the actors had gone to present their plays. In 1545 King Henry VIII
had issued a proclamation against vagabonds, ruffians, idle persons, and
common players,[32] in which he referred to their "fashions commonly used
at the Bank." The Bankside, however, was associated with the lowest and
most vicious pleasures of London, for here were situated the stews,
bordering the river's edge. Since the players were at this time subject to the
bitterest attacks from the London preachers, Burbage wisely decided not to
erect the first permanent home of the drama in a locality already a common
target for puritan invective.
The second locality, Finsbury Field, had nearly all the advantages, and none
of the disadvantages, of the Bankside. Since 1315 the Field had been in the
possession of the city,[33] and had been used as a public playground, where
families could hold picnics, falconers could fly their hawks, archers could
exercise their sport, and the militia on holidays could drill with all "the
pomp and circumstance of glorious war." In short, the Field was eminently
respectable, was accessible to the city, and was definitely associated with
the idea of entertainment. The locality, therefore, was almost ideal for the
purpose Burbage had in mind.[34]
The new playhouse, of course, could not be erected in the Field itself,
which was under the control of the city; but just to the east of the Field
certain vacant land, part of the dissolved Priory of Holywell, offered a site
in every way suitable to the purpose. The Holywell property, at the
dissolution of the Priory, had passed under the jurisdiction of the Crown,
and hence the Lord Mayor and the Aldermen could not enforce municipal
ordinances there. Moreover, it was distant from the city wall not much more
than half a mile. The old conventual church had been demolished, the
Priory buildings had been converted into residences, and the land near the
Shoreditch highway had been built up with numerous houses. The land next
to the Field, however, was for the most part undeveloped. It contained some
dilapidated tenements, a few old barns formerly belonging to the Priory, and

small garden plots, conspicuous objects in the early maps.

THE SITE OF THE FIRST PLAYHOUSES
Finsbury Field lies to the north (beyond Moor Field, the
small rectangular space next to the city wall), and the
Holywell Property lies to the right of Finsbury Field,
between the Field and the highway. Holywell Lane
divides the garden plots; the Theatre was erected just to
the north, and the Curtain just to the south of this lane,
facing the Field. (From the Map of London by Braun and
Hogenbergius representing the city as it was in 1554-
1558.)

[Enlarge]

Burbage learned that a large portion of this land lying next to the Field was
in the possession of a well-to-do gentleman named Gyles Alleyn,[35] and
that Alleyn was willing to lease a part of his holding on the conditions of
development customary in this section of London. These conditions are
clearly revealed in a chancery suit of 1591:
The ground there was for the most part converted first into garden plots,
and then leasing the same to diverse tenants caused them to covenant or
promise to build upon the same, by occasion whereof the buildings which
are there were for the most part erected and the rents increased.[36]
The part of Alleyn's property on which Burbage had his eye was in sore
need of improvement. It consisted of five "paltry tenements," described as
"old, decayed, and ruinated for want of reparation, and the best of them was
but of two stories high," and a long barn "very ruinous and decayed and
ready to have fallen down," one half of which was used as a storage-room,
the other half as a slaughter-house. Three of the tenements had small
gardens extending back to the Field, and just north of the barn was a bit of
"void ground," also adjoining the Field. It was this bit of "void ground" that
Burbage had selected as a suitable location for his proposed playhouse. The
accompanying map of the property[37] will make clear the position of this
"void ground" and of the barns and tenements about it. Moreover, it will
serve to indicate the exact site of the Theatre. If one will bear in mind the
fact that in the London of to-day Curtain Road marks the eastern boundary
of Finsbury Field, and New Inn Yard cuts off the lower half of the Great
Barn, he will be able to place Burbage's structure within a few yards.[38]

A PLAN OF BURBAGE'S HOLYWELL PROPERTY
Based on the lease, and on the miscellaneous documents
printed by Halliwell-Phillipps and by Braines. The
"common sewer" is now marked by Curtain Road, and
the "ditch from the horse-pond" by New Inn Yard.
[Enlarge]

The property is carefully described in the lease—quoted below—which
Burbage secured from Alleyn, but the reader will need to refer to the map in
order to follow with ease the several paragraphs of description:[39]

All those two houses or tenements, with appurtenances, which at the time of
the said former demise made were in the several tenures or occupations of
Joan Harrison, widow, and John Dragon.
And also all that house or tenement with the appurtenances, together with
the garden ground lying behind part of the same, being then likewise in the
occupation of William Gardiner; which said garden plot doth extend in
breadth from a great stone wall there which doth enclose part of the garden
then or lately being in the occupation of the said Gyles, unto the garden
there then in the occupation of Edwin Colefox, weaver, and in length from
the same house or tenement unto a brick wall there next unto the fields
commonly called Finsbury Fields.
And also all that house or tenement, with the appurtenances, at the time of
the said former demise made called or known by the name of the Mill-
house; together with the garden ground lying behind part of the same, also
at the time of the said former demise made being in the tenure or
occupation of the aforesaid Edwin Colefox, or of his assigns; which said
garden ground doth extend in length from the same house or tenement unto
the aforesaid brick wall next unto the aforesaid Fields.
And also all those three upper rooms, with the appurtenances, next
adjoining to the aforesaid Mill-house, also being at the time of the said
former demise made in the occupation of Thomas Dancaster, shoemaker, or
of his assigns; and also all the nether rooms, with the appurtenances, lying
under the same three upper rooms, and next adjoining also to the aforesaid
house or tenement called the Mill-house, then also being in the several
tenures or occupations of Alice Dotridge, widow, and Richard Brockenbury,
or of their assigns; together with the garden ground lying behind the same,
extending in length from the same nether rooms down unto the aforesaid
brick wall next unto the aforesaid Fields, and then or late being also in the
tenure or occupation of the aforesaid Alice Dotridge.
And also so much of the ground and soil lying and being afore all the
tenements or houses before granted, as extendeth in length from the
outward part of the aforesaid tenements being at the time of the making of
the said former demise in the occupation of the aforesaid Joan Harrison and
John Dragon, unto a pond there being next unto the barn or stable then in

the occupation of the right honorable the Earl of Rutland or of his assigns,
and in breadth from the aforesaid tenement or Mill-house to the midst of the
well being afore the same tenements.
And also all that Great Barn, with the appurtenances, at the time of the
making of the said former demise made being in the several occupations of
Hugh Richards, innholder, and Robert Stoughton, butcher; and also a little
piece of ground then inclosed with a pale and next adjoining to the
aforesaid barn, and then or late before that in the occupation of the said
Robert Stoughton; together also with all the ground and soil lying and being
between the said nether rooms last before expressed, and the aforesaid
Great Barn, and the aforesaid pond; that is to say, extending in length from
the aforesaid pond unto a ditch beyond the brick wall next the aforesaid
Fields.
And also the said Gyles Alleyn and Sara his wife do by these presents
demise, grant, and to farm lett unto the said James Burbage all the right,
title, and interest which the said Gyles and Sara have or ought to have in or
to all the grounds and soil lying between the aforesaid Great Barn and the
barn being at the time of the said former demise in the occupation of the
Earl of Rutland or of his assigns, extending in length from the aforesaid
pond and from the aforesaid stable or barn then in the occupation of the
aforesaid Earl of Rutland or of his assigns, down to the aforesaid brick wall
next the aforesaid Fields.[40]
And also the said Gyles and Sara do by these presents demise, grant, and to
farm lett to the said James all the said void ground lying and being betwixt
the aforesaid ditch and the aforesaid brick wall, extending in length from
the aforesaid [great stone] wall[41] which encloseth part of the aforesaid
garden being at the time of the making of the said former demise or late
before that in the occupation of the said Gyles Allen, unto the aforesaid
barn then in the occupation of the aforesaid Earl or of his assigns.
The lease was formally signed on April 13, 1576, and Burbage entered into
the possession of his property. Since the terms of the lease are important for
an understanding of the subsequent history of the playhouse, I shall set
these forth briefly:

First, the lease was to run for twenty-one years from April 13, 1576, at an
annual rental of £14.
Secondly, Burbage was to spend before the expiration of ten years the sum
of £200 in rebuilding and improving the decayed tenements.
Thirdly, in view of this expenditure of £200, Burbage was to have at the end
of the ten years the right to renew the lease at the same rental of £14 a year
for twenty-one years, thus making the lease good in all for thirty-one years:
And the said Gyles Alleyn and Sara his wife did thereby covenant with the
said James Burbage that they should and would at any time within the ten
years next ensuing at or upon the lawful request or demand of the said
James Burbage make or cause to be made to the said James Burbage a new
lease or grant like to the same presents for the term of one and twenty years
more, to begin from the date of making the same lease, yielding therefor the
rent reserved in the former indenture.[42]
Fourthly, it was agreed that at any time before the expiration of the lease,
Burbage might take down and carry away to his own use any building that
in the mean time he might have erected on the vacant ground for the
purpose of a playhouse:
And farther, the said Gyles Alleyn and Sara his wife did covenant and grant
to the said James Burbage that it should and might be lawful to the said
James Burbage (in consideration of the imploying and bestowing the
foresaid two hundred pounds in forme aforesaid) at any time or times
before the end of the said term of one and twenty years, to have, take down,
and carry away to his own proper use for ever all such buildings and other
things as should be builded, erected, or set up in or upon the gardens and
void grounds by the said James, either for a theatre or playing place, or for
any other lawful use, without any stop, claim, let, trouble, or interruption of
the said Gyles Alleyn and Sara his wife.[43]
Protected by these specific terms, Burbage proceeded to the erection of his
playhouse. He must have had faith and abundant courage, for he was a poor
man, quite unequal to the large expenditures called for by his plans. A
person who had known him for many years, deposed in 1592 that "James
Burbage was not at the time of the first beginning of the building of the

premises worth above one hundred marks[44] in all his substance, for he and
this deponent were familiarly acquainted long before that time and ever
since."[45] We are not surprised to learn, therefore, that he was "constrained
to borrow diverse sums of money," and that he actually pawned the lease
itself to a money-lender.[46] Even so, without assistance, we are told, he
"should never be able to build it, for it would cost five times as much as he
was worth."
Fortunately he had a wealthy brother-in-law, John Brayne,[47] a London
grocer, described as "worth five hundred pounds at the least, and by
common fame worth a thousand marks."[48] In some way Brayne became
interested in the new venture. Like Burbage, he believed that large profits
would flow from such a novel undertaking; and as a result he readily agreed
to share the expense of erecting and maintaining the building. Years later
members of the Brayne faction asserted that James Burbage "induced" his
brother-in-law to venture upon the enterprise by unfairly representing the
great profits to ensue;[49] but the evidence, I think, shows that Brayne
eagerly sought the partnership. Burbage himself asserted in 1588 that
Brayne "practiced to obtain some interest therein," and presumed "that he
might easily compass the same by reason that he was natural brother"; and
that he voluntarily offered to "bear and pay half the charges of the said
building then bestowed and thereafter to be bestowed" in order "that he
might have the moiety[50] of the above named Theatre."[51] As a further
inducement, so the Burbages asserted, he promised that "for that he had no
children," the moiety at his death should go to the children of James
Burbage, "whose advancement he then seemed greatly to tender."
Whatever caused Brayne to interest himself in the venture, he quickly
became fired with such hopes of great gain that he not only spent upon the
building all the money he could gather or borrow, but sold his stock of
groceries for £146, disposed of his house for £100, even pawned his
clothes, and put his all into the new structure. The spirit in which he worked
to make the venture a success, and the personal sacrifices that he and his
wife made, fully deserve the quotation here of two legal depositions bearing
on the subject:
This deponent, being servant, in Bucklersbury, aforesaid, to one Robert
Kenningham, grocer, in which street the said John Brayne dwelled also, and

of the same trade, he, the said Brayne, at the time he joined with the said
James Burbage in the aforesaid lease, was reputed among his neighbors to
be worth one thousand pounds at the least, and that after he had joined with
the said Burbage in the matter of the building of the said Theatre, he began
to slack his own trade, and gave himself to the building thereof, and the
chief care thereof he took upon him, and hired workmen of all sorts for that
purpose, bought timber and all other things belonging thereunto, and paid
all. So as, in this deponent's conscience, he bestowed thereupon for his
owne part the sum of one thousand marks at the least, in so much as his
affection was given so greatly to the finishing thereof, in hope of great
wealth and profit during their lease, that at the last he was driven to sell to
this deponent's father his lease of the house wherein he dwelled for £100,
and to this deponent all such wares as he had left and all that belonged
thereunto remaining in the same, for the sum of £146 and odd money,
whereof this deponent did pay for him to one Kymbre, an ironmonger in
London, for iron work which the said Brayne bestowed upon the said
Theatre, the sum of £40. And afterwards the said Brayne took the matter of
the said building so upon him as he was driven to borrow money to supply
the same, saying to this deponent that his brother Burbage was not able to
help the same, and that he found not towards it above the value of fifty
pounds, some part in mony and the rest in stuff.[52]
In reading the next deposition, one should bear in mind the fact that the
deponent, Robert Myles, was closely identified with the Brayne faction, and
was, therefore, a bitter enemy to the Burbages. Yet his testimony, though
prejudiced, gives us a vivid picture of Brayne's activity in the building of
the Theatre:
So the said John Brayne made a great sum of money of purpose and intent
to go to the building of the said playhouse, and thereupon did provide
timber and other stuff needful for the building thereof, and hired carpenters
and plasterers for the same purpose, and paid the workmen continually. So
as he for his part laid out of his own purse and what upon credit about the
same to the sum of £600 or £700 at the least. And in the same time, seeing
the said James Burbage nothing able either of himself or by his credit to
contribute any like sum towards the building thereof, being then to be
finished or else to be lost that had been bestowed upon it already, the said
Brayne was driven to sell his house he dwelled in in Bucklersbury, and all

his stock that was left, and give up his trade, yea in the end to pawn and sell
both his own garments and his wife's, and to run in debt to many for money,
to finish the said playhouse, and so to employ himself only upon that
matter, and all whatsoever he could make, to his utter undoing, for he saieth
that in the latter end of the finishing thereof, the said Brayne and his wife,
the now complainants, were driven to labor in the said work for saving of
some of the charge in place of two laborers, whereas the said James
Burbage went about his own business, and at sometimes when he did take
upon him to do some thing in the said work, he would be and was allowed a
workman's hire as other the workman there had.[53]
The last fling at Burbage is quite gratuitous; yet it is probably true that the
main costs of erecting the playhouse fell upon the shoulders of Brayne. The
evidence is contradictory; some persons assert that Burbage paid half the
cost of the building,[54] others that Brayne paid nearly all,[55] and still others
content themselves with saying that Brayne paid considerably more than
half. The last statement may be accepted as true. The assertion of Gyles
Alleyn in 1601, that the Theatre was "erected at the costs and charges of
one Brayne and not of the said James Burbage, to the value of one thousand
marks,"[56] is doubtless incorrect; more correct is the assertion of Robert
Myles, executor of the Widow Brayne's will, in 1597: "The said John
Brayne did join with the said James [Burbage] in the building aforesaid, and
did expend thereupon greater sums than the said James, that is to say, at
least five or six hundred pounds."[57] Since there is evidence that the
playhouse ultimately cost about £700,[58] we might hazard the guess that of
this sum Brayne furnished about £500,[59] and Burbage about £200. To
equalize the expenditure it was later agreed that "the said Brayne should
take and receive all the rents and profits of the said Theatre to his own use
until he should be answered such sums of money which he had laid out for
and upon the same Theatre more than the said Burbage had done."[60]
But if Burbage at the outset was "nothing able to contribute any" great sum
of ready money towards the building of the first playhouse, he did
contribute other things equally if not more important. In the first place, he
conceived the idea, and he carried it as far towards realization as his means
allowed. In the second place, he planned the building—its stage as well as
its auditorium—to meet the special demands of the actors and the comfort
of the audience. This called for bold originality and for ingenuity of a high

order, for, it must be remembered, he had no model to study—he was
designing the first structure of its kind in England.[61] For this task he was
well prepared. In the first place, he was an actor of experience; in the
second place, he was the manager of one of the most important troupes in
England; and, in the third place, he was by training and early practice a
carpenter and builder. In other words, he had exact knowledge of what was
needed, and the practical skill to meet those needs.
The building that he designed and erected he named—as by virtue of
priority he had a right to do—"The Theatre."
Of the Theatre, unfortunately, we have no pictorial representation, and no
formal description, so that our knowledge of its size, shape, and general
arrangement must be derived from scattered and miscellaneous sources.
That the building was large we may feel sure; the cost of its erection
indicates as much. The Fortune, one of the largest and handsomest of the
later playhouses, cost only £520, and the Hope, also very large, cost £360.
The Theatre, therefore, built at a cost of £700, could not have been small. It
is commonly referred to, even so late as 1601, as "the great house called the
Theatre," and the author of Skialetheia (1598) applied to it the significant
adjective "vast." Burbage, no doubt, had learned from his experience as
manager of a troupe the pecuniary advantage of having an auditorium large
enough to receive all who might come. Exactly how many people his
building could accommodate we cannot say. The Reverend John
Stockwood, in 1578, exclaims bitterly: "Will not a filthy play, with the blast
of a trumpet, sooner call thither a thousand than an hour's tolling of the bell
bring to the sermon a hundred?"[62] And Fleetwood, the City Recorder, in
describing a quarrel which took place in 1584 "at Theatre door," states that
"near a thousand people" quickly assembled when the quarrel began.
In shape the building was probably polygonal, or circular. I see no good
reason for supposing that it was square; Johannes de Witt referred to it as an
"amphitheatre," and the Curtain, erected the following year in imitation,
was probably polygonal.[63] It was built of timber, and its exterior, no doubt,
was—as in the case of subsequent playhouses—of lime and plaster. The
interior consisted of three galleries surrounding an open space called the
"yard." The German traveler, Samuel Kiechel, who visited London in the
autumn of 1585, described the playhouses—i.e., the Theatre and the Curtain

—as "singular [sonderbare] houses, which are so constructed that they have
about three galleries, one above the other."[64] And Stephen Gosson, in
Plays Confuted (c. 1581) writes: "In the playhouses at London, it is the
fashion for youths to go first into the yard, and to carry their eye through
every gallery; then, like unto ravens, where they spy the carrion, thither
they fly, and press as near to the fairest as they can." The "yard" was
unroofed, and all persons there had to stand during the entire performance.
The galleries, however, were protected by a roof, were divided into
"rooms," and were provided for the most part with seats. Gyles Alleyn
inserted in the lease he granted to Burbage the following condition:
And further, that it shall or may [be] lawful for the said Gyles and for his
wife and family, upon lawful request therefor made to the said James
Burbage, his executors or assigns, to enter or come into the premises, and
there in some one of the upper rooms to have such convenient place to sit or
stand to see such plays as shall be there played, freely without anything
therefor paying.[65]
The stage was a platform, projecting into the yard, with a tiring-house at the
rear, and a balcony overhead. The details of the stage, no doubt, were
subject to alteration as experience suggested, for its materials were of wood,
and histrionic and dramatic art were both undergoing rapid development.[66]
The furnishings and decorations, as in the case of modern playhouses, seem
to have been ornate. Thus T[homas] W[hite], in A Sermon Preached at
Pawles Crosse, on Sunday the Thirde of November, 1577, exclaims:
"Behold the sumptuous Theatre houses, a continual monument of London's
prodigality"; John Stockwood, in A Sermon Preached at Paules Cross,
1578, refers to it as "the gorgeous playing place erected in the Fields"; and
Gabriel Harvey could think of no more appropriate epithet for it than
"painted"—"painted theatres," "painted stage."
The building was doubtless used for dramatic performances in the autumn
of 1576, although it was not completed until later; John Grigges, one of the
carpenters, deposed that Burbage and Brayne "finished the same with the
help of the profits that grew by plays used there before it was fully
finished."[67] Access to the playhouse was had chiefly by way of Finsbury
Field and a passage made by Burbage through the brick wall mentioned in
the lease.[68]

The terms under which the owners let it to the actors were simple: the
actors retained as their share the pennies paid at the outer doors for general
admission, and the proprietors received as their share the money paid for
seats or standings in the galleries.[69] Cuthbert Burbage states in 1635: "The
players that lived in those first times had only the profits arising from the
doors, but now the players receive all the comings in at the doors to
themselves, and half the galleries."[70]
Before the expiration of two years, or in the early summer of 1578, Burbage
and Brayne began to quarrel about the division of the money which fell to
their share. Brayne apparently thought that he should at once be
indemnified for all the money he had expended on the playhouse in excess
of Burbage; and he accused Burbage of "indirect dealing"—there were even
whispers of "a secret key" to the "common box" in which the money was
kept.[71] Finally they agreed to "submit themselves to the order and
arbitrament of certain persons for the pacification thereof," and together
they went to the shop of a notary public to sign a bond agreeing to abide by
the decision of the arbitrators. There they "fell a reasoning together," in the
course of which Brayne asserted that he had disbursed in the Theatre "three
times at the least as much more as the sum then disbursed by the said James
Burbage." In the end Brayne unwisely hinted at "ill dealing" on the part of
Burbage, whereupon "Burbage did there strike him with his fist, and so they
went together by the ears, in so much," says the notary, "that this deponent
could hardly part them." After they were parted, they signed a bond of £200
to abide by the decision of the arbitrators. The arbitrators, John Hill and
Richard Turnor, "men of great honesty and credit," held their sessions "in
the Temple church," whither they summoned witnesses. Finally, on July 12,
1578, after "having thoroughly heard" both sides, they awarded that the
profits from the Theatre should be used first to pay the debts upon the
building, then to pay Brayne the money he had expended in excess of
Burbage, and thereafter to be shared "in divident equally between them."[72]
These conditions, however, were not observed, and the failure to observe
them led to much subsequent discord.
The arbitrators also decided that "if occasion should move them [Burbage
and Brayne] to borrow any sum of money for the payment of their debts
owing for any necessary use and thing concerning the said Theatre, that
then the said James Burbage and the said John Brayne should join in

pawning or mortgageing of their estate and interest of and in the same."[73]
An occasion for borrowing money soon arose. So on September 26, 1579,
the two partners mortgaged the Theatre to John Hide for the sum of £125
8s. 11d. At the end of a year, by non-payment, they forfeited the mortgage,
and the legal title to the property passed to Hide. It seems, however, that
because of some special clause in the mortgage Hide was unable to expel
Burbage and Brayne, or to dispose of the property to others. Hence he took
no steps to seize the Theatre; but he constantly annoyed the occupants by
arrest and otherwise. This unfortunate transference of the title to Hide was
the cause of serious quarreling between the Burbages and the Braynes, and
finally led to much litigation.
In 1582 a more immediate disaster threatened the owners of the Theatre.
One Edmund Peckham laid claim to the land on which the playhouse had
been built, and brought suit against Alleyn for recovery. More than that,
Peckham tried to take actual possession of the playhouse, so that Burbage
"was fain to find men at his own charge to keep the possession thereof from
the said Peckham and his servants," and was even "once in danger of his
own life by keeping possession thereof." As a result of this state of affairs,
Burbage "was much disturbed and troubled in his possession of the Theatre,
and could not quietly and peaceably enjoy the same. And therefore the
players forsook the said Theatre, to his great loss."[74] In order to reimburse
himself in some measure for this loss Burbage retained £30 of the rental due
to Alleyn. The act led to a bitter quarrel with Alleyn, and figured
conspicuously in the subsequent litigation that came near overwhelming the
Theatre.
In 1585 Burbage, having spent the stipulated £200 in repairing and
rebuilding the tenements on the premises, sought to renew the lease,
according to the original agreement, for the extended period of twenty-one
years. On November 20, 1585, he engaged three skilled workmen to view
the buildings and estimate the sum he had disbursed in improvements. They
signed a formal statement to the effect that in their opinion at least £220 had
been thus expended on the premises. Burbage then "tendered unto the said
Alleyn a new lease devised by his counsel, ready written and engrossed,
with labels and wax thereunto affixed, agreeable to the covenant." But
Alleyn refused to sign the document. He maintained that the new lease was
not a verbatim copy of the old lease, that £200 had not been expended on

the buildings, and that Burbage was a bad tenant and owed him rent. In
reality, Alleyn wanted to extort a larger rental than £14 for the property,
which had greatly increased in value.
On July 18, 1586, Burbage engaged six men, all expert laborers, to view the
buildings again and estimate the cost of the improvements. They expressed
the opinion in writing that Burbage had expended at least £240 in
developing the property.[75] Still Alleyn refused to sign an extension of the
lease. His conduct must have been very exasperating to the owner of the
Theatre. Cuthbert Burbage tells us that his father "did often in gentle
manner solicit and require the said Gyles Alleyn for making a new lease of
the said premises according to the purporte and effect of the said covenant."
But invariably Alleyn found some excuse for delay.
The death of Brayne, in August, 1586, led John Hide, who by reason of the
defaulted mortgage was legally the owner of the Theatre, to redouble his
efforts to collect his debt. He "gave it out in speech that he had set over and
assigned the said lease and bonds to one George Clough, his ... father-in-
law (but in truth he did not so)," and "the said Clough, his father-in-law, did
go about to put the said defendant [Burbage] out of the Theatre, or at least
did threaten to put him out." As we have seen, there was a clause in the
mortgage which prevented Hide from ejecting Burbage;[76] yet Clough was
able to make so much trouble, "divers and sundry times" visiting the
Theatre, that at last Burbage undertook to settle the debt out of the profits of
the playhouse. As Robert Myles deposed in 1592, Burbage allowed the
widow of Brayne for "a certain time to take and receive the one-half of the
profits of the galleries of the said Theatre ... then on a sudden he would not
suffer her to receive any more of the profits there, saying that he must take
and receive all till he had paid the debts. And then she was constrained, as
his servant, to gather the money and to deliver it unto him."[77]
For some reason, however, the debt was not settled, and Hide continued his
futile demands. Several times Burbage offered to pay the sum in full if the
title of the Theatre were made over to his son Cuthbert Burbage; and
Brayne's widow made similar offers in an endeavor to gain the entire
property for herself. But Hide, who seems to have been an honest man,
always declared that since Burbage and Brayne "did jointly mortgage it

unto him" he was honor-bound to assign the property back to Burbage and
the widow of Brayne jointly. So matters stood for a while.
At last, however, in 1589, Hide declared that "since he had forborne his
money so long, he could do it no more, so as they that came first should
have it of him." Thereupon Cuthbert Burbage came bringing not only the
money in hand, but also a letter from his master and patron, Walter Cape,
gentleman usher to the Lord High Treasurer, requesting Hide to make over
the Theatre to Cuthbert, and promising in return to assist Hide with the Lord
Treasurer when occasion arose. Under this pressure, Hide accepted full
payment of his mortgage, and made over the title of the property to
Cuthbert Burbage. Thus Brayne's widow was legally excluded from any
share in the ownership of the Theatre. Myles deposed, in 1592, that
henceforth Burbage "would not suffer her to meddle in the premises, but
thrust her out of all."
This led at once to a suit, in which Robert Myles acted for the widow. He
received an order from the Court of Chancery in her favor, and armed with
this, and accompanied by two other persons, he came on November 16,
1590, to Burbage's "dwelling house near the Theatre," called to the door
Cuthbert Burbage, and in "rude and exclamable sort" demanded "the moiety
of the said Theatre." James Burbage "being within the house, hearing a
noise at the door, went to the door, and there found his son, the said
Cuthbert, and the said Myles speaking loud together." Words were bandied,
until finally Burbage, "dared by the same Myles with great threats and
words that he would do this and could do that," lost his temper, and
threatened to beat Myles off the ground.[78]
Next the widow, attended by Robert Myles and others, visited the home of
the Burbages "to require them to perform the said award" of the court. They
were met by James Burbage's wife, who "charged them to go out of her
grounds, or else she would make her son break their knaves' heads."
Aroused by this noise, "James Burbage, her husband, looking out a window
upon them, called the complainant [Widow Brayne] murdering whore, and
... the others villaines, rascals, and knaves." And when Mistress Brayne
spoke of the order of the court, "he cryed unto her, 'Go, go. A cart, a cart for
you! I will obey no such order, nor I care not for any such orders, and
therefore it were best for you and your companions to be packing betimes,

for if my son [Cuthbert] come he will thump you hence!'" Just then
Cuthbert did "come home, and in very hot sort bid them get thence, or else
he would set them forwards, saying 'I care for no such order. The Chancery
shall not give away what I have paid for.'" And so, after "great and horrible
oathes" by James Burbage and his son, the widow and her attendants "went
their ways."[79]
Receiving thus no satisfaction from these visits to the home of James
Burbage, the widow and Robert Myles came several times to the Theatre,
bearing the order of the court in their hands; but each time they were railed
upon and driven out. Finally, the widow, with her ever-faithful adjutant
Robert Myles, his son Ralph, and his business partner, Nicholas Bishop,
went "to the Theatre upon a play-day to stand at the door that goeth up to
the galleries of the said Theatre to take and receive for the use of the said
Margaret half of the money that should be given to come up into the said
gallery." In the Theatre they were met by Richard Burbage, then about
nineteen years old, and his mother, who "fell upon the said Robert Myles
and beat him with a broom staff, calling him murdering knave." When
Myles's partner, Bishop, ventured to protest at this contemptuous treatment
of the order of the court, "the said Richard Burbage," so Bishop deposed,
"scornfully and disdainfully playing with this deponent's nose, said that if
he dealt in the matter, he would beat him also, and did challenge the field of
him at that time." One of the actors then coming in, John Alleyn—brother
of the immortal Edward Alleyn—"found the foresaid Richard Burbage, the
youngest son of the said James Burbage, there with a broom staff in his
hand; of whom when this deponent Alleyn asked what stir was there, he
answered in laughing phrase how they came for a moiety, 'But,' quod he
(holding up the said broom staff) 'I have, I think, delivered him a moiety
with this, and sent them packing.'" Alleyn thereupon warned the Burbages
that Myles could bring an action of assault and battery against them.
"'Tush,' quod the father, 'no, I warrant you; but where my son hath now beat
him hence, my sons, if they will be ruled by me, shall at their next coming
provide charged pistols, with powder and hempseed, to shoot them in the
legs.'"[80]
But if the Burbages could laugh at the efforts of Myles and the widow to
secure a moiety of the Theatre from Cuthbert, they were seriously troubled
by the continued refusal of Gyles Alleyn to renew the lease. James Burbage

many times urged his landlord to fulfill the original agreement, but in vain.
At last, Alleyn, "according to his own will and discretion, did cause a draft
of a lease to be drawn, wherein were inserted many unreasonable
covenants." The new conditions imposed by Alleyn were: (1) that Burbage
should pay a rental of £24 instead of £14 a year; (2) that he should use the
Theatre as a place for acting for only five years after the expiration of the
original twenty-one-year lease, and should then convert the building to
other uses; (3) that he should ultimately leave the building in the possession
of Alleyn.[81] The first and third conditions, though unjust, Burbage was
willing to accept, but the second condition—that he should cease to use the
Theatre for plays—he "utterly refused" to consider.
Finally, perceiving that it was useless to deal further with Alleyn, he made
plans to secure a new playhouse in the district of Blackfriars, a district
which, although within the city walls, was not under the jurisdiction of the
city authorities. He purchased there the old Blackfriars refectory for £600,
and then at great expense made the refectory into a playhouse. But certain
influential noblemen and others living near by protested against this, and
the Privy Council ordered that the building should not be used as a public
playhouse. All this belongs mainly to the history of the Second Blackfriars
Playhouse, and for further details the reader is referred to the chapter
dealing with that theatre.
Shortly after the order of the Privy Council cited above, Burbage died, just
two months before the expiration of his lease from Alleyn; and the Theatre
with all its troubles passed to his son Cuthbert. By every means in his
power Cuthbert sought to induce Alleyn to renew the lease: "Your said
subject was thereof possessed, and being so possessed, your said servant did
often require the said Alleyn and Sara his wife to make unto him the said
new lease of the premises, according to the agreement of the said
indenture." Cuthbert's importunity in the matter is clearly set forth in a
deposition by Henry Johnson, one of Alleyn's tenants. It was Alleyn's
custom to come to London at each of the four pay terms of the year, and
stop at the George Inn in Shoreditch to receive his rents; and on such
occasions Johnson often observed Cuthbert's entreaties with Alleyn. In his
deposition he says that he "knoweth that the said complainant [Cuthbert
Burbage] hath many times labored and entreated the defendant [Gyles
Alleyn] to make him a new lease of the premises in question, for this

deponent sayeth that many times when the defendant hath come up to
London to receive his rents, he, this deponent, hath been with him paying
him certain rent; and then he hath seen the plaintiff with his landlord,
paying his rent likewise; and then, finding opportunity, the plaintiff would
be intreating the defendant to make him a new lease of the premises in
question; and sayeth that it is at least three years since [i.e., in 1597] he, this
deponent, first heard the plaintiff labor and entreat the defendant for a new
lease."[82] Cuthbert tells us that Alleyn did not positively refuse to renew the
lease, "but for some causes, which he feigned, did defer the same from time
to time, but yet gave hope to your subject, and affirmed that he would make
him such a lease."[83]
Cuthbert's anxiety in this matter is explained by the fact that the old lease
gave him the right to tear down the Theatre and carry away the timber and
other materials to his own use, provided he did so before the expiration of
the twenty-one years. Yet, relying on Alleyn's promises to renew the lease,
he "did forbear to pull downe and carry away the timber and stuff employed
for the said Theatre and playing-house at the end of the said first term of
one and twenty years." A failure to renew the lease would mean, of course,
the loss of the building.
Alleyn, though deferring to sign a new lease, allowed Burbage to continue
in possession of the property at "the old rent of £14." Yet the Theatre seems
not to have been used for plays after the original lease expired.[84] The Lord
Chamberlain's Company, which had been occupying the Theatre, and of
which Richard Burbage was the chief actor, had moved to the Curtain; and
the author of Skialetheia, printed in 1598, refers to the old playhouse as
empty: "But see, yonder, one, like the unfrequented Theatre, walks in dark
silence and vast solitude."[85]
To Cuthbert Burbage such a state of affairs was intolerable, and on
September 29, 1598, he made a new appeal to Alleyn. Alleyn proffered a
lease already drawn up, but Cuthbert would not "accept thereof" because of
the "very unreasonable covenants therein contained."[86]
Shortly after this fruitless interview, or late in 1598, Gyles Alleyn resolved
to take advantage of the fact that Cuthbert Burbage had not removed the
Theatre before the expiration of the first twenty-one years. He contended

that since Cuthbert had "suffered the same there to continue till the
expiration of the said term ... the right and interest of the said Theatre was
both in law and conscience absolutely vested" now in himself; accordingly
he planned "to pull down the same, and to convert the wood and timber
thereof to some better use for the benefit" of himself.[87]
But, unfortunately for Alleyn, Cuthbert Burbage "got intelligence" of this
purpose, and at once set himself to the task of saving his property. He and
his brother Richard, the great actor, took into their confidence the chief
members of the Lord Chamberlain's Company, then performing at the
Curtain Playhouse, namely William Shakespeare, John Heminges,
Augustine Phillips, Thomas Pope, and William Kempe. These men agreed
to form with the Burbages a syndicate to finance the erection of a new
playhouse. The two Burbages agreed to bear one-half the expense,
including the timber and other materials of the old Theatre, and the five
actors promised to supply the other half. Together they leased a suitable plot
of land on the Bankside near Henslowe's Rose, the lease dating from
December 25, 1598. These details having been arranged, it remained only
for the Burbages to save their building from the covetousness of Alleyn.
On the night of December 28, 1598,[88] Alleyn being absent in the country,
Cuthbert Burbage, his brother Richard, his friend William Smith, "of
Waltham Cross, in the County of Hartford, gentleman," Peter Street,
"cheefe carpenter," and twelve others described as "laborers such as
wrought for wages," gathered at the Theatre and began to tear down the
building. We learn that the widow of James Burbage "was there, and did see
the doing thereof, and liked well of it";[89] and we may suspect that at some
time during the day Shakespeare and the other actors were present as
interested spectators.
The episode is thus vividly described by the indignant Gyles Allen:
The said Cuthbert Burbage, having intelligence of your subject's purpose
herein, and unlawfully combining and confederating himself with the said
Richard Burbage and one Peter Street, William Smith, and diverse other
persons to the number of twelve, to your subject unknown, did about the
eight and twentieth day of December, in the one and fortieth year of your
highness reign, and sithence your highness last and general pardon, by the

confederacy aforesaid, riotously assembled themselves together, and then
and there armed themselves with diverse and many unlawful and offensive
weapons, as namely swords, daggers, bills, axes, and such like, and so
armed did then repair unto the said Theatre, and then and there armed as
aforesaid, in very riotous, outrageous, and forceable manner, and contrary
to the laws of your highness realm, attempted to pull down the said Theatre.
Whereupon, diverse of your subjects, servants and farmers, then going
about in peaceable manner to procure them to desist from that unlawful
enterprise, they, the said riotous persons aforesaid, notwithstanding
procured then therein with great violence, not only then and there forcibly
and riotously resisting your subjects, servants, and farmers, but also then
and there pulling, breaking, and throwing down the said Theatre in very
outrageous, violent, and riotous sort.[90]
The workmen, under the expert direction of Peter Street, carried the timber
and other materials of the old Theatre to the tract of land on the Bankside
recently leased by the new syndicate—as Gyles Alleyn puts it, "did then
also in most forcible and riotous manner take and carry away from thence
all the wood and timber thereof unto the Bankside, in the Parish of St. Mary
Overies, and there erected a new playhouse with the said timber and wood."
The playhouse thus erected was, of course, an entirely new structure.
Nearly a quarter of a century had elapsed since James Burbage designed the
old Theatre, during which time a great development had taken place both in
histrionic art and in play writing; and, no doubt, many improvements were
possible in the stage and in the auditorium to provide better facilities for the
actors and greater comfort for the spectators. In designing such
improvements the architect had the advice and help of the actors, including
Shakespeare; and he succeeded in producing a playhouse that was a model
of excellence. The name selected by the syndicate for their new building
was "The Globe." For further details as to its construction, and for its
subsequent history, the reader is referred to the chapter dealing with that
building.
When Gyles Alleyn learned that the Burbages had demolished the Theatre
and removed the timber to the Bankside, he was deeply incensed, not only
at the loss of the building, but also, no doubt, at being completely outwitted.
At once he instituted suit against Cuthbert Burbage; but he was so

intemperate in his language and so reckless in his charges that he weakened
his case. The suit dragged for a few years, was in part referred to Francis
Bacon, and finally in the summer of 1601 was dismissed. Thus the history
of the first London playhouse, which is chiefly the history of quarrels and
litigation, came to a close.
It is not possible now to indicate exactly the stay of the different troupes at
the Theatre; the evidence is scattered and incomplete, and the inferences to
be drawn are often uncertain.
When the building was opened in 1576, it was, no doubt, occupied by the
Earl of Leicester's troupe, of which Burbage was the manager, and for
which, presumably, the structure had been designed. Yet other troupes of
players may also have been allowed to use the building—when Leicester's
Men were touring the provinces, or, possibly, on days when Leicester's Men
did not act. This arrangement lasted about six years.
In 1582 the use of the Theatre was interrupted by the interference of
Peckham. For a long time the actors "could not enjoy the premises," and
Burbage was forced to keep Peckham's servants out of the building with an
armed guard night and day. As a result of this state of affairs, Leicester's
troupe was dissolved; "many of the players," we are told, were driven away,
and the rest "forsook the said Theatre." The last notice of these famous
players is a record of their performance at Court on February 10, 1583.
Shortly after this, in March, 1583, Tilney, the Master of the Revels,
organized under royal patronage a new company called the Queen's Men.
For this purpose he selected twelve of the best actors of the realm, including
some of the members of Leicester's company.[91] The two best-known
actors in the new organization were the Queen's favorite comedian, Richard
Tarleton, the immortal "Lord of Mirth," and John Lanham, the leader and
apparently the manager of the troupe. James Burbage, who may by this
time, if not before, have retired from acting, was not included.
The newly organized Queen's Men in all probability occupied the Theatre
which had been left vacant by the dissolution of Leicester's company. Mr.
Wallace denies this, mainly on the evidence of a permit issued by the Lord
Mayor, November 28, 1583, granting the Queen's Men the privilege of
acting "at the sign of the Bull [Inn] in Bishopgate Street, and the sign of the

Bell [Inn] in Gracious Street, and nowhere else within this city." But this
permit, I think, lends scant support to Mr. Wallace's contention. The Lord
Mayor had no authority to issue a license for the Queen's Men to play at the
Theatre, for that structure was outside the jurisdiction of the city. The Privy
Council itself, no doubt, had issued such a general license when the
company was organized under royal patronage.[92] And now, ten months
later, on November 26, 1583, the Council sends to the Lord Mayor a request
"that Her Majesty's players may be suffered to play ... within the city and
liberties between this and shrovetide next"[93]—in other words, during the
winter season when access to the Theatre was difficult. It was customary for
troupes to seek permission to act within the city during the winter months.
[94] Thus the Queen's Men, in a petition written probably in the autumn of
the following year, 1584, requested the Privy Council to dispatch "favorable
letters unto the Lord Mayor of London to permit us to exercise within the
city," and the Lord Mayor refused, with the significant remark that "if in
winter ... the foulness of season do hinder the passage into the fields to play,
the remedy is ill conceived to bring them into London."[95] Obviously the
Queen's Men were seeking permission to play in the city only during the
cold winter months; during the balmy spring, summer, and autumn months
—for actors the best season of the year—they occupied their commodious
playhouse in "the fields."
That this playhouse for a time, at least, was the Theatre is indicated by
several bits of evidence. Thus the author of Martin's Month's Mind (1589)
speaks of "twittle-twattles that I had learned in ale-houses and at the
Theatre of Lanham and his fellows." Again, Nash, in Pierce Penniless
(1592), writes: "Tarleton at the Theatre made jests of him"; Harrington, in
The Metamorphosis of Ajax (1596): "Which word was after admitted into
the Theatre with great applause, by the mouth of Master Tarleton"; and the
author of Tarlton's Newes out of Purgatory (c. 1589) represents Tarleton as
connected with the Theatre. Now, unless Lanham, Tarleton, and their
"fellows" usually or sometimes acted at the Theatre, it is hard to understand
these and other similar passages.
The following episode tends to prove the same thing. On June 18, 1584,
William Fleetwood, Recorder, wrote to Lord Burghley:[96]

Right honorable and my very good lord. Upon Whitsunday there was a very
good sermon preached at the new churchyard near Bethelem, whereat my
Lord Mayor was with his brethren; and by reason no plays were the same
day, all the city was quiet. Upon Monday I was at the Court.... That night I
returned to London and found all the wards full of watchers; the cause
thereof was for that very near the Theatre or Curtain, at the time of the
plays, there lay a prentice sleeping upon the grass; and one Challes, at
Grostock, did turn upon the toe upon the belly of the same prentice.
Whereupon the apprentice start up.
In the altercation that followed, Challes remarked that "prentices were but
the scum of the world." This led to a general rising of apprentices, and
much disorder throughout the city. Fleetwood records the upshot thus:
Upon Sunday my Lord [Mayor] sent two aldermen to the court for the
suppressing and pulling down of the Theatre and Curtain. All the Lords [of
the Privy Council] agreed thereunto saving my Lord Chamberlain and Mr.
Vice-Chamberlain. But we obtained a letter to suppress them all. Upon the
same night I sent for the Queen's Players [at the Theatre?] and my Lord
Arundel's Players [at the Curtain?] and they all willingly obeyed the Lords's
letters. The chiefest of Her Highness's Players advised me to send for the
owner of the Theatre [James Burbage[97]], who was a stubborn fellow, and
to bind him. I did so. He sent me word he was my Lord of Hundson's man,
and that he would not come at me; but he would in the morning ride to my
lord.
The natural inference from all this is that the Queen's Men and Lord
Arundel's Men were then playing outside the city where they could be
controlled only by "the Lords's Letters"; that the Queen's Men were
occupying the Theatre, and that James Burbage was (as we know) not a
member of that company, but merely stood to them in the relation of "owner
of the Theatre."
What Burbage meant by calling himself "my Lord of Hunsdon's man" is not
clear. Mr. Wallace contends that when Leicester's Men were dissolved,
Burbage organized "around the remnants of Leicester's Company" a troupe
under the patronage of Lord Hunsdon, and that this troupe, and not the
Queen's Men, occupied the Theatre thereafter.[98] But we hear of Hunsdon's

Men at Ludlow in July, 1582; and we find them presenting a play at Court
on December 27, 1582. Since Leicester's troupe is recorded as acting at
Court as late as February 10, 1583, it seems unlikely that Mr. Wallace's
theory as to the origin of Hunsdon's Men is true. It may be, however, that
after the dissolution of Leicester's Men, Burbage associated himself with
Hunsdon's Men, and it may be that he allowed that relatively unimportant
company to occupy the Theatre for a short time. Hunsdon's Men seem to
have been mainly a traveling troupe; Mr. Murray states that notices of them
"occur frequently in the provinces," but we hear almost nothing of them in
London. Indeed, at the time of the trouble described by Fleetwood,
Hunsdon's Men were in Bath.[99] If Burbage was a member of the troupe, he
certainly did not accompany them on their extended tours; and when they
played in London, if they used the Theatre, they must have used it jointly
with the Queen's Men.
Late in 1585 the Theatre was affiliated with the adjacent Curtain. Burbage
and Brayne made an agreement with the proprietor of that playhouse
whereby the Curtain might be used "as an easore" [easer?] to the Theatre,
and "the profits of the said two playhouses might for seven years space be
in divident between them." This agreement, we know, was carried out, but
whether it led to an exchange of companies, or what effect it had upon the
players, we cannot say. Possibly to this period of joint management may be
assigned the witticism of Dick Tarleton recorded as having been uttered "at
the Curtain" where the Queen's Men were then playing.[100] It may even be
that as one result of the affiliation of the two houses the Queen's Men were
transferred to the Curtain.
In 1590, as we learn from the deposition of John Alleyn, the Theatre was
being used by the Admiral's Men.[101] This excellent company had been
formed early in 1589 by the separation of certain leading players from
Worcester's Men, and it had probably occupied the Theatre since its
organization. Its star actor, Edward Alleyn, was then at the height of his
powers, and was producing with great success Marlowe's splendid plays.
We may suppose that the following passage refers to the performance of the
Admiral's Men at the Theatre:

He had a head of hair like one of my devils in Dr. Faustus, when the old
Theatre crackt and frightened the audience.[102]
Late in 1590 the Admiral's Men seem to have been on bad terms with
Burbage,[103] and when John Alleyn made his deposition, February 6, 1592,
they had certainly left the Theatre. Mr. Greg, from entirely different
evidence, has concluded that they were dispersed in 1591,[104] and this
conclusion is borne out by the legal document cited above.
The next company that we can definitely associate with the Theatre was the
famous Lord Chamberlain's Men. On April 16, 1594, Lord Strange, the Earl
of Derby, died, and the chief members of his troupe—William Shakespeare,
Richard Burbage, John Heminges, William Kempe, Thomas Pope, George
Bryan, and Augustine Phillips—organized a new company under the
patronage of the Lord Chamberlain. For ten days, in June, 1594, they acted
at Newington Butts under the management of Philip Henslowe, then went,
probably at once, to the Theatre, which they made their home until the
Burbage lease of the property expired in the spring of 1597. Here, among
other famous plays, they produced the original Hamlet, thus referred to by
Lodge in Wit's Miserie, 1596:
He looks as pale as the visard of the ghost which cries so miserably at the
Theatre, like an oyster-wife, "Hamlet, revenge!"
And here, too, they presented all of Shakespeare's early masterpieces.
Their connection with the building ceased in 1597 at the expiration of the
Burbage lease; but their association with the proprietors of the Theatre was
permanent. Their subsequent history, as also the history of the Burbage
brothers, will be found in the chapters dealing with the Globe and the
Second Blackfriars.[105]

CHAPTER IV
THE CURTAIN

A LTHOUGH James Burbage was, as his son asserted, "the first builder
of playhouses," a second public playhouse followed hard on the
Theatre, probably within twelve months. It was erected a short distance to
the south of the Theatre,—that is, nearer the city,—and, like that building, it
adjoined Finsbury Field.[106] To the two playhouses the audiences came
trooping over the meadows, in "great multidudes," the Lord Mayor tells us;
and the author of Tarlton's Newes out of Purgatory (c. 1589) describes their
return to London thus: "With that I waked, and saw such concourse of
people through the fields that I knew the play was done."[107]
The new playhouse derived its name from the Curtain estate, on which it
was erected.[108] This estate was formerly the property of the Priory of
Holywell, and was described in 1538 as "scituata et existentia extra portas
ejusdem nuper monasterii prope pasturam dicte nuper Priorisse, vocatam
the Curteine."[109] Why it was so called is not clear. The name may have
been derived from some previous owner of the property; it may, as Collier
thought, have come from some early association with the walls (curtains) or
defenses of the city; or, it may have come, as Tomlins suggests, from the
mediæval Latin cortina, meaning a court, a close, a farm enclosure.[110]
Whatever its origin—the last explanation seems the most plausible—the
interesting point is that it had no connection whatever with a stage curtain.
The building was probably opened to the London public in the summer or
autumn of 1577. The first reference to it is found in T[homas] W[hite]'s
Sermon Preached at Pawles Crosse on Sunday the Thirde of November,
1577: "Behold the sumptuous theatre houses, a continual monument of
London's prodigality and folly";[111] and a reference to it by name appears
in Northbrooke's A Treatise, licensed December, 1577: "Those places, also,
which are made up and builded for such plays and interludes, as the Theatre
and Curtain."[112]

Like the Theatre, the Curtain was a peculiarly shaped building, specially
designed for acting; "those playhouses that are erected and built only for
such purposes ... namely the Curtain and the Theatre,"[113] writes the Privy
Council; and the German traveler, Samuel Kiechel, who visited London in
1585, describes them as "sonderbare" structures. They are usually
mentioned together, and in such a way as to suggest similarity of shape as
well as of purpose. We may, I think, reasonably suppose that the Curtain
was in all essential details a copy of Burbage's Theatre.[114] Presumably,
then, it was polygonal (or circular) in shape,[115] was constructed of timber,
and was finished on the outside with lime and plaster. The interior, as the
evidence already cited in the chapter on the Theatre shows, consisted of
three galleries surrounding an open yard. There was a platform projecting
into the middle of the yard, with dressing-rooms at the rear, "heavens"
overhead, and a flagpole rising above the "heavens." That some sign was
displayed in front of the door is likely. Malone writes: "The original sign
hung out at this playhouse (as Mr. Steevens has observed) was the painting
of a curtain striped."[116] Aubrey records that Ben Jonson "acted and wrote,
but both ill, at the Green Curtain, a kind of nursery or obscure playhouse
somewhere in the suburbs, I think towards Shoreditch or Clerkenwell."[117]
By "at the Green Curtain" Aubrey means, of course, "at the sign of the
Green Curtain"; but the evidence of Steevens and of Aubrey is too vague
and uncertain to warrant any definite conclusions.
Of the early history of the Curtain we know little, mainly because it was
not, like certain other playhouses, the subject of extensive litigation. We do
not even know who planned and built it. The first evidence of its ownership
appears fifteen years after its erection, in some legal documents connected
with the Theatre.[118] In July, 1592, Henry Lanman, described as "of
London, gentleman, of the age of 54 years," deposed: "That true it is about
7 years now shall be this next winter, they, the said Burbage and Brayne,
having the profits of plays made at the Theatre, and this deponent having
the profits of the plays done at the house called the Curtain near to the
same, the said Burbage and Brayne, taking the Curtain as an esore[119] to
their playhouse, did of their own motion move this deponent that he would
agree that the profits of the said two playhouses might for seven years space
be in divident between them."[120]

THE SITE OF THE CURTAIN PLAYHOUSE
From An Actual Survey of the Parish of St Leonard in
Shoreditch taken in the year 1745 by Peter Chasserau,
Surveyor. The key to the map gives "93" as Curtain
Court, probably the site of the old playhouse, "87" as
New Inn Yard, and "94" as Holywell Court, both
interesting in connection with Burbage's Theatre.
(Redrawn from the original for this volume.)

From this statement it is evident that Henry Lanman was the sole proprietor
of the Curtain as far back as 1585, and the presumption is that his
proprietorship was of still earlier date. This presumption is strengthened by

the fact that in a sale of the Curtain estate early in 1582, he is specifically
mentioned as having a tenure of an "edifice or building" erected in the
Curtain Close, that is, that section of the estate next to the Field, on which
the playhouse was built.[121] Since Lanman is not mentioned as having any
other property on the estate, the "edifice or building" referred to was
probably the playhouse. The document gives no indication as to how long
he had held possession of the "edifice," but the date of sale, March, 1582,
carries us back to within four years of the erection of the Curtain, and it
seems reasonable to suppose, though of course we cannot be sure, that
Lanman had been proprietor of the building from the very beginning.[122]
Certain records of the sale of the Curtain estate shortly before and shortly
after the erection of the playhouse are preserved, but these throw very little
light upon the playhouse itself. We learn that on February 20, 1567, Lord
Mountjoy and his wife sold the estate to Maurice Longe, clothworker, and
his son William Longe, for the sum of £60; and that on August 23, 1571,
Maurice Longe and his wife sold it to the then Lord Mayor, Sir William
Allyn, for the sum of £200. In both documents the property is described in
the same words: "All that house, tenement or lodge commonly called the
Curtain, and all that parcel of ground and close, walled and enclosed with a
brick wall on the west and north parts, called also the Curtain Close." The
lodge here referred to, generally known as "Curtain House," was on, or very
near, Holywell Lane;[123] the playhouse, as already stated, was erected in
the close near the Field.[124]
How long Sir William Allyn held the property, or why it reverted to the
Longe family, we do not know. But on March 18, 1582, we find William
Longe, the son of "Maurice Longe, citizen and clothworker, of London,
deceased," selling the same property, described in the same words, to one
"Thomas Harberte, citizen and girdler, of London." In the meantime, of
course, the playhouse had been erected, but no clear or direct mention of the
building is made in the deed of sale. Possibly it was included in the
conventionally worded phrase: "and all and singular other messuages,
tenements, edifices, and buildings, with all and singular their
appurtenances, erected and builded upon the said close called the Curtain."
[125] Among the persons named as holding tenures of the above-mentioned
"edifices and buildings" in the close was Henry Lanman. It seems not

improbable, therefore, that the Curtain, like the Theatre, was erected on
leased ground.
It is impossible to give a connected history of the Curtain. Most of the
references to it that we now possess are invectives in early puritanical
writings, or bare mention, along with other playhouses, in letters or
ordinances of the Privy Council and the Lord Mayor. Such references as
these do not much help us in determining what companies successively
occupied the building, or what varying fortunes marked its ownership and
management. Yet a few scattered facts have sifted down to us, and these I
have arranged in chronological order.
On the afternoon of April 6, 1580, an earthquake, especially severe in
Holywell, shook the building during the performance of a play, and greatly
frightened the audience. Munday says merely: "at the playhouses the people
came running forth, surprised with great astonishment";[126] but Stubbes,
the Puritan, who saw in the event a "fearful judgment of God," writes with
fervor: "The like judgment almost did the Lord show unto them a little
before, being assembled at their theatres to see their bawdy interludes and
other trumperies practised, for He caused the earth mightily to shake and
quaver, as though all would have fallen down; whereat the people, sore
amazed, some leapt down from the top of the turrets, pinnacles, and towers
where they stood, to the ground, whereof some had their legs broke, some
their arms, some their backs, some hurt one where, some another, and many
score crushed and bruised."[127]
The disturbance at the Theatre and the Curtain in 1584, when one Challes
"did turn upon the toe upon the belly of" an apprentice "sleeping upon the
grass" in the Field near by, has been mentioned in the preceding chapter. If
the interpretation of the facts there given is correct, Lord Arundel's Players
were then occupying the Curtain.
In the winter of 1585 Lanman entered into his seven years' agreement with
Burbage and Brayne by which the Theatre and the Curtain were placed
under one management, and the profits shared "in divident between them."
This agreement was faithfully kept by both parties, but there is no evidence
that after the expiration of the seven years, in the winter of 1592, the
affiliation was continued. What effect the arrangement had upon the

companies of players occupying the two theatres we cannot now determine.
To this period, however, I would assign the appearance of the Queen's Men
at the Curtain.[128]
On July 28, 1597, as a result of the performance of Thomas Nashe's The
Isle of Dogs, by Pembroke's Men at the Swan,[129] the Privy Council
ordered the plucking down of "the Curtain and the Theatre."[130] The order,
however, was not carried out, and in October plays were allowed again as
before.
At this time the Lord Chamberlain's men were at the Curtain, having
recently moved thither in consequence of the difficulties Cuthbert Burbage
was having with Gyles Alleyn over the Theatre property. During the stay of
the Chamberlain's Company, which numbered among its members William
Shakespeare, Richard Burbage, William Kempe (who had succeeded
Tarleton in popular favor as a clown), John Heminges, Thomas Pope, and
Augustine Phillips, the playhouse probably attained its greatest distinction.
Both Shakespeare and Jonson wrote plays for the troupe; Romeo and Juliet,
we are told, "won Curtain plaudities," as no doubt did many other of
Shakespeare's early masterpieces; and Jonson's Every Man in His Humour
created such enthusiasm here on its first performance as to make its author
famous.[131]
In the summer of 1599 the Chamberlain's Men moved into their splendid
new home, the Globe, on the Bankside, and the Curtain thus abandoned fell
on hard times. Perhaps it was let occasionally to traveling troupes; in
Jeaffreson's Middlesex County Records, under the date of March 11, 1600,
is a notice of the arrest of one William Haukins "charged with a purse taken
at a play at the Curtain." But shortly after, in April, 1600, when Henslowe
and Alleyn began to erect their splendid new Fortune Playhouse, they were
able to give the impression to Tilney, the Master of the Revels, and to the
Privy Council, that the Curtain was to be torn down. Thus in the Council's
warrant for the building of the Fortune, dated April 8, 1600, we read that
"another house is [to be] pulled down instead of it";[132] and when the
Puritans later made vigorous protests against the erection of the Fortune, the
Council defended itself by stating that "their Lordships have been informed
by Edmund Tilney, Esquire, Her Majesty's servant, and Master of the
Revels, that the house now in hand to be built by the said Edward Alleyn is

not intended to increase the number of the playhouses, but to be instead of
another, namely the Curtain, which is either to be ruined and plucked down,
or to be put to some other good use."[133]
All this talk of the Curtain's being plucked down or devoted to other uses
suggests a contemplated change in the ownership or management of the
building. We do not know when Lanman died (in 1592 he described himself
as fifty-four years of age),[134] but we do know that at some date prior to
1603 the Curtain had passed into the hands of a syndicate. When this
syndicate was organized, or who constituted its members, we cannot say.
Thomas Pope, in his will, dated July 22, 1603, mentions his share "of, in,
and to all that playhouse, with the appurtenances, called the Curtain";[135]
and John Underwood, in his will, dated October 4, 1624, mentions his "part
or share ... in the said playhouses called the Blackfriars, the Globe on the
Bankside, and the Curtain."[136] It may be significant that both Pope and
Underwood were sharers also in the Globe. Since, however, further
information is wanting, it is useless to speculate. We can only say that at
some time after the period of Lanman's sole proprietorship, the Curtain
passed into the hands of a group of sharers; and that after a discussion in
1600 of demolishing the building or devoting it to other uses, it entered
upon a long and successful career.
On May 10, 1601, "the actors at the Curtain"[137] gave serious offense by
representing on the stage persons "of good desert and quality, that are yet
alive, under obscure manner, but yet in such sort as all the hearers may take
notice both of the matter and the persons that are meant thereby." The Privy
Council ordered the Justices of the Peace to examine into the case and to
punish the offenders.[138]
Early in 1604 a draft of a royal patent for Queen Anne's Players—who had
hitherto been under the patronage of Worcester[139]—gives those players
permission to act "within their now usual houses, called the Curtain, and the
Boar's Head."[140] On April 9, 1604, the Privy Council authorized the three
companies of players that had been taken under royal patronage "to exercise
their plays in their several and usual houses for that purpose, and no other,
viz., the Globe, scituate in Maiden Lane on the Bankside in the County of
Surrey, the Fortune in Golding Lane, and the Curtain in Holywell."[141] The
King's Men (the Burbage-Shakespeare troupe) occupied the Globe; Prince

Henry's Men (the Henslowe-Alleyn troupe), the Fortune; and Queen Anne's
Men, the Curtain.
But the Queen's Men were probably dissatisfied with the Curtain. It was
small and antiquated, and it must have suffered by comparison with the
more splendid Globe and Fortune. So the Queen's players had built for
themselves a new and larger playhouse, called "The Red Bull." This was
probably ready for occupancy in 1605, yet it is impossible to say exactly
when the Queen's Men left the Curtain; their patent of April 15, 1609, gives
them permission to act "within their now usual houses called the Red Bull,
in Clerkenwell, and the Curtain in Holywell."[142] It may be that they
retained control of the Curtain in order to prevent competition.
What company occupied the Curtain after Queen Anne's Men finally
surrendered it is not clear. Mr. Murray is of the opinion that Prince Charles's
Men moved into the Curtain "about December, 1609, or early in 1610."[143]
In 1613 "a company of young men" acted The Hector of Germany "at the
Red Bull and at the Curtain." Such plays, however, written and acted by
amateurs, were not uncommon, and no significance can be attached to the
event.
In 1622, as we learn from the Herbert Manuscripts, the Curtain was being
occupied by Prince Charles's Servants.[144] In the same year the author of
Vox Graculi, or The Jack Daw's Prognostication for 1623, refers to it thus:
"If company come current to the Bull and Curtain, there will be more
money gathered in one afternoon than will be given to Kingsland Spittle in
a whole month; also, if at this time about the hours of four and five it wax
cloudy and then rain downright, they shall sit dryer in the galleries than
those who are the understanding men in the yard."
Prince Charles's Men did not remain long at the Curtain. At some date
between June 10 and August 19, 1623, they moved to the larger and more
handsome Red Bull.[145] After this, so far as I can discover, there is no
evidence to connect the playhouse with dramatic performances. Malone,
who presumably bases his statements on the now lost records of Herbert,
says that shortly after the accession of King Charles I it "seems to have
been used only by prize-fighters."[146]

The last mention of the Curtain is found in the Middlesex County Records
under the date February 21, 1627.[147] It is merely a passing reference to
"the common shoare near the Curtain playhouse," yet it is significant as
indicating that the building was then still standing. What ultimately became
of it we do not know. For a time, however, its memory survived in Curtain
Court (see page 79), and to-day its fame is perpetuated in Curtain Road.

CHAPTER V
THE FIRST BLACKFRIARS

T HE choir boys of the Chapel Royal, of Windsor, and of Paul's were all
engaged in presenting dramatic entertainments before Queen Elizabeth.
Each organization expected to be called upon one or more times a year—at
Christmas, New Year's, and other like occasions—to furnish recreation to
Her Majesty; and in return for its efforts each received a liberal "reward" in
money. Richard Farrant, Master of the Windsor Chapel, was especially
active in devising plays for the Queen's entertainment. But having a large
family, he was poor in spite of his regular salary and the occasional
"rewards" he received for the performances of his Boys at Court; and
doubtless he often cast about in his mind for some way in which to increase
his meagre income.
In the spring of 1576 James Burbage, having conceived the idea of a
building devoted solely to plays, had leased a plot of ground for the
purpose, and had begun the erection of the Theatre. By the autumn, no
doubt, the building was nearing completion, if, indeed, it was not actually
open to the public; and the experiment, we may suppose, was exciting much
interest in the dramatic circles of London. It seems to have set Farrant to
thinking. The professional actors, he observed, had one important advantage
over the child actors: not only could they present their plays before the
Queen and receive the usual court reward, but in addition they could present
their plays before the public and thus reap a second and richer harvest.
Since the child actors had, as a rule, more excellent plays than the
professional troupes, and were better equipped with properties and
costumes, and since they expended just as much energy in devising plays
and in memorizing and rehearsing their parts, Farrant saw no reason why
they, too, should not be allowed to perform before the public. This, he
thought, might be done under the guise of rehearsals for the Court. Possibly
the Queen might even wink at regular performances before the general
public when she understood that this would train the Boys to be more

skilful actors, would provide Her Majesty with more numerous and possibly
more excellent plays, and would enable the Master and his assistants to live
in greater comfort without affecting the royal purse.

BLACKFRIARS MONASTERY
A plan of the various buildings as they appeared before
the dissolution, based on the Loseley Manuscripts and
other documents, surveys, and maps. The Buttery
became Farrant's, the Frater Burbage's playhouse.
(Drawn by the author.)

For Farrant to build a playhouse specifically for the use of the Children was
out of the question. In the first place, it would be too conspicuously a

capitalization of the royal choristers for private gain; and in the second
place, it would be far too hazardous a business venture for so poor a man as
he to undertake. The more sensible thing for him to do was to rent
somewhere a large hall which could at small expense be converted into a
place suitable for training the Children in their plays, and for the
entertainment of select—possibly at first invited—audiences. The
performances, of course, were not to be heralded by a trumpet-and-drum
procession through the street, by the flying of a flag, and by such-like
vulgar advertising as of a public show; instead, they were to be quiet,
presumably "private," and were to attract only noblemen and those citizens
of the better class who were interested in the drama.[148]

THE SITES OF THE TWO BLACKFRIARS
PLAYHOUSES

The smaller rectangle at the north represents the
Buttery, later Farrant's playhouse, the larger rectangle
represents the Frater, later Burbage's playhouse. (From
Ogilby and Morgan's Map of London, 1677, the sites
marked by the author.)
[Enlarge]

Such was Farrant's scheme. In searching for a hall suitable for his purpose,
his mind at once turned to the precinct of Blackfriars, where in former years
the Office of the Revels had been kept, and where the Children had often
rehearsed their plays. The precinct had once, as the name indicates, been in
the possession of the Dominican or "Black" Friars. The Priory buildings had
consisted chiefly of a great church two hundred and twenty feet long and
sixty-six feet broad, with a cloister on the south side of the church forming
a square of one hundred and ten feet, and a smaller cloister to the south of
this. At the dissolution of the religious orders, the property had passed into
the possession of the Crown; hence, though within the city walls, it was not
under the jurisdiction of the city authorities. Farrant probably did not
anticipate any interference on the part of the Common Council with the
royal choristers "practicing" their plays in order "to yield Her Majesty
recreation and delight," yet the absolute certainty of being free from the
adverse legislation of the London authorities was not to be ignored.
Moreover, the precinct was now the home of many noblemen and wealthy
gentlemen, and Farrant probably thought that, as one of the most
fashionable residential districts in London, it was suitable for "private"
performances to be given by members of Her Majesty's household.
In furthering his project he sought the counsel and aid of his "very friend"
Sir Henry Neville, Lieutenant of Windsor, who, it is to be presumed, was
interested in the Windsor Boys. It happened that Neville knew of exactly
such rooms as were desired, rooms in the old monastery of Blackfriars
which he himself had once leased as a residence, and which, he heard, were
"to be let either presently, or very shortly." These rooms were in the
southwestern corner of the monastery, on the upper floor of two adjoining
buildings formerly used by the monks as a buttery and a frater. A history of
the rooms up to the time of their use as a theatre may be briefly sketched.

In 1548 the buttery and frater, with certain other buildings, were let by King
Edward to Sir Thomas Cawarden, Master of the Revels; and in 1550 they
were granted to him outright. In 1554 Cawarden sold the northern section of
the buttery, fifty-two feet in length, to Lord Cobham, whose mansion it
adjoined. The rest of the buttery, forty-six feet in length, and the frater, he
converted into lodgings. Since the frater was of exceptional breadth—fifty-
two feet on the outside, forty-six feet on the inside—he ran a partition
through its length, dividing it into two parts. The section of the frater on the
west of this partition he let to Sir Richard Frith; the section on the east, with
the remainder of the buttery not sold to Lord Cobham, he let to Sir John
Cheeke. It is with the Cheeke Lodgings that we are especially concerned.
About September, 1554, Cheeke went to travel abroad, and surrendered his
rooms in the Blackfriars. Sir Thomas Cawarden thereupon made use of
them "for the Office of the Queen's Majesty's Revells"; thus for a time the
Cheeke Lodgings were intimately connected with dramatic activities. But at
the death of Cawarden, in 1559, the Queen transferred the Office of the
Revels to St. John's, and the Blackfriars property belonging to Cawarden
passed into the possession of Sir William More.

A PLAN OF FARRANT'S PLAYHOUSE
Frith's Lodging and the four southern rooms of
Farrant's Lodging were on the upper floor of the Frater;
the two northern rooms of Farrant's Lodging were on
the upper floor of the Buttery. The playhouse was erected
in the two rooms last mentioned.

In 1560 the new proprietor let the Cheeke Lodgings to Sir Henry Neville,
with the addition of "a void piece of ground" eighteen feet wide extending
west to Water Lane.[149] During his tenancy Neville erected certain
partitions, built a kitchen in the "void piece of ground," and a large stairway
leading to the rooms overhead. In 1568 he surrendered his lease, and More

let the rooms first to some "sylk dyers," and then in 1571 to Lord Cobham.
In 1576 Cobham gave up the rooms, and More was seeking a tenant. It was
at this auspicious moment that Farrant planned a private theatre, and
enlisted the aid of Sir Henry Neville.
On August 27 Farrant and Neville separately wrote letters to Sir William
More about the matter. Farrant respectfully solicited the lease, and made the
significant request that he might "pull down one partition, and so make two
rooms—one." Neville, in a friendly letter beginning with "hearty
commendations unto you and to Mrs. More," and ending with light gossip,
urged Sir William to let the rooms to Farrant, and recommended Farrant as
a desirable tenant ("I dare answer for him"). Neither letter mentioned the
purpose for which the rooms, especially the large room referred to by
Farrant, were to be used; but More doubtless understood that the Windsor
Children were to practice their plays there, with occasional private
rehearsals. Largely as a result of Neville's recommendation, More decided
to let the rooms to Farrant. The progress of the negotiations is marked by a
letter from Farrant to More, dated September 17, 1576, requesting that there
be granted him also a certain "little dark room," which he found would be
useful.
The lease as finally signed describes the property thus:
Sir William More hath demised, granted, and to ferm letten, and by these
presents doth demise, grant, and to ferm let unto the said Richard Farrant all
those his six upper chambers, lofts, lodgings, or rooms, lying together
within the precinct of the late dissolved house or priory of the Blackfriars,
otherwise called the friars preachers, in London; which said six upper
chambers, lofts, lodgings, or rooms, were lately, amongst others, in the
tenure and occupation of the right honourable Sir William Brooke, Knight,
Lord Cobham; and do contain in length from the north end thereof to the
south end of the same one hundred fifty and six foot and a half of assize;
whereof two of the said six upper chambers, lofts, lodgings, or rooms in the
north end of the premises, together with the breadth of the little room under
granted, do contain in length forty[150] and six foot and a half, and from the
east to the west part thereof in breadth twenty and five foot of assize;[151]
and the four other chambers, or rooms, residue of the said six upper
chambers, do contain in length one hundred and ten foot, and in breadth

from the east to the west part thereof twenty-two foot of assize.... And also
... the great stairs lately erected and made by the said Sir Henry Neville
upon part of the said void ground and way.
It was agreed that the lease should run for twenty-one years, and that the
rental should be £14 per annum. But Sir William More, being a most careful
and exacting landlord, with the interest of his adjacent lodgings to care for,
inserted in the lease the following important proviso, which was destined to
make trouble, and ultimately to wreck the theatre:
Provided also that the said Richard Farrant, his executors or assigns, or any
of them, shall not in any wise demise, let, grant, assign, set over, or by any
ways or means put away his or their interest or term of years, or any part of
the same years, of or in the said premises before letten, or any part, parcel,
or member thereof to any person, or persons, at any time hereafter during
this present lease and term of twenty-one years, without the special license,
consent, and agreement of the said Sir William More, his heirs and assigns,
first had, and obtained in writing under his and their hands and seals.
The penalty affixed to a violation of this provision was the immediate
forfeiture of the lease.
Apparently Farrant entered into possession of the rooms on September
29[152] (although the formal lease was not signed until December 20), and
we may suppose that he at once set about converting the two upper rooms at
the north end of the lodgings into a suitable theatre.[153] Naturally he took
for his model the halls at Court in which the Children had been accustomed
to act. First, we are told, he "pulled down partitions to make that place apt
for that purpose"; next, he "spoiled" the windows—by which is meant, no
doubt, that he stopped up the windows, for the performances were to be by
candle-light. At one end of the hall he erected a platform to serve as a stage,
and in the auditorium he placed benches or chairs. There was, presumably,
no room for a gallery; if such had been erected, the indignant More would
certainly have mentioned it in his bill of complaints.[154] Chandeliers over
the stage, and, possibly, footlights, completed the necessary arrangements.
For these alterations Farrant, we are told, became "greatly indebted," and he
died three or four years later with the debt still unpaid. More complained
that the alterations had put the rooms into a state of "great ruin," which

meant, of course, from the point of view of a landlord desiring to let them
again for residential purposes. Just how costly or how extensive the
alterations were we cannot now determine; but we may reasonably
conclude that Farrant made the hall not only "commodious for his purpose,"
but also attractive to the aristocratic audiences he intended to gather there to
see his plays.
To reach the hall, playgoers had to come first into Water Lane, thence
through "a way leading from the said way called Water Lane" to "a certain
void ground" before the building. Here "upon part of the said void ground"
they found a "great stairs, which said great stairs do serve and lead into" the
upper rooms—or, as we may now say, Blackfriars Playhouse.[155]
Having thus provided a playhouse, Farrant next provided an adequate
company of boy actors. To do this, he combined the Children of Windsor
with the Children of the Chapel Royal, of which William Hunnis was
master. What arrangement he made with Hunnis we do not know, but the
Court records show that Farrant was regarded as the manager of the new
organization; he is actually referred to in the payments as "Master of the
Children of Her Majesty's Chapel," and Hunnis's official connection with
the Children is ignored.
Farrant may have been able to open his playhouse before the close of the
year; or he may have first begun performances there in the early months of
1577. He would certainly be anxious to make use of the new play he was
preparing for presentation at Court on Twelfth Day, January 6, 1577.
For four years, 1576-1580, the playhouse was operated without trouble. Sir
William More, however, was not pleased at the success with which the
actors were meeting. He asserted that when he made the lease he was given
to understand that the building was to be used "only for the teaching of the
Children of the Chapel"—with, no doubt, a few rehearsals to which certain
persons would be privately invited. But, now, to his grief, he discovered
that Farrant had "made it a continual house for plays." He asserted that the
playhouse had become offensive to the precinct; and doubtless some
complaints had been made to him, as landlord, by the more aristocratic
inhabitants.[156] At any rate, he became anxious to regain possession of the
building.

In the autumn of 1580 he saw an opportunity to break the lease and close
the playhouse. Farrant made the mistake of letting "two parcels thereof to
two severall persons" without first gaining the written consent of More, and
at once More "charged him with forfeiture of his lease." But before More
could "take remedy against him" Farrant died, November 30, 1580. More,
however, "entered upon the house, and refused to receive any rent but
conditionally."
By his will, proved March 1, 1581, Farrant left the lease of the Blackfriars
to his widow, Anne Farrant. But she had no authority over the royal
choristers, nor was she qualified to manage a company of actors, even if she
had had the time to do so after caring for her "ten little ones." What use, if
any, was made of the playhouse during the succeeding winter we do not
know. The widow writes that she, "being a sole woman, unable of herself to
use the said rooms to such purpose as her said husband late used them, nor
having any need or occasion to occupy them to such commodity as would
discharge the rents due for the said rooms in the bill alledged, nor being
able to sustain, repair, and amend the said rooms," etc.;[157] the natural
inference from which is that for a time the playhouse stood unused. The
widow, of course, was anxious to sublet the building to some one who could
make use of it as a playhouse; and on December 25, 1580, she addressed a
letter to Sir William More asking his written permission to make such a
disposal of the lease. The letter has a pathetic interest that justifies its
insertion here:
To the right worshipful Sir William More, Knight, at his house near
Guilford, give these with speed.
Right worshipful Sir:
After my humble commendations, and my duty also remembered—where it
hath pleased your worship to grant unto my husband in his life time one
lease of your house within the Blackfriars, for the term of twenty-one years,
with a proviso in the end thereof that he cannot neither let nor set the same
without your worship's consent under your hand in writing. And now for
that it hath pleased God to call my said husband unto His mercy, having left
behind him the charge of ten small children upon my hand, and my husband
besides greatly indebted, not having the revenue of one groat any way

coming in, but by making the best I may of such things as he hath left
behind him, to relieve my little ones. May it therefore please your worship,
of your abundant clemency and accustomed goodness, to consider a poor
widow's distressed estate, and for God's cause to comfort her with your
worship's warrant under your hand to let and set the same to my best
comodity during the term of years in the said lease contained, not doing any
waste. In all which doing, I shall evermore most abundantly pray unto God
for the preservation of your worship's long continuance. From Grenwich,
the twenty-fifth of December,
By a poor and sorrowful widow,
Anne Farrant.[158]
Whether she secured in writing the permission she requested we do not
know. Four years later More said that she did not. Possibly, however, she
was orally given to understand that she might transfer the lease to her
husband's former partner in the enterprise, William Hunnis.[159] Hunnis
naturally was eager to make use of the building in preparation for the
Christmas plays at Court. At some date before September 19, he secured the
use of the playhouse on a temporary agreement with the widow; but in
order to avoid any difficulty with More, he interviewed the latter, and
presented a letter of recommendation from the Earl of Leicester. This letter
has been preserved among Sir William's papers:
Sir William More:
Whereas my friend, Mr. Hunnis, this bearer, informeth me that he hath of
late bought of Farrant's widow her lease of that house in Blackfriars which
you made to her husband, deceased, and means there to practice the Queen's
Children of the Chapel, being now in his charge, in like sort as his
predecessor did, for the better training them to do Her Majesty's service; he
is now a suitor to me to recommend him to your good favour—which I do
very heartily, as one that I wish right well unto, and will give you thanks for
any continuance or friendship you shall show him for the furtherance of this
his honest request. And thus, with my hearty commendations, I wish you
right heartily well to fare. From the Court, this nineteenth of September,
1581.

Your very friend,
R. Leicester.[160]
The result of this interview we do not know. But on December 20
following, the widow made a formal lease of the property to William
Hunnis and John Newman, at a rental of £20 13s. 4d. a year, an increase of
£6 13s. 4d. over the rental she had to pay More. She required of them a
bond of £100 to guarantee their performance of all the covenants of the
lease. Thereupon the theatre under Hunnis and Newman resumed its career
—if, indeed, this had ever been seriously interrupted.
In the course of time, More's anxiety to recover possession of the hall seems
to have increased. The quarterly payments were not promptly met by the
widow, and the repairs on the building were not made to his satisfaction.
Probably through fear of the increasing dissatisfaction on the part of More,
Hunnis and Newman transferred their lease, in 1583, to a young Welsh
scrivener, Henry Evans, who had become interested in dramatic affairs.
This transfer of the lease without More's written consent was a second clear
breach of the original contract, and it gave More exactly the opportunity he
sought. Accordingly, he declared the original lease to Farrant void, and
made a new lease of the house "unto his own man, Thomas Smallpiece, to
try the said Evans his right." But Evans, being a lawyer, knew how to take
care of himself. He "demurred in law," and "kept the same in his hands with
long delays."
The widow, alarmed at the prospect of losing her lease, brought suit, in
December, 1583, against Hunnis and Newman separately for the forfeiture
of their several bonds of £100, contending that they had not paid promptly
according to their agreement, and had not kept the building in proper repair.
Hunnis and Newman separately brought suit in the Court of Requests for
relief against the widow's suits. Meanwhile More was demanding judgment
against Evans. Hunnis, it seems, carried his troubles to the Court and there
sought help. Queen Elizabeth could take no direct action, because Sir
William More was a good friend of hers, who had entertained her in his
home. But she might enlist the aid of one of her noblemen who were
interested in the drama. However this was, the young Earl of Oxford,
himself a playwright and the patron of a troupe of boy-actors, came to the

rescue of the theatre. He bought the lease of the building from Evans, and
undertook to reorganize its affairs. To Hunnis's twelve Children of the
Chapel he added the Children of St. Paul's Cathedral, making thus a
company of adequate size. He retained Hunnis, no doubt, as one of the
trainers of the Boys, and he kept Evans as manager of the troupe. Moreover,
shortly after the purchase, probably in June, 1583, he made a free gift of the
lease to his private secretary, John Lyly, a young man who had recently won
fame with the first English novel, Euphues. The object of this, like the
preceding transfers of title, it seems, was to put as many legal blocks in the
path of Sir William More as possible. More realized this, and complained
specifically that "the title was posted from one to another"; yet he had
firmly made up his mind to recover the property, and in spite of Oxford's
interference, he instructed his "learned council" to "demand judgment."
Meanwhile the dramatic organization at Blackfriars continued under the
direction of Hunnis, Evans, and Lyly, with the Earl of Oxford as patron. Not
only was Lyly the proprietor of the theatre, but he attempted to supply it
with the necessary plays. He had already shown his power to tell in
effective prose a pleasing love romance. That power he now turned to the
production of his first play, written in haste for the Christmas festivities.
The play, Alexander and Campaspe, was presented before Her Majesty on
January 1, 1584, and at Blackfriars, with great applause. Lyly's second play,
Sapho and Phao, was produced at Court on March 3, following, and also at
Blackfriars before the general public.
But at the Easter term, 1584, Sir William More got judgment in his favor.
The widow begged Sir Francis Walsingham to intercede in her behalf,
declaring that the loss of the lease "might be her utter undoing."[161]
Walsingham sent the letter to More, and apparently urged a consideration of
her case. More, however, refused to yield. He banished Lyly, Hunnis,
Evans, and the Children from the "great upper hall," and reconverted the
building into tenements.

CHAPTER VI
ST. PAUL’S

A S shown in the preceding chapter, not only were the Children of the
Chapel Royal and of Windsor called upon to entertain the Queen with
dramatic performances, but the Children of St. Paul's were also expected to
amuse their sovereign on occasion. And following the example of the
Children of the Chapel and of Windsor in giving performances before the
public in Blackfriars, the Paul's Boys soon began to give such performances
in a building near the Cathedral.[162] The building so employed was
doubtless one of the structures owned by the Church. Burbage and
Heminges refer to it as "the said house near St. Paul's Church."[163] Richard
Flecknoe, in A Discourse of the English Stage (1664), places it "behind the
Convocation-house in Paul's";[164] and Howes, in his continuation of Stow's
Annals (1631), says that it was the "singing-school" of the Cathedral.[165]
That the auditorium was small we may well believe. So was the stage.
Certain speakers in the Induction to What You Will, acted at Paul's in 1600,
say: "Let's place ourselves within the curtains, for, good faith, the stage is
so very little, we shall wrong the general eye else very much." Both Fleay
and Lawrence[166] contend that the building was "round, like the Globe,"
and as evidence they cite the Prologue to Marston's Antonio's Revenge,
acted at Paul's in 1600, in which the phrases "within this round" and "within
this ring" are applied to the theatre. The phrases, however, may have
reference merely to the circular disposition of the benches about the stage.
That high prices of admission to the little theatre were charged we learn
from a marginal note in Pappe with an Hatchet (1589), which states that if a
tragedy "be showed at Paul's, it will cost you four pence; at the Theatre two
pence."[167] The Children, indeed, catered to a very select public. Persons
who went thither were gentle by birth and by behavior as well; and
playwrights, we are told, could always feel sure there of the "calm attention
of a choice audience."[168] Lyly, in the Prologue to Midas, acted at Paul's in
1589, says: "Only this doth encourage us, that presenting our studies before

Gentlemen, though they receive an inward dislike, we shall not be hissed
with an open disgrace." Things were quite otherwise in the public theatres
of Shoreditch and the Bankside.
Under the direction of their master, Sebastian Westcott, the Boys acted
before the public at least as early as 1578,[169] for in December of that year
the Privy Council ordered the Lord Mayor to permit them to "exercise
plays" within the city;[170] and Stephen Gosson, in his Plays Confuted,
written soon afterwards, mentions Cupid and Psyche as having been
recently "plaid at Paules."
Westcott died in 1582, and was succeeded by Thomas Gyles. Shortly after
this we find the Children of Paul's acting publicly with the Children of the
Chapel Royal at the little theatre in Blackfriars. For them John Lyly wrote
his two earliest plays, Campaspe and Sapho and Phao, as the title-pages
clearly state. But their stay at Blackfriars was short. When in 1584 Sir
William More closed up the theatre there, they fell back upon their singing-
school as the place for their public performances.
At the same time the Queen became greatly interested in promoting their
dramatic activities. To their master, Thomas Gyles, she issued, in April,
1585, a special commission "to take up apt and meet children" wherever he
could find them. It was customary for the Queen to issue such a
commission to the masters of her two private chapels, but never before, or
afterwards, had this power to impress children been conferred upon a
person not directly connected with the royal choristers. Its issuance to Gyles
in 1585 clearly indicates the Queen's interest in the Paul's Boys as actors,
and her expectation of being frequently entertained by them. And to
promote her plans still further, she appointed the successful playwright John
Lyly as their vice-master, with the understanding, no doubt, that he was to
keep them—and her—supplied with plays. This he did, for all his comedies,
except the two just mentioned, were written for the Cathedral Children, and
were acted by them at Court, and in their little theatre "behind the
Convocation House."
Unfortunately under Lyly's leadership the Boys became involved in the
bitter Martin Marprelate controversy, for which they were suppressed near
the end of 1590. The printer of Lyly's Endimion, in 1591, says to the reader:

"Since the plays in Paul's were dissolved, there are certain comedies come
to my hands by chance, which were presented before Her Majesty at several
times by the Children of Paul's."
Exactly how long the Children were restrained it is hard to determine. In
1596 Thomas Nash, in Have With You to Saffron Walden, expressed a desire
to see "the plays at Paul's up again." Mr. Wallace thinks they may have been
allowed "up again" in 1598;[171] Fleay, in 1599 or 1600;[172] the evidence,
however, points, I think, to the spring or early summer of 1600. The
Children began, naturally, with old plays, "musty fopperies of antiquity";
the first, or one of the first, new plays they presented was Marston's Jack
Drum's Entertainment, the date of which can be determined within narrow
limits. References to Kempe's Morris, which was danced in February, 1600,
as being still a common topic of conversation, and the entry of the play in
the Stationers' Registers on September 8, 1600, point to the spring or early
summer of 1600 as the date of composition. This makes very significant the
following passage in the play referring to the Paul's Boys as just beginning
to act again after their long inhibition:
Sir Ed. I saw the Children of Paul's last night,
And troth they pleas'd me pretty, pretty well.
The Apes in time will do it handsomely.

Plan. S'faith, I like the audience that frequenteth
there
With much applause. A man shall not be choak't
With the stench of garlic, nor be pasted
To the barmy jacket of a beer-brewer.

Bra. Ju. 'Tis a good, gentle audience; and I hope
the Boys
Will come one day into the Court of Requests.
Shortly after this the Boys were indeed called "into the Court of Requests,"
for on New Year's Day, 1601, they were summoned to present a play before
Her Majesty.

Their master now was Edward Pierce, who had succeeded Thomas Gyles.
In 1605 the experienced Edward Kirkham, driven from the management of
the Blackfriars Theatre, became an assistant to Pierce in the management of
Paul's. In this capacity we find him in 1606 receiving the payment for the
two performances of the Boys at Court that year.[173]
Among the playwrights engaged by Pierce to write for Paul's were Marston,
Middleton, Chapman, Dekker, Webster, and Beaumont; and, as a result,
some of the most interesting dramas of the period were first acted on the
small stage of the singing-school. Details in the history of the Children,
however, are few. We find an occasional notice of their appearance at Court,
but our record of them is mainly secured from the title-pages of their plays.
The last notice of a performance by them is as follows: "On the 30th of
July, 1606, the youths of Paul's, commonly called the Children of Paul's,
played before the two Kings [of England and of Denmark] a play called
Abuses, containing both a comedy and a tragedy, at which the Kings
seemed to take great delight and be much pleased."[174]
The reason why the Children ceased to act is made clear in the lawsuit of
Keysar v. Burbage et al., recently discovered and printed by Mr. Wallace.
[175] From this we learn that when Rosseter became manager of the
Children of the Queen's Revels at the private playhouse of Whitefriars in
1609, he undertook to increase his profits by securing a monopoly both of
child-acting and of private theatres. Blackfriars had been deserted, and the
only other private theatre then in existence was Paul's. So Rosseter agreed
to pay Pierce a dead rent of £20 a year to keep the Paul's playhouse closed:
One Mr. Rosseter, a partner of the said complainant, dealt for and
compounded with the said Mr. Pierce to the only benefit of him, the said
Mr. Rosseter, the now complainant, the rest of their partners and Company
[at the Whitefriars] ... that thereby they might ... advance their gains and
profit to be had and made in their said house in the Whitefriars, that there
might be a cessation of playing and plays to be acted in the said house near
St. Paul's Church aforesaid, for which the said Rosseter compounded with
the said Pierce to give him the said Pierce twenty pounds per annum.[176]
In this attempt to secure a monopoly in private playhouses Rosseter was
foiled by the coming of Shakespeare's troupe to the Blackfriars; but the

King's Men readily agreed to join in the payment of the dead rent to Pierce,
for it was to their advantage also to eliminate competition.
The agreement which Rosseter secured from Pierce was binding "for one
whole year"; whether it was renewed we do not know, but the Children
never again acted in "their house near St. Paul's Church."

CHAPTER VII
THE BANKSIDE AND THE BEAR GARDEN

F ROM time out of mind the suburb of London known as "the
Bankside"—the term was loosely applied to all the region south of the
river and west of the bridge—had been identified with sports and pastimes.
On Sundays, holidays, and other festive occasions, the citizens, their wives,
and their apprentices were accustomed to seek outdoor entertainment across
the river, going thither in boats (of which there was an incredible number,
converting "the silver sliding Thames" almost into a Venetian Grand Canal),
or strolling on foot over old London Bridge. On the Bankside the visitors
could find maypoles for dancing, butts for the practice of archery, and broad
fields for athletic games; or, if so disposed, they could visit bull-baitings,
bear-baitings, fairs, stage-plays, shows, motions, and other amusements of a
similar sort.
Not all the attractions of the Bankside, however, were so innocent. For here,
in a long row bordering the river's edge, were situated the famous stews of
the city, licensed by authority of the Bishop of Winchester; and along with
the stews, of course, such places as thrive in a district devoted to vice—
houses for gambling, for coney-catching, and for evil practices of various
sorts. The less said of this feature of the Bankside the better.
More needs to be said of the bull- and bear-baiting, which probably
constituted the chief amusement of the crowds from the city, and which was
later closely associated with the drama and with playhouses. This sport,
now surviving in the bull-fights of Spain and of certain Spanish-American
countries, was in former times one of the most popular species of
entertainment cultivated by the English. Even so early as 1174, William
Fitz-Stephen, in his Descriptio Nobilissimæ Ciuitatis Londoniæ, under the
heading De Ludis, records that the London citizens diverted themselves on
holiday occasions with the baiting of beasts, when "strong horn-goring
bulls, or immense bears, contend fiercely with dogs that are pitted against

them."[177] In some towns the law required that bulls intended for the
butcher-shop should first be baited for the amusement of the public before
being led to the slaughter-house. Erasmus speaks of the "many herds of
bears" which he saw in England "maintained for the purpose of baiting."
The baiting was accomplished by tying the bulls or bears to stakes, or when
possible releasing them in an amphitheatre, and pitting against them bull-
dogs, bred through centuries for strength and ferocity. Occasionally other
animals, as ponies and apes, were brought into the fight, and the sport was
varied in miscellaneous ways. Some of the animals, by unusual courage or
success, endeared themselves to the heart of the sporting public. Harry
Hunks, George Stone, and Sacarson were famous bears in Shakespeare's
time; and the names of many of the "game bulls" and "mastiff dogs"
became household words throughout London.

THE BANKSIDE
Showing the Bear- and Bull-baiting Rings. (From the
Map of London by Braun and Hogenbergius,
representing the city in 1554-1558.)
[Enlarge]

THE BANKSIDE
This was the second district of London used for public
playhouses. Notice the amphitheatres for animal-baiting.
(From William Smith's MS. of the Description of
England, c. 1580.)
[Enlarge]

The home of this popular sport was the Bankside. The earliest extant map of
Southwark,[178] drawn about 1542, shows in the very centre of High Street,
just opposite London Bridge, a circular amphitheatre marked "The Bull
Ring"; and doubtless there were other places along the river devoted to the
same purpose. The baiting of bears was more closely identified with the
Manor of Paris Garden,[179] that section of the Bank lying to the west of the
Clink, over towards the marshes of Lambeth. The association of bear-
baiting with this particular section was probably due to the fact that in early
days the butchers of London used a part of the Manor of Paris Garden for
the disposal of their offal,[180] and the entrails and other refuse from the
slaughtered beasts furnished cheap and abundant food for the bears and

dogs. The Earl of Manchester wrote to the Lord Mayor and the Common
Council, in 1664, that he had been informed by the master of His Majesty's
Game of Bears and Bulls, and others, that "the Butcher's Company had
formerly caused all their offal in Eastcheap and Newgate Market to be
conveyed by the beadle of the Company unto two barrow houses,
conveniently placed on the river side, for the provision and feeding of the
King's Game of Bears."

THE BEAR- AND BULL-BAITING RINGS
These "rings" later gave place to the Bear Garden.
(From Agas's Map of London, representing the city as it
was about 1560.)

At first, apparently, the baiting of bears was held in open places,[181] with
the bear tied to a stake and the spectators crowding around, or at best
standing on temporary scaffolds. But later, permanent amphitheatres were
provided. In Braun and Hogenberg's Map of London, drawn between 1554
and 1558, and printed in 1572, we find two well-appointed amphitheatres,
with stables and kennels attached, labeled respectively "The Bear Baiting"
and "The Bull Baiting." When these amphitheatres were erected we do not

know, but probably they do not antedate by much the middle of the century.
[182]

It is to be noted that at this time neither "The Bull Baiting" nor "The Bear
Baiting" is in the Manor of Paris Garden, but close by in the Liberty of the
Clink. Yet the name "Paris Garden" continued to be used of the animal-
baiting place for a century and more. Possibly the identification of bear-
baiting with Paris Garden was of such long standing that Londoners could
not readily adjust themselves to the change; they at first confused the terms
"Bear Garden" and "Paris Garden," and later extended the term "Paris
Garden" to include that section of the Clink devoted to the baiting of
animals.
The two amphitheatres, it seems, were used until 1583, when a serious
catastrophe put an end to one if not both of them. Stow, in his Annals, gives
the following account of the accident:
The same thirteenth day of January, being Sunday, about four of the clock
in the afternoon, the old and underpropped scaffolds round about the Bear
Garden, commonly called Paris Garden, on the south side of the river of
Thamis over against the city of London, overcharged with people, fell
suddenly down, whereby to the number of eight persons, men and women,
were slain, and many others sore hurt and bruised to the shortening of their
lives.[183]
Stubbes, the Puritan, writes in his more heightened style:
Upon the 13 day of January last, being the Saboth day, Anno 1583, the
people, men, women, and children, both young and old, an infinite number,
flocking to those infamous places where these wicked exercises are usually
practised (for they have their courts, gardens, and yards for the same
purpose), when they were all come together and mounted aloft upon their
scaffolds and galleries, and in the midst of all their jolity and pastime, all
the whole building (not one stick standing) fell down with a most wonderful
and fearful confusion. So that either two or three hundred men, women, and
children (by estimation), whereof seven were killed dead, some were
wounded, some lamed, and otherwise bruised and crushed almost to death.
Some had their brains dashed out, some their heads all to-squashed, some

their legs broken, some their arms, some their backs, some their shoulders,
some one hurt, some another.[184]
The building, which the Reverend John Field described as "old and rotten,"
[185] was a complete ruin; "not a stick was left so high as the bear was
fastened to." The Puritan preachers loudly denounced the unholy spectacles,
pointing to the catastrophe as a clear warning from the Almighty; and the
city authorities earnestly besought the Privy Council to put an end to such
performances. Yet the owners of the building set to work at once, and soon
had erected a new house, stronger and larger and more pretentious than
before. The Lord Mayor, in some indignation, wrote to the Privy Council on
July 3, 1583, that "the scaffolds are new builded, and the multitudes on the
Saboth day called together in most excessive number."[186]
The New Bear Garden, octagonal in form, was probably modeled after the
playhouses in Shoreditch, and made in all respects superior to the old
amphitheatre which it supplanted.[187] We find that it was reckoned among
the sights of the city, and was exhibited to distinguished foreign visitors.
For example, when Sir Walter Raleigh undertook to entertain the French
Ambassador, he carried him to view the monuments in Westminster Abbey
and to see the new Bear Garden.

THE BEAR GARDEN
From Visscher's Map of London, published in 1616, but
representing the city as it was several years earlier.

A picture of the building is to be seen in the Hondius View of London, 1610
(see page 149), and in the small inset views from the title-pages of
Holland's Herωologia, 1620, and Baker's Chronicle, 1643 (see page 147),
all three of which probably go back to a view of London made between
1587 and 1597, and now lost. Another representation of the structure is to
be seen in the Delaram portrait of King James, along with the Rose and the
Globe (see opposite page 246). The best representation of the building,
however, is in Visscher's View of London (see page 127), printed in 1616,
but drawn several years earlier.[188]
Although we are not directly concerned with the history of the Bear Garden,
[189] a few descriptions of "the royal game of bears, bulls, and dogs" drawn

from contemporary sources will be of interest and of specific value for the
discussion of the Hope Playhouse—itself both a bear garden and a theatre.
Robert Laneham, in his Description of the Entertainment at Kenilworth
(1575), writes thus of a baiting of bears before the Queen:
Well, syr, the Bearz wear brought foorth intoo the Coourt, the dogs set too
them.... It was a Sport very pleazaunt of theez beastz; to see the bear with
his pink nyez leering after hiz enemiez approoch, the nimbleness & wayt of
ye dog to take his auauntage, and the fors & experiens of the bear agayn to
auoyd the assauts: if he war bitten in one place, how he woold pynch in an
oother to get free: that if he wear taken onez, then what shyft, with byting,
with clawing, with rooring, tossing, & tumbling he woold woork to wynd
hym self from them: and when he waz lose, to shake his earz tywse or
thryse, wyth the blud and the slauer aboout his fiznomy, waz a matter of a
goodly releef.
John Houghton, in his Collection for Improvement of Husbandry and Trade,
[190] gives a vivid account of the baiting of the bull. He says:

The bull takes great care to watch his enemy, which is a mastiff dog
(commonly used to the sport) with a short nose that his teeth may take the
better hold; this dog, if right, will creep upon his belly that he may, if
possible, get the bull by the nose; which the bull as carefully strives to
defend by laying it close to the ground, where his horns are also ready to do
what in them lies to toss the dog; and this is the true sport. But if more dogs
than one come at once, or they are cowardly and come under his legs, he
will, if he can, stamp their guts out. I believe I have seen a dog tossed by a
bull thirty, if not forty foot high; and when they are tossed, either higher or
lower, the men above strive to catch them on their shoulders, lest the fall
might mischief the dogs. They commonly lay sand about that if they fall
upon the ground it may be the easier. Notwithstanding this care a great
many dogs are killed, more have their limbs broke, and some hold so fast
that, by the bull's swinging them, their teeth are often broken out.... The true
courage and art is to hold the bull by the nose 'till he roars, which a
courageous bull scorns to do.... This is a sport the English much delight in;
and not only the baser sort, but the greatest lords and ladies.

An attendant upon the Duke of Nexara, who visited England in 1544, wrote
the following account of a bear-baiting witnessed in London:
In another part of the city we saw seven bears, some of them of great size.
They were led out every day to an enclosure, where being tied with a long
rope, large and intrepid dogs are thrown to them, in order that they may bite
and make them furious. It is no bad sport to see them fight, and the assaults
they give each other. To each of the large bears are matched three or four
dogs, which sometimes get the better and sometimes are worsted, for
besides the fierceness and great strength of the bears to defend themselves
with their teeth, they hug the dogs with their paws so tightly, that, unless the
masters came to assist them, they would be strangled by such soft
embraces. Into the same place they brought a pony with an ape fastened on
its back, and to see the animal kicking amongst the dogs, with the screams
of the ape, beholding the curs hanging from the ears and neck of the pony,
is very laughable.[191]
Orazio Busino, the chaplain of the Venetian Embassy in London, writes in
his Anglipotrida (1618):
The dogs are detached from the bear by inserting between the teeth ...
certain iron spattles with a wooden handle; whilst they take them off the
bull (keeping at a greater distance) with certain flat iron hooks which they
apply to the thighs or even to the neck of the dog, whose tail is
simultaneously dexterously seized by another of these rufflers. The bull can
hardly get at anybody, as he wears a collar round his neck with only fifteen
feet of rope, which is fastened to a stake deeply planted in the middle of the
theatre. Other rufflers are at hand with long poles to put under the dog so as
to break his fall after he has been tossed by the bull; the tips of these [poles]
are covered with thick leather to prevent them from disembowelling the
dogs. The most spirited stroke is considered to be that of the dog who seizes
the bull's lip, clinging to it and pinning the animal for some time; the
second best hit is to seize the eyebrows; the third, but far inferior, consists
in seizing the bull's ear.[192]
Paul Hentzner, the German traveler who visited London in 1598, wrote thus
of the Bear Garden:

There is still another place, built in the form of a theatre, which serves for
the baiting of bulls and bears; they are fastened behind, and then worried by
great English bull-dogs, but not without great risk to the dogs, from the
horns of the one, and the teeth of the other; and it sometimes happens they
are killed upon the spot; fresh ones are immediately supplied in the places
of those that are wounded or tired. To this entertainment there often follows
that of whipping a blinded bear, which is performed by five or six men
standing circularly with whips, which they exercise upon him without any
mercy, as he cannot escape from them because of his chain; he defends
himself with all his force and skill, throwing down all who come within his
reach, and are not active enough to get out of it, and tearing the whips out
of their hands and breaking them.
The following passage is taken from the diary of the Duke of Wirtemberg
(who visited London in 1592), "noted down daily in the most concise
manner possible, at his Highness's gracious command, by his private
secretary":[193]
On the 1st of September his Highness was shown in London the English
dogs, of which there were about 120, all kept in the same enclosure, but
each in separate kennel. In order to gratify his Highness, and at his desire,
two bears and a bull were baited; at such times you can perceive the breed
and mettle of the dogs, for although they receive serious injuries from the
bears, and are caught by the horns of the bull and tossed into the air so as
frequently to fall down again upon the horns, they do not give in, [but
fasten on the bull so firmly] that one is obliged to pull them back by the
tails and force open their jaws. Four dogs at once were set on the bull; they
however could not gain any advantage over him, for he so artfully contrived
to ward off their attacks that they could not well get at him; on the contrary,
the bull served them very scurvily by striking and beating at them.
The following is a letter from one William Faunte to Edward Alleyn, then
proprietor of the Bear Garden, regarding the sale of some game bulls:
I understood by a man which came with two bears from the garden, that you
have a desire to buy one of my bulls. I have three western bulls at this time,
but I have had very ill luck with them, for one of them hath lost his horn to
the quick, that I think he will never be able to fight again; that is my old

Star of the West: he was a very easy bull. And my bull Bevis, he hath lost
one of his eyes, but I think if you had him he would do you more hurt than
good, for I protest I think he would either throw up your dogs into the lofts,
or else ding out their brains against the grates.[194]
Finally, among the Alleyn papers of Dulwich College is an interesting bill,
or advertisement, of an afternoon's performance at the Bear Garden:
To-morrow being Thursday shall be seen at the Bear Garden on the
Bankside a great match played by the gamesters of Essex, who hath
challenged all comers whatsoever to play five dogs at the single bear for
five pounds, and also to weary a bull dead at the stake; and for your better
content [you] shall have pleasant sport with the horse and ape and whipping
of the blind bear. Vivat Rex!
In 1613 the Bear Garden was torn down, and a new and handsomer
structure erected in its place. For the history of this building the reader is
referred to the chapter on "The Hope."

CHAPTER VIII
NEWINGTON BUTTS

T HE Bankside, as the preceding chapter indicates, offered unusual
attractions to the actors. It had, indeed, long been associated with the
drama: in 1545 King Henry VIII, in a proclamation against vagabonds,
players,[195] etc., noted their "fashions commonly used at the Bank, and
such like naughty places, where they much haunt"; and in 1547 the Bishop
of Winchester made complaint that at a time when he intended to have a
dirge and mass for the late King, the actors in Southwark planned to exhibit
"a solemn play, to try who shall have the most resort, they in game or I in
earnest."[196] The players, therefore, were no strangers to "the Bank." And
when later in the century the hostility of the Common Council drove them
to seek homes in localities not under the jurisdiction of the city, the suburb
across the river offered them a suitable refuge. For, although a large portion
of Southwark was under the jurisdiction of London, certain parts were not,
notably the Liberty of the Clink and the Manor of Paris Garden, two
sections bordering the river's edge, and the district of Newington lying
farther back to the southwest. In these places the actors could erect their
houses and entertain the public without fear of the ordinances of the
Corporation, and without danger of interruption by puritanical Lord
Mayors.
Yet, as we have seen, the first public playhouses were erected not on the
Bankside—a "naughty" place,—but near Finsbury Field to the north of the
city; and the reasons which led to the selection of such a quiet and
respectable district have been pointed out.[197] It was inevitable, however,
that sooner or later a playhouse should make its appearance in the region to
the south of the city. And at an early date—how early it is impossible to say,
but probably not long after the erection of the Theatre and the Curtain—
there appeared in Southwark a building specially devoted to the use of
players. Whether it was a new structure modeled after the theatres of
Shoreditch, or merely an old building converted into a playhouse, we

cannot say. It seems to have been something more than an inn-yard fitted up
for dramatic purposes, and yet something less than the "sumptuous theatre
houses" erected "on purpose" for plays to the north of the city.
Whatever the building was, it was situated at Newington Butts (a place so
called from the butts for archery anciently erected there), and,
unfortunately, at a considerable distance from the river. Exactly how far
playgoers from London had to walk to reach the theatre after crossing over
the river we do not know; but the Privy Council speaks of "the tediousness
of the way" thither,[198] and Stow notes that the parish church of Newington
was "distant one mile from London Bridge." Further information about the
building—its exact situation, its size, its exterior shape, its interior
arrangement, and such-like details—is wholly lacking.
Nor are we much better off in regard to its ownership, management, and
general history. This seems to be due to the fact that it was not intimately
associated with any of the more important London troupes; and to the fact
that after a few unsuccessful years it ceased to exist. Below I have recorded
the few and scattered references which constitute our meagre knowledge of
its history.
The first passage cited may refer to the playhouse at Newington Butts. It is
an order of the Privy Council, May 13, 1580, thus summarized by the clerk:
A letter to the Justices of Peace of the County of Surrey, that whereas their
Lordships do understand that notwithstanding their late order given to the
Lord Mayor to forbid all plays within and about the city until Michaelmas
next for avoiding of infection, nevertheless certain players do play sundry
days every week at Newington Butts in that part of Surrey without the
jurisdiction of the said Lord Mayor, contrary to their Lordship's order; their
Lordships require the Justices not only to inquire who they be that disobey
their commandment in that behalf, and not only to forbid them expressly for
playing in any of these remote places near unto the city until Michaelmas,
but to have regard that within the precinct of Surrey none be permitted to
play; if any do, to commit them and to advertise them, &c.[199]
The next passage clearly refers to "the theatre" at Newington Butts. On May
11, 1586, the Privy Council dispatched a letter to the Lord Mayor, which the
clerk thus summarized:

A letter to the Lord Mayor: his Lordship is desired, according to his request
made to their Lordships by his letters of the vii th of this present, to give
order for the restraining of plays and interludes within and about the city of
London, for the avoiding of infection feared to grow and increase this time
of summer by the common assemblies of people at those places; and that
their Lordships have taken the like order for the prohibiting of the use of
plays at the theatre, and the other places about Newington, out of his
charge.[200]
Chalmers[201] thought the word "theatre" was used of the Newington
Playhouse, and for this he was taken to task by Collier,[202] who says: "He
confounds it with the playhouse emphatically called 'the Theatre' in
Shoreditch; and on consulting the Register, we find that no such playhouse
as the Newington Theatre is there spoken of." But Chalmers was right; for
if we consult the "Registers" we find the following letter, dispatched to the
Justices of Surrey on the very same day that the letter just quoted was sent
to the Lord Mayor:
A letter to the Justices of Surrey, that according to such direction as hath
been given by their Lordships to the Lord Mayor to restrain and inhibit the
use of plays and interludes in public places in and about the City of London,
in respect of the heat of the year now drawing on, for the avoiding of the
infection like to grow and increase by the ordinary assemblies of the people
to those places, they are also required in like sort to take order that the plays
and assemblies of the people at the theatre or any other places about
Newington be forthwith restrained and forborn as aforesaid, &c.[203]
The phrase, "the theatre or any other places about Newington," when
addressed to the "Justices of the Peace of Surrey" could refer only to the
Newington Butts Playhouse.
On June 23, 1592, because of a riot in Southwark, the Privy Council closed
all the playhouses in and about London.[204] Shortly after this the Lord
Strange's Men, who were then occupying the Rose, petitioned the Council
to be allowed to resume acting in their playhouse. The Council granted
them instead permission to act three times a week at Newington Butts; but
the players, not relishing this proposal, chose rather to travel in the
provinces. Soon finding that they could not make their expenses in the

country, they returned to London, and again appealed to the Privy Council
to be allowed to perform at the Rose.[205] The warrant issued by the Council
in reply to this second petition tells us for the first time something definite
about the Newington Butts Theatre:
To the Justices, Bailiffs, Constables, and Others to Whom it Shall
Appertain:
Whereas not long since, upon some considerations, we did restrain the Lord
Strange his servants from playing at the Rose on the Bankside, and
enjoyned them to play three days [a week] at Newington Butts; now
forasmuch as we are satisfied that by reason of the tediousness of the way,
and that of long time plays have not there been used on working days, and
for that a number of poor watermen are thereby relieved, you shall permit
and suffer them, or any other, there [at the Rose] to exercise themselves in
such sort as they have done heretofore, and that the Rose may be at liberty
without any restraint so long as it shall be free from infection, any
commandment from us heretofore to the contrary notwithstanding.[206]
From this warrant we learn that so early as 1592 the Newington house was
almost deserted, and that "of long time" plays had been given there only
occasionally.
Two years later, on June 3, 1594, Henslowe sent the Admiral's and the
Chamberlain's Men to play temporarily at the half-deserted old playhouse,
probably in order to give opportunity for needed repairs at the Rose.[207]
The section of his Diary, under the heading, "In the name of god Amen
begininge at newington my Lord Admeralle men & my Lord Chamberlen
men As followethe 1594," constitutes the fullest and clearest—and, one
may add, the most illustrious—chapter in the history of this obscure
building; for although it extends over only ten days, it tells us that Edward
Alleyn, Richard Burbage, and William Shakespeare then trod the
Newington stage, and it records the performance there of such plays as The
Jew of Malta, Andronicus, The Taming of a Shrew, and Hamlet.
We next hear of the building near the end of the century: in 1599, says Mr.
Wallace, it was "only a memory, as shown by a contemporary record to be
published later."[208]

Two other references close the history. In A Woman is a Weathercock, iii, iii,
printed in 1612, but written earlier, one of the actors exclaims of an
insufferable pun: "O Newington Conceit!" The fact that this sneer is the
only reference to the Newington Playhouse found in contemporary
literature is a commentary on the low esteem in which the building was held
by the Elizabethans, and its relative unimportance for the history of the
drama.
The last notice is in Howe's continuation of Stow's Annals (1631).[209] After
enumerating all the theatres built in London and the suburbs "within the
space of three-score years," he adds vaguely, "besides one in former time at
Newington Butts."

CHAPTER IX
THE ROSE

D OUBTLESS one reason for the obscure rôle which the theatre at
Newington played in the history of the drama was "the tediousness of
the way" thither. The Rose, the second theatre to make its appearance in
Surrey, was much more conveniently situated with respect to the city, for it
was erected in the Liberty of the Clink and very near the river's edge. As a
result, it quickly attained popularity with London playgoers, and before the
end of the century had caused the centre of dramatic activity to be shifted
from Finsbury Field to the Bank.
The builder of the Rose was one Philip Henslowe, then, so far as our
evidence goes, unknown to the dramatic world, but destined soon to
become the greatest theatrical proprietor and manager of the Tudor-Stuart
age. We find him living on the Bankside and in the Liberty of the Clink at
least as early as 1577. At first, so we are told, he was "but a poor man,"
described as "servant ... unto one Mr. Woodward." Upon the death of his
employer, Woodward, he married the widow, Agnes Woodward, and thus
came into the possession of considerable property. "All his wealth came by
her," swore the charwoman Joan Horton. This, however, simply means that
Henslowe obtained his original capital by his marriage; for, although very
illiterate, he was shrewd in handling money, and he quickly amassed "his
wealth" through innumerable business ventures.
As one of these ventures, no doubt, he leased from the Parish of St.
Mildred, on March 24, 1585, a small piece of property on the Bankside
known as "The Little Rose." "Among the early surveys, 1 Edward VI," says
Rendle, "we see that this was not merely a name—the place was a veritable
Rose Garden."[210] At the time of the lease the property is described as
consisting of a dwelling-house called "The Rose," "two gardens adjoining
the same" consisting of "void ground," and at least one other small building.
The dwelling-house Henslowe probably leased as a brothel—for this was

the district of the stews; and the small building mentioned above, situated at
the south end of one of the gardens, he let to a London grocer named John
Cholmley, who used it "to keep victualing in."[211]
Not satisfied, however, with the income from these two buildings,
Henslowe a year and a half later was planning to utilize a part of the "void
ground" for the erection of a theatre. What interested him in the drama we
do not know, but we may suppose that the same reason which led Burbage,
Brayne, Lanman, and others to build playhouses influenced him, namely,
the prospect of "great gains to ensue therefrom."[212]
For the site of his proposed playhouse he allotted a small parcel of ground
ninety-four feet square and lying in the corner formed by Rose Alley and
Maiden Lane (see page 245). Then he interested in the enterprise his tenant
Cholmley, for, it seems, he did not wish to undertake so expensive and
precarious a venture without sharing the risk with another. On January 10,
1587, he and Cholmley signed a formal deed of partnership, according to
which the playhouse was to be erected at once and at the sole cost of
Henslowe; Cholmley, however, was to have from the beginning a half-
interest in the building, paying for his share by installments of £25 10s. a
quarter for a period of eight years and three months.[213] The total sum to be
paid by Cholmley, £816, possibly represents the estimated cost of the
building and its full equipment, plus rental on the land.
The building is referred to in the deed of January 10 as "a playhouse now in
framing and shortly to be erected and set up." Doubtless it was ready for
occupancy early in the summer. That performances were given there before
the close of the year is at least indicated by an order of the Privy Council
dated October 29, 1587:
A letter to the Justices of Surrey, that whereas the inhabitants of Southwark
had complained unto their Lordships declaring that the order by their
Lordships set down for the restraining of plays and interludes within that
county on the Sabbath Days is not observed, and especially within the
Liberty of the Clink, and in the Parish of St. Saviours....[214]
The Rose was in "the Liberty of the Clink and in the Parish of St. Saviours,"
and so far as we have any evidence it was the only place there devoted to
plays. Moreover, a distinct reference to it by name appears in the Sewer

Records in April, 1588, at which date the building is described as "new."
[215]

In Norden's Map of London (1593), the Rose and the adjacent Bear Garden
are correctly placed with respect to each other, but are crudely drawn (see
page 147). The representation of both as circular—the Bear Garden, we
know, was polygonal—was due merely to this crudeness; yet the Rose
seems to have been indeed circular in shape, "the Bankside's round-house"
referred to in Tom Tell Troth's Message. The building is so pictured in the
Hondius map of 1610 (see page 149), and in the inset maps on the title-
pages of Holland's Herωologia, 1620, and Baker's Chronicle, 1643 (see
page 147), all three of which apparently go back to an early map of London
now lost. The building is again pictured as circular, with the Bear Garden at
the left and the Globe at the right, in the Delaram portrait of King James
(opposite page 246).[216]
From Henslowe's Diary we learn that the playhouse was of timber, the
exterior of lath and plaster, the roof of thatch; and that it had a yard,
galleries, a stage, a tiring-house, heavens, and a flagpole. Thus it differed in
no essential way from the playhouses already erected in Shoreditch or
subsequently erected on the Bank.[217]

THE BEAR GARDEN AND THE ROSE
The upper view, from Norden's Map of London, 1593,
shows the relative position of the Bear Garden and Rose.
The lower view, an inset from the title-page of Baker's
Chronicle, 1643, also shows the relative position, and
gives a more detailed picture of the two structures. The
Bear Garden is represented as polygonal, the Rose as
circular.

What troupes of actors used the Rose during the first five years of its
existence we do not know; indeed, until 1592 we hear nothing further of the
playhouse. As a result, some scholars have wrongly inferred that the
building was not erected until the spring of 1592.[218] It seems likely, as Mr.
Greg suggests, that Henslowe and Cholmley let the house to some company
of players at a stipulated annual rent, and so had nothing to do with the
management of its finances. This would explain the complete absence of
references to the playhouse in Henslowe's accounts.

During this obscure period of five years Cholmley disappears from the
history of the Rose. It may be that he withdrew from the undertaking at the
outset;[219] it may be that he failed to meet his payments, and so forfeited
his moiety; or it may be that, becoming dissatisfied with his bargain, he sold
out to Henslowe. Whatever the cause, his interest in the playhouse passed
over to Henslowe, who appears henceforth as the sole proprietor.

THE BEAR GARDEN AND THE ROSE
A small inset view of London, from the map entitled
"The Kingdome of Great Britaine and Ireland," printed
in Speed's Atlas (1611). The map is dated 1610, but the
inset view of London was copied, like the inset views to
Baker's Chronicle (1643) and to Holland's Herωologia
(1620), from a lost map of London drawn about 1589-
1599.

In the spring of 1592 the building was in need of repairs, and Henslowe
spent a large sum of money in thoroughly overhauling it.[220] The lathing
and plastering of the exterior were done over, the roof was re-thatched, new
rafters were put in, and much heavy timber was used, indicating important
structural alterations. In addition, the stage was painted, the lord's room and

the tiring-house were provided with ceilings, a new flagpole was erected,
and other improvements were introduced. Clearly an attempt was made to
render the building not only stronger, but also more attractive in appearance
and more modern in equipment.
The immediate occasion for these extensive alterations and repairs was the
engagement of Lord Strange's Men to occupy the playhouse under
Henslowe's management. This excellent troupe, with Edward Alleyn at its
head, was perhaps the best company of actors then in London. It later
became the Lord Chamberlain's Company, with which Shakespeare was
identified; even at this early date, although documentary proof is lacking, he
may have been numbered among its obscure members. The troupe opened
the Rose on February 19, 1592, with a performance of Robert Greene's
Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, and followed this with many famous plays,
such as The Spanish Tragedy, The Jew of Malta, Orlando Furioso, and
Henry VI.[221]
The coming of Lord Strange's Men to the Rose led to a close friendship
between Henslowe and Edward Alleyn, then twenty-six years of age, and at
the height of his fame as an actor, a friendship which was cemented in the
autumn by Alleyn's marriage to Henslowe's stepdaughter (and only child)
Joan Woodward. The two men, it seems, were thoroughly congenial, and
their common interests led to the formation of a business partnership which
soon became the most important single force in the theatrical life of the
time.
Lord Strange's Men continued to act at the Rose from February 19 until
June 23, 1592, when the Privy Council, because of a serious riot in
Southwark, ordered the closing of all playhouses in and about London until
Michaelmas following. Strange's Men very soon petitioned the Council to
be allowed to reopen their playhouse; the Council, in reply, compromised
by granting them permission to act three days a week at Newington Butts.
This, however, did not please the actors, and they started on a tour of the
provinces. In a short time, discovering that they could not pay their
expenses on the road, they again petitioned for permission to open the Rose,
complaining that "our company is great, and thereby our charge intolerable
in traveling the country," and calling attention to the fact that "the use of our
playhouse on the Bankside, by reason of the passage to and from the same

by water, is a great relief to the poor watermen there."[222] The petition was
accompanied by a supporting petition from the watermen asking the
Council "for God's sake and in the way of charity to respect us your poor
watermen." As a result of these petitions the Council gave permission,
probably late in August, 1592, for the reopening of the playhouse.[223] But
before Strange's Men could take advantage of this permission, a severe
outbreak of the plague caused a general inhibition of acting, and not until
December 29, 1592, were they able to resume their performances at the
Rose. A month later the plague broke out again with unusual severity, and
on February 1, 1593, playing was again inhibited. The year rapidly
developed into one of the worst plague-years in the history of the city;
between ten and fifteen thousand persons died of the epidemic, and most of
the London companies, including Strange's Men, went on an extended tour
of the country.
Near the close of the year, and while Strange's Men were still traveling, the
plague temporarily subsided, and Sussex's Men, who were then in London,
secured the use of the Rose. They began to act there on December 27, 1593;
but on February 6, 1594, the plague having again become threatening,
acting was once more inhibited. This brief occupation of the Rose by
Sussex's Men was notable only for the first performance of Titus
Andronicus.[224]

JOAN WOODWARD ALLEYN
The stepdaughter and only child of Philip Henslowe,
whose marriage to the great actor Edward Alleyn led to
the Henslowe-Alleyn theatrical enterprises. The portrait
is here reproduced for the first time. (From the Dulwich
Picture Gallery, by permission.)

At Easter, April 1, Strange's Men being still absent, Henslowe allowed the
Rose to be used for eight days by "the Queen's Men and my Lord of
Sussex's together." This second brief chapter in the long and varied history
of the playhouse is interesting only for two performances of the old King
Leir.[225]
As a result of the severe plague and the long continued inhibition of acting,
there was a general confusion and subsequent reorganization of the various
London troupes. The Admiral's Men, who had been dispersed in 1591, some
joining Strange's Men, some going to travel in Germany, were brought

together again; and Edward Alleyn, who had formerly been their leader, and
who even after he became one of Strange's Men continued to describe
himself as "servant to the right honorable the Lord Admiral,"[226] was
induced to rejoin them. Alleyn thereupon brought them to the Rose, where
they began to perform on May 14, 1594. After three days, however, they
ceased, probably to allow Henslowe to make repairs or improvements on
the building.
Strange's Men also had undergone reorganization. On April 16, 1594, they
lost by death their patron, the Earl of Derby. Shortly afterwards they
secured the patronage of the Lord Chamberlain, and before June 3, 1594,
they had arrived in London and reported to their former manager,
Henslowe.
At this time, apparently, the Rose was still undergoing repairs; so Henslowe
sent both the Admiral's and the Chamberlain's Men to act at Newington
Butts, where they remained from June 3 to June 13, 1594. On June 15 the
Admiral's Men moved back to the Rose, which henceforth they occupied
alone; and the Chamberlain's Men, thus robbed of their playhouse, went to
the Theatre in Shoreditch.
During the period of Lent, 1595, Henslowe took occasion to make further
repairs on his playhouse, putting in new pales, patching the exterior with
new lath and plaster, repainting the woodwork, and otherwise furbishing up
the building. The total cost of this work was £108 10s. And shortly after, as
a part of these improvements, no doubt, he paid £7 2s. for "making the
throne in the heavens."[227]
Near the close of July, 1597, Pembroke's Men at the Swan acted Nashe's
satirical play, The Isle of Dogs, containing, it seems, a burlesque on certain
persons high in authority. As a result the Privy Council on July 28 ordered
all acting in and about London to cease until November 1, and all public
playhouses to be plucked down and ruined.[228]
The latter part of the order, happily, was not put into effect, and on October
11 the Rose was allowed to open again. The Privy Council, however,
punished the Swan and Pembroke's Company by ordering that only the
Admiral's Men at the Rose and the Chamberlain's Men at the Curtain should
henceforth be "allowed." As a consequence of this trouble with the

authorities the best actors of Pembroke's Company joined the Admiral's
Men under Henslowe. This explains the entry in the Diary: "In the name of
God, amen. The xi of October began my Lord Admiral's and my Lord
Pembroke's Men to play at my house, 1597."[229] The two companies were
very soon amalgamated, and the strong troupe thus formed continued to act
at the Rose under the name of the Admiral's Men.
The Chamberlain's Men, who in 1594 had been forced to surrender the Rose
to the Admiral's Men and move to the Theatre, and who in 1597 had been
driven from the Theatre to the Curtain, at last, in 1599, built for themselves
a permanent home, the Globe, situated on the Bankside and close to the
Rose. Henslowe's ancient structure[230] was eclipsed by this new and
handsome building, "the glory of the Bank"; and the Admiral's Men, no
doubt, felt themselves placed at a serious disadvantage. As a result, in the
spring of 1600, Henslowe and Alleyn began the erection of a splendid new
playhouse, the Fortune, designed to surpass the Globe in magnificence, and
to furnish a suitable and permanent home for the Admiral's Men. The
building was situated in the suburb to the north of the city, far away from
the Bankside and the Globe.
The erection of this handsome new playhouse led to violent outbursts from
the Puritans, and vigorous protests from the city fathers. Accordingly the
Privy Council on June 22, 1600, issued the following order:[231]
Whereas divers complaints have heretofore been made unto the Lords and
other of Her Majesty's Privy Council of the manifold abuses and disorders
that have grown and do continue by occasion of many houses erected and
employed in and about London for common stage-plays; and now very
lately by reason of some complaint exhibited by sundry persons against the
building of the like house [the Fortune] in or near Golding Lane ... the
Lords and the rest of Her Majesty's Privy Council with one and full consent
have ordered in manner and form as follows. First, that there shall be about
the city two houses, and no more, allowed to serve for the use of the
common stage-plays; of the which houses, one [the Globe] shall be in
Surrey, in that place which is commonly called the Bankside, or
thereabouts; and the other [the Fortune], in Middlesex.
This sealed the fate of the Rose.

In July the Admiral's Men had a reckoning with Henslowe, and prepared to
abandon the Bankside. After they had gone, but before they had opened the
Fortune, Henslowe, on October 28, 1600, let the Rose to Pembroke's Men
for two days.[232] Possibly the troupe had secured special permission to use
the playhouse for this limited time; possibly Henslowe thought that since
the Fortune was not yet open to the public, no objection would be made. Of
course, after the Admiral's Men opened the Fortune—in November or early
in December, 1600—the Rose, according to the order of the Privy Council
just quoted, had to stand empty.
Its career, however, was not absolutely run. In the spring of 1602
Worcester's Men and Oxford's Men were "joined by agreement together in
one company," and the Queen, "at the suit of the Earl of Oxford," ordered
that this company be "allowed." Accordingly the Privy Council wrote to the
Lord Mayor on March 31, 1602, informing him of the fact, and adding:
"And as the other companies that are allowed, namely of me the Lord
Admiral and the Lord Chamberlain, be appointed their certain houses, and
one and no more to each company, so we do straightly require that this
company be likewise [appointed] to one place. And because we are
informed the house called the Boar's Head is the place they have especially
used and do best like of, we do pray and require you that that said house,
namely the Boar's Head, may be assigned unto them."[233] But the Lord
Mayor seems to have opposed the use of the Boar's Head, and the upshot
was that the Council gave permission for this "third company" to open the
Rose. In Henslowe's Diary, we read: "Lent unto my Lord of Worcester's
Players as followeth, beginning the 17 day of August, 1602."
This excellent company, destined to become the Queen's Company after the
accession of King James, included such important actors as William
Kempe, John Lowin, Christopher Beeston, John Duke, Robert Pallant, and
Richard Perkins; and it employed such well-known playwrights as Thomas
Heywood (the "prose Shakespeare," who was also one of the troupe), Henry
Chettle, Thomas Dekker, John Day, Wentworth Smith, Richard Hathway,
and John Webster. The company continued to act at the Rose until March
16, 1603, when it had a reckoning with Henslowe and left the playhouse.
[234] In May, however, after the coming of King James, it returned to the
Rose, and we find Henslowe opening a new account: "In the name of God,
amen. Beginning to play again by the King's license, and laid out since for

my Lord of Worcester's Men, as followeth, 1603, 9 of May."[235] Since only
one entry follows, it is probable that the company did not remain long at the
Rose. No doubt, the outbreak of the plague quickly drove them into the
country; and on their return to London in the spring of 1604 they occupied
the Boar's Head and the Curtain.
After this there is no evidence to connect the playhouse with dramatic
performances.
Henslowe's lease of the Little Rose property, on which his playhouse stood,
expired in 1605, and the Parish of St. Mildred's demanded an increase in
rental. The following note in the Diary refers to a renewal of the lease:
Memorandum, that the 25 of June, 1603, I talked with Mr. Pope at the
scrivener's shop where he lies,[236] concerning the taking of the lease anew
of the little Rose, and he shewed me a writing betwixt the parish and
himself which was to pay twenty pound a year rent,[237] and to bestow a
hundred marks upon building, which I said I would rather pull down the
playhouse than I would do so, and he bad me do, and said he gave me leave,
and would bear me out, for it was in him to do it.[238]
Henslowe did not renew his lease of the property. On October 4, 1605, the
Commissioners of the Sewers amerced him for the Rose, but return was
made that it was then "out of his hands."[239] From a later entry in the Sewer
Records, February 14, 1606, we learn that the new owner of the Rose was
one Edward Box, of Bread Street, London. Box, it seems, either tore down
the building, or converted it into tenements. The last reference to it in the
Sewer Records is on April 25, 1606, when it is referred to as "the late
playhouse."[240]

CHAPTER X
THE SWAN

T HE Manor of Paris Garden,[241] situated on the Bankside just to the
west of the Liberty of the Clink and to the east of the Lambeth marshes,
had once been in the possession of the Monastery of Bermondsey. At the
dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII, the property passed into the
possession of the Crown; hence it was free from the jurisdiction of the Lord
Mayor and Aldermen of London, and was on this account suitable for the
erection of a playhouse. From the Crown the property passed through
several hands, until finally, in 1589, the entire "lordship and manor of Paris
Garden" was sold for £850 to Francis Langley, goldsmith and citizen of
London.[242]
Langley had purchased the Manor as an investment, and was ready to make
thereon such improvements as seemed to offer profitable returns. Burbage
and Henslowe were reputed to be growing wealthy from their playhouses,
and Langley was tempted to erect a similar building on his newly acquired
property. Accordingly at some date before November, 1594, he secured a
license to erect a theatre in Paris Garden. The license was promptly opposed
by the Lord Mayor of London, who addressed to the Lord High Treasurer
on November 3, 1594, the following letter:
I understand that one Francis Langley ... intendeth to erect a new stage or
theatre (as they call it) for the exercising of plays upon the Bankside. And
forasmuch as we find by daily experience the great inconvenience that
groweth to this city and the government thereof by the said plays, I have
emboldened myself to be an humble suitor to your good Lordship to be a
means for us rather to suppress all such places built for that kind of
exercise, than to erect any more of the same sort.[243]
The protest of the Lord Mayor, however, went unheeded, and Langley
proceeded with the erection of his building. Presumably it was finished and

ready for the actors in the earlier half of 1595.

THE MANOR OF PARIS GARDEN AND THE SWAN
A survey executed in 1627 by royal command.
(Printed from Rendle's The Bankside.)
[Enlarge]

The name given to the new playhouse was "The Swan." What caused
Langley to adopt this name we do not know;[244] but we may suppose that it
was suggested to him by the large number of swans which beautified the
Thames. Foreigners on their first visit to London were usually very much
impressed by the number and the beauty of these birds. Hentzner, in 1598,
stated that the river "abounds in swans, swimming in flocks; the sight of
them and their noise is vastly agreeable to the boats that meet them in their
course"; and the Italian Francesco Ferretti observed that the "broad river of

Thames" was "most charming, and quite full of swans white as the very
snow."[245]
From a map of the Manor of Paris Garden carefully surveyed by order of
the King in 1627[246] (see page 163), we learn the exact situation of the
building. It was set twenty-six poles, or four hundred and twenty-six feet,
from the bank of the river, in that corner of the estate nearest London
Bridge. Most of the playgoers from London, however, came not over the
Bridge, but by water, landing at the Paris Garden Stairs, or at the near-by
Falcon Stairs, and then walking the short distance to the theatre.

THE SWAN PLAYHOUSE
(From Visscher's View of London, 1616).

An excellent picture of the exterior of the Swan is furnished by Visscher's
View of London, 1616, (see page 165). From this, as well as from the survey
of 1627 just mentioned, we discover that the building was duodecahedral—

at least on the outside, for the interior probably was circular. At the time of
its erection it was, so we are told, "the largest and the most magnificent
playhouse" in London. It contained three galleries surrounding an open pit,
with a stage projecting into the pit; and probably it differed in no essential
respect from the playhouses already built. In one point, however, it may
have differed—although of this I cannot feel sure: it may have been
provided with a stage that could be removed so as to allow the building to
be used on occasions for animal-baiting. The De Witt drawing shows such a
stage; and possibly Stow in his Survey (1598) gives evidence that the Swan
was in early times employed for bear-baiting:

And to begin at the west bank as afore, thus it followeth. On this bank is the
bear gardens, in number twain; to wit, the old bear garden [i.e., the one built
in 1583?] and the new [i.e., the Swan?], places wherein be kept bears, bulls,
and other beasts, to be baited at stakes for pleasure; also mastiffs to bait
them in several kennels are there nourished.[247]
Moreover, in 1613 Henslowe used the Swan as the model for the Hope, a
building designed for both acting and animal-baiting. It should be noted,
however, that in all documents the Swan is invariably referred to as a
playhouse, and there is no evidence—beyond that cited above—to indicate
that the building was ever employed for the baiting of bears and bulls.
In the summer of 1596 a Dutch traveler named Johannes de Witt, a priest of
St. Mary's in Utrecht, visited London, and saw, as one of the most
interesting sights of the city, a dramatic performance at the Swan. Later he
communicated a description of the building to his friend Arend van Buchell,
[248] who recorded the description in his commonplace-book, along with a
crude and inexact drawing of the interior (see page 169), showing the stage,
the three galleries, and the pit.[249] The description is headed: "Ex
Observationibus Londinensibus Johannis de Witt." After a brief notice of St.
Paul's, and a briefer reference to Westminster Cathedral, the traveler begins
to describe what obviously interested him far more. I give below a
translation of that portion relating to the playhouses:
There are four amphitheatres in London [the Theatre, Curtain, Rose, and
Swan] of notable beauty, which from their diverse signs bear diverse names.
In each of them a different play is daily exhibited to the populace. The two
more magnificent of these are situated to the southward beyond the Thames,
and from the signs suspended before them are called the Rose and the
Swan. The two others are outside the city towards the north on the highway
which issues through the Episcopal Gate, called in the vernacular
Bishopgate.[250] There is also a fifth [the Bear Garden], but of dissimilar
structure, devoted to the baiting of beasts, where are maintained in separate
cages and enclosures many bears and dogs of stupendous size, which are
kept for fighting, furnishing thereby a most delightful spectacle to men. Of
all the theatres,[251] however, the largest and the most magnificent is that
one of which the sign is a swan, called in the vernacular the Swan Theatre;

[252] for it accommodates in its seats three thousand persons, and is built of
a mass of flint stones (of which there is a prodigious supply in Britain),[253]
and supported by wooden columns painted in such excellent imitation of
marble that it is able to deceive even the most cunning. Since its form
resembles that of a Roman work, I have made a sketch of it above.
Exactly when the Swan was opened to the public, or what troupes of actors
first made use of it, we do not know. The visit of Johannes de Witt,
however, shows that the playhouse was occupied in 1596; and this fact is
confirmed by a statement in the lawsuit of Shaw v. Langley.[254] We may
reasonably suppose that not only in 1596, but also in 1595 the building was
used by the players.

THE INTERIOR OF THE SWAN PLAYHOUSE

Sketched by Johannes de Witt in 1596.
[Enlarge]

Our definite history of the Swan, however, begins with 1597. In February of
that year eight distinguished actors, among whom were Robert Shaw,
Richard Jones, Gabriel Spencer, William Bird, and Thomas Downton,
"servants to the right honorable the Earl of Pembroke," entered into
negotiations with Langley, or, as the legal document puts it, "fell into
conference with the said Langley for and about the hireing and taking a
playhouse of the said Langley, situate in the old Paris Garden, in the Parish
of St. Saviours, in the County of Surrey, commonly called and known by
the name of the sign of the Swan." The result of this conference was that the
members of Pembroke's Company[255] became each severally bound for the
sum of £100 to play at the Swan for one year, beginning on February 21,
1597.
This troupe contained some of the best actors in London; and Langley, in
anticipation of a successful year, "disbursed and laid out for making of the
said house ready, and providing of apparel fit and necessary for their
playing, the sum of £300 and upwards." Since he was at very little cost in
making the Swan ready, "for the said house was then lately afore used to
have plays in it," most of this sum went for the purchase of "sundry sort of
rich attire and apparel for them to play withall."
Everything seems to have gone well until near the end of July, when the
company presented The Isle of Dogs, a satirical play written in part by the
"young Juvenal" of the age, Thomas Nashe, and in part by certain "inferior
players," chief of whom seems to have been Ben Jonson.[256] The play
apparently attacked under a thin disguise some persons high in authority.
The exact nature of the offense cannot now be determined, but Nashe
himself informs us that "the troublesome stir which happened about it is a
general rumour that hath filled all England,"[257] and the Queen herself
seems to have been greatly angered. On July 28, 1597, the Privy Council
sent a letter to the Justices of Middlesex and of Surrey informing them that
Her Majesty "hath given direction that not only no plays shall be used
within London or about the city or in any public place during this time of

summer, but that also those playhouses that are erected and built only for
such purposes shall be plucked down." Accordingly the Council ordered the
Justices to see to it that "there be no more plays used in any public place
within three miles of the city until Allhallows [i.e., November 1] next"; and,
furthermore, to send for the owners of the various playhouses "and enjoin
them by vertue hereof forthwith to pluck down quite the stages, galleries,
and rooms that are made for people to stand in, and so to deface the same as
they may not be employed again to such use."[258]
The Council, however, did not stop with this. It ordered the arrest of the
authors of the play and also of the chief actors who took part in its
performance. Nashe saved himself by precipitate flight, but his lodgings
were searched and his private papers were turned over to the authorities.
Robert Shaw and Gabriel Spencer, as leaders of the troupe, and Ben Jonson,
as one of the "inferior players" who had a part in writing the play,[259] were
thrown into prison. The rest of the company hurried into the country, their
speed being indicated by the fact that we find them acting in Bristol before
the end of July.
Some of these events are referred to in the following letter, addressed by the
Privy Council "to Richard Topclyfe, Thomas Fowler, and Richard
Skevington, esquires, Doctor Fletcher, and Mr. Wilbraham":
Upon information given us of a lewd play that was played in one of the
playhouses on the Bankside, containing very seditious and slanderous
matter, we caused some of the players [Robert Shaw, Gabriel Spencer, and
Ben Jonson[260]] to be apprehended and committed to prison, whereof one
of them [Ben Jonson] was not only an actor but a maker of part of the said
play. Forasmuch as it is thought meet that the rest of the players or actors in
that matter shall be apprehended to receive such punishment as their lewd
and mutinous behaviour doth deserve, these shall be therefore to require
you to examine those of the players that are committed (whose names are
known to you, Mr. Topclyfe), what is become of the rest of their fellows
that either had their parts in the devising of that seditious matter, or that
were actors or players in the same, what copies they have given forth[261] of
the said play, and to whom, and such other points as you shall think meet to
be demanded of them, wherein you shall require them to deal truly, as they
will look to receive any favour. We pray you also to peruse such papers as

were found in Nashe his lodgings, which Ferrys, a messenger of the
Chamber, shall deliver unto you, and to certify us the examinations you
take.[262]
This unfortunate occurrence destroyed Langley's dream of a successful
year. It also destroyed the splendid Pembroke organization, for several of its
chief members, even before the inhibition was raised, joined the Admiral's
Men. On August 6 Richard Jones went to Henslowe and bound himself to
play for two years at the Rose, and at the same time he bound his friend
Robert Shaw, who was still in prison; on August 10 William Bird came and
made a similar agreement; on October 6 Thomas Downton did likewise.
Their leader, Gabriel Spencer, also probably had an understanding with
Henslowe, although he signed no bond; and upon his release from the
Marshalsea he joined his friends at the Rose.[263]
In the meantime the Queen's anger was abating, and the trouble was
blowing over. The order to pluck down all the public playhouses was not
taken seriously by the officers of the law, and Henslowe actually secured
permission to reopen the Rose on October 11. The inhibition itself expired
on November 1, but the Swan was singled out for further punishment. The
Privy Council ordered that henceforth license should be granted to two
companies only: namely, the Admiral's at the Rose, and the Chamberlain's
at the Curtain. This meant, of course, the closing of the Swan.
In spite of this order, however, the members of Pembroke's Company
remaining after the chief actors had joined Henslowe, taking on recruits and
organizing themselves into a company, began to act at the Swan without a
license. For some time they continued unmolested, but at last the two
licensed companies called the attention of the Privy Council to the fact, and
on February 19, 1598, the Council issued the following order to the Master
of the Revels and the Justices of both Middlesex and Surrey:
Whereas license hath been granted unto two companies of stage players
retayned unto us, the Lord Admiral and Lord Chamberlain ... and whereas
there is also a third company who of late (as we are informed) have by way
of intrusion used likewise to play ... we have therefore thought good to
require you upon receipt hereof to take order that the aforesaid third
company may be suppressed, and none suffered hereafter to play but those

two formerly named, belonging to us, the Lord Admiral and Lord
Chamberlain.[264]
Thus, after February 19, 1598, the Swan stood empty, so far as plays were
concerned, and we hear very little of it during the next few years. Indeed, it
never again assumed an important part in the history of the drama.
In the summer of 1598[265] it was used by Robert Wilson for a contest in
extempore versification. Francis Meres, in his Palladis Tamia, writes: "And
so is now our witty Wilson, who for learning and extemporall wit in this
faculty is without compare or compeere, as, to his great and eternal
commendations, he manifested in his challenge at the Swan on the
Bankside."
On May 15, 1600, Peter Bromvill was licensed to use the Swan "to show
his feats of activity at convenient times in that place without let or
interruption."[266] The Privy Council in issuing the license observed that
Bromvill "hath been recommended unto Her Majesty from her good brother
the French King, and hath shewed some feats of great activity before Her
Highness."
On June 22, 1600, the Privy Council "with one and full consent" ordered
"that there shall be about the city two houses, and no more, allowed to serve
for the use of the common stage plays; of the which houses, one [the Globe]
shall be in Surrey ... and the other [the Fortune] in Middlesex."[267] This
order in effect merely confirmed the order of 1598 which limited the
companies to two, the Admiral's and the Chamberlain's.
Early in 1601 Langley died; and in January, 1602, his widow, as
administratrix, sold the Manor of Paris Garden, including the Swan
Playhouse, to Hugh Browker, a prothonotary of the Court of Common
Pleas. The property remained in the possession of the Browker family until
1655.[268]
On November 6, 1602, the building was the scene of the famous hoax
known as England's Joy, perpetrated upon the patriotic citizens of London
by one Richard Vennar.[269] Vennar scattered hand-bills over the city
announcing that at the Swan Playhouse, on Saturday, November 6, a
company of "gentlemen and gentlewomen of account" would present with

unusual magnificence a play entitled England's Joy, celebrating Queen
Elizabeth. It was proposed to show the coronation of Elizabeth, the victory
of the Armada, and various other events in the life of "England's Joy," with
the following conclusion: "And so with music, both with voice and
instruments, she is taken up into heaven; when presently appears a throne of
blessed souls; and beneath, under the stage, set forth with strange fire-
works, diverse black and damned souls, wonderfully described in their
several torments."[270] The price of admission to the performance was to be
"two shillings, or eighteen pence at least." In spite of this unusually high
price, an enormous audience, including a "great store of good company and
many noblemen," passed into the building. Whereupon Vennar seized the
money paid for admission, and showed his victims "a fair pair of heels."
The members of the audience, when they found themselves thus duped,
"revenged themselves upon the hangings, curtains, chairs, stools, walls, and
whatsoever came in their way, very outrageously, and made great spoil."
[271]

On February 8, 1603, John Manningham recorded in his Diary: "Turner and
Dun, two famous fencers, playd their prizes this day at the Bankside, but
Turner at last run Dun so far in the brain at the eye, that he fell down
presently stone dead; a goodly sport in a Christian state, to see one man kill
another!" The place where the contest was held is not specifically
mentioned, but in all probability it was the Swan.[272]
For the next eight years all is silence, but we may suppose that the building
was occasionally let for special entertainments such as those just
enumerated.
In 1611 Henslowe undertook to manage the Lady Elizabeth's Men,
promising among other things to furnish them with a suitable playhouse.
Having disposed of the Rose in 1605, he rented the Swan and established
his company there. In 1613, however, he built the Hope, and transferred the
Lady Elizabeth's Men thither.
The Swan seems thereafter to have been occupied for a time by Prince
Charles's Men. But the history of this company and its intimate connection
with the Lady Elizabeth's Company is too vague to admit of definite

conclusions. So far as we can judge, the Prince's Men continued at the Swan
until 1615, when Henslowe transferred them to the Hope.[273]
After 1615 the Swan was deserted for five years so far as any records show.
But in 1621 the old playhouse seems to have been again used by the actors.
The Overseers of the Poor in the Liberty of Paris Garden record in their
Account Book: "Monday, April the 9th, 1621, received of the players £5 3s.
6d."[274] From this it is evident that in the spring of 1621 some company of
players, the name of which has not yet been discovered, was occupying the
Swan. Apparently, however, the company did not remain there long, for the
Account Book records no payment the following year; nor, although it
extends to the year 1671, does it again record any payments from actors at
the Swan. There is, indeed, no evidence to connect the playhouse with
dramatic performances after 1621.[275] In the map of 1627 it is represented
as still standing, but is labeled "the old playhouse," and is not even named.
Five years later it is referred to in Nicolas Goodman's Holland's Leaguer
(1632), a pamphlet celebrating one of the most notorious houses of ill fame
on the Bankside.[276] Dona Britannica Hollandia, the proprietress of this
house, is represented as having been much pleased with its situation:
Especially, and above all the rest, she was most taken with the report of
three famous amphitheatres, which stood so near situated that her eye might
take view of them from the lowest turret. One was the Continent of the
World [i.e., the Globe], because half the year a world of beauties and brave
spirits resorted unto it; the other was a building of excellent Hope, and
though wild beasts and gladiators did most possess it, yet the gallants that
came to behold those combats, though they were of a mixt society, yet were
many noble worthies amongst them; the last which stood, and, as it were,
shak'd hands with this fortress, being in times past as famous as any of the
other, was now fallen to decay, and like a dying Swanne, hanging down her
head, seemed to sing her own dirge.
This is the last that we hear of the playhouse, that was "in times past as
famous as any of the other." What finally became of the building we do not
know. It is not shown in Hollar's View of London, in 1647, and probably it
had ceased to exist before the outbreak of the Civil War.

CHAPTER XI
THE SECOND BLACKFRIARS

I N 1596 Burbage's lease of the plot of ground on which he had erected the
Theatre was drawing to a close, and all his efforts at a renewal had failed.
The owner of the land, Gyles Alleyn, having, in spite of the terms of the
original contract, refused to extend the lease until 1606, was craftily
plotting for a substantial increase in the rental; moreover, having become
puritanical in his attitude towards the drama, he was insisting that if the
lease were renewed, the Theatre should be used as a playhouse for five
years only, and then should either be torn down, or be converted into
tenements. Burbage tentatively agreed to pay the increased rental, but, of
course, he could not possibly agree to the second demand; and when all
negotiations on this point proved futile, he realized that he must do
something at once to meet the awkward situation.
In the twenty years that had elapsed since the erection of the Theatre and
the Curtain in Holywell, the Bankside had been developed as a theatrical
district, and the Rose and the Swan, not to mention the Bear Garden, had
made the south side of the river the popular place for entertainments.
Naturally, therefore, any one contemplating the erection of a playhouse
would immediately think of this locality. Burbage, however, was a man of
ideas. He believed that he could improve on the Bankside as a site for his
theatre. He remembered how, at the outset of his career as a theatrical
manager, he had had to face competition with Richard Farrant who had
opened a small "private" playhouse in Blackfriars. Although that building
had not been used as a "public" playhouse, and had been closed up after a
few years of sore tribulation, it had revealed to Burbage the possibilities of
the Blackfriars precinct for theatrical purposes. In the first place, the
precinct was not under the jurisdiction of the city, so that actors would not
there be subject to the interference of the Lord Mayor and his Aldermen. As
Stevens writes in his History of Ancient Abbeys, Monasteries, etc.: "All the
inhabitants within it were subject to none but the King ... neither the Mayor,

nor the sheriffs, nor any other officers of the City of London had the least
jurisdiction or authority therein." Blackfriars, therefore, in this fundamental
respect, was just as desirable a location for theatres as was Holywell to the
north of the city, or the Bankside to the south. In the second place,
Blackfriars had a decided advantage over those two suburban localities in
that it was "scituated in the bosome of the Cittie,"[277] near St. Paul's
Cathedral, the centre of London life, and hence was readily accessible to
playgoers, even during the disagreeable winter season. In the third place,
the locality was distinctly fashionable. To give some notion of the character
of its inhabitants, I record below the names of a few of those who lived in
or near the conventual buildings at various times after the dissolution:
George Brooke, Lord Cobham; William Brooke, Lord Cobham, Lord
Chamberlain of the Queen's Household; Henry Brooke, Lord Cobham, Lord
Warden of the Cinque Ports; Sir Thomas Cheney, Treasurer of the Queen's
Household, and Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports; Henry Carey, Lord
Hunsdon, Lord Chamberlain of the Queen's Household; George Carey, Lord
Hunsdon, who as Lord Chamberlain was the patron of Shakespeare's
troupe; Sir Thomas Cawarden, Master of the Revels; Sir Henry Jerningham,
Fee Chamberlain to the Queen's Highness; Sir Willam More, Chamberlain
of the Exchequer; Lord Zanche; Sir John Portynary; Sir William Kingston;
Sir Francis Bryan; Sir John Cheeke; Sir George Harper; Sir Philip Hoby,
Lady Anne Gray; Sir Robert Kyrkham; Lady Perrin; Sir Christopher More;
Sir Henry Neville; Sir Thomas Saunders; Sir Jerome Bowes; and Lady Jane
Guildford.[278] Obviously the locality was free from the odium which the
public always associated with Shoreditch and the Bankside, the recognized
homes of the London stews.[279]
Thus, a playhouse erected in the precinct of Blackfriars would escape all the
grave disadvantages of situation which attached to the existing playhouses
in the suburbs, and, on the other hand, would gain several very important
advantages.
Burbage's originality, however, did not stop with the choice of Blackfriars
as the site of his new theatre; he determined to improve on the form of
building as well. The open-air structure which he had designed in 1576, and
which had since been copied in all public theatres, had serious
disadvantages in that it offered no protection from the weather. Burbage
now resolved to provide a large "public" playhouse, fully roofed in, with the

entire audience and the actors protected against the inclemency of the sky
and the cold of winter. In short, his dream was of a theatre centrally located,
comfortably heated, and, for its age, luxuriously appointed.
With characteristic energy and courage he at once set about the task of
realizing this dream. He found in the Blackfriars precinct a large building
which, he thought, would admirably serve his purpose. This building was
none other than the old Frater of the Monastery, a structure one hundred and
ten feet long and fifty-two feet wide, with stone walls three feet thick, and a
flat roof covered with lead. From the Loseley documents, which M.
Feuillerat has placed at the disposal of scholars,[280] we are now able to
reconstruct the old Frater building, and to point out exactly that portion
which was made into a playhouse.[281]
At the time of the dissolution, the top story consisted of a single large room
known as the "Upper Frater," and also as the "Parliament Chamber" from
the fact that the English Parliament met here on several occasions; here,
also, was held the trial before Cardinals Campeggio and Wolsey for the
divorce of the unhappy Queen Catherine and Henry VIII—a scene destined
to be reënacted in the same building by Shakespeare and his fellows many
years later. In 1550 the room was granted, with various other properties in
Blackfriars, to Sir Thomas Cawarden.[282]

PLAN ILLUSTRATING THE SECOND
BLACKFRIARS PLAYHOUSE
The Playhouse was made by combining the Hall and the
Parlor.

The space below the Parliament Chamber was divided into three units. At
the northern end was a "Hall" extending the width of the building. It is
mentioned in the Survey[283] of 1548 as "a Hall ... under the said Frater";
and again in the side-note: "Memorandum, my Lorde Warden claimeth the
said Hall." Just to the south of the Hall was a "Parlor," or dining-chamber,
"where commonly the friars did use to break their fast." It is described in
the Survey as being "under the said Frater, of the same length and breadth."

The room could not have been of the "same length and breadth" as the great
Parliament Chamber, for not only would such dimensions be absurd for an
informal dining-room, but, as we are clearly told, the "Infirmary" was also
under the Parliament Chamber, and was approximately one-third the size of
the latter.[284] Accordingly I have interpreted the phrase, "of the same length
and breadth," to mean that the Parlor was square. When the room was sold
to Burbage it was said to be fifty-two feet in length from north to south,
which is exactly the breadth of the building from east to west. The Parlor, as
well as the Hall, was claimed by the Lord Warden; and both were granted to
Sir Thomas Cawarden in 1550.
South of the Parlor was the Infirmary, described as being "at the western
corner of the Inner Cloister" (of which the Frater building constituted the
western side), as being under the Parliament Chamber, and as being
approximately one-third the size of the Parliament Chamber. The Infirmary
seems to have been structurally distinct from the Hall and Parlor.[285] It was
three stories high, consisting of a "room beneath the Fermary," the
Infirmary itself, a "room above the same";[286] while the Parliament
Chamber, extending itself "over the room above the Fermary," constituted a
fourth story. Furthermore, not only was the Infirmary a structural unit
distinct from the Hall and the Parlor at the north, but it never belonged to
Cawarden or More, and hence was not included in the sale to Burbage. It
was granted in 1545 to Lady Mary Kingston,[287] from whom it passed to
her son, Sir Henry Jerningham, then to Anthony Kempe, who later sold it to
Lord Hunsdon;[288] and at the time the playhouse was built, the Infirmary
was still in the occupation of Hunsdon.
At the northern end of the Frater building, and extending westward, was a
narrow structure fifty feet in length, sixteen feet in breadth, and three stories
in height, regarded as a "part of the frater parcel." The middle story, which
was on the same level with the Parliament Chamber, was known as the
"Duchy Chamber," possibly because of its use in connection with the
sittings of Parliament, or with the meetings of the Privy Council there. The
building was granted to Cawarden in 1550.[289]
Upon the death of Cawarden all his Blackfriars holdings passed into the
possession of Sir William More. From More, in 1596, James Burbage
purchased those sections of the Frater building which had originally been

granted to Cawarden[290]—that is, all the Frater building except the
Infirmary—for the sum of £600, in modern valuation about $25,000.[291]
Evidently he had profited by Farrant's experience with More and by his own
experience with Gyles Alleyn, and had determined to risk no more leases,
but in the future to be his own landlord, cost what it might.
The properties which he thus secured were:
(1) The Parliament Chamber, extending over the Hall, Parlor, and Infirmary.
This great chamber, it will be recalled, had previously been divided by
Cawarden into the Frith and Cheeke Lodgings;[292] but now it was arranged
as a single tenement of seven rooms, and was occupied by the eminent
physician William de Lawne:[293] "All those seven great upper rooms as
they are now divided, being all upon one floor, and sometime being one
great and entire room, with the roof over the same, covered with lead." Up
into this tenement led a special pair of stairs which made it wholly
independent of the rest of the building.
(2) The friar's "Parlor," now made into a tenement occupied by Thomas
Bruskett, and called "the Middle Rooms, or Middle Stories"—possibly from
the fact that it was the middle of three tenements, possibly from the fact that
having two cellars under its northern end it was the middle of three stories.
It is described as being fifty-two feet in length north and south, and thirty-
seven feet in width. Why a strip of nine feet should have been detached on
the eastern side is not clear; but that this strip was also included in the sale
to Burbage is shown by later documents.
(3) The ancient "Hall" adjoining the "Parlor" on the north, and now made
into two rooms. These rooms were combined with the ground floor of the
Duchy Chamber building to constitute a tenement occupied by Peter
Johnson: "All those two lower rooms now in the occupation of the said
Peter Johnson, lying directly under part of the said seven great upper
rooms." The dimensions are not given, but doubtless the two rooms together
extended the entire width of the building and were approximately as broad
as the Duchy Chamber building, with which they were united.
(4) The Duchy Chamber building "at the north end of the said seven great
upper rooms, and at the west side thereof." At the time of the sale the
ground floor of this building was occupied by Peter Johnson, who had also

the Hall adjoining it on the west; the middle story was occupied by Charles
Bradshaw; and the top story by Edward Merry.[294]
Out of this heterogeneous property Burbage was confronted with the
problem of making a playhouse. Apparently he regarded the Parliament
Chamber as too low, or too inaccessible for the purposes of a theatre; this
part of his property, therefore, he kept as a lodging, and for many years it
served as a dormitory for the child-actors. The Duchy Chamber building,
being small and detached from the Frater building, he reserved also as a
lodging.[295] In the Hall and the Parlor, however, he saw the possibility of a
satisfactory auditorium. Let us therefore examine this section of the Frater
building more in detail, and trace its history up to the time of the purchase.
The Parlor was described as "a great room, paved," and was said to have
been "used and occupied by the friars themselves to their own proper use as
a parlor to dine and sup in."[296] Sir John Portynary, whose house adjoined
the Duchy Chamber, tells us that in 1550, when King Edward granted the
Blackfriars property to Cawarden, "Sir Thomas Cawarden, knight, entered
into the same house in the name of all that which the King had given him
within the said friars, and made his lodging there; and about that time did
invite this examinant and his wife to supper there, together with diverse
other gentlemen; and they all supped together with the said Sir Thomas
Cawarden, in the same room [the Parlor] where the said school of fence is
now kept, and did there see a play."[297]
Later Cawarden leased the Parlor to a keeper of an ordinary: "One
Woodman did hold the said house where the said school of fence is kept,
and another house thereby of Sir Thomas Cawarden, and in the other room
kept an ordinary table, and had his way to the same through the said house
where the said school of fence is kept."[298]
In 1563 William Joyner established in the rooms the school of fence
mentioned above, which was still flourishing in 1576.[299]
When in 1583 John Lyly became interested in the First Blackfriars
Playhouse, he obtained a lease of the rooms, but it is not clear for what
purpose. Later he sold the lease to Rocho Bonetti, the Italian fencing-
master, who established there his famous school of fence.[300] In George
Silver's Paradoxes of Defence, 1599, is a description of Bonetti's school,

which will, I think, help us to reconstruct in our imagination the "great
room, paved" which was destined to become Shakespeare's playhouse:
He caused to be fairely drawne and set round about the schoole all the
Noblemen's and Gentlemen's Armes that were his schollers, and, hanging
right under their Armes, their Rapiers, Daggers, Gloves of Male, and
Gantlets. Also he had benches and stooles, the roome being verie large, for
Gentlemen to sit about his schoole to behold his teaching.
He taught none commonly under twentie, fortie, fifty, or an hundred
pounds. And because all things should be verie necessary for the Noblemen
and Gentlemen, he had in his schoole a large square table, with a green
carpet, done round with a verie brode rich fringe of gold; alwaies standing
upon it a verie faire standish covered with crimson velvet, with inke, pens,
pen-dust, and sealing-waxe, and quiers of verie excellent fine paper, gilded,
readie for the Noblemen and Gentlemen (upon occasion) to write their
letters, being then desirous to follow their fight, to send their men to
dispatch their businesse.
And to know how the time passed, he had in one corner of his Schoole, a
Clocke, with a verie faire large diall; he had within that Schoole a roome
the which he called his privie schoole, with manie weapons therein, where
he did teach his schollers his secret fight, after he had perfectly taught them
their rules. He was verie much loved in the Court.
We are further told by Silver that Bonetti took it upon himself "to hit anie
Englishman with a thrust upon anie button." It is no wonder that
Shakespeare ridiculed him in Romeo and Juliet as "the very butcher of a
silk button," and laughed at his school and his fantastic fencing-terms:
Mercutio. Ah! the immortal "passado"! the "punto reverso"! the "hay"!
Benvolio. The what?
Mercutio. The pox of such antick, lisping, affecting fantasticoes! These new
tuners of accents!—"By Jesu, a very good blade!"
At the date of the sale to Burbage, February 4, 1596, the fencing school of
Bonetti, had become "those rooms and lodgings, with the kitchen thereunto
adjoining, called the Middle Rooms or Middle Stories, late being in the

tenure or occupation of Rocco Bonetti, and now being in the tenure or
occupation of Thomas Bruskett, gentleman."
To make his playhouse Burbage removed all the partitions in the Middle
Rooms, and restored the Parlor to its original form—a great room covering
the entire breadth of the building, and extending fifty-two feet in length
from north to south. To this he added the Hall at the north, which then
existed as two rooms in the occupation of Peter Johnson. The Hall and
Parlor when combined made an auditorium described as "per estimacionem
in longitudine ab australe ad borealem partem eiusdem sexaginta et sex
pedes assissæ sit plus sive minus, et in latitudine ab occidentale ad
orientalem partem eiusdem quadraginto et sex pedes assissæ sit plus sive
minus."[301] The forty-six feet of width corresponds to the interior width of
the Frater building, for although it was fifty-two feet wide in outside
measurement, the stone walls were three feet thick. The sixty-six feet of
length probably represents the fifty-two feet of the Parlor plus the breadth
of the Hall.
The ceiling of these two rooms must have been of unusual height. The
Infirmary, which was below the Parliament Chamber at the south, was three
stories high; and the windows of the Parlor, if we may believe Pierce the
Ploughman, were "wrought as a chirche":
An halle for an heygh kinge · an
household to holden,
With brode bordes abouten · y-benched
well clene,
With windowes of glas · wrought as a
chirche.

REMAINS OF BLACKFRIARS
This remnant of the old monastery was discovered in
1872 on the rebuilding of the offices of The Times. It
illustrates the substantial character of the Blackfriars
buildings, and may even be a part of the old Frater, for
The Times occupies that portion of the monastery. The
windows of the Frater, according to Pierce the
Ploughman, were "wrought as a chirche." (From a
painting in the Guildhall Museum.)

As a result Burbage was able to construct within the auditorium at least two
galleries,[302] after the manner of the public theatres. The Parliament
Chamber above was kept, as I have stated, for residential purposes. This is
why the various legal documents almost invariably refer to the playhouse as
"that great hall or room, with the rooms over the same."[303]
The main entrance to the playhouse was at the north, over the "great yard"
which extended from the Pipe Office to Water Lane.[304] The stage was
opposite this entrance, or at the southern end of the hall, as is shown by one
of the documents printed by Mr. Wallace.[305] Since the building was not,
like the other playhouses of London, open to the sky, the illumination was
supplied by candles, hung in branches over the stage; as Gerschow noted,
after visiting Blackfriars, "alle bey Lichte agiret, welches ein gross Ansehen

macht."[306] The obvious advantage of artificial light for producing
beautiful stage effects must have added not a little to the popularity of the
Blackfriars Playhouse.
The cost of all the alterations and the equipment could hardly have been
less than £300, so that the total cost of the property was at least £900, or in
modern valuation approximately $35,000. Burbage's sons, in referring to
the building years later, declared that their father had "made it into a
playhouse with great charge."
"And," they added significantly, "with great trouble." The aristocratic
inhabitants of the Blackfriars precinct did not welcome the appearance in
their midst of a "public," or, as some more scornfully designated it, a
"common," playhouse; and when they discovered the intentions of Burbage,
they wrote a strong petition to the Privy Council against the undertaking.
This petition, presented to the Council in November, 1596, I quote below in
part:
To the right honorable the Lords and others of Her Majesty's most
honorable Privy Council.—Humbly shewing and beseeching your honors,
the inhabitants of the precinct of the Blackfriars, London, that whereas one
Burbage hath lately bought certain rooms in the same precinct near
adjoining unto the dwelling houses of the right honorable the Lord
Chamberlaine [Lord Cobham] and the Lord of Hunsdon, which rooms the
said Burbage is now altering, and meaneth very shortly to convert and turn
the same into a common playhouse, which will grow to be a very great
annoyance and trouble, not only to all the noblemen and gentlemen
thereabout inhabiting, but also a general inconvenience to all the inhabitants
of the same precinct, both by reason of the great resort and gathering
together of all manner of vagrant and lewd persons ... as also for that there
hath not at any time heretofore been used any common playhouse within
the same precinct, but that now all players being banished by the Lord
Mayor from playing within the city ... they now think to plant themselves in
liberties, etc.[307]
The first person to sign the petition was the Dowager Lady Elizabeth
Russell; the second was none other than George Cary, Lord Hunsdon, at the
time the patron of Burbage's company of actors.[308] It is not surprising,

therefore, that as a result of this petition the Lords of the Privy Council (of
which Lord Cobham was a conspicuous member) issued an order in which
they "forbad the use of the said house for plays."[309] This order wrecked
the plans of Burbage quite as effectively as did the stubbornness of Gyles
Alleyn.
Possibly the mental distress Burbage suffered at the hands of the Privy
Council and of Gyles Alleyn affected his health; at least he did not long
survive this last sling of fortune. In February, 1597, just before the
expiration of the Alleyn lease, he died, leaving the Theatre to his son
Cuthbert, the bookseller, Blackfriars to his actor-son, Richard, the star of
Shakespeare's troupe, and his troubles to both. With good reason Cuthbert
declared many years later that the ultimate success of London theatres had
"been purchased by the infinite cost and pains of the family of Burbages."
When later in 1597 the Lord Chamberlain's Players were forced to leave
Cuthbert's Theatre, Richard Burbage was not able to establish them in his
comfortable Blackfriars house; instead, they first went to the old Curtain in
Shoreditch, and then, under the leadership of the Burbage sons, erected for
themselves a brand-new home on the Bankside, called "The Globe."
The order of the Privy Council had summarily forbidden the use of
Blackfriars as a "public" playhouse. Its proprietor, however, Richard
Burbage, might take advantage of the precedent established in the days of
Farrant, and let the building for use as a "private" theatre.[310] Exactly when
he was first able to lease the building as a "private" house we do not know,
for the history of the building between 1597 (when it was completed) and
1600 (when it was certainly occupied by the Children of the Chapel) is very
indistinct. We have no definite evidence to connect the Chapel Children, or,
indeed, any specific troupe, with Blackfriars during these years. Yet prior to
1600 the building seems to have been used for acting. Richard Burbage
himself seems to say so. In leasing the building to Evans, in 1600, he says
that he considered "with himself that" Evans could not pay the rent "except
the said Evans could erect and keep a company of playing-boys or others to
play plays and interludes in the said playhouse in such sort as before time
had been there used."[311] Now, unless this refers to Farrant's management
of the Chapel Boys in Blackfriars—nearly a quarter of a century earlier—it
means that before 1600 some actors, presumably "playing-boys," had used

Burbage's theatre. Moreover, there seems to be evidence to show that the
troupe thus vaguely referred to was under the management of Evans; for, in
referring to his lease of Blackfriars in 1600, Evans describes the playhouse
as "then or late in the tenure or occupation of your said oratour."[312] What
these vague references mean we cannot now with our limited knowledge
determine. But there is not sufficient evidence to warrant the usual
assumption that Evans and Giles had opened the Blackfriars with the
Children of the Chapel in 1597.[313]
The known history of Blackfriars as a regular theatre may be said to begin
in the autumn of 1600. On September 2 of that year, Henry Evans signed a
lease of the playhouse for a period of twenty-one years, at an annual rental
of £40. This interesting step on the part of Evans calls for a word of
explanation as to his plans.
The Children of the Chapel Royal, who had attained such glory at
Blackfriars during the Farrant-Hunnis-Evans-Oxford-Lyly régime, had
thereafter sunk into dramatic insignificance. Since 1584, when Lyly was
forced to give up his playhouse, they had not presented a play at Court.
Probably they did not entirely cease to act, for they can be vaguely traced in
the provinces during a part of this period; but their dramatic glory was
almost wholly eclipsed. Evans, who had managed the Boys under Hunnis,
Oxford, and Lyly, hoped now to reëstablish the Children of the Chapel at
Blackfriars as they had been in his younger days. Like James Burbage, he
was a man of ideas. His plan was to interest in his undertaking the Master
of the Chapel, Nathaniel Giles, who had succeeded to the office at the death
of Hunnis in 1597, and then to make practical use of the patent granted to
the Masters of the Children to take up boys for Her Majesty's service. Such
a patent, in the normal course of events, had been granted to Giles, as it had
been to his predecessors. It read in part as follows:
Elizabeth, by the grace of God, &c., to all mayors, sheriffs, bailiffs,
constables, and all other our officers, greeting. For that it is meet that our
Chapel Royal should be furnished with well-singing children from time to
time, we have, and by these presents do authorize our well-beloved servant,
Nathaniel Giles, Master of our Children of our said Chapel, or his deputy,
being by his bill subscribed and sealed, so authorized, and having this our
present commission with him, to take such and so many children as he, or

his sufficient deputy, shall think meet, in all cathedral, collegiate, parish
churches, chapels, or any other place or places, as well within liberty as
without, within this our realm of England, whatsoever they be.[314]
In such a commission Evans saw wonderful possibilities. He reasoned that
since the Queen had forced upon the Chapel Children the twofold service of
singing at royal worship and of acting plays for royal entertainment, this
twofold service should be met by a twofold organization, the one part
designed mainly to furnish sacred music, the other designed mainly to
furnish plays. Such a dual organization, it seemed to him, was now more or
less necessary, since the number of boy choristers in the Chapel Royal was
limited to twelve, whereas the acting of plays demanded at least twice as
many. Once the principle that the Chapel Royal should supply the Queen
with plays was granted, the commission could be used to furnish the
necessary actors; and the old fiction, established by Farrant and Hunnis, of
using a "private" playhouse as a means of exercising or training the boys for
Court service, would enable the promoters to give public performances and
thus handsomely reimburse themselves for their trouble.
Such was Evans's scheme, based upon his former experience with the
Children at Farrant's Blackfriars, and suggested, perhaps, by the existence
of Burbage's Blackfriars now forbidden to the "common" players. He
presented his scheme to Giles, the Master of the Children; and Giles, no
doubt, presented it at Court; for he would hardly dare thus abuse the
Queen's commission, or thus make a public spectacle of the royal choristers,
without in some way first consulting Her Majesty, and securing at least her
tacit consent. That Giles and Evans did secure royal permission to put their
scheme into operation is certain, although the exact nature of this
permission is not clear. Later, for misdemeanors on the part of the
management, the Star Chamber ordered "that all assurances made to the
said Evans concerning the said house, or plays, or interludes, should be
utterly void, and to be delivered up to be cancelled."[315]
Armed with these written "assurances," and with the royal commission to
take up children, Evans and Giles began to form their company. This
explains the language used by Heminges and Burbage: "let the said
playhouse unto Henry Evans ... who intended then presently to erect or set

up a company of boys."[316] Their method of recruiting players may best be
told by Henry Clifton, in his complaint to the Queen:
But so it is, most excellent Sovereign, that the said Nathaniel Giles,
confederating himself with one James Robinson, Henry Evans, and others,
[317] yet unto Your Majesty's said subject unknown how [many], by color of
Your Majesty's said letters patents, and the trust by Your Highness thereby
to him, the said Nathaniel Giles, committed, endeavoring, conspiring, and
complotting how to oppress diverse of Your Majesty's humble and faithful
subjects, and thereby to make unto themselves an unlawful gain and benefit,
they, the said confederates, devised, conspired, and concluded, for their own
corrupt gain and lucre, to erect, set up, furnish, and maintain a playhouse, or
place in the Blackfriars, within Your Majesty's city of London; and to the
end they might the better furnish their said plays and interludes with
children, whom they thought most fittest to act and furnish the said plays,
they, the said confederates, abusing the authority and trust by Your
Highness to him, the said Nathaniel Giles, and his deputy or deputies, by
Your Highness's said letters patents given and reposed, hath, sithence Your
Majesty's last free and general pardon, most wrongfully, unduly, and
unjustly taken diverse and several children from diverse and sundry schools
of learning and other places, and apprentices to men of trade from their
masters, no way fitting for Your Majesty's service in or for your Chapel
Royal, but the children have so taken and employed in acting and furnishing
of the said plays and interludes, so by them complotted and agreed to be
erected, furnished, and maintained, against the wills of the said children,
their parents, tutors, masters, and governors, and to the no small grief and
oppressions [of] Your Majesty's true and faithful subjects. Amongst which
numbers, so by the persons aforesaid and their agents so unjustly taken,
used and employed, they have unduly taken and so employed one John
Chappell, a grammar school scholar of one Mr. Spykes School near
Cripplegate, London; John Motteram, a grammar scholar in the free school
at Westminster; Nathaniel Field, a scholar of a grammar school in London
kept by one Mr. Monkaster;[318] Alvery Trussell, an apprentice to one
Thomas Gyles; one Phillipp Pykman and [one] Thomas Grymes,
apprentices to Richard and George Chambers; Salmon Pavy,[319] apprentice
to one Peerce; being children no way able or fit for singing, nor by any the
said confederates endeavoured to be taught to sing, but by them, the said

confederates, abusively employed, as aforesaid, only in plays and
interludes.[320]
In spite of the obvious animosity inspiring Clifton's words, we get from his
complaint a clear notion of how Evans and Giles supplemented the Children
of the Chapel proper with actors. In a short time they brought together at
Blackfriars a remarkable troupe of boy-players, who, with Jonson and
Chapman as their poets, began to astonish London. For, in spite of certain
limitations, "the children" could act with a charm and a grace that often
made them more attractive than their grown-up rivals. Middleton advises
the London gallant "to call in at the Blackfriars, where he should see a nest
of boys able to ravish a man."[321] Jonson gives eloquent testimony to the
power of little Salathiel Pavy to portray the character of old age:
Years he numbered scarce
thirteen
When Fates turned cruel,
Yet three filled zodiacs had he
been
The stage's jewel;
And did act, what now we
moan,
Old men so duly,
As, sooth, the Parcae thought
him one,
He played so truly.[322]
And Samuel Pepys records the effectiveness of a child-actor in the rôle of
women: "One Kinaston, a boy, acted the Duke's sister, but made the
loveliest lady that ever I saw in my life."[323]
Moreover, to expert acting these Boys of the Chapel Royal added the
charms of vocal and instrumental music, for which many of them had been
specially trained. The Duke of Stettin-Pomerania, who upon his grand tour
of the European countries in 1602 attended a play at Blackfriars, bears
eloquent testimony to the musical powers of the children: "For a whole hour
before the play begins, one listens to charming [köstliche] instrumental
music played on organs, lutes, pandorins, mandolins, violins, and flutes; as,

indeed, on this occasion, a boy sang cum voce tremula to the
accompaniment of a bass-viol, so delightfully [lieblich] that, if the Nuns at
Milan did not excel him, we had not heard his equal in our travels."[324] In
addition, the Children were provided with splendid apparel—though not at
the cost of the Queen, as Mr. Wallace contends.[325] Naturally they became
popular. On January 6, 1601, they were summoned to Court to entertain Her
Majesty—the first recorded performance of the Children of the Chapel at
Court since the year 1584, when Sir William More closed the first
Blackfriars.
Perhaps the most interesting testimony to the success of the Chapel
Children in their new playhouse is that uttered by Shakespeare in Hamlet
(1601), in which he speaks of the performances by the "little eyases" as a
"late innovation." The success of the "innovation" had driven Shakespeare
and his troupe of grown-up actors to close the Globe and travel in the
country, even though they had Hamlet as an attraction. The good-natured
way in which Shakespeare treats the situation is worthy of special
observation:
Ham. What players are they?
Ros. Even those you were wont to take delight in, the tragedians of the city.
[326]

Ham. How chances it they travel? their residence, both in reputation and
profit, was better both ways.[327]
Ros. I think their inhibition comes by means of the late innovation.
Ham. Do they hold the same estimation they did when I was in the city? are
they so followed?
Ros. No, indeed, they are not!
Ham. How comes it? do they grow rusty?
Ros. Nay, their endeavour keeps in the wonted pace; but there is, sir, an
aerie of children,[328] little eyases, that cry out on the top of question, and
are most tyrannically clapped for 't. These are now the fashion, and so
berattle the "common stages"—so they call them—that many wearing

rapiers [i.e., gallants] are afraid of goose-quills, and dare scarce come
thither.
Ham. What! are they children? who maintains 'em? how are they escoted?
Will they pursue the quality no longer than they can sing?
The passage ends with the question from Hamlet: "Do the boys carry it
away?" which gives Rosencrantz an opportunity to pun on the sign of the
Globe Playhouse: "Ay, that they do, my lord; Hercules and his load, too."
Shortly after the great dramatist had penned these words, the management
of Blackfriars met with disaster. The cause, however, went back to
December 13, 1600, when Giles and Evans were gathering their players. In
their overweening confidence they made a stupid blunder in "taking up" for
their troupe the only son and heir of Henry Clifton, a well-to-do gentleman
of Norfolk, who had come to London for the purpose of educating the boy.
Clifton says in his complaint that Giles, Evans, and their confederates, "well
knowing that your subject's said son had no manner of sight in song, nor
skill in music," on the 13th day of December, 1600, did "waylay the said
Thomas Clifton" as he was "walking quietly from your subject's said house
towards the said school," and "with great force and violence did seize and
surprise, and him with like force and violence did, to the great terror and
hurt of him, the said Thomas Clifton, haul, pull, drag, and carry away to the
said playhouse." As soon as the father learned of this, he hurried to the
playhouse and "made request to have his said son released." But Giles and
Evans "utterly and scornfully refused to do" this. Whereupon Clifton
threatened to complain to the Privy Council. But Evans and Giles "in very
scornful manner willed your said subject to complain to whom he would."
Clifton suggested that "it was not fit that a gentleman of his sort should
have his son and heir (and that his only son) to be so basely used." Giles
and Evans "most arrogantly then and there answered that they had authority
sufficient so to take any nobleman's son in this land"; and further to irritate
the father, they immediately put into young Thomas's hand "a scroll of
paper, containing part of one of their said plays or interludes, and him, the
said Thomas Clifton, commanded to learn the same by heart," with the
admonition that "if he did not obey the said Evans, he should be surely
whipped."[329]

Clifton at once appealed to his friend, Sir John Fortescue, a member of the
Privy Council, at whose order young Thomas was released and sent back to
his studies. Apparently this ended the episode. But Clifton, nourishing his
animosity, began to investigate the management of Blackfriars, and to
collect evidence of similar abuses of the Queen's commission, with the
object of making complaint to the Star Chamber. In October, 1601, Evans, it
seems, learned of Clifton's purpose, for on the 21st of that month he deeded
all his property to his son-in-law, Alexander Hawkins.[330] Clifton finally
presented his complaint to the Star Chamber on December 15, 1601,[331] but
his complaint was probably not acted on until early in 1602, for during the
Christmas holidays the Children were summoned as usual to present their
play before the Queen.[332]
Shortly after this, however, the Star Chamber passed on Clifton's complaint.
The decree itself is lost, but the following reference to it is made in a
subsequent lawsuit: "The said Evans ... was censured by the right honorable
Court of Star Chamber for his unorderly carriage and behaviour in taking
up of gentlemen's children against their wills and to employ them for
players, and for other misdemeanors in the said Decree contained; and
further that all assurances made to the said Evans concerning the said house
or plays or interludes should be utterly void, and to be delivered up to be
canceled."[333] Doubtless the decree fell with equal force upon Giles and the
others connected with the enterprise, for after the Star Chamber decree
Giles and Robinson disappear from the management of the playhouse.
Evans was forbidden to have any connection with plays there; and for a
time, no doubt, the building was closed.
Evans, however, still held the lease, and was under the necessity of paying
the rent as before. Then came forward Edward Kirkham, who, in his official
capacity as Yeoman of the Revels, had become acquainted with the
dramatic activities of the Children of the Chapel. He saw an opportunity to
take over the Blackfriars venture now that Evans and probably Giles had
been forbidden by the Star Chamber to have any connection with plays in
that building. Having associated with him William Rastell, a merchant, and
Thomas Kendall,[334] a haberdasher, he made overtures to Evans, the owner
of the lease. Evans, however, was determined to retain a half-interest in the
playhouse, and to evade the order of the Star Chamber by using his son-in-
law, Alexander Hawkins, as his agent. Accordingly, on April 20, 1602,

"Articles of Agreement" were signed between Evans and Hawkins on the
one part, and Kirkham, Rastell, and Kendall on the other part, whereby the
latter were admitted to a half-interest in the playhouse and in the troupe of
child-actors. Kirkham, Rastell, and Kendall agreed to pay one-half of the
annual rent of £40,[335] to pay one-half of the repairs on the building, and in
addition to spend £400 on apparel and furnishings for the troupe. Under this
reorganization—with Evans as a secret partner—the Children continued to
act with their customary success.
About a month later, however, Lord Hunsdon, the Lord Chamberlain,
whose house adjoined Blackfriars, seems to have inquired into the affairs of
the new organization.[336] What Kirkham told him led him to order Evans
off the premises. Evans informs us that he was "commanded by his
Lordship to avoid and leave the same; for fear of whose displeasure, the
complainant [Evans] was forced to leave the country."[337] He felt it prudent
to remain away from London "for a long space and time"; yet he "lost
nothing," for "he left the said Alexander Hawkins to deal for him and to
take such benefit of the said house as should belong unto him in his
absence."[338]
If we may judge from the enthusiastic account given by the Duke of Stettin-
Pomerania, who visited Blackfriars in the September following, the
Children were just as effective under Kirkham's management as they had
been under the management of Giles and Evans. It is to be noted, however,
that Elizabeth did not again invite the Blackfriars troupe to the Court.
The death of the Queen in 1603 led to the closing of all playhouses. This
was followed by a long attack of the plague, so that for many months
Blackfriars was closed, and "by reason thereof no such profit and
commodity was raised and made of and by the said playhouse as was hoped
for."[339] Evans actually "treated" with Richard Burbage "about the
surrendering and giving up the said lease," but Burbage declined to consider
the matter.
Shortly after this the plague ceased, and acting, stimulated by King James's
patronage, was resumed with fervor. The Blackfriars Company was
reorganized under Edward Kirkham, Alexander Hawkins (acting for Evans),
Thomas Kendall, and Robert Payne: and on February 4, 1604, it secured a

royal patent to play under the title "The Children of the Queen's Revels."
[340] According to this patent, the poet Samuel Daniel was specially
appointed to license their plays: "Provided always that no such plays or
shows shall be presented before the said Queen our wife by the said
Children, or by them anywhere publicly acted, but by the approbation and
allowance of Samuel Daniel, whom her pleasure is to appoint for that
purpose." At this time, too, or not long after, John Marston was allowed a
share in the organization, and thus was retained as one of its regular
playwrights.
The success of the new company is indicated by the fact that it was
summoned to present a play at Court in February, 1604, and again two plays
in January, 1605. Evans's activity in the management of the troupe in spite
of the order of the Star Chamber is evident from the fact that the payment
for the last two court performances was made directly to him.
In the spring of 1604 the company gave serious offense by acting Samuel
Daniel's Philotas, which was supposed to relate to the unfortunate Earl of
Essex; but the blame must have fallen largely on Daniel, who not only
wrote the play, but also licensed its performance. He was summoned before
the Privy Council to explain, and seems to have fully proved his innocence.
Shortly after this he published the play with an apology affixed.[341]
The following year the Children gave much more serious offense by acting
Eastward Hoe, a comedy in which Marston, Chapman, and Jonson
collaborated. Not only did the play ridicule the Scots in general, and King
James's creation of innumerable knights in particular, but one of the little
actors was actually made, it seems, to mimic the royal brogue: "I ken the
man weel; he is one of my thirty pound Knights." Marston escaped by
timely flight, but Jonson and Chapman were arrested and lodged in jail, and
were for a time in some danger of having their nostrils slit and their ears
cropped. Both Chapman and Jonson asserted that they were wholly
innocent, and Chapman openly put the blame of the offensive passages on
Marston.[342] Marston, however, was beyond the reach of the King's wrath,
so His Majesty punished instead the men in control of Blackfriars. It was
discovered that the manager, Kirkham, had presented the play without
securing the Lord Chamberlain's allowance. As a result, he and the others in
charge of the Children were prohibited from any further connection with the

playhouse. This doubtless explains the fact that Kirkham shortly after
appears as one of the managers of Paul's Boys.[343] It explains, also, the
following statement made by Evans in the course of one of the later legal
documents: "After the King's most excellent Majesty, upon some
misdemeanors committed in or about the plays there, and specially upon the
defendant's [Kirkham's] acts and doings there, had prohibited that no plays
should be more used there," etc.[344] Not only was Kirkham driven from the
management of the troupe and the playhouse closed for a time, but the
Children were denied the Queen's patronage. No longer were they allowed
to use the high-sounding title "The Children of the Queen's Majesty's
Revels"; instead, we find them described merely as "The Children of the
Revels," or as "The Children of Blackfriars."[345]
For a time, no doubt, affairs at the playhouse were at a standstill. Evans
again sought to surrender his lease to Burbage, but without success.[346]
Marston, having escaped the wrath of the King by flight, decided to end his
career as a playwright and turn country parson. It was shortly after this, in
all probability, that he sold his share in the Blackfriars organization to one
Robert Keysar, a goldsmith of London, for the sum of £100.[347]
Keysar, it seems, undertook to reopen the playhouse, and to continue the
Children there at his own expense.[348] From the proprietors he rented the
playhouse, the stock of apparel, the furnishings, and playbooks. This, I take
it, explains the puzzling statement made by Kirkham some years later:
This repliant [Kirkham] and his said partners [Rastell and Kendall] have
had and received the sum of one hundred pounds per annum for their part
and moiety in the premises without any manner of charges whatsoever [i.e.,
during Kirkham's management of the troupe prior to 1605].[349] And after
that this replyant and his said partners had received the foresaid profits [i.e.,
after Kirkham and his partners had to give up the management of the
Children in 1605], the said Children, which the said Evans in his answer
affirmeth to be the Queen's Children [i.e., they are no longer the Queen's
Children, for after 1605 they had been deprived of the Queen's patronage;
but Kirkham was in error, for Evans with legal precision had referred to the
company as 'The Queen's Majesty's Children of the Revels (for so it was
often called)'] were masters themselves [i.e., their own managers], and this
complainant and his said partners received of them, and of one Keysar who

was interest with them, above the sum of one hundred and fifty pounds per
annum only for the use of the said great hall, without all manner of charges,
as this replyant will make it manifest to this honorable court.[350]
Under Keysar's management the Blackfriars troupe continued to act as the
Children of the Revels. But, unfortunately, they had not learned wisdom
from their recent experience, and in the very following year we find them
again in serious trouble. John Day's Isle of Guls, acted in February, 1606,
gave great offense to the Court. Sir Edward Hoby, in a letter to Sir Thomas
Edwards,[351] writes: "At this time was much speech of a play in the
Blackfriars, where, in the Isle of Guls, from the highest to the lowest, all
men's parts were acted of two diverse nations. As I understand, sundry were
committed to Bridewell."[352]
The Children, however, were soon allowed to resume playing, and they
continued for a time without mishap. But in the early spring of 1608 they
committed the most serious offense of all by acting Chapman's Conspiracy
and Tragedy of Charles, Duke of Byron. The French Ambassador took
umbrage at the uncomplimentary representation of the contemporary
French Court, and had an order made forbidding them to act the play. But
the Children, "voyant toute la Cour dehors, ne laisserent de la faire, et non
seulement cela, mais y introduiserent la Reine et Madame de Verneuil,
traitant celle-ci fort mal de paroles, et lui donnant un soufflet." Whereupon
the French Ambassador made special complaint to Salisbury, who ordered
the arrest of the author and the actors. "Toutefois il ne s'en trouva que trois,
qui aussi-tôt furent menés à la prison où ils sont encore; mais le principal,
qui est le compositeur, échapa."[353] The Ambassador observes also that a
few days before the Children of the Revels had given offense by a play on
King James: "Un jour ou deux avant, ils avoient dépêché leur Roi, sa mine
d'Ecosse, et tous ses Favoris d'une étrange sorte; car aprés lui avoir fait
dépiter le Ciel sur le vol d'un oisseau, et fait battre un Gentilhomme pour
avoir rompu ses chiens, ils le dépeignoient ivre pour le moins une fois le
jour."[354] As a result of these two offenses, coming as a climax to a long
series of such offenses, the King was "extrêmement irrité contre ces
marauds-là," and gave order for their immediate suppression. This marked
the end of the child-actors at Blackfriars.

Naturally Kirkham, Rastell, and Kendall, since there was "no profit made of
the said house, but a continual rent of forty pounds to be paid for the same,"
became sick of their bargain with Evans. An additional reason for their
wishing to withdraw finally from the enterprise was the rapid increase of
the plague, which about July 25 closed all playhouses. So Kirkham, "at or
about the 26 of July, 1608, caused the apparrels, properties, and goods
belonging to the copartners, sharers, and masters" to be divided. Kirkham
and his associates took away their portions, and "quit the place," the one-
time manager using to Evans some unkind words: "said he would deal no
more with it, 'for,' quod he, 'it is a base thing,' or used words to such or very
like effect."[355] Evans, thus deserted by Kirkham, Rastell, and Kendall,
regarded the organization of the Blackfriars as dissolved; he "delivered up
their commission which he had under the Great Seal authorizing them to
play, and discharged diverse of the partners and poets."
Robert Keysar, however, the old manager, laid plans to keep the Children
together, and continue them as a troupe after the cessation of the plague. For
a while, we are told, he maintained them at his own expense, "in hope to
have enjoyed his said bargain ... upon the ceasing of the general sickness."
[356] And he expected, by virtue of the share he had purchased from John
Marston, to be able to use the Blackfriars Playhouse for his purpose.
In the meanwhile Evans began negotiations with Burbage for the surrender
of the lease: "By reason the said premises lay then and had long lyen void
and without use for plays, whereby the same became not only burthensome
and unprofitable unto the said Evans, but also ran far into decay for want of
reparations ... the said Evans began to treat with the said Richard Burbage
about a surrender of the said Evans his said lease."[357] This time Burbage
listened to the proposal, for he and his fellow-actors at the Globe
"considered that the house would be fit for themselves." So in August,
1608, he agreed to take over the building for the use of the King's Men.
Even after Evans's surrender of the lease, Keysar, it seems, made an effort
to keep the Children together. On the following Christmas, 1608-09, we
find a record of payment to him for performances at Court, by "The
Children of Blackfriars." But soon after this the troupe must have been
disbanded. Keysar says that they were "enforced to be dispersed and turned
away to the abundant hurt of the said young men";[358] and the Burbages

and Heminges declare that the children "were dispersed and driven each of
them to provide for himself by reason that the plays ceasing in the City of
London, either through sickness, or for some other cause, he, the said
complainant [Keysar], was no longer able to maintain them together."[359]
In the autumn of 1609, however, Keysar assembled the Children again,
reorganized them with the assistance of Philip Rosseter, and placed them in
Whitefriars Playhouse, recently left vacant by the disruption of the Children
of His Majesty's Revels. Their subsequent history will be found related in
the chapter dealing with that theatre.
When in August, 1608, Richard Burbage secured from Evans the surrender
of the Blackfriars lease, he at once proceeded to organize from the Globe
Company a syndicate to operate the building as a playhouse. He admitted to
partnership in the new enterprise all of the then sharers in the Globe except
Witter and Nichols, outsiders who had secured their interest through
marriage with the heirs of Pope and Phillips, and who, therefore, were not
entitled to any consideration. In addition, he admitted Henry Evans,
doubtless in fulfillment of a condition in the surrender of the lease. The
syndicate thus formed was made up of seven equal sharers, as follows:
Richard Burbage, Cuthbert Burbage, Henry Evans, William Shakespeare,
John Heminges, Henry Condell, and William Slye. These sharers leased the
building from Richard Burbage for a period of twenty-one years,[360] at the
old rental of £40 per annum, each binding himself to pay annually the sum
of £5 14s. 4d.[361] The method of distributing the profits between the
sharers (known as "housekeepers") and the actors (known as the
"company") was to be the same as that practiced at the Globe.[362]
Soon after this organization was completed, the King's Men moved from
the Globe to the Blackfriars. They did not, of course, intend to abandon the
Globe. Their plan was to use the Blackfriars as a "winter home," and the
Globe as a "summer house."[363] Malone observed from the Herbert
Manuscript that "the King's Company usually began to play at the Globe in
the month of May";[364] although he failed to state at what time in the
autumn they usually moved to the Blackfriars, the evidence points to the
first of November.
Such a plan had many advantages. For one thing, it would prevent the
pecuniary losses often caused by a severe winter. In the Poetaster (1601),

Jonson makes Histrio, representing the Globe Players, say: "O, it will get us
a huge deal of money, and we have need on't, for this winter has made us all
poorer than so many starved snakes; nobody comes at us."[365] This could
not be said of the King's Men after they moved to the Blackfriars. Edward
Kirkham, a man experienced in theatrical finances, offered to prove to the
court in 1612 that the King's Men "got, and as yet doth, more in one winter
in the said great hall by a thousand pounds than they were used to get on the
Bankside."[366]
Kirkham's testimony as to the popularity of the King's Men in their winter
home is borne out by a petition to the city authorities made by "the
constables and other officers and inhabitants of Blackfriars" in January,
1619. They declared that to the playhouse "there is daily such resort of
people, and such multitudes of coaches (whereof many are hackney-
coaches, bringing people of all sorts), that sometimes all our streets cannot
contain them, but that they clog up Ludgate also, in such sort that both they
endanger the one the other, break down stalls, throw down men's goods
from their shops, and the inhabitants there cannot come to their houses, nor
bring in their necessary provisions of beer, wood, coal, or hay, nor the
tradesmen or shopkeepers utter their wares, nor the passenger go to the
common water stairs without danger of their lives and limbs." "These
inconveniences" were said to last "every day in the winter time from one or
two of the clock till six at night."[367]
As a result of this petition the London Common Council ordered, January
21, 1619, that "the said playhouses be suppressed, and that the players shall
from thenceforth forbear and desist from playing in that house."[368] But the
players had at Court many influential friends, and these apparently came to
their rescue. The order of the Common Council was not put into effect; and
so far as we know the only result of this agitation was that King James on
March 27 issued to his actors a new patent specifically giving them—
described as his "well-beloved servants"—the right henceforth to play
unmolested in Blackfriars. The new clause in the patent runs: "as well
within their two their now usual houses called the Globe, within our County
of Surrey, and their private house situate in the precinct of the Blackfriars,
within our city of London."[369] At the accession of King Charles I, the
patent was renewed, June 24, 1625, with the same clause regarding the use
of Blackfriars.[370]

In 1631, however, the agitation was renewed, this time in the form of a
petition from the churchwardens and constables of the precinct of
Blackfriars to William Laud, then Bishop of London. The document gives
such eloquent testimony to the popularity of the playhouse that I have
inserted it below in full:
To the Right Honorable and Right Reverend Father in God, William, Lord
Bishop of London, one of His Majesty's Honorable Privy Council. The
humble petition of the churchwardens and constables of Blackfriars, on the
behalf of the whole Parish, showing that by reason of a playhouse,
exceedingly frequented, in the precinct of the said Blackfriars, the
inhabitants there suffer many grievances upon the inconveniences hereunto
annexed, and many other.
May it therefore please your Lordship to take the said grievances into your
honorable consideration for the redressing thereof. And for the reviving the
order, which hath been heretofore made by the Lords of the Council, and
the Lord Mayor and the Court of Aldermen, for the removal of them. And
they shall, according to their duties, ever pray for your Lordship.
Reasons and Inconveniences Inducing the Inhabitants of Blackfriars,
London, to Become Humble Suitors to Your Lordship for Removing the
Playhouse in the Said Blackfriars:
1. The shopkeepers in divers places suffer much, being hindered by the
great recourse to the plays (especially of coaches) from selling their
commodities, and having their wares many times broken and beaten off
their stalls.
2. The recourse of coaches is many times so great that the inhabitants
cannot in an afternoon take in any provision of beer, coals, wood, or hay,
the streets being known to be so exceeding straight and narrow.
3. The passage through Ludgate to the water [i.e., Water Lane] is many
times stopped up, people in their ordinary going much endangered, quarrels
and bloodshed many times occasioned, and many disorderly people towards
night gathered thither, under pretense of attending and waiting for those at
the plays.

4. If there should happen any misfortune of fire, there is not likely any
present order could possibly be taken, for the disorder and number of the
coaches, since there could be no speedy passage made for quenching the
fire, to the endangering of the parish and city.
5. Christenings and burials, which usually are in the afternoon, are many
times disturbed, and persons endangered in that part, which is the greatest
part of the parish.
6. Persons of honor and quality that dwell in the parish are restrained by the
number of coaches from going out, or coming home in seasonable time, to
the prejudice of their occasions. And some persons of honor have left, and
others have refused houses for this very inconvenience, to the prejudice and
loss of the parish.
7. The Lords of the Council in former times have by order directed that
there shall be but two playhouses tolerated, and those without the city, the
one at the Bankside, the other near Golding Lane (which these players still
have and use all summer), which the Lords did signify by their letters to the
Lord Mayor; and in performance thereof the Lord Mayor and the Court of
Aldermen did give order that they should forbear to play any longer there,
which the players promised to the Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas
(while he was Recorder of London) to observe, entreating only a little time
to provide themselves elsewhere.[371]
Bishop Laud endorsed the petition with his own hand "To the Coun. Table,"
and in all probability he submitted it to the consideration of the Privy
Council. If so, the Council took no action.
But in 1633, as a result of further complaints about the crowding of
coaches, the Privy Council appointed a committee to estimate the value of
the Blackfriars Theatre and "the buildings thereunto belonging," with the
idea of removing the playhouse and paying the owners therefor. The
committee reported that "the players demanded £21,000. The
commissioners [Sir Henry Spiller, Sir William Beecher, and Laurence
Whitaker] valued it at near £3000. The Parishioners offered towards the
removing of them £100."[372] Obviously the plan of removal was not
feasible, if indeed the Privy Council seriously contemplated such action.
The only result of this second agitation was the issuance on November 20

of special instructions to coachmen: "If any persons, men or women, of
what condition soever, repair to the aforesaid playhouse in coach, as soon as
they are gone out of their coaches, the coachmen shall depart thence and not
return till the end of the play."[373] Garrard, in a letter to the Lord Deputy
dated January 9, 1633, says: "Here hath been an order of the Lords of the
Council hung up in a table near Paul's and the Blackfriars to command all
that resort to the playhouse there to send away their coaches, and to
disperse abroad in Paul's Churchyard, Carter Lane, the Conduit in Fleet
Street, and other places, and not to return to fetch their company, but they
must trot afoot to find their coaches. 'Twas kept very strictly for two or
three weeks, but now I think it is disordered again."[374] The truth is that
certain distinguished patrons of the theatre did not care "to trot afoot to find
their coaches," and so made complaint at Court. As a result it was ordered,
at a sitting of the Council, December 29, 1633 (the King being present):
"Upon information this day given to the Board of the discommodity that
diverse persons of great quality, especially Ladies and Gentlewomen, did
receive in going to the playhouse of Blackfriars by reason that no coaches
may stand ... the Board ... think fit to explain the said order in such manner
that as many coaches as may stand within the Blackfriars Gate may enter
and stay there."[375]
All this agitation about coaches implies a fashionable and wealthy
patronage of the Blackfriars. An interesting glimpse of high society at the
theatre is given in a letter written by Garrard, January 25, 1636: "A little
pique happened betwixt the Duke of Lenox and the Lord Chamberlain
about a box at a new play in the Blackfriars, of which the Duke had got the
key, which, if it had come to be debated betwixt them, as it was once
intended, some heat or perhaps other inconvenience might have happened."
[376] The Queen herself also sometimes went thither. Herbert records,
without any comment, her presence there on the 13 of May, 1634.[377] It has
been generally assumed that she attended a regular afternoon performance;
but this, I am sure, was not the case. The Queen engaged the entire building
for the private entertainment of herself and her specially invited guests, and
the performance was at night. In a bill presented by the King's Men for
plays acted before the members of the royal family during the year 1636
occurs the entry: "The 5th of May, at the Blackfryers, for the Queene and
the Prince Elector ... Alfonso." Again, in a similar bill for the year 1638 (see

the bill on page 404) is the entry: "At the Blackfryers, the 23 of Aprill, for
the Queene ... The Unfortunate Lovers." The fact that the actors did not
record the loss of their "day" at their house, and made their charge
accordingly, shows that the plays were given at night and did not interfere
with the usual afternoon performances before the public.
The King's Men continued to occupy the Blackfriars as their winter home
until the closing of the theatres in 1642. Thereafter the building must have
stood empty for a number of years. In 1653 Sir Aston Cokaine, in a poem
prefixed to Richard Brome's Plays, looked forward prophetically to the
happy day when
Black, and White Friars too, shall flourish again.
But the prophecy was not to be fulfilled; for although Whitefriars (i.e.,
Salisbury Court) did flourish as a Restoration playhouse, the more famous
Blackfriars had ceased to exist before acting was allowed again. The
manuscript note in the Phillipps copy of Stow's Annals (1631) informs us
that "the Blackfriars players' playhouse in Blackfriars, London, which had
stood many years, was pulled down to the ground on Monday the 6 day of
August, 1655, and tenements built in the room."[378]

CHAPTER XII
THE GLOBE

A S related more fully in the chapter on "The Theatre," when Cuthbert
and Richard Burbage discovered that Gyles Alleyn not only refused to
renew the lease for the land on which their playhouse stood, but was
actually planning to seize the building and devote it to his private uses, they
took immediate steps to thwart him. And in doing so they evolved a new
and admirable scheme of theatrical management. They planned to bring
together into a syndicate or stock-company some of the best actors of the
day, and allow these actors to share in the ownership of the building.
Hitherto playhouses had been erected merely as pecuniary investments by
profit-seeking business men,—Burbage,[379] Brayne, Lanman, Henslowe,
Cholmley, Langley,—and had been conducted in the interests of the
proprietors rather than of the actors.[380] As a result, these proprietors had
long reaped an unduly rich harvest from the efforts of the players, taking all
or a large share of the income from the galleries. The new scheme was
designed to remedy these faults.

RICHARD BURBAGE
(Reproduced by permission from a painting in the
Dulwich Picture Gallery; photograph by Emery Walker,
Ltd.)

For participation in this scheme the Burbages selected the following men:
William Shakespeare, not only a successful actor, but a poet who had
already made his reputation as a writer of plays, and who gave promise of
greater attainments; John Heminges, a good actor and an exceptionally
shrewd man of business, who until his death managed the pecuniary affairs
of the company with distinguished success; Augustine Phillips and Thomas
Pope, both ranked with the best actors of the day;[381] and William Kempe,
the greatest comedian since Tarleton, described in 1600 as "a player in
interludes, and partly the Queen's Majesty's jester." When to this group we
add Richard Burbage himself, the Roscius of his age, we have an
organization of business, histrionic, and poetic ability that could not be
surpassed. It was carefully planned, and it deserved the remarkable success

which it attained. The superiority of the Globe Company over all others was
acknowledged in the days of James and Charles, and to-day stands out as
one of the most impressive facts in the history of the early drama.
According to the original plan there were to be ten shares in the new
enterprise, the Burbage brothers holding between them one-half the stock,
or two and a half shares each, and the five actors holding the other half, or
one share each. All the expenses of leasing a site, erecting a building, and
subsequently operating the building as a playhouse, and likewise all the
profits to accrue therefrom, were to be divided among the sharers according
to their several holdings.
This organization, it should be understood, merely concerned the ownership
of the building. Its members stood in the relation of landlords to the players,
and were known by the technical name of "housekeepers." Wholly distinct
was the organization of the players, known as the "company." The company,
too, was divided into shares for the purpose of distributing its profits. The
"housekeepers," in return for providing the building, received one-half of
the income from the galleries; the company, for entertaining the public,
received the other half of the income from the galleries, plus the takings at
the doors. Those actors who were also "housekeepers" shared twice in the
profits of the playhouse; and it was a part of the plan of the "housekeepers"
to admit actors to be sharers in the building as soon as they attained
eminence, or otherwise made their permanent connection with the
playhouse desirable. Thus the two organizations, though entirely distinct,
were interlocking.
Such a scheme had many advantages. In the first place, it prevented the
company from shifting from one playhouse to another, as was frequently
the case with other troupes. In the second place, it guaranteed both the
excellence and the permanency of the company. Too often good companies
were dissolved by the desertion of a few important members; as every
student of the drama knows, the constant reorganization of troupes is one of
the most exasperating features of Elizabethan theatrical history. In the third
place, the plan, like all profit-sharing schemes, tended to elicit from each
member of the organization his best powers. The opportunity offered to a
young actor ultimately to be admitted as a sharer in the ownership of the
building was a constant source of inspiration,[382] and the power to admit at

any time a new sharer enabled the company to recruit from other troupes
brilliant actors when such appeared; as, for example, William Osteler and
Nathaniel Field, who had attained fame with the Children at Blackfriars and
elsewhere. Finally, the plan brought the actors together in a close bond of
friendship that lasted for life. Heminges was loved and trusted by them all.
Shakespeare was admired and revered; three members of the troupe seem to
have named their sons for him. Indeed, there is nothing more inspiring in a
close study of all the documents relating to the Globe than the mutual
loyalty and devotion of the original sharers. The publication of
Shakespeare's plays by Heminges and Condell is merely one out of many
expressions of this splendid comradeship.
The plan of organization having been evolved, and the original members
having been selected, the first question presenting itself was, Where should
the new playhouse be erected? Burbage, Heminges, and the rest—including
Shakespeare—probably gave the question much thought. Their experience
in Holywell had not been pleasant; the precinct of Blackfriars, they now
well realized, was out of the question; so they turned their eyes to the
Bankside. That section had recently become the theatrical centre of London.
There were situated the Rose, the Swan, and the Bear Garden, and thither
each day thousands of persons flocked in search of entertainment. Clearly
the Bankside was best suited to their purpose. Near the fine old church of
St. Mary Overies, and not far from the Rose and the Bear Garden, they
found a plot of land that met their approval. Its owner, Sir Nicholas Brend,
was willing to lease it for a long term of years, and at a very reasonable
rate. They made a verbal contract with Brend, according to which the lease
was to begin on December 25, 1598.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Shakespeare seems to have been equally with Burbage a
leader in erecting the Globe. In 1599 the building is
officially described as "vna domo de novo edificata ... in
occupacione Willielmi Shakespeare et aliorum."

Three days later, on December 28, Richard and Cuthbert Burbage, having
secured the services of the carpenter, Peter Street, and his workmen, tore
down the old Theatre and transported the timber and other materials to this
new site across the river; and shortly after the Globe began to lift itself
above the houses of the Bankside—a handsome theatre surpassing anything
then known to London playgoers.
In the meantime the lawyers had drawn up the lease, and this was formally
signed on February 21, 1599. The company had arranged a "tripartite
lease," the three parties being Sir Nicholas Brend, the Burbage brothers, and
the five actors.[383] To the Burbages Sir Nicholas leased one-half of the

property at a yearly rental of £7 5s.; and to the five actors, he leased the
other half, at the same rate. Thus the total rent paid for the land was £14
10s. The lease was to run for a period of thirty-one years.
The five actors, not satisfied with tying up the property in the "tripartite
lease," proceeded at once to arrange their holdings in the form of a "joint
tenancy." This they accomplished by the following device:
William Shakespeare, Augustine Phillips, Thomas Pope, John Heminges,
and William Kempe did shortly after grant and assign all the said moiety of
and in the said gardens and grounds unto William Levison and Thomas
Savage, who regranted and reassigned to every one of them severally a fifth
part of the said moiety of the said gardens and grounds.[384]
The object of the "joint tenancy" was to prevent any member of the
organization from disposing of his share to an outsider. Legally at the death
of a member his share passed into the possession of the other members, so
that the last survivor would receive the whole. In reality, however, the
members used the "joint tenancy" merely to control the disposition of the
shares, and they always allowed the heirs-at-law to receive the share of a
deceased member.
The wisdom of this arrangement was quickly shown, for "about the time of
the building of said playhouse and galleries, or shortly after," William
Kempe decided to withdraw from the enterprise. He had to dispose of his
share to the other parties in the "joint tenancy," Shakespeare, Heminges,
Phillips, and Pope, who at once divided it equally among themselves, and
again went through the process necessary to place that share in "joint
tenancy." After the retirement of Kempe, the organization, it will be
observed, consisted of six men, and the shares were eight in number, owned
as follows: Richard Burbage and Cuthbert Burbage, each two shares,
Shakespeare, Heminges, Phillips, and Pope, each one share.

A PLAN OF THE GLOBE PROPERTY
Based on the lease and on other documents and
references to the property.
[Enlarge]

The tract of land on which the new playhouse was to be erected is minutely
described in the lease[385] as follows:
All that parcel of ground just recently before enclosed and made into four
separate garden plots, recently in the tenure and occupation of Thomas Burt
and Isbrand Morris, diers, and Lactantius Roper, salter, citizen of London,
containing in length from east to west two hundred and twenty feet in assize
or thereabouts, lying and adjoining upon a way or lane there on one [the
south] side, and abutting upon a piece of land called The Park[386] upon the

north, and upon a garden then or recently in the tenure or occupation of one
John Cornishe toward the west, and upon another garden plot then or
recently in the tenure or occupation of one John Knowles toward the east,
with all the houses, buildings, structures, ways, easements, commodities,
and appurtenances thereunto belonging.... And also all that parcel of land
just recently before enclosed and made into three separate garden plots,
whereof two of the same [were] recently in the tenure or occupation of John
Roberts, carpenter, and another recently in the occupation of one Thomas
Ditcher, citizen and merchant tailor of London ... containing in length from
east to west by estimation one hundred fifty and six feet of assize or
thereabouts, and in breadth from the north to the south one hundred feet of
assize by estimation or thereabouts, lying and adjoining upon the other side
of the way or lane aforesaid, and abutting upon a garden plot there then or
recently just before in the occupation of William Sellers toward the east,
and upon one other garden plot there, then or recently just before, in the
tenure of John Burgram, sadler, toward the west, and upon a lane there
called Maiden Lane towards the south, with all the houses....
This document clearly states that the Globe property was situated to the
north of Maiden Lane, and consequently near the river. Virtually all the
contemporary maps of London show the Globe as so situated. Mr. Wallace
has produced some very specific evidence to support the document cited
above, and he claims to have additional evidence as yet unpublished. On the
other hand, there is at least some evidence to indicate that the Globe was
situated to the south of Maiden Lane.[387]
For the purposes of this book it is sufficient to know that the Globe was
"situate in Maiden Lane"; whether on the north side or the south side is of
less importance. More important is the nature of the site. Strype, in his
edition of Stow's Survey, gives this description: "Maiden Lane, a long
straggling place, with ditches on each side, the passage to the houses being
over little bridges, with little garden plots before them, especially on the
north side, which is best both for houses and inhabitants." In Maiden Lane,
near one of these ditches or "sewers," the Globe was erected; and like the
other houses there situated, it was approached over a bridge.[388] In
February, 1606, the Sewer Commission ordered that "the owners of the
playhouse called the Globe, in Maid Lane, shall before the 20 day of April
next pull up and take clean out of the sewer the props or posts which stand

under their bridge on the north side of Maid Lane."[389] The ground on
which the building was erected was marshy, and the foundations were made
by driving piles deep into the soil. Ben Jonson tersely writes:[390]
The Globe, the glory of the Bank.... Flanked with a ditch, and forced out of
a marish.
Into the construction of the new playhouse went the timber and other
materials secured from the old Theatre; but much new material, of course,
had to be added. It is a mistake to believe that the Globe was merely the old
"Theatre" newly set up on the Bankside, and perhaps strengthened here and
there. When it was completed, it was regarded as the last word in theatrical
architecture. Dekker seems to have had the Globe in mind in the following
passage: "How wonderfully is the world altered! and no marvel, for it has
lyein sick almost five thousand years: so that it is no more like the old
Theater du munde, than old Paris Garden is like the King's garden at Paris.
What an excellent workman therefore were he, that could cast the Globe of
it into a new mould."[391] In 1600 Henslowe and Alleyn used the Globe as
the model of their new and splendid Fortune. They sought, indeed, to show
some originality by making their playhouse square instead of round; but
this, the one instance in which they departed from the Globe, was a mistake;
and when the Fortune was rebuilt in 1623 it was made circular in shape.

THE SITES OF THE BEAR GARDEN, THE ROSE,
AND THE GLOBE

Marked by the author on a plan of the Bankside printed
in Strype's Survey of London, 1720.
[Enlarge]

THE BEAR GARDEN, THE ROSE, AND THE FIRST
GLOBE
Compare this view of the Bankside with the preceding
map. (From an equestrian portrait of King James I, by
Delaram. The city is represented as it was when James
came to the throne in 1603.)

A few quotations from the Fortune contract will throw some light upon the
Globe:
With such-like stairs, conveyances, and divisions [to the galleries], without
and within, as are made and contrived in and to the late-erected playhouse
... called the Globe.

And the said stage to be in all other proportions contrived and fashioned
like unto the stage of the said playhouse called the Globe.
And the said house, and other things before mentioned to be made and
done, to be in all other contrivations, conveyances, fashions, thing, and
things, effected, finished and done according to the manner and fashion of
the said house called the Globe, saving only that all the principal and main
posts ... shall be square and wrought pilasterwise, with carved proportions
called satyrs to be placed and set on the top of every of the said posts.
What kind of columns were used in the Globe and how they were
ornamented, we do not know, but presumably they were round. Jonson, in
Every Man Out of His Humour, presented on the occasion of, or shortly
after, the opening of the Globe in 1599, says of one of his characters: "A
well-timbered fellow! he would have made a good column an he had been
thought on when the house was abuilding."[392] That Jonson thought well of
the new playhouse is revealed in several places; he speaks with some
enthusiasm of "this fair-fitted Globe,"[393] and in the passage already quoted
he calls it "the glory of the Bank."
In shape the building was unquestionably polygonal or circular, most
probably polygonal on the outside and circular within. Mr. E.K. Chambers
thinks it possible that it was square;[394] but there is abundant evidence to
show that it was not. The very name, Globe, would hardly be suitable to a
square building; Jonson describes the interior as a "round";[395] the ballad
on the burning of the house refers to the roof as being "round as a tailor's
clew"; and the New Globe, which certainly was not square, was erected on
the old foundation.[396] The frame, we know, was of timber, and the roof of
thatch. In front of the main door was suspended a sign of Hercules bearing
the globe upon his shoulders,[397] under which was written, says Malone,
the old motto, Totus mundus agit histrionem.[398]
The earliest representation of the building is probably to be found in the
Delaram View of London (opposite page 246), set in the background of an
engraving of King James on horseback. This view, which presents the city
as it was in 1603 when James came to the throne, shows the Bear Garden at
the left, polygonal in shape, the Rose in the centre, circular in shape, and
the Globe at the right, polygonal in shape. It is again represented in

Visscher's magnificent View of London, which, though printed in 1616,
presents the city as it was several years earlier (see page 253). The Merian
View of 1638 (opposite page 256) is copied from Visscher, and the View in
Howell's Londinopolis (1657) is merely a slavish copy of Merian; these two
views, therefore, so far as the Globe is concerned, have no special value.
[399]

THE FIRST GLOBE
From an old drawing in an extra-illustrated copy of
Pennant's London now in the British Museum.
Apparently the drawing is based on Visscher's View.

The cost of the finished building is not exactly known. Mr. Wallace

observes that it was erected "at an original cost, according to a later
statement, of £600, but upon better evidence approximately £400."[400] I am
not aware of the "better evidence" to which Mr. Wallace refers,[401] nor do I
know whether the estimate of £400 includes the timber and materials of the
old Theatre furnished by the Burbages. If the Theatre of 1576 cost nearly
£700, and the second Globe cost £1400, the sum of £400 seems too small.
Nor do we know exactly when the Globe was finished and opened to the
public. On May 16, 1599, a post-mortem inquisition of the estate of Sir
Thomas Brend, father of Sir Nicholas, was taken. Among his other
properties in Southwark was listed the Globe playhouse, described as "vna
domo de novo edificata ... in occupacione Willielmi Shakespeare et
aliorum."[402] From this statement Mr. Wallace infers that the Globe was
finished and opened before May 16, 1599. Though this is possible, the
words used seem hardly to warrant the conclusion. However, we may feel
sure that the actors, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, had moved into the
building before the end of the summer.
Almost at once they rose to the position of leadership in the drama, for both
Shakespeare and Burbage were now at the height of their powers. It is true
that in 1601 the popularity of the Children at Blackfriars, and the
subsequent "War of the Theatres" interfered somewhat with their success;
but the interference was temporary, and from this time on until the closing
of the playhouses in 1642, the supremacy of the Globe players was never
really challenged. When James came to the throne, he recognized this
supremacy by taking them under his royal patronage. On May 19, 1603, he
issued to them a patent to play as the King's Men[403]—an honor that was as
well deserved as it was signal.
In the autumn of 1608 the proprietors of the Globe acquired the Blackfriars
Theatre for the use of their company during the severe winter months. This
splendid building, situated in the very heart of the city, was entirely roofed
in, and could be comfortably heated in cold weather. Henceforth the open-
air Globe was used only during the pleasant season of the year; that is,
according to the evidence of the Herbert Manuscript, from about the first of
May until the first of November.

On June 29, 1613, the Globe caught fire during the performance of a play,
and was burned to the ground—the first disaster of the sort recorded in
English theatrical history. The event aroused great interest in London, and
as a result we have numerous accounts of the catastrophe supplying us with
full details. We learn that on a warm "sunne-shine" afternoon the large
building was "filled with people"—among whom were Ben Jonson, John
Taylor (the Water-Poet), and Sir Henry Wotton—to witness a new play by
William Shakespeare and John Fletcher, called All is True, or, as we now
know it, Henry VIII, produced with unusual magnificence. Upon the
entrance of the King in the fourth scene of the first act, two cannon were
discharged in a royal salute. One of the cannon hurled a bit of its wadding
upon the roof and set fire to the thatch; but persons in the audience were so
interested in the play that for a time they paid no attention to the fire
overhead. As a result they were soon fleeing for their lives; and within "one
short hour" nothing was left of the "stately" Globe.
I quote below some of the more interesting contemporary accounts of this
notable event. Howes, the chronicler, thus records the fact in his
continuation of Stow's Annals:
Upon St. Peter's Day last, the playhouse or theatre called the Globe, upon
the Bankside, near London, by negligent discharge of a peal of ordnance,
close to the south side thereof, the thatch took fire, and the wind suddenly
dispersed the flames round about, and in a very short space the whole
building was quite consumed; and no man hurt: the house being filled with
people to behold the play, viz. of Henry the Eight.[404]
Sir Henry Wotton, in a letter to a friend, gives the following gossipy
account:
Now to let matters of state sleep. I will entertain you at the present with
what happened this week at the Bankside. The King's Players had a new
play, called All is True, representing some principal pieces of the reign of
Henry the Eighth, which was set forth with many extraordinary
circumstances of pomp and majesty, even to the matting of the stage; the
Knights of the Order with their Georges and Garter, the guards with their
embroidered coats, and the like—sufficient in truth within awhile to make
greatness very familiar, if not ridiculous. Now King Henry, making a

masque at the Cardinal Wolsey's house, and certain cannons being shot off
at his entry, some of the paper or other stuff wherewith one of them was
stopped, did light on the thatch, where being thought at first but an idle
smoke, and their eyes more attentive to the show, it kindled inwardly, and
ran round like a train, consuming within less than an hour the whole house
to the very ground. This was the fatal period of that virtuous fabrick;
wherein yet nothing did perish but wood and straw, and a few forsaken
cloaks; only one man had his breeches set on fire, that would perhaps have
broiled him, if he had not, by the benefit of a provident wit, put it out with
bottle ale.[405]
John Chamberlain, writing to Sir Ralph Winwood, July 8, 1613, refers to
the accident thus:
The burning of the Globe or playhouse on the Bankside on St. Peter's Day
cannot escape you; which fell out by a peal of chambers (that I know not
upon what occasion were to be used in the play), the tampin or stopple of
one of them lighting in the thatch that cover'd the house, burn'd it down to
the ground in less than two hours, with a dwelling house adjoining; and it
was a great marvel and fair grace of God that the people had so little harm,
having but two narrow doors to get out.[406]

THE FIRST GLOBE
From Visscher's View of London, published in 1616, but
representing the city as it was several years earlier.

The Reverend Thomas Lorkin writes from London to Sir Thomas Puckering
under the date of June 30, 1613:

No longer since than yesterday, while Burbage's company were acting at the
Globe the play of Henry VIII, and there shooting off certain chambers in
way of triumph, the fire catched and fastened upon the thatch of the house,
and there burned so furiously, as it consumed the whole house, all in less
than two hours, the people having enough to do to save themselves.[407]
A contemporary ballad[408] gives a vivid and amusing account of the
disaster:
A Sonnet upon the Pitiful Burning of the
Globe
Playhouse in London
Now sit thee down, Melpomene,
Wrapt in a sea-coal robe,
And tell the dolefull tragedy
That late was played at Globe;
For no man that can sing and say
Was scared on St. Peter's day.
Oh sorrow, pitiful sorrow, and yet all
this is true.[409]

All you that please to understand,
Come listen to my story;
To see Death with his raking brand
Mongst such an auditory;
Regarding neither Cardinall's might,
Nor yet the rugged face of Henry the
eight.
Oh sorrow, etc.

This fearful fire began above,
A wonder strange and true,
And to the stage-house did remove,
As round as taylor's clew,
And burnt down both beam and snagg,
And did not spare the silken flagg.

Oh sorrow, etc.

Out run the Knights, out run the lords,
And there was great ado;
Some lost their hats, and some their
swords;
Then out run Burbage, too.
The reprobates, though drunk on
Monday,
Prayd for the fool and Henry Condy.
Oh sorrow, etc.

The periwigs and drum-heads fry
Like to a butter firkin;
A woeful burning did betide
To many a good buff jerkin.
Then with swolen eyes, like drunken
Flemminges
Distressed stood old stuttering
Heminges.
Oh sorrow, etc.
Ben Jonson, who saw the disaster, left us the following brief account:
The Globe, the glory of
the Bank,
Which, though it were the fort of the
whole parish,
Flanked with a ditch, and forced out of a
marish,
I saw with two poor chambers taken in,
And razed ere thought could urge this
might have been!
See the world's ruins! nothing but the
piles
Left—and wit since to cover it with tiles.
[410]

The players were not seriously inconvenienced, for they could shift to their
other house, the Blackfriars, in the city. The owners of the building,
however, suffered a not inconsiderable pecuniary loss. For a time they
hesitated about rebuilding, one cause of their hesitation being the short term
that their lease of the ground had to run. Possibly a second cause was a
doubt as to the ownership of the ground, arising from certain transactions
recorded below. In October, 1600, Sir Nicholas Brend had been forced to
transfer the Globe estate, with other adjacent property, to Sir Matthew
Brown and John Collett as security for a debt of £2500; and a few days after
he died. Since the son and heir, Matthew Brend, was a child less than two
years old, an uncle, Sir John Bodley, was appointed trustee. In 1608 Bodley,
by unfair means, it seems, purchased from Collett the Globe property, and
thus became the landlord of the actors. But young Matthew Brend was still
under age, and Bodley's title to the property was not regarded as above
suspicion.[411]

MERIAN'S VIEW OF LONDON
A section from Merian's View, showing the Bankside
playhouses. This View, printed in Ludvig Gottfried's
Neuwe Archontologia Cosmica (Frankfurt am Mayn,

1638), represents London as it was about the year 1612,
and was mainly based on Visscher's View, with some
additions from other sources.

Four months after the burning of the Globe, on October 26, 1613, Sir John
Bodley granted the proprietors of the building a renewal of the lease with an
extension of the term until December 25, 1635.[412] But a lease from Bodley
alone, in view of the facts just indicated, was not deemed sufficient; so on
February 14, 1614, Heminges, the two Burbages, and Condell visited the
country-seat of the Brends, and secured the signature of the young Matthew
Brend, and of his mother as guardian, to a lease of the Globe site with a
term ending on December 25, 1644.
Protected by these two leases, the Globe sharers felt secure; and they went
forward apace with the erection of their new playhouse. They made an
assessment of "£50 or £60" upon each share.[413] Since at this time there
were fourteen shares, the amount thus raised was £700 or £840. This would
probably be enough to erect a building as large and as well equipped as the
old Globe. But the proprietors determined upon a larger and a very much
handsomer building. As Howes, the continuer of Stow's Annals, writes, "it
was new builded in far fairer manner than before"; or as John Taylor, the
Water-Poet, puts it:
As gold is better that's in fire tried,
So is the Bankside Globe that late was
burn'd.[414]
Naturally the cost of rebuilding exceeded the original estimate. Heminges
tells us that on one share, or one-fourteenth, he was required to pay for "the
re-edifying about the sum of £120."[415] This would indicate a total cost of
"about" £1680. Heminges should know, for he was the business manager of
the organization; and his truthfulness cannot be questioned. Since, however,
the adjective "about," especially when multiplied by fourteen, leaves a
generous margin of uncertainty, it is gratifying to have a specific statement
from one of the sharers in 1635 that the owners had "been at the charge of
£1400 in building of the said house upon the burning down of the former."
[416] Heminges tells us that "he found that the re-edifying of the said

playhouse would be a very great charge," and that he so "doubted what
benefit would arise thereby" that he actually gave away half of one share
"to Henry Condell, gratis."[417] But his fears were unfounded. We learn
from Witter that after the rebuilding of the Globe the "yearly value" of a
share was greater "by much" than it had been before.[418]
The New Globe, like its predecessor, was built of timber,[419] and on the
same site—indeed the carpenters made use of the old foundation, which
seems not to have been seriously injured. In a "return" of 1634, preserved at
St. Saviour's, we read: "The Globe playhouse, near Maid Lane, built by the
company of players, with a dwelling house thereto adjoining, built with
timber, about 20 years past, upon an old foundation."[420] In spite of the use
made of the old foundation, the new structure was unquestionably larger
than the First Globe; Marmion, in the Prologue to Holland's Leaguer, acted
at Salisbury Court in 1634, speaks of "the vastness of the Globe," and
Shirley, in the Prologue to Rosania, applies the adjective "vast" to the
building. Moreover, the builders had "the wit," as Jonson tells us, "to cover
it with tiles." John Taylor, the Water-Poet, writes:
For where before it had a
thatched hide,
Now to a stately theatre is
turn'd.
The Second Globe is represented, but unsatisfactorily, in Hollar's View of
London, dated 1647 (opposite page 260). It should be noted that the artist
was in banishment from 1643 (at which time the Globe was still standing)
until 1652, and hence, in drawing certain buildings, especially those not
reproduced in earlier views of London, he may have had to rely upon his
memory. This would explain the general vagueness of his representation of
the Globe.
The construction was not hurried, for the players had Blackfriars as a home.
Under normal conditions they did not move from the city to the Bankside
until some time in May; and shortly after that date, in the early summer of
1614, the New Globe was ready for them. John Chamberlain writes to Mrs.
Alice Carleton on June 30, 1614:

I have not seen your sister Williams since I came to town, though I have
been there twice. The first time she was at a neighbor's house at cards, and
the next she was gone to the New Globe to a play. Indeed, I hear much
speech of this new playhouse, which is said to be the fairest that ever was in
England.[421]

THE SECOND GLOBE
From Hollar's View of London (1647).

With this New Globe Shakespeare had little to do, for his career as a
playwright had been run, and probably he had already retired from acting.
Time, indeed, was beginning to thin out the little band of friends who had
initiated and made famous the Globe organization. Thomas Pope had died

in 1603, Augustine Phillips in 1605, William Slye in 1608, and, just a few
months after the opening of the new playhouse, William Osteler, who had
been admitted to the partnership in 1611. He had begun his career as a
child-actor at Blackfriars, had later joined the King's Men, and had married
Heminges's daughter Thomasine.
A more serious blow to the company, however, fell in April, 1616, when
Shakespeare himself died. To the world he had been "the applause, delight,
the wonder" of the stage; but to the members of the Globe Company he had
been for many years a "friend and fellow." Only Burbage and Heminges
(described in 1614 as "old Heminges"), now remained of the original
venturers. And Burbage passed away on March 13, 1619:
He's gone! and with him what a world
are dead
Which he reviv'd—to be revived so
No more. Young Hamlet, old Hieronimo,
Kind Lear, the grieved Moor, and more
beside
That lived in him have now for ever
died![422]
Many elegies in a similar vein were written celebrating his wonderful
powers as an actor; yet the tribute that perhaps affects us most deals with
him merely as a man. The Earl of Pembroke, writing to the Ambassador to
Germany, gives the court news about the mighty ones of the kingdom: "My
Lord of Lenox made a great supper to the French Ambassador this night
here, and even now all the company are at a play; which I, being tender-
hearted, could not endure to see so soon after the loss of my old
acquaintance Burbage."[423]

THE TRADITIONAL SITE OF THE GLOBE
From Wilkinson's Theatrum Illustrata (1825). This site is
still advocated by some scholars. Compare page 245.

In 1623 Heminges and Condell, with great "care and paine," collected and
published the plays of Shakespeare, "onely to keep the memory of so
worthy a Friend and Fellow alive"; and shortly after, they too died, Condell
in 1627 and Heminges in 1630.
After the passing of this group of men, whose names are so familiar to us,
the history of the playhouse seems less important, and may be chronicled
briefly.
When young Matthew Brend came of age he recovered possession of the
Globe property by a decree of the Court of Wards. Apparently he accepted
the lease executed by his uncle and guardian, Bodley, by which the actors
were to remain in possession of the Globe until December 25, 1635; but in
1633 he sought to cancel the lease he himself had executed as a minor, by

which the actors were to remain in possession until 1644. His purpose in
thus seeking to gain possession of the Globe was to lease it to other actors
at a material increase in his profits.[424] Naturally the owners of the Globe
were alarmed, and they brought suit in the Court of Requests. In 1635, one
of the sharers, John Shanks, declares that he "is without any hope to renew"
the lease; and he refers thus to the suit against Brend: "When your suppliant
purchased his parts [in 1634] he had no certainty thereof more than for one
year in the Globe, and there was a chargeable suit then pending in the Court
of Requests between Sir Mathew Brend, Knight, and the lessees of the
Globe and their assigns, for the adding of nine years to their lease in
consideration that their predecessors had formerly been at the charge of
£1400 in building of the said house."[425] The lessees ultimately won their
contention, and thus secured the right to occupy the Globe until December
25, 1644—a term which, as it happened, was quite long enough, for the
Puritans closed all playhouses in 1642.
What disposition, if any, the sharers made of the Globe between 1642 and
1644 we do not know. But before the lease expired, it seems, Brend
demolished the playhouse and erected tenements on its site. In the
manuscript notes to the Phillipps copy of Stow's Annals, we find the
statement that the Globe was "pulled down to the ground by Sir Mathew
Brend, on Monday the 15 of April, 1644, to make tenements in the room of
it";[426] and the statement is verified by a mortgage, executed in 1706,
between Elizabeth, the surviving daughter and heir of Thomas Brend, and
one William James, citizen of London. The mortgage concerns "all those
messuages or tenements ... most of which ... were erected and built where
the late playhouse called the Globe stood, and upon the ground thereunto
belonging."[427]
After this the history of the property becomes obscure. Mrs. Thrale (later
Mrs. Piozzi), the friend of Samuel Johnson, whose residence was near by in
Deadman's Place, thought that she saw certain "remains of the Globe"
discovered by workmen in the employ of her husband:[428] "For a long time,
then,—or I thought it such,—my fate was bound up with the old Globe
Theatre, upon the Bankside, Southwark; the alley it had occupied having
been purchased and [the tenements] thrown down by Mr. Thrale to make an
opening before the windows of our dwelling-house. When it lay desolate in
a black heap of rubbish, my mother one day in a joke called it the Ruins of

Palmyra; and after that they had laid it down in a grass-plot Palmyra was
the name it went by.... But there were really curious remains of the old
Globe Playhouse, which though hexagonal in form without, was round
within." In spite of serious difficulties in this narrative it is possible that the
workmen, in digging the ground preparatory to laying out the garden,
uncovered the foundation of the Globe, which, it will be recalled, was
formed of piles driven deep into the soil, and so well made that it resisted
the fire of 1613.[429]
At the present time the site of the Globe is covered by the extensive
brewery of Messrs. Barclay, Perkins, and Company. Upon one of the walls
of the brewery, on the south side of Park Street, which was formerly
Maiden Lane, has been placed a bronze memorial tablet[430] showing in
relief the Bankside, with what is intended to be the Globe Playhouse
conspicuously displayed in the foreground. This is a circular building
designed after the circular playhouse in the Speed-Hondius View of London,
and represents, as I have tried to show, not the Globe, but the Rose. At the
left side of the tablet is a bust of the poet modeled after the Droeshout
portrait. At the right is the simple inscription:
HERE STOOD THE GLOBE PLAYHOUSE OF
SHAKESPEARE
Yet it is very doubtful whether the Globe really stood there. Mr. Wallace has
produced good evidence to show that the building was on the north side of
Park Street near the river; and in the course of the present study I have
found that site generally confirmed.

CHAPTER XIII
THE FORTUNE

T HE erection of the Globe on the Bankside within a few hundred yards
of the Rose was hardly gratifying to the Admiral's Men. Not only did it
put them in close competition with the excellent Burbage-Shakespeare
organization, but it caused their playhouse (now nearly a quarter of a
century old, and said to be in a state of "dangerous decay") to suffer in
comparison with the new and far handsomer Globe, "the glory of the Bank."
Accordingly, before the Globe had been in operation much more than half a
year, Henslowe and Alleyn decided to move to another section of London,
and to erect there a playhouse that should surpass the Globe both in size and
in magnificence. To the authorities, however, they gave as reasons for
abandoning the Rose, first, "the dangerous decay" of the building, and
secondly, "for that the same standeth very noisome for resort of people in
the winter time."
The new playhouse was undertaken by Henslowe and Alleyn jointly,
although the exact arrangement between them is not now clear. Alleyn
seems to have advanced the money and to have held the titles of ownership;
but on April 4, 1601, he leased to Henslowe a moiety (or one-half interest)
in the playhouse and other properties connected with it for a period of
twenty-four years at an annual rental of £8—a sum far below the real value
of the moiety.[431]
Whatever the details of the arrangement between the two partners, the main
outlines of their procedure are clear. On December 22, 1599, Alleyn
purchased for £240 a thirty-three-year lease[432] of a plot of ground situated
to the north of the city, in the Parish of St. Giles without Cripplegate. This
plot of ground, we are told, stood "very tolerable, near unto the Fields, and
so far distant and remote from any person or place of account as that none
can be annoyed thereby";[433] and yet, as the Earl of Nottingham wrote, it
was "very convenient for the ease of people."[434]

The property thus acquired lay between Golding Lane and Whitecross
Street, two parallel thoroughfares running north and south. There were
tenements on the edge of the property facing Whitecross Street, tenements
on the edge facing Golding Lane, and an open space between. Alleyn and
Henslowe planned to erect their new playhouse in this open space "between
Whitecross Street and Golding Lane," and to make "a way leading to it"
from Golding Lane. The ground set aside for the playhouse is described as
"containing in length from east to west one hundred twenty and seven feet
and a half, a little more or less, and in breadth, from north to south, one
hundred twenty and nine feet, a little more or less."[435]
The lease of this property having been consummated on December 22,
1599, on January 8, 1600, Henslowe and Alleyn signed a contract with the
carpenter, Peter Street (who had recently gained valuable experience in
building the Globe), to erect the new playhouse. The contract called for the
completion of the building by July 25, 1600, provided, however, the
workmen were "not by any authority restrained."
The latter clause may indicate that Peter Street anticipated difficulties. If so,
he was not mistaken, for when early in January his workmen began to
assemble material for the erection of the building, the authorities, especially
those of the Parish of St. Giles, promptly interfered. Alleyn thereupon
appealed to the patron of the troupe, the Earl of Nottingham, the Lord
Admiral. On January 12, 1600, Nottingham issued a warrant to the officers
of the county "to permit and suffer my said servant [Edward Alleyn] to
proceed in the effecting and furnishing of the said new house, without any
your let or molestation toward him or any of his workmen."[436] This
warrant, however, seems not to have prevented the authorities of St. Giles
from continuing their restraint. Alleyn was then forced to play his trump
card—through his great patron to secure from the Privy Council itself a
warrant for the construction of the building. First, however, by offering "to
give a very liberal portion of money weekly" towards the relief of "the poor
in the parish of St. Giles," he persuaded many of the inhabitants to sign a
document addressed to the Privy Council, in which they not only gave their
full consent to the erection of the playhouse, but actually urged "that the
same might proceed."[437] This document he placed in the hands of
Nottingham to use in influencing the Council. The effort was successful. On
April 8 the Council issued a warrant "to the Justices of the Peace of the

County of Middlesex, especially of St. Giles without Cripplegate, and to all
others whom it shall concern," that they should permit Henslowe and
Alleyn "to proceed in the effecting and finishing of the same new house."
[438]

THE SITE OF THE FORTUNE PLAYHOUSE
The site of the Fortune is marked by Playhouse Yard,
connecting Golden Lane and Whitecross Street. (From
Ogilby and Morgan's Map of London, 1677.)
[Enlarge]

This warrant, of course, put an end to all interference by local authorities.

But as the playhouse reared itself high above the walls of the city to the
north, the Puritans were aroused to action. They made this the occasion for
a most violent attack on actors and theatres in general, and on the Fortune in
particular. With this attack the city authorities, for reasons of their own,
heartily sympathized, but they had no jurisdiction over the Parish of St.
Giles, or over the other localities in which playhouses were situated. Since
the Privy Council had specially authorized the erection of the Fortune, the
Lord Mayor shifted the attack to that body, and himself dispatched an
urgent request to the Lords for reformation. In response to all this agitation
the Lords of the Privy Council on June 22, 1600, issued the following order:
Whereas divers complaints have heretofore been made unto the Lords and
other of Her Majesty's Privy Council of the manifold abuses and disorders
that have grown and do continue by occasion of many houses erected and
employed in and about London for common stage-plays; and now very
lately by reason of some complaint exhibited by sundry persons against the
building of the like house in or near Golding Lane ... the Lords and the rest
of Her Majesty's Privy Council with one and full consent have ordered in
manner and form as follows. First, that there shall be about the city two
houses, and no more, allowed to serve for the use of the common stage-
plays; of the which houses, one [the Globe] shall be in Surrey, in that place
which is commonly called the Bankside or thereabouts, and the other [the
Fortune] in Middlesex. Secondly, ... it is likewise ordered that the two
several companies of players assigned unto the two houses allowed may
play each of them in their several houses twice a week and no oftener; and
especially that they shall refrain to play on the Sabbath day ... and that they
shall forbear altogether in the time of Lent.
The first part of this order, limiting the playhouses and companies to two,
was merely a repetition of the order of 1598.[439] It meant that the Lords of
the Privy Council formally licensed the Admiral's and the Lord
Chamberlain's Companies to play in London (of course the Lords might,
when they saw fit, license other companies for specific periods). The
second part of the order, limiting the number of performances, was more
serious, for no troupe could afford to act only twice a week. The order if
carried out would mean the ruin of the Fortune and the Globe Companies.
But it was not carried out. The actors, as we learn from Henslowe's Diary,
did not restrict themselves to two plays a week. Why, then, did the Lords

issue this order, and why was it not put into effect? A study of the clever
way in which Alleyn, Nottingham, and the Privy Council overcame the
opposition of the puritanical officers of St. Giles who were interfering with
the erection of the Fortune will suggest the explanation. The Lords were
making a shrewd move to quiet the noisy enemies of the drama. They did
not intend that the Admiral's and the Chamberlain's Men should be driven
out of existence; they were merely meeting fanaticism with craft.
Alleyn and Henslowe must have understood this,—possibly they learned it
directly from their patron Nottingham,—for they proceeded with the
erection of their expensive building. The work, however, had been so
seriously delayed by the restraints of the local authorities that the
foundations were not completed until May 8.[440] On that day carpenters
were brought from Windsor, and set to the task of erecting the frame. Since
the materials had been accumulating on the site since January 17, the work
of erection must have proceeded rapidly. The daily progress of this work is
marked in Henslowe's Diary by the dinners of Henslowe with the
contractor, Peter Street. On August 8, these dinners ceased, so that on that
date, or shortly after, we may assume, the building proper was finished.[441]
For erecting the building Street received £440. But this did not include the
painting of the woodwork (which, if we may judge from De Witt's
description of the Swan, must have been costly), or the equipment of the
stage. We learn from Alleyn's memoranda that the final cost of the
playhouse was £520.[442] Hence, after Street's work of erection was finished
in August, the entire building had to be painted, and the stage properly
equipped with curtains, hangings, machines, etc. This must have occupied
at least two months. From Henslowe's Diary it appears that the playhouse
was first used about the end of November or the early part of December,
1600.[443]
The original contract of Henslowe and Alleyn with Peter Street for the
erection of the Fortune, preserved among the papers at Dulwich College,
supplies us with some very exact details of the size and shape of the
building. Although the document is long, and is couched in the legal
verbiage of the day, it will repay careful study. For the convenience of the
reader I quote below its main specifications:[444]

Foundation. A good, sure, and strong foundation, of piles, brick, lime, and
sand, both without and within, to be wrought one foot of assize at the least
above the ground.
Frame. The frame of the said house to be set square, and to contain
fourscore foot of lawful assize every way square without, and fifty-five foot
of like assize square every way within.
Materials. And shall also make all the said frame in every point for
scantlings larger and bigger in assize than the scantlings of the said new-
erected house called the Globe.
Exterior. To be sufficiently enclosed without with lath, lime, and hair.
Stairs. With such like stairs, conveyances, and divisions, without and
within, as are made and contrived in and to the late erected playhouse ...
called the Globe.... And the staircases thereof to be sufficiently enclosed
without with lath, lime, and hair.
Height of galleries. And the said frame to contain three stories in height; the
first, or lower story to contain twelve foot of lawful assize in height; the
second story eleven foot of lawful assize in height; and the third, or upper
story, to contain nine foot of lawful assize in height.
Breadth of galleries. All which stories shall contain twelve foot of lawful
assize in breadth throughout. Besides a jutty forward in either of the said
two upper stories of ten inches of lawful assize.
Protection of lowest gallery. The lower story of the said frame withinside ...
[to be] paled in below with good, strong, and sufficient new oaken boards....
And the said lower story to be also laid over and fenced with strong iron
pikes.
Divisions of galleries. With four convenient divisions for gentlemen's
rooms, and other sufficient and convenient divisions for two-penny
rooms.... And the gentlemen's rooms and two-penny rooms to be ceiled with
lath, lime, and hair.
Seats. With necessary seats to be placed and set, as well in those rooms as
throughout all the rest of the galleries.

Stage. With a stage and tiring-house to be made, erected, and set up within
the said frame; with a shadow or cover over the said stage. Which stage
shall be placed and set (as also the staircases of the said frame) in such sort
as is prefigured in a plot thereof drawn. [The plot has been lost.] And which
stage shall contain in length forty and three foot of lawful assize, and in
breadth to extend to the middle of the yard of the said house. The same
stage to be paled in below with good, strong, and sufficient new oaken
boards.... And the said stage to be in all other proportions contrived and
fashioned like unto the stage of the said playhouse called the Globe.... And
the said ... stage ... to be covered with tile, and to have a sufficient gutter of
lead to carry and convey the water from the covering of the said stage to fall
backwards.
Tiring-house. With convenient windows and lights, glazed, to the said
tiring-house.
Flooring. And all the floors of the said galleries, stories, and stage to be
boarded with good and sufficient new deal boards, of the whole thickness
where need shall be.
Columns. All the principal and main posts of the said frame and stage
forward shall be square, and wrought pilaster-wise, with carved proportions
called satyrs to be placed and set on the top of every of the said posts.
Roof. And the said frame, stage, and staircases to be covered with tile.
Miscellaneous. To be in all other contrivations, conveyances, fashions,
thing and things, effected, finished, and done, according to the manner and
fashion of the said house called the Globe.
It is rather unfortunate for us that the building was to be in so many respects
a copy of the Globe, for that deprives us of further detailed specifications;
and it is unfortunate, too, that the plan or drawing showing the arrangement
of the stage was not preserved with the rest of the document. Yet we are
able to derive much exact information from the contract; and with this
information, at least two modern architects have made reconstructions of
the building.[445]
No representation of the exterior of the Fortune has come down to us. In the
so-called Ryther Map of London, there is, to be sure, what seems to be a

crude representation of the playhouse (see page 278); but if this is really
intended for the Fortune, it does little more than mark the location. Yet one
can readily picture in his imagination the playhouse—a plastered structure,
eighty feet square and approximately forty feet high,[446] with small
windows marking the galleries, a turret and flagpole surmounting the red-
tiled roof, and over the main entrance a sign representing Dame Fortune:
I'le rather stand here,
Like a statue in the fore-front
of your house,
For ever, like the picture of
Dame Fortune
Before the Fortune Playhouse.
[447]

THE FORTUNE PLAYHOUSE (?)
The curious structure with the flag may be intended to
mark the site of the Fortune. (From the so-called Ryther

Map of London, drawn about 1630-40.)

Nor is there any pictorial representation of the interior of the playhouse. In
the absence of such, I offer the reader a verbal picture of the interior as seen
from the stage during the performance of a play. In Middleton and Dekker's
The Roaring Girl, acted at the Fortune, Sir Alexander shows to his friends
his magnificent house. Advancing to the middle of the stage, and pointing
out over the building, he asks them how they like it:
Goshawk. I like the prospect best.

Laxton. See how 't is
furnished!

Sir Davy. A very fair sweet room.

Sir Alex. Sir Davy
Dapper,
The furniture that doth adorn this room
Cost many a fair grey groat ere it came here;
But good things are most cheap when they're
most dear.
Nay, when you look into my galleries,
How bravely they're trimm'd up, you all shall
swear
You're highly pleas'd to see what's set down
there:
Stories of men and women, mix'd together,
Fair ones with foul, like sunshine in wet
weather;
Within one square a thousand heads are laid,
So close that all of heads the room seems made;
As many faces there, fill'd with blithe looks
Shew like the promising titles of new books
Writ merrily, the readers being their own eyes,
Which seem to move and to give plaudities;
And here and there, whilst with obsequious ears

Throng'd heaps do listen, a cut-purse thrusts and
leers
With hawk's eyes for his prey; I need not shew
him;
By a hanging, villainous look yourselves may
know him,
The face is drawn so rarely: then, sir, below,
The very floor, as 't were, waves to and fro,
And, like a floating island, seems to move
Upon a sea bound in with shores above.

All. These sights are excellent![448]
A closer view of this audience—"men and women, mix'd together, fair ones
with foul"—is furnished by one of the letters of Orazio Busino,[449] the
chaplain of the Venetian Embassy, who visited the Fortune playhouse
shortly after his arrival in London in 1617:
The other day, therefore, they determined on taking me to one of the many
theatres where plays are performed, and we saw a tragedy, which diverted
me very little, especially as I cannot understand a word of English, though
some little amusement may be derived from gazing at the very costly
dresses of the actors, and from the various interludes of instrumental music
and dancing and singing; but the best treat was to see such a crowd of
nobility so very well arrayed that they looked like so many princes,
listening as silently and soberly as possible. These theatres are frequented
by a number of respectable and handsome ladies, who come freely and seat
themselves among the men without the slightest hesitation. On the evening
in question his Excellency [the Venetian Ambassador] and the Secretary
were pleased to play me a trick by placing me amongst a bevy of young
women. Scarcely was I seated ere a very elegant dame, but in a mask, came
and placed herself beside me.... She asked me for my address, both in
French and English; and on my turning a deaf ear, she determined to honour
me by showing me some fine diamonds on her fingers, repeatedly taking off
no fewer than three gloves, which were worn one over the other.... This
lady's bodice was of yellow satin richly embroidered, her petticoat of gold
tissue with stripes, her robe of red velvet with a raised pile, lined with
yellow muslin, with broad stripes of pure gold. She wore an apron of point

lace of various patterns; her head-tire was highly perfumed, and the collar
of white satin beneath the delicately-wrought ruff struck me as extremely
pretty.
That the players were prepared to entertain distinguished visitors both
during the performance and after is shown by a letter from John
Chamberlain, July 21, 1621, to Sir Dudley Carleton. "The Spanish
Ambassador," he writes, "is grown so affable and familiar, that on Monday,
with his whole train, he went to a common play at the Fortune in Golding
Lane; and the players (not to be overcome with courtesy) made him a
banquet, when the play was done, in the garden adjoining."[450]
Upon its completion the new building was occupied by the Admiral's Men,
for whom it had been erected. This troupe of players, long famous under the
leadership of Edward Alleyn, was now one of the two companies authorized
by the Privy Council, and the chief rival of the Chamberlain's Men at the
Globe. Henslowe was managing their affairs, and numerous poets were
writing plays for them. They continued to act at the Fortune under the
name, "The Admiral's Men," until May 5, 1603, when, as Henslowe put it,
they "left off play now at the King's coming."[451]
After a short interruption on account of the plague, during a part of which
time they traveled in the provinces, the Admiral's Men were taken under the
patronage of the youthful Henry, Prince of Wales, and in the early spring of
1604 they resumed playing at the Fortune under their new name, "The
Prince's Servants."

EDWARD ALLEYN
(Reproduced by permission from a painting in the
Dulwich Picture Gallery; photograph by Emery Walker,
Ltd.)

For a time all went well. But from July, 1607, until December, 1609, the
plague was severe in London, and acting was seriously interrupted. During
this long period of hardship for the players, Henslowe and Alleyn seem to
have made an attempt to hold the troupe together by admitting its chief
members to a partnership in the building, just as the Burbages had formerly
admitted their chief players to a partnership in the Globe. At this time there
were in the troupe eight sharers, or chief actors.[452] Henslowe and Alleyn,
it seems, proposed to allot to these eight actors one-fourth of the Fortune
property. In other words, according to this scheme, there were to be thirty-
two sharers in the new Fortune organization, Alleyn and Henslowe together
holding three-fourths of the stock, or twelve shares each, and the eight
actors together holding one-fourth of the stock, or one share each. A

document was actually drawn up by Henslowe and Alleyn, with the name of
the leader of the Fortune troupe, Thomas Downton, inserted;[453] but since
the document was not executed, the scheme, it is to be presumed, was
unsuccessful—at least, we hear nothing further about it.[454]
On November 6, 1612, the death of the young Prince of Wales left the
company without a "service." On January 4, 1613, however, a new patent
was issued to the players, placing them under the protection of the
Palsgrave, or Elector Palatine, after which date they are known as "The
Palsgrave's Men."
On January 9, 1616, Henslowe, so long associated with the company and
the Fortune, died; and a year later his widow, Agnes, followed him. As a
result the entire Fortune property passed into the hands of Alleyn. But
Alleyn, apparently, did not care to be worried with the management of the
playhouse; so on October 31, 1618, he leased it to the Palsgrave's Men for a
period of thirty-one years, at an annual rental of £200 and two rundlets of
wine at Christmas.[455]
On April 24, 1620, Alleyn executed a deed of grant of lands by which he
transferred the Fortune, along with various other properties, to Dulwich
College.[456] But he retained during his lifetime the whole of the revenues
therefrom, and he specifically reserved to himself the right to grant leases
for any length of years. The transference of the title, therefore, in no way
affected the playhouse, and Alleyn continued to manage the property as he
had been accustomed to do in the past.
His services in this capacity were soon needed, for on December 9, 1621,
the Fortune was burned to the ground. Alleyn records the event in his Diary
thus: "Memorandum. This night at 12 of the clock the Fortune was burnt."
In a less laconic fashion John Chamberlain writes to Sir Dudley Carleton:
"On Sunday night here was a great fire at the Fortune in Golding-Lane, the
fairest playhouse in this town. It was quite burnt down in two hours, and all
their apparel and playbooks lost, whereby those poor companions are quite
undone."[457]
The "poor companions" thus referred to were, of course, the players, who
lost not only their stock of apparel, playbooks, and stage furniture, but also
their lease, which assured them of a home. Alleyn, however, was quite able

and ready to reconstruct the building for them; and we find him on May 20,
1621, already organizing a syndicate to finance "a new playhouse" which
"there is intended to be erected and set up." The stock of the new enterprise
he divided into twelve equal shares, which he disposed of, as the custom
was, in the form of whole and half shares, reserving for himself only one
share.[458] The plot of ground on which the old playhouse stood he leased to
the several sharers for a period of fifty-one years at an annual rental of £10
13s. 10d. a share, with the express condition that the building to be erected
thereon should never be used for any purpose other than the acting of stage-
plays. The sharers then proceeded to the task of constructing their
playhouse. It was proposed to make the new building larger[459] and
handsomer than the old one, and to build it of brick[460] with a tiled roof—
possibly an attempt at fireproof construction. It was decided, also, to
abandon the square shape in favor of the older and more logical circular
shape. Wright, in his Historia Histrionica, describes the New Fortune as "a
large, round, brick building,"[461] and Howes assures us that it was "farre
fairer" than the old playhouse.[462] We do not know how much the building
cost. At the outset each sharer was assessed £83 6s. 8d. towards the cost of
construction,[463] which would produce exactly £1000; but the first
assessment was not necessarily all that the sharers were called upon to pay.
For example, when the Globe was rebuilt each sharer was at first assessed
"£50 or £60," but before the building was finished each had paid more than
£100. So the Fortune may well have cost more than the original estimate of
£1000. In 1656 two expert assessors appointed by the authorities of
Dulwich College to examine the playhouse declared that "the said building
did in our opinions cost building about two thousand pound."[464] This
estimate is probably not far wrong. The playhouse was completed in June or
July of 1623, and was again occupied by the Palsgrave's Men.[465]
On November 25, 1626, Edward Alleyn died, and the Fortune property
came into the full possession of Dulwich College. This, however, did not in
any way affect the syndicate of the Fortune housekeepers, who held from
Alleyn a lease of the property until 1672. According to the terms of this
lease each of the twelve sharers had to pay a yearly rental of £10 13s. 10d.;
this rental now merely went to the College instead of to Alleyn.
In 1631 the Palsgrave's Men seem to have fallen on hard times; at any rate,
they had to give up the Fortune, and the playhouse was taken over, about

December, by the King's Revels, who had been playing at the small private
playhouse of Salisbury Court.[466] The Palsgrave's Men were reorganized,
taken under the patronage of the infant Prince Charles, and placed in the
Salisbury Court Playhouse just vacated by the King's Revels.
In 1635 there was a general shifting of houses on the part of the London
companies. The King's Revels left the Fortune and returned to their old
quarters at Salisbury Court; the Prince Charles's Men, who had been at
Salisbury Court, moved to the Red Bull; and the Red Bull Company
transferred itself to the Fortune.
The stay of the Red Bull Company at the Fortune was not happy. Towards
the end of 1635 the plague was seriously interfering with their performance
of plays;[467] and on May 10, 1636, the Privy Council closed all theatres,
and kept them closed, except for a few days, until October 2, 1637.[468] This
long inhibition not only impoverished the actors and drove them into the
country, but came near ruining the lessees of the Fortune, who, having no
revenue from the playhouse, could not make their quarterly payments to the
College. On September 4, 1637, the Court of Assistants at Dulwich noted
that the lessees were behind in their rent to the extent of £132 12s. 11d.;
"and," the court adds, "there will be a quarter's rent more at Michaelmas
next [i.e., in twenty-five days], which is doubted will be also unpaid,
amounting to £33 1s. 4d."[469] The excuse of the lessees for their failure to
pay was the "restraint from playing."[470]
This "restraint" was removed on October 2, 1637, and the players resumed
their performances at the Fortune. But in the early summer of 1639 they fell
victims to another bit of ill luck even more serious than their long
inhibition. In a letter of Edmond Rossingham, dated May 8, 1639, we read:
"Thursday last the players of the Fortune were fined £1000 for setting up an
altar, a bason, and two candlesticks, and bowing down before it upon the
stage; and although they allege it was an old play revived, and an altar to
the heathen gods, yet it was apparent that this play was revived on purpose
in contempt of the ceremonies of the Church."[471]
During the Easter period, 1640, the players returned to their old quarters at
the Red Bull. After their unhappy experiences at the Fortune they were
apparently glad to occupy again their former home. The event is celebrated

in a Prologue entitled Upon the Removing of the Late Fortune Players to
the Bull, written by John Tatham, and printed in Fancies Theatre (1640):
[472]

Here, gentlemen, our anchor's
fixt; and we
Disdaining Fortune's
mutability,
Expect your kind acceptance.
The writer then hurls some uncomplimentary remarks at the Fortune,
observing complacently: "We have ne'er an actor here has mouth enough to
tear language by the ears." It is true that during these later years the Fortune
had fallen into ill repute with persons of good taste. But so had the Red
Bull, and the actors there had no right to throw stones. Apparently the large
numbers that could be accommodated in the great public theatres, and the
quality of the audience attracted by the low price of admission, made noise
and rant inevitable.[473] As chief sinners in this respect the Fortune and the
Red Bull are usually mentioned together.
Upon the departure of the Red Bull Company, the Prince Charles's Men
(originally the Admiral's, and later the Palsgrave's Men), who had been
occupying the Red Bull, came to the Fortune.[474] Thus after an absence of
nearly nine years, the old company (though sadly altered in personnel), for
which the Fortune had been built, returned to its home to remain there until
the end.
On September 2, 1642, the Long Parliament passed an ordinance
suppressing all stage-plays; but for a time the actors at the Fortune seem to
have continued their performances. In the fifth number of The Weekly
Account, September 27-October 4, 1643, we find among other entries: "The
players' misfortune at the Fortune in Golding Lane, their players' clothes
being seized upon in the time of a play by authority from the Parliament."
[475] This, doubtless, led to the closing of the playhouse.

After the Fortune was thus closed, the lessees were in a predicament. By a
specific clause in their lease they were prevented from using the building
for any purpose other than the acting of stage-plays, and now Parliament by
a specific ordinance had forbidden the acting of stage-plays. Hence the

lessees, some of whom were poor persons, being unable to make any profit
from the building, refused to pay any rent. The College entered suit against
them, and exhausted all legal means to make them pay, but without success.
[476]

When the ordinance prohibiting plays expired in January, 1648, the actors
promptly reopened the Fortune, and we learn from The Kingdom's Weekly
Intelligencer that on January 27 no fewer than one hundred and twenty
coaches were crowded about the building. But on February 9 Parliament
passed a new and even more stringent ordinance against dramatic
performances, placing penalties not only upon the players, but also upon the
spectators. This for ever put an end to acting at the Fortune.
In 1649 the arrears of the lessees having reached the sum of £974 5s. 8d.,
the authorities of the College took formal possession of the playhouse.
From certain manuscript notes[477] entered in the Phillipps copy of Stow's
Annals (1631), we learn that "a company of soldiers, set on by the sectaries
of these sad times, on Saturday, the 24 day of March, 1649," sacked the
Salisbury Court Playhouse, the Phœnix, and the Fortune. The note states
that the Fortune was "pulled down on the inside by the soldiers"; that is, the
stage and the seats were dismantled[478] so as to render the building
unusable for dramatic purposes.
In the following year, 1650, the inhabitants of the Parish of St. Giles
"represent that they are poor, and unable to build a place of worship for
themselves, but think it would be convenient if that large building
commonly known by the name of the Fortune Playhouse might be allotted
and set apart for that purpose." The request was not granted.[479]
By July, 1656, the condition of the old playhouse was such that the Masters
and Wardens of the College appointed two experts to view the building and
make recommendations. They reported "that by reason the lead hath been
taken from the said building, the tiling not secured, and the foundation of
the said playhouse not kept in good repair, great part of the said playhouse
is fallen to the ground, the timber thereof much decayed and rotten, and the
brick walls so rent and torn that the whole structure is in no condition
capable of repair, but in great danger of falling, to the hazard of passengers'
lives"; and they add: "The charge for demolishing the same will be

chargeable and dangerous. Upon these considerations our opinion is that the
said materials may not be more worth than eighty pound."[480]
The authorities of Dulwich took no action on this report. However, on
March 5, 1660, they ordered that the property be leased, making a casual
reference to the playhouse as "at present so ruinous that part thereof is
already fallen down, and the rest will suddenly follow." Accordingly, they
inserted in the Mercurius Politicus of February 14-21, 1661, the following
advertisement: "The Fortune Playhouse, situate between Whitecross Street
and Golding Lane, in the parish of St. Giles, Cripplegate, with the ground
thereto belonging, is to be let to be built upon."[481]
No one seems to have cared to lease the property; so on March 16,
following, the materials of the building were sold to one William Beaven
for the sum of £75;[482] and in the records of the College, March 4, 1662,
we read that "the said playhouse ... is since totally demolished."[483]

CHAPTER XIV
THE RED BULL

T HE builder of the Red Bull Playhouse[484] was "one Aaron Holland,
yeoman," of whom we know little more than that he "was utterly
unlearned and illiterate, not being able to read."[485] He had leased "for
many years" from Anne Beddingfield, "wife and administratrix of the goods
and chattles of Christopher Beddingfield, deceased," a small plot of land,
known by the name of "The Red Bull." This plot of land, which contained
one house, was situated "at the upper end of St. John's Street" in the Parish
of St. James, Clerkenwell, the exact location being marked by "Red Bull
Yard" in Ogilby and Morgan's Map of London, printed in 1677. The
property was not much more distant from the heart of the city than the
Fortune property, and since it could be easily reached through St. John's
Gate, it was quite as well situated for dramatic purposes as was the Fortune.

THE SITE OF THE RED BULL PLAYHOUSE
The site is indicated by Red Bull Yard. (From Ogilby and
Morgan's Map of London, 1677.)
[Enlarge]

In or before 1605[486] Holland erected on this plot of ground "a playhouse
for acting and setting forth plays, comedies, and tragedies." We may suspect
that he did this at the instigation of the Earl of Worcester's Men, who had
just been taken under the patronage of the Queen, and had been selected by
the Privy Council as one of three companies to be "allowed." The warrant
of the Privy Council, April 9, 1604, orders the Lord Mayor to "permit and
suffer the three companies of players to the King, Queen, and Prince

publickly to exercise their plays in their several and usual houses for that
purpose, and no other, viz. the Globe, situate in Maiden Lane on the
Bankside in the county of Surrey, the Fortune in Golding Lane, and the
Curtain, in Holywell."[487] Among these three companies, as Dekker tells
us, there was much rivalry.[488] No doubt the Queen's Men, forced to
occupy the old Curtain Playhouse, suffered by comparison with the King's
Men at the handsome Globe, and the Prince's Men at the new and
magnificent Fortune; and this, I suspect, furnished the immediate cause for
the erection of the Red Bull. In a draft of a license to the Queen's Men,
made late in 1603 or early in 1604, the fact is disclosed that the actors, of
whom Thomas Greene was the leader, were contemplating a new
playhouse. The company was licensed to use any "playhouse not used by
others, by the said Thomas Greene elected, or by him hereafter to be built."
[489] Whether or no Greene and his fellows had some understanding with
Holland, we cannot say. But in 1605 we find Holland disposing of one share
in the new playhouse to Thomas Swynnerton, a member of Queen Anne's
Troupe; and he may at the same time have disposed of other shares to other
members, for his transaction with Swynnerton comes to our notice only
through a subsequent lawsuit. The words used in the documents connected
with the suit clearly suggest that the playhouse was completed at the time of
the purchase. From the fact that Holland granted "a seventh part of the said
playhouse and galleries, with a gatherer's place thereto belonging or
appertaining, unto the said Thomas Swynnerton for diverse years,"[490] it
appears that the ownership of the playhouse had been divided into seven
shares, some of which, according to custom, may have been subdivided into
half-shares.
The name of the playhouse, as in the case of the Rose and the Curtain, was
taken from the name of the estate on which it was erected. Of the building
we have no pictorial representation; the picture in Kirkman's The Wits
(1672), so often reproduced by scholars as "The Interior of the Red Bull,"
has nothing whatever to do with that building. The Kirkman picture shows a
small enclosed room, with a narrow stage illuminated by chandeliers and
footlights; the Red Bull, on the contrary, was a large, open-air building,
with its stage illuminated by the sun. It is thus described in Wright's
Historia Histrionica (1699): "The Globe, Fortune, and Bull were large
houses, and lay partly open to the weather."[491] Before its door was

displayed a sign on which was painted a red bull; hence the playhouse is
sometimes referred to simply as "at the sign of the Red Bull."
The building, as I have indicated, seems to have been completed in or
before 1605; but exactly when the Queen's Men moved thither from the
Curtain is not clear. The patent issued to the company on April 15, 1609,
gives them license to play "within their now usual houses, called the Red
Bull in Clerkenwell, and the Curtain in Holywell."[492] Since they would
hardly make use of two big public playhouses at the same time, we might
suspect that they were then arranging for the transfer. Moreover, Heath, in
his Epigrams, printed in 1610 but probably written a year or two earlier,
refers to the three important public playhouses of the day as the Globe, the
Fortune, and the Curtain. Yet, that the Queen's Men were playing regularly
at the Red Bull in 1609 is clear from Dekker's Raven's Almanack,[493] and
they may have been playing there at intervals after 1605.
Dekker, in the pamphlet just mentioned, predicted "a deadly war" between
the Globe, the Fortune, and the Red Bull. And he had good reasons for
believing that the Queen's Men could successfully compete with the two
other companies, for it numbered among its players some of the best actors
of the day. The leader of the troupe was Thomas Greene, now chiefly
known for the amusing comedy named, after him, Greene's Tu Quoque, but
then known to all Londoners as the cleverest comedian since Tarleton and
Kempe:
Scat. Yes, faith, brother, if it please you; let's go see a play at the Globe.
But. I care not; any whither, so the clown have a part; for, i' faith, I am
nobody without a fool.
Gera. Why, then, we'll go to the Red Bull; they say Green's a good clown.
[494]

The chief playwright for the troupe was the learned and industrious Thomas
Heywood, who, like Shakespeare, was also an actor and full sharer in his
company. Charles Lamb, who was an ardent admirer of Heywood's plays,
enthusiastically styled him "a prose Shakespeare"; and Wordsworth, with
hardly less enthusiasm, declared him to have been "a great man."

In 1612 Thomas Greene died, and the leadership of the troupe was taken
over by Christopher Beeston, a man well known in the theatrical life of the
time. Late in February, 1617, Beeston transferred the Queen's Men to his
new playhouse in Drury Lane, the Cockpit; in little more than a week the
sacking of the Cockpit drove them back to their old quarters, where they
remained until the following June. But even after this they seem not to have
abandoned the Red Bull entirely.
Edward Alleyn, in his Account Book, writes: "Oct. 1, 1617, I came to
London in the coach and went to the Red Bull"; and again under the date of
October 3: "I went to the Red Bull, and received for The Younger Brother
but £3 6s. 4d."[495] What these two passages mean it is hard to say, for they
constitute the only references to the Red Bull in all the Alleyn papers; but
they do not necessarily imply, as some have thought, that Alleyn was part
owner of the playhouse; possibly he was merely selling to the Red Bull
Company the manuscript of an old play.[496]
At the death of Queen Anne, March 2, 1619, the company was deprived of
its "service," and after attending her funeral on May 13, was dissolved.
Christopher Beeston joined Prince Charles's Men, and established that
troupe at the Cockpit;[497] the other leading members of Queen Anne's Men
seem to have continued at the Red Bull under the simple title "The Red Bull
Company."
In April, 1622, a feltmaker's apprentice named John Gill,[498] while seated
on the Red Bull stage, was accidentally injured by a sword in the hands of
one of the actors, Richard Baxter. A few days later Gill called upon his
fellow-apprentices to help him secure damages. In the forenoon he sent the
following letter, now somewhat defaced by time, to Baxter:
Mr. Blackster [sic]. So it is that upon Monday last it ... to be upon your
stage, intending no hurt to any one, where I was grievously wounded in the
head, as may appear; and in the surgeon's hands, who is to have xs. for the
cure; and in the meantime my Master to give me maintenance ... [to my]
great loss and hindrance; and therefore in kindness I desire you to give me
satisfaction, seeing I was wounded by your own hand ... weapon. If you
refuse, then look to yourself and avoid the danger which shall this day
ensue upon your company and house. For ... as you can, for I am a

feltmaker's prentice, and have made it known to at least one hundred and
forty of our ... who are all here present, ready to take revenge upon you
unless willingly you will give present satisfaction. Consider there ... think
fitting. And as you have a care for your own safeties, so let me have answer
forthwith.[499]
Baxter turned the letter over to the authorities of Middlesex (hence its
preservation), who took steps to guard the playhouse and actors. The only
result was that prentices "to the number of one hundred persons on the said
day riotously assembled at Clerkenwell, to the terror and disquiet of persons
dwelling there."
On July 8, 1622, the Red Bull Company secured a license "to bring up
children in the quality and exercise of playing comedies, histories,
interludes, morals, pastorals, stage-plays and such like ... to be called by the
name of the Children of the Revels."[500] The Children of the Revels
occupied the Red Bull until the summer of the following year, 1623, when
they were dissolved. The last reference to them is in the Herbert Manuscript
under the date of May 10, 1623.[501]
In August, 1623, we find the Red Bull occupied by Prince Charles's Men,
[502] who, after the dissolution of the Revels Company, had moved thither
from the less desirable Curtain.
Two years later, in 1625, Prince Charles became King, and took under his
patronage his father's troupe, the King's Men. Some of the members of the
Prince Charles Troupe were transferred to the King's Men, and the rest
constituted a nucleus about which a new company was organized, known
simply as "The Red Bull Company."
About this time, it seems, the playhouse was rebuilt and enlarged. The
Fortune had been destroyed by fire in 1621, and had just been rebuilt in a
larger and handsomer form. In 1625 one W.C., in London's Lamentation for
her Sins, writes: "Yet even then, Oh Lord, were the theatres magnified and
enlarged."[503] This doubtless refers to the rebuilding of the Fortune and the
Red Bull. Prynne specifically states in his Histriomastix (1633) that the
Fortune and Red Bull had been "lately reedified [and] enlarged." But
nothing further is known of the "re-edification and enlargement" of the Red
Bull.

After its enlargement the playhouse seems to have acquired a reputation for
noise and vulgarity. Carew, in 1630, speaks of it as a place where "noise
prevails" and a "drowth of wit," and yet as always crowded with people
while the better playhouses stood empty. In The Careless Shepherdess,
acted at Salisbury Court, we read:
And I will hasten to the
money-box,
And take my shilling out
again;
I'll go to the Bull, or Fortune,
and there see
A play for two-pence, and a
jig to boot.[504]
In 1638, a writer of verses prefixed to Randolph's Poems speaks of the
"base plots" acted with great applause at the Red Bull.[505] James Wright
informs us, in his Historia Histrionica, that the Red Bull and the Fortune
were "mostly frequented by citizens and the meaner sort of people."[506]
And Edmund Gayton, in his Pleasant Notes, wittily remarks: "I have heard
that the poets of the Fortune and Red Bull had always a mouth-measure for
their actors (who were terrible tear-throats) and made their lines
proportionable to their compass, which were sesquipedales, a foot and a
half."[507] Probably the ill repute of the large public playhouses at this time
was chiefly due to the rise of private playhouses in the city.
In 1635 the Red Bull Company moved to the Fortune, and Prince Charles's
Men occupied the Red Bull.
Five years later, at Easter, 1640, Prince Charles's Men moved back to the
Fortune, and the Red Bull Company returned to its old home. In a prologue
written to celebrate the event,[508] the members of the company declared:
Here, gentlemen, our anchor's fix't.
This proved true, for the company remained at the Red Bull until
Parliament passed the ordinance of 1642 closing the playhouses and
forbidding all dramatic performances. The ordinance, which was to hold
good during the continuance of the civil war, was renewed in 1647, with

January 1, 1648, set as the date of its expiration. Through some oversight a
new ordinance was not immediately passed, and the actors were prompt to
take advantage of the fact. They threw open the playhouses, and the
Londoners flocked in great crowds to hear plays again. At the Red Bull, so
we learn from the newspaper called Perfect Occurrences, was given a
performance of Beaumont and Fletcher's Wit Without Money.
But on February 9, 1648, Parliament made up for its oversight by passing
an exceptionally severe ordinance against dramatic exhibitions, directing
that actors be publicly flogged, and that each spectator be fined the sum of
five shillings.
During the dark years that followed, the Red Bull, in spite of this ordinance,
was occasionally used by venturous actors. James Wright, in his Historia
Histrionica, tells us that upon the outbreak of the war the various London
actors had gone "into the King's army, and, like good men and true, served
their old master, though in a different, yet more honourable capacity.
Robinson was killed at the taking of a place (I think Basing House) by
Harrison.... Mohun was a captain.... Hart was cornet of the same troop, and
Shatterel quartermaster. Allen, of the Cockpit, was a major.... The rest either
lost or exposed their lives for their king."[509] He concludes the narrative by
saying that when the wars were over, those actors who were left alive
gathered to London, "and for a subsistence endeavoured to revive their old
trade privately." They organized themselves into a company in 1648 and
attempted "to act some plays with as much caution and privacy as could be
at the Cockpit"; but after three or four days they were stopped by soldiers.
Thereafter, on special occasions "they used to bribe the officer who
commanded the guard at Whitehall, and were thereupon connived at to act
for a few days at the Red Bull, but were sometimes, notwithstanding,
disturbed by soldiers."[510] To such clandestine performances Kirkman
refers in his Preface to The Wits, or Sport upon Sport (1672): "I have seen
the Red Bull Playhouse, which was a large one, so full that as many went
back for want of room as had entered; and as meanly as you may now think
of these drolls, they were then acted by the best comedians then and now in
being." Not, however, without occasional trouble. In Whitelocke's
Memorials, p. 435, we read: "20 Dec., 1649. Some stage-players in St.
John's Street were apprehended by troopers, their clothes taken away, and
themselves carried to prison"; again, in The Perfect Account, December 27-

January 3, 1654-1655: "Dec. 30, 1654.—This day the players at the Red
Bull, being gotten into all their borrowed gallantry and ready to act, were by
some of the soldiery despoiled of all their bravery; but the soldiery carried
themselves very civilly towards the audience."[511] In the Weekly
Intelligencer, September 11-18, 1655, we find recorded still another sad
experience for the actors: "Friday, September 11, 1655.—This day proved
tragicall to the players at the Red Bull; their acting being against the Act of
Parliament, the soldiers secured the persons of some of them who were
upon the stage, and in the tiring-house they seized also upon their clothes in
which they acted, a great part whereof was very rich."[512]
On this occasion, however, the soldiers, instead of carrying themselves
"very civilly" towards the audience, undertook to exact from each of the
spectators the fine of five shillings. The ordinance of Parliament, passed
February 9, 1648, read: "And it is hereby further ordered and ordained, that
every person or persons which shall be present and a spectator at such
stage-play or interlude, hereby prohibited, shall for every time he shall be
present, forfeit and pay the sum of five shillings to the use of the poor of the
parish."[513] But the spectators did not submit to this fine without a struggle.
Jeremiah Banks wrote to Williamson on September 16, 1655: "At the
playhouse this week many were put to rout by the soldiers and had broken
crowns; the corporal would have been entrapped had he not been vigilant."
[514] And in the Weekly Intelligencer, September 11-18, we read: "It never
fared worse with the spectators than at this present, for those who had
monies paid their five shillings apiece; those who had none, to satisfy their
forfeits, did leave their cloaks behind them. The Tragedy of the spectators
was the Comedy of the soldiers. There was abundance of the female sex,
who, not able to pay five shillings, did leave some gage or other behind
them, insomuch that although the next day after the Fair was expected to be
a new fair of hoods, of aprons, and of scarfs; all which, their poverty being
made known, and after some check for their trespass, were civilly again
restored to the owners."[515]
At the period of the Restoration the Red Bull was among the first
playhouses to reopen. John Downes, in his Roscius Anglicanus, writes:
"The scattered remnant of several of these houses, upon King Charles'
Restoration, framed a company, who acted again at the Bull."[516]
Apparently the company was brought together by the famous old

Elizabethan actor, Anthony Turner. From the Middlesex County Records (iii,
279) we learn that at first the players were interrupted by the authorities:
12 May, 1659.—Recognizances, taken before Ra: Hall, esq. J.P., of William
Wintershall and Henry Eaton, both of Clerkenwell, gentlemen, in the sum
of fifty pounds each; "Upon condition that Antony Turner shall personally
appear at the next Quarter Sessions of the Peace to be holden at Hicks Hall
for the said County of Middlesex; for the unlawful maintaining of stage-
plays and interludes at the Red Bull in St. John's Street, which house he
affirms that they hire of the parishioners of Clerkenwell at the rate of
twenty shillings a day over and above what they have agreed to pay towards
the relief of their poor and repairing their highways, and in the meantime to
be of good behaviour and not to depart the Court without license.—Ra:
Hall." Also similar Recognizances, taken on the same day, before the same
J.P., of the same William Wintershall and Henry Eaton, gentlemen, in the
same sum of fifty pounds each; for the appearance of Edward Shatterall at
the next. Q.S.P. for Middlesex at Hicks Hall, "to answer for the unlawful
maintaining of stage-plays and interludes at the Red Bull in St. John's Street
&c." S.P.R., 17, May, 1659.
Later, it seems, they secured a license from the authorities, and thenceforth
acted without interruption. Samuel Pepys made plans "to go to the Red Bull
Playhouse" with Mrs. Pierce and her husband on August 3, 1660, but was
prevented by business. An account of his visit there on March 23, 1661, is
thus given in his Diary:
All the morning at home putting papers in order; dined at home, and then
out to the Red Bull (where I had not been since plays came up again), but
coming too soon I went out again and walked up and down the
Charterhouse Yard and Aldersgate Street. At last came back again and went
in, where I was led by a seaman that knew me, but is here as a servant, up to
the tiring-room, where strange the confusion and disorder that there is
among them in fitting themselves, especially here, where the clothes are
very poor and the actors but common fellows. At last into the pit, where I
think there was not above ten more than myself, and not one hundred in the
whole house. And the play, which is called All's Lost by Lust, poorly done;
and with so much disorder, among others, that in the musique-room, the

boy that was to sing a song not singing it right, his master fell about his ears
and beat him so, that it put the whole house in an uproar.
The actors, however, did not remain long at the Red Bull. They built for
themselves a new theatre in Drury Lane, whither they moved on April 8,
1663;[517] and after this the old playhouse was deserted. In Davenant's The
Play-House to Be Let (1663), i, i, we read:
Tell 'em the Red Bull stands empty for
fencers:[518]
There are no tenants in it but old spiders.

CHAPTER XV
WHITEFRIARS

T HE district of Whitefriars, lying just outside the city wall to the west,
and extending from Fleet Street to the Thames, was once in the
possession of the order of White Friars, and the site of an important
monastery; but in Elizabeth's time the church had disappeared, most of the
ancient buildings had been dismantled, and in their place, as Stow tells us,
were "many fair houses builded, lodgings for noblemen and others." Since
at the dissolution of the monasteries the property had come into the
possession of the Crown, it was not under the jurisdiction of the London
Common Council—a fact which made Whitefriars, like Blackfriars, a
desirable refuge for players seeking to escape the hostility of the city
authorities.[519] One might naturally expect the appearance of playing here
at an early date, but the evidence is slight.[520]
The first appearance of a regular playhouse in Whitefriars dates from the
early years of King James's reign. With our present knowledge we cannot
fix the date exactly, yet we can feel reasonably certain that it was not long
before 1607—probably about 1605.
The chief spirit in the organization of the new playhouse seems to have
been the poet Michael Drayton, who had secured a patent from King James
to "erect" a company of child actors, to be known as "The Children of His
Majesty's Revels."[521] Obviously his hope was to make the Children of His
Majesty's Revels at Whitefriars rival the successful Children of Her
Majesty's Revels at Blackfriars. In this ambitious enterprise he associated
with himself a wealthy London merchant, Thomas Woodford, whom we
know as having been interested in various theatrical investments.[522] These
two men leased from Lord Buckhurst for a short period of time a building
described as a "mansion house" formerly a part of the Whitefriars
monastery: "the rooms of which are thirteen in number, three below, and ten
above; that is to say, the great hall, the kitchen by the yard, and a cellar,

with all the rooms from the Master of the Revells' office as the same are
now severed and divided."[523] The "great hall" here mentioned, once the
refectory of the monks, was made into the playhouse. Its "great" size may
be inferred from the fact that there were ten rooms "above"; and its general
excellence may be inferred from the fact that it was leased at £50 per
annum, whereas Blackfriars, in a more desirable location and fully
equipped as a theatre, was rented for only £40.
From an early seventeenth-century survey of the Whitefriars property (see
the opposite page), we are able to place the building very exactly. The part
of the monastery used as a playhouse—the Frater—was the southern
cloister, marked in the plan, "My Lords Cloyster." The "kitchen by the
yard" mentioned in the document just quoted is clearly represented in the
survey by the "Scullere." The size of the playhouse is hard to ascertain, but
it was approximately thirty-five feet in width and eighty-five feet in length.
[524] In the London of to-day it extended roughly from Bouverie Street to
Ashen-tree Court, and lay just north of George Yard.

A PLAN OF WHITEFRIARS
A portion of an early seventeenth-century survey of the
Whitefriars property. The playhouse adjoined the
"Scullere" on the south. (This survey was discovered in
the Print Room of the British Museum by Mr. A.W.
Clapham, and reproduced in The Journal of the British
Archæological Association, 1910.)
[Enlarge]

Of the career of the Children under the joint management of Drayton and
Woodford we know almost nothing. But in March, 1608, a new
management assumed charge of the troupe, and from this point on the
history of the playhouse is reasonably clear.
The original lease of the building, it seems, expired on March 5, 1608. But
before the expiration—in the latter part of 1607 or in the early part of 1608
—Drayton and Woodford secured a new lease on the property for six years,
eight months, and twenty days, or until December 25 (one of the four
regular feasts of the year), 1614. In February, 1608, after having secured
this renewal of the lease, Thomas Woodford suddenly determined to retire
from the enterprise; and he sold his moiety to one David Lording Barry,[525]
author of the play Ram Alley. Barry and Drayton at once made plans to
divide the property into six shares, so as to distribute the expenses and the
risks as well as the hoped-for profits. Barry induced his friend, George
Androwes, to purchase one share, and hence the lawsuit from which we
derive most of our knowledge of the playhouse. From this suit I quote
below the more significant part relating to the new organization:
Humbly complaining, sheweth unto your honorable lordship, your daily
orator, George Androwes, of London, silkweaver, that whereas one
Lordinge Barry, about February which was in the year of our Lord 1607
[i.e., 1608], pretending himself to be lawfully possessed of one moiety of a
messuage or mansion house, parcel of the late dissolved monastery called
the Whitefriars, in Fleet Street, in the suburbs of London, by and under a
lease made thereof, about March then next following, from the right
honorable Robert, Lord Buckhurst, unto one Michael Drayton and Thomas

Woodford, for the term of six years, eight months, and twenty days then
following, for and under the yearly rent of fifty pounds reserved thereupon;
the moiety of which said lease and premisses, by mean assignment from the
said Thomas Woodford, was lawfully settled in the said Lordinge Barry, as
he did pretend, together with the moiety of diverse play-books, apparel, and
other furnitures and necessaries used and employed in and about the said
messuage and the Children of the Revels,[526] there being, in making and
setting forth plays, shows, and interludes, and such like. And the said
Lordinge Barry ... being desirous to join others with him in the interest of
the same, who might be contributory to such future charges as should arise
in setting forth of plays and shows there, did thereupon ... solicit and
persuade your orator to take from the said Barry an assignment of a sixth
part of the messuage, premisses, and profits aforesaid.

MICHAEL DRAYTON
(From a painting in the National Portrait Gallery,
London: photograph copyrighted by Emery Walker,
Ltd.)

This passage gives us an interesting glimpse of Drayton and Barry in their
efforts to organize a syndicate for exploiting the Children of His Majesty's
Revels. They induced several other persons to buy half-shares; and then
they engaged, as manager of the Children, Martin Slaiter,[527] a well-known
and thoroughly experienced actor. For his services as manager, Slaiter was
to receive one whole share in the organization, and lodgings for himself and
his family of ten in the building. The syndicate thus formed was made up of
four whole-sharers, Michael Drayton, Lordinge Barry, George Androwes,
and Martin Slaiter, and four half-sharers, William Trevell, William Cooke,
Edward Sibthorpe, and John Mason.[528]
The "great hall" had, of course, already been fitted up for the acting of
plays, and the new lessees did not at first contemplate any expenditure on
the building. Later, however,—if we can believe Androwes,—they spent a
not inconsiderable sum for improvements. The Children already had certain
plays, and to these were added some new ones. Among the plays in their
repertoire were Day's Humour Out of Breath, Middleton's Family of Love,
Armin's The Two Maids of Moreclacke, Sharpham's Cupid's Whirligig,
Markham and Machin's The Dumb Knight, Barry's Ram Alley, and Mason's
The Turk. The last two writers were sharers, and it seems likely that
Drayton, also a sharer and experienced as a dramatist, contributed some
plays towards the stock of the company.
The new organization, with bright prospects for success, was launched in
March, 1608. Almost at once, however, it began to suffer from ill luck. In
April the Children at Blackfriars, by their performance of Byron, caused
King James to close all playhouses in London. How long he kept them
closed we do not know, but we find the lessees of Whitefriars joining with
the three other London companies in seeking to have the inhibition raised.
As the French Ambassador informed his Government: "Pour lever cette
défense, quatres autres compagnies, qui y sont encore, offrent déjà cent
mille francs, lesquels pourront bien leur en ordonner la permission."[529]
Even if this inhibition was shortly raised, the Whitefriars organization was
not much better off, for in July the plague set in with unusual violence, and
acting was seriously if not wholly interrupted for the next twelve months
and more. As a result, the profits from the theatre did not come up to the

"fair and false flattering speeches" which at the outset Barry had made to
prospective investors, and this led to bad feeling among the sharers.
The company at Blackfriars, of course, was suffering in a similar way. On
August 8, 1608, their playhouse was surrendered to the owner, Richard
Burbage, and the Children being thus left without a home were dispersed.
Early in 1609, probably in February, Robert Keysar (the manager of the
Blackfriars troupe), Philip Rosseter, and others secured the lease of the
Whitefriars Playhouse from Drayton and the rest of the discontented
sharers, and reassembled there the Children of Blackfriars. What became of
the Whitefriars troupe we do not know; but it is highly likely that the new
organization took over the better actors from Drayton's company. At any
rate, we do not hear again of the Children of His Majesty's Revels.
When Keysar and this new troupe of child-actors moved into Whitefriars,
Slaiter and his family of ten were expelled from the building. This led to a
lawsuit, and explains much in the legal documents printed by Greenstreet.
Slaiter complained with no little feeling that he had been "riotously,
willfully, violently, and unlawfully, contrary to the said articles and
pretended agreement [by which he had been not only engaged as a manager,
but also guaranteed a home for the period of "all the term of years in the
lease"], put and kept out of his said rooms of habitation for him, this
defendant, and his family, and all other his means of livelihood, thereby
leaving this defendant and his whole family, being ten in number, to the
world to seek for bread and other means to live by."[530]
The new Whitefriars troupe acted five plays at Court during the winter of
1609-10. Payments therefor were made to Robert Keysar, and the company
was referred to merely as "The Children of the Whitefriars." But on January
4, 1610, the company secured a royal patent authorizing the use of the title
"The Children of the Queen's Revels."[531] The patent was granted to Robert
Daborne, Philip Rosseter, John Tarbock, Richard Jones, and Robert
Browne; but Keysar, though not named in the grant, was still one of the
important sharers.[532]
The troupe well deserved the patronage of the Queen. Keysar described the
Blackfriars Children whom he had reorganized as "a company of the most
expert and skillful actors within the realm of England, to the number of

eighteen or twenty persons, all or most of them, trained up in that service in
the reign of the late Queen Elizabeth for ten years together."[533] And to
these, as I have pointed out, it seems likely that the best members of the
bankrupt Children of His Majesty's Revels had been added. The chief actor
of the new organization was Nathaniel Field, whose histrionic ability placed
him beside Edward Alleyn and Richard Burbage. One of the first plays he
was called upon to act in his new theatre was Jonson's brilliant comedy,
Epicœne, in which he took the leading rôle.

THE SITES OF THE WHITEFRIARS AND THE
SALISBURY COURT PLAYHOUSES
The Whitefriars Playhouse was just north of "K. 46";
the Salisbury Court Playhouse was just south of the

court of that name. (From Ogilby and Morgan's Map of
London, 1677.)
[Enlarge]

The idea then occurred to Rosseter to secure a monopoly on child-acting
and on private playhouses. The Children of His Majesty's Revels had
ceased to exist. The Blackfriars Playhouse had been closed by royal
command, and its lease had been surrendered to its owner, Richard
Burbage. The only rival to the Children at Whitefriars was the troupe of
Paul's Boys acting in their singing-school behind the Cathedral. How
Rosseter attempted to buy them off is thus recorded by Richard Burbage
and John Heminges:
There being, as these defendants verily think, but only three private
playhouses in the city of London, the one of which being in the Blackfriars
and in the hands of these defendants or of their assigns, one other being in
the Whitefriars in the hands or occupation of the said complainant himself
[Keysar], his partners [Rosseter, et al.], or assigns, and the third near St.
Paul's Church, then being in the hands of one Mr. Pierce, but then unused
for a playhouse. One Mr. Rosseter, a partner of the said complainant
[Keysar] dealt for and compounded with the said Mr. Pierce [Master of the
Paul's Boys] to the only benefit of him, the said Rosseter, the now
complainant [Keysar], the rest of their partners and company, and without
the privity, knowledge, or consent of these defendants [the King's
Company], or any of them, and that thereby they, the said complainant
[Keysar] and the said Rosseter and their partners and company might
advance their gains and profit to be had and made in their said house in
Whitefriars, that there might be a cessation of playing and plays to be acted
in the said house near St. Paul's Church aforesaid, for which the said
Rosseter compounded with the said Pierce to give him, the said Pierce,
twenty pounds per annum.[534]
By this means Rosseter disposed of the competition of the Paul's Boys. But,
although he secured a monopoly on child-acting, he failed to secure a
monopoly on private playhouses, for shortly after he had sealed this bargain
with Pierce, the powerful King's Men opened up at Blackfriars. Rosseter

promptly requested them to pay half the "dead rent" to Pierce, which they
good-naturedly agreed to do.
In 1613 Whitefriars was rented by certain London apprentices for the
performance "at night" of Robert Taylor's The Hog Hath Lost His Pearl.
The episode is narrated by Sir Henry Wotton in a letter to Sir Edmund
Bacon:
On Sunday last, at night, and no longer, some sixteen apprentices (of what
sort you shall guess by the rest of the story) having secretly learnt a new
play without book,[535] entitled The Hog Hath Lost His Pearl, took up the
Whitefriars for their theatre, and having invited thither (as it should seem)
rather their mistresses than their masters, who were all to enter per buletini
for a note of distinction from ordinary comedians. Towards the end of the
play the sheriffs (who by chance had heard of it) came in (as they say) and
carried some six or seven of them to perform the last act at Bridewell. The
rest are fled. Now it is strange to hear how sharp-witted the city is, for they
will needs have Sir John Swinerton, the Lord Mayor, be meant by the Hog,
and the late Lord Treasurer by the Pearl.[536]
Apparently the Children of the Queen's Revels continued successfully at
Whitefriars until March, 1613. On that date Rosseter agreed with Henslowe
to join the Revels with the Lady Elizabeth's Men then acting at the Swan.
The new organization, following the example of the King's Men, used
Whitefriars as a winter, and the Swan as a summer, house. Thus for a time
at least Whitefriars came under the management of Henslowe.
Rosseter's lease of the building was to expire in the following year. He
seems to have made plans—possibly with the assistance of Henslowe—to
erect in Whitefriars a more suitable playhouse for the newly organized
company; at least that is a plausible interpretation of the following curious
entry in Sir George Buc's Office Book: "July 13, 1613, for a license to erect
a new playhouse in Whitefriars, &c. £20."[537] But the new playhouse thus
projected never was built, doubtless because of strong local opposition.
Instead, Henslowe erected for the company a public playhouse on the
Bankside, known as "The Hope."
In March, 1614, at the expiration of one year, Rosseter withdrew from his
partnership with Henslowe. On December 25, 1614, his lease of the

Whitefriars expired, and he was apparently unable to renew it. Thereupon
he attempted to fit up a private playhouse in the district of Blackfriars, and
on June 3, 1615, he actually secured a royal license to do so. But in this
effort, too, he was foiled.[538]
After this we hear little or nothing of the Whitefriars Playhouse. Yet the
building may occasionally have been used for dramatic purposes.
Cunningham says: "The case of Trevill v. Woodford, in the Court of
Requests, informs us that plays were performed at the Whitefriars Theatre
as late as 1621; Sir Anthony Ashley, the then landlord of the house, entering
the theatre in that year, and turning the players out of doors, on pretense that
half a year's rent was yet unpaid to him."[539] I have not been able to
examine this document. Neither Fleay nor Murray has found any trace of a
company at Whitefriars after Rosseter's departure; hence for all practical
purposes we may regard the Whitefriars Playhouse as having come to the
end of its career in 1614.

CHAPTER XVI
THE HOPE

O N August 29, 1611, Henslowe became manager of the Lady Elizabeth's
Men. Having agreed among other things to furnish them with a
playhouse,[540] and no longer being in possession of the Rose, he rented the
old Swan and maintained them there throughout the year 1612.
In March of the following year, 1613, he entered into a partnership with
Philip Rosseter (the manager of the private playhouse of Whitefriars), and
"joined" the Lady Elizabeth's Men with Rosseter's excellent troupe of the
Queen's Revels. Apparently the intention of Henslowe and Rosseter was to
form a company strong enough to compete on equal terms with the King's
Men. In imitation of the King's Men, who used the Globe as a summer and
the Blackfriars as a winter home, the newly amalgamated company was to
use the Swan and the Whitefriars.[541] And the chief actor of the troupe,
corresponding to Richard Burbage of the King's Men, was to be Nathaniel
Field, then at the height of his powers:
Cokes. Which is your Burbage now?
Leatherhead. What mean you by that, sir?
Cokes. Your best actor, your Field.
Littlewit. Good, i' faith! you are even with me, sir.[542]
Among their playwrights were Ben Jonson, Philip Massinger, John Fletcher,
and Robert Daborne, not to mention Field, who in addition to acting wrote
excellent plays.
If it was the purpose of Henslowe and Rosseter to compete with the Globe
Company in a winter as well as in a summer house, that purpose was
endangered by the fact that Rosseter's lease of his private theatre expired
within a year and a half, and could not be renewed. Rosseter and Henslowe,

as pointed out in the preceding chapter, seem to have attempted to erect in
Whitefriars a winter home for their troupe; so, at least, I have interpreted
the curious entry in Sir George Buc's Office Book: "July 13, 1613, for a
license to erect a new playhouse in the Whitefriars, &c. £20."[543] The
attempt, however, was foiled, probably by the strong opposition of the
inhabitants of the district.
Shortly after this, Henslowe made plans to provide the company with a new
and better public playhouse on the Bankside, more conveniently situated
than the Swan. The old Bear Garden was beginning to show signs of decay,
and, doubtless, would soon have to be rebuilt. This suggested to Henslowe
the idea of tearing down that ancient structure and erecting in its place a
larger and handsomer building to serve both for the performance of plays
and for the baiting of animals. To this plan Jacob Meade, Henslowe's
partner in the ownership of the Bear Garden, agreed.

THE HOPE PLAYHOUSE, OR SECOND BEAR
GARDEN
From Hollar's View of London (1647).
[Enlarge]

Accordingly, on August 29, 1613, Henslowe and Meade signed a contract
with a carpenter named Katherens to pull down the Bear Garden and erect
in its place a new structure. The original contract, preserved among the
Henslowe Papers, is one of the most valuable documents we have relating
to the early theatres. It is too long and verbose for insertion here, but I give
below a summary of its contents.[544] Katherens agreed:

1. To "pull down" the Bear Garden and "the stable wherein the bulls and
horses" had been kept; and "near or upon the said place where the said
game-place did heretofore stand," to "newly erect, build, and set up" a
"playhouse, fit and convenient in all things both for players to play in, and
for the game of bears and bulls to be baited in."
2. "To build the same of such large compass, form, wideness, and height as
the playhouse called the Swan."
3. To provide for the building "a good sure, and sufficient foundation of
bricks ... thirteen inches at the least above the ground."
4. To make three galleries: "the inner principal posts of the first story to be
twelve feet in height, and ten inches square; in the middle story ... eight
inches square; in the upper story ... seven inches square."[545]
5. To "make two boxes in the lowermost story, fit and decent for gentlemen
to sit in," and in the rest of the galleries "partitions between the rooms as
they are in the said playhouse called the Swan."
6. To construct "a stage, to be carried and taken away, and to stand upon
tressels, good, substantial, and sufficient for the carrying and bearing of
such a stage."
7. To "build the heavens all over the said stage, to be borne or carried
without any posts or supporters to be fixed or set upon the said stage."
8. To equip the stage with "a fit and convenient tyre-house."
9. To "build two staircases without and adjoining to the said playhouse ... of
such largeness and height as the staircases of the said playhouse called the
Swan."
10. "To new build, erect, and set up the said bull-house and stable ... of that
largeness and fitness as shall be sufficient to keep and hold six bulls and
three horses."
11. "To new tyle with English tyles all the upper roof of the said playhouse
... and stable."

12. To have the playhouse finished "upon or before the last day of
November," 1613.
For all this Katherens was to receive the sum of £360; but since Henslowe
and Meade supplied a large share of the lumber and other materials, the
total cost of the building may be estimated as not less than £600.
When completed, the new playhouse was appropriately christened "The
Hope."
It has been generally assumed that a picture of the Hope is given in
Visscher's View of London, published in 1616; but this, I think, is
exceedingly doubtful. In drawing the Bankside, Visscher rather slavishly
copied the Agas map of 1560, inserting a few new buildings,—notably the
playhouses,—and it is virtually certain that he represented the "Bear
Garden" (so he distinctly calls it) and the Globe as they were before their
reconstruction.[546] The first representation of the Hope is to be found in
Hollar's splendid View of London published in 1647 (see page 326). At this
time the building, which had for many years been devoted wholly to the
royal sports of bull- and bear-baiting, was still standing. It is hard to believe
that an artist who so carefully represented the famous edifices of the city
should have greatly erred in drawing the "Bear Baiting House,"—a
structure more curious than they, and quite as famous.
Hollar represents the Hope as circular. According to the contract Katherens
was "to build the same of such large compass, form, wideness, and height
as the playhouse called the Swan." Whether the word "form" was intended
to apply to the exterior of the building we do not know. The Swan was
decahedral; Visscher represents the "Bear Garden" as octagonal (which is
correct for the Bear Garden that preceded the Hope). But since the exterior
was of lime and plaster, and a decahedral form had no advantage, Katherens
may well have constructed a circular building as Hollar indicates. Perhaps it
is significant in this connection that John Taylor, the Water-Poet, in his Bull,
Bear, and Horse, refers to the Hope as a "sweet, rotuntious college."
Significant also, perhaps, is the clause in the contract by which Katherens
was required to "build the heavens all over the stage," for this exactly
describes the heavens as drawn by Hollar. I see no reason to doubt that in
the View of 1647 we have a reasonably faithful representation of the Hope.

THE HOPE PLAYHOUSE, OR SECOND BEAR
GARDEN
The upper view is from Hollar's Post-conflagration map
in the Crace Collection of the British Museum; the lower
view is from Faithorne's Map of London (1658).

The Hope was probably opened shortly after November 30, 1613, the date
at which Katherens had bound himself to have the building "fully finished,"
and it was occupied, of course, by the Henslowe and Rosseter troupe of
actors. The arrangement of the movable stage enabled Henslowe and Meade
to use the building also for animal-baiting. According to the contract with
the actors, the latter were to "lie still one day in fourteen" for the baiting.

[547] This may not have been a serious interruption for the players; but the
presence of the stable, the bear dens, and the kennels for the dogs must have
rendered the playhouse far from pleasant to the audiences. Ben Jonson, in
the Induction to his Bartholomew Fair, acted at the Hope in October, 1614,
remarks: "And though the Fair be not kept in the same region that some
here perhaps would have it, yet think that therein the author hath observed a
special decorum, the place being as dirty as Smithfield, and as stinking
every whit."[548]
In March, 1614,—that is, at the completion of one full year under the joint
management of Henslowe and Rosseter,—the amalgamated company was
"broken," and Rosseter withdrew, selling his interest in the company's
apparel to Henslowe and Meade for £63. The latter at once reorganized the
actors under the patent of the Lady Elizabeth's Men, and continued them at
the Hope.[549] The general excellence of the troupe thus formed is referred
to by John Taylor, the Water-Poet, in the lines:
And such a company (I'll boldly say)
That better (nor the like) e'er play'd a
play.[550]
But this encomium may have been in large measure due to gratitude, for the
company had just saved the Water-Poet from a very embarrassing situation.
The amusing episode which gave occasion to this deserves to be chronicled
in some detail.
With "a thousand bills posted over the city" Taylor had advertised to the
public that at the Hope Playhouse on October 7, 1614, he would engage in a
contest of wit with one William Fennor, who proudly styled himself "The
King's Majesty's Riming Poet."[551] On the appointed day the house was
"fill'd with a great audience" that had paid extra money to hear the contest
between two such well-known extemporal wits. But Fennor did not appear.
The result may best be told by Taylor himself:
I then stept out, their angers to appease;
But they all raging, like tempestuous
seas,
Cry'd out, their expectations were
defeated,

And how they all were cony-catch'd and
cheated.
Some laught, some swore, some star'd
and stamp'd and curst,
And in confusèd humors all out burst.
I (as I could) did stand the desp'rate
shock,
And bid the brunt of many dang'rous
knock.
For now the stinkards, in their ireful
wraths,
Bepelted me with lome, with stones,
with laths.
One madly sits like bottle-ale and hisses;
Another throws a stone, and 'cause he
misses,
He yawnes and bawles, ...
Some run to th' door to get again their
coin ...
One valiantly stepped upon the stage,
And would tear down the hangings in his
rage ...
What I endur'd upon that earthly hell
My tongue or pen cannot describe it
well.[552]
At this point the actors came to his rescue and presented a play that
mollified the audience. Taylor had to content himself with a printed
justification. The bitter invective of Taylor against Fennor, Fennor's reply,
and Taylor's several answers are to be found in the folio edition of the
Water-Poet's works. The episode doubtless furnished much amusement to
the city.
Some three weeks after this event, on October 31, 1614, the Lady
Elizabeth's Men produced with great success Jonson's Bartholomew Fair;
and on November 1 they were called upon to give the play at Court. But the
career of the company was in the main unhappy. Henslowe managed their
affairs on the theory that "should these fellows come out of my debt, I

should have no rule with them."[553] Accordingly in three years he "broke"
and again reorganized them no fewer than five times.
At last, in February, 1615, he not only "broke" the company, but severed his
connection with them for ever. He turned the hired men over to other
troupes, and sold the stock of apparel "to strangers" for £400. The indignant
actors, in June, 1615, drew up "Articles of Grievance" in which they
charged Henslowe with having extorted from the company by unjust means
the sum of £567; and also "Articles of Oppression" in which they accused
him of various dishonorable practices in his dealings with them.[554]
Shortly after severing his connection with the Lady Elizabeth's Men,
Henslowe, in March, 1615, seems to have taken over Prince Charles's Men,
who, it appears, had been acting at the Swan. To this new company—the
"strangers" referred to, I think—he had already transferred some of the
hirelings, and had sold the Hope stock of apparel for £400.
Henslowe died early in January of the following year, 1616, and his interest
in the theatre passed to Edward Alleyn. On March 20, 1616, Alleyn and
Meade engaged Prince Charles's Men to continue at the Hope "according to
the former articles of agreement had and made with the said Philip
[Henslowe] and Jacob [Meade]."[555] The actors acknowledged themselves
indebted to Henslowe "for a stock of apparel used for playing apparel, to
the value of £400, heretofore delivered unto them by the said Philip,"[556]—
the stock formerly used by the Lady Elizabeth's Men; and Alleyn and
Meade agreed to accept £200 in full discharge of that debt.[557]
In the winter of 1616-17, Prince Charles's Men quarreled with Meade, who
had appropriated an extra day for his bear-baiting. Rosseter had just
completed a new private theatre in Porter's Hall, Blackfriars, and that stood
invitingly open. So about February they abandoned the Hope, and wrote a
letter of explanation to Edward Alleyn: "I hope you mistake not our
removal from the Bankside. We stood the intemperate weather, 'till more
intemperate Mr. Meade thrust us over, taking the day from us which by
course was ours."[558]
After the company quarreled with Meade and deserted the Hope, there is no
evidence that the building was again used for plays. It became associated
almost entirely with animal-baiting, fencing, feats of activity, and such-like

performances; and gradually the very name "Hope," which was identified
with acting, gave way to the earlier designation "Bear Garden." In 1632 the
author of Holland's Leaguer remarks that "wild beasts and gladiators did
most possess it"; and such must have been the chief use of the building
down to 1642, when animal-baiting was prohibited by Parliament.[559]
On January 14, 1647, at the disposition of the Church lands, the Hope was
sold for £1783 15s.[560]
In certain manuscript notes entered in the Phillipps copy of Stow's Annals
(1631), we read:
The Hope, on the Bankside, in Southwarke, commonly called the Bear
Garden, a playhouse for stage-plays on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and
Saturdays, and for the baiting of Bears on Tuesdays and Thursdays, the
stage being made to take up and down when they please. It was built in the
year 1610, and now pulled down to make tenements, by Thomas Walker, a
petticoat-maker in Cannon Street, on Tuesday, the 25 day of March, 1656.
Seven of Mr. Godfrey's bears, by the command of Thomas Pride, then high
sheriff of Surrey, were then shot to death on Saturday the 9 day of February,
1655 [i.e. 1656], by a company of soldiers.[561]
The mistakes in the earlier part of this note are obvious, yet the latter part is
so circumstantial that we cannot well doubt its general accuracy. The
building, however, was not pulled down "to the ground," though its interior
may have been converted into tenements.
At the Restoration, when the royal sport of bear-baiting was revived, the
Hope was again fitted up as an amphitheatre and opened to the public. The
Earl of Manchester, on September 29, 1664, wrote to the city authorities,
requesting that the butchers be required, as of old, to provide food for the
dogs and bears:
He had been informed by the Master of His Majesty's Game of Bears and
Bulls, and others, that the Butchers' Company had formerly caused all their
offal in Eastcheap and Newgate Market to be conveyed by the beadle of
that Company unto two barrow houses, conveniently placed on the river
side, for the provision and feeding of the King's Game of Bears, which
custom had been interrupted in the late troubles when the bears were killed.

His Majesty's game being now removed to the usual place on the Bankside,
by Order of the Council, he recommended the Court of Aldermen to direct
the Master and Wardens of the Butchers' Company to have their offal
conveyed as formerly for the feeding of the bears, &c.[562]
For some years the Bear Garden flourished as it had in the days of Elizabeth
and James. It was frequently visited by Samuel Pepys, who has left vivid
accounts of several performances there. In his Diary, August 14, 1666, he
writes:

After dinner with my wife and Mercer to the Bear-garden; where I have not
been, I think, of many years, and saw some good sport of the bull's tossing
of the dogs: one into the very boxes. But it is a very rude and nasty
pleasure. We had a great many hectors in the same box with us (and one,
very fine, went into the pit, and played his dog for a wager, which was a
strange sport for a gentleman), where they drank wine, and drank Mercer's
health first; which I pledged with my hat off.
John Evelyn, likewise, in his Diary, June 16, 1670, records a visit to the
Bear Garden:
I went with some friends to the Bear Garden, where was cock-fighting, dog-
fighting, bear- and bull-baiting, it being a famous day for all these butcherly
sports, or rather barbarous cruelties. The bulls did exceeding well; but the
Irish wolf-dog exceeded, which was a tall greyhound, a stately creature
indeed, who beat a cruel mastiff. One of the bulls tossed a dog full into a
lady's lap as she sat in one of the boxes at a considerable height from the
arena. Two poor dogs were killed; and so all ended with the ape on
horseback, and I most heartily weary of the rude and dirty pastime, which I
had not seen, I think, in twenty years before.
On January 7, 1676, the Spanish Ambassador was entertained at the Bear
Garden, as we learn from a warrant, dated March 28, 1676, for the payment
of £10 "to James Davies, Esq., Master of His Majesty's Bears, Bulls, and
Dogs, for making ready the rooms at the Bear Garden, and baiting of the
bears before the Spanish Ambassador, the 7 January last, 1675 [6]."[563]
Rendle[564] quotes from The Loyal Protestant an advertisement of an
entertainment to be given so late as 1682 "at the Hope on the Bankside,
being His Majesty's Bear Garden." And Malcolm writes the following
account of the baiting of a horse there in April of the same year:
Notice was given in the papers that on the twelfth of April a horse, of
uncommon strength, and between 18 and 19 hands high, would be baited to
death at his Majesty's Bear-Garden at the Hope on the Bankside, for the
amusement of the Morocco ambassador, many of the nobility who knew the
horse, and any others who would pay the price of admission. It seems this
animal originally belonged to the Earl of Rochester, and being of a

ferocious disposition, had killed several of his brethren; for which misdeed
he was sold to the Earl of Dorchester; in whose service, committing several
similar offenses, he was transferred to the worse than savages who kept the
Bear-Garden. On the day appointed several dogs were set upon the
vindictive steed, which he destroyed or drove from the arena; at this instant
his owners determined to preserve him for a future day's sport, and directed
a person to lead him away; but before the horse had reached London Bridge
the spectators demanded the fulfilment of the promise of baiting him to
death, and began to destroy the building: to conclude, the poor beast was
brought back, and other dogs set upon him, without effect, when he was
stabbed to death with a sword.[565]
This is the last reference to the Hope that I have been able to discover. Soon
after this date the "royal sport of bulls, bears, and dogs" was moved to
Hockley-in-the-hole, Clerkenwell, where, as the advertisements inform us,
at "His Majesty's Bear Garden" the baiting of animals was to be frequently
seen.[566] Strype, in his Survey of London, thus describes Bear Garden Alley
on the Bankside:
Bear Alley runs into Maiden Lane. Here is a Glass House; and about the
middle is a new-built Court, well inhabited, called Bear Garden Square, so
called as built in the place where the Bear Garden formerly stood, until
removed to the other side of the water: which is more convenient for the
butchers, and such like who are taken with such rustic sports as the baiting
of bears and bulls.[567]
In the map which he gives of this region (reproduced on page 245) the
position of the Hope is clearly marked by the square near the middle of
Bear Alley.

CHAPTER XVII
ROSSETER’S BLACKFRIARS, OR PORTER’S HALL

P HILIP ROSSETER, the poet and musician, first appears as a theatrical
manager in 1610, when he secured a royal patent for the Children of the
Queen's Revels to act at Whitefriars. This company performed there
successfully under his management until March, 1613, when, for some
unknown reason, he formed a partnership with Philip Henslowe, who was
managing the Lady Elizabeth's Men at the Swan. The two companies were
combined, and the new organization, under the name of "The Lady
Elizabeth's Men," made use of both playhouses, the Swan as a summer and
the Whitefriars as a winter home.
As already explained in the preceding chapters, Rosseter's lease on the
Whitefriars Playhouse was to expire in 1614, and apparently he was unable
to renew the lease.[568] Naturally he and his partner Henslowe were anxious
to secure a private playhouse in the city to serve as a winter home for their
troupe, especially since the Swan was poorly situated for winter patronage.
This may explain the following entry in Sir George Buc's Office-Book:
"July 13, 1613, for a license to erect a new playhouse in Whitefriars &c.
£20."[569] The new playhouse, however, was not built. Probably the
opposition of the inhabitants of the district led to its prohibition.
At the expiration of one year, in March, 1614, Rosseter withdrew from his
partnership with Henslowe, and on the old patent of the Children of the
Queen's Revels (which he had retained) organized a new company to travel
in the country.
In the following year, 1615, he and certain others, Philip Kingman, Robert
Jones, and Ralph Reeve, secured a lease of "diverse buildings, cellars,
sollars, chambers, and yards for the building of a playhouse thereupon for
the better practising and exercise of the said Children of the Revels; all
which premises are situate and being within the precinct of the Blackfriars,

near Puddlewharf, in the suburbs of London, called by the name of the Lady
Saunders's House, or otherwise Porter's Hall."[570] It was their purpose to
convert this hall into a playhouse to rival the near-by Blackfriars; and in
accordance with this purpose, on June 3, 1615, Rosseter secured a royal
license under the Great Seal of England "to erect, build, and set up in and
upon the said premises before mentioned one convenient playhouse for the
said Children of the Revels, the same playhouse to be used by the Children
of the Revels for the time being of the Queene's Majesty, and for the
Prince's Players, and for the Lady Elizabeth's Players."[571]
The work of converting Porter's Hall into a playhouse seems to have begun
at once. On September 26, 1615, the Privy Council records "that one
Rosseter, and others, having obtained license under the Great Seal of
England for the building of a playhouse, have pulled down [i.e., stripped the
interior of] a great messuage in Puddlewharf, which was sometimes the
house of the Lady Saunders, within the precinct of the Blackfriars, and are
now erecting a new playhouse in that place."[572]
The city authorities, always hostile to the actors and jealous of any new
theatres, made so vigorous a complaint to the Privy Council that the Lords
of the Council "thought fit to send for Rosseter." He came, bringing his
royal license. This document was carefully "perused by the Lord Chief
Justice of England," who succeeded in discovering in the wording of one of
its clauses a trivial flaw that would enable the Privy Council, on a
technicality, to prohibit the building: "The Lord Chief Justice did deliver to
their Lordships that the license granted to the said Rosseter did extend to
the building of a playhouse without the liberties of London, and not within
the city."[573] Now, in 1608 the liberty of Blackfriars had by a special royal
grant been placed within the jurisdiction of the city. Rosseter's license
unluckily had described the Lady Saunders's house as being "in the
suburbs," though, of course, the description was otherwise specific enough:
"all which premises are situate and being within the precinct of the
Blackfriars, near Puddlewharf, in the suburbs of London, called by the
name of the Lady Saunders's House, or otherwise Porter's Hall."
Since "the inconveniences urged by the Lord Mayor and Aldermen were
many," the Lords of the Privy Council decided to take advantage of the flaw

discovered by the Lord Chief Justice, and prohibit the erection of the
playhouse. Their order, issued September 26, 1615, reads as follows:
It was this day ordered by their Lordships that there shall be no playhouse
erected in that place, and that the Lord Mayor of London shall straightly
prohibit the said Rosseter and the rest of the patentees, and their workmen
to proceed in the making and converting the said building into a playhouse.
And if any of the patentees or their workmen shall proceed in their intended
building contrary to this their Lordships' inhibition, that then the Lord
Mayor shall commit him or them so offending unto prison and certify their
Lordships of their contempt in that behalf.[574]
This order, for the time being, halted work on the new playhouse. The
Children of the Revels were forced to spend the next year traveling in the
provinces; and the Lady Elizabeth's Men and Prince Charles's Men had to
remain on the Bankside and endure the oppressions of Henslowe and later
of Meade. Possibly their sufferings at the hands of Meade led them to urge
Rosseter to complete at once the much desired house in the city. At any rate,
in the winter of 1616, Rosseter, believing himself strongly enough
entrenched behind his royal patent, resumed work on converting Porter's
Hall into a theatre. The city authorities issued "diverse commandments and
prohibitions," but he paid no attention to these, and pushed the work to
completion. The building seems to have been ready for the actors about the
first of January, 1617. Thereupon the company which had been occupying
the Hope deserted that playhouse and "came over" to Rosseter's Blackfriars.
[575] In the new playhouse they presented Nathaniel Field's comedy, Amends
for Ladies, which was printed the following year "as it was acted at the
Blackfriars both by the Prince's Servants and the Lady Elizabeth's."
The actors, however, were not allowed to enjoy their new home very long.
On January 27, 1617, the Privy Council dispatched the following letter to
the Lord Mayor:
Whereas His Majesty is informed that notwithstanding diverse
commandments and prohibitions to the contrary, there be certain persons
that go about to set up a playhouse in the Blackfriars near unto His
Majesty's Wardrobe, and for that purpose have lately erected and made fit a
building, which is almost if not fully finished. You shall understand that His

Majesty hath this day expressly signified his pleasure that the same shall be
pulled down, so as it be made unfit for any such use; whereof we require
your Lordship to take notice and to cause it to be performed accordingly,
with all speed, and thereupon to certify us of your proceeding.
There can be no doubt that an order so peremptory, carrying the authority
both of the Privy Council and of the King, and requiring an immediate
report, was performed "with all speed." After this we hear nothing more of
the playhouse in Puddlewharf.[576]

CHAPTER XVIII
THE PHŒNIX, OR COCKPIT IN DRURY LANE

T HE private playhouse opened in Drury Lane[577] in 1617 seems to have
been officially named "The Phœnix"; but to the players and the public
alike it was more commonly known as "The Cockpit." This implies some
earlier connection of the site or of the building with cock-fighting, from
time out of mind a favorite sport in England. Stowe writes in his Survey:
"Cocks of the game are yet cherished by diverse men for their pleasures,
much money being laid on their heads, when they fight in pits, whereof
some be costly made for that purpose." These pits, it seems, were circular in
shape, and if large enough might well be used for dramatic purposes.
Shakespeare, in Henry V (1599), likens his playhouse to a cockpit:
Can this
cockpit hold
The vasty fields of France? or
may we cram
Within this wooden O the
very casques
That did affright the air at
Agincourt?
It is possible, then, that the building was an old cockpit made into a
playhouse. Howes,[578] in enumerating the London theatres, says: "Five inns
or common hostelries turned into playhouses, one cockpit, St. Paul's
singing-school," etc. And Thomas Randolph, in verses prefixed to James
Shirley's Grateful Servant (printed in 1630 as it was acted "in the private
house in Drury Lane"), suggests the same metamorphosis:
When thy intelligence on the Cockpit
stage
Gives it a soul from her immortal rage,

I hear the Muse's birds with full delight
Sing where the birds of Mars were wont
to fight.
But in this fantastic conceit Randolph may have been thinking simply of the
name of the theatre; possibly he knew nothing of its early history. On the
whole it seems more likely that the playhouse was newly erected in 1617
upon the site of an old cockpit. The name "Phœnix" suggests that possibly
the old cockpit had been destroyed by fire, and that from its ashes had
arisen a new building.[579] Howes describes the Phœnix as being in 1617 "a
new playhouse,"[580] and Camden, who is usually accurate in such matters,
refers to it in the same year as "nuper erectum."[581]
Of its size and shape all our information comes from James Wright, who in
his Historia Histrionica[582] tells us that the Cockpit differed in no essential
feature from Blackfriars and Salisbury Court, "for they were all three built
almost exactly alike for form and bigness." Since we know that Blackfriars
and Salisbury Court were small rectangular theatres, the former constructed
in a hall forty-six feet broad and sixty-six feet long, the latter erected on a
plot of ground forty-two feet broad and one hundred and forty feet long, we
are not left entirely ignorant of the shape and the approximate size of the
Cockpit.[583] And from Middleton's Inner Temple Masque (1618) we learn
that it was constructed of brick. Its sign, presumably, was that of a phœnix
rising out of flames.

THE SITE OF THE COCKPIT IN DRURY LANE
The site is marked by Cockpit Court. (From Rocque's
Map of London, 1746.)
[Enlarged Segment]

The playhouse was erected and managed by Christopher Beeston,[584] one
of the most important actors and theatrical managers of the Elizabethan
period. We first hear of him as a member of Shakespeare's troupe. In 1602
he joined Worcester's Company. In 1612 he became the manager of Queen
Anne's Company at the Red Bull. He is described at that time as "a thriving
man, and one that was of ability and means."[585] He continued as manager
of the Queen Anne's Men at the Red Bull until 1617, when he transferred
them to his new playhouse in Drury Lane.
The playhouse seems to have been ready to receive the players about the
end of February, 1617. We know that they were still performing at the Red
Bull as late as February 23;[586] but by March 4 they had certainly moved to
the Cockpit.

On the latter date, during the performance of a play, the Cockpit was
entered by a mob of disorderly persons, who proceeded to demolish the
interior. The occasion for the wrecking of the new playhouse was the
Shrove Tuesday saturnalia of the London apprentices, who from time
immemorial had employed this holiday to pull down houses of ill-fame in
the suburbs. That the Cockpit was situated in the neighborhood of such
houses cannot be doubted. We may suppose that the mob, fresh from
sacking buildings, had crowded into the playhouse in the afternoon, and
before the play was over had wrecked that building too.
The event created a great stir at the time. William Camden, in his Annals,
wrote under the date of March 4, 1617:
Theatrum ludiorum, nuper erectum in Drury Lane, a furente multitudine
diruitur, et apparatus dilaceratur.
Howes, in his continuation of Stow's Annals, writes:
Shrove-Tuesday, the fourth of March, many disordered persons of sundry
kinds, amongst whom were very many young boys and lads, that assembled
themselves in Lincolnes Inn Field, Finsbury Field, in Ratcliffe, and Stepney
Field, where in riotous manner they did beat down the walls and windows
of many victualing houses and of all other houses which they suspected to
be bawdy houses. And that afternoon they spoiled a new playhouse, and did
likewise more hurt in diverse other places.[587]
That several persons were killed, and many injured, is disclosed by a letter
from the Privy Council to the Lord Mayor, dated March 5, 1617:
It is not unknown unto you what tumultuous outrages were yesterday
committed near unto the city of London in diverse places by a rowt of lewd
and loose persons, apprentices and others, especially in Lincolns Inn Fields
and Drury Lane, where in attempting to pull down a playhouse belonging to
the Queen's Majesty's Servants, there were diverse persons slain, and others
hurt and wounded, the multitude there assembled being to the number of
many thousands, as we are credibly informed.[588]
The Queen's Men returned to the Red Bull and acted there until their ruined
playhouse could be repaired. Three months later, on June 3, they again

occupied the Cockpit,[589] and continued there until the death of Queen
Anne on March 2, 1619.[590]
This event led to the dissolution of the company. For a year or more its
members had been "falling at variance and strife amongst themselves," and
when the death of the Queen deprived them of a "service," they "separated
and divided themselves into other companies."[591] As a result of the
quarrels certain members of the company made charges against their former
manager, Beeston: "The said Beeston having from the beginning a greater
care for his own private gain, and not respecting the good of these
defendants and the rest of his fellows and companions, hath in the place and
trust aforesaid much enriched himself, and hath of late given over his coat
and condition,[592] and separated and divided himself from these
defendants, carrying away not only all the furniture and apparel," etc.[593]
The charges against Beeston's honesty may be dismissed; but it seems clear
that he had withdrawn from his former companions, and was preparing to
entertain a new troupe of actors at his playhouse. And Beeston himself tells
us, on November 23, 1619, that "after Her Majesty's decease, he entered
into the service of the most noble Prince Charles."[594] Thus Prince
Charles's Men, after their unfortunate experiences at the Hope and at
Rosseter's Blackfriars, came to Beeston's playhouse, where they remained
until 1622. In the spring of that year, however, they moved to the Curtain,
and the Princess Elizabeth's Men occupied the Cockpit.[595] Under their
tenancy, the playhouse seems to have attained an enviable reputation.
Heminges and Condell, in the epistle to the readers, prefixed to the Folio of
Shakespeare (1623), bear testimony to this in the following terms: "And
though you be a Magistrate of Wit, and sit on the stage at Blackfriars, or the
Cockpit, to arraign plays daily." A further indication of their prosperity is to
be found in the records of St. Giles's Church; for when in 1623 the parish
undertook the erection of a new church building, "the players of the
Cockpit," we are informed, contributed the large sum of £20, and the
proprietors, represented by Christopher Beeston, gave £19 1s. 5d.[596]
The Princess Elizabeth's Men continued to act at the Cockpit until May,
1625, when all theatres were closed on account of the plague. Beeston made
this the occasion to organize a new company called "Queen Henrietta's
Men"; and when the theatres were allowed to reopen, about December,
1625,[597] this new company was in possession of the Cockpit. But the

reputation of the playhouse seems not to have been enhanced by the
performances of this troupe. In 1629, Lenton, in The Young Gallant's
Whirligig, writes sneeringly:
The Cockpit heretofore would
serve his wit,
But now upon the Friars'
Stage he'll sit.
And in the following year, 1630, Thomas Carew in verses prefixed to
Davenport's Just Italian, attacks the Red Bull and the Cockpit as
"adulterate" stages where "noise prevails," and "not a tongue of th' untun'd
kennel can a line repeat of serious sense." Queen Henrietta's Men probably
continued to occupy the building until May 12, 1636, when the theatres
were again closed on account of a serious outbreak of the plague. The
plague continued for nearly a year and a half, and during this time the
company was dissolved.[598]
Before the plague had ceased, early in 1637, "Mr. Beeston was commanded
to make a company of boys."[599] In the Office-Book of the Lord
Chamberlain we find, under the date of February 21, 1637: "Warrant to
swear Mr. Christopher Beeston His Majesty's Servant in the place of
Governor of the new company of The King's and Queen's Boys."[600] The
first recorded performance by this new company was at Court on February
7, 1637.[601] On February 23, the number of deaths from the plague having
diminished, acting was again permitted; but at the expiration of one week,
on March 2, the number of deaths having increased, all playhouses were
again closed. During this single week the King's and Queen's Boys, we may
suppose, acted at the Cockpit.[602]
On May 12, Beeston was arrested and brought before the Privy Council for
having allowed his Boys to act a play at the Cockpit during the inhibition.
[603] In his apology he explains this as follows: "Petitioner being
commanded to erect and prepare a company of young actors for Their
Majesties's service, and being desirous to know how they profited by his
instructions, invited some noblemen and gentlemen to see them act at his
house, the Cockpit. For which, since he perceives it is imputed as a fault, he
is very sorry, and craves pardon."[604]

On September 17, 1637, "Christopher Beeston, His Majesty's servant, by
petition to the Board, showed that he hath many young actors lying
unpractised by reason of the restraint occasioned by infection of the plague,
whereby they are much disabled to perform their service, and besought that
they might have leave to practise. It was ordered that Beeston should be at
liberty to practise his actors at Michaelmas next [September 29], if there be
no considerable increase of the sickness, nor that there die more than died
last week."[605]
On October 2, 1637, the plague having abated, all playhouses were opened,
and the King's and Queen's Boys, Herbert tells us, began to play at the
Cockpit "the same day."[606] Here, under the popular name of "Beeston's
Boys," they enjoyed a long and successful career, which ended only with
the prohibition of acting in 1642.
In 1639 Christopher Beeston died, and the position of Governor of the Boys
was conferred upon his son, William Beeston, who had long been
associated in the management of the company,[607] and who, if we may
believe Francis Kirkman, was admirably qualified for the position. In
dedicating to him The Loves and Adventures of Clerico and Lozia, Kirkman
says:
Divers times in my hearing, to the admiration of the whole company, you
have most judiciously discoursed of Poesie: which is the cause I presume to
choose you for my patron and protector, who are the happiest interpreter
and judge of our English stage-plays this nation ever produced; which the
poets and actors of these times cannot (without ingratitude) deny; for I have
heard the chief and most ingenious acknowledge their fames and profits
essentially sprung from your instruction, judgment, and fancy.
But in spite of all this, William Beeston's career as Governor was of short
duration. About the first of May, 1640, he allowed the Boys to act without
license a play that gave great offense to the King. Herbert, the Master of the
Revels, writes of this play that it "had relation to the passages of the King's
journey into the north, and was complained of by His Majesty to me, with
command to punish the offenders."[608] In the Office-Book of the Lord
Chamberlain, under the date of May 3, 1640, we read:

Whereas William Beeston and the company of the players of the Cockpit, in
Drury Lane, have lately acted a new play without any license from the
Master of His Majesty's Revels, and being commanded to forbear playing
or acting of the same play by the said Master of the Revels, and
commanded likewise to forbear all manner of playing, have
notwithstanding, in contempt of the authority of the said Master of the
Revels, and the power granted unto him under the Great Seal of England,
acted the said play, and others, to the prejudice of His Majesty's service, and
in contempt of the Office of the Revels, [whereby] he and they and all other
companies ever have been and ought to be governed and regulated: These
are therefore in His Majesty's name, and signification of his royal pleasure,
to command the said William Beeston and the rest of that company of the
Cockpit players from henceforth and upon sight hereof, to forbear to act any
plays whatsoever until they shall be restored by the said Master of the
Revels unto their former liberty. Whereof all parties concernable are to take
notice, and conform accordingly, as they and every one of them will answer
it at their peril.[609]
Herbert records in his Office-Book:
On Monday the 4 May, 1640, William Beeston was taken by a messenger
and committed to the Marshalsea by my Lord Chamberlain's warrant, for
playing a play without license. The same day the company at the Cockpit
was commanded by my Lord Chamberlain's warrant to forbear playing, for
playing when they were forbidden by me, and for other disobedience, and
lay still Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. On Thursday, at my Lord
Chamberlain's entreaty, I gave them their liberty, and upon their petition of
submission subscribed by the players, I restored them to their liberty on
Thursday.[610]
To this period of Beeston's imprisonment I should refer the puzzling
Epilogue of Brome's The Court Beggar:
There's wit in that now. But this small Poet vents none but his own, and his
by whose care and directions this Stage is govern'd, who has for many
years, both in his father's days, and since, directed Poets to write and
Players to speak, till he trained up these youths here to what they are now.
Aye, some of 'em from before they were able to say a grace of two lines

long to have more parts in their pates than would fill so many Dry-vats. And
to be serious with you, if after all this, by the venomous practice of some,
who study nothing more than his destruction, he should fail us, both Poets
and Players would be at loss in reputation.
His "destruction" was wrought, nevertheless, for as a result of his
indiscretion he was deposed from his position as Governor of the King's
and Queen's Company, and William Davenant was appointed in his place.
In the Office-Book of the Lord Chamberlain under the date of June 27,
1640,[611] appears the following entry with the heading, "Mr. Davenant
Governor of the Cockpit Players":
Whereas in the playhouse or theatre commonly called the Cockpit, in Drury
Lane, there are a company of players authorized by me (as Lord
Chamberlain to His Majesty) to play or act under the title of The King's and
Queen's Servants, and that by reason of some disorders lately amongst them
committed they are disabled in their service and quality: These are therefore
to signify that by the same authority I do authorize and appoint William
Davenant, Gent., one of Her Majesty's servants, for me and in my name to
take into his government and care the said company of players, to govern,
order, and dispose of them for action and presentments, and all their affairs
in the said house, as in his discretion shall seem best to conduce to His
Majesty's service in that quality. And I do hereby enjoin and command
them, all and every of them, that are so authorized to play in the said house
under the privilege of His or Her Majesty's Servants, and every one
belonging as prentices or servants to those actors to play under the same
privilege, that they obey the said Mr. Davenant and follow his orders and
directions, as they will answer the contrary; which power and privilege he is
to continue and enjoy during that lease which Mrs. Elizabeth Beeston, alias
Hucheson, hath or doth hold in the said playhouse, provided he be still
accountable to me for his care and well ordering the said company.[612]
Under the direction of Davenant the company acted at the Cockpit until the
closing of the theatres two years later.
The history of the playhouse during the troubled years that followed is
varied. In the churchwarden's account of St. Giles's Parish is found the
entry: "1646. Paid and given to the teacher at the Cockpit of the children,

6d."[613] Apparently the old playhouse was then being temporarily used as a
school.
Wright, in his Historia Histrionica, tells us that at the outbreak of the civil
war most of the actors had joined the royal army and served His Majesty,
"though in a different, yet more honorable capacity." Some were killed,
many won distinction; and "when the wars were over, and the royalists
totally subdued, most of 'em who were left alive gathered to London, and
for a subsistence endeavored to revive their old trade privately. They made
up one company out of all the scattered members of several, and in the
winter before the King's murder, 1648, they ventured to act some plays,
with as much caution and privacy as could be, at the Cockpit." John Evelyn
records in his Diary, under the date of February 5, 1648: "Saw a
tragicomedy acted in the Cockpit after there had been none of these
diversions for many years during the war." Trouble, however, was brewing
for these daring actors. As Wright records: "They continued undisturbed for
three or four days, but at last, as they were presenting the tragedy of The
Bloody Brother (in which Lowin acted Aubery; Taylor, Rollo; Pollard, the
Cook; Burt, Latorch; and, I think, Hart, Otto), a party of foot-soldiers beset
the house, surprised 'em about the middle of the play, and carried 'em away
in their habits, not admitting them to shift, to Hatton House, then a prison,
where, having detained them some time, they plundered them of their
clothes, and let 'em loose again."[614]
In 1649 the interior of the building was sacked, if we may trust the
manuscript note entered in the Phillipps copy of Stow's Annals (1631): "The
playhouse in Salisbury Court, in Fleet Street, was pulled down by a
company of soldiers set on by the sectaries of these sad times, on Saturday
the 24 day of March, 1649. The Phœnix, in Drury Lane, was pulled down
also this day, being Saturday the 24 day of March, 1649, by the same
soldiers."[615] In the passage quoted, "pulled-down" merely means that the
stage and its equipment, and possibly a part of the galleries and the seats,
were wrecked, not that the walls of the building itself were thrown down.
In 1656 Sir William Davenant undertook to create a form of dramatic
entertainment which would be tolerated by the authorities. The Lord
Protector was known to be a lover of music. Sir William, therefore, applied
for permission to give operatic entertainments, "after the manner of the

antients," the "story sung in recitative music," and the representation made
"by the art of perspective in scenes." To such entertainments, he thought, no
one could object. He was wise enough to give his first performances at
Rutland House; but in 1658 he moved to the Cockpit, where, says Aubrey,
"were acted very well, stylo recitativo, Sir Francis Drake and The Siege of
Rhodes (1st and 2d parts). It did affect the eye and ear extremely. This first
brought scenes in fashion in England; before at plays was only a hanging."
Thus the Cockpit had the distinction of being the first English playhouse in
which scenery was employed, and, one should add, the first English home
of the opera.[616]
Later in the same year, 1658, Davenant exhibited at the Cockpit The Cruelty
of the Spaniards in Peru; but this performance excited the suspicion of the
authorities, who on December 23 sent for "the poet and the actors" to
explain "by what authority the same is exposed to public view."[617]
"In the year 1659," writes John Downes in his Roscius Anglicanus,
"General Monk marching then his army out of Scotland to London, Mr.
Rhodes, a bookseller, being wardrobe-keeper formerly (as I am informed)
to King Charles the First's company of commedians in Blackfriars, getting a
license from the then governing state,[618] fitted up a house then for acting,
called the Cockpit, in Drury Lane, and in a short time completed his
company." If this statement is correct, the time must have been early in the
year 1659-60, and the company must have attempted at first to play without
a proper license. From the Middlesex County Records (iii, 282), we learn
that one of their important actors, Thomas Lilleston, was held under bond
for having performed "a public stage-play this present 4th of February
[1659-60] in the Cockpit in Drury Lane in the parish of St. Giles-in-the-
Fields, contrary to the law in that case made"; and in the Parish Book[619] of
St. Giles we find the entry: "1659. Received of Isack Smith, which he
received at the Cockpit playhouse of several offenders, by order of the
justices, £3 8s. 6d." Shortly after this, it is to be presumed, the company
under Rhodes's management secured the "license of the then governing
state" mentioned by Downes, and continued thereafter without interruption.
The star of this company was Betterton, whose splendid acting at once
captivated London. Pepys went often to the theatre, and has left us some
interesting notes of his experiences there. On August 18, 1660, he writes:

Captain Ferrers, my Lord's Cornet, comes to us, who after dinner took me
and Creed to the Cockpit play, the first that I have had time to see since my
coming from sea, The Loyall Subject, where one Kinaston, a boy, acted the
Duke's sister, but made the loveliest lady that ever I saw in my life, only her
voice not very good.
Again on October 11, 1660, he writes:
Here in the Park we met with Mr. Salisbury, who took Mr. Creed and me to
the Cockpit to see The Moor of Venice, which was well done. Burt acted the
Moor, by the same token a very pretty lady that sat by me called out to see
Desdemona smothered.
The subsequent history of the Cockpit falls outside the scope of the present
treatise. The reader who desires to trace the part the building played in the
Restoration would do well to consult the numerous documents printed by
Malone from the Herbert Manuscript.[620]

CHAPTER XIX
SALISBURY COURT

T HE Salisbury Court Playhouse[621] was projected and built by two men
whose very names are unfamiliar to most students of the drama—
Richard Gunnell and William Blagrove. Yet Gunnell was a distinguished
actor, and was associated with the ownership and management of at least
two theatres. Even so early as 1613 his reputation as a player was sufficient
to warrant his inclusion as a full sharer in the Palsgrave's Company, then
acting at the Fortune. When the Fortune was rebuilt after its destruction by
fire in 1621, he purchased one of the twelve shares in the new building, and
rose to be manager of the company.[622] In addition to managing the
company he also, as we learn from the Herbert Manuscript, supplied the
actors with plays. In 1623 he composed The Hungarian Lion, obviously a
comedy, and in the following year The Way to Content all Women, or How a
Man May Please his Wife.[623] Of William Blagrove I can learn little more
than that he was Deputy to the Master of the Revels. In this capacity he
signed the license for Glapthorne's Lady Mother, October 15, 1635; and his
name appears several times in the Herbert Manuscript in connection with
the payments of various companies.[624] Possibly he was related to Thomas
Blagrove who during the reign of Elizabeth was an important member of
the Revels Office, and who for a time served as Master of the Revels.
What threw these two men together in a theatrical partnership we do not
know. But in the summer of 1629 they decided to build a private playhouse
to compete with the successful Blackfriars and Cockpit; and for this
purpose they leased from the Earl of Dorset a plot of ground situated to the
east of the precinct of Whitefriars. The ground thus leased opened on
Salisbury Court; hence the name, "The Salisbury Court Playhouse." In the
words of the legal document, the Earl of Dorset "in consideration that
Richard Gunnell and William Blagrove should at their costs and charges
erect a playhouse and other buildings at the lower end of Salisbury Court, in
the parish of St. Bridges, in the ward of Farringdon Without, did demise to

the said Gunnell and Blagrove a piece of ground at the same lower end of
Salisbury Court, containing one hundred and forty foot in length and forty-
two in breadth ... for forty-one years and a half." The lease was signed on
July 6, 1629. Nine days later, on July 15, the Earl of Dorset, "in
consideration of nine hundred and fifty pounds paid to the said late Earl by
John Herne, of Lincoln's Inn, Esquire, did demise to hire the said piece of
ground and [the] building [i.e., the playhouse] thereupon to be erected, and
the rent reserved upon the said lease made to Gunnell and Blagrove."
Herne's lease was for a term of sixty-one years. The effect of this second
lease was merely to make Herne, instead of the Earl of Dorset, the landlord
of the players.

A PLAN OF THE SALISBURY COURT PROPERTY
To illustrate the lease. (Drawn by the author.)

The plot of ground selected for the playhouse is described with exactness in
the lease printed below. The letters inserted in brackets refer to the
accompanying diagram (see page 371):
All that soil and ground whereupon the Barn [A], at the lower end of the
great back court, or yard of Salisbury Court, now stands; and so much of
the soil whereupon the whole south end of the great stable in the said court
or yard stands, or contains, from that end of that stable towards the north
end thereof sixteen foot of assize, and the whole breadth of the said stable
[B]; and all the ground and soil on the east and west side of that stable lying
directly against the said sixteen foot of ground at the south end thereof
between the wall of the great garden belonging to the mansion called Dorset
House and the wall that severs the said Court from the lane called Water
Lane [C and D]; and all the ground and soil being between the said walls on
the east and west part thereof, and the said barn, stable, and ground on both
side the same on the south and north parts thereof [E]. Which said several
parcells of soil and ground ... contain, in the whole length ... one hundred
and forty foot of assize, and in breadth ... forty and two foot of assize, and
lies together at the lower end of the said Court.
This plot, one hundred and forty feet in length by forty-two in breadth, was
small for its purpose, and the playhouse must have covered all the breadth
and most of the length of the leased ground;[625] there was no actual need of
leaving any part of the plot vacant, for the theatre adjoined the Court, and
"free ingress, egress, and regress" to the building were stipulated in the
lease "by, through, and on any part of the Court called Salisbury Court."
At once Gunnell and Blagrove set about the erection of their playhouse.
They may have utilized in some way the "great barn" which occupied most
of their property; one of the legal documents printed by Cunningham
contains the phrase: "and the great barn, which was afterwards the
playhouse."[626] If this be true—I think it very doubtful—the reconstruction
must have been thorough, for Howes, in his continuation of Stow's Annals
(1631), speaks of Salisbury Court as "a new, fair playhouse";[627] and in all
respects it seems to have ranked with the best.

We know very little of the building. But Wright, in his Historia Histrionica,
informs us that it was "almost exactly like" the two other private houses, the
Blackfriars and the Cockpit:
True. The Blackfriars, Cockpit, and Salisbury Court were called private
houses, and were very small to what we see now. The Cockpit was standing
since the Restoration, and Rhodes' company acted there for some time.
Love. I have seen that.
True. Then you have seen the other two in effect, for they were all three
built almost exactly alike for form and bigness.[628]
In spite of what Wright says, however, there is some reason for believing
that Salisbury Court was smaller than the other two private houses. The
Epilogue to Totenham Court refers to it as "my little house"; and the Epistle
affixed to the second edition of Sir Giles Goosecappe is said to convey the
same impression of smallness.[629]
According to Malone, Sir Henry Herbert, the Master of the Revels, was
"one of the proprietors" of the house, and held a "ninth share" in the profits.
[630] This, however, is not strictly accurate. Sir Henry, by virtue of his power
to license playhouses, demanded from each organization of players an
annual fee. The King's Men gave him two benefit performances a year;
Christopher Beeston, on behalf of the Cockpit in Drury Lane, paid him £60
a year; as for the rest, Herbert tells us that he had "a share paid by the
Fortune Players, and a share by the Bull Players, and a share by the
Salisbury Court Players."[631] It seems, therefore, that the Salisbury Court
organization was divided into eight shares, and that of the profits an extra,
or ninth, share was set aside as a fee for the Master of the Revels.
The playhouse was ready for use in all probability in the autumn of 1629;
and to occupy it a new company of actors was organized, known as "The
King's Revels." The chief members of this company were George Stutville,
John Young, William Cartwright, William Wilbraham, and Christopher
Goad; Gunnell and Blagrove probably acted as managers. In the books of
the Lord Chamberlain we find a warrant for the payment of £30 to William
Blagrove "and the rest of his company" for three plays acted by the
Children of the Revels, at Whitehall, 1631.[632] The Children continued at

Salisbury Court until about December, 1631, when they abandoned the
playhouse in favor of the much larger Fortune, surrendered by the
Palsgrave's Men.
The Palsgrave's Men, who for many years had occupied the Fortune, seem
to have fallen on bad times and to have disbanded. They were reorganized,
however, possibly by their old manager, Richard Gunnell, and established
in Salisbury Court. The Earl of Dorset, who took a special interest in
Salisbury Court, obtained for the troupe a patent to play under the name of
the infant Prince Charles, then little more than a year old.[633] The patent
bears the date of December 7, 1631; and "The Servants of the High and
Mighty Prince Charles" opened at Salisbury Court very soon after[634] with
a play by Marmion entitled Holland's Leaguer. The Prologue refers to the
going of the King's Revels to the Fortune, and the coming of the new troupe
to Salisbury Court:
Gentle spectators, that with graceful eye
Come to behold the Muses' colony
New planted in this soil, forsook of late
By the inhabitants, since made
Fortunate.
The Prologue closes thus:
That on our branches now new poets
sing;
And when with joy he shall see this
resort
Phœbus shall not disdain to styl't his
Court.
But the audiences at Salisbury Court were not large. For six performances
of the play, says Malone, Sir Henry Herbert received "but one pound
nineteen shillings, in virtue of the ninth share which he possessed as one of
the proprietors of the house."[635]
Of the "new poets" referred to by the Prologue, one, of course, was
Marmion himself. Another, I venture to say, was James Shirley, who, as I
think, had been engaged to write the company's second play. This was The

Changes, brought out at Salisbury Court on January 10. The Prologue is full
of allusions to the company, its recent misfortunes, and its present attempt
to establish itself in its new quarters:
That Muse, whose song within another
sphere[636]
Hath pleased some, and of the best,
whose ear
Is able to distinguish strains that are
Clear and Phœbean from the popular
And sinful dregs of the adulterate brain,
By me salutes your candour once again;
And begs this noble favour, that this
place,
And weak performances, may not
disgrace
His fresh Thalia.[637] 'Las, our poet
knows
We have no name; a torrent overflows
Our little island;[638] miserable we
Do every day play our own Tragedy.
But 't is more noble to create than kill,
He says; and if but with his flame, your
will
Would join, we may obtain some
warmth, and prove
Next them that now do surfeit with your
love.
Encourage our beginning. Nothing grew
Famous at first. And, gentlemen, if you
Smile on this barren mountain, soon it
will
Become both fruitful and the Muses hill.
The similarity of this to the Prologue of Holland's Leaguer is striking; and
the Epilogue is written in the same vein:

Opinion
Comes hither but on crutches yet; the
sun
Hath lent no beam to warm us. If this
play
Proceed more fortunate, we shall bless
the day
And love that brought you hither. 'T is in
you
To make a little sprig of laurel grow,
And spread into a grove.
All scholars who have written on the subject—Collier, Fleay, Greg, Murray,
etc.—have contended that the King's Revels Company did not leave
Salisbury Court until after January 10, 1632, because Herbert licensed
Shirley's The Changes on that date,[639] and the title-page of the only
edition of The Changes states that it was acted at Salisbury Court by His
Majesty's Revels. But Herbert records payments for six representations of
Marmion's Leaguer by Prince Charles's Men at Salisbury Court "in
December, 1631."[640] This latter date must be correct, for on January 26
Holland's Leaguer was entered on the Stationers' Register "as it hath been
lately and often acted with great applause ... at the private house in
Salisbury Court." According to the generally accepted theory, however, the
King's Men were still at Salisbury Court, and actually bringing out a new
play there so late as January 10. This error has led to much confusion, and
to no little difficulty for historians of the stage; for example, Mr. Murray is
forced to suppose that two royal patents were granted to Prince Charles's
Company.[641] It seems to me likely that the title-page of The Changes is
incorrect in stating that the play was acted by the King's Revels. The play
must have been acted by the new and as yet unpopular Prince Charles's
Men, who had occupied Salisbury Court as early as December, and, as
Herbert tells us, with poor success. The various dates cited clearly indicate
this; and the Prologue and the Epilogue are both wholly unsuited for
utterance by the successful Revels Company which had just been "made
Fortunate," but are quite in keeping with the condition of the newly
organized and struggling Prince Charles's Men, who might naturally ask the
public to "encourage our beginning."

Whether Prince Charles's Men ultimately succeeded in winning the favor of
the public we do not know. Presumably they did, for at some date before
1635 they moved to the large Red Bull Playhouse. Richard Heton wrote:
"And whereas my Lord of Dorset had gotten for a former company at
Salisbury Court the Prince's service, they, being left at liberty, took their
opportunity of another house, and left the house in Salisbury Court destitute
both of a service and company."[642]
This person, Richard Heton, who describes himself as "one of the Sewers of
Her Majesty's Chamber Extraordinary," had now obtained control of
Salisbury Court, and had become manager of its affairs.[643] He apparently
induced the Company of His Majesty's Revels to leave the Fortune and
return to Salisbury Court, for in 1635 they acted there Richard Brome's The
Sparagus Garden. But their career at Salisbury Court was short; on May 12
of the following year all playhouses were closed by the plague, and acting
was not allowed again for nearly a year and a half. During this long period
of inactivity, the Company of His Majesty's Revels was largely dispersed.
When at last, on October 2, 1637, the playhouses were allowed to open,
Heton found himself with a crippled troupe of actors. Again the Earl of
Dorset interested himself in the theatre. Queen Henrietta's Company, which
had been at the Cockpit since 1625, having "disperst themselves," Dorset
took "care to make up a new company for the Queen";[644] and he placed
this new company under Heton at Salisbury Court. Heton writes: "How
much I have done for the upbuilding of this Company, I gave you some
particulars of in a petition to my Lord of Dorset." This reorganization of the
Queen's Men explains, perhaps, the puzzling entry in Herbert's Office-
Book, October 2, 1637: "I disposed of Perkins, Sumner, Sherlock, and
Turner, to Salisbury Court, and joyned them with the best of that company."
[645] Doubtless Herbert, like Dorset, was anxious for the Queen to have a
good troupe of players. This new organization of the Queen's Men
continued at Salisbury Court without interruption, it seems, until the closing
of the playhouses in 1642.[646]
In 1649 John Herne, son of the John Herne who in 1629 had secured a lease
on the property for sixty-one years, made out a deed of sale of the
playhouse to William Beeston,[647] for the sum of £600. But the document
was not signed. The reason for this is probably revealed in the following

passage: "The playhouse in Salisbury Court, in Fleet Street, was pulled
down[648] by a company of soldiers set on by the sectaries of these sad
times, on Saturday, the 24 day of March, 1649."[649]
Three years later, however, Beeston, through his agent Theophilus Bird,
secured the property from Herne at the reduced price of £408: "John Herne,
by indenture dated the five and twentieth day of May, 1652, for £408, to
him paid by Theophilus Bird, did assign the premises and all his estate
therein in trust for the said William Beeston."[650]
Early in 1660 Beeston, anticipating the return of King Charles, and the
reëstablishment of the drama, decided to put his building back into
condition to serve as a playhouse; and he secured from Herbert, the Master
of the Revels, a license to do so.[651] On April 5, 1660, he contracted with
two carpenters, Fisher and Silver, "for the rebuilding the premises"; and to
secure them he mortgaged the property. The carpenters later swore that they
"expended in the same work £329 9s. 4d."[652]
The reconstructed playhouse was opened in 1660, probably as early as June,
with a performance of The Rump, by Tatham. It was engaged by Sir
William Davenant for his company of actors until his "new theatre with
scenes" could be erected in Lincoln's Inn Fields.[653] The ubiquitous Pepys
often went thither, and in his Diary gives us some interesting accounts of
the performances he saw there. On March 2, 1661, he witnessed a revival of
Thomas Heywood's Love's Mistress, or The Queen's Masque before a large
audience:
After dinner I went to the Theatre [i.e., Killigrew's playhouse] where I
found so few people (which is strange, and the reason I did not know) that I
went out again; and so to Salisbury Court, where the house as full as could
be; and it seems it was a new play, The Queen's Masque, wherein are some
good humours: among others a good jeer to the old story of the Siege of
Troy, making it to be a common country tale. But above all it was strange to
see so little a boy as that was to act Cupid, which is one of the greatest parts
in it.
Again, on March 26, he found Salisbury Court crowded:

After dinner Mrs. Pierce and her husband, and I and my wife, to Salisbury
Court, where coming late, he and she light of Col. Boone, that made room
for them; and I and my wife sat in the pit, and there met with Mr. Lewes
and Tom Whitton, and saw The Bondman[654] done to admiration.
The history of the playhouse during these years falls outside the scope of
this volume. Suffice it to say that before Beeston finished paying the
carpenters for their work of reconstruction, the great fire of 1666 swept the
building out of existence; as Fisher and Silver declared: "The mortgaged
premises by the late dreadful fire in London were totally burned down and
consumed."[655]

CHAPTER XX
THE COCKPIT-IN-COURT, OR THEATRE ROYAL AT
WHITEHALL

O N birthdays, holidays, and festive occasions in general the sovereigns
of England and the members of the royal family were wont to summon
the professional actors to present plays at Court. For the accommodation of
the players and of the audience, the larger halls at Hampton, Windsor,
Greenwich, St. James, Whitehall, or wherever the sovereign happened to be
at the time, were specially fitted up, often at great expense. At one end of
the hall was erected a temporary stage equipped with a "music-room,"
"players' houses of canvas," painted properties, and such other things as
were necessary to the actors. In the centre of the hall, on an elevated dais,
were provided seats for the royal family, and around and behind the dais,
stools for the more distinguished guests; a large part of the audience was
allowed to stand on platforms raised in tiers at the rear of the room. Since
the plays were almost invariably given at night, the stage was illuminated
by special "branches" hung on wires overhead, and carrying many lights. In
the accounts of the Office of the Revels one may find interesting records of
plays presented in this manner, with the miscellaneous items of expense for
making the halls ready.
Usually the Court performances, like the masques, were important, almost
official occasions, and many guests, including the members of the
diplomatic corps, were invited. To provide accommodation for so numerous
an audience, a large room was needed. Hampton Court possessed a splendid
room for the purpose in the Great Banqueting Hall, one hundred and six
feet in length and forty feet in breadth. But the palace at Whitehall for many
years had no room of a similar character. For the performance of a masque
there in 1559 the Queen erected a temporary "Banqueting House." Again, in
1572, to entertain the Duke of Montmorency, Ambassador from France, she
had a large "Banketting House made at Whitehall," covered with canvas

and decorated with ivy and flowers gathered fresh from the fields. An
account of the structure may be found in the records of the Office of the
Revels. Perhaps, however, the most elaborate and substantial of these
"banqueting houses" was that erected in 1581, to entertain the ambassadors
from France who came to treat of a marriage between Elizabeth and the
Duc d'Anjou. The structure is thus described by Holinshed in his Chronicle:
[656]

This year (against the coming of certain commissioners out of France into
England), by Her Majesty's appointment, on the sixth and twentieth day of
March, in the morning (being Easter Day), a Banqueting House was begun
at Westminster, on the south-west side of Her Majesty's palace of Whitehall,
made in manner and form of a long square, three hundred thirty and two
foot in measure about; thirty principals made of great masts, being forty
foot in length apiece, standing upright; between every one of these masts
ten foot asunder and more. The walls of this house were closed with canvas,
and painted all the outsides of the same most artificially, with a work called
rustic, much like stone. This house had two hundred ninety and two lights
of glass. The sides within the same house was made with ten heights of
degrees for people to stand upon; and in the top of this house was wrought
most cunningly upon canvas works of ivy and holly, with pendants made of
wicker rods, garnished with bay, rue, and all manner of strange flowers
garnished with spangles of gold; as also beautified with hanging toseans
made of holly and ivy, with all manner of strange fruits, as pomegranates,
oranges, pompions, cucumbers, grapes, carrots, with such other like,
spangled with gold, and most richly hanged. Betwixt these works of bays
and ivy were great spaces of canvas, which was most cunningly painted, the
clouds with stars, the sun and sun-beams, with diverse other coats of sundry
sorts belonging to the Queen's Majesty, most richly garnished with gold.
There were of all manner of persons working on this house to the number of
three hundred seventy and five: two men had mischances, the one broke his
leg, and so did the other. This house was made in three weeks and three
days, and was ended the eighteenth day of April, and cost one thousand
seven hundred forty and four pounds, nineteen shillings, and od mony, as I
was credibly informed by the worshipful master Thomas Grave, surveyor
unto Her Majesty's works, who served and gave order for the same.

Although built in such a short time, and of such flimsy material, this
expensive Banqueting House seems to have been allowed to stand, and to
have been used thereafter for masques and plays. Thus, when King James
came to the throne, he ordered plays to be given there in November, 1604.
We find the following entry in the Treasurer's accounts:
For making ready the Banqueting House at Whitehall for the King's
Majesty against the plays, by the space of four days ... 78s. 7d.
And the accounts of the Revels' Office inform us:
Hallomas Day, being the first of November, a play in the Banqueting House
at Whitehall, called The Moor of Venice.
Apparently, however, the King was not pleased with the Banqueting House
as a place for dramatic performances, for he promptly ordered the Great
Hall of the palace—a room approximately ninety feet in length and forty
feet in breadth[657]—to be made ready for the next play:
For making ready the Great Chamber at Whitehall for the King's Majesty to
see the play, by the space of two days ... 39s. 4d.
The work was completed with dispatch, for on the Sunday following the
performance of Othello in the Banqueting House, The Merry Wives of
Windsor was acted in the Great Hall. The next play to be given at Court was
also presented in the same room:
On St. Stephen's Night, in the Hall, a play called Measure for Measure.
And from this time on the Great Hall was the usual place for Court
performances. The abandonment of the Banqueting House was probably
due to the facts that the Hall was smaller in size, could be more easily
heated in the winter, and was in general better adapted to dramatic
performances. Possibly the change was due also to the decayed condition of
the old structure and to preparations for its removal. Stow, in his Annals
under the date of 1607, writes:
The last year the King pulled down the old, rotten, slight-builded
Banqueting House at Whitehall, and new-builded the same this year very
strong and stately, being every way larger than the first.[658]

This new Banqueting House was completed in the early part of 1608. John
Chamberlain writes to Sir Dudley Carleton on January 5, 1608: "The
masque goes forward at Court for Twelfth Day, tho' I doubt the New Room
will be scant ready."[659] Thereafter the Banqueting House, "every way
larger than the first," was regularly used for the presentation of masques.
But it was rarely if ever used for plays. Throughout the reign of James, the
ordinary place for dramatic performances, as has been observed, was the
Great Hall.
On January 12, 1619, as a result of negligence during the preparations for a
masque, the Banqueting House caught fire and was burned to the ground.
The Reverend Thomas Lorkin writes to Sir Thomas Puckering on January
19, 1619:
The unhappy accident that chanced at Whitehall last week by fire you
cannot but have heard of; but haply not the manner how, which was this. A
joiner was appointed to mend some things that were out of order in the
device of the masque, which the King meant to have repeated at Shrovetide,
who, having kindled a fire upon a false hearth to heat his glue-pot, the force
thereof pierced soon, it seems, the single brick, and in a short time that he
absented himself upon some occasion, fastened upon the basis, which was
of dry deal board, underneath; which suddenly conceiving flame, gave fire
to the device of the masque, all of oiled paper, and dry fir, etc. And so, in a
moment, disposed itself among the rest of that combustible matter that it
was past any man's approach before it was almost discovered. Two hours
begun and ended that woful sight.

THE COCKPIT
Probably as built by Henry VIII. (From Faithorne's Map
of London, 1658. The Whitehall district is represented as
it was many years earlier, compare Agas's Map, 1560).
[Enlarge]

Inigo Jones, who had dreamed of a magnificent palace at Whitehall, and
who had drawn elaborate plans for a royal residence which should surpass
anything in Europe, now took charge of building a new Banqueting House
as a first step in the realization of his scheme. The noble structure which he
erected is to-day one of his chief monuments, and the sole relic of the once

famous royal palace. It was completed in the spring of 1622; but, as in the
case of its predecessor, it was not commonly used for dramatic
entertainments. Though masques might be given there, the regular place for
plays continued to be the Great Hall.
In the meanwhile, however, there had been developed at Court the custom
of having small private performances in the Cockpit, in addition to the more
elaborate performances in the Great Hall. Since this ultimately led to the
establishment of a theatre royal, known as "The Cockpit-in-Court," it will
be necessary to trace in some detail the history of that structure.
The palace of Whitehall, anciently called York House, and the home of
thirty successive Archbishops of York, was seized by King Henry VIII at
the fall of Wolsey and converted into a royal residence.[660] The new
proprietor at once made improvements after his own taste, among which
were tennis-courts, bowling-alleys, and an amphitheatre for the "royal
sport" of cock-fighting. In Stow's description of the palace we read:
On the right hand be diverse fair tennis courts, bowling alleys, and a
Cockpit, all built by King Henry the Eight.
Strype, in his edition of Stow's Survey (1720), adds the information that the
Cockpit was made "out of certain old tenements."[661] It is pictured in
Agas's Map of London (1570), and more clearly in Faithorne's Map (see
page 390), printed in 1658, but apparently representing the city at an earlier
date.
During the reign of Elizabeth the Cockpit, so far as I can ascertain, was
never used for plays. In the voluminous documents relating to the Office of
the Revels there is only one reference to the building: in 1572 flowers were
temporarily stored there that were to be used for decking the "Banketting
House."
It was during the reign of King James that the Cockpit began to be used for
dramatic representations. John Chamberlain writes from London to Sir
Ralph Winwood, December 18, 1604: "Here is great provision for Cockpit
to entertain him [the King] at home, and of masques and revels against the
marriage of Sir Herbert and Lady Susan Vere."[662] Since, however, King
James was very fond of cock-fighting, it may be that Chamberlain was

referring to that royal entertainment rather than to plays. The small Cockpit
was certainly a very unusual place for the formal presentation of plays
before His Majesty and the Court.
But the young Prince Henry, whose official residence was in St. James's
Palace, often had private or semi-private performances of plays in the
Cockpit. In the rolls of the expenses of the Prince we find the following
records:[663]
For making ready the Cockpit four several times for plays, by the space of
four days, in the month of December, 1610, £2 10s. 8d.
For making ready the Cockpit for plays two several times, by the space of
four days, in the months of January and February, 1611, 70s. 8d.
For making ready the Cockpit for a play, by the space of two days, in the
month of December, 1611, 30s. 4d.
The building obviously, was devoted for the most part to other purposes,
and had to be "made ready" for plays at a considerable expense. Nor was
the Prince the only one who took advantage of its small amphitheatre. John
Chamberlain, in a letter to Sir Dudley Carleton on September 22, 1612,
describing the reception accorded to the Count Palatine by the Lady
Elizabeth, writes: "On Tuesday she sent to invite him as he sat at supper to a
play of her own servants in the Cockpit."[664]
It is clear, then, that at times throughout the reign of James dramatic
performances were given in the Cockpit; but the auditorium was small, and
the performances must have been of a semi-private nature. The important
Court performances, to which many guests were invited, were held in the
Great Hall.
In the reign of the next sovereign, however, a change came about. In the
year 1632 or 1633, as well as I am able to judge with the evidence at
command, King Charles reconstructed the old Cockpit into a "new theatre
at Whitehall," which from henceforth was almost exclusively used for Court
performances. The opening of this "new theatre royal" is celebrated by a
Speech from the pen of Thomas Heywood:

A Speech Spoken to Their Two Excellent Majesties at
the First Play Play'd by the Queen's Servants in
the New Theatre at Whitehall.
When Greece, the chief priority might
claim
For arts and arms, and held the eminent
name
Of Monarchy, they erected divers places,
Some to the Muses, others to the Graces,
Where actors strove, and poets did
devise,
With tongue and pen to please the ears
and eyes
Of Princely auditors. The time was,
when
To hear the rapture of one poet's pen
A Theatre hath been built.

By the Fates' doom,
When th' Empire was removed from
thence to Rome,
The Potent Cæsars had their circi, and
Large amphitheatres, in which might
stand
And sit full fourscore thousand, all in
view
And touch of voice. This great Augustus
knew,
Nay Rome its wealth and potency
enjoyed,
Till by the barbarous Goths these were
destroy'd.

But may this structure last, and you be
seen
Here a spectator, with your princely

Queen,
In your old age, as in your flourishing
prime,
To outstrip Augustus both in fame and
time.
The exact date of this Speech is not given, but it was printed[665] in 1637
along with "The Prologue to the Famous Tragedy of The Rich Jew of Malta,
as it Was Played Before the King and Queen in His Majesty's Theatre at
Whitehall"; and this Prologue Heywood had already published with the play
itself in 1633. He dedicated the play to Mr. Thomas Hammon, saying, "I
had no better a New-Year's gift to present you with." Apparently, then, the
play had been acted at Court shortly before New Year's, 1633; and this sets
a forward date to Heywood's Speech. Other evidence combines with this to
show that "His Majesty's Theatre at Whitehall" was "new" at the Christmas
season of 1632-33.
In erecting this, the first "theatre royal," King Charles would naturally call
for the aid of the great Court architect Inigo Jones,[666] and by good luck we
have preserved for us Jones's original sketches for the little playhouse (see
page 396). These were discovered a few years ago by Mr. Hamilton Bell in
the Library of Worcester College (where many valuable relics of the great
architect are stored), and printed in The Architectural Record of New York,
March, 1913. Mr. Bell accompanied the plans with a valuable discussion,
but he was unable to discover their purpose. He writes:
We have still no clue as to what purpose this curiously anomalous and most
interesting structure was to serve—whether the plan was ever carried out, or
whether it remained part of a lordly pleasure-house which its prolific
designer planned for the delectation of his own soul.
That the plan actually was carried out, at least in part, is shown by a sketch
of the Whitehall buildings made by John Fisher at some date before 1670,
and engraved by Vertue in 1747, (see page 398).[667] Here, in the northeast
corner of the palace, we find a little theatre, labeled "The Cockpit." Its
identity with the building sketched by Inigo Jones is obvious at a glance;
even the exterior measurements, which are ascertainable from the scales of
feet given on the two plans, are the same.

INIGO JONES'S PLANS FOR THE COCKPIT-IN-
COURT
Now preserved in the Worcester College Library at
Oxford; discovered by Mr. Hamilton Bell, and
reproduced in The Architectural Record, of New York,
1913.