IV. THE PLAY-HOUSES (part 1 of 2)

IV. THE PLAY-HOUSES (part 1 of 2)

The world the stage, the prologue tears, The acts vain hope and varied fears: The scene shuts up with loss of breath, And leaves no epilogue but death. HENRY KING.

XVI

INTRODUCTION: THE PUBLIC THEATRES

[Bibliographical Note.--Some notes in the Gentleman’s Magazine for 1813–16 by Eu. Hood [Joseph Haslewood] are reprinted in The Gentleman’s Magazine Library, xv (1904), 86, and in Roxburghe Revels (ed. J. Maidment, 1837). J. P. Collier, History of English Dramatic Poetry, iii. 79, has An Account of the Old Theatres of London, and chronological sections on the subject are in F. G. Fleay, A Chronicle History of the London Stage (1890). T. F. Ordish, Early London Theatres (1894), covers the Shoreditch and Bankside theatres ‘in the Fields’ other than the Globe; a companion volume on the urban houses has never appeared. The Bankside houses are also dealt with by W. Rendle, The Bankside, Southwark, and the Globe (1877), being Appendix I to F. J. Furnivall, Harrison’s Description of England, Part II (N. Sh. Soc.), and in Old Southwark and its People (1878) and The Play-houses at Bankside in the Time of Shakespeare (Walford’s Antiquarian, 1885, vii. 207, 274; viii. 55). J. Q. Adams, Shakespearean Play-houses (1917), is a comprehensive and valuable work, which reached me when this chapter was practically complete. I am glad to find that our results so generally agree. The chief London maps have been reproduced by the London Topographical Society and on a smaller scale by G. E. Mitton, Maps of Old London (1908). Some are also given as illustrations in G. P. Baker, The Development of Shakespeare as a Dramatist (1907). They are classified by W. Martin, A Study of Early Map-Views of London in The Antiquary, xlv (1909), 337, 406, and their evidence for the Bankside analysed by the same writer, with partial reproductions, in The Site of the Globe Play-house of Shakespeare (1910, Surrey Archaeological Collections, xxiii. 149).

The evidence of the maps as to the position of the theatres is obscured, partly by uncertainties as to the dates and authorships both of the engravings and of the surveys on which they were based, and partly by the pictorial character of the topography. They are not strict plans in two dimensions, such as modern cartographers produce, but either drawings in full perspective, or bird’s-eye views in diminished perspective. The imaginary standpoint is always on the south, and the pictorial aspect is emphasized in the foreground, with the result that, while the Bankside theatres, but not those north of the river, are generally indicated, this is rarely with a precision which renders it possible to locate them in relation to the thoroughfares amongst which they stand. This is more particularly the case since, while the general grouping of buildings, gardens, and trees appears, from a comparison of one view with another, to be faithfully given, it is probable that the details are often both conventionally represented and out of scale. The following classification is mainly borrowed from Dr. Martin: (a) Pre-Reformation representations of London throwing no light on the theatres; (b) Wyngaerde, a pictorial drawing (c. 1543–50) by A. Van der Wyngaerde (L. T. Soc. i; Mitton, i); (c) Höfnagel, a plan with little perspective by G. Höfnagel, from a survey of c. 1554–7 (cf. A. Marks in Athenaeum for 31 March 1906), published (1572) with the title Londinum Feracissimi Angliae Regni Metropolis in G. Braun and F. Hohenburg, Civitates Orbis Terrarum (L. T. Soc. ii; Mitton, iv); (d) Agas, an engraving with more perspective, but generally similar to that of Höfnagel and possibly from the same survey, but drawn after 1561, and assigned by G. Vertue, who reproduced it (1737), to Ralph Agas (L. T. Soc. xvii; Mitton, ii); (e) Smith, a coloured drawing by William Smith, possibly based on Höfnagel or Agas, in B. M. Sloane MS. 2596, reproduced in H. B. Wheatley and E. W. Ashbee, W. Smith, The Particular Description of England, 1588 (1879), and in G. P. Baker, The Development of Shakespeare as a Dramatist (1907), 18; (f) Bankside Views, small representations of the same general character as (c), (d), and (e), used as backgrounds to pictures and described by W. Martin in Antiquary, xlv. 408; (g) Norden, engravings in slight perspective of ‘London’ and ‘Westminster’ by P. Van den Keere in J. Norden, Speculum Britanniae (1593), from survey of about the same date (L. T. Soc. vii; Mitton, v, vi; Furnivall, Harrison’s Description of England, Part I, with notes on p. lxxxix by H. B. Wheatley, reprinted by L. T. Soc. in Record, ii); (h) Delaram Group, perspective views as backgrounds to portrait (c. 1616) of James I by F. Delaram (1620), reproduced by W. Martin in Surrey A. Colls. xxiii. 186, and other portraits probably based on some original of c. 1603; (i) Hondius Group, (i) drawing by P. D. Hondius (1610) in J. Speed, Theatre of the Empire of Great Britain (1611), as inset to map of Britain (L. T. Record, ii, with notes by T. F. Ordish; Baker, f. p.), (ii) engraving on title-page of R. Baker, Chronicle (1643), reproduced by Martin in Surrey A. Colls. xxiii. 187, (iii) engraving on title-page of H. Holland, Herwologia Anglica (1620), (iv) engraving of triumphal arch at coronation entry of James I by W. Kip in S. Harrison (cf. ch. xxiv), The Arches of Triumph (1604), all perhaps based on the same original or survey; (k) Visscher, engraving in perspective by Nikolaus Janssen Visscher (1616), ‘Amstelodami, ex officina Judoci Hondii’, with mutilated text from Camden’s Britannia, reproduced from unique copy in Brit. Mus. (L. T. Soc. iv, with notes by T. F. Ordish in L. T. Record, vi; also W. Martin in Surrey A. Colls. xxiii. 188, and in Ordish, Shakespeare’s London, f. p. and elsewhere); (l) Merian Group, (i) engraving in perspective by M. Merian in J. L. Gottfried, Neuwe Archontologia Cosmica (1638), 290, reproduced by Martin, 191, and Adams, 256, and copied in (ii) f. p. to James Howell, Londinopolis (1657), reproduced by Baker, 154, and (iii) R. Wilkinson, Londina Illustrata (1819); (m) ‘Ryther’ Group, (i) engraving in very slight perspective from drawing unfinished as regards the Bankside in Crace Collection, No. 32, without date, imprint, or indication of authorship, reproduced by W. J. Loftie, History of London, ii. 282, C. L. Kingsford, Chronicles of London, (1905) f. p., and Baker, 36, 125, 135, and ascribed to Augustine Ryther in 1604, but probably of about 1636–45 (cf. 4 N. Q. ix. 95; 6 N. Q. xii. 361, 393; 7 N. Q. iii. 110; vi. 297; vii. 498) in view of (ii) another version in Crace Coll., No. 31, with the Bankside complete, bearing the imprint of ‘Cornelis Danckerts grauer of maps’ in Amsterdam (c. 1631–56), and possibly by Hollar, who worked for Danckerts, and was in England 1636–45, (iii) map by T. Porter (c. 1666), based on (i) with later additions (reproduced L. T. Soc. v); (n) Hollar, engraving in perspective by W. Hollar (in London 1635–43), published by Cornelius Danckerts in 1647 (L. T. Soc. xix; section by Martin in Surrey A. Colls. xxiii. 194); (o) Faithorne and Newcourt, engraving in conventional perspective by William Faithorne from drawing by Richard Newcourt, published in 1658 (L. T. Soc. xviii; Mitton, vii). Of the various maps of post-conflagration London the most useful are that of Leeke and Hollar (c. 1666), of which a section is reproduced by Martin in Surrey A. Colls. xxiii. 191, and those of John Ogilby and W. Morgan (1677, Mitton, viii), John Ogilby and W. Morgan (1682, L. T. Soc. xv), and John Rocque (1746, L. T. Soc. xxxiv, xxxv, xxxvii; Mitton, ix; section in Martin, ut supra, 197). Rendle, Bankside, has attempted to indicate the sites of the Bankside theatres upon a reconstructed map based on Rocque, and Martin in Surrey A. Colls. xxiii. 155, 202, gives parts of the Bankside area as it now stands from the Ordnance Survey map (1896) and a plan of the Anchor Brewery (1909).]

A. INTRODUCTION

The detailed notices, which will form the greater part of this chapter, may with advantage be prefaced with some general observations upon the historical sequence of the theatres and their distribution at different periods over the London area. The earlier Tudor London knew no theatre, in the sense of a building specially planned and maintained for public dramatic performances, although Yarmouth had its ‘game-house’ by 1538, and a theatrum at Exeter was the scene of satirical farces far back in the fourteenth century. The miracle plays, not in London processional, were given in the open air, and probably on temporary scaffolds. Similar stages may sometimes have been used for the interludes, but these were ordinarily represented in the winter-time, and sought the kindly shelter of a hall.[1019] In the provision of specialized buildings, the drama appears to have been anticipated by the ruder sport of baiting. Höfnagel’s pre-Elizabethan map already shows on the Southwark side of the river the two rings, with open centres and roofed seats for spectators, which are repeated later on by Agas and by Smith. They stand in yards or gardens lined with dog-kennels. One is lettered ‘The Bowll bayting’, the other ‘The beare bayting’. When the first Elizabethan theatres were built in 1576, it was the hall on the one hand, and the ring on the other, which determined the general structure of the two types of auditorium that came simultaneously into being.[1020] The ‘private’ house, roofed and lit, and with its seats arranged in tiers along three sides of a long room, and the ‘public’ house, generally circular, with covered stage and galleries, and a central yard or ‘pit’ open to the day, co-existed for more than half a century, and finally merged in the post-Restoration type of theatre which has come down to our own day. The distinction between ‘private’ and ‘public’ is an unessential one, depending probably upon some difference in the methods of paying for admission necessitated by the regulations of the City or the Privy Council.[1021] The performances in all the houses were public in the ordinary sense. There was, however, another important factor, besides the baiting ring, which greatly affected the structure of the open-air theatre. This was the inn-yard. Long before 1576, interludes had been given in public, as well as in the private halls of the great, and even the need for some kind of permanent, or quasi-permanent, installation had been felt. No doubt there were halls in London which could be hired. The keeper of the Carpenters’ Hall in Shoreditch was prosecuted towards the end of Henry VIII’s reign for procuring a Protestant interlude ‘to be openly played’.[1022] Fees for the letting of Trinity Hall for plays occur among the ‘casuall recepts’ of the churchwardens of St. Botolph without Aldersgate in 1566–7.[1023] A jest-book of 1567 records a play at Northumberland Place.[1024] But an even more convenient hospitality was afforded by the great court-yards of the City inns, where there was sack and bottle-ale to hand, and, as the Puritans averred, chambers ready for deeds of darkness to be done, when the play was over.[1025] In these yards, approached by archways under the inn buildings from one or more streets, and surrounded by galleries with external staircases giving access to the upper floors, an audience could quickly gather, behold at their ease, and escape payment with difficulty. The actors could be accommodated with a tiring-room on the ground floor, and perform as on a natural stage between the pillars supporting the galleries. An upper gallery could be used to vary the scene. The first performances in London inns upon record were at the Saracen’s Head, Islington, and the Boar’s Head, Aldgate, both in 1557.[1026] By the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign the use of them was normal. Plays ‘in hostels and taverns’ were specified for prohibition by the proclamation of April 1559, and the City regulations of 1574 are clearly aimed at the control of the ‘greate innes, havinge chambers and secrete places adjoyninge to their open stagies and gallyries’, and impose obligations for the sake of good order upon innkeepers and tavern-keepers in the forefront of those regarded as likely to harbour plays.[1027] It is not reading too much between the lines to suggest that the owners of particular houses specially laid themselves out to secure the attraction of public entertainments, entered into regular contracts with players, and probably even undertook structural alterations which in fact converted their yards into little less than permanent theatres.[1028] We have, indeed, the record of a trade dispute about the workmanship of play-scaffolds at the Red Lion in Stepney as far back as 1567. The Red Lion stood outside the jurisdiction of the City. Within it, and so far as we can judge, much more important in the history of the stage were the Bell and the Cross Keys, both in Gracechurch Street, the Bull in Bishopsgate Street, and the Bel Savage on Ludgate Hill. No one of these four is in fact mentioned by name as a play-house earlier than 1575, and although they must have been hard hit by the regulations of 1574, it is clear that they did not go altogether out of use, especially during the winter, when climatic conditions rendered the suburbs unattractive, for another twenty years. Stockwood, in 1578, speaks of six or eight ‘ordinarie places’ where plays were then performed.[1029] Nevertheless the action of the City, and the enterprise of James Burbadge, whose descendants claimed for him the honour of being ‘the first builder of playhowses’, led to a shifting of the dramatic focus. The Theatre and the Curtain, both built in or about 1576, stood in ‘the fields’ to the north of London proper, and were perhaps soon followed by Newington Butts on the south side of the river, beyond St. George’s Fields; while the Blackfriars, adapted in the same year (1576) by Richard Farrant to house the performances of children, occupied an old monastic building in the precinct of a ‘liberty’ which, although within the walls, was largely exempt from the jurisdiction of the Corporation. This became the home of the Children of the Chapel, while the Paul’s boys played in their own ‘song-school’, either the church of St. Gregory or some other building in the neighbourhood of St. Paul’s. How long this arrangement had existed, or whether any company of children had played in public at all before the date of Farrant’s experiment, we do not know. From 1576 onwards, it is the Theatre and the Curtain which have to bear the brunt of the Puritan attack, and the luxury of these, as compared with the primitive accommodation of the inn-yards, arouses a special indignation. ‘The sumptuous Theatre houses, a continual monument of Londons prodigalitie and folly’, wails Thomas White in 1577. Stockwood in 1578 discommends ‘the gorgeous playing place erected in the fieldes’; and William Harrison, perhaps about the same time, finds it ‘an evident token of a wicked time when plaiers wexe so riche that they can build such houses’.[1030] Presently the theatres became notable amongst the sights which foreign travellers must see in London. Lupold von Wedel in 1584 says nothing of them, although he records the baiting and its rings.[1031] But they are noticed in the following year by Samuel Kiechel, a merchant of Ulm, who writes:[1032]

‘Comedies are given daily. It is particularly mirthful to behold, when the Queen’s comedians act, but annoying to a foreigner who does not know the language, that he understands nothing. There are some peculiar houses, which are so made as to have about three galleries over one another, inasmuch as a great number of people always enters to see such an entertainment. It may well be that they take as much as from 50 to 60 dollars [£10 to £12] at once, especially when they act anything new, which has not been given before, and double prices are charged. This goes on nearly every day in the week; even though performances are forbidden on Friday and Saturday, it is not observed.’

The Theatre and the London inns were still the chief playing-places, when at some date between 1576 and 1596 William Lambarde illustrated his account of the pilgrimages to Boxley, by explaining that those who visited the shrine did not get off scot-free--

‘no more than such as goe to Parisgardein, the Bell Sauage, or Theatre, to beholde Beare baiting, Enterludes, or Fence play, can account of any pleasant spectacle, unlesse they first pay one pennie at the gate, another at the entrie of the Scaffolde, and the thirde for a quiet standing.’[1033]

Paris Garden was the generic name given to the successive places for bear-baiting which lay on the Surrey side of the river, not in Southwark proper, which was in the jurisdiction of the City, but in the Liberty of the Clink, which stretched in a westerly direction along the Bankside, or still farther to the west, in the Manor of Paris Garden itself. In Surrey, no less than in London, plays had established themselves at an early date. A performance was going on in Southwark, while the priests of St. Saviour’s sang Dirige for Henry VIII’s soul in 1547.[1034] The Privy Council ordered the Surrey justices to suppress plays in the Borough and the adjoining places during 1578; and it seems probable that a regular play-house had been built south of the river at a date not much later than that of the Theatre itself. It stood far back behind Southwark, in the village of Newington, divided from the river by St. George’s Fields. The distance and the bad roads were against it; and it was not until the Rose was built in the Clink about 1587, that the Bankside became a serious rival to the ‘fields’ in the north as the home of theatres. The Swan, in Paris Garden, was built in 1595. Newington is too far to the south to appear in the maps, but Norden’s map of 1593 shows two round buildings, standing between Bankside and an unnamed road, which may safely be identified with that called Maiden Lane. One is lettered ‘The Beare howse’, the other, more to the east and the south, ‘The play howse’; and this must clearly be the Rose.

In 1596 the City appear to have at last obtained the assent of the Privy Council to the complete exclusion of plays from the area of their jurisdiction. This is probably the proceeding described, with no precise indication of date, in the following passage from Richard Rawlidge’s A Monster Lately Found out and Discovered, or the Scourging of Tipplers (1628):[1035]

‘London hath within the memory of man lost much of hir pristine lustre, ... by being ... filled with ... sinnes, which ... are ... maintained, in Play-houses, Ale-houses, Bawdy-houses, Dising-houses, ... All which houses, and traps for Gentlemen, and others, of such Receipt, were formerly taken notice of by many Citizens, and well disposed graue Gentlemen ... wherevpon some of the pious magistrates made humble suit to the late Queene Elizabeth of ever-liuing memorie, and her priuy Counsaile, and obteined leaue from her Majesty to thrust those Players out of the Citty and to pull downe the Dicing houses: which accordingly was affected, and the Play-houses in Gracious street, Bishops-gate-street, nigh Paules, that on Ludgate hill, the White-Friars were put down, and other lewd houses quite supprest within the Liberties, by the care of those religious senators, ... and surely had all their successors followed their worthy stepps, sinne would not at this day haue beene so powerfull, and raigning as it is.’

The play-houses in Gracious or Gracechurch Street, Bishopsgate Street, and Ludgate Hill were presumably the Bell and the Cross Keys, the Bull, and the Bel Savage. By the house ‘nigh Paul’s’ Rawlidge possibly meant the choir song-school; but in fact there had been no plays by the Paul’s boys since 1590. If there was really a Whitefriars house at so early a date, this is the only notice preserved of it. It may be suspected that Rawlidge confused it with the Blackfriars, which James Burbadge was apparently prevented, upon representations by the City, from reopening in 1596. The claim of the City to exercise any control over the old religious precincts of the Blackfriars and the Whitefriars was a doubtful one; and although they ultimately secured jurisdiction, they were not able to prevent the so-called ‘private’ theatres from establishing themselves in these ‘liberties’.[1036] With these exceptions, however, and possibly that of the Boar’s Head, which seems to have been used for a few years after 1602, but was more likely just outside the bars, 1596 probably saw the last of playing within the actual gates of the City.

Londoners had now to look wholly to the suburbs for their dramatic entertainment. Prince Lewis of Anhalt-Cöthen found four theatres in 1596.[1037] These were doubtless the Theatre and the Curtain on the north and the Rose and the Swan on the south of the river. The Newington house was still used in 1594, but even before that had long been out of fashion. It was probably also about 1596 that John de Witt wrote his Observations Londinenses. He too mentioned the four theatres, together with the baiting house, and was particularly struck by the newest, and as he avers, the largest and fairest of them, the Swan, of the interior of which he attached a rough sketch to his manuscript. This manuscript is lost, but fortunately an extract survives, copied into a commonplace book by Arend van Buchell of Utrecht. The following is the complete text:[1038]

EX OBSERVATIONIBUS LONDINENSIBUS JOHANNIS DE WITT.

De phano D. Pauli. Huic Paulino phano adheret locus ab asservandis sacratioribus vestimentis Sacristi dictus, omnino observatione dignus, quippe quo DIANAE delubrum fuisse ferunt. Sacellum est rotundum, hemyphericum, concameratum, cuius structura Romanam antiquitatem referre videtur. Aiunt cum fundamenta templi iacerentur effossam ante huius aediculae fores innumeram cervinorum capitum copiam; inde colligi Dianae sacrificia (cui cervis litabatur) ibi olim peracta esse eique hanc aedem sacratam fuisse; in eodem phano sunt epitaphia et sepulcra varia praeter ea quae alio loco a me notata sunt, Guilelmi Herberti Penbrochiae comitis Walliae praesidis qui obijt A^o aetat. lxiii Christi vero 1569.

Ibidem in aede Westmonasteriensi sunt monumenta cum suis elogiis: Guill. Thynne armigeri ex antiqua Bottevillorum familia, Joannis Thynne fratris qui obijt 14 Martii 1584, item Joannis Bourgh Duisburgi gubernatoris A^o 1596.

Amphiteatra Londinij sunt iv visendae pulcritudinis quae a diversis intersigniis diuersa nomina sortiuntur: in iis varia quotidie scaena populo exhibetur. Horum duo excellentiora vltra Tamisim ad meridiam sita sunt, a suspensis signis ROSA et Cygnus nominata: Alia duo extra vrbem ad septentrionem sunt, viâ quâ itur per Episcopalem portam vulgariter Biscopgat nuncupatam. Est etiam quintum, sed dispari [vsu?] et structura, bestiarum concertationi destinatum, in quo multi vrsi, tauri, et stupendae magnitudinis canes, discretis caueis & septis aluntur, qui [drawing occupies rest of page] ad pugnam adseruantur, iocundissimum hominibus spectaculum praebentes. Theatrorum autem omnium prestantissimum est et amplissimum id cuius intersignium est cygnus (vulgo te theatre off te cijn [off te swan]),[1039] quippe quod tres mille homines in sedilibus admittat, constructum ex coaceruato lapide pyrritide (quorum ingens in Britannia copia est) ligneis suffultum columnis quae ob illitum marmoreum colorem, nasutissimos quoque fallere possent. Cuius quidem formam quod Romani operis vmbram videatur exprimere supra adpinxi.

Narrabat idem se vidisse in Brittannia apud Abrahamum de lyndeley [?] mercatorem Alberti Dureri omnia opera cartacea elegantissima et absolutissima.

The account of Paul Hentzner, who was in London from 31 August to 8 September 1598, lays less stress upon the theatres than upon the baiting, and is not altogether consistent with that of de Witt as to the structure of the Swan, which was the nearest house to the moorings of the royal barge at the west end of Paris Garden.[1040] Hentzner writes:

‘Sunt porro Londini extra Urbem Theatra aliquot, in quibus Histriones Angli Comoedias & Tragoedias singulis fere diebus, in magna hominum frequentia agunt, quas variis etiam saltationibus, suavissima adhibita musica, magno cum populi applausu finire solent. Non longe ab uno horum theatrorum, quae omnia lignea sunt, ad Thamesim navis est regia, quae duo egregia habet conclavia, fenestris perlucidis, picturis & sculpturis eleganter exornata, in sicco & quidem sub tecto collocata, propterea, ut a pluviis & coeli injuria immunis sit.’

Hentzner then describes the baiting.[1041] He concludes:

‘Utuntur in hisce spectaculis sicut & alibi, ubicunque locorum sint Angli, herba Nicotiana, quam Americano idiomate Tabacam nuncupant (Paetum alii dicunt) hoc modo frequentissime; Fistulae in hunc finem ex argilia factae, orificio posteriori, dictam herbam probe exiccatam, ita ut in pulverem facile redigi possit, immittunt, & igne admoto accendunt, unde fumus ab anteriori parte ore attrahitur, qui per nares rursum, tanquam per infurnibulum exit, & phlegma ac capitis defluxiones magna copia secum educit. Circumferuntur insuper in hisce theatris varii fructus venales, ut poma, pyra, nuces & pro ratione temporis, etiam vinum & cerevisia.’[1042]

It is perhaps natural that foreign visitors should be more struck by the English theatres at a time when the English stage was serving as a model to northern Europe, than was the case with a native chronicler of grave and slightly Puritanic tendencies. John Stowe, when he published his Survey of London in 1598, had nothing to say of the Bankside houses, and but little of those in Middlesex. After writing of the miracle plays, he says:

‘Of late time in place of those Stage playes, hath beene vsed Comedies, Tragedies, Enterludes, and Histories, both true and fayned: For the acting whereof certaine publike places as the Theater, the Curtine, &c., haue been erected’ [in margin, ‘Theater and Curten for Comedies & other shewes’].[1043]

In another place, at the end of a description of Holywell, he adds:

‘And neare therevnto are builded two publique houses for the acting and shewe of Comedies, Tragedies, and Histories, for recreation. Whereof the one is called the Courtein, the other the Theatre: both standing on the South-west side towards the field.’[1044]

Even these scanty references were pruned in the second edition of 1603, after the Theatre had disappeared at the end of 1598 and the Chamberlain’s men had left the Curtain. And of the Globe, built during the earlier half of 1599, to which they migrated, Stowe takes no notice. The Globe, however, appears, although unnamed, together with two other theatres, of which one must be the Curtain, in the next foreign account, a very full one by Thomas Platter of Basle, who was in England from 18 September to 20 October 1599.[1045] I translate the passage, of which sufficient use has not been made by historians of the stage:

‘After dinner on the 21st of September, at about two o’clock, I went with my companions over the water, and in the strewn roof-house saw the tragedy of the first Emperor Julius with at least fifteen characters very well acted. At the end of the comedy they danced according to their custom with extreme elegance. Two in men’s clothes and two in women’s gave this performance, in wonderful combination with each other. On another occasion, I also saw after dinner a comedy, not far from our inn, in the suburb; if I remember right, in Bishopsgate. Here they represented various nations, with whom on each occasion an Englishman fought for his daughter, and overcame them all except the German, who won the daughter in fight. He then sat down with him, and gave him and his servant strong drink, so that they both got drunk, and the servant threw his shoe at his master’s head and they both fell asleep. Meanwhile the Englishman went into the tent, robbed the German of his gains, and thus he outwitted the German also. At the end they danced very elegantly both in English and in Irish fashion. And thus every day at two o’clock in the afternoon in the city of London two and sometimes three comedies are performed, at separate places, wherewith folk make merry together, and whichever does best gets the greatest audience. The places are so built, that they play on a raised platform, and every one can well see it all. There are, however, separate galleries and there one stands more comfortably and moreover can sit, but one pays more for it. Thus anyone who remains on the level standing pays only one English penny: but if he wants to sit, he is let in at a further door, and there he gives another penny. If he desires to sit on a cushion in the most comfortable place of all, where he not only sees everything well, but can also be seen, then he gives yet another English penny at another door. And in the pauses of the comedy food and drink are carried round amongst the people, and one can thus refresh himself at his own cost.

‘The comedians are most expensively and elegantly apparelled, since it is customary in England, when distinguished gentlemen or knights die, for nearly the finest of their clothes to be made over and given to their servants, and as it is not proper for them to wear such clothes but only to imitate them, they give them to the comedians to purchase for a small sum.

‘What they can thus produce daily by way of mirth in the comedies, every one knows well, who has happened to see them acting or playing.’

Platter then describes the Cockpit and the baiting. He concludes:

‘With such and many other pastimes besides the English spend their time; in the comedies they learn what is going on in other lands, and this happens without alarm, husband and wife together in a familiar place, since for the most part the English do not much use to travel, but are content ever to learn of foreign matters at home, and ever to take their pastime.’

A year later than Platter, another traveller thus describes a visit to the Bankside:[1046]

‘1600 die Lunae 3 Julii. Audivimus comoediam Anglicam; theatrum ad morem antiquorum Romanorum constructum ex lignis, ita formatum ut omnibus ex partibus spectatores commodatissime singula videre possint. In reditu transivimus pontem magnificis aedificiis ornatum e quibus uni adhuc affixa cernuntur capita quorundam comitum et nobilium, qui laesae Majestatis rei supplicio affecti sunt.’

When Lewis of Anhalt and de Witt wrote, there were four theatres, exclusive of the City inn-yards, which were probably already closed. Platter found two, and sometimes three, performances being given daily. This agrees with the evidence available from other sources. After the scandal of The Isle of Dogs in 1597, the Privy Council decreed a limitation of the London companies to two, the Chamberlain’s men and the Admiral’s. The former played at the Curtain until 1599, when they destroyed the Theatre and built the Globe. The latter played at the Rose until 1600, when they migrated to the newly built Fortune. But it is clear that the ordinance of the Privy Council was not strictly observed. An intruding company was playing in February 1598, either at the Theatre or the Swan. Platter’s three houses in 1599 included the Curtain, together presumably with the Globe and the Rose. When the Council sanctioned the opening of the Fortune in 1600, they understood that the Curtain was to be ‘either ruinated or applied to some other good use’, but it was still the scene of plays in 1601. Finally, in the spring of 1602 Elizabeth ordered the Council to tolerate a third company, that of the Earl of Worcester, Master of the Horse. This was then playing at the Boar’s Head, a short-lived house of which practically nothing is known; in the autumn it moved to the Rose. The Swan possibly went out of use, except for the occasional performances of acrobats and fencers, or of amateurs. On the other hand, Lord Hertford’s men were in London during the winter of 1602–3, in addition to the three privileged companies, and they must have practised somewhere.

To the above must be added, for the closing years of Elizabeth’s reign, the ‘private’ houses; Paul’s reopened in the winter of 1599, the Blackfriars in that of 1600. Of these Platter knows nothing, but Duke Philip Julius of Stettin-Pomerania, in the autumn of 1602, in addition to performances at the Fortune and another theatre, saw also, doubtless at the Blackfriars, the Kinder-comoedia. The following is an extract from the diary of the visit kept by the duke’s secretary, Frederic Gerschow:[1047]

‘13 [September] On the thirteenth a comedy was played, of the taking of Stuhl-Weissenberg, firstly by the Turks, and thereafter back again by the Christians.

14. In the afternoon was played a tragicomedy of Samson and the half tribe of Benjamin.’[1048]

On 16 September the duke and his retinue saw the baiting. On 18 September they visited the Blackfriars, and Gerschow wrote an account of the organization of the Children of the Chapel and of the nature of their performances.[1049]

The Globe and the Fortune continued in regular use, as the houses of the King’s men, and the Prince’s men respectively, during the new reign, and endured to the closing of the theatres in 1642. Each was destroyed by fire and rebuilt; the former in 1613, the latter in 1621. Queen Anne’s men at first used the Boar’s Head and the Curtain, but migrated from the Boar’s Head to the Red Bull, which had been built by 1606. This became their principal house, and they cannot be shown to have used the Curtain after 1609. These were the only companies of men players in London during 1603–8, and the Globe, the Fortune, and the Red Bull are obviously the ‘three houses’ whose rivalry is referred to by Dekker in the following passage from his Raven’s Almanack of 1608:[1050]

‘Another ciuill warre doe I finde wil fal betweene players, who albeit at the beginning of this fatall yeare, they salute one another like sworne brothers, yet before the middle of it, shall they wish one anothers throate cut for two pence. The contention of the two houses, (the gods bee thanked) was appeased long agoe, but a deadly warre betweene the three houses will I feare burst out like thunder and lightning. For it is thought that Flag will be aduanced (as it were in mortall defiance against Flag), numbers of people will also bee mustred and fall to one side or other, the drums and trumpets must be sounded, partes will then (euen by the chiefest players) bee taken: words will passe to and fro: speeches cannot so bee put vp, handes will walke, an alarum be giuen, fortune must fauour some, or els they are neuer able to stand: the whole world must sticke to others, or else al the water in the theames wil not serue to carrie those away that will bee put to flight, and a third faction must fight like wilde Buls against Lyons, or else it will be in vaine to march vp into the field.’

There were, however, more than three London companies about 1608. M. de la Boderie tells us how one fell into disgrace during that year, and how four others subscribed to buy off the consequent inhibition of plays.[1051] The reconciliation is simple. Dekker has in mind only the ‘public’ and not the ‘private’ houses. Of these Paul’s was closed in 1606; it was made worth its Master’s while not to reopen it. The Blackfriars was used by the successive boy companies, known generically as the Queen’s Revels, until 1608 or 1609, when it passed to the King’s men, who thereafter maintained it as a winter house, to supplement the Globe. The Queen’s Revels then moved to the Whitefriars, a private house built at some time before 1608, and occupied in that year by the ephemeral company of the King’s Revels.

An increase in the number of adult companies now made fresh demands upon theatrical house-room. It is presumably the Duke of York’s men who were described at Leicester in 1608 as ‘the Princes players of the White Chapple, London’. The description suggests that they used the Boar’s Head, but if so, nothing more is heard of it, and it is conceivable that they soon succeeded to the Curtain. The Lady Elizabeth’s, who came into existence in 1611, are traceable at the Swan, which Henslowe may have taken over to succeed the Rose, disused, if not pulled down, by 1606. The following lines are in John Heath’s Two Centuries of Epigrammes (1610), but may of course, especially as the Red Bull is not named, date back to the period when the Curtain was still in the hands of the Queen’s men:

Momus would act the fooles part in a play, And cause he would be exquisite that way, Hies me to London, where no day can passe But that some play-house still his presence has; Now at the Globe with a judicious eye Into the Vice’s action doth he prie. Next to the Fortune, where it is a chaunce But he marks something worth his cognisance. Then to the Curtaine, where, as at the rest, He notes that action downe that likes him best.[1052]

A foreign traveller again gives us help. The relation of the visit of Prince Lewis Frederick of Württemberg in 1610 merely records that he went to the Globe, and Justus Zingerling, who was in London at about the same date, has the briefest note of the existence of ‘theatra comoedorum et in quibus ursi et tauri cum canibus committuntur’.[1053] But the itinerary of Prince Otto of Hesse-Cassel in the following year is more expansive. The compiler writes:

‘In London there are seven theatres, where daily, except on Sundays, comedies are performed, whereof the most important is the Globe, which lies over the water. The theatre, where the children play, is on the hither side of the water; they play at three o’clock, but only from Michaelmas to Easter. Here it only costs half a shilling to enter, but for the other places at least half a crown. These play only with lights, and are the best company in London.’[1054]

In addition to the Globe and the Whitefriars, the tale of seven theatres is probably made up by the Blackfriars, the Fortune, the Red Bull, the Curtain, and the Swan.

Henslowe’s correspondence with Daborne shows that he still had a ‘publique howse’, probably the Swan, in December 1613, and also that in June of that year his company was only just thinking of ‘comming over’ for a summer season, presumably from the Whitefriars, as he had recently carried out an amalgamation between the Lady Elizabeth’s men and the Queen’s Revels.[1055] In the following year occurred an episode which curiously emphasizes the constant shifting of the focus of theatrical interest during the whole of the period with which we are concerned. Originally stageland was in the heart of the City itself. With the building of the first theatres, it was transferred to the Fields of the northern suburbs. During the last decade of the sixteenth century the Fields in their turn gave way to the Bankside. The Rose, the Swan, and the Globe successively made their appearance, and the vestry of Southwark began to echo the earlier outcry of the City against the iniquities of players, until their mouths were stopped with tithes. But the transpontine period proved a brief one. Hardly was the Globe up, before Alleyn’s choice of a site for the Fortune set the fashion veering again, and opened up a new theatrical region in the western suburbs. This was convenient for the Court and the great houses along the Strand and for the lawyers in the Temple and at Westminster, as well as for the City proper, and its tradition has endured until quite recent years. The Red Bull and the Whitefriars followed in the same area. On the other hand, the Rose had vanished, and the King’s men, although they did not desert the Globe, acknowledged the change of venue by taking up their winter quarters in the Blackfriars hard by. One result was that men who had ridden to the Fields and been ferried to the Bankside, now walked or drove in their coaches to the theatre door. During the spring of 1614 things were probably at their worst. Both the Globe, after its fire, and the Hope were still in the builder’s hands, and if the Lady Elizabeth’s lingered again at the Whitefriars, there can have been no plays across the water at all. The watermen, who twenty years before had exercised the influence of their patron, the Lord Admiral, to induce the Privy Council to revoke an inhibition on the Bankside houses, sent up a bitter cry of protest. John Taylor, the ‘water-poet’, whom they chose as their spokesman, tells the story.[1056] A petition to the King was prepared, to the effect that no play-house might be permitted ‘in London or in Middlesex, within four miles of the City on that side of the Thames’, and with this Taylor pursued James to Theobalds, Newmarket, and Royston. It recited the service done by watermen in the navy during the Armada invasion of 1588 and in such expeditions as those of Essex in 1596 and 1597. And it proceeded:

‘Afterwards the players began to play on the Bankside and to leave playing in London and Middlesex (for the most part), then there went such great concourse of people by water that the small number of watermen remaining at home were not able to carry them, by reason of the court, the terms, the players, and other employments, so that we were enforced and encouraged (hoping that this golden stirring would have lasted ever) to take and entertain men and boys.’

It was calculated that the number of watermen and their dependants between Windsor and Gravesend had now by 1614 reached 40,000:

‘The cause of the greater half of which multitude hath been the players playing on the Bankside, for I have known three companies besides the bear-baiting, at once there; to wit, the Globe, the Rose, and the Swan. And it is an infallible truth that, had they never played there, it had been better for watermen by the one half of their living, for the company is increased more than half by their means of playing there in former times.’

Foreign employment had now come to an end:

‘And the players have all (except the King’s men) left their usuall residency on the Bankside, and do play in Middlesex far remote from the Thames, so that every day in the week they do draw unto them three or four thousand people, that were used to spend their monies by water.’

Such, Taylor assures us, was the effect of the petition. It was referred by James to ‘his commissioners for suits’, that is to say, the Court of Requests, composed of Sir Julius Caesar, Sir Thomas Parry, Sir Francis Bacon, Sir Henry Montagu, Sir Walter Cope, George Calvert, and Baron Sotherton. The King’s men exhibited a counter-petition, and the case came on for hearing.

‘Sir Francis Bacon very worthily said that so far as the public weal was to be regarded before pastimes, or a serviceable decaying multitude before a handful of particular men, or profit before pleasure, so far was our suit to be preferred before theirs.’

The players appealed to the Earl of Somerset, who became Lord Chamberlain and in that capacity their official protector on 10 July 1614, but he proved well affected towards the watermen. The hearing was adjourned and never resumed, owing to the death of Cope on 31 July, the promotion of Caesar to the Mastership of the Rolls on 1 October, and the consequent dissolution of the commission. Ill feeling broke out between Taylor and his fellows the watermen, who declared that he met the players at supper at the Cardinal’s Hat on Bankside, and took bribes of them to let the suit fall. Taylor, therefore, wrote his pamphlet to vindicate his position.[1057] The completion of the new Globe and the Hope during the progress of the dispute had probably eased matters temporarily for the watermen, but the growing tendency of things theatrical towards Middlesex was not permanently checked. Some of the minor companies used the Hope until 1617, and then left it to the bears again. The Globe survived, but will be found to have occupied during the Caroline period a distinctly secondary position to the Blackfriars in the economy of the King’s men. For this there was another reason besides the geographical superiority of Middlesex over Surrey. The acquisition of the Blackfriars, even though only for winter purposes, in 1608 was an acknowledgement of the advantages for adult companies of the ‘private’ or roofed type of theatre, hitherto used only by boys. Once these advantages were realized, the doom of the old ‘ring’ type, with its central opening, was written. Probably the Hope was the only new house constructed on these lines after 1608, and obviously the Hope required free ventilation to get rid of the stink of bears and dogs. In 1615 Philip Rosseter and others obtained sanction for the conversion of Porter’s Hall in the Blackfriars into a theatre. This was to be used by children as well as adults, and was probably roofed. It was pulled down again by what seems a somewhat arbitrary decision in 1617. About the same time, the roofed Cockpit in Drury Lane was converted into a theatre, under the name of the Phoenix, for the occupation of the Queen’s men, who migrated to it from the Red Bull. Whether or not the Fortune was given a roof at the rebuilding of 1623, or the Red Bull at somewhat the same time, is uncertain; but at any rate the Salisbury Court theatre, built near the Whitefriars in 1629, perhaps to replace the old Whitefriars theatre, was a roofed house.[1058] This was the last new theatre built before the civil wars. The Blackfriars, the Cockpit, and Salisbury Court were the most important of the Caroline stages, and in the post-Restoration houses, although these were on a larger scale than the ‘private’ houses of the past, the roofed model was invariably adopted.

Soon after the completion of Salisbury Court, Edmund Howes, who had already edited the fourth edition of John Stowe’s Annales in 1615, was again revising the text for the fifth edition of 1631, and took occasion to append to his account of the burnings of the Globe and the Fortune the following summary of theatrical enterprise since 1569:[1059]

‘In the yeere one thousand sixe hundred twenty nine, there was builded a new faire Play-house, neere the white Fryers. And this is the seauenteenth Stage, or common Play-house, which hath beene new made within the space of threescore yeeres within London and the Suburbs, viz.

‘Fiue Innes, or common Osteryes turned to Play-houses, one Cockpit, S. Paules singing Schoole, one in the Black-fryers, and one in the White-fryers, which was built last of all, in the yeare one thousand sixe hundred twenty nine, all the rest not named, were erected only for common Play-houses, besides the new built Beare garden, which was built as well for playes, and Fencers prizes, as Bull bayting; besides, one in former time at Newington Buts; Before the space of threescore yeares aboue-sayd, I neither knew, heard, nor read, of any such Theaters, set Stages, or Play-houses, as haue beene purposely built within mans memory.’

This passage serves as a fair summary of the detailed investigations set out in this chapter. Howes only allows one house to the Blackfriars and one to the Whitefriars, and must therefore be leaving out of account the abortive Porter’s Hall house, and treating Salisbury Court as a continuation of the earlier Whitefriars. The Hope and Newington Butts are afterthoughts, and make his seventeen into nineteen. We can identify his five inns as the Bull, the Bell, the Cross Keys, the Bel Savage, and probably the Red Lion, although this just antedates his period of sixty years; while his balance of eight unnamed common play-houses must be the Theatre, the Curtain, the Rose, the Swan, the Globe, the Fortune, the Boar’s Head, and the Red Bull.

Prynne, in his Histriomastix (1633), records six ‘divels chappels’ as then in use, and these are doubtless the six houses, the Blackfriars, Globe, Cockpit, Salisbury Court, Fortune, and Red Bull, which are also noted by the Restoration writers on the stage, John Downes and James Wright, as surviving up to the cataclysm of the civil wars.[1060]

Somewhat more confused and vague in their datings are the reminiscences about 1660 of the Marquis of Newcastle in his letter of advice to Prince Charles, under the head of ‘Devertismentes for your Ma^{tie} People’:[1061]

‘Firste for London Paris Garden will holde good for the meaner People.

‘Then for severall Playe Houses as ther weare five att leaste In my Time,--

‘Black-Friers, the Cock-Pitt, Salsburye Courte, the Fortune, & the Redd Bull,--Ther weare the Boyes thatt played at Black-Friers, & Paules, & then the Kinges Players played att the Globe--which is nowe calde the Phenixe [!]--Some Played, att the Bores heade, & att the Curtin In the feildes & some att the Hope whiche Is the Beare Garden, and some at White Friers,--Butt five or Sixe Playe Houses Is enough for all sortes off Peoples divertion & pleasure In thatt kinde.’

The marquis is the only one of the chroniclers who definitely records the Boar’s Head.

A manuscript continuation of Stowe’s Annales, found in a copy of the 1631 edition, narrates the havoc wrought by Puritans and ground-landlords:[1062]

‘Play Houses. The Globe play house on the Banks side in Southwarke, was burnt downe to the ground, in the yeare 1612. And now built vp againe in the yeare 1613, at the great charge of King Iames, and many Noble men and others. And now pulled downe to the ground, by Sir Matthew Brand, On Munday the 15 of April 1644, to make tenements in the room of it.

‘The Blacke Friers players play-house in Blacke Friers, London, which had stood many yeares, was pulled downe to the ground on Munday the 6 day of August 1655, and tennements built in the rome.

‘The play house in Salsbury Court, in Fleetstreete, was pulled downe by a company of souldiers, set on by the sectuaries of these sad times, on Saturday the 24 day of March 1649.

‘The Phenix in Druery Lane, was pulled downe also this day, being Saterday the 24 day of March 1649, by the same souldiers.

‘The Fortune Play-house betweene White Crosse streete and Golding Lane was burnd downe to the ground in the yeare 1618. And built againe with brick worke on the outside in the yeare 1622. And now pulled downe on the inside by the souldiers this 1649.

‘The Hope, on the Banks side in Southwarke, commonly called the Beare Garden, a Play House for Stage Playes on Mundayes, Wedensdayes, Fridayes, and Saterdayes, and for the baiting of the Beares on Tuesdayes and Thursdayes, the stage being made to take vp and downe when they please. It was built in the year 1610, and now pulled downe to make tennementes, by Thomas Walker, a peticoate maker in Cannon Streete, on Tuesday the 25 day of March 1656. Seuen of M^r. Godfries beares, by the command of Thomas Pride, then hie Sheriefe of Surry, were then shot to death, on Saterday the 9 day of February 1655, by a company of souldiers.’

Downes and Wright do not mention the Hope, as they were not discussing baiting. On the other hand, the annalist says nothing of the fate of the Red Bull, which in fact appears to have escaped destruction, to have been occasionally used for ‘drolls’ during the Commonwealth, and to have served once more, with the Cockpit and Salisbury Court, the demolition of which was probably limited to the interior fittings, for the first entertainments of the Restoration. The building of Vere Street in 1660, Lincoln’s Inn Fields in 1661, and Drury Lane in 1663 made them obsolete.[1063]

These records leave ambiguous the fate of the Curtain and the Swan. The Curtain is traceable in occasional use up to about 1627, and is figured as a roundish building in the ‘Ryther’ maps, which are probably of a decade later.[1064] It cannot, therefore, have vanished long before the civil wars, and was the most long-lived of all the theatres. It may, of course, have been rebuilt, later than its original foundation in 1576, but as to this there is no evidence. The ‘Ryther’ maps also show the Fortune. No other maps give any of the theatres on the north of the river. Of the Bankside houses, the Swan is shown by a decagonal ground-plan, with the inscription ‘Old Play house’, in the Paris Garden Manor survey of 1627.[1065] And it is described as still existing side by side with the Globe and the Hope, but clearly also as derelict, in the following passage from Holland’s Leaguer (1632):

‘Especially, and aboue all the rest, she was most taken with the report of three famous Amphytheators, which stood so neere scituated, that her eye might take view of them from the lowest Turret, one was the Continent of the World, because halfe the yeere a World of Beauties, and braue Spirits resorted vnto it; the other was a building of excellent Hope, and though wild beasts and Gladiators did most possesse 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 handes with this Fortresse, beeing in times past as famous as any of the other, was now fallen to decay, and like a dying Swanne, hanging downe her head, seemed to sing her owne dierge.’[1066]

I turn now to the maps of the Bankside, which, had they been datable, and drawn with cartographical precision, ought not only to have furnished valuable evidence as to the duration of the theatres, but also to have indicated accurately the position of each amongst the streets and lanes of the district. Neither condition is, however, fulfilled. Even where the date of an engraving is known, the date of the survey on which it was based can, as a rule, be only approximately determined. And the constant intrusion of pictorial elements, which gives the maps the character of perspective views rather than of plans, is naturally emphasized on the Bankside, which has to serve as a foreground to the design. The main topographical features which have to be borne in mind are simple, and can easily be related to those in John Rocque’s map of 1746, as interpreted by Strype’s Survey of 1720, or in a modern Ordnance map. The whole region concerned lies roughly between the southern approaches to London and Blackfriars Bridges. It underwent a good deal of development during one period, especially in the area of the Clink, a liberty lying between Southwark on the east and another liberty of Paris Garden on the west, and affording a convenient suburban resort outside the jurisdiction of the City. Stowe’s account of the neighbourhood in 1598 is perhaps a little misleading. He describes no more than the Bankside proper, ‘a continuall building of tenements’ on the riverside, extending about half a mile west of London Bridge. Here he places, from west to east, the bear gardens, the former stews, the prison of the Clink, Winchester House, and the church of St. Mary Overie in Southwark.[1067] This agrees pretty well with the maps of Agas (c. 1561) and Norden (1593), except that there was already a group of houses falling outside Stowe’s purview, which stood on the river near Paris Garden Stairs and practically continued the Bankside westwards. But there was also, which Stowe does not mention, a marshy hinterland to the Bankside, of ponds and gardens, among which Agas, and still more Norden, show a good many scattered houses. By the end of the century there was a fairly definite north to south street known as Deadman’s Place, which debouched from the east end of the Bankside, and from which in its turn struck out one called Maid or Maiden Lane, which went in an irregular line westwards over the marshes, and was finally joined by two divergent ways, Love Lane and Gravel (afterwards Holland) Lane, to the Paris Garden group of houses. Thus was formed a rough parallelogram, half a mile long, and from 200 to 350 feet deep, within or near which all the theatrical sites are placed by the maps. In Norden’s map of 1593, both the Bear House and the Play House, which must be the Rose, stand considerably to the west of Deadman’s Place. The Bear House is the most westerly of the two, and is about halfway between the Bankside houses on the north and Maid Lane on the south. The Rose is a good deal nearer Maid Lane. In the Delaram views (1603–20) there are three flagged, but unnamed, structures. One which stands well back from the river and, after allowing for the view-point, appears slightly the most easterly of the three, is cylindrical; the upper half is alone windowed, and has a smaller diameter than the lower half. It is placed amongst trees and meadows. There is nothing which obviously indicates Maid Lane.[1068] The two other buildings stand much nearer the river’s edge, amongst houses; they are angled, probably octagonal, and not cylindrical. The ‘Hondius’ views repeat the cylindrical building and the most westerly of the two angled buildings much in the same relative position; the intermediate one has disappeared. It seems obvious that the cylindrical building must be the Globe, and the other two the Bear Garden, afterwards the Hope, to the west, and the Rose, left out of the ‘Hondius’ group, because it disappeared in 1605, in the centre. The Delaram and ‘Hondius’ views do not extend far enough west to include the Swan. It is shown by Visscher in 1616, and named. So are the Bear Garden and the Globe, both of which appear as angled buildings, octagonal or hexagonal, about equidistant from the Bankside houses, and north of Maid Lane, the angle of which next Deadman’s Place is shown.[1069] As the change from a cylindrical to an angled representation of the Globe coincides with the rebuilding of the house in 1614, we may perhaps infer that the structural form is not a mere cartographic convention.[1070] It is rather singular that in the Merian maps (circa 1638) there are four houses again, including the Swan, well to the west. This, with two of the three houses in the eastern group, is named by the engraver. A third unnamed house stands between the Globe on the east and the Bear Garden on the west, which is approximately where the Rose used to stand. It is distinctly nearer the river than the other two, but all three are north of Maid Lane, from which the Bear Garden is slightly more remote than the Globe.[1071] If the Rose had actually a second term of existence, it was probably only a brief one.[1072] The fullest of the Ryther maps (c. 1636–45) has two angled buildings, one to the west, rather nearer to Bankside than to Maid Lane; the other to the east, and south of Maid Lane, standing in an angle between that and a track running from north-west to south-east. There are no names, but obviously the eastern house is the Globe, and the western the Hope, and indeed the dogs can be made out. The track joining Maid Lane may be Globe Alley. The Hollar view of 1647 shows two cylindrical, not angled, buildings. One lettered ‘The Globe’ is on the extreme brink of the river; the other, to the east and south of it, is lettered ‘Beere bayting’. Faithorne and Newcourt, in 1658, give no theatres proper, but only a ring marked ‘Beare garden’. Finally, Leeke and Hollar about 1666 give a single unnamed roundish theatre, south of Maid Lane. Presumably it is the Globe, but copied from a survey of earlier date, as the Globe had been pulled down for tenements in 1644.

On the whole, the maps are disappointing guides. It seems more probable than has quite been recognized, that the singular two-storied structure shown by Hondius and Delaram really represents the earlier, the Shakespearian, Globe. And the representation of a fourth house by Merian, even if he did not know its name, gives support to the view that the Rose may have had some kind of existence at a later date than the Sewers records indicate. But as regards the alinement, the distance from the river, and the relation to Maid Lane, of the three houses in the Clink, it is clear that no consistent story is told. The general impression one gets is that the Hope stood farthest to the west, then the Rose, and then the Globe; and that the Rose stood nearest to the river, then the Hope, and then the Globe. Nor is this inconsistent with documentary evidence, which in particular indicates that the parcel of land, on which the latest of the Bear Gardens was built, was contiguous on the west to that known as ‘the little Rose’.[1073] Bear Garden and Rose Alley, running side by side from the Bankside into Maid Lane or Park Street, are traceable in eighteenth-century maps and in the modern Ordnance map.[1074] Did one judge by the maps alone, one would probably, in spite of the dissenting testimony of ‘Ryther’ and of Leeke and Hollar, come to the conclusion that the Globe stood to the north of Maid Lane. The balance of other evidence points unmistakably in the other direction.[1075]

B. THE PUBLIC THEATRES

i. The Red Lion Inn. ii. The Bull Inn. iii. The Bell Inn. iv. The Bel Savage Inn. v. The Cross Keys Inn. vi. The Theatre. vii. The Curtain. viii. Newington Butts. ix. The Rose. x. The Swan. xi. The Globe. xii. The Fortune. xiii. The Boar’s Head. xiv. The Red Bull. xv. The Hope. xvi. Porter’s Hall.

i. THE RED LION INN

The following record appears in the court books of the Carpenters’ Company:[1076]

Courte holden the xv^{th} daie of Julie 1567, Annoque Regni Reginae Eliz. nono by M^r William Ruddoke, M^r Richard More, Henrye Whreste & Richard Smarte wardeins, & M^r Bradshawe.

Memorandum that at courte holden the daie & yeare abovesayd that, whear certaine varyaunce, discord & debate was betwene Wyllyam Sylvester carpenter on thone partie & John Brayne grocer on thother partie, yt is agreed, concluded & fullie determyned by the saide parties, by the assent & consent of them bothe, with the advise of the M^r & wardeins abovesayd that Willyam Buttermore, John Lyffe, Willyam Snellinge & Richard Kyrbye, Carpenters, shall with expedicon goe & peruse suche defaultes as are & by them shalbe found of in & aboute suche skaffoldes, as he the said Willyam hathe mad at the house called the Red Lyon in the parishe of Stebinyhuthe, & the said Willyam Sillvester shall repaire & amend the same with their advize substancyallie, as they shall thinke good. And that the said John Brayne, on Satterdaie next ensuenge the date above written, shall paye to the sayd Willyam Sylvester the some of eight poundes, tenne shillinges, lawfull money of England, & that after the playe, which is called the storye of Sampson, be once plaied at the place aforesaid the said John shall deliver to the said Willyam such bondes as are now in his custodie for the performaunce of the bargaine. In witnesse whereof both parties hereunto hathe sett their handes.

by me John Brayne grocer. [Sylvester’s mark.]

This is the only notice of the Red Lion playing-inn which has been preserved, but John Brayne, grocer, is doubtless the same who financed his brother-in-law, James Burbadge, in the far more important enterprise of the Theatre in 1576. Stebunheth or Stepney was a parish in Middlesex, lying to the east of the City, beyond Whitechapel, and, although near enough to be in a sense a suburb, was outside the civic jurisdiction.

ii. THE BULL INN

The first notice of the Bull is on 7 June 1575 when the playing of a ‘prize’ there is recorded in the register of the School of Defence. It appears to have been the most popular of all localities for this purpose and there are fourteen similar notices of its use in the register, ending with one on 3 July 1590.[1077] Florio refers to it as a place for plays in 1578.[1078] Stephen Gosson in his Schoole of Abuse (1579) exempts from his ordinary condemnation of plays The Jew and Ptolemy ‘shown at the Bull’.[1079] On 1 July 1582 the Earl of Warwick asked permission from the Lord Mayor for his servant John David to play his provost prizes at ‘the Bull in Bishopsgatestrete or some other conuenient place to be assigned within the liberties of London’. This was refused, much to Warwick’s annoyance, on the ground that an inn was a place ‘somewhat to close for infection’, and David appointed to play ‘in an open place of the Leaden hall’.[1080] The Bull, with the Bell, was assigned by a civic order of 28 November 1583 to the Queen’s men for their first winter season. Tarlton and the Queen’s men are said in the Jests to have played ‘oftentimes’ at ‘the Bull in Bishops-gate-street’, and here their play of The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth, with Tarlton in the parts of the judge and the clown and Knell in that of Henry, was given.[1081] This must, of course, have been between 1583 and Tarlton’s death in 1588. In 1592 the translator of The Spaniard’s Monarchie disclaims any ‘title fetched from the Bull within Bishopsgate, as a figge for a Spaniard’. I do not know whether any old play underlying the Admiral’s (q.v.) Spanish Fig of 1601–2 can be referred to. The house was still in use during 1594, for in April or May of that year Anthony Bacon settled in Bishopsgate, to the vexation of his mother, ‘on account of its neighbourhood to the Bull Inn, where plays and interludes were continually acted, and would, she imagined, corrupt his servants’.[1082] Richard Flecknoe mentions the Bull in Bishopsgate Street, with the Cross-Keys, as one of the inns turned into theatres at the beginning of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, as was ‘at this day to be seen’ in 1664.[1083] The site was at No. 91 on the west of Bishopsgate Street, and is shown in Hatton’s map of 1708, and the Ordnance Survey maps of 1848–51 and 1875.

iii. THE BELL INN

This inn existed in 1560, for on 12 June of that year ‘the wyff of the Bell in Gracyous-strett’ was carted as a bawd and whore.[1084] Plays must have been used there in 1576–7, in the Revels Account for which year an item of 10_d._ is included ‘ffor the cariadge of the partes of y^e well counterfeit from the Bell in Gracious strete to St. Iohns to be performed for the play of Cutwell’.[1085] With the Bull, it was assigned to the Queen’s men by a civic order of 28 November 1583 for their first winter season. Tarlton’s Jests also mention Tarlton and ‘his fellowes’, probably the Queen’s men, as performing at the Bell ‘by’ the Cross Keys which was also in Gracious Street, and this must have been before Tarlton’s death in 1588.[1086] Both houses may be included in Rawlidge’s reference to play-houses in Gracious street and elsewhere ‘put down’ by the City in Elizabeth’s time. I suppose that the site is that of Bell Yard at No. 12 on the west of Gracechurch Street.[1087]

iv. THE BEL SAVAGE INN

The Bel Savage is named as an early London play-house in the 1596 edition of Lambarde’s Perambulation of Kent. This inn, of which the name is still preserved on Ludgate Hill, where it stood until 1873 (Harben, 63), must be distinguished from another in Gracechurch Street once kept by Tarlton, which in his time was known as the Saba.[1088] The origin of the name is obscure; a deed of 1452 refers to an ‘inn ... called Savages Inn, otherwise called the Bell on the Hoop, in the parishe of St. Bride in Fleet Street’ (L. T. R. ii. 71). Probably therefore the notion of the Belle Sauvage is a later perversion. Gascoigne, in the prologue to his Glass of Government (1575), repudiates the ‘worthie jests’ and ‘vain delights’ of ‘Bellsavage fair’.[1089] Gosson, in 1579, excepts from his general condemnation of plays ‘the two prose books, played at the Belsavage, where you shall find never a word without wit, never a line without pith, never a letter placed in vain’.[1090] A play-house ‘on Ludgate Hill’ is included by Rawlidge in his list of those ‘put down’ in Elizabeth’s time. Probably the Queen’s men were acting at the Bel Savage in 1588, for after the death of Tarlton in that year was published ‘a sorowfull newe sonnette, intituled Tarltons Recantacion uppon this theame gyven him by a gentleman at the Belsavage without Ludgate (nowe or els never) beinge the laste theame he songe’.[1091] Prynne’s reference to Dr. Faustus (q.v.) at the Bel Savage suggests that at some time the Admiral’s also played there. It was also occasionally used for the playing of ‘prizes’; the earliest recorded date in the Register of the School of Defence being in 1575–7 and the latest on 31 January 1589.[1092]

v. THE CROSS KEYS INN

This inn may have been the play-house, or one of the play-houses, ‘in Gracious Street’ said by Rawlidge to have been ‘put down’ under Elizabeth. The first notice of it dates from 23 June 1579, on which day James Burbadge was arrested at the suit of John Hynde for £5 1_s._ 1_d._, ‘as he came down Gracious Street towards the Cross Keys there to a play’. The house is described as the dwelling-house of Richard Ibotson, citizen and brewer of London.[1093] It was in use as a place of popular amusement during the life of Tarlton, who died in 1588, for one of the Jests relates how he came from the Bell, where he was playing to ‘the Crosse-Keyes in Gracious streete’ to see Banks’s performing horse there.[1094] A company can first be definitely located at it in 1589, on 5 November of which year Lord Strange’s men, as reported by Lord Mayor Hart to Burghley, disobeyed an admonition to forbear playing, and ‘went to the Crosse Keys and played that afternoon’. In 1594 Strange’s men were absorbed in Lord Hunsdon’s, and on 8 October 1594 Hunsdon wrote to the Lord Mayor to obtain toleration for ‘my nowe companie of players’ who had been accustomed ‘to plaie this winter time within the citye at the Crosse Kayes in Gracious street’.[1095] How long Shakespeare’s fellows continued to use the Cross Keys as a winter house is unknown; presumably it ceased to be available in 1596. The adaptation of the inn as a theatre was still visible at the Restoration, and is assigned by Richard Flecknoe to ‘about the beginning of Queen Elizabeth’s reign’. The site is shown in Ogilby and Morgan’s map of 1677 and the Ordnance Survey map of 1848–51: it is on the west of Gracechurch Street.

vi. THE THEATRE

[Bibliographical Note.--Material is available in the records of four litigations: (a) Peckham v. Allen (Wards and Liveries, 1589) as to the title to the site; (b) Burbadge v. Ames et al. (Coram Rege, 1596–9) and Earl of Rutland v. Allen and Burbadge (Exchequer, 1599–1602) as to the title to a neighbouring plot; (c) Burbadge v. Brayne (Chancery, 1588–95). Brayne (afterwards Miles) v. Burbadge (Chancery, 1590–5), and Miles v. Burbadge (Requests, 1597), as to the profits of the house; (d) Allen v. Street (Coram Rege, 1600), Burbadge v. Allen (Requests, 1600), Allen v. Burbadge (Queen’s Bench, 1601–2), and Allen v. Burbadge et al. (Star Chamber, 1601–2), as to the removal of the fabric. A few documents from these, some of which he supposed to relate to the Blackfriars, were printed by Collier in Memoirs of the Actors (1846 and H. E. D. P. iii. 257) and in Original History of the Theatre in Shoreditch (1849, Sh. Soc. Papers, iv. 63). A large number were used by Halliwell-Phillipps for his excursus on The Theatre and Curtain (Outlines, i. 345), and in C. C. Stopes, Burbage and Shakespeare’s Stage (1913), where abstracts of (a) and (b) may be consulted. The full texts of (c) and (d) are printed in C. W. Wallace, The First London Theatre, Materials for a History (1913, Nebraska University Studies, xiii. 1). The exact locality of the site has been carefully investigated by W. W. Braines in Holywell Priory and the Site of the Theatre, Shoreditch (1915, Indication of Houses of Historical Interest in London, xliii), and again in The Site of the Theatre, Shoreditch (1917, L. T. R. xi. 1).]

The following statement as to the beginnings of theatrical enterprise in London is made by Cuthbert Burbadge and his family in the so-called Sharers Papers of 1635:[1096]

‘The father of us, Cutbert and Richard Burbage, was the first builder of playehowses, and was himselfe in his younger yeeres a player. The Theater hee built with many hundred poundes taken up at interest. The players that lived in those first times had onely the profitts arising from the dores, but now the players receave all the commings in at the dores to themselves and halfe the galleries from the houskepers. Hee built this house upon leased ground, by which meanes the landlord and hee had a great suite in law, and, by his death, the like troubles fell on us, his sonnes; wee then bethought us of altering from thence, and at like expence built the Globe.’

The accuracy of this is fully borne out by the records of the various legal proceedings in connexion with the Theatre, which a painful investigation has exhumed, and the topographical indications furnished by the evidence in some of these have made it possible to locate with some precision the site of London’s first regular play-house.

The Theatre stood in the Liberty of Halliwell or Holywell, part of the Middlesex parish of St. Leonard’s, Shoreditch, immediately outside the Bishopsgate entrance to the City.[1097] The name of the Liberty was derived from an ancient holy well, which has now disappeared, and its status from the fact that it had been the property of a priory of Benedictine nuns. The buildings of the priory lay between Shoreditch High Street, leading north from Bishopsgate, on the east and the open Finsbury fields on the west. Its southern gate was in a lane leading from the High Street to the Fields, then and still known as Holywell Lane or Street, on the south of which lay the Prioress’s pasture called the Curtain. Part of this south end of the liberty, lying on both sides of Holywell Lane, had been leased in 1537 and 1538 to the Earls of Rutland, who continued to hold it from the Crown after the dissolution in 1539, and obtained a renewed lease in 1584.[1098] The rest of the property, including the main conventual buildings, was sold in 1544 to one Henry Webb, whose daughter Susan and her husband Sir George Peckham sold it in 1555 to Christopher Bumsted, and he in the same year to Christopher Allen and his son Giles. The alienation of 1555 was challenged as illegal by Susan Peckham’s heirs in 1582, and ultimately, but not until about thirty years later, they appear to have made good their claim.[1099] In the meantime Giles Allen had leased a part of the property, which became the site of the Theatre, to James Burbadge on 13 April 1576.[1100] This was bounded to the north by the wall of Allen’s own garden, probably corresponding to the main cloister of the convent, on the east or south-east by the Earl of Rutland’s holding, and on the west by a ditch dividing it from the open Finsbury fields. Within the ditch and divided from it by a strip of void ground, was the old brick wall of the precinct. On the extreme south was a bit of void ground lying between an Oat Barn occupied by Rutland and another Great Barn included in the lease. The Oat Barn and the void ground were in fact debatable property claimed both by Allen and Rutland. North of the Great Barn, and immediately to the east of the precinct wall was more void and garden ground; farther to the east the ‘inner court yarde’ of the convent. This held tenements backing upon Allen’s garden to the north, and others, including a mill-house, backing on the garden ground to the west. In this yard was a well, probably the eponymous ‘Holywell’, which fed a horsepond by Rutland’s stable on the south-east, and then drained away through the debatable ground to the Finsbury ditch.[1101] Since Burbadge’s barn is known to have been shored up to the Theatre, it is evident that this must have been constructed in the void and garden ground between the tenements and the precinct wall, and as there was no right of way through Rutland’s holding from Holywell Lane, an entrance was made through the wall direct from Finsbury fields. The Theatre itself, indeed, was sometimes loosely spoken of as ‘in the fields’.[1102] Working from later title-deeds of the locality, Mr. Braines has successfully located the precise site of the building in the angle now formed by Curtain Road, which occupies the strip of void ground between the precinct wall and Finsbury ditch, and New Inn Yard, which occupies a strip of the ‘debateable ground’ and a strip also of the site of the Great Barn. The site is now part of the premises of the Curtain Road Elementary School.[1103]

Burbadge’s lease was for a term of twenty-one years from Lady Day 1576. He was to pay a fine of £20 and an annual rent of £14. He covenanted to spend £200 within the first ten years in improving the existing buildings, and in return Allen covenanted to make a new lease for twenty-one years at any time within the first ten years, and also to allow the tenant at any time within the term of either lease ‘to take down such building as should within the sayd tenne yeeres be erected on the sayd voyde growndes for a theater or playinge place’. It was also agreed that Allen and his wife and family ‘vpon lawfull request therfore made’ should be entitled ‘to enter or come into the premisses and their in some one of the vpper romes to have such convenient place to sett or stande to se such playes as shalbe ther played freely without any thinge therefore payeinge soe that the sayd Gyles hys wyfe and familie doe com and take ther places before they shalbe taken vpp by any others’. Burbadge, a joiner as well as a player, had probably the technical qualifications for his enterprise. But he was a man of small means, not worth above 100 marks, and had no credit.[1104] He found a partner in his brother-in-law, John Brayne, a well-to-do grocer of Bucklersbury, who had already been connected with a play-house speculation at the Red Lion inn. The association proved a calamitous one, and its history can only be traced through the dubious ex parte statements of later litigation. Burbadge, in an unfortunately mutilated document, appears to have alleged that Brayne acquired an interest by means of a promise, which he afterwards evaded, to leave it to his sister’s children.[1105] Robert Miles, of the George Inn, Whitechapel, a friend of Brayne, who supported and ultimately inherited the case of his widow, told a different story.[1106] He had heard Burbadge ‘earnestlie insynuate’ Brayne to join in the transaction, as one which ‘wold grow to ther contynual great profitt and commodytie’. Brayne was ‘verye loth to deale in the matter’, and complained later to Miles that it was ‘his vtter vndoing’, and that he would never have touched it, but for the ‘swete and contynuall’ persuasions of Burbadge. His brother-in-law had assured him that the cost of erecting the play-house would not exceed £200, and after it had already cost £500, urged that ‘it was no matter’, and that the profits ‘wold shortlie quyte the cost vnto them bothe’. Obviously Brayne was out for profits, and had to take his risks. But if the account of Miles is to be trusted, he had also definite grievances against his partner. Burbadge’s small contribution to the outlay was partly made in material, for which he overcharged at the rate of sixpence for a groat’s worth. When funds ran short, Brayne and his wife worked as labourers on the structure, while Burbadge, if he set his hand to a job, took the regular rate of wages for it. And there is some corroboration of a more serious charge of ‘indyrect dealing’, after the house was opened, about the ‘collecting of the money for the gallories’.[1107] Miles alleged that during a space of two years Burbadge used a secret key made by one Braye, a smith in Shoreditch, to filch from ‘the commen box where the money gathered at the said playes was putt in’, thus cheating ‘his fellowes the players’ as well as Brayne. He would also ‘thrust some of the money devident betwene him and his said ffellowes in his bosome or other where about his bodye’. The Theatre was in use by 1 August 1577, as it is mentioned by name in the Privy Council inhibition of that date.[1108] But it was opened before the work was completed, and the last stages were paid for out of the profits.[1109] Moreover, in addition to what Brayne and Burbadge could find, money had to be raised on mortgage, with the result that Brayne never got full security for his interest in the undertaking. He was not a party to the original lease, thinking that if a joint lease were entered into, the survivor would take all.[1110] When a draft assurance of a moiety of the profits to him was prepared on 9 August 1577, it could not be executed because the lease was at pawn, and ultimately, on 22 May 1578, Burbadge gave him a bond of £400 to assure in due course.[1111] An assurance was, however, never made. The friction between the partners led to violent disputes. On one occasion, after high words in a scrivener’s shop, ‘Burbage did there strike him with his fist and so they went together by the eares in somuch that this deponent could herdly part them’.[1112] On 12 July 1578 they submitted their differences to arbitrators, who decided that, with the exception of 10_s._ weekly for Brayne’s housekeeping and 8s. for Burbadge’s out of the profits of ‘such playes as should be playd there vpon Sundaies’, the first charge upon the rents and profits of the property should be the repayment of debts due upon the theatre. Thereafter Brayne should take them ‘till he shuld be answered suche somes of money which he had lade out for and vpon the same Theatre more then the said Burbage had done’. And when this claim too was discharged, the rents and profits should ‘go in devydent equallye betwene them’. Should it be necessary to raise money on mortgage, it should be a joint mortgage, and its redemption would then come in as the first claim on the rents and profits. Burbadge gave Brayne a further bond of £200 for the keeping of this award.[1113] On 26 September 1579 a mortgage was in fact entered into for a loan of £125 from John Hyde, grocer, to be repaid in a year. The amount, however, was not forthcoming, and although Hyde made an arrangement to take £5 a week out of the profits, he only got it for four or five weeks. In June 1582 he arrested Burbadge and got £20 out of him. Shortly afterwards he claimed forfeiture of the lease, and as Burbadge warned him that Brayne ‘wold catch what he cold’, appointed one of his own servants with Burbadge ‘to gather vp v^{li} wekely during the tyme of playes’. In this way he got back another £20 or £30. There was, however, still at least £30 outstanding when Brayne died in August 1586.[1114] His widow Margaret claimed a moiety of the interest under the lease as his heir. At first, we hear, Burbadge allowed her ‘half of the profittes of the gallaries’, but only so long as she could lay out money ‘to the necessary vse of the said playe howsse’, and when she had so spent £30, he said that he must take all the profits until the debts were paid, made her gather as a servant, and finally thrust her out altogether.[1115] Meanwhile Hyde was getting impatient for his money. He had promised Mrs. Brayne that, if he were satisfied, he would reassure the lease to her and Burbadge jointly, but not to either party separately. But now he said that he must convey it to whichever would pay him first, and being approached through Walter Cope, the master of Burbadge’s son Cuthbert, he did in fact, on some promise that Mrs. Brayne should not be wronged, take his £30 and make over the lease to Cuthbert Burbadge on 7 June 1589.[1116] Henceforward Cuthbert, and not his father, was the ostensible tenant of the property. This transaction stimulated Mrs. Brayne to assert her claims. About a year before the Burbadges had brought an action against her in Chancery, apparently in the hope of enforcing the alleged promise of Brayne to leave his interest to his sister’s children; and she now retorted with a counteraction against James and Cuthbert, in which she claimed to have an assignment of a moiety of the lease.[1117] Her chief witness was the Robert Miles on whose statements this narrative has already drawn. He was not of unimpeachable reputation. His long association with Brayne had ended in a quarrel. Brayne had ‘charged Miles with his deathe, by certaine stripes geven him by Miles’. The widow had accused him before the coroner and procured his indictment as ‘a comon barreter’. Afterwards they had become friends, and he was now maintaining Mrs. Brayne in her suit.[1118] Much of his evidence, however, received corroboration from his son Ralph, from William Nicoll, a notary who had prepared the deeds connected with the partnership, and from Edward Collins, who had acquired Brayne’s grocery business in Bucklersbury. Burbadge, on the other hand, relied largely on one Henry Bett, who had had an opportunity of perusing Mrs. Brayne’s papers, and had then transferred his services to the other side. We cannot perhaps assume that all the evidence in the cross-suits is preserved. So far as what we have goes, there seems to have been no attempt on Burbadge’s part to defend himself against the charge of indirect dealing during the early years of partnership. Nor were the main facts as to the history of the lease much in dispute. The chief issue was as to Mrs. Brayne’s equitable claim to an interest in it, and this of course turned largely on the state of the account between Brayne and Burbadge at the death of the former. Miles asserted that the expenditure on the building of the Theatre in cash and credit had been practically all Brayne’s, that he had started as a rich man, but had had to sell his lease and stock in Bucklersbury and pawn his own wardrobe and his wife’s to get the work finished, that he was ruined, and that Mrs. Brayne was now ‘vtterlye vndone’ by the suit, and owed 500 marks to her friends.[1119] On the other side it was claimed that Brayne’s wealth, variously reputed at from £500 to £1,000, had been exaggerated, that he was already involved when he took the Theatre in hand, and that his downfall was largely due to unfortunate investments outside the partnership, especially in a soap-making business carried on with Miles at the George, where in fact Burbadge had incurred losses in helping him.[1120] Bett, moreover, said that, while Brayne ‘would never plainlie declare’ what his profits on the Theatre had been, ‘yt seemed by his taulke, that he had gayned and receyved a grete deale of monye, more than he had disbursed’.[1121] The actual figures produced in the course of the case, which are sufficient to enable us to arrive at a fair estimate of the main position, do not quite bear out this suggestion. Towards the original outlay Burbadge seems to have found about £50; Brayne as much and £239 more, which he claimed as due to him from the partnership. In addition there were outside debts outstanding at the time of his death to the amount of at least £220. Something, moreover, had already been spent out of takings before 1586 in payments on Hyde’s mortgage. So that we may perhaps reasonably accept the total cost of the building as being somewhere about the 1,000 marks (£666) at which common repute estimated it.[1122] A certain amount of building material, worth perhaps 100 marks, was still in hand. All that Brayne could be shown to have received as against his considerable outlay was a sum of £135 1_s._, for which his receipt was produced. What Burbadge had received it is difficult to say. A comparison of various estimates suggests that after Brayne’s death it may have been between £100 and £200 a year.[1123] On the other hand, he had paid off the debt of £220 which Brayne had left outstanding. And throughout he had been responsible, without aid from Brayne, for certain outgoings independent of the structure of the Theatre, for which he was entitled to claim credit. He had paid £230 in rent and laid out at least £220 in putting the tenements in order, as well as at least £30 early in 1592 on the repair of the Theatre itself.[1124]

The fortunes of the case in Chancery were various. In 1590 the Court seemed inclined to grant a sequestration of half the profits; but instead made an order that the arbitrament of 1578 should be observed.[1125] On the strength of this Mrs. Brayne and Miles came to the Theatre on more than one occasion, and claimed to appoint collectors, including one Nicholas Bishop, who was asked to stand ‘at the door that goeth vppe to the gallaries of the said Theater to take and receyve for the vse of the said Margarett half the money that shuld be gyven to come vppe into the said gallaries at that door’. They were, however, refused access, and on 16 November 1590 there was a row royal, of which independent witness was borne by John Alleyn, of the Admiral’s men, who were then playing at the Theatre. James Burbadge, ‘looking out at a wyndoe vpon them’, joined his wife in reviling them as a murdering knave and whore, and expressed his contempt for the order of Chancery; Cuthbert, who came home in the middle of the fray, backed him up; while Richard Burbadge, the youngest son, snatched up a broom-staff, and as he afterwards boasted, paid Robert Miles his moiety with a beating. He also threatened Nicholas Bishop, ‘scornfully and disdainfullye playing with this deponentes nose’. James said that at their next coming his sons should provide pistols charged with powder and hempseed to shoot them in the legs.[1126] Both Cuthbert and James were summoned on 28 November for contempt before the court, which instead of dealing with this charge proceeded to take the whole case into further consideration.[1127] This was something of a triumph for Burbadge, who continued to resist the order, and repeated with oaths that twenty contempts and as many injunctions would not force him to give up his property. This was heard by John Alleyn in the Theatre yard about May 1591, and about eight days later ‘in the Attyring housse or place where the players make them ready’, on the occasion of a dispute with the Admiral’s men about some of ‘the dyvydent money between him and them’ which he had detained, Burbadge was equally irreverent before Alleyn and James Tunstall about the Lord Admiral himself, saying ‘by a great othe, that he cared not for iij of the best lordes of them all’.[1128] Margaret Brayne died in 1593, leaving her estate to Miles, who thus became a principal in the suit.[1129] And on 28 May 1595 the court came to the decision that it could not entertain the case, until Miles had endeavoured to obtain relief at common law, by suing on the two bonds which Burbadge had given to Brayne in 1578.[1130] He does not seem to have thought it worth while to do this, probably because he saw very little chance of recovering money from James Burbadge, while Cuthbert, who now held the lease, was not a party to the bonds.[1131]

It is the personality of Burbadge rather than the conduct of the Theatre that these details illumine. But we may gather that the building was constructed mainly of timber with some ironwork, that it had a tiring-house and galleries, one at least of which was divided into upper rooms, where spectators could sit as well as stand, and that money was taken by appointed gatherers, placed in locked boxes, and subsequently shared out amongst those entitled to it.[1132] From other sources it appears that 1_d._ was charged for admission to the building and 1_d._ or 2_d._ more for a place in the galleries.[1133] Apparently the players took the entrance fee and the owners of the house the whole or an agreed proportion of the gallery money. In the winter of 1585 an interesting arrangement was entered into between Burbadge and Brayne on the one hand and Henry Lanman, owner of the neighbouring Curtain, on the other, by which during a period of seven years the Curtain was taken ‘as an Esore’ to the Theatre, and the profits of both houses pooled and equally divided between the two parties. This arrangement was still operative in 1592.[1134] Kiechel tells us that the number of galleries was three, and De Witt that the shape was that of an ‘amphitheatrum’.[1135] It is impossible to trace with any certainty the successive occupation of the Theatre by various companies of players or to reconstruct the list of plays produced upon the boards. Its occupants were Burbadge’s ‘fellows’ at the time of his frauds of 1576–8, and may reasonably be identified with Leicester’s, of whom he was certainly one in 1574.[1136] Stephen Gosson tells us in 1579 that amongst plays then ‘vsually brought in to the Theater’, were The Blacksmith’s Daughter and his own Catiline’s Conspiracies, and in 1582 assigns to the same house Lodge’s, if it was Lodge’s, Play of Plays and Pastimes given on the last 23 February, the play of The Fabii and possibly the history of Caesar and Pompey.[1137] Presumably The Fabii is The Four Sons of Fabius, presented by Warwick’s men at Court on 1 January 1580. Warwick’s men had therefore probably replaced Leicester’s at the Theatre, and it was the same men, then in the service of the Earl of Oxford, who were concerned in a riot at the Theatre on 10 April 1580.[1138] In 1582 came the controversy between Edmund Peckham and Giles Allen about the freehold of the Theatre site, as a result of which Burbadge was ‘disturbed and trobled in his possession’, and ‘the players for sooke the said Theater to his great losse’.[1139] So there was probably another change at this time. And in 1583 there was a complete reshuffling of all the London companies on the formation of the Queen’s men. Professor Wallace, who is primarily considering that part of the evidence which he has himself discovered, says that the Queen’s did not act at the Theatre.[1140] But most certainly they did. It is true that, when an inhibition against the Theatre and Curtain was obtained on 14 June 1584, the owner of the Theatre, ‘a stubburne fellow’, described himself as Lord Hunsdon’s man. Nevertheless the only companies named as concerned are the Queen’s and Arundel’s, and Burbadge may not himself have been then acting.[1141] And as to the presence of the Queen’s in the Theatre at some date there is no doubt. Tarlton is not traceable in any other company than the Queen’s, and it was at the Theatre that Tarlton made jests of Richard Harvey’s Astrological Discourse upon the Conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter, published in 1583.[1142] The Queen’s certainly did not confine themselves to the Theatre; but that they were there again in 1589 may be inferred from a mock testament of Martin Marprelate in Martins Month’s Mind, in which he is made to admit that he learned his twittle tattles ... at the Theater of Lanam and his fellows’. A marginal note in the same pamphlet indicates that it was at the Theatre that the ‘Maygame’ representing the ‘launcing and worming’ of Martin was staged, and there is other evidence that Laneham, then one of the Queen’s men, was one of the players who took a part in the ribald controversy.[1143] Gabriel Harvey’s scoff at Lyly as ‘the Foolemaster of the Theatre’ may perhaps indicate his authorship of plays for the house. In 1590–1 it is clear that the Admiral’s men, probably already associated with Strange’s, were at the Theatre, and their quarrel with Burbadge doubtless led them to cross the river and join Henslowe at the Rose. After the reconstitution of the companies in 1594, James Burbadge’s son Richard became a leading member of the Chamberlain’s men, and it is probable that, when this company left the Rose about the middle of June, it was to the Theatre that they went. Here Hamlet, which certainly belonged to them, was being acted in 1596.[1144] It must be added that the Theatre was not strictly reserved for the purposes of the legitimate drama. It was built for ‘activities’, amongst other things, according to Stowe, and prizes of the School of Defence were played at it between 1578 and 1585.[1145] On 22 February 1582, there took place at the Theatre ‘a scurvie play set oot al by one virgin, which there proved a fyemarten without voice, so that we stayed not the matter’.[1146]

It was a natural consequence of the success of Burbadge’s new departure that the Theatre and its immediate successor, the Curtain, had to bear the brunt of the Puritan denunciations of the stage. These incidentally bore witness to the costly elaborateness of the new accommodation provided for the players.[1147] Apart from the moral corruption upon which the Puritans laid most stress, there is some evidence that the position of the Theatre, with a great space of open ground before it, made it a natural focus for the disorderly elements of society. As early as 5 October 1577, just after the resumption of plays for the autumn, the Mayor and Recorder Fleetwood were listening to ‘a brabell betwene John Wotton and the Leuetenuntes sonne of the one parte, and certain ffreholders of Shordyche, for a matter at the Theater’. There was serious trouble in the course of 1584. Fleetwood wrote to Burghley how on 8 June, ‘very nere the Theatre or Curten, at the tyme of the playes, there laye a prentice sleping upon the grasse and one Challes alias Grostock dyd turne upon the too upon the belly of the same prentice; whereupon the apprentice start up, and after wordes they fell to playne bloues’; and how on 10 June, ‘one Browne, a serving man in a blew coat, a shifting fellowe, having a perrelous witt of his owne, entending a spoile if he cold have browght it to passe, did at Theatre doore querell with certen poore boyes, handicraft prentises, and strooke some of theym; and lastlie he with his sword wondend and maymed one of the boyes upon the left hand; whereupon there assembled nere a ml. people’.[1148] Unscrupulous characters might find congenial companions in the throng. Somewhere in 1594 a diamond, which had gone astray from the loot of a Spanish vessel, was shown in Finsbury Fields by a mariner to certain goldsmiths, who said that they had met him by chance at a play in the Theatre at Shoreditch.[1149] But James Burbadge had obtained for himself a tactical advantage by building outside the jurisdiction of the City and within that, less organized or more easy-going, of the Middlesex magistrates. The Corporation were powerless, except in so far as, directly by persuasion, or indirectly by invoking the Privy Council, they could stir the county bench to action. They lost no opportunity, which brawls or plague afforded, of attempting this.[1150] An exceptionally troublous year was 1580. It began with an indictment of John Brayne and James Burbadge ‘yeomen’ of Shoreditch, at the Middlesex sessions, for bringing unlawful assemblies together on 21 February and other days ‘ad audienda et spectanda quaedam colloquia sive interluda vocata playes or interludes’ by them and others ‘exercitata et practicata’ at the Theatre in Holywell, with the result of affrays and tumults leading to a breach of the peace.[1151] On 6 April was the great earthquake, which threw down chimneys in Shoreditch, and according to one account ‘shaked not only the scenical Theatre, but the great stage and theatre of the whole land’.[1152] Four days later was the riot between Lord Oxford’s men and the Inns of Court, and the two events gave the Lord Mayor an excellent opportunity of pointing out to the Council that the players of plays which were used at the Theatre were ‘a very superfluous sort of men’ and of securing a suspension of performances until after Michaelmas. The riot of 8 June 1584 similarly led to the inhibition by the Council and Fleetwood already noticed, although it is clear that this was not so permanent as the City probably hoped, when the authority for ‘the suppressing and pulling downe of the Theatre and Curten’ reached them. Matters came to a crisis again in 1597 with the production of The Isle of Dogs on the Bankside, and an appeal of the City on 28 July was answered on the same day by mandates of the Council, of which one was addressed to the Middlesex justices, and directed them to send for the owners of the Theatre and Curtain, and enjoin them to ‘plucke downe quite the stages, gallories and roomes that are made for people to stand in, and so to deface the same as they maie not be ymploied agayne to suche use’.[1153]

It is unlikely that the Theatre was ever opened again. It is certain that the Chamberlain’s men had moved to the Curtain before the end of 1597, and the abandonment of the old house is referred to unmistakably enough in a satire published in 1598.[1154] The explanation is to be found in the relations of the Burbadges to their ground landlord, Giles Allen. The following account is taken in the main from Cuthbert Burbadge’s allegations in litigation of 1600. On 1 November 1585, shortly before the termination of the first ten years of the lease, James Burbadge, as he was entitled to do, presented Allen with a draft of a new twenty-one years’ lease. This Allen evaded signing, apparently alleging that it was not in verbatim agreement with the old lease, and probably also that some of Burbadge’s covenants under the old lease had remained unfulfilled.[1155] By way of precaution, Burbadge thought it desirable to put on record in his account-book some evidence that he had spent the £200 in improving the tenements, upon which his right to remove the structure of the Theatre depended. He called in expert craftsmen, and took two ‘views’, one on 20 November 1585, another, after some further work had been done, on 18 July 1586. The first estimate was £220, the second £240. This last was later confirmed by a third view taken in connexion with the Brayne litigation in July 1591.[1156] The money had been spent, partly on ordinary repairs, partly on converting the old barn into tenements, partly on putting up two new houses, one of which was for Burbadge’s own occupation.[1157] The matter of the new lease now slumbered until the expiration of the old one on 13 April 1597 drew near. In 1596 negotiations took place between landlord and tenant, and a compromise was mooted, by which the new lease was to be granted, but for an increased rent of £24 instead of £14. Allen afterwards asserted and Cuthbert Burbadge denied that there was a proviso that after five years the building should be converted to some other use than that of a play-house.[1158] Cuthbert continued the negotiations after James Burbadge’s death in February 1597, but they finally broke down, and for a year or so the tenancy was only on sufferance.[1159] Finally, in the autumn of 1598, when Cuthbert had agreed to demands which he thought extortionate, Allen refused to accept his brother Richard as security, and all hope of a settlement disappeared.[1160] Cuthbert now resolved to avail himself of the covenant of the expired lease, under which the tenant was entitled to pull down and remove the Theatre. This he began to do, in spite of a protest from Allen’s representative, on 28 December 1598, with the concurrence of his mother and brother, and the financial aid of one William Smith of Waltham Cross.[1161] The work was still in progress on 20 January 1599, when Burbadge’s agent, Peter Street, carpenter, entered the close with ten or twelve men, and carried the timber to the other side of the river for use in the erection of the Globe. For this act Allen brought an action of trespass against Street in the Queen’s Bench, alleging that he had trampled down grass in the close to the value of 40_s._, and claiming damages for £800 in all, of which £700 represented his estimate of the value of the Theatre.[1162] Burbadge applied to the Court of Requests to stop the common law suit, alleging in effect that he was equitably entitled to act upon the covenant, even though the lease had expired, on account of the unreasonable refusal of Allen to grant the new lease when applied for, under the terms of the old one, in 1585.[1163] The issue really turned upon whether this refusal was reasonable. Allen said that James Burbadge had been a troublesome tenant, that he had converted the barn into eleven tenements, whose inhabitants became a nuisance to the parish by begging for their 20_s._ rents, that he had not repaired the building but only shored it up, that he had not spent the stipulated £200, and that £30 rent was in arrear at the time of the application of 1585 and was still unpaid.[1164] Probably these last two were the only allegations to which the court attached importance. Allen claimed that he had no remedy against James Burbadge’s estate, for he had made deeds of gift to his sons of his property, and his widow and administratrix was without funds. Burbadge, however, produced evidence of the estimates of 1585 and 1586, and suggested that his father had a counter-claim against the rent in the expense to which he had been put in maintaining his possession at the time of Peckham’s claim to the freehold. On 18 October 1600 the Court decided in his favour.[1165] Allen brought a Queen’s Bench action against him in 1601 for breach of agreement, and in 1601 complained to the Star Chamber of perjury on the part of the expert witnesses and other wrongs done him in the course of the earlier proceedings; but, although the conclusions of these suits are not on record, it is not likely that he succeeded in obtaining a favourable decision.[1166]

vii. THE CURTAIN

[Bibliographical Note.--Some rather scanty material is brought together by T. E. Tomlins, Origin of the Curtain Theatre and Mistakes regarding it in Sh. Soc. Papers, i. 29, and Halliwell-Phillipps, The Theatre and Curtain (Outlines, i. 345).]

The Curtain is included with the Theatre in Stowe’s general description of Holywell as ‘standing on the South-west side towards the field’. That it was somewhat south of the Theatre is indicated by a reference to it in 1601 as in Moorfields, a name given to the open fields lying south of and adjacent to Finsbury Fields. But, although it stood in the parish of Shoreditch and the liberty of Holywell, it was not, like the Theatre, actually within the precinct of the dissolved priory. Curtina is glossed by Ducange as ‘minor curtis, seu rustica area, quae muris cingitur’, and the description is sufficiently met by the piece of land lying outside the southern gate of the priory, and on the other side of Holywell Lane into which that gate opened.[1167] A priory lease to the Earl of Rutland of his town house in 1538 described it as ‘infra muros et portas eiusdem monasterii’, and part of the holding consisted of stables and a hay-loft ‘scituata et existentia extra portas eiusdem monasterii prope pasturam dictae Priorissae vocatam the Curtene’. Post-dissolution conveyances refer to a ‘house, tenement or lodge’ called the Curtain, and to a parcel of ground, enclosed with a wall on the west and north, called the Curtain close, which lay south of the Earl of Rutland’s house, and on which by 1581 stood various tenements, which were described as ‘sett, lyeng and being in Halliwell Lane’. The property in question formed part of the possessions of Sir Thomas Leigh of Hoxton at his death in 1543 and had formerly been conveyed to him by Lord Wriothesley. Through Leigh’s daughter Katharine it passed to her husband Lord Mountjoy. On 20 February 1567 it was sold for £40 to Maurice Long and his son William, being then in the occupation of one Wilkingeson and Robert Manne. On 23 August 1571 Maurice Long conveyed it for £200 to Sir William Allen, then Lord Mayor, possibly by way of mortgage in connexion with building speculations, since on 18 March 1581 it was in the hands of William Long, who then sold it to Thomas Herbert. There had evidently been an increase in the number of tenements on the site, and Thomas Wilkinson, Thomas Wilkins, Robert Medley, Richard Hicks, Henry Lanman, and Robert Manne are named as tenants.[1168] As Henry Lanman or Laneman had the profits of the theatre in 1585, there can be little doubt that it stood on part of the land dealt with in the conveyances. Halliwell-Phillipps thinks that it must have been situated ‘in or near the place which is marked as Curtain Court in Chassereau’s plan of Shoreditch, 1745’,[1169] and is now known as Gloucester Street. If so, it was very near the boundary between Holywell and Moorfields, much along the line of which now runs Curtain Road. But it must be remembered that Curtain Court may also have taken its name from the ‘house, tenement or lodge’ which already existed in 1567 and is mentioned as the Curtain House in the Shoreditch registers as late as 1639; and certainly in Ryther’s map (c. 1636–45) the theatre, though still bordering on Moorfields, is shown a good deal farther, both to the east and the south, than the point indicated by Halliwell-Phillipps.[1170]

The Burbadges claimed that James was the first builder of play-houses, but the Curtain must have followed very soon after the Theatre. It is not mentioned by name with its predecessor in the Privy Council order of 1 August 1577, but is in Northbrooke’s treatise of the following December. Up to 1597 its history is little more than a pendant to that of the Theatre, with which it is generally coupled in the Puritan attacks and in the occasional interferences of authority. From 1585 to 1592, indeed, it was used as an ‘easer’ to the Theatre, and the profits of the two houses were pooled under an arrangement between Henry Lanman and the Burbadges.[1171] The companies who occupied the Curtain can for the most part only be guessed at.[1172] At the time of the inhibition of 14 June 1584 it was probably occupied by Lord Arundel’s men. Tarlton appeared at it, but not necessarily after the formation of the Queen’s company.[1173] Prizes of the School of Defence were occasionally played at it from 1579 to 1583.[1174] Unlike the Theatre, the Curtain was certainly reopened after the inhibition of 1597. It is likely that the Chamberlain’s men repaired to it in October of that year, and remained at it until the Globe was ready in 1599. The same satirist, who tells us that the Theatre was closed in 1598, tells us that the Rose, which was continuously occupied by the Admiral’s men, and the Curtain were open;[1175] and a clue to the actors at it is given by Marston’s reference to ‘Curtain plaudities’ in the closest connexion with Romeo and Juliet.[1176] In 1600 Robert Armin, of the Chamberlain’s men, published his Fool upon Fool, in which he called himself ‘Clonnico de Curtanio Snuffe’. In the 1605 edition he changed the name to ‘Clonnico del Mondo Snuffe’. The direct connexion of the Chamberlain’s men with the Curtain probably ended on the opening of the Globe. But a share in it belonged to Thomas Pope, when he made his will on 22 July 1603, and another to John Underwood, when he made his on 4 October 1624. Both were of the Chamberlain’s men, although Underwood cannot have joined them until about 1608.

The Curtain did not go entirely out of use when the Chamberlain’s left it. It must have been the theatre near Bishopsgate at which Thomas Platter saw a play in September or October 1599.[1177] It is possible that Kempe (q.v.) was then playing there. In March 1600 one William Hawkins, barber, of St. Giles’s without Cripplegate was charged at the Middlesex Sessions with taking a purse and £1 6_s._ 6_d._ at the Curtain, and Richard Fletcher, pewterer, of Norwich, was bound over to give evidence.[1178]

On 22 June 1600, when the Privy Council gave authority for the opening of the Fortune, they were given to understand by the Master of the Revels that it would replace the Curtain, which was therefore to be ‘ruinated or applied to some other good use’. This arrangement seems to suggest that the Curtain was in some way under the control of Alleyn or Henslowe. It was, however, departed from, and apparently with the tacit consent of the Council, as although they had occasion on 10 May 1601 to instruct the Middlesex justices to suppress a libellous play produced at ‘the Curtaine in Moorefeilds’, they did not take, as they might have done, the point that no play ought to have been produced there at all. On 31 December they were again insisting on the limitation of the theatres in use to two; and on 31 March 1602 they again departed from their own principles by licensing Oxford’s and Worcester’s men to play at the Boar’s Head. Henceforward three companies of men players were regularly tolerated, and when a draft licence was prepared for Worcester’s, or as they had then become Queen Anne’s, men early in the following year the Curtain and the Boar’s Head were named as ‘there now usuall howsen’. The Curtain is also specified for them in the Council’s warrant for the resumption of plays on 9 April 1604. About 1606 they also took into use the Red Bull, and thereafter but little is heard of the Curtain. The Queen’s men, however, played Day, Wilkins, and Rowley’s The Travels of Three English Brothers there at some time before its entry on 29 June 1607. It was still theirs in April 1609, but may perhaps soon have passed to the Duke of York’s men. It is mentioned, with the Globe and Fortune, in Heath’s Epigrams of 1610, and plays heard ‘at Curtaine, or at Bull’ and ‘a Curtaine Iigge’ are objects of ridicule in Wither’s Abuses Stript and Whipt of 1613.[1179] It was used by an amateur company for a performance of Wentworth Smith’s Hector of Germany in 1615, and it is obscurely referred to in I. H.’s This World’s Folly of the same year.[1180] Malone gathered from Sir Henry Herbert’s office-book that it was used by Prince Charles’s men in 1622, and soon thereafter only by prize-fighters. It was still in use in 1624, and still standing in 1627.[1181]

viii. NEWINGTON BUTTS

A theatre, of which the history is very obscure, but which may have been built soon after the Theatre and Curtain, stood at Newington, a village one mile from London Bridge, divided from the Bankside by St. George’s Fields, and reachable by the road which continued Southwark High Street.[1182] Here there were butts for the practice of archery. Plays at Newington Butts, outside the City jurisdiction, are first mentioned in a Privy Council letter of 13 May 1580 to the Surrey justices. A similar letter of 11 May 1586 speaks more precisely of ‘the theater or anie other places about Newington’. A third letter, undated, but probably belonging to 1591 or 1592, recites an order of the Council restraining Strange’s men from playing at the Rose, and enjoining them to play three days a week at Newington Butts, and rescinds it, ‘by reason of the tediousness of the way, and that of long time plays have not there been used on working days’.[1183] Possibly the theatre had come into Henslowe’s hands, for his diary records that it was at Newington that the combined companies of the Admiral’s and Chamberlain’s men began their first season after the plague of 1592–4, apparently playing there from 5 to 15 June 1594, and then going their separate ways to the Rose and the Theatre respectively. The theatre is mentioned in the list given by Howes in 1631.[1184] It is said to have been ‘only a memory’ by 1599.[1185] A bad pun is called a ‘Newington conceit’ in 1612.[1186]

ix. THE ROSE

[Bibliographical Note.--All the more important documents are printed or calendared from the Dulwich MSS. with a valuable commentary in Greg, Henslowe’s Diary and Henslowe Papers, and in Collier, Memoirs of Alleyn and Henslowe’s Diary.]

The Rose owed its name to the fact that it stood in what had been, as recently as 1547–8, a rose garden.[1187] On 3 December 1552 Thomasyn, widow of Ralph Symonds, fishmonger, granted to trustees, for her own use during life and thereafter to the charitable uses of the parish of St. Mildred, Bread Street, her ‘messuage or tennement then called the little rose with twoe gardens’ formerly in St. Margaret’s and then in St. Saviour’s, Southwark. St. Mildred’s still has a plan of the estate, which extended to about three roods.[1188] A ‘tenement called the Rose’ is referred to in a recital of a lease of Henry VIII’s reign as the eastern boundary of other tenements, by name the Barge, the Bell, and the Cock, which lay ‘vppon the banke called Stewes’ in St. Margaret’s, afterwards St. Saviour’s, parish, between the highway next the Thames on the north and Maiden Lane on the south.[1189] It is located by Mr. Rendle just to the east of the still existing Rose Alley. The site therefore lay in the Liberty of the Clink midway between those afterwards occupied by the Globe on the east and the Hope on the west. On 20 November 1574 the parish let the property for thirty-one years at £7 annually to William Griffin, vintner. Griffin assigned it on 11 December 1579 to Robert Withens, vintner, and Withens on 24 March 1585 to Henslowe.[1190] There was as yet no theatre. The first mention of one as in contemplation is in an agreement of 10 January 1587 between Henslowe and one John Cholmley, citizen and grocer of London, for partnership during the next eight years and three months, should both parties live so long, in a garden plot ninety-four feet square on the Bankside in the parish of St. Saviour’s, Southwark, and ‘a playe howse now in framinge and shortly to be ereckted and sett vppe vpone the same’. Under this Henslowe undertook to have ‘the saide play house with all furniture thervnto belonginge’ set up ‘with as muche expedicion as maye be’ by John Grigges, carpenter, to pay all rents due on the premisses, and to repair the bridges and wharves belonging to them before the following Michaelmas. Cholmley undertook to bear his share of any further cost of maintaining the premises, and also to pay Henslowe the sum of £816 in quarterly instalments. In consideration of this, he was to take half of all such profits as ‘shall arysse grow be colectted gathered or become due for the saide parcell of grounde and playe howse when and after yt shalbe ereckted and sett vpe by reason of any playe or playes, that shalbe showen or played there or otherwysse howsoever’. The partners are jointly to appoint ‘players to vse exersyse & playe in the saide playe howse’, and collect sums themselves or by deputy of all persons coming to the performances ‘excepte yt please any of the saide partyes to suffer theire frendes to go in for nothinge’. Cholmley is also to have the sole right of selling food or drink on the premises and a small house already in his tenure on the south of the plot close to Maiden Lane, ‘to keepe victualinge in’ or for any other purpose, and with a right of ingress from Thames side by Rose Alley.[1191] The deed does not name the property, but it cannot be doubted that it refers to a part of the Little Rose. Presumably the theatre was to be built on a garden at the back of the holding, and the existing tenement on Bankside was not to be interfered with. Henslowe had ‘Rosse rentes’ of a residential character in 1602 or 1603.[1192] Norden’s map (1593) puts the Rose farther from the river than the Bear Garden. The Delaram and Merian drawings, on the other hand, put it very near the river, and these, although of less authority than Norden, are followed in Mr. Rendle’s plan. Probably Norden’s Bear Garden was an older one than that which afterwards became the Hope.[1193] The provision as to the wharfs and bridges seems to indicate an intention to open the Rose at Michaelmas 1587, and I see no reason to doubt that it was in fact ready for occupation by about that date. On 29 October the Privy Council called the attention of the Surrey justices to complaints from Southwark of breaches of the rule against plays on Sunday, ‘especiallie within the Libertie of the Clincke and in the parish of St. Saviour’s in Southwarke’. There may, of course, have been plays at inns in the Clink, but it is more natural to take the protest as one against the newly opened Rose. No other regular theatre existed in the Clink at this time. That the Rose was built by 1588 appears from a record of the Sewer Commission for Surrey.[1194] It is not in Smith’s plan of 1588, but this may easily not have been quite up to date.

The next that is heard of the Rose is probably in 1592.[1195] In March and April of that year Henslowe, who had recently taken his famous ‘diary’ into use as a financial memorandum book, noted in it some building expenditure, and a little later set out ‘a note of suche carges as I haue layd owt a bowte my playe howsse in the yeare of our lord 1592’.[1196] Henslowe is not known to have owned Newington Butts, or any other theatre except the Rose, and it is reasonable to assume that this is what he meant by ‘my playe howsse’. The work probably began in or before January, as an entry halfway through the list is dated on 6 February. It entailed the purchase of a barge and a certain amount of breaking up and paling and wharfing. Henslowe appears to have done the work himself and not by contract. He bought a mast, turned balusters, boards and laths, in part from the carpenter Grigges who is named in the agreement with Cholmley, and in part from a ‘timber man’ called Lee. He bought bolts, hinges, and nails from the ironmonger at the Fryingpan in Southwark and from one Brader. He bought lime, sand, chalk, and bricks. He paid wages to carpenters, workmen, and labourers, and employed painters and a thatcher. The exact nature and extent of the work are not specified, but it included the painting of the stage, the ceiling of ‘my lords rome’, and ‘the rome ouer the tyerhowsse’, and the ‘makeinge the penthowsse shed at the tyeringe howsse doore’. It has sometimes been supposed that the Rose never got built in 1587, and that these are the accounts, or part of them, for the original construction. This seems to me most unlikely. The total expense, with the exception of a small number of items lost by the mutilation of a page, only amounted to about £108. This could not cover more than repairs. On the other hand, these were clearly substantial repairs, and the fact that they were needed suggests that the building cannot have been a very new one. The lapse of five years since 1587 would, however, be consistent with the necessity for them. Almost simultaneously with the earliest dated entries in the building account, begins on 19 February 1592 the record of performances by Lord Strange’s men, which continues to the following 22 June. If these were at the Rose, the paint on the stage can hardly have been dry in time for them, unless, as Dr. Greg suggests, the payments made in March and April were for work done a little earlier. That it was at the Rose that Strange’s men played seems indicated by the Privy Council order, reciting the restraint of this company ‘from playinge at the Rose on the Banckside’, which it is difficult to assign to any year but 1591 or 1592.[1197] It is a little curious that nothing more is heard of John Cholmley, and I think the natural inference is that he was dead and that the partnership had thereby, in accordance with the terms of the agreement, been automatically dissolved.[1198]

The assumption, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, that until he acquired a share in the Fortune Henslowe had no proprietary interest in any other theatre must explain the assignment to the Rose of all the playing recorded in the diary between 1592 and the autumn of 1600, with the exception of the few performances definitely stated to have been at Newington Butts. The further conjecture must, I think, be accepted that the season begun by the Admiral’s and Chamberlain’s men at Newington Butts in the summer of 1594 was transferred, so far as the Admiral’s men were concerned, to the Rose after 15 June. If so, the Rose housed Strange’s men again from 29 December 1592 to 1 February 1593, Sussex’s from 26 December 1593 to 6 February 1594, the Queen’s and Sussex’s together from 1 to 9 April 1594, and the Admiral’s from 14 to 16 May 1594, and then regularly from the following June until their transference to the Fortune in 1600. The only actual mentions of the theatre by name in the diary during this period are in the agreements of 1597 between Henslowe and the players Jones and Borne, in which Henslowe specifies ‘the Rosse’ as ‘my howsse’ in which they are to play. It was no doubt in use when Guilpin’s Skialetheia (S. R. 8 September 1598) was written.[1199] In the Lenten interval of 1595 Henslowe made ‘A nott of what I haue layd owt abowt my playhowsse ffor payntynge & doinge it abowt with ealme bordes & other repracyones’. The expenditure reached a total of £108 19_s._, which was much about the same as that of 1592, and was supplemented in the following June by a further £7 2_s._ for carpenters’ work, including ‘mackinge the throne in the heuenes’.[1200] The accounts of 1592 and 1595 suggest that the building was of wood and plaster on a brick foundation, and this is consistent with Hentzner’s statement of 1598. Part of it, at least, was thatched. If the maps can be trusted, it was octagonal. In 1600 Henslowe had to find new occupants for the Rose. He records that Pembroke’s men began to play there on 28 October, but only enters two unprofitable performances. Possibly the Privy Council, who had decreed in the previous July a limitation of houses to one on each side of the river, interfered. But this limitation was certainly not permanent. There is a receipt for a play bought for Worcester’s men ‘at the Rose’, and they probably used the house during the term of their account with Henslowe between August 1602 and May 1603. Subsequently they moved to the Curtain and Boar’s Head. Henslowe’s lease of the site was due to expire at the end of 1605, and this explains to some extent the following entry in the diary:

‘The 25 of June 1603 I talked with M^r. Pope at the scryveners shope wher he lisse consernynge the tackynge of the leace a new of the littell Roosse & he showed me a wrytynge betwext the pareshe & hime seallfe which was to paye twenty pownd a yeare rent & to bestowe a hundred marckes vpon billdinge which I sayd I wold rather pulle downe the playehowse then I wold do so & he beade me do & sayd he gaue me leaue & wold beare me owt for yt wasse in him to do yt.’[1201]

It is impossible to say whether ‘Mr. Pope’ was Thomas Pope of the King’s men at the neighbouring Globe, or Morgan Pope, who was formerly interested in the Bear House, or some other Pope; nor is it clear how he was in a position to authorize Henslowe to pull down the theatre. Dr. Greg draws the natural inference from the wording that he may have given his consent as a prospective lessee of the property.[1202] In any case the Rose was not pulled down until two or three years later. The Sewers records show that in January 1604 not Philip but Francis Henslowe was amerced 6_s._ 8_d._ for it, which may mean that Lennox’s men were playing there; that on 4 October 1605 Philip Henslowe was amerced, but return was made that it was ‘out of his hands’; that on 14 February 1606 Edward Box, of Bread Street, London, was amerced for it; and that on 25 April 1606 Box was amerced for the site of ‘the late play-house in Maid lane’.[1203]

There is no record of plays at the Rose after 1603.[1204] It is in the Delaram engravings, but not in any later views except those of the Merian group, where it appears, flagged but unnamed, on the river edge.[1205] Nor is it mentioned with the Hope, Globe, and Swan in Holland’s Leaguer (1632). The explanation may perhaps be that the Merian engraver followed some out-of-date authority, such as Delaram, which had got the house farther north than Norden puts it, and as it had long ceased to exist, did not know its name. On the other hand, it is also just conceivable that for a short period the Rose, or some other building at the north end of the Rose site, had a renewed life as a place of public entertainment. Alleyn was paying ‘tithe dwe for the Rose’ in 1622.[1206] And Malone cites Herbert’s ‘office-book’ for a statement that after 1620 the Swan and the Rose were ‘used occasionally for the exhibition of prize-fighters’.[1207]

x. THE SWAN

[Bibliographical Note.--John de Witt’s description and plan are published in K. T. Gaedertz, Zur Kenntnis der altenglischen Bühne (1888), and more exactly by H. B. Wheatley in On a Contemporary Drawing of the Swan Theatre, 1596 (N. S. S. Trans. 1887–92, 215). They are discussed by H. Logemann in Anglia, xix. 117, by W. Archer in The Universal Review for June 1888, by W. Rendle in 7 N. Q. vi. 221, by J. Le G. Brereton, De Witt at the Swan (1916, Sh.-Homage, 204), by myself in a paper on The Stage of the Globe in The Stratford Town Shakespeare, x. 351, and in most recent treatises on Elizabethan staging; cf. chh. xviii, xx. Earlier material is collected by W. Rendle in The Play-houses at Bankside in the Time of Shakespeare (Antiquarian Magazine and Bibliographer, 1885, vii. 207). The facts as to Langley’s purchase and the pleadings and order in the suit of Shawe et al. v. Langley before the Court of Requests in 1597–8 (cited as S. v. L.) are given by C. W. Wallace, The Swan Theatre and the Earl of Pembroke’s Servants (1911, E. S. xliii. 340). T. S. Graves, A Note on the Swan Theatre (M. P. ix. 431), discusses the light thrown on the internal arrangements of the Swan by the accounts of England’s Joy in 1602.]

The Swan stood in the Liberty and Manor of Paris Garden, at the western end of the Bankside. This manor, from which the royal ‘game’ of bear-baiting took its traditional appellation, had come into the hands of the Crown as part of the possessions of the dissolved monastery of Bermondsey. It was granted in 1578 to nominees of Henry, Lord Hunsdon, conveyed by them to the Cure family, and sold for £850 on 24 May 1589 by Thomas Cure the younger to Francis Langley, a citizen and goldsmith of London. Langley, who was brother-in-law to Sir Anthony Ashley, one of the clerks to the Privy Council, held the office of Alnager and Searcher of Cloth, to which he had been appointed by the Corporation on the recommendation of the Privy Council and Sir Francis Walsingham in December 1582.[1208] The site of the theatre can be precisely identified from a plan of the manor dated in 1627, but based on a survey of 1 November 1624.[1209] It was in the north-east corner of the demesne, east of the manor-house, twenty-six poles due south of Paris Garden stairs, and immediately west of a lane leading to a house called Copt Hall. The outline shown is that of a double circle, or perhaps dodecahedron, divided into twelve compartments, with a small porch or tiring-house towards the road. The exact date of building is unknown. On 3 November 1594 the Lord Mayor wrote to Burghley that Langley ‘intendeth to erect a niew stage or Theater (as they call it) for the exercising of playes vpon the Banck side’, and detailed the usual civic objections to the stage as arguments in favour of the suppression of the project.[1210] It is probable that Burghley refused to intervene and that Langley proceeded at once with the erection of the Swan, which may then have been ready for use in 1595. It is impossible, without the Swan, to make up the tale of four ‘spielhäuser’ seen by the Prince of Anhalt in 1596 (360). To 1596 again is assigned, although with probability rather than certainty, the visit of John de Witt, who not only names but also describes and delineates the Swan.[1211] In any case the Swan had already been in use by players before February 1597, when Langley entered into an arrangement for its occupation by Lord Pembroke’s men.[1212] The terms of the lease provided that he should make the house ready and furnish apparel, which he alleged cost him £300, and should get his return for this expenditure out of the company’s moiety of the gallery takings, in addition of course to the other moiety which in accordance with theatrical custom went to him as rent.[1213] The enterprise was rudely interrupted by the production of The Isle of Dogs at the Swan itself, and the restraint of 28 July 1597 which was the result. The leading members of Pembroke’s company joined or rejoined the Admiral’s at the Rose, and became involved in litigation with Langley on account of their breach of covenant.[1214] For a time Langley succeeded in keeping a company together, and the Swan remained open.[1215] It was perhaps the intention of the Privy Council order of 19 February 1598, against an intrusive ‘third company’ which was competing with the Chamberlain’s and the Admiral’s, to close it.[1216] If so, Langley may still for a time have found means of evasion, since on the following 1 May the vestry of St. Saviour’s were viewing new buildings of his, and at the same time negotiating with Henslowe and Meade for money for the poor ‘in regarde of theire playe-houses’.[1217] During the next few years, however, such notices as we get of the Swan, while showing that it was still in existence and available for occasional entertainments, carry no evidence of any use by a regular company. Francis Meres, in his Palladis Tamia of 1598, tells us that it was the scene of a challenge in ‘extemporall’ versifying by Robert Wilson.[1218] It was one of the wooden theatres which were seen by Hentzner in the same year, and no doubt the one near which he describes the royal barge as lying.[1219] On 15 May 1600 the Council sanctioned its use for feats of activity by Peter Bromvill.[1220] On 7 February 1602 it was occupied by fencers, and while two of these, by names Turner and Dun, were playing their prizes upon its stage, Dun was unfortunate enough to receive a mortal wound in the eye.[1221] On 6 November 1602 it was chosen by Richard Vennar for his impudent mystification of England’s Joy. The accounts of this transaction show that it was fitted with ‘hangings, curtains, chairs, and stools’, and capable of scenic effects, such as the appearance of a throne of blessed souls in heaven and of black and damned souls with fireworks from beneath the stage.[1222] Meanwhile Langley had died in 1601 and in January 1602 the Paris Garden estate was sold to Hugh Browker, a protonotary of the Court of Common Pleas, in whose family it remained to 1655.[1223] About 1611 it was once more taken into use for plays. The Roaring Girl (1611), itself a Fortune play, has an allusion to a knight who ‘lost his purse at the last new play i’ the Swan’,[1224] and the accounts of the overseers of Paris Garden contain entries of receipts from ‘the play house’ or ‘the Swan’ in each April from 1611 to 1615.[1225] The last entry is of so small an amount that it probably only covered a fraction of a year, and I think the inference is that the Swan was disused on the opening of the Hope in 1614.[1226] If so, it had probably been taken over by Henslowe for the use of the Lady Elizabeth’s men, who came into existence in 1611, and whose Chaste Maid in Cheapside was published in 1630 as ‘often acted at the Swan on the Bankeside’. The Hope itself was modelled structurally upon the Swan. Its measurements were the same, and it had similar partitions between the rooms and external staircases. Its heavens, however, were to be supported without the help of posts from the stage, since this had to be removable on days of bear-baiting. It is obviously illegitimate to infer from this specification that the stage of the Swan, which was not used for bear-baiting, was also removable. The accounts of the overseers show one more payment from the ‘players’ in 1621, which perhaps supports the statement contained in one of Malone’s notes from Sir Henry Herbert’s office-book, that after 1620 the Swan was ‘used occasionally for the exhibition of prize-fighters’.[1227] The theatre is marked ‘Old Play-house’ in the manor map of 1627. The last notice of it is in Holland’s Leaguer (1632) as a famous amphitheatre, which was ‘now fallen to decay, and like a dying swanne hanging downe her head seemed to sing her own dierge’.[1228]

Many of the maps of the Bankside do not extend far enough west to take in the Swan. It is named and shown as an octagonal or decagonal building by Visscher (1616) and in maps of the Merian group (1638), but not by Hollar (1647).

xi. THE GLOBE

[Bibliographical Note.--The devolution of the Globe shares can be traced in the documents of three lawsuits: (a) Ostler v. Heminges, in the Court of King’s Bench in 1616 (Coram Rege Roll 1454, 13 Jac. I, Hilary Term, m. 692), described by C. W. Wallace in The Times of 2 and 4 Oct. 1909, and in part privately printed by him in Advance Sheets from Shakespeare, the Globe, and Blackfriars (1909), here cited as O. v. H.; (b) Witter v. Heminges and Condell, in the Court of Requests (1619–20), described by C. W. Wallace in The Century of Aug. 1910, and printed by him in Nebraska University Studies, x (1910), 261, here cited as W. v. H.; and (c) the proceedings before the Lord Chamberlain in 1635 known as the Sharers Papers, and printed by Halliwell-Phillipps in Outlines, i. 312. Professor Wallace’s descriptive articles require some corrections from the texts of his documents. Much evidence bearing upon the site of the theatre was collected by W. Rendle in The Bankside, Southwark, and the Globe Play-house (1877), printed by the N. S. S. as an appendix to Harrison, pt. ii (cited as Rendle, Bankside), in Walford’s Antiquarian, viii (1885), 209, and in The Anchor Brewery (1888, Inns of Old Southwark, 56), by G. Hubbard in Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects, 3rd series, xvii. 26, and London and Middlesex Arch. Soc. Trans. n. s. ii (1912), pt. iii, and most fully by W. Martin in Surrey Archaeological Collections, xxiii (1910), 149. Some additional facts, from records of the Sewers Commission for Kent and Surrey in the possession of the London County Council, and from deeds concerning the Brend estate, were published by Dr. Wallace in The Times of 30 April and 1 May 1914, and led to discussion by Dr. Martin, Mr. Hubbard, and others in 11 N. Q. x. 209, 290, 335; xi. 447; xii. 10, 50, 70, 121, 143, 161, 201, 224, 264, 289, 347, and by W. W. Braines in The Site of the Globe Play-house (1921). A paper by the present writer on The Stage of the Globe is in the Stratford Town Shakespeare, x. 351.]

In the building of the Globe use was made of the materials of the old Theatre (q.v.) which, according to Allen v. Burbadge (1602), the Burbadges, with Peter Street and others, pulled down on 28 December 1598, carried ‘all the wood and timber therof unto the Banckside in the parishe of St. Marye Overyes, and there erected a newe playehowse with the sayd timber and woode’.[1229] An earlier account gives the date of the audacious proceeding as 20 January 1599. The formal lease of the new site from the freeholder, Nicholas Brend of West Molesey, was executed on 21 February 1599. No doubt Street, who had assisted in the transfer, was the builder and had finished his job when on 8 January 1600 he contracted with Henslowe and Alleyn to put up the Fortune (q.v.) on the model, with certain modifications, of ‘the late erected plaiehowse on the Banck in the saide parishe of St. Saviours called the Globe’. This contract allowed twenty-eight weeks for the work. Probably the Globe took about the same time, for it is described as ‘de novo edificata’ in the inquisition on the property left by the lessor’s father, Thomas Brend, which is dated on 16 May 1599.[1230] It may not then have been quite finished, but it was doubtless ready for the occupation of the Chamberlain’s men by the beginning of the autumn season of 1599. One of the earliest plays there produced by them was Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar which on 21 September Thomas Platter crossed the water to see ‘in dem streüwinen Dachhaus’.[1231] Whether the Globe or its predecessor the Curtain was the ‘wooden O’ of Henry V, 1, prol. 13, must be more doubtful, as the prologue to Act V of the same play contemplates the triumphant return of Essex from Ireland, and in fact Essex left England on 27 March and returned, not triumphant, on 28 September 1599.[1232] Jonson refers to ‘this faire-fild Globe’ as the scene of his Every Man Out of his Humour, produced in the autumn of 1600.[1233] The Privy Council order of the previous 22 June, which enacts that there shall be one allowed house only ‘in Surrey in that place which is commonlie called the Banckside or there aboutes’, goes on to recite that the Chamberlain’s men had chosen the Globe to be that one. The allowance of the house ‘in Surrey called the Globe’ is confirmed by the Privy Council letter of 27 December 1601. The order of 9 April 1604 authorizes the opening after the plague of ‘the Globe scituate in Maiden Lane on the Banckside in the Countie of Surrey’. This order evidently contemplates that the King’s men will use the house, which was assigned to them by name as ‘theire nowe vsual howse called the Globe within our County of Surrey’ by the terms of the patent of 19 May 1603. The precedent is followed in the later patents of 1619 and 1625, and there is nothing to indicate that any other company than the Chamberlain’s or King’s men ever performed, even temporarily, at the theatre.

The Globe was held by a syndicate, composed mainly of members of the company, on a leasehold tenure. The site, which had been garden ground, was described in the original lease with some minuteness as follows:[1234]

‘totam illam parcellam fundi nuper praeantea inclusam & factam in quatuor separalia gardina nuper in tenuris & occupacionibus Thomae Burt & Isbrand Morris diers & Lactantii Roper Salter civis Londoniae continentem in longitudine ab oriente vsque occidentem ducentos & viginti pedes assisae vel eo circiter iacentem & adiungentem viae sive venellae ibidem ex vno latere & abbuttantem super peciam terrae vocatam the Parke super boream & super gardinum tunc vel nuper in tenura siue occupacione cuiusdam Johannis Cornishe versus occidentem & super aliud gardinum tunc vel nuper in tenura sive occupacione cuiusdam Johannis Knowles versus orientem cum omnibus domibus aedificiis structuris vijs easiamentis commoditatibus & pertinentiis adinde spectantibus vel aliquo modo pertinentibus quae dicta praemissa sunt scituata iacentia & existentia infra parochiam sancti Salvatoris in Southwarke in Comitatu Surria aceciam totam illam parcellam terrae nuper praeantea inclusam & factam in tria separalia gardina vnde duo eorundem nuper in tenura sive occupacione cuiusdam Johannis Robertes carpenter ac aliud nuper in occupacione cuiusdam Thomas Ditcher civis & mercatoris scissoris Londoniae scituatam iacentem & existentem in parochia praedicta in praedicto comitatu Surria continentem in longitudine ab oriente ad occidentem per estimacionem centum quinquaginta & sex pedes assisae vel eo circiter & in latitudine a borea ad austrum centum pedes assisae per estimacionem vel eo circiter iacentem & adiungentem super alio latere viae sive venellae praedictae & abbuttantem super gardinum ibidem tunc vel nuper praeantea in occupacione Willelmi Sellers versus orientem & super vnum aliud gardinum ibidem tunc vel nuper praeantea in tenura Johannis Burgram sadler versus occidentem & super venellam ibidem vocatam Mayden lane versus austrum cum omnibus domibus aedificijs structuris vijs easiamentis commoditatibus & pertinentiis ultimis recitatis praemissis seu alicui parti vel parcellae inde spectantibus seu aliquo modo pertinentibus simul cum libero ingressu egressu & regressu & passagio ... per & trans praedictam viam sive venellam iacentem & existentem inter praemissa praedicta.’

The lease was granted for a term of thirty-one years from Christmas 1598 to Christmas 1629, and conveyed the property in two equal moieties, the one to Cuthbert and Richard Burbadge and the other to William Shakespeare, Augustine Phillips, Thomas Pope, John Heminges, and William Kempe.[1235] With the exception of Cuthbert Burbadge these were all members of the Chamberlain’s company. Each moiety was charged with a ground-rent of £7 5_s._ There is nothing to show how the funds for building were found. ‘Wee’, said the Burbadges in 1635, ‘at like expence built the Globe, with more summes of money taken up at interest, which lay heavy on us many yeeres; and to ourselves wee joyned those deserveing men, Shakspere, Hemings, Condall, Philips, and others, partners in the profittes of that they call the House, but makeing the leases for twenty-one yeeres hath beene the destruction of ourselves and others, for they dyeing at the expiration of three or four yeeres of their lease, the subsequent yeeres became dissolved to strangers, as by marrying with their widdowes and the like by their children.’[1236] This is, however, not a strictly accurate account of what took place in 1599, for Condell was not one of the original ‘housekeepers’, and the original lease was for thirty-one, not twenty-one, years. In any case, the Burbadges contributed the woodwork of the Theatre.

Between the execution of the lease and the completion of the play-house, Shakespeare and his four fellows assigned their moiety to William Levison and Thomas Savage, who ‘reassigned to euerye of them seuerally a fift parte of the said moitie’, so that after the building each of the five had a ‘ioynt tenancie’ with the other four in a moiety of the ground and galleries, and was also ‘tenant in common’ during the term of the lease.[1237] Professor Wallace explains that ‘the purpose of a joint-tenancy was to prevent the breaking up and scattering of an estate into fractions by keeping the property always in the hands of the members, or the longest survivors, or survivor, of them all, thus not allowing it to descend to heirs’. The legal distinction is no doubt sound, but we shall find that, whatever the intention of the assignment and reassignment may have been, the Globe shares did in fact descend to heirs, and that a good deal of trouble and litigation was thereby caused.[1238]

Shortly after the house was built Kempe, no doubt on his withdrawal from the company, assigned his interest to Shakespeare, Heminges, and Phillips, who by further assignments to and from one Thomas Cressey brought in Pope, with the result that each of the four now held a fourth part of the moiety.[1239] Pope died before 13 February 1604 and left his interest to Mary Clark, alias Wood, and Thomas Bromley. Mary Clark must have married John Edmonds, another legatee under the will, for in 1612 an interest corresponding to Pope’s was held by John and Mary Edmonds and Basil Nicoll.[1240] Nicoll, who was Pope’s executor, was presumably acting as trustee for Thomas Bromley. Edmonds, though an actor, belonged not to the King’s men, but was a Queen’s man by 1618. One-eighth of the house, therefore, was alienated from the company in 1604. A further alienation, which proved particularly troublesome in its results, took place on the death of Phillips in May 1605. The exact facts became a matter of legal dispute. But it appears that Phillips’ interest passed first to his widow Anne as executrix, and, when her marriage in the course of 1606 to the spendthrift John Witter became known, to Heminges, who succeeded her as executor under the terms of the will. In this capacity Heminges leased an interest to the Witters on 14 February 1611 for a term of eighteen years from Christmas 1610.[1241] This interest was not a fourth, but only a sixth of the moiety, since at some date between the death of Phillips and that of Sly on 16 August 1608 the moiety had been redivided to allow of the introduction of Henry Condell and William Sly into the syndicate of housekeepers.[1242] A similar transaction took place on 20 February 1612, when Basil Nicoll and John and Mary Edmonds, then holding one-sixth of the moiety, Shakespeare and Witter, each also holding one-sixth, and Heminges and Condell, holding three-sixths, joined to convey one-seventh of the moiety to William Ostler.[1243] It must, I think, be assumed that Heminges and Condell had together purchased the share left by Sly to his son Robert.

The acquisition of the Blackfriars by the King’s men in 1608 did not, at first at least, detract from the importance of the Globe as the leading London theatre. It is so accepted by foreign visitors in 1610 and again in 1611.[1244]

On 29 June 1613 the house was ‘casually burnt downe and consumed with fier’.[1245] The event was important enough to find a record in Howes’ continuation of Stowe’s Annales:[1246]

‘Upon S. Peters day last, the play-house or Theater, called the Globe, upon the Banckside near London, by negligent discharging of a peal of ordinance, close to the south-side thereof, the thatch took fire, and the wind sodainly disperst the flame 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 Eighth. And the next spring it was new builded in far fairer manner than before.’

Many other contemporary accounts exist. Thus Thomas Lorkin wrote to Sir Thomas Puckering on 30 June:[1247]

‘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.’

On 2 July Sir Henry Wotton wrote to his nephew Sir Edmund Bacon:[1248]

‘Now, to let matters of state sleep, I will entertain you at the present with what has happened this week at the Bank’s side. The King’s players had a new play, called All is True, representing some principal pieces of the reign of Henry VIII, 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 garters, the Guards with their embroidered coats, and the like: sufficient in truth within a while to make greatness very familiar, if not ridiculous. Now, King Henry making a masque at the Cardinal Wolsey’s house, and certain chambers 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 grounds. This was the fatal period of that virtuous fabric, 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.’

On 8 July John Chamberlain wrote to Sir Ralph Winwood:[1249]

‘The burning of the Globe, or play-house, 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 tamplin or stopple of one of them lighting in the thatch that covered the house, burn’d it down to the ground in less than two hours, with a dwelling-house adjoining, and it was a great marvaile and fair grace of God, that the people had so little harm, having but two narrow doors to get out.’

Nor was poetic chronicles of the disaster lacking. On the day after the fire took place, two ballads about it were entered in the Stationers’ Register.[1250] Neither is known in print, but the use of the word ‘doleful’ suggests that one of them, of which the author was William Parrat, is probably identical with the following set of verses, preserved in manuscript:[1251]

_A Sonnett upon the pittiful burneing of the Globe playhowse in London._

Now sitt the downe, Melpomene, Wrapt in a sea-cole robe, And tell the dolefull tragedie, That late was playd at Globe; For noe man that can singe and saye [But ?] was scard on St. Peters daye. Oh sorrow, pittifull sorrow, and yett all this is true.

All yow that please to understand, Come listen to my storye, To see Death with his rakeing brand Mongst such an auditorye; Regarding neither Cardinalls might, Nor yett the rugged face of Henry the Eight. Oh sorrow, &c.

This fearfull fire beganne above, A wonder strange and true, And to the stage-howse did remove, As round as taylors clewe; And burnt downe both beame and snagg, And did not spare the silken flagg. Oh sorrow, &c.

Out runne the knightes, out runne the lordes, And there was great adoe; Some lost their hattes, and some their swordes; Then out runne Burbidge too; The reprobates, though druncke on Munday, Prayd for the Foole and Henry Condye. Oh sorrow, &c.

The perrywigges and drumme-heades frye, Like to a butter firkin; A wofull burneing did betide To many a good buffe jerkin. Then with swolne eyes, like druncken Flemminges, Distressed stood old stuttering Heminges. Oh sorrow, &c.

No shower his raine did there downe force In all that Sunn-shine weather, To save that great renowned howse; Nor thou, O ale-howse, neither. Had itt begunne belowe, sans doubte, Their wives for feare had pissed itt out. Oh sorrow, &c.

Bee warned, yow stage-strutters all, Least yow againe be catched, And such a burneing doe befall, As to them whose howse was thatched; Forbeare your whoreing, breeding biles, And laye up that expence for tiles. Oh sorrow, &c.

Goe drawe yow a petition, And doe yow not abhorr itt, And gett, with low submission, A licence to begg for itt In churches, sans churchwardens checkes, In Surrey and in Midlesex. Oh sorrow, pittifull sorrow, and yett all this is true.

John Taylor, the water-poet, has his epigram on the theme:[1252]

As gold is better that’s in fier try’d, So is the Bankside Globe, that late was burn’d; For where before it had a thatched hide, Now to a stately theator ’tis turn’d: Which is an emblem, that great things are won By those that dare through greatest dangers run.

Ben Jonson, in his Execration upon Vulcan, writes as if he had been an eye-witness:[1253]

Well fare the wise men yet, on the Bank side, My friends the watermen! they could provide Against thy fury, when to serve their needs, They made a Vulcan of a sheaf of reeds, Whom they durst handle in their holiday coats, And safely trust to dress, not burn their boats. But O those reeds! thy mere disdain of them Made thee beget that cruel stratagem, Which some are pleased to style but thy mad prank, Against 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. The Brethren they straight nosed it out for news, ’Twas verily some relict of the Stews; And this a sparkle of that fire let loose, That was raked up in the Winchestrian goose, Bred on the Bank in time of Popery, When Venus there maintained the mystery. But others fell with that conceit by the ears, And cried it was a threatning to the bears, And that accursed ground, the Paris-garden: ‘Nay,’ sighed a sister, ‘Venus’ nun, Kate Arden, Kindled the fire!’ But then, did one return, No fool would his own harvest spoil or burn! If that were so, thou rather wouldst advance The place that was thy wife’s inheritance. ‘Oh no,’ cried all, ‘Fortune, for being a whore, Scaped not his justice any jot the more: He burnt that idol of the Revels too. Nay, let Whitehall with revels have to do, Though but in dances, it shall know his power; There was a judgement shewn too in an hour.’

The Puritans did in fact draw such morals as Jonson satirized. Prynne, for example, finds the hand of God in ‘the sudden feareful burning, even to the ground, both of the Globe and Fortune play-houses, no man perceiving how these fires came’.[1254]

The Globe was at once rebuilt. It was open again by 30 June 1614, when John Chamberlain wrote to Alice Carleton that he had called upon her sister Williams, and found her ‘gone to the new Globe, to a play. Indeed’, he says, ‘I hear much speech of this new play-house, which is said to be the fairest that ever was in England, so that if I live but seven years longer, I may chance to take a journey to see it’.[1255] The manuscript continuator of Stowe, describing the end of the theatre, says that the rebuilding was ‘at the great charge of King Iames, and many Noble men and others’.[1256] The lawsuit documents contain no indication that any part of the burden fell upon any one but the ‘housekeepers’, who being bound under their lease to ‘mainteyne and repaire’ the house, resolved to ‘reedifie the same’. The first estimate of cost seems to have been about £700 to £800, for a levy of ‘50^{li} or 60^{li}’ was called upon each seventh share of the moiety.[1257] Witter was unable to meet this demand, and as he was also behindhand with his share of the ground-rent and other payments, Heminges resumed possession of the seventh and gave half of it ‘gratis’ to Henry Condell. By this time it had been ascertained that the re-edifying would be ‘a verie greate charge’, and Heminges claims that the re-edifying of Witter’s ‘parte’ had in fact cost himself and Condell ‘about the somme of cxx^{li}’.[1258] This would mean a total cost of about £1,680.[1259] Heminges appears to have taken a sub-lease at 20_s._ a year from his partners of two small parcels of the land in 1615, and to have built on them a house, probably a taphouse, as a private enterprise.[1260]

Ostler died in December 1614, and Heminges took possession of his interest and drew the profits until October 1615, when his daughter Thomasina, Ostler’s widow, brought an action against him for them, the result of which is unknown.[1261] Shakespeare died in April 1616, and his interest, if not previously alienated, would have passed under his will, with other ‘leases’ to John and Susanna Hall.[1262] At some time earlier than April 1619, probably when he joined the company about 1616, Field was admitted to be a housekeeper, and the moiety was then divided into eighths instead of sevenths.[1263] In April 1619 Witter brought an action against Heminges and Condell in the Court of Requests, to recover the interest which he had forfeited at the time of the rebuilding. He estimated the present annual value of the seventh, which he had held, at £30 to £40, and in the course of the proceedings expressed his willingness either to pay a rent of £13 6_s._ 8_d._ for the half of that seventh which Heminges had not passed over to Condell, or, alternatively, to take the profits of the houses on the site, other than the theatre, and in return for those to become responsible for the whole of the ground-rents due under the principal leases. The defence consisted in a denial of Witter’s claim to benefit under the will of Augustine Phillips, and an assertion that, after Heminges had allowed him to draw considerable sums in respect of the share, he had deserted his wife, at whose death Heminges ‘out of charitie was at the charges of the buryeing of her’. The depositions of the witnesses, who included Thomas Woodford and one James Knasborough, are unfortunately missing. Ultimately Witter failed to proceed with his case, and on 29 November 1620 the Court gave judgement for the defendants.

In October 1624 died John Underwood and left a share in the Globe in trust for his children to Condell and others as his executors. It must be supposed that he had succeeded to Field’s eighth, when the latter left the King’s men in 1619. Condell himself died in December 1627 and left his interest to his son William until he should have made £300 out of it, and thereafter to his widow. Heminges died in October 1630, and his interest passed to his son William as his executor. During the last years of their lives Heminges and Condell, following out the policy of absorption which has already been illustrated, appear to have acquired in one way or another the whole of the shares formerly held by Shakespeare, by Basil Nicoll and John Edmonds as successors of Sly, and by Underwood. This fact emerges from the records known as the Sharers Papers, which start with a petition from Robert Benfield, Eliard Swanston, and Thomas Pollard, then important members of the King’s company, to the Lord Chamberlain in 1635, to be admitted to shares as ‘housekeepers’ in the profits of the Globe and the Blackfriars.[1264] The allegations show that the Globe had been ‘formerly’ divided into sixteen shares, of which eight were held by Cuthbert Burbadge and Richard Burbadge’s widow Winifred, now Mrs. Robinson, in her own right and that of her son William, four by Mrs. Condell, and four by William Heminges. Afterwards Joseph Taylor and John Lowin were allowed to acquire shares, and later still the remaining Heminges interest was ‘surreptitiously’ purchased by John Shank. At the date of the petition, therefore, the Burbadges held seven shares, Mrs. Condell two, Shank three, and Taylor and Lowin two each. The case furnishes valuable information as to the organization of the theatre, and as to the division of outgoing and profits between the housekeepers and the actors as such. It is pretty evident that by 1635 the Globe took a secondary place to the Blackfriars in the economy of the King’s men.[1265] Shank admitted that he had bought a two years’ term of one Globe share in 1633 and a one year’s term of two more in 1634, together with interests in the Blackfriars, and seems to have thought that the £506 which he gave was full value for the purchases.[1266] The Burbadges protested against being called upon to part with any part of their property to ‘men soe soone shott up’ and not having the ‘antiquity and desert’, which had customarily been looked for in housekeepers. In support of their plea they recalled the early services of their father in the building of theatres and the claims of their family to profit by ‘the great desert of Richard Burbadge for his quality of playing’. They suggested that ‘makeing the leases for twenty-one yeeres’ to their fellows, whose widows or children subsequently alienated the profits from the company, had been their ‘destruction’. The Lord Chamberlain, however, directed that the Burbadges should transfer two shares and Shank one to the three petitioners, ‘at the usual and accustomed rates, and according to the proportion of the time and benefit they are to injoy’. This the order states, in the case of the Globe, as five years. Probably there is an error here. The terms bought by Shank were to expire in 1635, but at the time of the petition a suit was pending in the Court of Requests for the confirmation of a ‘lease paroll’ from Sir Matthew Brend for a further nine years from 25 March 1635. The original lease of 1599 from Nicholas Brend was for thirty-one years and would have expired in 1629. But on 26 October 1613, when the rebuilding of the theatre was in hand, a fresh lease extending the term to 1635 had been granted by Sir John Bodley as trustee for Nicholas’s son Matthew, who was then a minor. Not content with this, the syndicate had procured a promise of a further extension to 1644 from young Matthew himself, which he now repudiated.[1267] I think that Bodley must have taken the opportunity in 1613 to raise the ground-rent from £14 10_s._ to £20. A draft for a return of new and divided houses, made for the Earl Marshal in 1634, has the following entry:

‘The Globe play-house nere Maid lane built by the company of players, with the dwelling-house thereto adjoyninge, built with timber, about 20 yeares past, upon an old foundation, worth 14^{li} to 20^{li} per ann., and one house there adjoyning built about the same tyme with timber, in the possession of W^m Millet, gent., worth per ann. 4^{li} [In margin, Play-house & house, S^r Mathew Brend’s inheritance].’

A corrected return of 1637 runs:

‘The Globe play-house nere Maide lane built by the Company of Players with timber about 20 yeares past uppon an old foundacion, worth 20^{li} per ann. beinge the inheritance of S^r Mathew Brand, K^{nt}.’[1268]

The petitioners in the Sharers Papers declare that up to Lady Day 1635 the rent for the Globe and Blackfriars together was not above £65. The original rent of the Blackfriars was £40, but this also may have been put up on the expiration of the first lease in 1629. The Court of Requests finally confirmed the extension of the lease to 1644, apparently at a still further increased rent of £55, as Shank states the combined rent of the two houses as £100. The Globe was ‘pulled downe to the ground, by Sir Matthew Brand, on Munday the 15 of April 1644, to make tenements in the room of it’; that is to say, immediately upon the expiration of the nine years’ term from Lady Day 1635 contemplated in the Sharers Papers.[1269]

The precise locality of the Globe has been matter of controversy. The various contemporary documents already quoted place it beyond doubt in Surrey, and ‘on the Bankside’, a term which must certainly be taken to cover, not merely the row of houses looking directly upon the river, but also the whole of the western part of Southwark lying behind and south of these. With somewhat greater minuteness, the parish of St. Mary Overies is specified in the lawsuit of Allen v. Burbadge, and the parish of St. Saviour’s in the Fortune contract. There is no inconsistency here. The two ancient parishes of St. Mary Magdalen and St. Margaret on the Hill were amalgamated under the name of St. Saviour’s at the Reformation.[1270] I do not know that the ancient boundaries are upon record. The Rose stood in what had been St. Margaret’s, and one would therefore expect to find the Globe nearer than the Rose to the old priory church of St. Mary’s. In the Privy Council order of 1604 the situation is described as ‘in Maiden lane’, and in the return to the Earl Marshal of 1637 as ‘nere Maide lane’. But, apart from the difference between ‘in’ and ‘nere’, Maiden Lane is a fairly long thoroughfare, and so far as these indications are concerned, the Globe may have been either to the north or the south of it. Local tradition, as elaborated by Southwark antiquaries, has been inclined to put it to the south, within the area occupied by what was formerly Thrale’s and is now Barclay and Perkins’s Anchor Brewery, of which Maiden Lane, now Park Street, forms the northern boundary. The main reason for this is the inclusion within the brewery of the course of a passage known as Globe Alley, which ran west from Deadman’s Place in a parallel line to Maiden Lane for about 360 feet and then turned northwards for another 100 feet until it debouched into the Lane. So far as measurements go, Globe Alley might be the venella of the 1599 lease. The name first appears in the St. Saviour’s token book for 1614, where it is applied to houses formerly described as Brand’s Rents, and from 1613 onwards as Sir John Bodley’s Rents.[1271] Land south of Maiden Lane certainly formed part of the Brend estate, and a plot of it conveyed by Sir Matthew Brend to one Hilary Memprise in 1626 was bounded on the south by a sewer dividing it from the Bishop of Winchester’s park, and on the north by ‘the alley or way leading to the Gloabe Play-house commonly called Gloabe Alley’.[1272] A century later, property acquired for the brewery in 1732 is similarly described as ‘fronting a certain alley or passage called Globe Alley, in antient times leading from Deadman’s Place to the Globe Play-house’.[1273]

It was certainly a belief in the Thrale family that the site of the theatre itself had passed into their hands. Mrs. Piozzi, Johnson’s friend, who married Henry Thrale in 1763, left the following autobiographical note of her residence in Southwark between that date and her husband’s death in 1781:

‘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 thrown down by M^r 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 laid it down in a grass-plot. Palmyra was the name it went by, I suppose, among the clerks and servants of the brewhouse.... But there were really curious remains of the old Globe Play-house, which though hexagonal in form without, was round within.’[1274]

Dr. Martin seems to think that the lady’s recollection was confused and that the garden called Palmyra stood on the east of Deadman’s Place opposite to Globe Alley. But, according to Concanen and Morgan it was ‘on the opposite side of the street’ to the brewery.[1275] However this may be, there are other notices which show that, however complete the demolition of 1644, the theatre or part of it was still regarded by tradition as standing a hundred years later amongst the tenements by which it was replaced.[1276] In 1787 the brewery was purchased by Barclay and Perkins, and the conveyance recites amongst other property a plot of ground between Globe Alley and a common sewer, from which had been cleared in 1767 some ‘ruinous and decayed’ tenements formerly occupied in 1715 by John Knowles and others.[1277] This is probably the clearance referred to by Mrs. Piozzi. Under Acts of 1786 and 1812 Globe Alley was closed, and it is now covered over within the brewery precinct. Horwood’s map of 1799 shows the eastern end already obliterated. The western end is called Globe Walk, and to the north of it is Globe Court, perhaps representing the space cleared in 1767.

On the assumption that the theatre stood in Globe Alley, there has been divergence of opinion as to the precise part of the Alley in which it stood. Mr. Rendle fixed on a spot on the north side, about 80 or 100 feet from the Deadman’s Place end.[1278] To this he was guided, partly by a further local tradition, according to which the site was occupied successively by a meeting-house and a windmill, and partly by an argument derived from the entries in the St. Saviour’s token-book for 1621.[1279] Here, under the heading ‘Sir John Bodley’s Rentes’ are recorded in succession about ten names. Then comes a new heading, differently written, ‘Gloab Alley’, then two more names, then in the margin of the page the word ‘Gloabe’. This Mr. Rendle took to mean that the Globe was about twelve houses from the east end of the alley. If this is an indication of the site of the Globe at all, which is a mere conjecture, I should myself draw the inference that it stood, not twelve, but two houses from the end of the alley, and that a part, if not the whole, of Bodley’s Rents was outside the alley. And why should the enumerator be supposed to have worked from the east, rather than from the north end of the alley? Dr. Martin, in fact, turns Mr. Rendle’s argument round in this way, and uses the token-book to support a theory which places the theatre south of Globe Alley, just at the angle where it turns to the north, and 360 feet, instead of Mr. Rendle’s 80 or 100 feet, west of Deadman’s Place.[1280] Here it appears to be located in a borough history of 1795;[1281] and is certainly located in more than one early nineteenth-century plan.[1282] Dr. Martin has attempted to obtain confirmation of this siting from an investigation of the brewery title-deeds. From 1727 onwards the history of the angle site is clear. In that year it was transferred, subject to a mortgage, by Timothy Cason and his wife Elizabeth, heiress of the Brend estate, to certain parishioners of St. Saviour’s. Upon it was built the parish workhouse referred to by Concanen and Morgan. This stood just at the outer south-west angle of Globe Alley, which Dr. Martin conceives to have been occupied by the theatre. In 1774 a new workhouse was built, and the site of the old one bought by the Thrales. It was conveyed with the rest of the brewery to Barclay and Perkins in 1787, and was then described as the ground ‘on which lately stood all that great shop or workhouse formerly used for a meeting-house’. Dr. Martin thinks that this forgotten meeting-house may have been confused in local tradition with that further to the east along Globe Alley.[1283] Dr. Martin suggests that the property transferred by the Casons in 1727 is to be identified with that described in a deed executed by the same persons in 1706, of which a copy is also to be found amongst the brewery title-deeds, as consisting of tenements built ‘where the late play-house called the Globe stood and upon the ground thereunto belonging’. If this were so, he would of course have proved his point. The deed of 1706 seems to have been a family settlement covering various fragments of Brend property in Southwark, which had only just been brought together in the hands of Elizabeth Cason. The Globe site had been settled by Sir Matthew Brend in 1624 upon his wife Frances as a jointure. She died in 1673, and it then passed as a jointure to Judith, wife of Sir Matthew’s son Thomas and mother of Elizabeth, under a deed of 1655 in which the reference to ‘the late play-house called the Globe’, repeated in that of 1706, first occurs. Judith Brend had died in 1706.

As a matter of fact, it is almost impossible to reconcile the Southwark tradition that the Globe stood on the south of Maiden Lane, either in Mr. Rendle’s or in Dr. Martin’s interpretation of it, with more than one bit of evidence which we owe to the research of Professor Wallace. The first of these is the lease of 1599 itself, as recited in the pleadings of Ostler v. Heminges. This states quite clearly that the leased plot abutted on a piece of land called the Park ‘super boream’ and on Maiden Lane ‘versus austrum’, and it is difficult to take very seriously either the Latinity which makes ‘versus austrum’ mean that the leased plot was on the south, or the suggestion that the draughtsman was working carelessly from a plan which had the south instead of the north of the plot at the top of the sheet, and got the points of his compass wrong.[1284] I daresay that such things do sometimes happen in conveyancer’s offices, but it is hardly legitimate to call them in aid as a canon of interpretation. No doubt it is tempting to identify the piece of land called the Park with the Bishop of Winchester’s park, which lay at a reasonable distance to the south and not to the north of Maiden Lane, but after all this must once have extended nearly up to the Bankside, since Maiden Lane itself is known to have been cut out of it, and it is not at all improbable that some little strip of land retained the name.[1285] It can only have been a very little one. The lease describes the Globe site as consisting of two plots lying apparently on opposite sides of a way or alley (venella) by which access was obtainable to them. One of these, that next the Park, had been the gardens of Thomas Burt, Isbrand Morris, and Lactantius Roper. It was 220 feet in length and lay between the garden of John Knowles on the east and John Cornish on the west. The southern plot, bounded by Maiden Lane on the south, had similarly been the gardens of John Roberts and Thomas Ditcher. This was only 156 feet long and 100 feet deep, and lay between the gardens of William Sellers to the east and John Burgram to the west. Now the whole space between Maiden Lane and the Thames is only from 200 to 350 feet at various points, so that there could not have been room for much of a ‘park’ between the Globe site and the Bankside houses.

The evidence of the lease is confirmed in various ways by the records of presentments made by the Commissioners of Sewers for Kent and Surrey against negligent occupiers in this marshy neighbourhood. The most important entry is one of 14 February 1606:

‘It is ordered that Burbidge and Heminges and others, the owners of the Play-house called the Globe in Maid-Lane shall before the xx^{th} day of Aprill next pull vp and take cleane out of the Sewar the props or postes which stand vnder their bridge on the north side of Mayd-lane vpon paine to forfeit xx^s.’

This is endorsed ‘done’, but another order of the same day requiring the same men to ‘well and sufficientlye pyle boorde and fill vp viij poles more or lesse of theire wharfe against theire said Play-house’ needed a repetition on 25 April before it received attention.[1286] Earlier records, before the Globe came into existence, relate to some of the garden-holders named in the lease. A plot of John Bingham or Burgram abutted on a Maiden Lane sewer in 1596, and this is probably identical with the ‘common sewer leading from Sellors gardin to the beare garden’, which William Sellers and others were ordered to cleanse on 5 December 1595. Certainly the bear garden was to the north and not the south of Maiden Lane. There was also a sewer bordering upon the park, and on this Jasper Morris and Thomas Burt had encroached in 1593.[1287]

The old maps, as usual, do not give much help when it comes to a pinch, although the balance of their authority, for what it is worth, seems to me to be in favour of a northern site.[1288] Mr. Hubbard, calculating from Visscher’s map, would put the Globe on the site of the present Central Wharf, 15 feet south of the Bankside houses and 136 feet west of Bank End, and therefore not very near Maiden Lane at all.[1289] I do not think that he sufficiently recognizes the imperfections of the maps from a surveyor’s point of view. I doubt whether more is to be got out of them than that the Globe stood more to the east and probably more to the south than either the Hope or the Rose.[1290]

The foregoing paragraphs show the state of the controversy when the body of this chapter was written. Since then Mr. Braines has taken up the investigation where it was left by Dr. Martin, with the help of the brewery title-deeds and many other documents bearing on the distribution of tenements in Maiden Lane and Globe Alley over more than a century. It now seems clear that, in view of the known history of properties north of Maiden Lane, there is no room for the Globe plot there, that this plot did pass from the Casons to the workhouse and ultimately the brewery, and that it did lie at Dr. Martin’s angle site, being indeed precisely located on the map by Concanen and Morgan’s description of 1795. We must therefore assume that the points of the compass were, as Dr. Martin conjectured, inverted in the lease of 1599, east with west and north with south, and that the Globe company maintained a bridge over the sewer on the opposite side of Maiden Lane to the theatre, for the convenience of visitors coming down Horseshoe Alley from the river. The venella of 1599 must have been a westward extension of Globe Alley, afterwards disused.

Some notion of the structural character of the Globe may be gleaned from the builder’s contract for the Fortune in 1600.[1291] The Globe was then the last new thing in theatres, and in entering into his agreement for the Fortune with Peter Street, the builder of both houses, Henslowe was careful to specify that the Globe should be taken as the model, alike as regards the arrangement of the galleries and staircases, the contrivances and fashioning of the stage, and all other minor points not particularly indicated. The only alterations of design set out in the agreement were that the scantlings or standard measurements of the timber should be rather stouter than those of the Globe, and that the main posts of the stage and auditorium should be shaped square and carved with figures of satyrs. It is probable, however, that a more important difference is passed without notice. The Fortune was rectangular; the Globe was almost certainly round. The reference to a circular house in Henry V and A Warning for Fair Women, both plays of about 1599, may indeed belong to the Curtain rather than the Globe, but there are similar references in E. M. O. (1599) and in The Merry Devil of Edmonton (1608), which are certainly Globe plays, and there seems no reason to doubt that the Globe is represented by the cylindrical buildings, windowless below, windowed and of narrower diameter above, which are shown in the maps of the Hondius group and in the background of Delaram’s portrait of James I.[1292] A few details are furnished by the various narratives of the fire of 1613. The roof was thatched, whence arose the accident. The walls were of timber, for nothing was burnt but wood and straw. The building was ‘flanked with a ditch, and forced out of a marish’. It had a stage-house ‘round as taylors clewe’, and carried a silken flag. There were two narrow doors, and hard by stood an alehouse. The new Globe built after the fire was tiled for greater safety. In other respects there was probably no great change. The building is described in 1634 as of timber, upon an old foundation. The maps, if they can be trusted, figure it as polygonal, rather than strictly round. No doubt it was round inside; an ‘amphytheator’, it is called in Holland’s Leaguer. The Sharers Papers of 1635 mention the tiring-house door, at which money was taken. James Wright tells us that it was a summer house, large and partly open to the weather, and that the acting was always by daylight. Malone conjectured that the name ‘Globe’ was taken from the sign, ‘which was a figure of Hercules supporting the Globe, under which was written Totus mundus agit histrionem’.[1293] I do not know where he got this information.

xii. THE FORTUNE

[Bibliographical Note.--Most of the documents are at Dulwich, and are printed in full or in abstract by W. W. Greg in Henslowe Papers, and by J. P. Collier in Alleyn Memoirs and Alleyn Papers. The Register of the Privy Council adds a few of importance. Valuable summaries of the history of the theatre are given by W. W. Greg, Henslowe’s Diary, ii. 56, and W. Young, History of Dulwich College (1889), ii. 257. The Catalogue of the Manuscripts and Muniments at Dulwich (1881–1903) by G. F. Warner and F. B. Bickley is also useful.]

The settlement of the Chamberlain’s men in 1599 at the Globe, hard by the Rose, on Bankside, probably led Henslowe and Alleyn to plan during the same year a countermove, by the transference of the Admiral’s men to a new theatrical locality in the rapidly growing districts on the north-west boundary of the City. The Rose, although not built fifteen years, was in decay, and the swamps of the Bankside had not, especially in bad weather, proved attractive to visitors. The new centre might be expected to serve in summer and winter alike, and, while in a place ‘remote and exempt’ from the City jurisdiction, would be convenient for the well-to-do population, which was establishing itself in the western suburbs, along the main roads of Holborn and the Strand. The Fortune on the north, and the Blackfriars, opened about the same time on the south, delimited a region which has remained almost to our own day the head-quarters of the stage. The actual site selected lay just outside Cripplegate between Golding or Golden Lane and Whitecross Street, in the county of Middlesex, the lordship or liberty of Finsbury, and the parish of St. Giles without Cripplegate. The title-deeds at Dulwich make it possible to trace the history of the property or part of it back to the reign of Henry VIII, but for the present purpose it is sufficient to begin with 11 July 1584, the date of a lease by Daniel Gill, son of William Gill, gardener, to Patrick Brewe, goldsmith, of five tenements on the east side of Golding Lane and one on the west side of Whitecross Street at a rent of £12 a year. This lease Brewe assigned to Alleyn on 22 December 1599, for a sum of £240. Subsequently, in 1610, Alleyn bought up a reversionary lease for £100, and also, after troublesome negotiations with the numerous descendants of Daniel Gill, the freehold of the property for £340.[1294] This purchase, however, and probably also the original lease, included a good deal more than the actual plot on which the theatre was built. The deed of sale recites six tenements on the east of Golden Lane and six on the west of Whitecross Street. It is pretty clear, from the boundaries described, as compared with those in a temporary assignment by Alleyn of the lease, that the property dealt with in 1584 and in 1610 was the same, and it is natural to conclude that Alleyn had himself added to the number of tenements.[1295] This is confirmed by a note of Alleyn’s that, in addition to building the play-house, he spent £120 ‘for other priuat buildings of myn owne’. One such building adjoined the south side of the play-house in 1601.[1296] Alleyn’s note gives the cost of the play-house itself as £520, making up with the private buildings and the purchase of leasehold, reversion, and freehold, a total expenditure of £1,320.[1297] The contract for building the framework was taken by Peter Street, carpenter, at £440, which presumably left Alleyn £80 for the painting and other decorative work excluded from the contract. The following is the text of the contract, which is preserved at Dulwich:[1298]

‘This Indenture made the Eighte daie of Januarye 1599, and in the Twoe and Fortyth yeare of the Reigne of our sovereigne Ladie Elizabeth, by the grace of god Queene of Englande, Fraunce and Irelande, defender of the Faythe, &c. betwene Phillipp Henslowe and Edwarde Allen of the parishe of S^{te} Saviours in Southwark in the Countie of Surrey, gentlemen, on thone parte, and Peeter Streete, Cittizen and Carpenter of London, on thother parte witnesseth That whereas the saide Phillipp Henslowe & Edward Allen, the daie of the date hereof, haue bargayned, compounded & agreed with the saide Peter Streete ffor the erectinge, buildinge & settinge upp of a new howse and Stadge for a Plaiehouse in and vppon a certeine plott or parcell of grounde appoynted oute for that purpose, scytuate and beinge nere Goldinge lane in the parishe of S^{te} Giles withoute Cripplegate of London, to be by him the saide Peeter Streete or somme other sufficyent woorkmen of his provideinge and appoyntemente and att his propper costes & chardges, for the consideracion hereafter in theis presentes expressed, made, erected, builded and sett upp in manner & forme followinge (that is to saie); The frame of the saide howse to be sett square and to conteine ffowerscore foote of lawfull assize everye waie square withoutt and fiftie fiue foote of like assize square everye waie within, with a good suer and stronge foundacion of pyles, brick, lyme and sand bothe without & within, to be wroughte one foote of assize att the leiste aboue the grounde; And the saide fframe to conteine three Stories in heighth, the first or lower Storie to conteine Twelue foote of lawfull assize in heighth, the second Storie Eleaven foote of lawfull assize in heigth, and the third or vpper Storie to conteine Nyne foote of lawfull assize in height; All which Stories shall conteine Twelue foote and a halfe of lawfull assize in breadth througheoute, besides a juttey forwardes in either of the saide twoe vpper Stories of Tenne ynches of lawfull assize, with ffower convenient divisions for gentlemens roomes, and other sufficient and convenient divisions for Twoe pennie roomes, with necessarie seates to be placed and sett, aswell in those roomes as througheoute all the rest of the galleries of the saide howse, and with suchelike steares, conveyances & divisions withoute & within, as are made & contryved in and to the late erected Plaiehowse on the Banck in the saide parishe of S^{te} Saviours called the Globe; With a Stadge and Tyreinge howse to be made, erected & settupp within the saide fframe, with a shadowe or cover over the saide Stadge, which Stadge shalbe placed & sett, as alsoe the stearecases of the saide fframe, in suche sorte as is prefigured in a plott thereof drawen, and which Stadge shall conteine in length Fortie and Three foote of lawfull assize and in breadth to extende to the middle of the yarde of the saide howse; The same Stadge to be paled in belowe with good, stronge and sufficyent newe oken bourdes, and likewise the lower Storie of the saide fframe withinside, and the same lower storie to be alsoe laide over and fenced with stronge yron pykes; And the saide Stadge to be in all other proporcions contryved and fashioned like vnto the Stadge of the saide Plaie howse called the Globe; With convenient windowes and lightes glazed to the saide Tyreinge howse; And the saide fframe, Stadge and Stearecases to be covered with Tyle, and to haue a sufficient gutter of lead to carrie & convey the water frome the coveringe of the saide Stadge to fall backwardes; And also all the saide fframe and the Stairecases thereof to be sufficyently enclosed withoute with lathe, lyme & haire, and the gentlemens roomes and Twoe pennie roomes to be seeled with lathe, lyme & haire, and all the fflowers of the saide Galleries, Stories and Stadge to be bourded with good & sufficyent newe deale bourdes of the whole thicknes, wheare need shalbe; And the saide howse and other thinges beforemencioned to be made & doen to be in all other contrivitions, conveyances, fashions, thinge and thinges effected, finished and doen accordinge to the manner and fashion of the saide howse called the Globe, saveinge only that all the princypall and maine postes of the saide fframe and Stadge forwarde shalbe square and wroughte palasterwise, with carved proporcions called Satiers to be placed & sett on the topp of every of the same postes, and saveinge alsoe that the said Peeter Streete shall not be chardged with anie manner of pay[ntin]ge in or aboute the saide fframe howse or Stadge or anie parte thereof, nor rendringe the walls within, nor seeling anie more or other roomes then the gentlemens roomes, Twoe pennie roomes and Stadge before remembred. Nowe theiruppon the saide Peeter Streete dothe covenant, promise and graunte ffor himself, his executours and administratours, to and with the saide Phillipp Henslowe and Edward Allen and either of them, and thexecutours and administratours of them and either of them, by theis presentes in manner & forme followeinge (that is to saie); That he the saide Peeter Streete, his executours or assignes, shall & will att his or their owne propper costes & chardges well, woorkmanlike & substancyallie make, erect, sett upp and fully finishe in and by all thinges, accordinge to the true meaninge of theis presentes, with good, stronge and substancyall newe tymber and other necessarie stuff, all the saide fframe and other woorkes whatsoever in and vppon the saide plott or parcell of grounde (beinge not by anie aucthoretie restrayned, and haveinge ingres, egres & regres to doe the same) before the ffyue & twentith daie of Julie next commeinge after the date hereof; And shall alsoe at his or theire like costes and chardges provide and finde all manner of woorkmen, tymber, joystes, rafters, boordes, dores, boltes, hinges, brick, tyle, lathe, lyme, haire, sande, nailes, lade, iron, glasse, woorkmanshipp and other thinges whatsoever, which shalbe needefull, convenyent & necessarie for the saide fframe & woorkes & euerie parte thereof; And shall alsoe make all the saide fframe in every poynte for Scantlinges lardger and bigger in assize then the Scantlinges of the timber of the saide newe erected howse called the Globe; And alsoe that he the saide Peeter Streete shall furthwith, aswell by himself as by suche other and soemanie woorkmen as shalbe convenient & necessarie, enter into and vppon the saide buildinges and woorkes, and shall in reasonable manner proceede therein withoute anie wilfull detraccion vntill the same shalbe fully effected and finished. In consideracion of all which buildinges and of all stuff & woorkemanshipp thereto belonginge, the saide Phillipp Henslowe & Edward Allen and either of them, ffor themselues, theire, and either of theire executours & administratours, doe joynctlie & seuerallie covenante & graunte to & with the saide Peeter Streete, his executours & administratours by theis presentes, that they the saide Phillipp Henslowe & Edward Allen or one of them, or the executours administratours or assignes of them or one of them, shall & will well & truelie paie or cawse to be paide vnto the saide Peeter Streete, his executours or assignes, att the place aforesaid appoynted for the erectinge of the saide fframe, the full somme of Fower hundred & Fortie Poundes of lawfull money of Englande in manner & forme followeinge (that is to saie), att suche tyme and when as the Tymber-woork of the saide fframe shalbe rayzed & sett upp by the saide Peeter Streete his executours or assignes, or within seaven daies then next followeinge, Twoe hundred & Twentie poundes, and att suche time and when as the saide fframe & woorkes shalbe fullie effected & ffynished as is aforesaide, or within seaven daies then next followeinge, thother Twoe hundred and Twentie poundes, withoute fraude or coven. Prouided allwaies, and it is agreed betwene the saide parties, that whatsoever somme or sommes of money the saide Phillipp Henslowe & Edward Allen or either of them, or the executours or assignes of them or either of them, shall lend or deliver vnto the saide Peter Streete his executours or assignes, or anie other by his appoyntemente or consent, ffor or concerninge the saide woorkes or anie parte thereof or anie stuff thereto belonginge, before the raizeinge & settinge upp of the saide fframe, shalbe reputed, accepted, taken & accoumpted in parte of the firste paymente aforesaid of the saide some of Fower hundred & Fortie poundes, and all suche somme & sommes of money, as they or anie of them shall as aforesaid lend or deliver betwene the razeinge of the saide fframe & finishinge thereof and of all the rest of the saide woorkes, shalbe reputed, accepted, taken & accoumpted in parte of the laste pamente aforesaid of the same somme of Fower hundred & Fortie poundes, anie thinge abouesaid to the contrary notwithstandinge. In witnes whereof the parties abouesaid to theis presente Indentures Interchaungeably haue sett theire handes and seales. Yeoven the daie and yeare ffirste abouewritten.

P S

Sealed and deliuered by the saide Peter Streete in the presence of me William Harris Pub[lic] Scr[ivener] And me Frauncis Smyth appr[entice] to the said Scr[ivener]

[Endorsed:] Peater Streat ffor The Building of the Fortune.

The constant references in the terms of the contract to the model of the Globe, while bearing testimony to the stimulus which the building of the Globe had given to theatrical competition, leaves some uncertainty as to many details of planning, and it is matter for regret that the ‘plot’ of the stage and staircases furnished to the builder has not itself been preserved. We learn, however, that the house was a square one, 80 feet each way by outside and 55 feet by inside measurement; that the stage was 43 feet wide and projected into the middle of the yard; that the framework was of wood, on a foundation of brick and piles, and with an outer coating of plaster; that the framework and stage were boarded within and strengthened with iron pikes; that there were three galleries rising to a total height of 32 feet, and that sections of these were partitioned off and ceiled as ‘gentlemens rooms’, of which there were four, and ‘two-penny rooms’; that the tiring-house had glazed windows; that there was a ‘shadowe or cover’ over the stage, and that this, with the galleries and staircases, were tiled and supplied with lead gutters to carry off the rain-water. Two divergences from the Globe model are specified: the timber work is to be stouter, and the principal posts of the frame work and stage are to be square and carved with satyrs. An ingenious attempt has been made by Mr. William Archer and Mr. W. H. Godfrey to reconstruct the plan of the theatre from these and other indications, with a liberal allowance of conjecture.[1299] It will be observed that Henslowe, as well as Alleyn, was a party to the contract; but it is pretty clear from Alleyn’s note already referred to that he found the money, and although Henslowe did in fact become his partner in the enterprise, this was under a lease of 4 April 1601, whereby he took over a moiety of the play-house and its profits for a term of twenty-four years from the previous 25 March at an annual rent of £8.[1300] This lease did not include Alleyn’s private tenements, but it did include some enclosed ‘growndes’ on the north and west of the house, and a passage 30 feet long by 14 feet wide running east from the south-west angle of the building ‘from one doore of the said house to an other’. It is, I think, to be inferred from this that the main approach to the earlier Fortune theatre was from the Golden Lane side. The contract with Street is dated on 8 January 1600 and provides for the completion of the work by the following 25 July, and for the payment of the price in two instalments, one when the framework was up and the other upon completion. In fact, however, the acquittances by Street and others, endorsed upon the Dulwich indenture, show that Henslowe acted as a kind of banker for the transaction, and made advances from time to time to Street, or to pay workmen or purchase materials, all of which were debited against the amounts payable under the contract. Work seems to have begun before 17 January. By 20 March Henslowe had paid £180 and by 4 May £240. It is therefore a little puzzling to find a payment ‘at the eand of the fowndations’ on 8 May. About £53 more was paid before 10 June, making nearly £300 in all by that date. The last entry is one of 4s. to Street ‘to pasify him’, which suggests that some dispute had taken place. Here the acquittances stop, but Henslowe’s Diary indicates that he was frequently dining in company with Street from 13 June to August 8, and probably the work was completed about the latter date.[1301] Alleyn had had to face some opposition in carrying out his project. He began by arming himself with the authority of his ‘lord’, the Earl of Nottingham, who wrote in his favour to the Middlesex justices on 12 January 1600, explaining the reasons for leaving the Bankside and the general convenience of the new locality, and citing the Queen’s ‘special regarde of fauor’ towards the company as a reason why the justices should allow his servant to build ‘w^{th}out anie yo^r lett or molestation’. This action did not prove sufficient to avert a local protest. Lord Willoughby and others complained to the Council, who on 9 March wrote to the Middlesex justices informing them that the erection of a new play-house, ‘wherof ther are to manie allreadie not farr from that place’, would greatly displease the Queen, and commanding the project to be ‘staied’. Alleyn, however, was secure in the royal favour. He also, by offering a weekly contribution to the relief of the poor, succeeded in obtaining a certificate from the petty officials and other inhabitants of Finsbury of their consent to the toleration of the house; and on 8 April the Council wrote again to the justices, withdrawing their previous inhibition and laying special stress on Elizabeth’s desire that Alleyn personally should revive his services as a player, ‘wheareof, of late he hath made discontynuance’. The letter also referred to the fact that another house was pulled down instead of the Fortune, and a formal Privy Council order of 22 June, laying down that there shall in future be one house in Middlesex for the Admiral’s men, and one on the Bankside for the Chamberlain’s, makes it clear that the condemned theatre was the Curtain.[1302] Nevertheless, it is certain that neither the Curtain nor the Rose was in fact plucked down at this date.

The Fortune was opened in the autumn of 1600 by the Admiral’s men, probably with Dekker’s 1 Fortune’s Tennis, and its theatrical history is closely bound up with that of the same company, who occupied it continuously, as the Admiral’s to 1603, then as Prince Henry’s men to his death in 1612, and finally as the Palsgrave’s men. It is only necessary to deal here with matters that directly concern the building. That it became something of a centre of disturbance in the peaceful suburbs of the north-west is shown by various entries in the records of the Middlesex Bench. On 26 February 1611, two butchers, Ralph Brewyn and John Lynsey, were charged with abusing gentlemen there. On 1 October 1612, the justices regarded it as the resort of cutpurses, and were thereby led to suppress the jigs at the end of plays, which especially attracted such persons. In 1613 a true bill was found against Richard Bradley for stabbing Nicholas Bedney there on 5 June.[1303] The upkeep of the structure was expensive. A note in Alleyn’s hand of sums laid out upon the play-house during the seven years 1602–8 shows an average amount of about £120. Only £4 2_s._ was spent during 1603, for the greater part of which year the theatres were closed, but £232 1_s._ 8_d._ in 1604.[1304] No doubt wooden buildings, open to the weather, perished rapidly. It is not unreasonable to suppose that the relations between the company and their landlords were much what they had been at the Rose; that is to say that the latter took half the gallery receipts and bore repairs, while the former took the rest of the receipts and met all other outgoings. An unexecuted draft lease to Thomas Downton of 1608 indicates that Alleyn and Henslowe then had it in mind to bind the company more closely to the theatre, by dividing a quarter of their interest amongst the eight members of the company.[1305] Possibly the plan was carried out. In asking a loan from Alleyn on a date apparently earlier than August 1613, Charles Massye, who was one of the eight, not only offers repayment out of his ‘gallery mony’ and ‘house mony’, but also the assignment of ‘that lyttell moete I have in the play housses’ as a security.[1306] Certainly the company took over the house after Henslowe’s death on 6 January 1616. His share in the building passed to his widow, who contemplated a sale of it to Gregory Franklyn, Drew Stapley, and John Hamond.[1307] But the deed remained unexecuted at her death in 1617, and the whole property was now once more in Alleyn’s hands. On 31 October 1618 he leased it to the company for £200 a year, to be reduced to £120 at his death. With it went a taphouse occupied by Mark Brigham, the rent of a two-room tenement held by John Russell, and a strip of impaled ground 123 feet by 17 feet, lying next the passage on the south.[1308] This is perhaps the garden in which, according to John Chamberlain, the players, ‘not to be overcome with courtesy’, banqueted the Spanish ambassador when he visited the theatre on 16 July 1621.[1309] John Russell is presumably the same whose appointment by Alleyn as a ‘gatherer’ lead to a protest from William Bird on behalf of the company.[1310] A few months after the ambassador’s visit, John Chamberlain records the destruction of the Fortune on 9 December 1621:[1311]

‘On Sonday night here was a great fire at the Fortune in Golden-Lane, the fayrest play-house in this towne. It was quite burnt downe in two howres, & all their apparell & play-bookes lost, wherby those poore companions are quite undone.’

Alleyn also notes the event in his diary.[1312] On 20 May 1622 he formed a syndicate, and leased to it the site at a rent of £128 6_s._, under an obligation to build a new theatre at a cost of £1,000.[1313] This, ‘a large round brick building’, was erected in the following year.[1314] The site conveyed covered a space of almost exactly 130 feet square, and on it had stood, besides the buildings named in the lease of 1618, other tenements, in one of which William Bird himself lived. Mr. Lawrence has suggested that the new Fortune may have been a roofed-in house, but his evidence is hardly sufficient to outweigh the explicit statement of Wright that it ‘lay partly open to the weather, and there they always acted by daylight’.[1315] This can hardly refer only to the earlier building. The Fortune was dismantled in 1649 and ‘totally demolished’ by 1662, and the façade still extant in 1819 cannot therefore have belonged to it, although it may have belonged to a Restoration ‘nursery’ for young actors, possibly upon the same site.[1316] No acting seems to have taken place at the Fortune after 1649.[1317]

xiii. THE BOAR’S HEAD

There appear to have been at least six city inns under this sign.[1318] The most famous was that on the south side of Great Eastcheap, in St. Michael’s, which seems to have been regarded in the middle of the sixteenth century as the traditional locality of the tavern scenes in Henry IV.[1319] This inn was in the occupation of Joan Broke, widow, in 1537, and in that of Thomas Wright, vintner, about 1588.[1320] Another Boar’s Head stood ‘without’ Aldgate, in the extra-mural Portsoken ward, which lay between that gate and the bars with which the liberties of the City terminated at Hog Lane. Here, according to Stowe, there were ‘certaine faire Innes for receipt of trauellers repayring to the Citie’.[1321] At the Aldgate inn had been produced in 1557 a ‘lewd’ play called The Sackful of Newes, which provoked the interference of Mary’s Privy Council.[1322] But it seems to me exceedingly improbable that either this or the Eastcheap inn was converted into the play-house, of which we have brief and tantalizing records in the seventeenth century. Both were within the City jurisdiction, where the licensing of play-houses seems to have definitely terminated in 1596. It is true that a Privy Council letter of 31 March 1602, which directs that the combined company of Oxford’s and Worcester’s men shall be allowed to play at the Boar’s Head, is addressed to the Lord Mayor.[1323] But so are other letters of the same type, the object of which is to limit plays to a small number of houses outside the liberties, and to restrain them elsewhere over the whole area of the City and the suburbs.[1324] And when, a year or two later, Worcester’s men became Queen Anne’s, and a draft patent was drawn up to confirm their right to play in the Curtain and the Boar’s Head, both houses are described, not as in the City, but as ‘within our County of Middlesex’.[1325] Presumably Anne’s men left the Boar’s Head when the Red Bull became available for their use in 1606, and Mr. Adams has explained a mention, which had long puzzled me, of the Duke of York’s men as ‘the Prince’s Players of Whitechapel’ in 1608 by the suggestion that they succeeded to the vacant theatre.[1326] If this is so, I think it affords further evidence for the theory that the Boar’s Head, although it may have taken its name from the Aldgate inn, was not itself that inn, and probably not a converted inn at all, but lay just outside and not just inside the City bars. For, although part of the street between Aldgate and Whitechapel is sometimes called, as in Ogilby’s map of 1677 and Rocque’s of 1746, ‘Whitechapel Street’, yet Whitechapel proper lay outside the liberties, farther to the east along the Mile End Road.[1327] The only other contemporary record of the Boar’s Head is a letter to Edward Alleyn from his wife Joan on 21 October 1603, in which she says, ‘All the companyes be come hoame & well for ought we knowe, but that Browne of the Boares head is dead & dyed very pore, he went not into the countrye at all’.[1328] This Browne cannot be identified, and it is perhaps idle to conjecture that he may have been related to Robert Browne, and that it may have been at the Boar’s Head that the latter played with Derby’s men in 1599–1601. The Boar’s Head seems to have been generally forgotten by the Restoration, but is recalled by the Marquis of Newcastle c. 1660.[1329]

xiv. THE RED BULL

[Bibliographical Note.--The records of the suit of Woodford v. Holland (1613) were printed by J. Greenstreet in the Athenaeum for 28 Nov. 1885 from Court of Requests Books, xxvi, ff. 780, 890, and cxxviii, and therefrom by Fleay, 194; and more fully with those of the later suit of 1619 (misdated 1620) by C. W. Wallace in Nebraska University Studies, ix. 291 (cited as W. v. H.). Collier, i. 374, mentions evidence on the same transactions as ‘in the Audit Office’, and misnames the complainant John Woodward.]

Our chief knowledge of the early history of the Red Bull is derived from disputes before the Court of Requests in 1613 and 1619 between Thomas Woodford and Aaron Holland. It appears that Holland held a lease of the site, which was at the upper end of St. John Street in the parish of St. James, Clerkenwell, from Anne, widow and executrix of Christopher Bedingfield, and had there built a play-house. The indication of a Red Bull Yard in Ogilby and Morgan’s map of 1677 to the west of St. John Street, and just north of the angle which it forms with Clerkenwell Green, no doubt defines the locality with some precision.[1330] In 3 Jac. I, that is, at some date between 24 March 1605 and 23 March 1606, he assigned one-seventh of the house to Thomas Swynnerton, ‘with a gatherers place thereto belonging’. This Swynnerton transferred for £50 to Philip Stone.[1331] It was subject to a rent of £2 10_s._, and Holland gave Stone an indenture in February 1609, which was alleged not to constitute a proper lease. In 1612–13 Stone sold his seventh for £50 to Woodford, who took profits for a quarter, and then entrusted his interest to Holland, instructing his servant Anthony Payne to pay the rent. He alleged that Holland persuaded Payne to be behindhand with the rent, and withheld the profits, estimated at £30 a year. He therefore brought his action a little before May 1613. The Court called upon Holland to show cause why he should not account for the arrears of profits, and for 1_s._ 6_d._ a week due to the gatherer’s place.[1332] Holland replied, and the issues were referred to the arbitration of counsel, including Woodford’s ‘demaund of the eighteenth penny and the eighteenth part of such moneys & other comodities as should be collected or receaued ... for the profittes of the galleries or other places in or belonging to the play howse’.[1333] Counsel made an arrangement, but did not agree in their reports of its terms, and the Court ordered Holland to give Woodford an indenture similar to that given to Stone.[1334] Holland got a writ of prohibition from the King’s Bench, always jealous of the jurisdiction of the Court of Requests, on 6 November 1613, and Woodford began a suit against Holland in Stone’s name for not making a proper indenture in 1609. This, he says, Stone conspired with Holland to withdraw. In 1619 he brought another action for his profits before the Court of Requests, in which Holland describes him as ‘Woodford, alias Simball’, but the result is unknown.

The Red Bull, then, was built not later and probably not much earlier than 1606, a little before the first recorded mention of it in the following passage from The Knight of the Burning Pestle, which was almost certainly produced in the winter of 1607:

‘Citizen. Why so sir, go and fetch me him then, and let the Sophy of Persia come and christen him a childe.

‘Boy. Beleeue me sir, that will not doe so well, ’tis stale, it has beene had before at the red Bull.’[1335]

The allusion is to an incident in the last scene of Day, Rowley, and Wilkins’ Travels of the Three Brothers.[1336] This, according to the entry in the Stationers’ Register on 29 June 1607, was played at the Curtain, and according to its title-page of 1607 by the Queen’s men. But there is no reason why it should not also have been played at the Red Bull, since both houses are specified as occupied by the Queen’s men in their patent of 15 April 1609. In their earlier draft patent of about 1603–4, the Boar’s Head and Curtain are named, and in a Privy Council letter of 9 April 1604 the Curtain only. Presumably, therefore, the Red Bull was taken into use by the Queen’s men, of whom Swynnerton was one, as soon as it was built at some date between 1604 and 1606. The Red Bull is one of the three houses whose contention is predicted in Dekker’s Raven’s Almanack of 1608, and Dekker refers to it again in his Work for Armourers, written during the plague of 1609, when the bear garden was open and the theatres closed. He says, ‘The pide Bul heere keepes a tossing and a roaring, when the Red Bull dares not stir’.[1337] Its existence caused trouble from time to time to the Middlesex justices. At the end of May 1610, William Tedcastle, yeoman, and John Fryne, Edward Brian, Edward Purfett, and Thomas Williams, felt-makers, were called upon to give recognisances to answer for a ‘notable outrage at the play-house called the Red Bull’; and on 3 March 1614 Alexander Fulsis was bailed out on a charge of picking Robert Sweet’s pocket of a purse and £3 at this theatre.[1338] Further references to it are to be found in Wither’s Abuses Stript and Whipt (1613), in Tomkis’s Albumazar (1615), and in Gayton’s Pleasant Notes on Don Quixot (1654).[1339]

An entry in Alleyn’s Diary for 1617 has been supposed to indicate that he had an interest in the Red Bull. To me it only suggests that he sold the actors there a play.[1340]

The Queen’s men most likely occupied the Red Bull at least until 1617 when, as shown by the lawsuit of 1623, they were on the point of moving to the Cockpit in Drury Lane. Plays of theirs were printed as acted there in 1608, 1611, 1612, and 1615. Swetnam the Woman Hater Arraigned by Women, printed in 1620, was also played there, before Anne’s death in 1619. In 1637 Thomas Heywood, formerly one of the Queen’s men, included in his Pleasant Dialogues and Dramas, a Prologue and Epilogue, to which he prefixed the note ‘A young witty lad playing the part of Richard the third: at the Red Bull: the Author because hee was interessed in the play to incourage him, wrot him this Prologue and Epilogue’.[1341] This was probably, and certainly if the play was Shakespeare’s, some quite exceptional performance. Similarly the ‘companie of young men of this citie’, who are stated on the title-page of Wentworth Smith’s Hector of Germany (1615) to have acted it at the Red Bull and Curtain, must be supposed to have used these theatres by some arrangement with the Queen’s men.

The Red Bull afterwards passed to other companies, continued in use up to, and even occasionally during, the Commonwealth, and had a revived life after the Restoration to 1663.[1342] Before 1633, and probably before 1625, it had been re-edified and enlarged.[1343] Mr. Lawrence suggests that at this time it became a roofed house, which it seems certainly to have been after the Restoration.[1344] But it is difficult to get away from Wright’s explicit statement that it ‘lay partly open to the weather, and there they always acted by daylight’.[1345] Nor need the quite modern identification of it with the roofed interior depicted in The Wits rest upon anything but an incidental reference to the house in the text of the pamphlet.[1346] Nothing is known as to the shape or galleries of the Red Bull.

xv. THE HOPE

[Bibliographical Note.--The Dulwich papers relating to the connexion of Henslowe and Alleyn with the bear-baiting and the Hope are to be found with a commentary in Greg, Henslowe’s Diary and Henslowe Papers. Valuable material on the Bankside localities is in W. Rendle, The Bankside, Southwark, and the Globe, 1877 (Appendix I to Furnivall, Harrison’s Description of England, Part II, with a reconstructed map of the Bankside and a 1627 plan of Paris Garden), Old Southwark and its People (1878), The Play-houses at Bankside in the Time of Shakespeare (1885, Walford’s Antiquarian, vii. 207, 274; viii. 55), Paris Garden and Blackfriars (1887, 7 N. Q. iii. 241, 343, 442). Some notes of Eu. Hood [Joseph Haslewood] in 1813 and A. J. K[empe] in 1833 are reprinted in The Gentleman’s Magazine Library, xv (1904), 74, 117. Other writings on Paris Garden are by W. H. Overall (1869) in Proc. Soc. Antiq. 2nd series, iv. 195, J. Meymott, The Manor of Old Paris Garden (1881), P. Norman, The Accounts of the Overseers of the Poor of Paris Garden, Southwark, 1608–1671 (1901) in Surrey Arch. Colls. xvi. 55. Since I wrote this chapter, C. L. Kingsford (1920, Arch. lxx. 155) has added valuable material.]

It is convenient, in connexion with the Hope, to deal with the whole rather troublesome question of the Bankside Bear Gardens. The ursarius or bearward was a recognized type of mediaeval mimus, and the rewards in which his welcome found expression are a recurring item in many a series of municipal or domestic accounts. Thus, to take one example only, the corporation of Shrewsbury entertained between 1483 and 1542 the ursinarii, ursuarii, or ursiatores of the King, the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, the Marquises of Dorset and Exeter, the Earl of Derby, and the town of Norwich.[1347] On more than one occasion the payment is said to be pro agitacione bestiarum suarum. The phrase is perhaps not free from ambiguity. The dancing bear was, until quite recently, a familiar sight in provincial England, and I have seen one even on the sophisticated slopes of Notting Hill. And illuminations dating back as far as the tenth century bear evidence to the antiquity of his somewhat grotesque tripudium.[1348] But in the robust days of our forefathers there was an even more attractive way of agitating bears. The traditional victim of an English baiting was no doubt the bull. A Southwark map of 1542 shows a ‘Bolrynge’ in the middle of the High Street and a neighbouring alley still bore the name in 1561.[1349] The maps of Höfnagel (c. 1560) and Agas (c. 1570) show another ring, marked ‘The bolle bayting’ and with a very palpable bull inside it, upon the Bankside, not far from where the Hope must afterwards have stood.[1350] But the bear was also baited in London, at least from the twelfth century.[1351] Erasmus is often cited as declaring that in the reign of Henry VIII ‘herds’ of the animal were kept for the purpose. This is an error. Erasmus wrote of dancing bears; but I am afraid it must be assumed that the chief function of the bearward attached to the Tudor Royal Household was to provide exhibitions of the more brutal, noisy, and occasionally dangerous sport.[1352] A regular office is traceable back to 1484, when Richard III in the first year of his reign appointed his bearward John Browne to be ‘Maister, Guyder and Ruler of all our Beres and Apes’.[1353] It was still a part of the establishment of the Royal Household under Elizabeth. A patent of 2 June 1573 to Ralph Bowes describes it as ‘the room or office of Cheif Master Overseer and Ruler of all and singular our game pastymes and sportes, that is to saie of all and everie our beares bulles and mastyve dogges’, and names as Bowes’s predecessors Cuthbert Vaughan and Sir Richard Long.[1354] The grant was of the nature of a commission, authorizing the holder, personally or by deputy, to ‘take up’ or press animals for the royal service, and giving him the sole right of baiting the Queen’s bears, to the exclusion of any other officer or under officer appertaining to the bears, not specially licensed or appointed by him. The Master was presumably expected to make his profit out of the privileges granted, for the patent did not assign him any fee, such as the under officers, known as the Keepers of Bears and Mastiffs, enjoyed at the hands of the Treasurer of the Chamber.[1355] But he received a reward, similar to those given to players, of £5 through the Treasurer on the Council’s warrant, when the baiting was shown before the Queen. These rewards are generally expressed as ‘for the Game of Paris Garden’ or ‘to the Master of her Majesty’s Game at Paris Garden’; and Bowes must have joined sons or other relatives with him as deputies, since Edward Bowes and Thomas Bowes were often payees instead of Ralph Bowes during his term of office.[1356] Towards the end of Bowes’s life it would seem that Henslowe and Alleyn, who had been baiting bears on the Bankside as licensees since 1594, were in negotiation to obtain the Mastership.[1357] Probably the first idea was to buy a surrender of the office from Bowes, since the Dulwich manuscripts contain an unexecuted draft of a patent to Henslowe, following the terms of that to Bowes himself and reciting such a surrender.[1358] I should suppose this negotiation to be that in connexion with which Henslowe spent £2 15_s._ 6_d._ during 1597 upon visits to Sir Julius Caesar, Master of Requests, and other Court officials, and in a fee to the Clerk of the Signet. The expenditure is entered in the diary as incurred ‘a bowt the changinge of ower comysion’.[1359] But before a surrender was effected it would seem that Henslowe had had to turn his thoughts to a succession. In this he was disappointed. On 4 June 1598 he wrote to Alleyn that Bowes was very sick and expected to die, and that he much feared he should lose all. Neither Caesar nor the Lord Admiral had done anything for him, and although he had received help from Lady Edmondes and Mr. Langworth, he now learnt that the reversion of the Mastership was already promised by the Queen to one Mr. Dorrington, a pensioner.[1360] Bowes did in effect die very shortly after, and on 11 August 1598 John Dorrington received his patent for the Mastership.[1361] To this was joined the office of Keeper of the Bandogs and Mastiffs, with a fee of 10_d._ a day for exercising this office and keeping twenty mastiff bitches, and a further fee of 4_d._ for a deputy.[1362] It is not unlikely that John Dorrington was related to the Richard Darrington who had held this keepership with the same fees, amounting to £21 5_s._ 10_d._ a year, in 1571. Another keepership, that of the Bears, was held in 1599 by Jacob Meade, who was closely associated with Henslowe and Alleyn in the management of the Bear garden.[1363] Dorrington’s grant was confirmed by James I on 14 July 1603, and on 23 July he was knighted.[1364] About this time Henslowe and Alleyn, who were paying Dorrington £40 a year for licence to bait,[1365] must have contemplated fresh negotiations for a transfer of the patent, for the draft in the Dulwich manuscripts, originally drawn up about 1597, has been altered by Henslowe so as to adapt it to the new reign and to a surrender by Dorrington.[1366] But once again they were unsuccessful, for Dorrington died, and on 20 July 1604 the Mastership was granted to one of the invading Scots, Sir William Stuart.[1367] From him, however, Henslowe and Alleyn did succeed in obtaining an assignment, and a draft patent as joint Masters and Keepers, with the fees of 10_d._ and 4_d._, is dated 24 November 1604. They had, indeed, been rather in Stuart’s hands, for he had refused either to give them a licence or to take over their house and bears, and they had to pay for the surrender at what they considered the high rate of £450.[1368] This we learn from a petition of about 1607, in which they appealed to the King for an increase in the daily fee by 2_s._ 8_d._, in view of their losses through restraints and the deaths of bears, and of their heavy expenses, amounting to £200 a month, whereby their privilege, which was once worth £100 a year, could now not be let at all.[1369] It is doubtful whether they got any relief. They had a new patent on 24 November 1608;[1370] but about 1612 they sent up another petition in very similar terms. A grant of £42 10_s._ and 12_d._ a day had, indeed, been made them in March 1611 for keeping a lion and two white bears. But this was probably menagerie work and quite apart from the baiting. They continued as joint Masters until Henslowe’s death in 1616, when the whole office passed to Alleyn in survivorship.[1371]

When baiting seemed desirable to the soul of the sovereign, the ‘game’ was generally brought to the Court, wherever the Court might happen to be.[1372] The rewards of the Treasurer of the Chamber were most often for attendances in the Christmas holidays or at Whitsuntide. But the game might be called for at any time to add lustre to the entertainment of an ambassador or other distinguished visitor to Court. Thus on 25 May 1559 French ambassadors dined with Elizabeth, ‘and after dener to bear and bull baytyng, and the Quens grace and the embassadurs stod in the galere lokyng of the pastym tyll vj at nyght’.[1373] Later French embassies of 1561, 1572, 1581, and 1599, and a Danish embassy of 1586 were similarly honoured.[1374] The custom continued during the next reign. On 19 August 1604 there was a grand banquet at Whitehall for Juan Fernandez de Velasco, Constable of Castile, on the completion of peace between England and Spain, and thereafter a ball, and after the ball ‘all then took their places at the windows of the room which looked out upon a square, where a platform was raised, and a vast crowd had assembled to see the King’s bears fight with greyhounds. This afforded great amusement. Presently a bull, tied to the end of a rope, was fiercely baited by dogs.’[1375] James had introduced a new and dangerous element into the sport by using the lions which were kept in the Tower, and this also became the scene of baitings. On 5 March 1607 the Treasurer of the Chamber paid Henslowe and Alleyn no less than £30, partly for attendances with the game at Greenwich during the visit of the King of Denmark and at Whitehall during that of the Prince de Joinville, and partly for baiting of the lions in the Tower on three several occasions.[1376] Stowe gives detailed descriptions of lion-baitings in 1604, 1605, 1609, and 1610, of which the first is interesting, because it was under the personal superintendence of Edward Alleyn, ‘now sworne the Princes man and Maister of the Beare Garden’.[1377]

But the profit of the thing, from the point of view of the Master of the Game, was not so much in the attendances at Court, as in the public baitings, which he and those holding licences from him were privileged to give with the bears and dogs, ‘taken up’ by virtue of the commission or bought at their own expense, during such times as these were not required for the royal service. These public spectacles were held at what was known as the Bear Garden, under conditions much resembling those of a theatre. They played a considerable part in the life of London; literature is full of allusions to them; and they are described with more or less detail in the narratives of many travellers from abroad. An early account is that from the Spanish of a secretary to the Duke of Najera, who visited Henry VIII in 1544.[1378] He describes the bears as baited daily, with three or four dogs to each bear, in an enclosure where they were tied with ropes, and adds:

‘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.’

In 1559 the same French ambassadors, who saw the baiting at Whitehall, were taken on the following day to Paris Garden, and ‘ther was boyth bare and bull baytyng, and the capten with a c. of the gard to kepe rowme for them to see the baytyng’.[1379] The next notice of any value is that of Lupold von Wedel, who was at Southwark on 23 August 1584.[1380]

‘There is a round building three stories high, in which are kept about a hundred large English dogs, with separate wooden kennels for each of them. These dogs were made to fight singly with three bears, the second bear being larger than the first and the third larger than the second. After this a horse was brought in and chased by the dogs, and at last a bull, who defended himself bravely. The next was that a number of men and women came forward from a separate compartment, dancing, conversing and fighting with each other: also a man who threw some white bread among the crowd, that scrambled for it. Right over the middle of the place a rose was fixed, this rose being set on fire by a rocket: suddenly lots of apples and pears fell out of it down upon the people standing below. Whilst the people were scrambling for the apples, some rockets were made to fall down upon them out of the rose, which caused a great fright but amused the spectators. After this, rockets and other fireworks came flying out of all corners, and that was the end of the play.’

It is interesting to observe that the baiting proper was supplemented with fireworks and an entertainment, which must have been of the nature of a jig.[1381] The visit of Frederick, Duke of Württemberg, on 1 September 1592, is also recorded by his secretary, who says:[1382]

‘His Highness was shown in London the English dogs, of which there were about 120, all kept in the same enclosure, but each in a 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, 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, so that one is obliged to pull them back by their 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 butting at them.’

De Witt briefly notices the ‘amphitheatrum’ of the Bear Garden in 1596. He says:[1383]

‘Est etiam quintum sed dispari [vsu?] et structura, bestiarum concertationi destinatum, in quo multi vrsi, tauri, et stupendae magnitudinis canes discretis caueis et septis aluntur, qui ad pugnam adseruantur, iocundissimum hominibus spectaculum praebentes.’

Hentzner, who visited London in the autumn of 1598, says:[1384]

‘Est et alius postea locus Theatri quoque formam habens, Ursorum & Taurorum venationibus destinatus, qui à postica parte alligati à magnis illis canibus & molossis Anglicis, quos lingua vernacula Docken appellant, mire exagitantur, ita tamen, ut saepe canes isti ab Ursis vel Tauris, dentibus arrepti, vel cornibus impetiti, de vita periclitari, aliquando etiam animam exhalare soleant, quibus sic vel sauciis vel lassis statim substituuntur alii recentes & magis alacres. Accedit aliquando in fine hujus spectaculi Ursi plane excaecati flagellatio, ubi quinque, vel sex, in circulo constituti, Ursum flagellis misere excipiunt, qui licet alligatus auffugere nequeat, alacriter tamen se defendit, circumstantes, & nimium appropinquantes, nisi recte & provide sibi caveant, prosternit, ac flagella e manibus cadentium eripit atque confringit.’

To 1599 belongs the account of Thomas Platter of Basle:[1385]

‘The London bearbaitings usually take place every Sunday and Wednesday, across the water. The play house is built in circular form; above are a number of seated galleries; the ground space under the open sky is unoccupied. In the midst of this a great bear is fastened to a stake by a long rope. When we came down the stairs, we went behind the play house, and saw the English dogs, of which there were about 120 chained up, each in his separate kennel, in a yard.’

Platter also describes the actual baiting of the bull and bear and of the blind bear, much as did his predecessors. On 7 September 1601 the Duc de Biron was taken to the Bear Garden, as one of the sights of London, by no less a cicerone than Sir Walter Raleigh.[1386] A visit of 16 September 1602 is described in the diary of Philip Julius, Duke of Stettin in Pomerania.[1387] The vogue of the Bear Garden amongst foreigners evidently lasted into James’s reign, but the notices are briefer. Lewis Frederick of Württemberg, saw on 26 April 1610 the baiting both of bears and bulls ‘and monkeys that ride on horseback’;[1388] and Justus Zingerling of Thuringia, who was in London about the same year, mentions the ‘theatra comoedorum, in which bears and bulls fight with dogs’.[1389] Even more summary is the reference in an itinerary of Prince Otto von Hesse-Cassel in 1611.[1390] But the extracts given sufficiently describe the nature of the sport, and show that bulls continued to be baited up to a late date, as well as bears, and that the serious business of the spectacle was diversified by regular humorous episodes, such as the monkey on horseback and the whipping of the blind bear. He, by the way, was called Harry Hunks, and is named by Sir John Davies in his Epigrams[1391] of c. 1594, in company with the Sackerson who gave rise to a boast on the part of Master Slender,[1392] and at a later date by Dekker[1393] and Henry Peacham.[1394] Two other famous bears were Ned Whiting and George Stone. Both are alluded to in Ben Jonson’s Epicoene (1609),[1395] and the latter also in The Puritan (1607).[1396] The death of the ‘goodlye beare’ George Stone at a baiting before the King of Denmark in 1606 is lamented in the petition of Henslowe and Alleyn to the King for increased fees already described. One other interesting notice of the sport may be added from the Dulwich collection, and that is an advertisement or ‘bill’ of the entertainment, which runs as follows:

‘Tomorrowe beinge Thursdaie shalbe seen at the Beargardin on the banckside a greate mach plaid by the gamstirs of Essex who hath chalenged all comers what soeuer to plaie v dogges at the single beare for v pounds and also to wearie a bull dead at the stake and for your better content shall haue plasant sport with the horse and ape and whiping of the blind beare. Viuat Rex.’[1397]

Where then was the Bear Garden? This is a point upon which the foreign visitors are not very explicit. From them we could infer little more than that it was transpontine. It has already been pointed out that in official documents, at any rate those of a less formal character than a patent under the great seal, the Mastership is described as the Mastership of the Game of, or at, Paris Garden. With this common parlance agrees.[1398] In the allusions of the pamphleteers and poets, from the middle of the sixteenth to the middle of the seventeenth century, Paris or Parish Garden is regularly the place of baiting.[1399] ‘The Beare-garden, commonly called Paris Garden’, says Stowe, speaking of 1583.[1400] At Paris Garden, or as it is sometimes corruptly spelt, ‘Pallas Garden’, Henslowe and Alleyn have their office as Masters[1401] in 1607, and near it Alleyn is living in 1609. Now the Liberty and Manor of Paris Garden is a quite well defined part of the Bankside. It lay at the extreme west end, bordering upon Lambeth Marsh, with the Clink upon its east. In it stood from about 1595 the most westerly of the theatres, the Swan.[1402] Historians of Southwark are fond of suggesting that it had been the abode of the bears from an almost immemorial antiquity, and follow a late edition of Blount’s seventeenth-century Glossographia in connecting it with the domus of a certain Robert de Parys, near which the butchers of London were ordered to throw their garbage in 1393.[1403] I think the idea is that the garbage was found useful for feeding the bears. This theory I believe to be as much a myth as Taylor the water-poet’s derivation of the name from Paris, son of Priam. Parish, rather than Paris Garden, seems, in fact, to be the earlier form, although there is nothing in the history of the place that very particularly explains it.[1404] Many residents in London were of course ‘de Parys’ in the fourteenth century, and the domus of the Robert in question, who lived some time after the first mention of ‘Parish’ Garden, was pretty clearly on the City and not the Surrey side of the river.[1405] It is, however, the case that before the Civil War the Butchers’ Company had been accustomed to send their offal by a beadle to ‘two barrow houses, conveniently placed on the river side, for the provision and feeding of the King’s Game of Bears’, and were directed to resume the practice after the Restoration; and possibly this is what misled Blount.[1406] Obviously, however, what the butchers did in the seventeenth century is no proof of what they did in the fourteenth. And, in fact, the ordinance of 1393 is explicit in its direction that the offal is ultimately to be, not devoured by bears, but cast into mid-stream.

There is in fact nothing, so far as I know, to locate the royal Game on the Bankside at all until the middle of the sixteenth century, when it was already hard by the stews in the Liberty of the Clink, and still less, except the persistence of the name, to locate it definitely in the Liberty of Paris Garden.[1407] The notice which brings Paris Garden nearest is in Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, which contains an account of an adventure of one Ralph Morice, secretary to Cranmer, who was foolish enough to take a book of his master’s, containing criticisms of the Six Articles, in a wherry from Westminster Bridge to Paul’s Wharf. It chanced that Henry VIII ‘was then in his barge with a great number of barges and boats about him, then baiting of bears in the water, over against the Bank’. The waterman stopped to see the fun, and the bear broke loose, and climbed into the wherry, which upset. The dangerous book fell into the Thames and was picked up by the bearward, who was the Lady Elizabeth’s bearward and ‘an arrant Papist’. It was only through the good offices of Cromwell that Morice escaped serious trouble. This was about July 1539.[1408] Certainly it was the custom from an early date to moor the King’s barge off Paris Garden.[1409] The spot was marked later by the Old Barge Stairs, which stood at the west end of that part of the Bank lying in front of the Garden, just as Paris Garden Stairs stood at its east end. But the barge was not necessarily at its moorings when Henry was baiting from it. Mr. Ordish suggests that it was the common use of Paris Garden Stairs by visitors to the baiting, which led to the name being transferred to the Bear Garden itself, without any one troubling to inquire very minutely whether it stood a little to the east or a little to the west of the landing.[1410] On the whole, however, I regard it as reasonably probable that there was at one time a Bear Garden in the Liberty, which fixed the traditional name for the sport, even after it had been transferred farther along the Bank.[1411] It may, perhaps, be a slight confirmation of this view that the 1627 survey of Paris Garden shows a space, apparently laid out as a garden and arranged as a circle within a square, which may represent the site. It stands nearly opposite Paris Garden Stairs in a triangular bit of ground between Holland Street and the lane leading to Copt Hall. This seems to have been rather a desolate region in Elizabeth’s reign, at any rate when you got beyond the row of houses which lined the bank.[1412] If there was a Bear Garden there, it had clearly been abandoned some little time before 1546, as the Stews were then ‘the accustomed place’. Somewhat later, the maps of Höfnagel (c. 1560) and Agas (c. 1570) show, in addition to the Bull ring already mentioned, another ring marked ‘The Beare bayting’, standing immediately west of it, and like it in the Clink.[1413] The animals at the stake are discernible in the rings, and to the south of each stretches a yard with a pond in the middle and kennelled dogs along the sides. It is in the Clink, too, that Norden in 1593 shows ‘The Beare howse’, a little west and north of ‘The play howse’, which is the Rose. This evidence is consistent with what little is upon written record about the locality of the Bear Gardens. The most important document is a deposition of John Taylor, not the water-poet, in a suit of 1620:[1414]

‘He saith that he remembreth that the game of bear-bayting hath been kept in fower severall places (vizt.) at Mason Steares on the bankside; neere Maid-lane by the corner of the Pyke Garden; at the beare garden which was parcell of the possession of William Payne; and the place where they are now kept.’

Taylor was then an old man of seventy-seven and his memory would easily go back to the time of the early maps. To his testimony may be added that of Stowe, who says in his Survey of London (1598):[1415]

‘Now to returne to the West banke, there be two Beare gardens, the olde and new places, wherein be kept Beares, Buls and other beastes to be bayted. As also Mastiues in severall kenels, nourished to baite them. These Beares and other Beasts are there bayted in plottes of ground, scaffolded about for the Beholders to stand safe. Next on this banke was sometime the Bordello or stewes.’

In his Annales Stowe records the fall of ‘the old and under propped scaffolds round about the Beare-garden, commonly called Paris garden’, and the consequent death of eight persons, at 4 p.m. on Sunday, 13 January 1583. It was, he says, ‘a friendly warning to such as more delight themselves in the cruelty of beasts, than in the works of mercy, the fruits of a true professed faith, which ought to be the Sabbath day’s exercise’.[1416] Dr. Dee also noted the accident in his diary, and it was reported to Burghley on the next day by the Lord Mayor and on 19 January by Recorder Fleetwood.[1417] Both of these adopt the view expressed by Stowe that it must be regarded as divine punishment for the violation of the Sabbath, and Fleetwood refers to ‘a booke sett downe vpon the same matter’, which may be John Field’s Godly Exhortation by Occasion of the late Judgment of God showed at Paris Garden. The shrewd irony of Sir Thomas More, upon a similar event, when it was the church that fell, many years before at Beverley, found little echo in the mind of the Elizabethan Puritan.[1418] A further letter from the Lord Mayor to the Privy Council on 3 July 1583 states that by then the Paris Garden scaffolds were ‘new builded’.[1419]

I find it very difficult to say which of the numerous bear gardens mentioned by Taylor and Stowe was in use at any given time. Mr. Rendle thought that Taylor’s first two, that at Mason Stairs and that at the corner of the Pike Garden, were the two shown as ‘The bolle bayting’ and ‘The Bearebayting’ by Agas.[1420] If so, they are quite out of scale. This is likely, since they are drawn large enough to show the animals. They are shown east and west of each other. Rendle puts the Pike Garden due south of Mason Stairs, but it clearly extended more to the east in 1587. In any case both these earlier sites were farther to the west of the Clink than the Hope. Where then was the place on William Payne’s ground? Mr. Rendle, after a careful comparison of Rocque’s map of 1746 and other later maps, puts it at ‘the north courtelage in the lane known as the Bear Garden’ and the Hope at the south courtelage in the same lane.[1421] I take him to mean that the Bear Garden on Payne’s ground was that in use until 1613, and that the Hope was built a little to the south of it. The terms of the contract with Katherens, however, suggest that the same or practically the same site was used. Mr. Rendle adds that ‘William Payne’s place next the Thames can be traced back into the possession of John Allen, until it came down to Edward Alleyn, and was sold by him at a large profit to Henslowe; the same for which Morgan Pope in 1586 paid to the Vestry of St. Saviour’s “6_s._ 8_d._ by the year for tithes”.’[1422] This I cannot quite follow. There seem to have been two properties standing respectively next and next but one on the west to the ‘little Rose’. Next the Rose stood messuages called The Barge, Bell and Cock. They were leased by the Bishop of Winchester to William Payne in 1540. His widow Joan Payne assigned them to John White and John Malthouse on 1 August 1582, and White’s moiety was assigned to Malthouse on 5 February 1589.[1423] From him Henslowe bought the lease in 1593–4.[1424] The tenements upon it were in his hands as ‘Mr. Malthowes rentes’ in 1603 and Alleyn was living in one of them.[1425] And the lease of the Barge, Bell and Cock passed to Alleyn and was assigned by his will towards the settlement of his second or third wife, Constance, daughter of Dean Donne.’[1426] To the west of this property in 1540 was a tenement once held by the prioress of Stratford. This passed to the Crown, and then to Thomas and Isabella Keyes under a Crown lease which was in Henslowe’s hands by 1597. Some notes of deeds--leases, deputations, bonds--concerning the Bear Garden were left by Alleyn. Four of the deeds have since been found by Mr. Kingsford in the Record Office. It appears that, before Henslowe, both Pope and Burnaby had some of the Keyes land on a sub-lease, and that Burnaby probably had the Keyes lease itself. Payne carried on baiting in a ring just south of the Barge. The site was called Orchard Court in 1620, and stood north of the Hope. This agrees with the relation suggested by Mr. Rendle between the two courtelages’. The object of the suit of 1620 was to determine whether the Hope also stood upon episcopal, or upon Crown land. Taylor’s testimony was ambiguous. But it follows that the transfer southwards must have been due to a tenant who held under both leases. It was suggested in 1620 that Pope rebuilt the scaffold standings round the ring as galleries with a larger circuit. This was doubtless after the ruin of 1583. Nothing is said of a change of site at this time. Moreover, both Pope and Burnaby seem to have used the site of the Hope and its bull-house as a dog-yard. Probably, therefore, the change was made by Henslowe and Alleyn. Alleyn left a record of ‘what the Bear garden cost me for my owne part in December 1594’. He paid £200 to Burnaby, perhaps only for a joint interest with Henslowe or Jacob Meade, and £250 for the ‘patten’, that is, I suppose, the Mastership bought from Sir William Stuart in 1604. He held his interest for sixteen years and received £60 a year, and then sold it to ‘my father Hinchloe’ for £580 in February 1611.[1427] There must have been considerable outgoings on the structure during this period. Another memorandum in Alleyn’s hand shows an expenditure of £486 4_s._ 10_d._ during 1602–5, and a further expenditure during 1606–8 of £360 ‘p^d. for ye building of the howses’.[1428] This last doubtless refers in part, not to the baiting ring itself, but to a tavern and office built on ‘the foreside of the messuage or tenemente called the Beare garden, next the river of Thames in the parish of St. Saviors’, for which there exists a contract of 2 June 1606 between Henslowe and Alleyn and Peter Street the carpenter.[1429] But this only cost £65, and it seems to me most likely that the Bear Garden was rebuilt on the southern site at the same time. Further light is thrown on the profits of the Bear Garden by a note in Henslowe’s diary that the receipts at it for the three days next after Christmas 1608 were £4, £6, and £3 14_s._, which may be compared with the average of £1 18_s._ 3_d._ received from the Fortune during the same three days.[1430] It may be added that Crowley notes the ‘bearwardes vaile’ somewhat ambiguously as ½_d._, 1_d._, or 2_d._,[1431] and that Lambarde in 1596 includes Paris Garden with the Theatre and Bel Savage as a place where you must pay ‘one pennie at the gate, another at the entrie of the scaffolde, and the thirde for a quiet standinge’.[1432]

Yet another building enterprise was undertaken in 1613, by which time an interest in the property had certainly been leased to Jacob Meade. On 29 August a contract was entered into between Henslowe and Meade and Gilbert Katherens, carpenter, for the pulling down of the Bear Garden and the erection before the following 30 November on or near the same site of a play-house on the model of the Swan, but with a movable stage, so as to enable the building to be used also for baitings. I reproduce the document here from Dr. Greg’s text:[1433]

Articles, Covenauntes, grauntes, and agreementes, Concluded and agreed vppon this Nyne and Twenteithe daie of Auguste, Anno Domini 1613, Betwene Phillipe Henslowe of the parishe of S^t Saviour in Sowthworke within the countye of Surrey, Esquire, and Jacobe Maide of the parishe of S^t Olaves in Sowthworke aforesaide, waterman, of thone partie, And Gilbert Katherens of the saide parishe of S^t Saviour in Sowthworke, Carpenter, on thother partie, As followeth, That is to saie--

Inprimis the saide Gilbert Katherens for him, his executours, administratours, and assignes, dothe convenaunt, promise, and graunt to and with the saide Phillipe Henslowe and Jacobe Maide and either of them, thexecutors, administratours, & assigns of them and either of them, by theise presentes in manner and forme following: That he the saied Gilbert Katherens, his executours, administratours, or assignes shall and will, at his or theire owne proper costes and charges, vppon or before the last daie of November next ensuinge the daie of the date of theise presentes above written, not onlie take downe or pull downe all that same place or house wherin Beares and Bulls haue been heretofore vsuallie bayted, and also one other house or staple wherin Bulls and horsses did vsuallie stande, sett, lyinge, and beinge vppon or neere the Banksyde in the saide parishe of S^t Saviour in Sowthworke, comonlie called or knowne by the name of the Beare garden, but shall also at his or theire owne proper costes and charges vppon or before the saide laste daie of November newly erect, builde, and sett vpp one other same place or Plaiehouse fitt & convenient in all thinges, bothe for players to playe in, and for the game of Beares and Bulls to be bayted in the same, and also a fitt and convenient Tyre house and a stage to be carryed or taken awaie, and to stande vppon tressells good, substanciall, and sufficient for the carryinge and bearinge of suche a stage; And shall new builde, erect, and sett vp againe the saide plaie house or game place neere or vppon the saide place, where the saide game place did heretofore stande; And to builde the same of suche large compasse, fforme, widenes, and height as the Plaie house called the Swan in the libertie of Parris garden in the saide parishe of S^t Saviour now is; And shall also builde two stearecasses without and adioyninge to the saide Playe house in suche convenient places, as shalbe moste fitt and convenient for the same to stande vppon, and of such largnes and height as the stearecasses of the saide playehouse called the Swan nowe are or bee; And shall also builde the Heavens all over the saide stage, to be borne or carryed without any postes or supporters to be fixed or sett vppon the saide stage, and all gutters of leade needfull for the carryage of all suche raine water as shall fall vppon the same; And shall also make two Boxes in the lowermost storie fitt and decent for gentlemen to sitt in; And shall make the particions betwne the Rommes as they are at the saide Plaie house called the Swan; And to make turned cullumes vppon and over the stage; And shall make the principalls and fore fronte of the saide Plaie house of good and sufficient oken tymber, and no furr tymber to be putt or vsed in the lower most, or midell stories, except the vpright postes on the backparte of the saide stories (all the byndinge joystes to be of oken tymber); The inner principall postes of the first storie to be twelve footes in height and tenn ynches square, the inner principall postes in the midell storie to be eight ynches square, the inner most postes in the vpper storie to be seaven ynches square; The prick postes in the first storie to be eight ynches square, in the seconde storie seaven ynches square, and in the vpper most storie six ynches square; Also the brest sommers in the lower moste storie to be nyne ynches depe, and seaven ynches in thicknes, and in the midell storie to be eight ynches depe and six ynches in thicknes; The byndinge jostes of the firste storie to be nyne and eight ynches in depthe and thicknes, and in the midell storie to be viij and vij ynches in depthe and thicknes. Item to make a good, sure, and sufficient foundacion of brickes for the saide Play house or game place, and to make it xiij^{teene} ynches at the leaste above the grounde. Item to new builde, erect, and sett vpp the saide Bull house and stable with good and sufficient scantlinge tymber, plankes, and bordes, and particions of that largnes and fittnes as shalbe sufficient to kepe and holde six bulls and three horsses or geldinges, with rackes and mangers to the same, and also a lofte or storie over the saide house as nowe it is. And shall also at his & theire owne proper costes and charges new tyle with Englishe tyles all the vpper rooffe of the saide Plaie house, game place, and Bull house or stable, and shall fynde and paie for at his like proper costes and charges for all the lyme, heare, sande, brickes, tyles, lathes, nayles, workemanshipe and all other thinges needfull and necessarie for the full finishinge of the saide Plaie house, Bull house, and stable; And the saide Plaiehouse or game place to be made in althinges and in suche forme and fashion, as the saide plaie house called the Swan (the scantling of the tymbers, tyles, and foundacion as ys aforesaide without fraude or coven). And the saide Phillipe Henslow and Jacobe Maide and either of them for them, thexecutors, administratours, and assignes of them and either of them, doe covenant and graunt to and with the saide Gilbert Katherens, his executours, administratours, and assignes in manner and forme followinge (That is to saie) That he the saide Gilbert or his assignes shall or maie haue, and take to his or theire vse and behoofe, not onlie all the tymber, benches, seates, slates, tyles, brickes, and all other thinges belonginge to the saide Game place & Bull house or stable, and also all suche olde tymber whiche the saide Phillipe Henslow hathe latelie bought, beinge of an old house in Thames street, London, whereof moste parte is now lyinge in the yarde or backsyde of the saide Beare-garden; And also to satisfie and paie vnto the saide Gilbert Katherens, his executors, administratours, or assignes for the doinge and finishinges of the workes and buildinges aforesaid the somme of Three Hundered and three score poundes of good and lawffull monie of England, in manner and forme followinge (That is to saie) In hande at thensealinge and delivery hereof, Three score pounds which the saide Gilbert acknowlegeth him selfe by theise presentes to haue receaued; And more over to paie every weeke weeklie, duringe the firste six weekes, vnto the saide Gilbert or his assignes, when he shall sett workemen to worke vppon or about the buildinge of the premisses the somme of Tenne poundes of lawffull monie of Englande to paie them there wages (yf theire wages dothe amount vnto somuche monie); And when the saide plaie house, Bull house, and stable are reared, then to make vpp the saide wages one hundered poundes of lawffull monie of England, and to be paide to the saide Gilbert or his assignes; And when the saide Plaie house, Bull house, and stable are Reared, tyled, walled, then to paie vnto the saide Gilbert Katherens or his assignes one other hundered poundes of lawffull monie of England; And when the saide Plaie house, Bull house, and stable are fullie finished, builded, and done in manner and forme aforesaide, then to paie vnto the saide Gilbert Katherens or his assignes one other hundred Poundes of lawffull monie of England in full satisfacion and payment of the saide somme of CCClx^{li}. And to all and singuler the covenantes, grauntes, articles, and agreementes above in theise presentes contayned, whiche on the parte and behalfe of the saide Gilbert Katherens, his executours, administratours, or assignes are ought to be observed, performed, fulfilled, and done, the saide Gilbert Katherens byndeth himselfe, his executours, administratours, and assignes vnto the saide Phillipe Henslowe and Jacob Maide and to either of them, thexecutours, administratours, and assignes of them or either of them, by theise presentes. In witnes whereof the saide Gilbert Katherens hath herevnto sett his hande and seale, the daie and yere firste above written

The mark G K of Gilbert Katherens

Sealed and Delivered in the presence of witnes Moyses Bowler Edwarde Griffin

The execution of the contract must have been delayed, for the rebuilt Bear Garden is fairly to be identified with the Hope, of which no mention is made in the petition of the spring of 1614 described by Taylor in The True Cause of the Watermen’s Suit, although it had certainly come into use by the following autumn.[1434] Here was arranged for 7 October a trial of wit between this same Taylor and the shifty rhymer William Fennor.[1435] The latter failed to turn up, and Taylor, who, according to his own account, had advertised ‘this Bear Garden banquet of dainty conceits’ and collected a great audience, was left ‘in a greater puzzell then the blinde beare in the midst of all her whip-broth’. After acting part of what he had intended, he resigned the stage to the regular company:

Then came the players, and they play’d an act, Which greatly from my action did detract, For ’tis not possible for any one To play against a company alone, And such a company (I’ll boldly say) That better (nor the like) e’r played a play.

This company was no doubt the Lady Elizabeth’s, as reconstituted in the previous March under an agreement with Nathaniel Field on their behalf, of which a mutilated copy exists. To it Meade was a party, and there is nothing to establish a connexion between Meade and any other theatre than the Hope.[1436] Jonson names the Lady Elizabeth’s men as the actors of Bartholomew Fair, and in the Induction thereto, after a dialogue between the Stage-keeper, who is taunted with ‘gathering up the broken apples for the beares within’, and the Book-holder, a Scrivener reads ‘Articles of Agreement, indented, between the Spectators or Hearers, at the Hope on the Bankeside, in the County of Surrey on the one party; and the Author of Bartholmew Fayre in the said place, and County on the other party: the one and thirtieth day of Octob. 1614’. According to Jonson the locality was suitable for a play on Bartholomew Fair, for it was ‘as durty as Smithfield, and as stinking euery whit’.[1437] There were disputes between Henslowe and the company, partly arising out of an arrangement that they should ‘lie still’ one day a fortnight for the baiting, and the combination broke up. Some of its members, apparently then Prince Charles’s men, are found after Henslowe’s death signing an agreement with Alleyn and Meade to play at the Hope, and to set aside a fourth of the gallery takings towards a sum of £200 to be accepted in discharge of their debt to Henslowe. Alleyn had of course resumed his part proprietorship of the house as executor and ultimate heir to Henslowe. Meade probably took actual charge of the theatre, and there is an undated letter from Prince Charles’s men to Alleyn, written possibly in 1617, in which they explain their removal from the Bankside as due to the intemperate action of his partner in taking from them the day which by course was theirs. I suppose that this dispute also was due to the competition of baiting with the plays. In 1619 some disputes between Alleyn and Meade had to be settled by arbitration, and from Alleyn’s memoranda in connexion with these it appears that Meade was his deputy under his patent as Master of the Game, and had also a lease from him of the house at £100 a year.[1438] The Hope is mentioned from time to time, chiefly as a place of baiting, up to the civil wars.[1439] It is one of the three Bankside theatres alluded to in Holland’s Leaguer (1632), where it is described as ‘a building of excellent hope’ for players, wild beasts, and gladiators. Bear-baiting was suppressed by the House of Commons in 1642,[1440] and the house was dismantled in 1656. The manuscript continuation of Stowe’s Annales describes its end and the slaughter of the bears, but gives the date of its erection erroneously as 1610 instead of 1613.[1441]

After the Restoration the Bear Garden was restored, and a lane called Bear Gardens, running from Bankside to New Park Street, and a sign therein of The White Bear still mark its name.[1442] Its site is pretty well defined in the seventeenth-century maps as to the west of the Globe and, where that is shown, the Rose, and generally as a little nearer Maid Lane than the latter. This is consistent with a notice in the Sewers records for 5 December 1595 of a sewer which ran to the Bear Garden from a garden known to have lain a little farther east along Maid Lane than the Globe.[1443]

The traditional day for baiting was Sunday. Crowley in 1550 describes it as taking place on ‘euerye Sondaye’.[1444] Naturally this did not pass without Puritan comment, to which point was given by the fall of Paris Garden on a Sunday in 1583.[1445] A general prohibition of shows on Sunday seems to have followed, from which it is not likely that bear-baiting was excepted. It may be inferred that Thursday was substituted, for a Privy Council order of 25 July 1591 called attention, not only to a neglect of the rule as to Sunday, but also to the fact that every day ‘the players do use to recite their plays to the great hurt and destruction of the game of bear-baiting and like pastimes, which are maintained for Her Majesty’s pleasure if occasion require’, and forbade plays both on Sunday and on Thursday, on which day ‘those other games usually have been always accustomed and practised’.[1446] Henslowe’s diary seems to show that up to 1597 he kept the Sunday prohibition and disregarded the Thursday one, which is a little odd, as he was interested in the Bear Garden. But a proclamation of 7 May 1603 on the accession of James repeats the warning that there was neglect of the Sabbath, and renews the prohibition both for baiting and for plays.[1447] Henslowe and Alleyn in their petition of about 1607 for increased fees lay stress on this restraint as a main factor in their alleged loss.[1448] It seems from the notes of Stowe’s manuscript continuator that during the first half of the seventeenth century Tuesday and Thursday became the regular baiting days.[1449] But the agreements made by Henslowe and Meade with the Lady Elizabeth’s men in 1614 profess only to reserve one day in fourteen for this purpose, of which apparently notice was to be given on the previous Monday.[1450]

xvi. PORTER’S HALL

Authority was given for the erection of a new theatre by the following patent of 3 June 1615:[1451]

[Sidenote: De concessione regard Phillippo Rosseter et aliis.]

Iames by the grace of God &c. To all Maiors, Sheriffes, Iustices of peace, Bayliffes, Constables, headboroughes, and to all other our Officers, Ministers, and loving Subiectes, to whome these presentes shall come, greeting. Whereas wee by our letteres Patentes sealed with our great seale of England bearing date the ffourth day of Ianuary in the seaventh yeare of our Raigne of England Fraunce and Ireland and of Scotland the three and ffortieth for the consideracions in the same letteres patentes expressed did appoint and authorise Phillipp Rosseter and certaine others from tyme to tyme to provide, keepe, and bring vppe a convenient nomber of children, and them to practise and exercise in the quallitie of playing by the name of the children of the Revelles to the Queene, within the white ffryers in the Suburbs of our Cittie of London, or in any other convenient place where they the said Phillipp Rosseter and the rest of his partners should thinke fitting for that purpose, As in and by the said letteres patentes more at large appeareth, And whereas the said Phillipp Rosseter and the rest of his said partners have ever since trayned vppe and practised a convenient nomber of children of the Revelles for the purpose aforesaid in a Messuage or mansion house being parcell of the late dissolved Monastery called the white ffryers neere Fleetestreete in London, which the said Phillipp Rosseter did lately hold for terme of certaine yeres expired, And whereas the said Phillipp Rosseter, together with Phillipp Kingman, Robert Iones, and Raphe Reeve, to continue the said service for the keeping and bringing vppe of the children for the solace and pleasure of our said most deere wife, and the better to practise and exercise them in the quallitie of playing by the name of children of the Revelles to the Queene, have latelie taken in lease and farme divers buildinges, Cellers, sollars, chambers, and yardes for the building of a Play-house therevpon for the better practising and exercise of the said children of the Revelles, All which premisses are scituate and being within the Precinct of the Blacke ffryers neere Puddlewharfe in the Suburbs of London, called by the name of the lady Saunders house, or otherwise Porters hall, and now in the occupation of the said Robert Iones. Nowe knowe yee that wee of our especiall grace, certaine knowledge, and meere mocion have given and graunted, And by theise presentes for vs, our heires, and successors, doe give and graunte lycense and authoritie vnto the said Phillipp Rosseter, Phillipp Kingman, Robert Iones, and Raphe Reeve, at their proper costes and charges to erect, build, and sett vppe in and vppon the said premisses before mencioned one convenient Play-house for the said children of the Revelles, the same Play-house to be vsed by the Children of the Revelles for the tyme being of the Queenes Maiestie, and for the Princes Players, and for the ladie Elizabeths Players, soe tollerated or lawfully lycensed to play exercise and practise them therein, Any lawe, Statute, Act of Parliament, restraint, or other matter or thing whatsoever to the contrary notwithstanding. Willing and commaunding you and every of you our said Maiors, Sheriffes, Iustices of peace, Bayliffes, Constables, headboroughes and all other our officers and ministers for the tyme being, as yee tender our pleasure, to permitt and suffer them therein, without any your lettes, hinderance, molestacion, or disturbance whatsoever. In witnes whereof, &c. Witnes our selfe at Westminster the third day of Iune. per breve de priuato sigillo &c.

The statements made in the patent as to the objects of the promoters can be confirmed from other sources. We know that the lease of the Whitefriars expired at the end of 1614, that there had been an amalgamation of the Queen’s Revels and the Lady Elizabeth’s men in 1613, and that in all probability this arrangement was extended to bring in Prince Charles’s men during 1615. Unfortunately for Rosseter and his associates, the patent had hardly been granted before it was called in question. Presumably the inhabitants of the Blackfriars, who had already one theatre in their midst, thought that that one was enough. At any rate the Corporation approached the Privy Council, and alleged divers inconveniences, in particular the fact that the theatre, which was described as ‘in Puddle Wharfe’, would ‘adjoine so neere vnto’ the church of St. Anne’s as to disturb the congregation.[1452] The Council referred the patent to the Lord Chief Justice, Sir Edward Coke, no friend of players, or of the royal prerogative which expressed itself in patents; and when he found a technical flaw, in that the Blackfriars, having been brought within the City jurisdiction by the charter of 1608, was not strictly within ‘the suburbs’, ordered on 26 September 1615 that the building, which had already been begun, should be discontinued. Nevertheless, the work must have gone so far as to permit of the production of plays, for the title-page of Field’s Amends for Ladies (1618) testifies that it was acted ‘at the Blacke-Fryers both by the Princes Servants and the Lady Elizabeths’. Moreover, on 27 January 1617 the Privy Council wrote again to the Lord Mayor, enjoining him to see to the suppression of a play-house in the Blackfriars ‘neere vnto his Majestyes Wardrobe’, which is said to be ‘allmost if not fully finished’.[1453]

It does not appear possible to say exactly where in the Blackfriars’ precinct the Porter’s Hall once occupied by Lady Saunders stood. It was certainly not the porter’s lodge at the north-west corner of the great cloister, for this was still in 1615, as it had been since 1554, part of the Cobham house. One Ninian Sawnders, a vintner, took a lease of the chancel of the old conventual church from Sir Thomas Cawarden in 1553, and this would have been close to St. Anne’s, which stood at the north-east corner of the great cloister. But Ninian died in 1553 and never got knighted. On the other hand, the rooms on the south side of the great cloister, generally described as Lygon’s lodgings, had been in the tenure of one Nicholas Saunders shortly before their sale by Sir George More to John Freeman and others in 1609. Nicholas Saunders is said to have been knighted in 1603.[1454] These lodgings adjoined More’s own mansion house, and might at some time have served as a lodge for his porter.[1455] But I do not feel that they would very naturally be described either as ‘near’ or ‘in’ Puddle Wharf, or as ‘near’ the Wardrobe. These indications suggest some building approached either from Puddle Wharf proper or from the hill, afterwards known as St. Andrew’s Hill, which ran up from it to the Wardrobe, outside the eastern wall of the Priory precinct. The Cawarden estate did not extend to this wall, and the Saunders family may quite well, in addition to Lygon’s lodgings, have had a house, either on the site of the old convent gardens, or higher up the hill on the Blackwell estate, near where Shakespeare’s house stood, and near also to St. Anne’s. Perhaps there had been a porter’s lodge on the east of the old prior’s house.

XVII

THE PRIVATE THEATRES

i. THE BLACKFRIARS

[Bibliographical Note.--Many documents bearing upon the history of the theatre are preserved at Loseley, and the most important are collected by Professor A. Feuillerat in vol. ii of the Malone Society’s Collections (1913). A few had been already printed or described by A. J. Kempe in The Loseley Manuscripts (1835), by J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps in Outlines, i. 299, by J. C. Jeaffreson in the 7th Report of the Hist. MSS. Commission (1879), by Professor Feuillerat himself in Shakespeare-Jahrbuch, xlviii (1912), 81, and by C. W. Wallace, with extracts from others, in The Evolution of the English Drama up to Shakespeare (1912, cited as Wallace, i). In the same book and in The Children of the Chapel at Blackfriars (1908, cited as Wallace, ii), Professor Wallace prints or extracts documents from other sources, chiefly lawsuits in the Court of Requests and elsewhere, which supplement those discovered by J. Greenstreet and printed in F. G. Fleay, Chronicle History of the London Stage (1890). The references to the theatre in J. P. Collier, History of English Dramatic Poetry (1837 and 1879), are seriously contaminated by forgeries. Some material for the general history of the precinct is furnished in the various editions of John Stowe, Survey of London (1598, 1603, ed. Munday, 1618, ed. Strype, 1720, ed. Kingsford, 1908), in W. Dugdale, Monasticon (1817–30), by M. Reddan in the Victoria History of London, i. 498, and in the Athenaeum (1886), ii. 91. A. W. Clapham, On the Topography of the Dominican Priory of London (Archaeologia, lxiii. 57), gives a valuable account of the history and church of the convent, but had not the advantage of knowing the Loseley documents, and completely distorts the plan of the domestic buildings and the theatre. An account by J. Q. Adams is in S. P. xiv (1917), 64. The status of the liberty is discussed by V. C. Gildersleeve, Government Regulation of the Elizabethan Drama, 143.]

The Dominicans, also called the ‘preaching’ or ‘black’ friars, came to England in 1221. Their first house was in Holborn.[1456] In 1275 they acquired a site on the sloping ground between St. Paul’s and the river, just to the east of Fleet ditch, and obtained leave to divert the walls of the City so as to furnish a north and north-west boundary to their precinct. Here grew up a very famous convent, the motherhouse of all the Dominican settlements in the country. It received favours from several sovereigns, notably from Edward I and his Queen Eleanor, who were regarded as its founders; and in return held its great buildings available for national purposes. In 1322–3 it furnished a depository for state records. It housed divers parliaments, at first in its church and later in a great chamber which will be of singular interest to us, and from as early as 1311 was often found a convenient meeting-place for the Privy Council. In 1522 it was the lodging of the Emperor Charles V, and a wooden bridge and gallery were carried over the Fleet, to facilitate communications with his train in Bridewell palace. In 1529 its parliament chamber was the scene of the legatine sittings which tried the case of divorce between the same Emperor’s niece Katharine and the conscience-stricken Henry VIII.[1457]

By this time the friars had ceased to be a power in the land. Those of the convent had numbered seventy in 1315; there were no more than sixteen or seventeen in 1538.[1458] Parts of the buildings, now all too spacious, were let out as residences. It was, perhaps, the neighbourhood of the Wardrobe, whose Master had an official residence contiguous to the east wall of the precinct, which made the Blackfriars a favourite locality for those about the Court. A list of ‘them that hath lodgings within the Blak Freers’, which was drawn up in 1522, probably in connexion with the imperial visit, contains the names of Lord Zouch of Harringworth, Lord Cobham, Sir William Kingston, then carver and afterwards comptroller of the household, Sir Henry Wyatt, afterwards treasurer of the chamber, Sir William Parr, Sir Thomas Cheyne, afterwards warden of the Cinque ports and treasurer of the household, Jane, widow of Sir Richard Guildford, formerly master of the horse, and Christopher More, a clerk of the exchequer.[1459] It is to be feared that some of these tenants cast a covetous eye upon the fee-simple of their dwellings, and that it was not all zeal for church reform which made Lord Cobham, for example, write to Sir Thomas Wyatt, the poet and son of Sir Henry, on 7 October 1538, ‘No news, but I trust there shall not be a friar left in England before you return’.[1460] Cobham and his friends had not long to wait. The deed by which the friars surrendered their property into the hands of the King is dated 12 November 1538. The annual income, derived from the rented premises, was reckoned as £104 15_s._ 5_d._, but of course this in no way represents the capital value of the site and buildings.[1461] The partition of spoils, under the supervision of the Court of Augmentations, followed in due course. Cobham got his house, although not immediately, at nine years’ purchase; and between 1540 and 1550 some sixteen other parcels of the estate, many of them very substantial, were similarly alienated.[1462] Finally, on 12 March 1550, during the liberal distribution of crown lands for which the authority of Henry VIII was alleged by his executors in the Privy Council, a comprehensive grant was made of all that still remained unalienated in the precinct to Sir Thomas Cawarden, the Master of the Revels, whose office had for some years past been established within its walls. Apparently Cawarden paid nothing for it, but on the other hand the King owed him a good deal for moneys spent in the service of the Revels.[1463]

The Blackfriars long remained an anomaly in the local government of London. Like all monastic establishments, the friars had maintained extensive privileges within their own precinct. Nightly their porter had shut their four gates upon the city. They had done their own paving. The Lord Mayor had claimed a jurisdiction, but if this was admitted, it was only in cases of felony. The ordinary functions of civil magistracy had been exercised, when called for, by Sir William Kingston and other important tenants.[1464] Naturally there had been friction from time to time with the Corporation, and on the surrender the latter, like the tenants, hoped that their opportunity was come. They addressed a petition to Henry, in which they expressed their gratification that he had ‘extirped and extinct the orders of Freers to the great exaltacion of Crystes doctryne and the abolucion of Antecriste theyr first founder and begynner’, and asked for a grant of the church and the whole precinct of the Blackfriars, together with those of the three other London friaries, to be used for the special benefit of non-parishioners and of those infected by pestilence.[1465] Henry, however, had not gone to the trouble of obtaining a surrender merely to inflate the powers and the revenues of a municipality. He is reported to have replied that ‘he was as well hable to keep the liberties as the Friers were’, and to have handed the keys to Sir John Portinari, one of his gentlemen pensioners, who dwelt in the precinct.[1466] The Blackfriars, therefore, continued to be an exempt place or ‘liberty’, an enclave within the walls of the City, but not part of it, and with a somewhat loose and ill-defined organization of its own. The inhabitants agreed together and appointed a porter and a scavenger. A constable was appointed for them by the justices of the verge.[1467] The precinct was constituted an ecclesiastical parish, known as St. Anne’s after a chapel which had once served its inhabitants; and was provided with a church.[1468] Petty offences were tried, and any exceptional affairs managed, as might have been done in a rural parish, by the justices, and it was to these that any administrative orders thought necessary by the Privy Council were ordinarily addressed.[1469] It perhaps goes without saying that the City were not content with a single rebuff. They attempted to interfere at the time of a riot in 1551, and were snubbed by the Privy Council.[1470] Under Mary they promoted legislation with a view to annexing the liberties, but without success.[1471] In 1562 a sheriff, who entered the liberty to enforce a proclamation, was shut in by the prompt action of the constable, and faced with an inhibition which one of the justices hurried to obtain from a privy councillor.[1472] The city remained persistent. In 1574 the Council had again to intervene.[1473] In 1578 a controversy arose as to the right of the City to dispose of the goods of felons and other escheats. It was referred to two chief justices, who made a report to the effect that, while the inhabitants of both the Blackfriars and the Whitefriars enjoyed certain immunities from civic levies and liabilities, nevertheless the soil of the precincts lay within the City, and the City was entitled to exercise jurisdiction therein. It may be doubted whether effect was given to this opinion.[1474]

In 1587 the Council ordered another inquiry, in order to ascertain the precise nature of the Queen’s title in the Blackfriars.[1475] There had been a petition for redress of inconveniences from the inhabitants.[1476] About the same time the chief landowner, Sir William More, appears to have suggested that the liberty should be converted into a manor, and manorial rights conferred upon him.[1477] These are signs that residence in a liberty hard by a thronging population had disclosed a seamy side. Undesirable persons were bound to throng to a district where the Lord Mayor’s writ did not run. An open space, for example, filled with immemorial trees planted by the friars, had been ruined to house alleys for bowling and other unlawful games.[1478] Doubtless there were those who resented the fact that the attempt of the City to discourage interludes had been met by the establishment of a Blackfriars theatre in 1576, which lasted until 1584. It appears to have been a protest from the inhabitants which led the Privy Council to forbid the public theatre contemplated by James Burbage in 1596, although some years later they winked at the opening of the building as a private house. In 1596 the church fell down, and in appointing a commission to apportion the responsibility for repairs, the council also instructed them to consider the government of the liberty, ‘which being grown more populus than heretofore and without any certaine and knowen officer to keepe good orders there, needeth to be reformed in that behalfe’.[1479] The nature of the commission’s findings is not upon record, but that the ultimate solution lay in the incorporation of the liberty in the City could hardly be doubtful. As far back as 1589 the Council had found it convenient to use the Lord Mayor as an agent for securing a proper contribution from the Blackfriars towards a levy. From 1597 onwards they showed an increased tendency to make similar use of an administrative machinery far more completely organized than that of the justices of the peace. In that year the Lord Mayor was instructed to make a collection in aid of the Blackfriars church repairs. In 1600 it again fell to him to assess the share of the liberty in a levy of men and money. In 1601 it is he who is called upon to suppress plays in Blackfriars during Lent.[1480] The final step was, however, deferred until 20 September 1608, when the new Jacobean charter formally extended the jurisdiction of the city to various liberties, including both the Blackfriars and the Whitefriars, with certain exemptions as regards assessments and the tenure of offices, but with none as regards responsibility for petty offences and the keeping of the peace.[1481]

I have anticipated, in order to get the question of jurisdiction out of the way. I must now return to the topography. Sir Thomas Cawarden died on 29 August 1559. He had no son, and his executors, Lady Cawarden and Sir William More, personally took over the Blackfriars estate in survivorship, as part of the settlement of his affairs.[1482] Lady Cawarden’s death on 20 February 1560 left More sole owner. He retained the property until his own death in 1601, and the muniment room of his house at Loseley near Guildford contains innumerable documents relating to the business transactions in which it involved him, together with some of earlier date which he inherited from Cawarden. The researches of Professor Feuillerat in these archives render it possible to reconstruct with some minuteness the arrangement of the Blackfriars and its buildings at the time of the surrender, to trace many of the changes of the next half-century, and, as part of the process, to indicate pretty definitely the locality and nature of the structures which were turned to theatrical uses.

The precinct covered a space of about five acres.[1483] In shape it was a rough parallelogram, wider at the north than at the south. The great gate was towards the east end of the north boundary. It was reached by a short entry on the south of Bowier Row, now Ludgate Hill, just east of Ludgate. This seems to have been called Gate Street. It is now the north end of Pilgrim Street.[1484] From here the boundary was the city wall, westwards for about 450 ft. to the Fleet ditch, and then southwards for about 800 ft. along the east side of the ditch. There were towers at intervals. One of these stood about 200 ft. down from the angle, and immediately south of this was the bridge over the Fleet towards Bridewell. The south and east boundaries were also walled. Between the south wall and the river ran Castle Lane, which was not within the precinct.[1485] A gate in the south wall gave access across the lane to the Blackfriars ‘bridge’ or ‘stairs’, a common landing place, originally built by the Prior of St. John’s, from whom, in some way not clear to me, the Friars held their estate.[1486] The south-east angle of the precinct was near Puddle Wharf, and from here the boundary ran up the west side of St. Andrew’s Hill to Carter Lane, bending out eastwards near the top, where the buildings of the Wardrobe joined it by an arch over the roadway, was then driven in sharply westwards by the end of Carter Lane, which was butt up against a turngate in the friars’ wall, and finally ran in an irregularly diagonal line from the junction of Creed and Carter Lanes north-west to the great gate again. Internally the precinct was unequally divided by an irregular highway which ran north and south, from the great gate to the Blackfriars stairs. This started out of Gate Street as High Street, and lower down became Water Lane.[1487] All the conventual buildings lay on the east of the highway. Here was the larger division of the precinct, measuring about 450 ft. from east to west. The western division, measuring about 150 ft., contained only a few houses and gardens. Across it ran from Bridewell Bridge to Water Lane a strip of unoccupied land, containing nothing but a ruined gallery, probably part of the provision made for the accommodation of Charles V in 1522. One of Cawarden’s first acts, when he got his property, was to make a new road, with tenements and gardens to the south of it, along this strip. It became known as Bridewell Lane, and is represented by the present Union Street.[1488] It must have joined Water Lane just south of a little place or parvis which lay in front of the west porch of the church and the adjoining entrance to the cloister. The parvis contained one or two houses and shops, and formed part of the continuous thoroughfare from north to south, communicating by gateways with High Street and Water Lane.[1489] The conventual church itself divided the eastern portion of the precinct from west to east, extending not quite so far east as the present Friar Street. It was 220 ft. long and 66 ft. wide, and had two aisles and a chancel, which, as usual in conventual churches, was as long as the nave. There was a square porch tower over the west end. Over the junction of nave and chancel stood a belfry, visible in Wyngaerde’s drawing of c. 1543–50, and to the north of the chancel a chapel, probably the quasi-parochial chapel of St. Anne, and a vestry.[1490] Beyond these was the churchyard.[1491] This was 300 ft. long by 90 ft. deep, and occupied about two-thirds of the space between the High Street on the west, the church on the south, and the north-eastern boundary of the precinct. A group of houses stood between it and the great gate towards Ludgate, and three others separated it from the High Street at the south west corner.[1492] One of these, built up against the church and the High Street gateway, was a recluse’s cell or Ankerhouse.[1493] Cawarden cut a new road across the churchyard, 20 ft. north of the site of the chancel and just north of the Ankerhouse and the High Street gate. This continued Carter Lane, the turngate at the end of which was converted into a gate practicable for carts, and with Bridewell Lane provided a thoroughfare across the Blackfriars from east to west in addition to that from north to south. That part of the existing Carter Lane, west of Creed Lane, which was formerly known as Shoemakers’ Row, doubtless represents Cawarden’s new way.[1494]

On the south of the nave stood the great cloister, entered by a porter’s lodge in its north-west corner. It was 110 ft. square. Its eastern alley was probably in a line with a way across the church under the belfry to a door into the churchyard, and this line, preserved by Cawarden in order to provide access to the cloister from his new way, is represented by the existing Church Entry.[1495] The north side of the cloister was formed by the wall of the nave. Behind the other three sides were ranged the domestic buildings of the convent. On the east were the ample Prior’s lodging, which stretched back over the space south of the chancel, and farther to the south the Convent garden, covering an acre. Over part of this lodging and over the cloister alley itself was the east dorter of the friars, communicating direct with the church by a stairway.[1496] The east side of the cloister also contained the Chapter-house, which probably stood in the middle, and to the south of this a school-house.[1497] Behind the south-east corner were the provincial’s lodging, a store-house, the common jakes, and another garden, known as the hill garden.[1498] Another dorter stood over the south cloister alley and over some ground-floor buildings of uncertain use, which divided this alley from an inner cloister, flanked on the east by the library, and in part on the west by the infirmary, behind which were the bakehouse, brewhouse, and stables. The western end of the south alley of the main cloister formed a lavabo, and was apparently sunk to a lower level than the rest.[1499] Down the western side of both cloisters extended a continuous range of buildings, the details of which will require subsequent examination. These formed two main blocks. The northern, flanking the main cloister, contained the buttery and parts of the guest-house and porter’s lodge; the southern, flanking the inner cloister, was devoted to the refectory, the lower end of which, owing to the slope of the hill, seems to have stood over the infirmary. The irregular outline of Water Lane, jutting a good deal to the west after it emerged from the parvis in front of the church porch, left a space of some 84 ft. at its widest between this range of buildings and the lane itself. The guest-house and porter’s lodge extended back into this space; it also held the convent kitchen and other subsidiary buildings.[1500]

When Cawarden got his grant in 1550, a great deal of the property had already been disposed of.[1501] Except for the strip where he laid out Bridewell Lane and two small garden plots, nothing was left for him in the western division of the precinct. To the north the group of houses between the churchyard and the great gate had gone. To the south, Cobham had taken the rooms over the porter’s lodge, with a closet window looking into the church, and he and one Sir George Harper had divided the rest of the guest-house block--‘fayer great edifices’, says Cawarden--that lay behind.[1502] Sir Francis Bryan had taken the Prior’s lodging and the convent garden, and from him they had passed to the Bishop of Ely and then to one William Blackwell. Lady Kingston had taken the inner cloister, with part of the south dorter and the rooms beneath it, the library, the infirmary, the brewhouse, bakehouse, and stables. Others had taken the school-house, some more of the south dorter, the provincial’s lodging, the jakes, the store-house, and the hill garden, and these ultimately passed to Lady Grey. Sir Thomas Cheyne, the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, had taken some of the buildings west of the frater. Everything farther south, down towards the river, had also been alienated. What was left for Cawarden consisted mainly of the church itself and the churchyard, the ankerhouse, the great cloister, the chapter-house, the east dorter, the porter’s lodge and buttery block, with all the rooms over these except Cobham’s, the frater, the kitchen, and such buildings standing between the frater and Water Lane, as did not belong to Cheyne.[1503] Much trouble was caused to Cawarden’s successors by uncertainty as to the extent of Cheyne’s claim.[1504] No doubt the grant constituted Cawarden the chief landowner in the district, but he complained that hardly any of his property was ‘mansionable’, and even at the time of his death he had only brought the annual value up to £70.[1505] The survey taken for the purposes of the grant puts it at no more than £19. On the other hand, the value of the stone and timber and other material of the buildings is estimated in the same survey at £879 3_s._ 4_d._, including an item of £709 11_s._ 0_d._ for lead alone. Evidently it was from the site-value and the judicious erection of new buildings and conversion of old ones, with the aid of this material, into ‘mansionable’ property, that Cawarden’s profit was to come. A convinced Protestant, he looked upon the church as a quarry. He pulled it down, with the exception of the south wall of the nave, which was to serve him as a garden wall, and the porch which he turned into a tenement. Other tenements were built on the site, and the rest of it, with so much of the churchyard as was not required for the new road, was let off. One of the tenants appears to have made tennis-courts on the site of the chancel. The demolition included St. Anne’s Chapel. This had been closed during Henry’s reign and used as a store-house for the Offices of Tents and Revels. For a while the inhabitants were allowed to worship in a room under an old gallery, presumably that which became the site of Bridewell Lane; but now this passed into Cawarden’s hands and he evicted them. When they plucked up heart, under Mary, to protest, he first offered them a site in the churchyard and a roof if they would be at the expense of building, and ultimately gave them an upper room, apparently at the north end of the east dorter. This fell down in 1597, and was rebuilt by the parishioners, who finally bought it, with a piece of the site of the old conventual church as a churchyard, from Sir George More in 1607–8.[1506] Cawarden effected an adjustment of boundaries on the east of the cloister with the Bishop of Ely.[1507] He then proceeded to build dwelling rooms along the south and east sides of the cloister.[1508] They must have been fairly shallow, for they left him a great square garden, but no doubt the recess of the chapter-house permitted increased depth towards the east. Under the west wing of the new building, adjoining the buttery, was a great vaulted room, 57 ft. by 25, which must, I think, have been the lavabo of the friars.[1509] East of this was a set of rooms capable of use as a separate dwelling, which came to be known as Lygon’s lodgings.[1510] The rest formed the capital mansion of the property, the ‘great house’, and was clearly intended for Cawarden’s own residence. It seems to have been sometimes let and sometimes occupied by Sir William More.[1511] The great garden must have been pleasant enough, with the north and west cloister alleys left standing, and a tinkling conduit in the west end, filled by a pipe from Clerkenwell.[1512]

The important part of the Blackfriars, from the point of view of theatrical topography, is the range of buildings on the western side of the two cloisters, parallel to Water Lane. The two blocks constituting this range, or so much of them as passed to Cawarden, are referred to in the surveys of 1548 and 1550 as the ‘olde butterie’ and the ‘vpper ffrater’.[1513] From the details given in these surveys and in the leases and other documents preserved at Loseley, it is possible to form a very fair notion of their structure and uses. The chief rooms in both blocks were upon an upper floor. The northern block was 110 ft. in length from north to south and 36 ft. in width. The upper rooms, however, were only 26 ft. wide, as 10 ft. was taken up by a high stone gallery which ran along the west of the building, and was perhaps connected with the wooden gallery leading to the Fleet.[1514] These rooms were four in number. That to the north, 21 ft. long, belonged to Cobham, and had a closet window looking into the church upon the south wall of which, for 20 ft. of its width, the block abutted.[1515] Then came two central rooms, a large and a small one, measuring together 52 ft. in length, and then a southern one, which with an entry measured 47 ft.[1516] The surveys treat the three rooms which fell to Cawarden as a single ‘hall place’. All four rooms had probably formed part of the guest-house of the convent, and had lodged Charles V. The ground floor held low rooms pierced at intervals by entries and with cellars underneath them. The chief entry or gate-house was at the southern end and served Cawarden’s mansion house when that was built.[1517] North of this came the buttery proper and a pantry, occupying with a small entry connecting them 29 ft.;[1518] then another stepped entry into the cloister serving afterwards as Cawarden’s garden gate;[1519] then probably more rooms under the two central upper rooms; then a staircase to Cobham’s upper room;[1520] and finally rooms belonging to the porter’s lodge, which were 21 ft. in length. This lodge extended backwards towards Water Lane, and over and around it were other rooms of Cobham’s and yet others forming the house of Sir George Harper.[1521] Some or all of these had also probably been part of the guest-house. Together with a garden of Cobham’s, they occupied rather less than half the space between the northern block and Water Lane. South of them, and included in Cawarden’s grant, were the convent kitchen with a room over it, and the kitchen yard, forming a space 84 ft. wide, and in length 74 ft. at the buttery end and 68 ft. at the lane end.

The northern block, being 110 ft. long, extended right down to the southern line of the cloister, which was 110 ft. square. Here it abutted upon the southern block. This was 52 ft. wide. The length of the upper frater is given in the surveys as 107 ft., and in two of More’s leases as 110 ft.[1522] The latter figure is probably the right one.[1523] The north end of this block contained a ‘great stair’, which gave access both to the frater and to the guest-house, and was itself convenient of approach both from the gate-house entry and from the lavabo at the south-west angle of the cloister. Probably this end was built in the form of a tower, as there were rooms on and over the staircase and over the adjoining Duchy Chamber, and garrets over those.[1524] There was a garret also over the south end of the northern block.[1525] It is doubtful whether anything stood over the main portion of the southern block.[1526] This had a flat leaded roof, whereas the northern block, as its lead is not mentioned in the survey, probably had a gabled and tiled roof. Apart from the staircase tower, the upper floor of the southern block consisted of the ‘upper’ frater or refectory, a spacious apartment, which had been used for Parliaments and the legatine trial of Henry VIII’s divorce case, and was sometimes known as ‘the Parliament chamber’.[1527] The ground floor is a little more difficult. The survey of 1548 assigns to it a ‘blind’, that is, I suppose, a windowless, or at any rate dark, parlour, which came next the buttery block, and a hall, to which the parlour served as an entry.[1528] These are said to be ‘vnder the seide frater of the same lengethe and breddethe’. This might naturally be taken to mean that they were, together, of the same size as the frater above. In fact it must, I think, mean that they were of the same size as each other, for we know from another source that the south end of the frater was over a room not belonging to Cawarden at all but to Lady Kingston, and itself standing over the infirmary, which, owing to the fall of the ground, formed at that end a lower story of the block.[1529] The survey does not say what the sizes of the parlour and hall were, but a later document suggests that together they underlay over two-thirds of the frater and occupied a space of 74 ft. from north to south and 52 ft. from east to west.[1530] Under Cawarden’s part of the southern block were cellars. To the west lay what was known as the Duchy Chamber, probably from some official use in connexion with the Duchy of Lancaster. This was a two-story building, 50 ft. long by 16 ft. wide, jutting out at right angles to the extreme north end of the frater. South of it was a house, apparently belonging to Sir Thomas Cheyne and occupied by Sir John Portinari, which touched the frater at one end, and at the other had a parlour, interposed between the end of the Duchy Chamber and Water Lane, and bounded on the north, as the Duchy Chamber itself must have been, by the kitchen yard. South of this again were a little chamber and a kitchen, with an entry from Water Lane, probably between Portinari’s parlour and another house belonging to Cheyne.[1531] The little chamber and kitchen were used in conjunction with the hall under the upper frater. This hall, which was paved and stood ‘handsome to’ the buttery, had also been a frater, serving as a breakfast room for the friars, and in the little chamber had lived their butler.[1532] Now it is noted in the surveys that Sir Thomas Cheyne had laid claim to the paved hall, the ‘blind’ parlour, the little chamber, and the kitchen, and it seems very doubtful whether they were covered by the specifications of Cawarden’s grant.[1533] He succeeded, however, in occupying them; and the inevitable lawsuit was left for his successor.

Cawarden had had the buttery, frater, kitchen, and Duchy chamber on lease since 4 April 1548.[1534] Some of these, as well as other conventual buildings, he had occupied from a still earlier date in his capacity as Master of the Tents and Revels. For these offices the propinquity of the Wardrobe rendered the Blackfriars very convenient. Already in 1511 temporary use had been made of some room in the precinct to prepare a pageant in for a joust at Westminster.[1535] Before Cawarden became Master, the regular store-house of the Revels office had been at Warwick Inn.[1536] The transfer to Blackfriars was not completed until February 1547, but it perhaps began earlier, since the papers of the Court of Augmentations contain receipts by John Barnard, for sums spent by the King’s surveyor on ‘the reparayng and amendyng of the Blacke Fryers in London store howse for the seyd tentes and revelles’ during 1545.[1537] The Chapel of St. Anne had been requisitioned with other houses ‘to laye in tentes, maskes and revels’ before the end of Henry VIII’s reign.[1538] As to the exact location of the Tents there is some interesting, although conflicting, evidence. An order of the Augmentations in 1550 allowed Sir Thomas Cheyne £5 a year for the use of his great room by the Tents from 25 March 1545 onwards.[1539] The room intended was undeniably the paved hall or breakfast room under the frater, but Sir William More maintained in 1572 that the payment by the Augmentations was an irregular one, and that the paved hall had never been used for the Revels and was never in fact Cheyne’s.[1540] Sir John Portinari gave evidence that for some time after the surrender of the convent it had remained empty, and that he had himself kept the keys until Cawarden took possession of it in 1550. Cawarden then invited him to a supper and a play in the hall.[1541] The Revels seem to have had the use of the upper frater or parliament chamber during Henry VIII’s reign.[1542] But the surveys of 1548 and 1550 locate them to the north of this, in the southernmost of the four halls of the old guest-house. The two central halls, together with the convent kitchen, had been tenanted as far back as 1539 by successive Lords Cobham, to whose house they were adjacent.[1543] In 1554, however, Cawarden sold the two rooms to George Lord Cobham, together with the porter’s lodge, which underlay his original holding, and received as part of his consideration a release from any claim which Cobham may have had to the kitchen yard and to the property granted to Cawarden on the west side of Water Lane.[1544] With the upper rooms transferred to Cobham went ‘appurtenances’, which probably included the corresponding ground-floor rooms, as these are not traceable in More’s possession and apparently formed part of the Cobham estate when that was disposed of in the next century.[1545] The porter’s lodge was all on the ground floor. It had a frontage of 21 ft. on the cloister and ran back for 47 ft. towards Water Lane. At the time of Cawarden’s grant in 1550 it had been occupied by John Barnard, clerk comptroller of the Tents and Revels, but he had died in the same year.[1546] Naturally it was convenient for the officers of the Revels to live in the Blackfriars. John Holt, the yeoman, had a house to the north of the churchyard. Thomas Philipps, the clerk, had the ‘little chamber’ west of the frater. The paved hall served him as a wood store, and from time to time some of Cawarden’s servants lay there. About 1552 Cawarden moved Philipps to the Ankerhouse, and put into the little chamber the deputy clerk, Thomas Blagrave, who found it too small, and rented an adjoining chamber from Cheyne.[1547] The paved hall was then let, with other neighbouring rooms on more than one floor, to one Woodman, who kept an ordinary in the hall and did a good deal of damage to the property.[1548] Meanwhile, the Revels had apparently been moved from this first-floor hall where they lay in 1550, for when this hall is recited as the south boundary of Cobham’s purchase in 1554, it is described as a house in the tenure of Sir John Cheke or his assigns.[1549] So long as the Tents and Revels continued to be housed in Crown property, the offices had of course nothing to pay for rent. But after 1550 Cawarden, as naturally, claimed an allowance for rent, and in 1555 he was permitted to charge six years’ arrears from Michaelmas 1549 at the rate of £3 6_s._ 8_d._ a year each for the official residences of the comptroller, clerk, and yeoman, £6 13_s._ 4_d._ for his own, £6 13_s._ 4_d._ for the office of the tents, and £6 13_s._ 4_d._ for the ‘store and woorke howses of the revelles’. In the accounts for 1555–9 similar charges recur annually, but the allowance for Cawarden’s own house is raised to £10 and that for the houses of the other officers to £5 each; and the £6 13_s._ 4_d._ for the Revels office is specified as being ‘for the rente of fyve greate roomes within the Blackefryers for the woorke and store howses of the Revelles’.[1550] About 1560 the store-house was certainly not the hall over the buttery, but the great vaulted room in the south-west corner of the cloister, which had been the lavabo of the friars.[1551] On the other hand, Sir John Cheke’s tenure of his house had ceased and the vacated rooms had become available for workhouses. This is evident from the terms of a lease of the same rooms to Sir Henry Neville, executed on 10 June 1560, just after the Revels had been removed to St. John’s.[1552] Cawarden had died on the previous 29 August, and the lease was one of the first dealings of William More with the property. The principal rooms leased were precisely four in number. They had been ‘lately called or knowen by the name of Mr. Chekes lodginge and sythence vsed by Sir Thomas Cawarden knight deceased for the office of the Quenes Maiesties Revelles’. They were bounded on the north by Lord Cobham’s house, on the east by the houses of More and of Sir Henry Jerningham, who was Lady Kingston’s son and heir, and on the west by another house of More’s in the occupation of Richard Frith, and by the way leading to More’s house and garden and a piece of void ground. Under them and leased with them were the buttery and pantry; and the lease also covered a cellar and a ‘greate rome in manner of a grete seller having a chimpney’ which I suppose to have been the late Revels store-house. The upstairs rooms were approximately 157 ft. long, 27 ft. wide at the north end, and 22 ft. wide at the south end.[1553] The length agrees approximately with the sum of the lengths of the upper frater and of the hall over the buttery not included in Cobham’s purchase of 1554; and it was evidently from these that Neville’s holding was taken. But the head of the staircase must have interfered with his width in the middle, and it will be observed that, while he had the full width of the northern block, he had less than half the full width (52 ft.) of the frater. Evidently Cawarden had partitioned the frater to make it ‘mansionable’, and in particular had divided it into two tenements by a partition from north to south. Neville’s was the eastern division. The western division and the rooms at the top of the staircase tower were in the tenure of Richard Frith, who had taken a twenty-four years’ lease from Cawarden in April 1555 and had obtained a renewal from More on 24 December 1559. Here, in 1561, Frith kept a dancing-school.[1554] Neville’s lease also gave him a share in More’s water-supply, a strip of the void ground, formerly the convent kitchen yard, between the northern block and Water Lane, and a right of way to the buttery and pantry through the rest of that ground, which was reserved to More. Neville’s strip lay just south of Cobham’s garden wall. That reserved by More was partly taken up by ways to his garden and gate-house entries. In the space between these was erected in 1561 a public conduit, which received the water-supply after it left More’s tap, and passed it on to the Earl of Pembroke’s house at Baynard’s Castle. Here also stood a tennis ground, tenanted with a cellar under the northern block by Frith.[1555] The gate-house entry, or at least the way to it, served Frith’s house, as well as More’s own. Near it were certain rooms, reserved for More’s use or that of his servant John Horley, which may have been constructed out of the ‘blind’ parlour. The great stairs in the tower between the two blocks were probably assigned to Frith. They were not included in Neville’s lease, and he was specifically debarred from any right of access through More’s house or garden except by More’s licence. It was probably contemplated that he would build stairs to the upper floor for himself, and this is perhaps why More exacted no fine on the execution of the lease.[1556] At any rate Neville did build stairs on the west of the house, placing them not in his own strip of yard but in More’s, with his water-cock in a little room at the stair foot. The pale of Frith’s tennis court was altered to allow of access between it and Neville’s stairs from More’s garden entry to his gate-house entry.[1557] In his own strip Neville built a kitchen and another set of stairs behind it which must have led into the extreme north end of his house, as the site of the kitchen underlay, not Neville’s own rooms, but those purchased by Cobham in 1554. The rest of the strip served as a woodyard, and had a privy in it. Presumably the original convent kitchen acquired by Cawarden had been pulled down. Within the house Neville put up partitions, turning his four rooms into six, of which it may be inferred that two lay in the northern block and four in the southern, and adorning one of these latter with wainscoting most of the way round, and with a great round portal.[1558] About Lady Day 1568 More bought back the lease from Neville for £100, doubtless in consideration of the improvements.[1559] For a time it seems to have been occupied by the Silk Dyers Company.[1560] On 6 February 1571 it was let to William Lord Cobham, the terms of whose lease closely resemble those of Neville’s, but record the changes made during his predecessor’s tenancy.[1561] Cobham gave up the house in 1576, and on 27 August of that year Neville wrote to More to recommend a new applicant for the tenancy, his friend Richard Farrant. With it came an application from Farrant himself. Apparently his tenancy entailed the removal of an Italian, who may have been one of the silk dyers, and he desired to be allowed to take down one of the partitions. On 17 September he wrote to ask that a small room, 6 ft. by 4½ ft., occupied by More’s man Bradshaw might be added to his holding.[1562] His lease was executed on 20 December.[1563] It gives him all the rooms which Neville had had, with the exception of the former Revels store-house, which is now described as ‘that great rome nowe vsed for a wasshynge howse’; and it adds the little room specially asked for, which had been contrived by throwing together a privy and a coal-house. Richard Farrant was Master of the Children of Windsor Chapel, and deputy to William Hunnis as Master of the Children of the Chapel Royal, and his object in taking the house was to have a room in which the children could give public representations for profit of the plays which they were afterwards to perform at Court. He carried out his plan, and so the old frater of the friars, once the parliament chamber of the realm, became the first Blackfriars theatre.[1564]

More, according to his own account, was not best pleased at the use made of his house. He complained that Farrant, after pretending that he only meant to teach the children in it, had made it a ‘continuall howse for plays’ to the offence of the precinct, and to fit it for the purpose had pulled down and defaced Neville’s partitions, spoiled the windows, and brought the house to great ruin. He had also sublet certain portions, and, as he was not entitled to do this under his lease without licence, More claimed the forfeiture of the lease. At this moment, on 30 November 1580, Farrant died, leaving the house to his widow Anne. For some months there were no plays in the theatre. Then Hunnis resolved to carry on Farrant’s enterprise himself, and on a recommendation from the Earl of Leicester More appears to have given at least a tacit consent to a sub-letting by Anne to Hunnis and one John Newman on 20 December 1581. They were to do repairs and pay her £6 13_s._ 4_d._ in rent more than the £14 due to More. An unfortunate slip of the scrivener’s pen cut Mrs. Farrant’s profit down to £6 6_s._ 8_d._ They also gave bonds of £100 each for the due fulfilment of their covenants, and according to Newman’s statement to More, paid £30 down. According to Mrs. Farrant they neglected their repairs and were extremely irregular with their rent, so that she was put to great shifts in order to satisfy Sir William More, disposing of a small reversion given her by the Queen, pawning her plate and jewels, selling a dozen of gold buttons here and a set of viols there, and borrowing of powerful friends such as Lord Cobham or Henry Sackford, the Master of the Tents. Meanwhile Hunnis and Newman disposed of their interest to one Henry Evans, a scrivener, and More, incensed at this, took definite steps in the spring of 1583 to recover his house by executing a fresh lease to one of his men, Thomas Smallpiece, and setting Smallpiece to sue for the ejectment of Evans. The latter tried to elude him by a further transfer of the sub-lease to the Earl of Oxford, who passed it on to John Lyly, the poet; and thus, says More, the title was ‘posted over from one to another from me’ contrary to the conditions of the original lease. Doubtless Hunnis, Lyly, and Evans were all working together under the Earl’s patronage, for a company under Oxford’s name was taken to Court by Lyly in the winter of 1583–4 and by Evans in the winter of 1584–5, and it seems pretty clear that in 1583–4, at any rate, it was in fact made up of boys from the Chapel and Paul’s.[1565] More, however, pursued his point, and about Easter 1584 recovered legal possession of his house. Some months before, Anne Farrant, in despair, had appealed to Sir Francis Walsingham, and had also brought actions at common law against Hunnis and Newman for the forfeiture of their bonds. They applied to the Court of Requests to take over the case, and there is no formal record of the outcome. But in January 1587 Mrs. Farrant was again complaining to the Privy Council, and Sir John Wolley was asked to bring about a settlement between her and More, who was his father-in-law.[1566]

So ends the story of the first Blackfriars theatre. The premises which it had occupied came into the hands of Henry Lord Hunsdon, who was also about the same time tenant of More’s mansion house and garden.[1567] It would seem that Lord Oxford and Lyly had passed on to Hunsdon their sub-leases from the Farrants and that, even when he recovered legal possession from the court, More did not care to interfere with this arrangement. But there was evidently some friction. The sub-leases were due to expire in 1590 or 1591, and in April 1586 More refused to renew them. His excuse was that ‘The howses yow had of Lyllye I determyne that assone as theye bothe shall cum into my handes to kepe them to the onelye vse of me and mye chylderne’. In acknowledging this decision, Hunsdon complained that the pipe of water belonging to one of the houses had been diverted to serve that of Lord Cobham. In 1590 he made a fresh attempt to secure a renewal. More at first drafted a letter of consent, but then changed his mind and told Hunsdon that he needed the houses for his daughter Lady Wolley and for himself on his visits to London. Hunsdon had suffered annoyance because the tenant of the next house ‘having the vse of the leades, either by negligence or otherwise, suffereth the boyes to cutt upp the lead with knifes or to boore yt through with bodkyns wherby the rayne cometh throwghe’.[1568] This allusion, together with that to the pipe of water, makes it clear that Hunsdon’s houses included the rooms covered by Neville’s lease of 1560, in which the right of dancing-master Frith to use the leads over the southern block is expressly safeguarded. I think it is probable that the two houses are merely the southern and northern sections of the Farrant holding, separately sublet to Hunsdon. It is known that Farrant himself, while in occupation of the theatre, had let off certain rooms. More’s wish to retain the property for family reasons did not long outlast its immediate purpose of decently covering a refusal to the Lord Chamberlain. Frith’s tenancy also came to an end, and for some period between 1590 and 1596 the rooms formerly constituting the upper frater were reunited in the occupation of William de Laune, a doctor of physic. The rooms to the north of them, after his appointment as Chamberlain of the Exchequer on 23 November 1591, were used by More for the purposes of the Pipe Office.[1569] The buttery and pantry beneath were probably also relet in 1591.[1570]

I must now turn to the history of the ‘paved hall’ and ‘blind parlour’ under the upper frater and the little chamber and kitchen to the west of these, all of which, when Cawarden obtained possession in 1550, were under the shadow of a claim by Sir Thomas Cheyne. Blagrave’s occupation of the little chamber terminated when the Revels Office moved to St. John’s in 1560, and on 10 December 1564 More drafted a lease of it to one Laurence Bywater, who had in fact been in occupation since 1560.[1571] It is described as consisting of a hall, a chamber above, a little room below, a kitchen, a yard, ‘a long entrie coming in ouer the yard bourded and railed’, and a vault or cellar. The paved hall had been let by 1572 to William Joyner, who used it as a fencing-school. In this year Cheyne’s claim was renewed by one Henry Pole and his wife Margaret, who was the widow of Cheyne’s eldest son. The rooms chiefly in dispute were the paved hall and Bywater’s house, but the Poles seem also to have claimed rooms in the tenures of Richard Frith and Thomas Hale.[1572] It may be conjectured that these were the rooms constructed out of the blind parlour. On the other hand More made a counter-claim, probably not very serious, to Pole tenements in the occupation of Christopher Fenton, Thomas Austen, and John Lewes. Incidentally, it appears that Cawarden had not succeeded in removing all signs of papistry from the Blackfriars, for Bywater’s house is throughout described in the interrogatories taken as the little house having chalices and singing cakes painted in the window. The matter was referred to arbitration.[1573] Pole’s case rested entirely on the question of fact as to what the holding of Cheyne and his predecessors actually comprised in 1540, since the grant named no boundaries but merely gave Cheyne the houses and lands then in his own occupation and formerly in those of Jasper Fylole and of Thomas Ferebye and William Lylgrave. Pole produced some witnesses who declared that before the surrender by the friars one Purpointe had dwelt in Bywater’s house and kept a tavern in the fencing-school, and that subsequently Ferebye and Lylgrave had occupied these premises. They could not say that Cheyne himself had ever had possession of them, but Pole was able to cite the order of the Court of Augmentation in 1550 allowing Cheyne rent for his large room as a store-house for the tents. In More’s view this rent was paid under a misunderstanding, and he seems to have suggested that the only houses occupied by Cheyne and his predecessors were that afterwards occupied by Portinari and one ‘new built’ by Cheyne, in which apparently Lord Henry Seymour was living at the time of the suit. Moreover, he produced a number of witnesses, including Bywater, Blagrave, Thomas Hale, groom of the Tents, Portinari himself, and Elizabeth Baxter, widow of the former porter of the friars, who agreed in deposing that the friars had never let these rooms, which were essential as a breakfast room and a butler’s lodging to their daily life, and gave a perfectly consistent account of the various uses of them after the surrender by Cawarden, Woodman, Phillips, Blagrave, and Bywater, which have already been indicated in this narrative. It does not transpire that More confided to the arbitrators the suspicious references to Cheyne’s claim in the surveys of 1548 and 1550. However this may be, their decision was in his favour on the substantial issue. The Poles were required to acknowledge his right to Bywater’s house and the paved hall, as well as to the tenements of Frith and Hale. More, on the other hand, was to abandon his claim to the tenements of Fenton, Austen, and Lewes, and by way of compromise was to execute a lease of Bywater’s house to the Poles at a nominal rent for fifty years or the term of their lives. This he accordingly did. Nothing more is heard of any of the premises involved until July 1584, just after More had succeeded in putting an end to Lyly’s theatrical enterprise. By this date both Bywater and Joyner had gone, and their places had been taken by another fencing-master, an Italian, Rocco Bonetti by name.[1574] Bonetti had acquired from Margaret Pole, now a widow, her life-interest in the butler’s lodging. He had also taken over from Lyly two leases, one of the fencing-school, the other of a house, the property of More, immediately west of the butler’s lodging.[1575] The latter he had repaired at some cost. He had even been rash enough to put up additional buildings on More’s land. And he had not paid his workmen, to whom he owed £200. The butler’s lodging is described as being in great decay. But this also, or its site, he appears to have enlarged, at the expense of his neighbouring tenement on the west. He feared the expiration of his interests, and got his friends, of whom were Lord Willoughby, Sir John North, and Sir Walter Raleigh, to approach More for an extension of tenure. As regards the western house, More seems to have consented, after much reluctance in view of Bonetti’s indebted condition, to a lease for seven years in 1586.[1576] As regards the butler’s lodging, he was mainly interested in the reversion after Mrs. Pole’s death, and of this reversion he granted Bonetti a ten years’ term by a lease of 20 March 1585.[1577] The holding is described in much the same terms as those used in Bywater’s lease of 1564. The measurements, however, are also given. The length from north to south was 25 ft. 2 in., and the width from east to west 22 ft. 6 in. But 4 ft. 6 in. of the length and 2 ft. of the width were not covered by Mrs. Pole’s lease, and were taken, probably by an encroachment which the lease was intended to regularize, from More’s tenement to the west. For the sake of greater accuracy, the measurements and boundaries of this western tenement are given. It was 33 ft. from north to south and 39 ft. 8 in. from east to west. It was bounded on the north by More’s yard, on the south and west by a house of Mrs. Pole’s, on the south by the way to Sir George Carey’s house, and on the east by More’s house in Bonetti’s tenure, that is to say the house which is the subject of the lease.[1578]

Sir George Carey was the eldest son of Lord Hunsdon, and himself became Lord Hunsdon on 22 July 1596.[1579] He is not traceable in the Blackfriars before 1585, but continued to reside there until his death in 1603. The way to his house corresponds in position with the way to Lady Kingston’s house of the 1548 survey, and he had pretty clearly acquired some or all of her property, including the infirmary under the upper frater.[1580] The way must have followed a line from Water Lane, much the same as that of the present Printing House Lane. The fencing-school was accessible from it by a door next to Carey’s.[1581] Certain other data of the early surveys are a little difficult to reconcile with those of the later documents. The surveys indicate three parallel rows of buildings, of a comparatively insignificant character, extending over a space roughly 80 ft. square between the frater block and Water Lane. The north row consisted of the two-storied Duchy Chamber, a narrow building 50 ft. by 17 ft., and the parlour of Sir John Portinari’s house. These had a frontage on the kitchen yard. South of them came the rest of Portinari’s house, and south of this the little chamber, 26 ft. long by 10 ft. wide, the little kitchen, 23 ft. long by 22 ft. wide, and an entry to the latter, 30 ft. long by 17 ft. wide, which I suppose to have debouched upon Water Lane. The little chamber and kitchen had their frontage on the way leading to Lady Kingston’s. The house referred to as Cheyne’s in the 1550 survey is probably that occupied by Portinari. But Cheyne must also have had other property in the same neighbourhood, which the surveys do not mention. There was the house, probably that described as ‘new built’ in 1572, which he occupied himself, and which afterwards passed to Lord Henry Seymour.[1582] And there were the three tenements which More claimed, but did not secure in 1572. These premises were leased as a whole by the Poles to Christopher Fenton on 31 May 1571, and appear to have been gradually cut up into smaller holdings. By 1610 there were four tenants and by 1614 five. They bounded More’s property, and must have lain in the angle of Water Lane and the way to Lady Kingston’s, just south of the entry to the little kitchen.[1583]

The little chamber of 1548 is undoubtedly the butler’s lodging leased to Bywater in 1564 and to Bonetti in 1585, which was a subject of the lawsuit in 1572. But whereas it measured 26 ft. by 10 ft. in 1548, it measured 22 ft. 6 in. by 25 ft. 2 in. in 1585, and the enumeration of rooms in the two leases show that, although Bonetti may have built a small additional room upon a bit of land filched from More, there had been no substantial change since 1564. Further, while in 1548 it was bounded on the north by Portinari’s holding, it was reached in 1564 by a railed and boarded entry across its yard, and documents of 1596 and 1601 make it clear that this entry terminated in a small porch opening on the kitchen yard.[1584] Similarly the little kitchen, 23 ft. by 22 ft., of 1548 had been replaced in 1584 by a house 33 ft. by 39 ft. 8 in., and of this also Portinari’s house had ceased to be the boundary, and a yard of More’s had been substituted. Finally, More’s successor, Sir George More, was in a position in 1603 to sell to one John Tice a strip of land bounded by Tice’s house on the south, Water Lane on the west, and the kitchen yard on the north and east, which must have been just about where Portinari’s parlour stood at the time of the 1548 survey.[1585] I am now approaching the region of conjecture, but there is only one way of accounting for the facts. More must have acquired and pulled down Portinari’s house, and thus not only let light and air into the somewhat congested district west of the frater, but also left room for extensions in the rear of the little houses fronting on the way to Lady Kingston’s. The extension of the little chamber he had probably himself undertaken before 1564. It did not interfere with the chalices and singing cakes in the window, or prevent the house from being in decay in 1585. In 1572 it could be seen that the house had been covered with lead, but presumably was so no longer.[1586] The extension of the little kitchen seems to have been an enterprise of Bonetti, of which More reaped the profits. The rest of the space gained was utilized for the fencing-school kitchen, for a staircase behind the Duchy Chamber, and for certain yards, all of which were in existence in 1596.[1587] It is just possible that More also pulled down the west end of the Duchy Chamber.

By 1596 both the fencing-school and the butler’s lodging had passed from the occupation of Bonetti. One Thomas Bruskett had the former and one John Favour the latter. This is the year of James Burbadge’s great enterprise of the second Blackfriars theatre. Our first intimation of it is from Lord Hunsdon, in a letter to More of 9 January 1596.[1588] He has heard that More has parted with part of his house for a play-house, and makes an offer for ‘your other howse, which once I had also’. The deed of sale by More to James Burbadge is dated 4 February 1596.[1589] The purchase money was £600. The rooms transferred are carefully described, but only a few of the measurements and boundaries are given. There were seven great upper rooms, ‘sometyme being one greate and entire room’, enclosed with great stone walls, and reached by a great pair of winding stairs from the great yard next the Pipe Office. Other stone stairs reached leads above. These rooms had been lately in the tenure of William de Laune, doctor of physic. Beneath them, or beneath an entry between them and the Pipe Office, lay a vault, of which Burbadge was to have the use only, by a ‘stoole and tonnell’ contrived in the thickness of his north wall.[1590] Under some part of De Laune’s seven rooms, and included in the sale, lay also rooms 52 ft. long and 37 ft. wide, known as the ‘midle romes’ or ‘midle stories’. These extended south to Sir George Carey’s house, and were reached from a lane leading thereto, by a door next to Carey’s gate. They had been in the tenure of Rocco Bonetti and were now in that of Thomas Bruskett, together with a kitchen adjoining, and two cellars reached by stairs from the kitchen, and lying under the north end of the middle rooms. Bruskett had one of these, and the other was occupied by John Favor, who dwelt in the house held for the term of her life by Mrs. Pole. This house did not go to Burbadge, but he had one of two small yards of which Favor had the other, between Mrs. Pole’s house and the cellars. This yard was occupied by Peter Johnson, and Burbadge also took four rooms tenanted by Johnson, and surrounded by his yard on the south, Mrs. Pole’s entry on the west, and the great yard next the Pipe Office on the north. Two of these were under De Laune’s late rooms. The other two were under rooms, to the west of the north end of De Laune’s, which were occupied by Charles Bradshaw, possibly the Bradshaw whose room was begged by Farrant in 1576. Bradshaw also occupied a little buttery, an entry and passage from the seven rooms, and a little room for wood and coals. This lay over the buttery, on the west side of a staircase leading to two rooms or lofts, one of which was over the east and north of Bradshaw’s rooms and the other over the entry between the seven rooms and the Pipe Office. These were in the occupation of Edward Merry, who also had a room or garret over them reached by a further staircase. A staircase also led from Peter Johnson’s yard to Bradshaw’s rooms. Both Bradshaw’s and Merry’s rooms were included in Burbadge’s purchase, which was completed by a small yard and privy on the north side of Pipe Office yard, east of Water Lane, south of Cobham’s house, and west of a house of More’s also occupied by Cobham. Burbadge was also to have the right of depositing coal and other goods for a reasonable time in the old kitchen yard, now called ‘the greate yarde next the Pipe Office’, provided he did not interfere with access to the Pipe Office itself, or to More’s garden or other parts of his premises. The description seems complicated, as one reads the deed, but I think that the disposition of the rooms is fairly intelligible.[1591] The seven upper rooms, once a single great room, can only represent the whole of the old parliament chamber or upper frater, formerly divided into two distinct holdings. This, as we know, abutted across the staircase upon the hall in the northern block which had formed part of Farrant’s holding and which More had converted into the Pipe Office in 1591.[1592] The middle rooms, together with the two easternmost of Johnson’s rooms, must together represent the space of the paved hall and blind parlour. There is no reason to suppose that Burbadge bought from More, or that More ever possessed, anything beyond this space on the ground floor of the frater block; and if the hall and parlour were, as I have suggested, of equal size, the total space passing to Burbadge on this floor was 74 ft. from north to south and 52 ft. from east to west. The rest of the floor had been Lady Kingston’s and passed to Sir George Carey.[1593] Johnson’s other two rooms and Bradshaw’s rooms above them, lying to the west of the north end of the seven great rooms, must be the two floors of the Duchy Chamber. The yards behind them were rendered possible by the clearance of Portinari’s house. Bradshaw’s two smaller rooms were on the staircase tower, and Merry’s rooms and garret were partly at the top of this staircase and partly above the Duchy Chamber.

DIAGRAMS OF BLACKFRIARS

1596

The property purchased by Burbadge was extended at various dates after his death in February 1597 by his sons Cuthbert and Richard. On 26 June 1601 they bought for £95 from Sir George More the reversion of the butler’s lodging, subject to the life-interest of Mrs. Pole and to the ten years’ lease after her death, which had in the interval since 1585 passed from Rocco Bonetti to Thomas Bruskett.[1594] On 30 May 1610 they purchased two-thirds of the interests of the heirs of Mrs. Pole and of a mortgagee in the houses formerly held by Christopher Fenton, and on 7 July 1614 also purchased the remaining interest. These houses cost them in all £170.[1595] If, as is not unlikely, they also purchased at some time the house which in 1585 stood on the site of the little kitchen of 1548, and the bit of land sold to John Tice in 1603, the whole of the plot between the frater on the east, Water Lane on the west, the kitchen yard on the north, and the way to Lord Hunsdon’s house on the south, will have passed into their hands. There is no indication that they ever acquired any part of Lord Hunsdon’s house. This was apparently occupied by the French ambassador in 1623, when one of its upper rooms, used as a chapel, fell, and many persons were killed. Camden in his notes for Jacobean annals confused this room with the theatre.[1596] About 1629 the King’s printers, Robert Barker and John Bill, secured Hunsdon House for their press, and it remained the King’s printing house until the Great Fire.[1597] On 19 December 1612 the Burbadges obtained from the Cobham estate a piece of land for the enlargement of the yard near the Pipe Office, which was serving twenty years later to turn coaches in.[1598]

To make an end for the present of topography, the fortunes of the property to the north of the Burbadge purchases may be briefly traced. Sir William More died in 1601 and his son and successor, Sir George, had no need for a Pipe Office. The rooms were therefore leased, with others, on 23 April 1601 to Sir Jerome Bowes at a rent of £14 6_s._ 8_d._ ‘and certein glasses’.[1599] I think that the other rooms included the old lavatory of the friars, once a Revels store-house and thereafter a wash-house for More’s mansion, and that it was in this room that Bowes established the glass-house which became an important industry of the Blackfriars.[1600] On 19 June 1609 Sir George More sold this property, subject to Bowes’s lease, together with the mansion house, the great garden and all that remained to him within the great cloister, to a syndicate, whose members in 1611 divided the purchase amongst themselves.[1601] The former Pipe Office, now called the gate-house, with its yard, part of the glass-house, and a strip of the garden 23 ft. 10 in. wide passed to William Banister. Banister’s son Thomas sold them in 1616 to Gideon De Laune and De Laune in 1617 to Jacob Hardratt. Then Hardratt rebuilt the property and in 1619 sold back to De Laune a tenement which extended 43 ft. from north to south, and 24 ft. westwards from ‘the great gate near the play-house’ to the tenement occupied by a widow Basil. It had a small garden on the east, lying south of another garden belonging to De Laune.[1602] The length of 43 ft. exceeds by 6 ft., the width of an entry, that of the Pipe Office rooms, the site of which De Laune’s tenement no doubt occupied.

The big sale of 1609 did not include the kitchen and kitchen stairs built by Sir Henry Neville about 1560, or the wood yard which enclosed them. A bit of this yard had been included in Burbadge’s purchase of 1596. The rest of the property, with the water supply, had been bought on 11 March 1601, by Henry Lord Cobham, whose house it underlay.[1603] It had in fact been held by his father as far back as 1596.[1604] In 1603 Cobham was attainted. His Blackfriars property was forfeited to the Crown, but regranted to his widow, Lady Kildare, and for some years remained in the hands of trustees for her and her daughter Lady Howard.[1605] In 1612 an additional bit of the wood yard was sold, as already stated, to the Burbadges. Finally, in 1632 the estate was conveyed to the Company of Apothecaries, in whose hands it has since remained.[1606] They must also have acquired the house of Gideon De Laune, who was one of their founders, and therefore their present premises, in their extent of 116 ft. from north to south, exactly replace the ‘northern block’ of buildings which stood to the west of the main Blackfriars cloister, when Sir Thomas Cawarden took possession of it in 1550.

James Burbadge was not destined to see the success of his adventure. After all, he was prevented from establishing his theatre in 1596. Play-houses had just been suppressed in the City, and a number of the more important inhabitants of the Blackfriars disliked the idea of one being opened in their select residential precinct, where no common play-house had yet been seen. Farrant’s theatre, nominally intended for the private practice of the Chapel boys, was presumably regarded as not falling within the category of common play-houses. A petition was sent to the Privy Council, amongst the signatories to which were Burbadge’s neighbour, Sir George Carey, now Lord Hunsdon, Elizabeth Lady Russell, who lived a little farther up Water Lane, and Richard Field, the printer of Shakespeare’s poems.[1607] The extant copy of the petition is not dated, but later references assign it to November 1596, and inform us that as a result the Privy Council forbade the use of the house.[1608] On James Burbadge’s death in February 1597 the Blackfriars property passed to his son Richard.[1609] It is not known what use he made of it before 1600, but in that year the resumption of plays by the Chapel children under Nathaniel Giles gave him an opportunity of following Farrant’s example, and letting the theatre for what were practically public performances ‘vnder the name of a private howse’.[1610] With Giles were associated one James Robinson and Henry Evans, who had already been concerned in the enterprise of John Lyly and the Earl of Oxford; and it was to Evans that, on 2 September 1600, Burbadge leased ‘the great hall or roome, with the roomes over the same, scituate within the precinct of the black Friours’, for a term of twenty-one years from Michaelmas 1600, at a rent of £40,[1611] while Evans and his son-in-law Alexander Hawkins gave a joint bond in £400 as collateral security for due payment. Evans set up a company, which under various names, and throughout shifting financial managements, maintained a substantial continuity of existence, and occupied the Blackfriars for a period of eight years. Its fortunes are dealt with in detail elsewhere.[1612] Only those points directly bearing upon the theatre as such need now be noted. In October 1601, when Evans was negotiating a partnership with Edward Kirkham, William Rastall, and Thomas Kendall, he apparently undertook to transfer his lease to Hawkins in trust to reassign a moiety of the interest under it to these partners.[1613] No reassignment, however, was in fact made. Evans carried out some repairs in December 1603, and trouble arose with his partners because he severed the school-house and chamber over the same from the great hall and used them as private apartments to dine and sup in.[1614] When the playing companies were hard hit by the plague of 1603–4, Evans began to treat with Burbadge for a surrender of the lease.[1615] This came to nothing at the time, but in August 1608, when the Revels company was in disgrace for playing Chapman’s Byron and Kirkham had declared a desire to make an end of the speculation, the suggestion was revived, and the surrender, probably with the assent of Hawkins, actually took place.[1616] As part of his consideration, Evans, through a nominee, was admitted by Burbadge into a new syndicate, of which the other members were Burbadge himself and his brother Cuthbert, and some of the leading players of the King’s company, by whom it was intended that the Blackfriars should now be used.[1617] The King’s men probably entered upon their occupation of the theatre in the autumn of 1609, and thereafter used it alternatively with the Globe, as their winter house, up to the end of their career in 1642.[1618] The new syndicate consisted of seven partners, who may be called ‘housekeepers’, in accordance with the terminology found in use in 1635, in order to distinguish them from the ‘sharers’ in the acting profits of the company.[1619] On 9 August 1608 Richard Burbadge executed six leases, each conveying a seventh part of the play-house for a term of twenty-one years from the previous midsummer, and entailing the payment of a seventh part of the rent of £40. The six lessees were his brother Cuthbert, John Heminges, William Shakespeare, Henry Condell, William Sly, and Thomas Evans. The remaining interest he no doubt retained himself. Sly, however, died five days later, and his share was surrendered by his executrix, and divided amongst the other partners. On 25 August 1611 it was transferred to William Ostler. After his death on 16 December 1614 it should have passed to his widow, Thomasina, but her father John Heminges retained it, and in 1629 she estimated that he had thus defrauded her of profits at the rate of £20 a year.[1620] At some date later than 1611 John Underwood must have been admitted to a share, for he owned one at his death in 1624. The original leases terminated in 1629. Probably new ones were then entered into, for by 1633 we find that the rent had been increased to £50, and in 1635 that the interest of the housekeepers had still four years to run, and that it was divided not into seven, but into eight parts. Cuthbert Burbadge and the widows of Richard Burbadge and Henry Condell still represented the original holders. Two parts had been bought in 1633 and 1634 from Heminges’s son by John Shank. One part was still held in the name of Underwood, but a third of it was apparently in the hands of Eillart Swanston. John Lowin and Joseph Taylor had each a part. As a result of the dispute the Lord Chamberlain ordered a new partition under which Shank resigned one share to be divided between Swanston, Thomas Pollard, and Robert Benfield.[1621]

The occupation of the Blackfriars by the King’s men was not wholly peaceful. The beginning of their tenure almost exactly coincided with the grant of the new charter by which the jurisdiction of the City was extended to the precinct.[1622] It was not, however, until 1619 that an attempt was made to invoke this jurisdiction against them. In that year the officials of the precinct and the church of St. Anne’s, backed up by a few of the inhabitants, sent a petition to the Corporation, in which they recited the inconveniences due to a play-house in their midst, recalled the action taken by the Privy Council in 1596, as well as the Star Chamber order of 1600 limiting the London play-houses to two, and begged that conformity to the wishes of the Council might be enforced. The Corporation made an order for the suppression of the Blackfriars on 21 January 1619.[1623] It clearly remained inoperative, but explains why the King’s men thought it desirable to obtain a fresh patent, dated on 27 March 1619, in which their right to play at ‘their private house scituate in the precinctes of the Blackfriers’, as well as at the Globe, was explicitly stated.[1624] They had to face another attack in 1631. Their opponents on this occasion approached Laud, then Bishop of London.[1625] After some delay Laud seems to have brought the matter before the Privy Council. The idea was mooted of buying the players out and on 9 October 1633 a commission of Middlesex justices was appointed to report as to the value of their interests.[1626] These were estimated by the players at £21,990, and by the commissioners at £2,900. The only offer towards a compensation fund was one of £100 from the parish of St. Anne’s.[1627] Evidently the proposal was allowed to drop. On 20 November 1633, the Privy Council made an order forbidding coaches to stand in Ludgate or St. Paul’s Churchyard while the performances were going on, but even this regulation was practically cancelled by an amending order made at a meeting presided over by the King in person on 29 December.[1628]

It is rather disappointing that the numerous documents bearing upon the occupation of the Blackfriars between 1600 and 1608 should throw so little light upon the way in which James Burbadge adapted his purchase ‘with great charge and troble’ to the purposes of a theatre. The lease of 1600 did not cover the whole of the property, but only a ‘great hall or roome, with the roomes over the same’. Presumably this was the case also with the leases of 1608, since the rent was the same as in 1600. The rest of the premises, with those purchased later by the younger Burbadges, may be represented by the four tenements valued at £75 a year in 1633, and the ‘piece of void ground to turn coaches’ valued at £6 was doubtless the fragment of the old kitchen yard north of the approach. The Kirkham lawsuits tell us that one or two rooms were reserved for the residence of Evans in 1602 and that during the early part of 1604 ‘a certen rome, called the Scholehouse, and a certen chamber over the same’ had been ‘seuered from the said great hall, and made fitt by’ Evans ‘at his owne proper cost and chardges, to dyne and supp in’.[1629] Professor Wallace has a number of additional lawsuits, still unpublished.[1630] But the extracts from these given by him in 1908 add only a few details to those formerly known. They seem to amount to this. The hall was 66 ft. from north to south and 46 ft. from east to west. It was paved, and had a stage, galleries, and seats of which a schedule was attached to the lease. The stage was at one end of the hall. The school-house was at the north end of the hall.[1631] At this end also must have been the entrance, as one of the petitions of 1619 locates it near the way used from part of the precinct in going to church.[1632] It was doubtless by the gate-house entry to the cloister, just beyond where the coaches turned. Unfortunately one is left quite in doubt upon the critical question as to which of the rooms known to us from earlier records were used for the theatre. It might have been the upper frater with the partitions removed; it might have been constructed out of the paved hall and blind parlour beneath, which appear to be represented by the ‘midle romes’ and two of the rooms in the occupation of Peter Johnson enumerated in the conveyance to Burbadge. A priori one would have thought the upper frater the most likely. It may very well have been paved, like the hall beneath it, and a chamber which had held parliaments and a legatine trial could amply suffice to hold a theatre. On this supposition the rooms ‘above’ the hall which were conveyed by the lease of 1600, and one of which Evans converted into a dining-room can only have been the room over the staircase and the garret over that. These, indeed, may have extended over the north end of the frater proper, although in the main that building appears, down to the time when Burbadge bought it, to have had nothing over it but leads.[1633] There is a serious difficulty in the way of the alternative theory, which would identify the theatre with the ‘midle romes’ on the ground floor. This is that these would most likely only be low rooms, vaulted to carry the heavy floor of the parliament chamber above. On the whole, the balance of probability appears to be strongly in favour of the upper frater.

Professor Wallace’s account of the matter is categorical. ‘The south section’, he says, ‘underwent a thorough transformation. The two stories were converted into the auditorium called “the great Hall or Room”.... The roof was changed, and rooms, probably of the usual dormer sort, were built above the Great Hall.’[1634] I do not know whether there is any evidence for this theory, which disregards a good many structural difficulties, in those parts of his recently discovered documents which Professor Wallace has not published; there is certainly none in those which he has. If not, I do not think we must assume that Burbadge undertook expensive building operations, when he had all the facilities for planning an admirable auditorium without them. Professor Wallace seems to have been led into his conjecture by an assumed necessity for providing space for three tiers of galleries. There is no such necessity, and in fact no evidence for more than one tier, although I dare say that the upper frater taken by itself was high enough for two. Professor Wallace cites a reference to ‘porticibus anglice galleryes’, and points out that ‘galleryes’ is a plural. This is so, but the ‘galleryes’ were not necessarily superimposed; if one ran along the east side of the hall and the other along the west, they would still constitute a plural. Professor Wallace takes the step from his plural to three with the aid of Cockledemoy’s address to ‘my very fine Heliconian gallants, and you, my worshipful friends in the middle region’.[1635] Obviously the ‘middle region’ is not bound to be the middle one of three galleries; it may just as well be the space between the stage and the galleries.

It is beyond the scope of this inquiry to trace the detailed fortunes of the Blackfriars during its later years. By Caroline times it took place of the Globe as the principal and most profitable house of the King’s men.[1636] In 1653, when like the rest of the theatres it was closed, Richard Flecknoe recalled its origin and wrote its epitaph.[1637] It was pulled down on 6 August 1655.[1638] This site was used for tenements, which in course of time were replaced by The Times office which now occupies the site.[1639]

ii. THE WHITEFRIARS

[Bibliographical Note.--The relevant dissertations are P. Cunningham, The Whitefriars, the Salisbury Court, and the Duke’s Theatres (1849, Sh. Soc. Papers, iv. 89), J. Greenstreet, The Whitefriars Theatre in the Time of Shakspere (1888, N. S. S. Trans. 269), with text of the Bill and Answer in the Chancery suit of Androwes v. Slater (1609), and A. W. Clapham, The Topography of the Carmelite Priory of London (1910, Brit. Arch. Assoc. Journal, n. s. xvi. 15), with seventeenth-century plan of the precinct, reproduced by Adams, 312.]

The only suggestion of a sixteenth-century play-house in the Whitefriars is to be found in the statement of Richard Rawlidge in 1628 that one was suppressed there at a date under Elizabeth which he does not specify, but which may most plausibly be put at 1596 (cf. p. 359). It is not improbable that Rawlidge wrote ‘Whitefriars’ when he should have written ‘Blackfriars’, but Malone (Var. iii. 46, 52) accepted the statement and assigned the suppression to 1580. I do not suppose that Collier had any other basis than this for the ‘more then 30 yeares’ of the following description which he alleged to be an extract from ‘an original survey of some part of the precinct, made in March 1616’ in his possession, and printed in his New Facts (1835), 44:

‘The Theater is situate near vnto the Bishopps House, and was in former times a hall or refectorie belonging to the dissolved Monastery. It hath beene vsed as a place for the presentation of playes and enterludes for more then 30 yeares, last by the Children of her Majestie. It hath little or no furniture for a play-house, saving an old tottered curten, some decayed benches, and a few worne out properties and peeces of Arras for hangings to the stage and tire house. The raine hath made its way in and if it bee not repaired, it must soone be plucked downe or it will fall.’

The earliest record, therefore, on which reliance can be placed is the lawsuit of Androwes v. Slater in 1609,[1640] which recites the lease by Robert Lord Buckhurst to Michael Drayton and Thomas Woodford for six years eight months and twenty days from March 1608 of ‘a messuage or mansion howse parcell of the late dissolved monastery called the Whitefriars, in Fleete streete, in the subvrbs of London’, while the articles of agreement between the sharers of the King’s Revels syndicate (cf. ch. xii), of the same date, assign lodgings in the house to Martin Slater, and add

‘The roomes of which howse are thirteene in number, three belowe and tenne above, that is to saie, the greate hall, the kitchin by the yard, and a cellar, with all the roomes from the east ende of the howse to the Master of the revells’ office, as the same are now severed and devided.’[1641]

The precinct of the former priory of the Carmelites or White Friars lay between Fleet Street and the river, to the east of Serjeants’ Inn and to the west of Water Lane, which divided it from Salisbury Court, the old inn of the bishops of Salisbury, which had passed to the Sackvilles in the sixteenth century, and ultimately became known as Dorset House (Stowe, Survey, ii. 45). The precinct was a liberty, and its history, from the point of view of local government, had been closely analogous to that of the Blackfriars. Like the Blackfriars, it came under complete civic control in this very year of 1608 (cf. p. 480). The Whitefriars mansion itself the Sackvilles probably acquired from the family of Thomas Lord De La Warr, to whom a grant of priory property was made in 1544 (Dugdale, vi. 1572).

From the King’s Revels the Whitefriars passed to the occupation of the Queen’s Revels (cf. ch. xii) in 1609, and continued in their use both before and after their amalgamation with the Lady Elizabeth’s in March 1613. It is named on the title-pages of Woman a Weathercock (1612) and The Insatiate Countess (1613), and a reference in the prologue to ‘daughters of Whitefriars’ shows that it was also the locality of Epicoene (1609). In February 1613 it was ‘taken up’ by some London apprentices for an invitation performance of Robert Tailor’s The Hog Hath Lost His Pearl (q.v.). From March 1613 the amalgamated companies had Bankside theatres available, first the Swan and afterwards the Hope, but it is clear from the Watermen’s petition (cf. p. 370) that, at any rate before the Hope was built, they mainly used the Whitefriars. Daborne in a letter to Henslowe of 5 June 1613 speaks of the company ‘comming over’, presumably from the Whitefriars to Bankside, and on 9 Dec. 1613 suggests that a play of his would be suitable for Henslowe’s ‘publique howse’, from which it may perhaps be inferred that Henslowe had also an interest in a ‘private’ house at the time (Henslowe Papers, 72, 79). Apparently conversion into a public theatre was then contemplated, for on 13 July 1613 the Master of the Revels received a fee of £20 ‘for a license to erect a new play-house in the White-friers, &c.’ (Var. iii. 52). But this scheme was stopped by the Privy Council.[1642] On 3 June 1615 Rosseter and others obtained their patent for the Porter’s Hall theatre in Blackfriars (cf. p. 472), which contemplated its use by the Revels, the Prince’s, and the Lady Elizabeth’s, and incidentally recited that the Revels Children had been trained and exercised in the Whitefriars ‘ever since’ 1610. The amalgamation was dissolved in the spring of 1616, and the Lady Elizabeth’s and the Revels probably disappeared from London. If, therefore, the Whitefriars continued in use, it was probably by Prince Charles’s men, who would have been left homeless by the demolition of Porter’s Hall early in 1617. That it did continue in use and that a renewed lease was still held by some of the parties interested in the house in 1608 is indicated by the suit of Trevell v. Woodford before the Court of Requests in 1642, from which it appears, according to Peter Cunningham, that Sir Anthony Ashley, the then landlord of the house, entered the theatre in 1621, and turned out the players, on the pretence that half a year’s rent was due to him. In 1629 the Whitefriars was replaced by the Salisbury Court theatre, built on the site of an old barn just on the other side of Water Lane.

XVIII

THE STRUCTURE AND CONDUCT OF THEATRES

[Bibliographical Note.--The only Restoration treatises which throw any light on the pre-Restoration theatre are R. Flecknoe, A Short Discourse of the English Stage (1664), and J. Wright, Historia Histrionica (1699), extracts from which are in Appendix I.

Archaeological material was brought together by E. Malone in Variorum iii. 51, and J. P. Collier in H. E. D. P. iii. 140.

Modern investigation may be said to begin with the discovery of the Swan drawing in 1888. The principal dissertations up to 1916 are:

K. T. Gaedertz, Zur Kenntnis der altenglischen Bühne (1888); H. B. Wheatley, On a contemporary Drawing of the interior of the Swan Theatre, 1596 (1888, N. S. S. Trans. 1887–92, 215); W. Archer, A Sixteenth-Century Play-house (1888, Universal Review), The Stage of Shakespeare (10 Aug. 1907, Tribune), The Fortune Theatre, 1600 (12 Oct. 1907, Tribune, repr. Jahrbuch, xliv. 159), The Swan Drawing (11 Jan. 1908, Tribune), The Elizabethan Stage (1908, Quarterly Review, ccviii. 442), The Play-house (1916, Shakespeare’s England, ii. 283); R. Genée, Ueber die scenischen Formen Shakespeare’s in ihrem Verhältnisse zur Bühne seiner Zeit (1891, Jahrbuch, xxvi. 131); E. Kilian, Die scenischen Formen Shakespeares in ihrer Beziehung zu der Aufführung seiner Dramen auf der modernen Bühne (1893, Jahrbuch, xxviii. 90), Shakespeare auf der modernen Bühne (1900, Jahrbuch, xxxvi. 228); H. Logeman, Johannes de Witt’s Visit to the Swan Theatre (1897, Anglia, xix. 117); C. Grabau, Zur englischen Bühne um 1600 (1902, Jahrbuch, xxxviii. 232); W. J. Lawrence, Some Characteristics of the Elizabethan-Stuart Stage (1902, E. S. xxxii. 36), The Elizabethan Play-house (1912, 1913), Night Performances in the Elizabethan Theatres (1915, E. S. xlviii. 213), New Light on the Elizabethan Theatre (May 1916, Fortnightly Review), A Forgotten Play-house Custom of Shakespeare’s Day (1916, Book of Homage, 207), Horses on the Elizabethan Stage (T. L. S. 5 June 1919), _He’s for a Jig or ---- _ (T. L. S. 3 July 1919); K. Mantzius, History of Theatrical Art (1903–9); E. E. Hale, The Influence of Theatrical Conditions on Shakespeare (1904, M. P. i. 171); E. Koeppel, Die unkritische Behandlung dramaturgischer Angaben in den Shakespeare-Ausgaben (1904, E. S. xxxiv. 1); W. Bang, Zur Bühne Shakespeares (1904, Jahrbuch, xl. 223); W. Keller, Nochmals zur Bühne Shakespeares (1904, Jahrbuch, xl. 225); A. H. Tolman, Shakespeare’s Stage and Modern Adaptations (1904, Views about Hamlet, 115), Alternation in the Staging of Shakespeare’s Plays (1909, M. P. vi. 517); C. Brodmeier, Die Shakespeare-Bühne nach den alten Bühnenanweisungen (1904); R. Prölss, Von den ältesten Drucken der Dramen Shakespeares (1905); P. Monkemeyer, Prolegomena zu einer Darstellung der englischen Volksbühne (1905); G. P. Baker, Hamlet on an Elizabethan Stage (1905, Jahrbuch, xli. 296), Elizabethan Stage Theories (3 Nov. 1905, The Times Literary Supplement); C. H. Kaulfuss-Diesch, Die Inszenierung des deutschen Dramas an der Wende des 16 und 17 Jahrhunderts (1905); G. F. Reynolds, Some Principles of Elizabethan Staging (1905, M. P. i. 581, ii. 69), Trees on the Stage of Shakespeare (1907, M. P. v. 153), What we know of the Elizabethan Stage (1911, M. P. ix. 47), William Percy and his Plays (1914, M. P. xii. 109); J. Corbin, Shakespeare and the Plastic Stage (1906, Atlantic Monthly, xcvii. 369), Shakespeare his Own Stage Manager (1911, Century, lxxxiii. 260); R. Bridges, On the Influence of the Audience (1907, Stratford Town Shakespeare, x. 321); E. K. Chambers, On the Stage of the Globe (1907, Stratford Town Shakespeare, x. 351); C. C. Stopes, Elizabethan Stage Scenery (June 1907, Fortnightly Review); R. Wegener, Die Bühneneinrichtung des Shakespeareschen Theaters (1907); W. H. Godfrey, An Elizabethan Play-house (1908, Architectural Review, xxiii. 239; cf. xxxi. 53); C. W. Wallace, The Children of the Chapel at Blackfriars (1908); F. Schelling, The Elizabethan Play-house (1908, Proc. of Philadelphia Num. and Antiq. Soc.); A. A. Helmholtz-Phelan, The Staging of Court Dramas before 1595 (1909, M. L. A. xxiv. 185); V. E. Albright, The Shaksperian Stage (1909), Percy’s Plays as Proof of the Elizabethan Stage (1913, M. P. xi. 237); A. R. Skemp, Some Characteristics of the English Stage before the Restoration (1909, Jahrbuch, xlv. 101); W. Creizenach, Bühnenwasen und Schauspielkunst (1909, Gesch. des neueren Dramas, iv. 401); B. Neuendorff, Die englische Volksbühne im Zeitalter Shakespeares nach den Bühnenanweisungen (1910); H. H. Child, The Elizabethan Theatre (1910, C. H. vi. 241); H. Conrad, Bemerkungen zu Lawrence’ Title and Locality Boards (1910, Jahrbuch, xlvi. 106); C. R. Baskervill, The Custom of Sitting on the Elizabethan Stage (1911, M. P. viii. 581); J. Q. Adams, The Four Pictorial Representations of the Elizabethan Stage (April 1911, J. G. P.); F. A. Foster, Dumb Show in Elizabethan Drama before 1620 (1911, E. S. xliv. 8); A. Forestier, The Fortune Theatre Reconstructed (12 Aug. 1911, Illustrated London News); M. B. Evans, An Early Type of Stage (1912, M. P. ix. 421); T. S. Graves, A Note on the Swan Theatre (1912, M. P. ix. 431), Night Scenes in the Elizabethan Theatres (1913, E. S. xlvii. 63), The Court and the London Theaters during the Reign of Elizabeth (1913), The Origin of the Custom of Sitting upon the Stage (1914, J. E. G. P. xiii. 104), The Act Time in Elizabethan Theatres (1915, Univ. of Carolina, Studies in Philology, xii. 3), The Ass as Actor (1916, S. Atlantic Quarterly, xv. 175); G. H. Cowling, Music on the Shakespearian Stage (1913); H. Bell, Contributions to the History of the English Play-house (1913, Architectural Record, 262, 359); W. G. Keith, The Designs for the first Movable Scenery on the English Stage (1914, Burlington Magazine, xxv. 29, 85); W. Poel, Shakespeare in the Theatre (1915), Some Notes on Shakespeare’s Stage and Plays (1916); J. Le G. Brereton, De Witt at the Swan (1916, Book of Homage, 204); A. H. Thorndike, Shakespeare’s Theater (1916); T. H. Dickinson, Some Principles of Shakespeare Staging (1916, Wisconsin Shakespeare Studies, 125). More recent papers are noted in the Bulletin of the English Association. R. C. Rhodes’ The Stagery of Shakespeare (1922) deserves consideration.

It remains to give some account of the iconographical material available. Of four representations of the interiors of play-houses, the only one of early date (c. 1596) is (a) Arend van Buchell’s copy of a drawing by Johannes de Witt of the Swan, published in 1888 by Gaedertz and in more accurate facsimile by Wheatley (vide supra). The other three are Caroline. (b) A small engraving in a compartment of the title-page of W. Alabaster, Roxana (1632), may be taken as representing a type of academic stage, as the play was at Trinity, Cambridge, c. 1592. (c) A very similar engraving in the title-page of N. Richards, Messallina (1640), if it represents a specific stage at all, is less likely to represent the second Fortune, as suggested by Skemp in his edition of the play, or the Red Bull, as suggested by Albright, 45, than Salisbury Court, where it is clear from Murray, i. 279, that most of the career of the Revels company, by whom it was produced, was spent. (d) An engraved frontispiece to Francis Kirkman’s editions (1672, 1673) of The Wits, or Sport upon Sport (originally published by Marsh, 1662) has been shown by Albright, 40, to have been erroneously regarded as a representation of the Red Bull, to which there is an incidental reference in the preface to Part II, and must be taken to show the type of stage on which the ‘drolls’ contained in the book were given ‘when the publique Theatres were shut up’.

A Court interlude, with performers and spectators, might be supposed to be represented in (e) a woodcut prefixed to Wilson’s Three Lords and Three Ladies of London (1590), but the subject is not that of the play, and the cut is shown by A. W. Pollard (English Miracle Plays, ed. 6, 1914) to be taken from S. Batman, The Travayled Pylgrime (1569), and ultimately from a fifteenth-century illustration to O. de la Marche’s Chevalier Délibéré.

Of the exteriors of theatres there are (f) a small engraving of Theatrum in a compartment of the title-page of Jonson’s Works (1616), which may be merely a bit of classical archaeology, but appears to have the characteristic Elizabethan hut, and (g) a series of representations, or perhaps only cartographical symbols, in the various maps detailed in the bibliographical note to ch. xvi. Doubtfully authentic is (h) a façade of the Blackfriars, reproduced by Baker, 78, from a print in the collection of Mr. Henry Gardiner, with a note (44) that the owner and various antiquarians ‘believe it genuine’; and almost certainly misnamed (i) a façade engraved as a relic of the second Fortune in R. Wilkinson, Londina Illustrata (1819), ii. 141, and elsewhere, which is plausibly assigned by W. J. Lawrence, Restoration Stage Nurseries, in Archiv (1914), 301, to a post-Restoration training-school for young actors.

A small ground-plan (k) of the Swan appears upon a manor map of Paris Garden in 1627, reproduced by W. Rendle in Harrison, ii, App. I.

A rough engraving (l) on the title-page of Cornucopia, Pasquils Nightcap (1612) shows a section of the orchestra of a classical play-house as seen from the stage, and throws no light on contemporary conditions; and (m) the design by Inigo Jones described in ch. vii is of uncertain date, and intended for the private Cockpit theatre at Whitehall.

I know of no representation of an English provincial stage, and unfortunately E. Mentzel, who describes (Gesch. der Schauspielkunst in Frankfurt am Main, 38) a woodcut of a play, with signboards, by English actors, probably at Frankfort, Nuremberg, or Cassel, in 1597, does not reproduce it. Some notion of the improvised stages used by travelling companies for out-of-door performances may be obtained from the continental engravings reproduced by Bapst, 153, by Rigal in Petit de Julleville, iii. 264, 296, and by M. B. Evans, An Early Type of Stage (M. P. ix. 421).

An engraving of the Restoration stage of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane (built 1663), from Ariane, ou Le Mariage de Bacchus (1674), and another of the same house as altered in 1696, from Unhappy Kindness (1697), are reproduced by Lawrence, i. 169; ii. 140. Of the five engravings of the Duke’s Theatre, Dorset Garden (built 1671), in E. Settle, Empress of Morocco (1673), one is reproduced by Albright, 47, and another by Lawrence, ii. 160, and Thorndike, 110.

Graphic attempts to reconstruct the plan and elevation of a typical Elizabethan stage will be found in the dissertations cited above of Brodmeier, Wegener, Archer, Godfrey, Albright, Corbin (1911, by G. Varian and J. Hambridge), and Forestier, and in the picture reproduced in W. N. Hills, The Shakespearian Stage (1919).

Various revivals have also been carried out on Elizabethan stages, with more or less of archaeological purism, notably in London (W. Poel, Shakespeare in the Theatre), Paris (Sh.-Jahrbuch, xxxv. 383), Harvard (G. P. Baker in Sh.-Jahrbuch, xli. 296), and Munich (Sh.-Jahrbuch, xlii. 327).]

A history of the theatres would not be complete without some account of their general structure and economy in the disposition of auditorium and stage. I propose to begin with the more assured or less important points, as a clearing of the way for the difficult and controverted problems of scenic setting, on some of which I am afraid that no very secure conclusion can be reached.

It is necessary, in the forefront, to appreciate the distinction between the ‘common’ or ‘public’ play-houses and the ‘private’ houses, which, so far as our period is concerned, were Paul’s, the Blackfriars, and the Whitefriars. This distinction is in its origin somewhat a technical one, for there is no reason to suppose that in the private houses the performances were private, in the sense that access to them could not be obtained, on payment, by members of the general public. Probably it is to be explained in relation to the Elizabethan system of State control of theatres, and represents an attempt to evade the limitations on the location and the number of play-houses which had been established through the action, first of the civic authorities and later of the Privy Council itself. This view receives support from the allegations made during the campaign for the suppression of the Blackfriars in 1619 that the owner ‘doth vnder the name of a private howse (respectinge indeed private comoditie only) convert the said howse to a publique play-house’.[1643]

It can hardly be supposed, however, that Burbadge could have hoodwinked the Privy Council merely by calling the Blackfriars a ‘private’ house, without finding any other means of differentiating it from the ‘public’ houses, and it is quite possible that the technical distinction, for which modern analogies could be found, consisted in the fact that admission was paid for in advance and no money taken at the doors.[1644] Mr. Lawrence has very appropriately quoted in this connexion the Common Council regulations of 1574, in which an exception is made for performances ‘withowte publique or comen collection of money of the auditorie, or behoulders theareof’; and though I do not suggest that the extension of this principle to Paul’s or the Blackfriars fell within the intention of the order, the evasion may have been allowed, within the gates of Paul’s or in a liberty, and for a well-conducted house attended by a well-to-do audience, to hold.[1645] If so, it is probable that Paul’s from the beginning and the earlier Blackfriars were in effect private houses. But the actual terminology does not emerge before the revival of the boy companies in 1599 and 1600. For some years past the title-pages of plays had vaunted them as ‘publikely acted’.[1646] A corresponding ‘priuately acted’ appears for Blackfriars in Jonson’s Cynthia’s Revels (1601) and Poetaster (1602), and for Paul’s in Middleton’s Blurt Master Constable (1602), while the antithesis is complete in Dekker’s Satiromastix (1602), which was presented ‘publikely’ by the Chamberlain’s and ‘priuately’ by Paul’s. Somewhat later we find Field’s Woman a Weathercock (1612) acted ‘priuately’, and Chapman’s Revenge of Bussy D’Ambois (1613) ‘at the priuate Play-house’ in the Whitefriars.[1647] But by this time the distinction may be taken for granted as well established in general use.[1648]

From the point of view, however, of stage arrangements, the technical differentia of a private house is less important than certain subsidiary characteristics.[1649] The private houses were all in closed buildings, were occupied by boys, and charged higher prices than the ordinary theatres. These facts entailed variations of structure and method, which will require attention at more than one point. They naturally became less fundamental, but did not entirely disappear, after the transfer of the Blackfriars to the King’s men in 1609, and probably passed still further into the background after the introduction of roofed public houses in the Caroline age.[1650] The title-pages generally describe the Blackfriars, the Cockpit, and Salisbury Court as ‘private’ houses right up to the closing of the theatres, but the term, in so far as it connotes anything different from ‘public’, seems to have lost what little meaning it ever had.[1651]

De Witt, about 1596, describes the Theatre, Curtain, Rose, and Swan as ‘amphiteatra’, and Hentzner in 1598 adds that they were all ‘lignea’.[1652] The Globe and the Hope were built later on the same structural model. The Fortune was also of wood, but square. Of the shape and material of the Red Bull we know nothing. Prologues and epilogues often refer to the internal appearance of the auditorium as presenting a ‘round’, ‘ring’, ‘circuit’, ‘circumference’, or ‘O’.[1653] If we can rely upon the draughtsmanship of the London maps, the external outline was rather that of a polygon. This evidence must not be pressed too far, for there is probably an element of cartographic symbolism to be reckoned with. The same house may appear in one map as a hexagon, in another as an octagon or decagon, and the late Hollar group differs from its predecessors in using a completely circular form. But there is confirmation in the Paris Garden manor map of 1627, which shows the ground-plan of the Swan decagonal, and in the statement of Mrs. Thrale that the ruins of the Globe still visible in the eighteenth century were hexagonal without and round within. This was of course the later Globe built in 1613, and there is some reason for thinking that the earlier Globe may have been of rather different design. The verses on the fire by which it was destroyed speak of the stage-house ‘as round as taylers clewe’, and the early Hondius map, while it shows the Rose as polygonal, shows the Globe as circular, with the upper half of less diameter than the lower. This construction reappears in the Delaram drawings, and is so peculiar that the representation may well be realistic. There was an obvious precedent for the amphitheatrical form in the bear and bull rings which preceded the public theatres, and I do not know that we need go back with Ordish to a tradition of round mediaeval play-places, Cornish or English, or to the remains of Roman occupation. A ring is the natural form in which the maximum number of spectators can press about an object of interest.[1654]

There is nothing to show that, for the main fabric, any material but timber was used, until the Fortune was rebuilt of brick in 1623. Timber is provided for in the contracts for the earlier Fortune and the Hope, and these were modelled on the Globe and Swan. Oak was to be mainly used for the Hope; no fir in the lower or middle stories. Burbadge’s lawsuits show that timber was the chief object of his expenditure on the Theatre, although some ironwork was also employed, presumably to tie the woodwork together. The dismantled fabric of the Theatre was used for the Globe. Henslowe used a good deal of timber for the repairs of the Rose in 1592–3, and did the house ‘about with ealme bordes’ in 1595. There was also some brickwork, and the Fortune and Hope were to have brick foundations, a foot above the ground. The Fortune was to be covered with lath, lime, and hair without. Henslowe also used plaster, and I do not see anything inconsistent with a substantially wooden structure in De Witt’s statement that the Swan was ‘constructum ex coaceruato lapide pyrritide ... ligneis suffultum columnis’. This has been regarded as an error which prejudices the reliability of De Witt’s observations, but the description is too precise to be disproved by Hentzner’s generalized ‘lignea’, and after all the strength of the building was naturally in the columns, and the flints and mortar--a common form of walling in the chalk districts of England--may well have filled up the interstices between these. De Witt adds that the columns might deceive the shrewdest ‘ob illitum marmoreum colorem’.[1655]

De Witt has also been criticized for giving the seating capacity of the Swan as 3,000. I dare say this is merely the exaggerated round estimate of a casual visitor, but Wheatley calculates from the drawing that the galleries might hold 2,000, and it would not be surprising if our rude forefathers sat a bit closer than we care to do. Moryson speaks even more largely of theatres ‘more remarkable for the number, and the capacity, than for the building’, and ‘capable of many thousands’, while no less than 2,000 got into Trinity College hall for the academic plays of 1615.[1656] The frame of the Fortune was 80 ft. square without and 55 ft. square within. This allows a depth of 12½ ft. for the galleries, and Corbin calculates a seating capacity, allowing 18 in. for a seat and 18 in. square for a standing man, of 2,138 or 2,558 at a pinch.[1657] We do not know that the Swan was not larger than the Fortune, and have therefore no right to assume that De Witt was seriously out. Wright tells us that the Globe, Fortune, and Red Bull were ‘large’ houses; he is comparing them with the private houses of Caroline days.[1658] The allusion in Old Fortunatus to the ‘small circumference’ of the Rose perhaps hardly indicates that it was below the average size.

The Swan drawing is our one contemporary picture of the interior of a public play-house, and it is a dangerous business to explain away its evidence by an assumption of inaccurate observation on the part of De Witt, merely because that evidence conflicts with subjective interpretations of stage-directions, arrived at in the course of the pursuit of a ‘typical’ stage. Still less can it be discredited on the ground that it was merely made by Van Buchell on ‘hearsay evidence’ from the instructions of De Witt.[1659] It is a copy, like the accompanying description on the same piece of paper, of De Witt’s original, which De Witt says he drew (‘adpinxi’) in order to bring out an analogy which had struck him between the English and the Roman theatres. It was for this reason also, no doubt, that he marked certain features of the structure on the drawing with the names of what he thought to be their classical prototypes. I do not, of course, suggest that the drawing has the authority of a photographic record. De Witt is more likely to have made it as an afterthought in his inn than during the actual performance, and he may well have omitted or misrepresented features. Certainly he can hardly have seen the trumpeter sounding when the action had already begun. And the draughtsmanship is bad, and may have been made worse by the copyist.[1660] The upper part is done, with an attempt at perspective, as he may have seen it from a point in the middle, or perhaps the upper, gallery somewhat to the right of the centre; the lower part as from full face, so that the pillars stand equidistant from the edges of the stage, as they would not have appeared to him in perspective. His doors and the compartments of his stage gallery are of uneven sizes.[1661] But, with all its faults, the drawing is the inevitable basis of any comprehensive account of the main structural features of a play-house, and I propose, leaving aside for the present the question of the possible hangings which it does not show, to take its parts one by one and illustrate them from other sources, and in particular from Henslowe’s contracts for the construction of the Fortune in 1600 and the Hope in 1614.[1662]

The outline of the building is round, or slightly ovoid.[1663] The floor, which shows no traces of seating, is marked ‘planities siue arena’. This is the space ordinarily known as the ‘yard’, a name which it may fairly be taken to have inherited from the inn-yards, surrounded by galleries and open overhead, in which, in the days before the building of the Theatre in 1576, more or less permanent play-houses had grown up.[1664] Spectators in the yard always stood, and the more unstable psychology of a standing, as compared with a seated, crowd must always be taken into account in estimating the temperament of an Elizabethan audience. These are the ‘groundlings’, and the poets take their revenge for occasional scenes of turbulence in open or covert sneers at their ‘understanding’.[1665]

Well into the yard, leaving space for the groundlings on three sides of it, projects a quadrangular stage, which is marked ‘proscaenium’.[1666] The breadth is perhaps rather greater than the depth.[1667] This was certainly the case at the Fortune, where the stage was 43 ft. wide, and extended ‘to the middle of the yarde’, a distance of 27½ ft. The level of the stage may be some 3 or 4 ft. above the ground. Two solid trestles forming part of its supports are visible, but at the Fortune it was paled in with oak, and in view of the common use of the space below the stage to facilitate apparitions and other episodes requiring traps, this was probably the normal arrangement.[1668] It has been thought that the stage of the Swan, like that of the Hope, which was in many respects modelled upon it, may have been removable. But this is hardly consistent with the heavy pillars which, in this respect certainly unlike the Hope, it carries. Moreover, the Hope had to be available for bear-baiting, which entailed an open arena, and there is no evidence, and very little likelihood, that baiting ever took place at the Swan. Like other theatres, it sometimes accommodated gymnasts and fencers, but these would use the stage.[1669] There are no rails round the stage, such as we may infer the existence of at the Globe.[1670] The only scenic apparatus visible is a large bench, on which a lady sits, while another stands behind her in an attitude of surprise, at the rapid approach from an outer corner of the stage of a man in an affected attitude, with a hat on his head and a long staff in his hand. You might take him for Malvolio cross-gartered, were there any chance that Twelfth Night could have been written when the drawing was made, or produced at the Swan.[1671] Probably he is a returning traveller or a messenger bringing news. The floor of the stage is apparently bare. Sometimes rushes were laid down, at any rate for interior scenes.[1672] The Globe produced Henry VIII in 1613 ‘with many extraordinary circumstances of pomp and majesty, even to the matting of the stage’.

Circling the yard and raised above it are three tiers of galleries, each containing three rows of seats. Beneath the first gallery De Witt wrote ‘orchestra’, above its seats ‘sedilia’, and between the middle and upper galleries ‘porticus’. In the classical theatre ‘porticus’ was the name for a covered gallery, and the classical analogy also makes it clear that by ‘orchestra’ De Witt meant to indicate the position occupied by the spectators of highest rank, corresponding to the seats of Roman senators, to which the name of the obsolete dancing place immediately in front of them had been transferred. It was not until the Restoration that the orchestra was allocated to the music.[1673] The fronts of the galleries are supported by a number of turned posts. In the Fortune all the chief supports, presumably both in the auditorium and on the stage, were to be square and made ‘palasterwise, with carved proporcions called Satiers’. Internal painting was contemplated, but was not covered by the contract. Other references to painted theatres suggest that the Elizabethan builders were not content with bare scaffolds, but aimed at a decorative effect.[1674] Three seems to have been the regular number of galleries. Kiechel bears witness to it for the Theatre and Curtain in 1585; and there were three at the Fortune and at the Hope. The lowest gallery at the Fortune was 12 ft. high, the next 11 ft., and the uppermost 9 ft., and each of the two latter jutted out 10 in. beyond that below. This gives a total height of 32 ft., about three-fifths of the interior width of the house. The maps, therefore, make the buildings rather disproportionately high. The uppermost gallery has a roof, marked ‘tectum’. This in the earlier Globe was of thatch, which caused the fire of 1613, and left the unlucky King’s men with little but ‘wit to cover it with tiles’. I think the Rose was also thatched; but the Fortune and Hope were tiled. In view of the jetties, such a roof would give some protection to those in the galleries, but the groundlings had none. Both the drawing and the maps confirm the statement of Wright that the Globe, Fortune, and Red Bull were ‘partly open to the weather’, and this was doubtless also the case with their predecessors.[1675]

De Witt does not indicate any internal gallery partitions, but the Swan had these by 1614, for they were to be the model for ‘two boxes in the lowermost storie fitt and decent for gentlemen to sitt in’, which were to be constructed at the Hope. Similarly the Fortune was to have ‘ffower convenient divisions for gentlemens roomes, and other sufficient and convenient divisions for twoe pennie roomes, with necessarie seates’. These were to be ceiled with lath and plaster. An earlier example of the technical use of the term ‘room’ for a division of the auditorium occurs in the draft Theatre lease of 1585, which gave the landlord a right to sit or stand in ‘some one of the upper romes’, if the places were not already taken up. If the clause, like the rest of the draft, merely reproduced the covenants of the 1576 lease, the term was of long standing. Probably the divisions were of varying sizes. There would not have been much point in cutting up the space available for ‘two-pennie roomes’ into very small sections, but there were also ‘priuate roomes’, which are perhaps the same as the ‘gentlemens roomes’ of the contracts.[1676] If so, these were probably to the right and left of the stage in the lowest gallery. But the whole question of seating and prices is rather difficult, and it is further complicated by obscurely discerned changes of fashion, which involved the adoption of the very inconvenient custom of sitting on the stage, and the consequent abandonment by the gentry of what was called the lord’s room. Prices also, no doubt, tended to grow, at any rate for the better seats; the ‘popular’ prices always remained low.[1677] I do not know whether the professional actors ever contented themselves, after their establishment in London, with merely sending round the hat, or, in mediaeval phrase, making a ‘gatheryng’.[1678] Fixed prices must certainly have been the rule by the time of Kiechel’s visit in 1585, for he tells us that, on the occasion of a new play, double prices were charged. This practice helps to explain the fluctuating receipts in Henslowe’s diary, and was still in force in the seventeenth century.[1679] Spenser and his friends could have their laugh at a play for 1_d._ or 2_d._ in 1579, and ten years later Martin Marprelate could be seen for 2_d._ at the Theatre and 4_d._ at Paul’s.[1680] Higher prices are already characteristic of the private houses. In 1596 Lambarde informs us of a regular scale, apparently applicable to all public entertainments. None, he says, who ‘goe to Paris Gardein, the Bell Savage or Theatre, to beholde beare baiting, enterludes or fence play, can account of any pleasant spectacle unlesse they first pay one pennie at the gate, another at the entrie of the scaffolde and the thirde for a quiet standing’. Platter, in 1599, reports the same scale and adds a distinction, not made by Lambarde, between standings and seats. You paid 1_d._ to stand on the level, 1_d._ at an inner door to sit, and 1_d._ at a third door for one of the best places with a cushion.[1681] The two-penny galleries or rooms long continued to be the resort of the ordinary playgoer, if he was not satisfied to stand in the yard for a penny.[1682] He sat close, and the insolent poets and pamphleteers classed him with the groundlings as a ‘stinkard’.[1683] His domain certainly included the top gallery, but about the other galleries I am not sure. There are some puzzling allusions to penny galleries and rooms, but probably, these are not distinct from the ‘two-penny’ ones, and the explanation is to be found in the practice of paying the twopence in two instalments, one on entrance, the other at the gallery door.[1684] It did not long remain possible to get one of the best seats for the 3_d._ quoted by Platter, even if there was not already in his time a higher charge for ‘the priuate roomes of greater price’.[1685] There were both sixpenny and twelve-penny rooms by 1604.[1686] These may have been the same private rooms at varying prices, according as the play was old or new. I take it that you only got a single seat, even in a ‘private’ room, for your 6_d._ or 12_d._, and not the whole room. Overbury or another gives 12_d._ as the price of the ‘best room’ as late as about 1614, but in the same year the ordinary scale of charges was greatly exceeded throughout the house on the production of Bartholomew Fair at the Hope, where a speaker in the induction says, ‘it shall be lawful to judge his six-penny-worth, his twelve-penny-worth, so to his eighteen-pence, two shillings, half a crown, to the value of his place, provided always his place get not above his wit’. This must have been a quite exceptional occasion, not merely a new play, but a new play at a new house. Similarly, when Richard Vennar brought the gulls to his swindle of England’s Joy in 1602, ‘the price at cumming in was two shillings or eighteen-pence at least’.

A special compartment in one of the galleries was not the only privilege offered to the more fashionable playgoer. He might, at one time or another, sit ‘over the stage’ and on the stage. De Witt’s drawing shows, at the back of the stage, a raised gallery divided into six small boxes, in each of which one or two spectators appear to be placed.[1687] It is reasonable to suppose that these are sitting ‘over the stage’.[1688] And some or all of those ‘over the stage’ again, appear to have sat in ‘the lords room’ or ‘rooms’.[1689] Of such a room we first hear in 1592, when Henslowe, repairing the Rose, paid 10_s._ ‘for sellynge of the Rome ouer the tyerhowsse’ and 13_s._ ‘for sellinges my lords Rome’. The entry rather suggests that this was not so much a room for ‘lords’, as a room primarily reserved for the particular ‘lord’, under whose patronage the actors played; but however this may be, it was probably available by courtesy for other persons of distinction. The practice of sitting on the stage itself first emerges about 1596.[1690] It was general by the seventeenth century, and was apparently most encouraged at the Blackfriars, where it perhaps lent itself best to the structural character of the building.[1691] It was known at Paul’s, but was inconvenient on so small a stage.[1692] And, as it certainly originated at the public houses, so it maintained itself there, in spite of the grumbles of the ordinary spectators, with whose view of the action the throng of feathered and restless gallants necessarily interfered.[1693] It may have been profitable to the actors as sharers, but as actors they resented the restriction of the space available for their movements which it entailed.[1694] The prologue to Jonson’s The Devil is an Ass of 1616 contains a vigorous protest.[1695] But the gallant liked to be seen as well as to see, and liked to slip in and out of the tiring-house and hob-nob with the players. It was not until Caroline times that the custom became intolerable.[1696] On the stage stools were provided for those who did not care to sit on the rushes, and for these they paid at least sixpence and sometimes a shilling.[1697] One result of the introduction of sitting on the stage appears to have been that the lord’s room lost its attractiveness and consequently its status. It fell into the background, and became the haunt of a rather disreputable class of playgoer. The lords were now to be found either on the stage itself, or in the private rooms of the lower gallery. Presumably the ‘grate’ to which the courtier of Sir John Davies’ epigram relegated himself, was in the lord’s room, perhaps fitted with a casement for scenic purposes.[1698] The change is chronicled by Dekker in the passage of The Gull’s Horn Book, in which the gull is instructed how to behave himself in a play-house. He must by all means advance himself up to the throne of the stage.

‘I meane not into the Lords roome (which is now but the Stages Suburbs): no, those boxes, by the iniquity of custome, conspiracy of waiting-women and Gentlemen-Ushers, that there sweat together, and the couetousnes of Sharers, are contemptibly thrust into the reare, and much new Satten is there dambd, by being smothred to death in darknesse.’

I return to the guidance of De Witt. The boarding between the yard and the lower gallery, which in the Fortune was overlaid with iron pikes, presumably to prevent the groundlings from climbing over, shows two apertures, to right and left of the stage, one of which is marked ‘ingressus’. From these steps lead to the lower gallery itself, and we may infer the presence of a passage to staircases behind, by which the upper galleries were reached. The contracts show that the Fortune, like the Globe, and the Hope, like the Swan, were to have external staircases.[1699] Perhaps this accounts for the greater diameter of the lower part of the Globe in the London maps. Of external doors there were only two at the Globe, which caused trouble at the time of the fire, and two also at the Fortune, when Alleyn leased a share of it to Henslowe in 1601. One of these would in each case have been a door to the tiring-house, giving access to the stage and the lord’s room, while the other served the body of the theatre.[1700] Those bound for the galleries paid their pennies at the theatre door, passed through the yard to the ‘ingressus’, and made additional payments there and in the ‘rooms’, according to the places selected.[1701] The custom explains itself by the arrangement between the sharers of companies and the housekeepers of theatres, which gave the latter a proportion of gallery takings in lieu of rent. ‘Gatherers’, appointed by the persons interested, collected the money, and although this was put into a locked box, whence the modern term ‘box-office’, there were abundant opportunities for fraud. At need, the gatherers could serve as supernumeraries on the stage.[1702]

At the back of the stage, and forming a chord to an arc of the circular structure of the play-house, runs a straight wall, pierced by two pairs of folding doors, on which De Witt has written ‘mimorum aedes’. Above it is the gallery or lord’s room already described. This wall is the ‘scene’, in the primary sense; it is also the front of the ‘tire-house’, or in modern phrase ‘green-room’, a necessary adjunct of every theatre. The Theatre depositions of 1592 speak of this as ‘the attyring housse or place where the players make them readye’. The drawing indicates nothing in the way of hangings over either wall or doors, but in some theatres these certainly existed. Thus Peacham, in his Thalia’s Banquet (1620) referring to much earlier days, tells us that

Tarlton when his head was onely seene, The Tire-house doore and Tapistrie betweene, Set all the multitude in such a laughter, They could not hold for scarce an hour after.[1703]

The front of the tiring-house is the ‘scene’ in the Renaissance sense, and its characteristics will be of great concern in later chapters.[1704] The Fortune tire-house was to be within the frame of the theatre, and would not, therefore, unless it projected on to the stage, have more depth than about 12 ft. Mr. Brereton, in a careful analysis of the drawing, suggests that the Swan tire-house may not have extended the full width of the stage, but may have left room to come and go on either side of its front.[1705] If so, some projection is not improbable, but one cannot rely much upon the hazardous interpretation of bad draughtsmanship. The ground-plan of the Swan seems to show an annexe at one point, and of course additional depth could easily be obtained in this way. Moreover, there were at least three stories available. The spectators in the lord’s room would not take up the whole depth on the level of the middle gallery, and there must have been a corresponding space on that of the top gallery. Henslowe ceiled ‘the rome ouer the tyerhowsse’ in 1592, and an inventory of the Admiral’s men in 1598 includes effects ‘leaft above in the tier-house in the cheast’. No doubt a fair amount of accommodation was needed. The tire-house was not merely a dressing-room and a store-house. Here came the author, to rail at the murdering of his lines, and the gallants to gossip and patronize the players.[1706] Here were the book-holder, who prompted the speeches, surveyed the entrances and exits, and saw to the readiness of the properties;[1707] the tireman, who fitted the dresses and the beards, furnished stools, and in the private theatres took charge of the lights;[1708] the stage-keeper;[1709] the grooms and ‘necessary attendants’, waiting to draw curtains, to thrust out beds, and to carry benches and banquets on and off.[1710] Here, too, was the head-quarters of the music, although in the public theatres the music was largely incidental, and was often played on, or above, or even below the stage, as might seem most appropriate to any particular action.[1711] Music between the acts was not unknown, but we learn from the induction to the Malcontent that it was ‘not received’ by the audience at the Globe in 1604.[1712] There was also, of course, the final ‘jig’.[1713] For an overture, the public theatres seem to have employed nothing beyond three soundings of a trumpet, the last of which was the signal for the prologue to begin.[1714] Probably the musical element tended to increase. A special music-room perhaps existed already at the Swan in 1611, and, if so, may have been, as it was in the later theatres, in the upper part of the tire-house.[1715]

The Fortune tire-house was to have ‘convenient windowes and lightes glazed’. Some of these may have looked into the auditorium, and have been used for scenic purposes. But the maps show external windows here and there in the walls, and these would be necessary to light both the tire-house and the galleries. We have a picture of Burbadge leaning out of an upper window to greet with abuse the disturbers of his peace at the Theatre in 1590. The yard and the stage itself were, of course, lit, in the absence of a roof, from above. Performances were ordinarily by daylight; before the end of the sixteenth century the time for beginning had been fixed at 2 o’clock.[1716] The stage-directions point to a frequent enough use of lamps and tapers, but always to give the illusion of scenic darkness. Plays, however, lasted at least two hours, sometimes half an hour or even an hour longer, and there was the jig to follow.[1717] It must therefore be doubtful whether, in the depth of winter, daylight could have served quite to the end. Webster complains that the ill-success of The White Devil was due to its being given ‘in so dull a time of winter, and presented in so open and black a theatre’. Perhaps the shorter plays were chosen for the shorter days, or the jig was omitted. But it is also possible that some primitive illumination, in the form of cressets, or baskets of tarred and flaring rope, was introduced.[1718]

The actors themselves were not wholly without protection from the elements. De Witt depicts two heavy classical columns, which stand on square bases rather farther back than the middle of the stage and a little way from each side of it. These support a pent-house roof, which starts from the level of the eaves of the ‘tectum’ over the top gallery, and descends in a steep slope to a level opposite to the middle of the second gallery, where it slightly projects beyond the supporting columns. Behind and above it rises a kind of hut, conspicuous above the ‘tectum’ and forming a superstructure to the tire-house. Its front has less width than that of the tire-house, and its side is shown in clumsy perspective, which is apparently followed round by the pent-house below it. The pent-house is the only thing in the drawing, that can represent the ‘shadow’ or ‘heavens’, which several allusions point to as a regular feature in the public theatres, and which certainly existed at the Rose, the Fortune--and therefore presumably the Globe--and the Hope.[1719] But it must be admitted that this sharply sloping roof, coming down low and considerably impeding the vision of the spectators at any rate in the top gallery, does not agree very well with the notion of a heavens dominating the stage, elaborately decorated, and serving for the display of spectacular effects, which were surely meant to be visible to all. It is possible that De Witt’s halting draughtsmanship has failed him in the attempt to tackle the architectural perspective from a difficult angle in an upper gallery. My impression is that, by giving too much height to the bottom gallery, he has got the two other galleries out of line with the stories of the tire-house to which they correspond, and that the lower gallery should really be on the level of the stage, the middle gallery on that of the gallery ‘over the stage’, and the top gallery on that of the rather obscure story above. If so, the front of this story would have been visible, and may have contained some aperture of which account has not yet been taken in formulating theories of staging.[1720] And I think that the columns were really higher and the roof flatter than De Witt has drawn them. It is perhaps less easy to suggest that the columns stood farther forward than De Witt has placed them, but the roof may well have projected farther over them. They are solid enough to bear a much greater weight than the drawing indicates. However these things may have been at the Swan--I am not blind to the dangers of attempting to convert what De Witt has shown into something which he has not shown--one may, perhaps, infer that more extensive roofing than the pent-house of the drawing would afford was contemplated by the Fortune contract, which provides for ‘a shadowe or cover over the saide stadge’, and the Hope contract, which is even more precise in its specification of ‘the Heavens all over the saide stage’. In both cases there were to be gutters to carry away rain-water. The heavens at the Hope were ‘to be borne or carryed without any postes or supporters to be fixed or sett uppon the saide stage’, and it has been thought that other theatres of later date than the Swan may also have dispensed with posts. But there is little ground for this theory, other than the obvious obstruction which the posts would offer to vision.[1721] Howes seems to refer to the arrangement at the Hope as an innovation, and it can hardly be unrelated to the special need for a removable stage at that house. On the other hand the posts may very likely have been slighter than De Witt has shown them. At the Fortune they were, like other ‘princypall and maine postes’, square and carved ‘palasterwise’ with satyrs. The posts are worked into the action of several plays, and Kempe tells us that pickpockets were pilloried by being tied to them.[1722]

The hut has two windows in front, and a door in the visible side. It has been suggested that it may really have stood rather more forward than De Witt indicates, jutting out from the tire-house so as to be directly over a part of the heavens.[1723] An analogous superstructure is observable in most of the map-representations of theatres. That of the later Globe in Visscher’s map of 1616 seems to have two bays, one behind another, instead of the one bay of the Swan drawing, and would have required more space. The ‘Theatrum’ of Jonson’s 1616 Folio has an =L=-shaped superstructure. The object of a jut forward would be to facilitate the descents and ascents from and to the heavens, which formed popular features in many plays, and which must have been contrived by some kind of machinery from above.[1724] From the roof of this hut floats a flag, with the figure of a swan upon it, and at the door stands a man, apparently blowing a trumpet, from which depends a smaller flag also bearing a swan. There is abundant evidence that the play-houses flew flags when they were open for performances, and took them down when Lent or a plague rendered playing impossible.[1725] The trumpeter is no doubt giving one of the three ‘soundings’ which preluded the appearance of the prologue in his traditional long black velvet cloak.[1726] Nor did the flag and the trumpet exhaust the resources of the Elizabethan art of advertisement. The vexillatores of the miracle-play would perhaps have been out of keeping with London conditions.[1727] But it was customary to announce after the epilogue of each performance what the next was to be.[1728] And public notification was given by means of play-bills, of which we hear from as early a date as 1564, and which were set up on posts in conspicuous places up and down the city and probably also at the play-house doors.[1729] Copies seem also to have been available for circulation from hand to hand.[1730] On 30 October 1587 John Charlwood entered in the Stationers’ Register a licence for ‘the onely ympryntinge of all manner of billes for players’. This passed from him to James Roberts, and was transferred by Roberts to William Jaggard on 29 October 1615.[1731] No theatrical bill of the Elizabethan or Jacobean period is preserved, although a manuscript bill for the Bear Garden is amongst Alleyn’s papers at Dulwich.[1732] Four late seventeenth-century bills are at Claydon; they are brief announcements, which give the names of the plays, but not those of the authors or actors.[1733] There is no evidence of anything corresponding to the modern programme, with its cast and synopsis of scenes.[1734] The audience gathered early, as there were few, if any, reserved seats.[1735] The period of waiting was spent in consuming fruit or sweatmeats and liquid refreshment, and in expressing impatience if the actors failed to make an appearance in good time.[1736] Tobacco was freely used, especially by the gallants on the stage.[1737] Books were also hawked up and down, and a game of cards might beguile the tedium of waiting.[1738] The galleries were full of light women, who found them a profitable haunt, but whose presence did not altogether prevent that of ladies of position, probably in the private rooms, and possibly masked.[1739]

If the audience liked a play, the actors expected a Plaudite of hand-clapping; if otherwise, they took their chance of hissing and ‘mewing’, or of a pointed withdrawal of spectators from the stage.[1740] The device of a claque was not unknown.[1741] The applause was often invited in the closing speech or in a formal epilogue, on the same lines as the prologue, which it seems to have replaced in favour about the end of the sixteenth century.[1742] This might also lead up to or perhaps represent the prayer for the sovereign, of which there are traces up to a late date, and which was analogous to the modern use of ‘God Save the King’.[1743] The accompanying prayer for the ‘lord’ of the players, on the other hand, cannot be shown to have been adopted into the public theatres.[1744] Finally, the epilogue might indicate a coming dance.[1745] Of this a little more needs to be said. The players have amongst other elements in their ancestry the mediaeval mimes, and they inherit the familiar mimic tradition of multifarious entertainment. The ‘legitimate’ drama was not as yet on its pedestal. The companies of the ’eighties and even the early ’nineties were composed of men ready at need to eke out their plays by musical performances and even the ‘activities’ of acrobats. This is perhaps most obvious in the continental companies, which had to face the obstacles to a complete intelligence between stage and audience introduced at the tower of Babel. Such a cosmopolitan mingling of drama and ‘activities’ as we may suppose The Labours of Hercules to have been was a valuable resource.[1746] But at home also we find Strange’s and the Admiral’s men showing their ‘activities’ at court, and Symons the acrobat becoming a leader amongst the Queen’s, and even so late as 1601 Henslowe fitting out the Admiral’s boy Nick to tumble in the presence of royalty. The country tours of the Queen’s were for some time accompanied by a Turkish rope dancer.[1747] In the theatres themselves Italian players made their success and their scandal, with the help of tumbling women.[1748] Whether English players did the same we do not know. But we do know that the dance by way of afterpiece was a regular and enduring custom.[1749] It was known as the jig.[1750] At first, perhaps, nothing more than such dancing, with the help of a variety of foreign costumes, as was also an element in the early masks, it developed into a farcical dialogue, with a musical and Terpsichorean accompaniment, for which popular tunes, such as Fading, were utilized.[1751] This transformation was perhaps due to the initiative of Tarlton, to whom several jigs are attributed.[1752] But he was followed by Kempe and others, and in the last decade of the sixteenth century the jig may be inferred from the Stationers’ Register to have become almost a literary type.[1753] Nashe in 1596 threatens Gabriel Harvey with an interlude, and ‘a Jigge at the latter end in English Hexameters of O neighbour Gabriell, and his wooing of Kate Cotton’.[1754] In 1597 Henslowe bought two jigs from two young men for the Admiral’s at a cost of 6_s._ 8_d._[1755] In 1598 ‘Kemps Jigge’ was being sung in the streets.[1756] The Middlesex justices made a special order against the lewd jigs, songs, and dances at the Fortune in 1612.[1757] Unfortunately few jigs have survived except from a late date or in German adaptations.[1758] Two or three, however, appear amongst collections of ballads to which they are cognate in metrical form, notably one ascribed to ‘M^r Attowel’, whom we should, I think, identify with the sixteenth-century George, rather than the seventeenth-century Hugh, of that name.[1759] Another, Rowland’s Godson, seems to be the surviving member of a well-known cycle.[1760]

Nor was the jig the only form of afterpiece which had its savour in an Elizabethan play-house. Tarlton again, and after Tarlton Wilson, won reputation in the handling of ‘themes’, which appear to have been improvisations in verse, strung together on some motive supplied by a member of the audience.[1761] It has been suggested that complete plays were also sometimes given by the method of improvised dialogue on a concerted plot which was followed in the Italian commedie dell’ arte.[1762] This must remain very doubtful. The Italian practice and the stock characters, pantaloon, zany, and harlequin, of the commedie dell’ arte were certainly known in England; but we have the clear evidence of The Case is Altered that by 1597 at any rate they had not been naturalized.[1763] If improvisation went beyond the gagging of a clown, it was probably only in some exceptional experiment or tour de force.[1764] As exceptional also we may regard Vennar’s spectacular Englands Joy of 1602 and the wager plays, in which actors or even amateurs challenged each other to compete in rendering some ‘part’ of traditional repute.[1765] One would like to know more about the play, apparently a monologue, ‘set out al by one virgin’, at the Theatre in 1583.[1766]

Many of the characteristics of the public theatres naturally repeated themselves at the Blackfriars, the Whitefriars, and Paul’s. The distinctive features of these, as already indicated, arose from the structure of the buildings, from the higher prices charged, and in the beginning at least from the employment of singing boys as actors. Some assimilation of ‘public’ and ‘private’ methods was bound to follow upon the acquisition of the Blackfriars by men actors in 1609, but the period during which this was the principal house of the King’s company lies outside the scope of this survey.

The exact location of Paul’s is obscure, but we know that its auditorium was round and its stage small.[1767] Whitefriars and both the earlier and the later Blackfriars were in rooms which had formed part of mediaeval conventual buildings, rectangular, roofed, and more analogous to courtly halls than to popular rings. No room at Farrant’s disposal would have given him a stage of a greater width than 27 ft. Burbadge’s theatre was 66 ft. from north to south, and 46 ft. from east to west. It was on the second story of his purchase that he could have best constructed it. The stage, which stood on a paved floor, was probably towards the south end, and as the whole space available was something like 100 ft. long by 52 wide, we may guess that partitions had been put up to screen off a tiring-house behind it and a passage by which the tiring-house could be reached.[1768] The entrance would be at the north end, where a great flight of stairs led up from a yard large enough for coaches to turn in. There were galleries, but not necessarily three distinct tiers of galleries, as in the public theatres, for which, indeed, there would hardly have been height enough.[1769] And there was a ‘middle region’ in which the spectators sat, instead of standing as they did in the public ‘yards’.[1770] This, which was a feature also of the later private houses, came to be known as the ‘pit’, but as the derivation of this term is from ‘cockpit’, it may not be of earlier origin than the building of the Cockpit or Phoenix theatre in Drury Lane about 1617.[1771] A roofed theatre would not require a specially constructed ‘heavens’, as descents could be worked through the ceiling from a room above. There is no clear evidence for a lord’s room at any of the private houses.[1772] But there were ‘boxes’, at any rate at the Whitefriars.[1773] Evidence for seats on the stage has already been furnished. There is much to suggest that the audience was a more select one than that of the public theatres.[1774] Elizabeth cannot be shown to have ever attended the Blackfriars, but Anne certainly did.[1775] And the price of the seats, which ranged from 6_d._ to 2_s._ 6_d._, was of itself sufficient to keep out persons of the ‘groundling’ or ‘stinkard’ type.[1776] Performances did not necessarily take place every day, and they could begin rather later and go on rather longer than those out of doors, since they were not dependent on daylight.[1777] Windows were certainly used, for we hear of them being clapped down to give the illusion of night scenes.[1778] But candles and torches supplied an artificial lighting.[1779] As both the Paul’s boys and those of the Chapel were primarily choristers, it is not surprising that music played a considerable part in the entertainment provided. Musical interludes were given between the acts, and Gerschow records a preliminary concert of an hour in length before the play began at the Blackfriars in 1602.[1780] Sometimes also a boy came forward and danced between the acts.[1781] At Paul’s there was at the back of the stage a ‘musick tree’, which apparently rose out of a ‘canopie’ and bore a ‘musick house’ on either side of it.[1782]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] E. J. L. Scott, Letter Book of Gabriel Harvey (Camden Soc.), 67.

[2] Cf. App. D, No. lxxviii.

[3] Cf. ch. xi.

[4] G. Dugdale, Time Triumphant (1604), sig. B, ‘Nay, see the beauty of our all kinde soveraigne! not onely to the indifferent of worth, and the worthy of honor, did he freely deale about thiese causes, but to the meane gave grace, as taking to him the late Lord Chamberlaines servants, now the Kings acters; the Queene taking to her the Earle of Worsters servants, that are now her acters; and the Prince, their sonne, Henry, Prince of Wales full of hope, tooke to him the Earle of Nottingham his servants, who are now his acters.’

[5] Cf. ch. xvi, introd., and App. C, No. lviii.

[6] Flecknoe (App. I) perhaps exaggerates the share of moral sentiment in bringing to an end the formal connexion of the choirs with plays (cf. p. 52).

[7] De la Boderie, in 1608 (cf. vol. i, p. 327), speaks of five companies in London. These would be the King’s, Queen’s, Prince’s, Revels, and King’s Revels.

[8] Archaeologia, lxii. 1. 216, from statutes collected in the decanate of Ralph of Baldock (1294–1304), ‘Cantoris officium est ... pueros introducendos in chorum et ad cantum intitulatos examinare ... Magistrum Scolae Cantus in ecclesia Sancti Gregorii, salva Decano et Capitulo ipsius collacione, preficere’; Dugdale, St. Paul’s (1818), 347, from fifteenth-or early sixteenth-century manuscript of statutes, ‘Magistrum Scholae Cantus constituit Cantor. Ad eum pertinet eos qui canere nequeunt instruere, pueros diligenter docere, eis non solum magistrum Cantus, sed etiam bonorum morum esse.’

[9] Archaeologia, lxii. 1. 215, from statutes collected in decanate of Ralph de Diceto (1181–99), ‘Cotidie pascat ... duos pueros elemosinarios ... et secum ad Ecclesiam media nocte panem et cervisiam pro iunioribus chorum frequentantibus defer[r]i faciat, et quolibet quarterio semel vel bis post matutinas iunioribus gentaculum unum in domo sua faciat’. A thirteenth-century statute required the pueri de elemosinaria to sit humbly upon the ground when feeding in the house of a canon. Cf. Mediaeval Stage, i. 355, for Diceto’s statute about the Boy Bishop, with its mention of the return of the boys ‘ad Elemosinariam’, and the reforming statute of 1263.

[10] Archaeologia, lxii. 1. 220.

[11] Ibid. 217, 220 (c. 1263; c. 1310) ‘Elemosinarius ... habeat insuper continuo secum octo pueros ad Ecclesiae ministerium ydoneos, quos per seipsum vel alium magistrum in spectantibus ad ministerium ecclesiae et litteratura ac bonis moribus diligenter faciat informari.... Quociens vero dicti pueri ad scolas vel spaciatum ire debent....’; Dugdale, 349 [Elemosinarius] ‘octo pueros bonae indolis et honestae parentelae habeat; quos alat et educat in morum disciplina; videat etiam instruantur in cantu et literatura, ut in omnibus apti ad ministerium Dei in Choro esse possent’.

[12] There was a bequest to the almoner to maintain boys, apparently at the University, after they had changed their voices, as early as 1315 (Archaeologia, lxii. 1. 219–22).

[13] Hennessy, 61; W. S. Simpson, Charter and Statutes of the College of Minor Canons in St. Paul’s Cathedral (Archaeologia, xliii. 165; cf. Trans. of London and Midd. Arch. Soc. (1st series), iv. 231). The statutes of c. 1521 note a dispensation of that year for Thomas Hikeman ‘peticanon and amner’ and for ‘all and euery peticanon which shalbe Amneur hear-after’ to bring a stranger to meals.

[14] Stowe, Survey, ii. 19; cf. the Hollar engraving in Baker, 95.

[15] Stowe, i. 327; Archaeologia, xliii. 171. By c. 14 of the statutes the college gates were shut at meals.

[16] Leach, Journal of Education (1909), 506, cites the Registrum Elemosinariae (ed. M. Hacket from Harl. MS. 1080), ‘If the almoner does not keep a clerk to teach the choristers grammar, the schoolmaster of St. Paul’s claims 5_s._ a year for teaching them, though he ought to demand nothing for them, because he keeps the school for them, as the Treasurer of St. Paul’s once alleged before the Dean and Chapter is to be found in ancient deeds’. Mr. Leach adds, ‘It is to be feared the Treasurer invented or misrepresented the ancient deed’. William de Tolleshunt, almoner, appears from his will of 1329 in the same register to have taught his boys himself (Archaeologia, lxii. 1. 220), ‘Item lego pueris ecclesiae quos ego educavi senioribus in Elemosinaria existentibus cuilibet xij^d et iunioribus cuilibet vj^d’. He also left his grammar books ‘et omnes quaternos sermonum de Festo Sanctorum Innocencium, quos tempore meo solebant Episcopi Puerorum pronuntiare, ad remanendum in Elemosinaria praedicta imperpetuum, ad usum fructum puerorum in eadem degencium’. His logic and physic books are to be lent out ‘pueris aptis ad scolatizandum, cum ab elemosinaria recesserint’.

[17] Mediaeval Stage, i. 356. The sermon written by Erasmus is headed Concio ... pronunciata ... in nova schola Iohannis Coleti, but Erasmus may not have known the exact procedure at St. Paul’s. The earlier sermon printed by Wynkyn de Worde has ‘whyche often times I radde whan I was Querester, in the Marteloge of Poulis’.

[18] Mediaeval Stage, ii. 380.

[19] Mediaeval Stage, ii. 196, 215, 219. Wallace, i. 88, points out that the performers of the Menaechmi before Wolsey in 1527 were not the Paul’s boys, but the Cardinal’s gentlemen.

[20] Chamber Accounts (1545).

[21] Nichols, Eliz. i. xxxv, ‘By Sebastian, scolemaister of Powles, a boke of ditties, written’.

[22] Household Accounts of Princess Elizabeth, 1551–2 (Camden Misc. ii), 37, ‘Paid in rewarde to the Kinges Maiesties drommer and phipher, the xiij^{th} of Februarye, xx^s; M^r. Heywoodde, xxx^s; and to Sebastian, towardes the charge of the children with the carriage of the plaiers garmentes iiij^{li}, xix^s. In thole as by warraunte appereth, vij^{li}, ix^s’.

[23] F. Madden, Expenses of Lady Mary, 62 (March 1538), ‘Item geuen to Heywood playeng an enterlude with his children bifore my lades grace, xl^s’.

[24] Wallace, i. 77, goes against the evidence when he asserts that Heywood wrote for the Chapel. Why he asserts that Heywood ‘had grown up in the Chapel under Cornish’, to whom, by the way, he wantonly transfers the authorship of The Four P. P., The Pardoner and the Frere, and Johan Johan, I do not know. There is nothing to show that Heywood was a Chapel boy, and the absence of his name from the Chapel list of 1509 (cf. p. 27), when he would have been about twelve, may be taken as disposing of the notion. He is first discoverable at Court in December 1514, for which month he received wages at the rate of viij^d a day in some undefined capacity (Chamber Account in Addl. MS. 21481, f. 178), which was shared by one John Mason, who was a Yeoman of the Crown by March 1516 (Brewer, ii. 475). By 1520 Heywood himself was a Yeoman of the Crown (Brewer, iii. 1. 499), and during 1519–21 the Chamber Accounts show him as also a ‘singer’ at £5 a quarter. Later he became player of the virginals, and has 50_s._ a quarter as such in the Accounts for 1529–31, 1538–41, and 1547–9. He was Sewer of the Chamber at the funeral of Edward in 1553. It occurs to me as just possible that Heywood’s ‘children’ may have been neither the Chapel nor the Paul’s boys, but the boys taken up by Philip Van Wilder for the musical establishment of the Household; cf. p. 31. But I think it is more likely that Heywood wrote for the Paul’s boys throughout, as he almost certainly did in 1559. There is another hint of his connexion with them in the fact that at the coronation of Mary in 1553 he sat under a vine against the grammar school and made speeches (Holinshed (1808), iv. 6). A. W. Reed (1917, 3 Library, viii. 247) adds facts, and thinks the Yeoman was distinct.

[25] Addl. MS. 15233; cf. Mediaeval Stage, ii. 454. Thomas Tusser, in the Autobiography printed with the 1573 edition of his Points of Good Husbandry, is the authority for placing Redford at Paul’s:

But mark the chance, myself to ’vance, By friendship’s lot, to Paul’s I got. So found I grace a certain space Still to remain With Redford there, the like nowhere For cunning such and virtue much By whom some part of musicke art So did I gain.

From Paul’s Tusser passed to Eton, before he matriculated at Cambridge in 1543. In other manuscripts compositions by Redford and Thomas Mulliner are associated, and one of these, Addl. MS. 30513, is inscribed ‘Sum liber Thomae Mullineri, Johanne Heywoode teste’. Stafford Smith, on what authority is unknown, stated (cf. D. N. B.) that Mulliner was Master of St. Paul’s School. If so, he may have come between Redford and Westcott. On 3 March 1564 he was admitted as organist in Corpus Christi College, Oxford (Fowler, Hist. of C.C.C. 426).

[26] Feuillerat, E. and M. 145; Wallace, i. 84. The mention of ‘xij cottes for the boyes in Heywoodes play’ does not justify the assumption that the players were the Chapel. The ten established boys of the St. Paul’s choir could be supplemented by probationers or the grammar school.

[27] Mediaeval Stage, ii. 196.

[28] Machyn, 206. ‘M^r Philip’ was organist of Paul’s in 1557 (Nichols, Illustrations, iii). Fleay, 57, guesses that the play was Nice Wanton, which is not likely, if Heywood had a hand in it.

[29] Hennessy, 61.

[30] Flood cites a Vatican record of 1561 from Catholic Record Soc. i. 21, ‘Sebastianus, qui organa pulsabat apud D. Paulum Londini, cum vellet eiici, tamen tum ita charus Elizabethae fuit, ut nihil schismatice agens locum suum in ea ecclesia retineat’; also Grindal’s letter of 1563 to Dudley in Strype, Grindal (ed. 1821), 113. Hillebrand adds from Libri Vicarii Generalis (Huick 1561–74), iii, f. 77, that in July 1563 Westcott failed to appear before the Consistory Court and was excommunicated as ‘contumacem’, and from St. Paul’s records (A. Box 77, 2059) that on 8 Nov. 1564 he gave a bond to conform or resign by the following Easter. Gee, 230, gives a list of deprived clergy from N. Sanders, De Visibili Monarchia (1571), 688, which includes among Magistri Musices ‘Sebastianus in Cathedrali ecclesia Londinensi’.

[31] Fleay, 15, 60, has some inaccuracies in these dates, and conjectures that among the early Paul’s plays were a revival of Udall’s Ralph Roister Doister and Ulpian Fulwell’s Like Will to Like, and that these contained satire of Richard Edwards and the Chapel.

[32] Dasent, ix. 56.

[33] Hillebrand from Repertory, xix, f. 18, ‘For asmoche as this Court ys enformed that one Sebastian that wyll not communicate with the Church of England kepe the playes and resorte of the people to great gaine and peryll of the coruptinge of the Chyldren wyth papistrie And therefore master Morten ys appoynted to goe to the Deane of Powles and to gyve him notyce of that dysorder, and to praye him to gyve suche remeadye therein, within his iurysdyccion, as he shall see meete, for Christian Relygion and good order’.

[34] Dasent, x. 127. Cath. Record Soc. i. 70 gives the date of Westcott’s committal ‘for papistry’ from S. P. D. Eliz. cxl. 40, as 21 Dec. 1577, and that of release as 19 March 1578. According to S. P. D. Eliz. cxviii. 73, Westcott was Master of the Children in 1577 and valued at £100 in goods.

[35] Gosson, P. C. 188.

[36] Flood (Mus. Ant. iv. 187) gives an abstract of his will, dated on 3 April and proved on 14 April 1582. He describes himself as almoner of St. Paul’s, dwelling in the almonry and born at Chimley in Devonshire; appoints Henry Evans overseer and Justinian Kyd executor, and leaves legacies to relatives (apparently he had no children or wife), to members of the Redford family, to ‘Gyles Clothier’, to the ten choristers, to ‘sometimes children of the said almenerey’, by name Bromeham, Richard Huse, Robert Knight, Nicholas Carleton, Baylye, Nasion, and Gregory Bowringe, to ‘Shepard that keepeth the door at playes’, and to Pole ‘the keper of the gate’. Wallace, i. 171, cites the will from P. C. C. 14 and 31, Tirwhite, giving the date of confirmation as 3 July 1582. One name may be added to Westcott’s list of boys from a Court Minute of Christ’s Hospital on 5 March 1580 (Musical Times, 1 Jan. 1907), ‘M^r. Sebastian, of Paulls, is appointed to have Hallawaie the younger out of this House to be one of the singing children of the Cathedral Church of Paulls in this Citie’.

[37] Gosson (1582) speaks of the plays as ‘at Paules’; and Rawlidge (1628) mentions a house ‘nigh Pauls’ as one of those pulled down by the City, apparently in 1596 (cf. ch. xvi). The Paul’s boys, however, can hardly have been playing for some years before that date. Howes (1629) definitely specifies the singing school (cf. ch. xvi). On the other hand, Flecknoe, a late authority and in a passage dealing (inaccurately) with Jacobean rather than Elizabethan conditions, assigns the plays to ‘behinde the Convocation-house in Paul’s’ (App. I). This is expanded by Malone (Variorum, iii. 46) into ‘in S^t. Paul’s school-room, behind the Convocation-house’, and Baker, 45, suggests that they used a small yard or cloister before the doors of the Convocation House and shut off by a high wall from the main churchyard (cf. Hollar’s prints in Baker, 95, 115). But I doubt if Flecknoe had anything in mind except St. Gregory’s, which stood just west of the Convocation House. The hall of the College of Minor Canons is perhaps also a possibility; but neither this nor the church is likely to have afforded a circular auditorium (cf. ch. xviii). Can they have used the Convocation House itself?

[38] McDonnell, 27, argues for the participation of the grammar school in the plays. Obviously the phrase ‘children of Paul’s’, ordinarily used of the playing-boys, proves nothing one way or the other. That the plays were mainly an affair of the choir is a fair inference from the fact that they were presented at Court by the song-school masters. But there is no reason to doubt that the mediaeval give and take between the two schools continued through the sixteenth century. Hunter, Chorus Vatum, v. 542, quotes a manuscript life of Sir Thomas Offley, ‘This Thomas Offley became a good grammarian under Mr. [William] Lillie and understood the Latin tongue perfectly; and because he had a sweet voice he was put to learn prick-song among the choristers of St. Paul’s, for that learned Mr. Lillie knew full well that knowledge in music was a help and a furtherance to all arts’. On the other hand, Dean Nowell (Churton, Life of A. Nowell, 190) instructed Thomas Giles in 1584 to teach the choristers catechism, writing, and music, and then to ‘suffer them to resort to Paul’s School that they may learn the principles of Grammar’. Some seventeenth-century performances by the grammar school, after the regular Paul’s plays ceased, are upon record.

[39] Cf. infra (Chapel, Oxford’s); ch. xvii (Blackfriars).

[40] R. Churton, Life of Alexander Nowell, 190, from Reg. Nowell, ii, f. 189; Nichols, Eliz. ii. 432; Collier, i. 258; Hazlitt, 33; Wallace, ii. 67, from original warrant under the Signet in Sloane MS. 2035^b, f. 73: ‘By the Queene, Elizabeth.

‘Whereas we haue authorysed our servaunte Thomas Gyles M^r. of the children of the Cathedrall Churche of S^t. Pauls within our Cittie of London to take vpp suche apte and meete Children as are most fitt to be instructed and framed in the arte and science of musicke and singinge as may be had and founde out within anie place of this our Realme of England or Wales, to be by his education and bringinge vp made meete and hable to serve vs in that behalf when our pleasure is to call for them. Wee therefore by the tenour of these presentes will and require you that ye permitt and suffer from henceforthe our saide servaunte Thomas Gyles and his deputie or deputies and every of them to take vp in anye Cathedral or Collegiate Churche or Churches and in everye other place or places of this our Realme of England and Wales, suche Childe and Children as he or they or anye of them shall finde and like of and the same Childe and Children by vertue hereof for the vse and service afouresaide, with them or anye of them to bringe awaye, withoute anye your lettes contradiccions staye or interruptions to the contrarie Charginge and commaundinge you and everie of you to be aydinge helpinge and assisting vnto the aboue named Thomas Gyles and his deputie and deputies in and aboute the due execucion of the premisses for the more spedie effectuall & bettar accomplisshing thereof from tyme to tyme as you and everie of you doe tendar our will and pleasure and will aunswere for doinge the contrarye at your perilles. Youen vnder our Signet at our Manour of Grenewich the 26^{th} Day of Aprill in the 27^{th} yere of our reign.

To all and singuler Deanes, Provostes, Maisters and Wardens of Collegies and all Ecclesiasticall persons and mynisters and to all other our officers mynisters and subiectes to whome in this case it shall apperteyne and to everye of them greetinge.’

No other commission for the Paul’s choir is extant, but their rights are reserved in the commission for Windsor (q.v.) of 8 March 1560.

[41] Harvey, Advertisement for Pap-Hatchet (Works, ii. 212). Lyly was still Oxford’s man but writing for Paul’s, c. Aug. 1585 (M. L. R. xv. 82.).

[42] Cf. ch. ix and App. C, No. xl, especially Pappe with an Hatchet (Oct. 1589).

[43] Have With You to Saffron Walden (Works, iii. 46). I do not think the reference to a twelvemonth’s silence, due to envy, in the prologue to Nashe’s Summer’s Last Will and Testament (c. Oct. 1592) affords any justification for ascribing that play to the Paul’s boys. Murray, i. 330; ii. 284, records a payment at Gloucester in 1590–1 ‘to the children of powles’. I am sceptical about this, especially as I observe in the next year a payment for a breakfast to the Queen’s men ‘at M^r. Powelles’. Murray’s only other municipal record for the company, at Hedon, Yorkshire, on some quite unknown date, ‘Item, payd to the ---- pawll plaiers’ (ii. 286), is even less satisfactory. But if the boys did travel on their suppression, they may well have gone to Croydon.

[44] Rimbault, 4. Giles must have resigned, if he was the Thomas Giles who, on 18 April 1606, was paid 100 marks a year as instructor to Henry in music (Devon, 35). He was instructor to Charles in 1613 (Reyher, 78) and figures in masks (cf. ch. vi). Fellowes, 184, 190, has two songs set by Pearce, one from Blurt Master Constable.

[45] 1 A. and M. IV. i. 30, ‘Enter Andrugio, Lucio, Cole, and Norwood’. Bullen thinks that the two boys played the parts named, but the action requires at least one page, who sings.

[46] Wallace, ii. 153, says he has evidence of playing at Paul’s in 1598, but he does not give it. It is perhaps rash to assume that Pearce originated the revival, as there is no proof that he came to Paul’s before 1600.

[47] Cf. ch. xi.

[48] V. i. 102.

[49] Collier, iii. 181. On the light thrown on the Paul’s stage by these plays, cf. ch. xxi. It is conceivable that some of them may have been originally written before 1590 (cf. ch. xxiii, s.v. Percy).

[50] Cf. ch. xxiv.

[51] Cf. infra (Queen’s Revels).

[52] Nichols, James, iv. 1073, from The King of Denmark’s Welcome (1606), ‘the Youthes of Paules, commonlye cald the Children of Paules, plaide before the two Kings, a playe called Abuses: containing both a Comedie and a Tragedie, at which the Kinges seemed to take delight and be much pleased’. The play is lost. Fleay, ii. 80, has no justification for identifying it with The Insatiate Countess. Wily Beguiled (ch. xxiv) might be a Paul’s play.

[53] C. W. Wallace, Nebraska University Studies (1910), x. 355; cf. infra (Queen’s Revels), ch. xvii (Blackfriars).

[54] Constitutio Domus Regis (c. 1135) in Hearne, Liber Niger Scaccarii, i. 342, ‘Capellani, custos capellae et reliquiarum. Corridium duorum hominum, et quatuor servientes capellae unusquisque duplicem cibum, et duo summarii capellae unusquisque 1^d in die et 1^d ad ferrandum in mense’; cf. R. O. Ld. Steward’s Misc. 298 (1279); Tout, 278, 311 (1318); H. O. 3, 10 (1344–8); Life Records of Chaucer (Chaucer Soc.), iv. 171 (1369); Nicolas, P. C. vi. 223 (1454).

[55] H. O. 10. In 1318 he was ‘chief chapellain’.

[56] J. H. Wylie, Henry IV, iv. 208, from Household Accounts, ‘John Bugby our chaplain retained 3 years ago pur apprendre et enformer les enfants de notre chapelle en la science de gramaire at 100/-p. a. nothing yet paid, £15 due’. A grant to John Tilbery, a boy of the King’s chapel, was made on 12 Nov. 1405 (C. P. R., Hen. IV, iii. 96).

[57] Wallace, i. 12, 21, from P. R. The commission of 1420 was to John Pyamour ‘uni clericorum Capellae hospicii nostri’; another of 1440 was to John Croucher, Dean. When regular Masters were instituted, the commissions seem to have been made direct to them.

[58] Wallace, i. 14, quotes laudatory accounts of the singing of the chapel by two members of the suite of Leo von Ro[vz]mital, a Bohemian who visited the English Court in 1466.

[59] H. O. 49. There is nothing about plays, but ‘Memorandum, that the King hathe a songe before hym in his hall or chambre uppon All-hallowen day at the latter graces, by some of these clerkes and children of chappel in remembrance of Christmasse; and soe of men and children in Christmasse thorowoute. But after the songe on All-hallowen day is done, the Steward and Thesaurere of houshold shall be warned where it liketh the King to kepe his Christmasse’.

[60] At the coronation of James in 1603 (Rimbault, 127) there were a Sub-dean, 7 Ministers, the Master of the Children, an Organist, 22 ordinary Gentlemen, and a Clerk of the Check; also a Sergeant, 2 Yeomen, and a Groom of the Vestry. This agrees with the Elizabethan fee lists, which give the total number of Gentlemen as 32. The coronation list does not name Epistolers; but it is clear from the notices of appointments in Rimbault, 1, that a Gospeller and Epistoler were appointed, as next in succession to the Gentlemen’s places, although it does not appear that they were necessarily ex-Children. There were also Extraordinary Gentlemen (Rimbault, 31).

[61] Cf. ch. ii.

[62] H. O. 160. The hall and chapel are to be kept ‘at all times when his Highnesse shall lye in his castle of Windsor, his mannors of Bewlye, Richmond, Hampton Court, Greenwich, Eltham, or Woodstock’; but ‘in rideing journeys and progresses’, only the Master of the Children, six men, six children, and some officers of the vestry are to attend. In the seventeenth century ‘all removinge weekes’ were amongst the ‘auntient tymes of lyberty and playinge weekes’ (Rimbault, 73). But the practice may have varied. Stopes, 252, gives a Stable warrant of 1554 for a wagon ‘for the necessarie conveying and cariage of the Children of our Chapel and their man from place to place, at such seasons, as they by our commandment shall remove to serve where wee shall appointe them’.

[63] A chapel of St. Stephen existed in 1205. It was rebuilt and made a free collegiate chapel in 1348, and dissolved in 1547, and the building assigned as a chamber for the House of Commons (J. T. Smith, Antiquities of Westminster, 72; V. H. London, i. 566). It may have originated as a domestic chapel, but seems to be quite distinct from the Household Chapel by the sixteenth century. Thus its St. Nicholas Bishop had an old annual reward of £1 from the Exchequer (Devon, Issues of Exchequer, 222; R. Henry, Hist. of Great Britain^3, xii. 459; Brewer, iv. 869), while the Household boys got their reward of £6 12_s._ 4_d._ from the Treasurer of the Chamber. Wallace, i. 22, notes that the Masters of the Children ‘all lived’ at Greenwich, which suggests that this was the Tudor head-quarters of the Chapel.

[64] Wallace, i. 22, 23, 26, 61, from patents of Masters; Fee List (passim).

[65] R. Henry, Hist. of Great Britain^3, xii. 457; Brewer, ii. 873; iii. 364; iv. 868; Fee Lists (passim); Wallace, i. 21, 23, 24, 26, 33, 61, from patents and Exchequer of Receipt, Auditor’s Privy Seal Books. The Elizabethan fee for a Gentleman was only £30 (cf. p. 41, n. 3), but it was increased again to £40 by James in 1604 (Rimbault, 61).

[66] H. O. 169, 212. The Chamber Accounts for Aug. 1520 include a special payment to the Master for the diets of the boys when they accompanied the King to Calais, at 2_d._ a day each.

[67] The allowance was 6_d._ in 1575 (Collier, i. 175; Nagel, 29; from Harl. MS. 589, f. 220), but Hunnis’s petition of 1583 (cf. p. 37) implies that this rate was customary before Elizabeth’s reign.

[68] Chamber Accounts (passim); cf. p. 24, n. 6. For the feast of the Boy Bishop on St. Nicholas Day, cf. Mediaeval Stage, i. 336, 359, 369.

[69] Stopes, 15, ‘40 surplices for the gentlemen and 16 for the children of the Chapel’ (Wardrobe warrant of 7 Oct. 1533); ‘for 10 children of the Kings Chapell, for gownes of Tawney Chamblett lined with black satin of Bruges, and Milan bonnettes for the said children, as in the same boke of apparel is declared xliii^{li}. iii^s. iiii^d. For two children of the Kings Chapell, for 2 gownes of Black Chamblett, lined with black satin of Bruges 2 cotes of yellow saten of Bruges lined with Coton, and 2 Millan bonnettes, and for making and lining of said gownes and cotes as in the said boke at large it duly apperes x^{li} xviii^s ... Item for twenty gentlemen of the King’s chapel, for 20 gownes of Black Damask for the said gentlemen, cxxvii^{li}. x^s.’ (Queen’s Remembrancia, Wardrobe Expenses, Hen. VIII, 52/10 A).

[70] Chamber Accounts (passim). From 1510 to 1513 Robert Fairfax had 2s. a week for the diet of William Alderson and Arthur Lovekyn, the King’s scholars, and £2 13_s._ 4_d._ for their teaching. In 1513 William Max, late a Child of the Chapel, had 40_s._ In 1514 Cornish was finding and apparelling Robert Philip and another Child of the Chapel, for £1 13_s._ 4_d._ a quarter, and in 1517 finding and teaching William Saunders, late Child of the Chapel, for the same sum, with 2_d._ a week for board ‘when the king keepeth no household’. In 1529–30 Crane had 3_d._ a day wages and 20_d._ a week board wages for Robert Pery, and in 1530 also for William Pery. In 1531 Robert Pery was paid direct. Cunningham, xx, gives a late seventeenth-century example of a similar arrangement. In 1546 a royal letter was written for the appointment of William Bretten, late a Chapel boy, to be singing-man at Lichfield (Brewer, xxi. 1. 142). Some of the above names appear in a list of Chapel Children, William Colman, William Maxe, William Alderson, Henry Meryell, John Williams, John Graunger, Arthur Lovekyn, Henry Andrewe, Nicholas Ivy, Edward Cooke, and James Curteys, receiving liveries at the funeral of Henry VII in 1509 (Lafontaine, 3, from Ld. Ch. Records, 550, f. 131). Some amusing correspondence of 1518 relates to a boy Robin, whom Henry VIII wished to transfer from Wolsey’s chapel to his own. It was stipulated that Cornish should treat him honestly, ‘otherwise than he doth his own’, and later Cornish wrote praising the clean singing and descant of the recruit (Brewer, ii. 1246–50).

[71] J. M. Manly in C. H. vi. 279; C. Johnson, John Plummer (1921, Antiquaries Journal, i. 52); Wallace, i. 21, from patents and Exchequer payments. Wallace does not include Melyonek although (ii. 62) he gives the following commission, already printed by Collier, i. 41, and Rimbault, vii, from Harl. MS. 433, f. 189:

‘Mellenek, Ric. etc. To all and every our subgiettes aswele spirituell as temporell thise our lettres hering or seeing greeting, We let you wite that for the confidence & trust that we haue in our trusty and welbeloued seruant John Melyonek oon of ye gentilmen of our Chapell and knowing also his expert habilitie and connyng in ye science of Musique haue licenced him and by thise presentes licence and geue him auctorite that within all places in this our realme aswele Cathedral churges coliges chappells houses of relegion and al oyer franchised & exempt places as elliswhere our colege roial at Wyndesor reserued & except may take and sease for vs and in our name al suche singing men & childre being expart in the said science of Musique as he can finde and think sufficient and able to do vs seruice. Wherfor &c. Yeuen &c. at Nottingham the xvj^{th} day of September A^o secundo [1484].’

Banaster did not die until 1487, but I think Melyonek must have replaced him, perhaps without a patent, under Richard III.]

[72] Cf. D. N. B. Songs by Banaster and Newark are in Addl. MS. 5465 (Chambers and Sidgwick, Early English Lyrics, 299).

[73] Collier, i. 46; cf. Wallace, i. 12. I am not sure that Collier meant 1485.

[74] Reyher, 504, from Harl. MS. 69, f. 34^v. Wallace, i. 13; ii. 69, citing the same MS., misdates ‘1490’, and says that eight children took part. Four singing children who had appeared in another disguising a day or two before were probably also from the Chapel.

[75] Chamber Accounts in Wallace, i. 28, 38; Bernard Andrew, Annales Hen. VII (Gairdner, Memorials of Hen. VII), 104; Halle, i. 25; Professor Wallace seems to think that the annual Christmas rewards paid by the Treasurer of the Chamber to the Gentlemen, which went on to the end of the reign, were for plays. But these were of £13 6_s._ 8_d._, whereas the reward for a play was £6 13_s._ 4_d._ They were paid on Twelfth Night, and are sometimes said to be for ‘payne taking’ during Christmas. In 1510 they had an extra £6 13_s._ 4_d._ for praying for the Queen’s good deliverance. The ‘payne taking’ was no doubt as singers. An order of Henry VII’s time (H. O. 121) for the wassail on Twelfth Night has, ‘Item, the chappell to stand on the one side of the hall, and when the steward cometh in at the hall doore with the wassell, he must crie three tymes, Wassell, wassell, wassell; and then the chappell to answere with a good songe’. The Gentlemen also had 40_s._ annually from the Treasurer of the Chamber ‘to drink with their bucks’ given them for a summer feast, which was still held in the seventeenth century (Rimbault, 122).

[76] Stopes, Shakespeare’s Environment, 238; Feuillerat, Ed. and Mary, 149, 289. Professor Feuillerat says that one of the documents relating to the play refers to the ‘Children of the Chapel’, and doubts whether there is a real distinction between the ‘Gentlemen’ and the ‘Children’ as actors.

[77] Feuillerat, Ed. and Mary, 3, 255. The conjecture is supported by the fact that garments belonging to the Revels were in possession of two Gentlemen of the Chapel in April 1547 (ibid., 12, 13).

[78] Chamber Accounts in Wallace, i. 38, 65, 70; Brewer, xiv. 2. 284; Kempe, 69; Collier, i. 78; Feuillerat, Ed. and Mary, 266, 288. The ‘iiij Children y^t played afore y^e king’ on 14 Jan. 1508 were not necessarily of the Chapel.

[79] Cf. ch. viii and Mediaeval Stage, ii. 192, 215.

[80] Wallace, i. 33. No patent is cited, but the privy seal for the payment to Cornish of the Exchequer annuity was dated 1 April 1510, and he was shortly afterwards paid for the Christmas and Easter quarters. Newark had died in Nov. 1509. It is therefore a little puzzling to find in a list of Exchequer fees payable during the year ended Michaelmas 1508 (R. Henry, Hist. of Great Britain^3, xii. 457) the item ‘Willelmo Cornysshe magistro puerorum capellae regis pro excubitione eorundem puerorum 26^{li}. 13^s. 4^d.’ Probably the list was prepared retrospectively in Henry VIII’s reign (cf. the analogous list in Brewer, ii. 873), and the name rather than the date is an error.

[81] The data are: (a) Exchequer Payments (Wallace, i. 34), Mich. 1493, ‘Willelmo Cornysshe de Rege’, 100_s._; (b) T. C. Accounts, ‘to one Cornysshe for a prophecy in rewarde’, 13_s._ 4_d._ (12 Nov. 1493); ‘to Cornishe of the Kings Chapell’, 26_s._ 8_d._ (1 Sept. 1496); ‘to Cornysshe for 3 pagents’ (26 Oct. 1501); ‘m^r kyte Cornisshe and other of the Chapell y^t played affore ye king at Richemounte’, £6 13_s._ 4_d._ (25 Dec. 1508); (c) Household Book of Q. Elizabeth, 25 Dec. 1502, ‘to Cornisshe for setting of a Carrall vpon Cristmas Day in reward’, 13_s._ 4_d._; (d) John Cornysh in list of Gent. of Chapel 23 Feb. 1504, and William Cornysh in similar lists c. 1509 and 22 Feb. 1511 (Lafontaine, 2, from Ld. Ch. Records); (e) Songs by ‘W. Cornishe, jun.’ in Addl. MS. 5465, by ‘John Cornish’ in Addl. MS. 5665, by ‘W. Cornish’ in Addl. MS. 31922 (Early English Lyrics, 299); (f) A Treatise betweene Trouthe and Enformacon, by ‘William Cornysshe otherwise called Nyssewhete Chapelman with ... Henry the VII^{th} his raigne the xix^{th} yere the moneth of July’ [1504], doubtless the satirical ballad on Empson referred to by Stowe, Annales, 816 (B. M. Royal MS. 18, D. 11). I think they yield an older William and a John Cornish, of whom one, probably John, arranged the three pageants at Arthur’s wedding, and a William ‘jun.’ who must have joined the Chapel in 1503 or 1504 and became Master of the Children. The older William may be identical with the Westminster (q.v.) choir-master of 1479–80. A Christopher or ‘Kit’ Cornish, referred to by Stopes, 17, and elsewhere, had no existence. This is a ghost-name, due to the juxtaposition of ‘kyte’, i.e. Sir John Kite, afterwards Archbishop of Armagh, and ‘Cornisshe’ in the 1508 record above.

[82] Cf. ch. v and Mediaeval Stage, i. 400.

[83] The T. C. Accounts show a reward of £200 to Cornish on 30 Nov. 1516, of which the occasion is not specified, and a payment of £18 2_s._ 11½_d._ for ‘ij pagentes’ on 6 July 1517. With these possible exceptions, no expenditure on the disguisings or the interludes which formed part of them as distinct from the independent interludes by the Children, for which Cornish received £6 13_s._ 4_d._ each, seems to have passed through these accounts. Any remuneration received by Cornish or his fellows or children for their personal services probably passed through the Revels Accounts.

[84] Wallace, i. 16, 50. He light-heartedly accuses my friend Mr. Pollard, me, and others of perpetuating an old mis-ascription on the strength of Bale, ‘generally without consulting the Scriptores’, in the first edition of which (1548) Bale says that Rastell ‘reliquit’, and in the second that he ‘edidit’ The Four Elements. This Professor Wallace regards as revision by Bale of an incorrect assertion that Rastell was the author into an assertion that he was the publisher. But Bale elsewhere uses ‘edidit’ to indicate authorship, as Professor Wallace might have learnt from the notice of Heywood which he quotes on p. 80. As to The Four P. P. there are three early editions by three different publishers, and they all assign it to Heywood.

[85] Wallace, i. 61, 69; ii. 63, from patents and Exchequer payments. The Elizabethan patent is in Rymer, xv. 517.

[86] Rimbault, viii, quoting only the words ‘in anie churches or chappells within England to take to the King’s use, such and so many singing children and choristers, as he or his deputy should think good’. Stopes, 12, gives Lansd. MS. 171, and Stowe MS. 371, f. 31^v, as references, but the commission is not in either of them.

[87] Matthew Welder appears as a lute and viol at Court in 1516 and 1517. Peter Welder was appointed in 1519 and is traceable to 1559, as a lute, viol, or flute. Henry van Wilder was a ‘musician’, 1553–8. Philip Welder or van Wilder himself is first noted as a ‘minstrel’ in 1526. Later he was a lute up to 1554. In 1547 he was also ‘of the Privy Chamber’ and keeper of the King’s musical instruments (Nagel, 6, 13, 15, 16, 18, 22, 24, 27; Lafontaine, 8, 9, 12; Brewer, i, cxi). He died 24 Jan. 1554, leaving a son, Henry, probably the one noted above (Fry, London Inquisitions, i. 117). The Chamber Accounts for 1538–41 show an allowance to him of £70 ‘for six singing children’ (Stopes, 12). Several references to ‘Philippe and his fellows yong mynstrels’ and to ‘the children that be in the keeping of Philip and Edmund Harmon’ appear in Green Cloth documents from 30 June 1538 to 1544 (H. O. 166, 172, 191, 208; Genealogist, xxx. 23). Edmund Harmon was one of the royal Barbers. Finally, livery lists of 1547 show nine singing men and children under ‘M^r. Phelips’ (Lafontaine, 7). An earlier company of ‘the King’s young minstrels’ than this of 1538–50 seems to have been lodged at court c. 1526 (Brewer, iv. 1. 865), and there were ‘troyes autres nos ioesnes ministralx’ as far back as 1369 (Life Records of Chaucer, iv. 174). Elizabethan fee lists continue to make provision for ‘six children for singing’, but there is no indication that the posts were filled up.

[88] Wallace, ii. 63, from docquet in B. M. Royal MS. 18, C. xxiv, f. 232. By an obvious error, the name is written by the clerk as ‘Gowre’.

[89] Wallace, i. 77.

[90] Cf. p. 12.

[91] It is possible that the Treasurer of the Chamber did not pay all the rewards for plays during the earlier years of the reign; but the suggestion of Wallace, i. 108, that, if we had the Books of Queen’s Payments, more information might be available, seems to show a failure to realize the identity of the Tudor Books of King’s Payments with the T. of C. Accounts. There might, however, be rewards in a book subsidiary to the Privy Purse Accounts. I do not think that much can be made of the recital of ‘playes’ as well as ‘maskes’ in the preamble of the Revels Accounts for 1558–9, during which the T. of C. paid no rewards, since this may be merely ‘common form’.

[92] Feuillerat, Eliz. 34; cf. Appendix A. Naturally no ‘reward’ would be paid in such circumstances. Fleay, 16, 32, 60, conjectures that the play was Misogonus.

[93] Strype, Survey of London (App. i. 92), gives the date from Bower’s tombstone at Greenwich, and as his death is recited in Edwardes’ patent (Stopes, Hunnis, 146) and his will of 18 June 1561 was proved on 25 Aug. 1561 (Wallace, i. 106), it is clear that the entry of Rimbault, 1, ‘1563. Rich. Bower died, M^r of the children, A^o 5^{to}’, must be an error.

[94] Wallace, Blackfriars, 65, from Privy Seal in P. R. O. The patent dated 10 Jan. 1562 is on Patent Rolls, 4 Eliz. p. 6, m. 14 dorso.

[95] This is recorded in a Revels document, and seems a clear case of a play given by the Chapel and not paid for by the T. of C.

[96] Cf. ch. vii, p. 223.

[97] Rimbault, 2. On Hunnis, cf. ch. xxiii.

[98] Stopes, 295, translates the patent of appointment from Auditors Patent Books, ix, f. 144^v; the Privy Seal is in Privy Seals, Series iii, 1175. Stopes also prints the patent and Wallace, ii. 66, the Signet Bill (misdescribing it as a Privy Seal) for the commission; it is enrolled on Patent Rolls, 9 Eliz. p. 10, m. 16 dorso. It is varied from the model of 1562 by the inclusion of power to the Master to take up lodging for the children in transit, and to fix ‘reasonable prises’ for carriage and necessaries at his discretion.

[99] Hazlitt-Warton, iv. 217, citing f. xii of the pamphlet. I know of no copy. One is catalogued among Bishop Tanner’s books in the Bodleian, but Stopes, 226, ‘went to Oxford on purpose to see it, but found that it had utterly vanished’. Macray, Annals of the Bodleian, 211, thinks that it may have been destroyed when Tanner’s books fell into a river during their transit from Norwich to Oxford in Dec. 1731. The pamphlet is also cited for an example of the use of the term ‘spur money’ (Bumpus, 29, with date ‘1598’). F. T. Hibgame (10 N. Q. i. 458) describes a collection of pamphlets seen by him in New York under the general title of The Sad Decay of Discipline in our Schools (1830), which included Some Account of the Stripping and Whipping of the Children of the Chapel, containing a ‘realistic account of the treatment of the boys at one of the royal chapels’, of which he thought the author might be George Colman.

[100] Cf. ch. vii.

[101] Feuillerat, Eliz. 244, ‘Holly, Ivye, firr poles & Mosse for the Rock ... Hornes iij, Collers iij, Leashes iij & dogghookes iij with Bawdrickes for the hornes in Hvnnyes playe’.

[102] Variorum, iii. 439.

[103] Cf. ch. xxiii (Gascoigne).

[104] W. Creizenach (Sh.-Jahrbuch, liv. 73) points out that the source must have been Livy, xxvi. 50.

[105] Cf. infra (Windsor).

[106] Rimbault, 2.

[107] Cf. ch. xvii (Blackfriars). The bare fact of this early use of the Blackfriars has, of course, long been known from the reference to comedies at the Blackfriars in Gosson, P. C. 188 (App. C, No. xxx), and the prologues to Lyly’s Campaspe and Sapho and Phao. Fleay, 36, 39, 40, guessed that the early Blackfriars performances were at an inn, and by the Paul’s boys, and that the euphuistic prose plays at the Bel Savage mentioned by Gosson, S. A. 39 (App. C, No. xxii), in 1579 were early Chapel versions of Lyly’s above-named plays. But there is no evidence that either of the boy companies ever used an inn.

[108] Cf. p. 38.

[109] Cf. ch. vii, p. 223.

[110] Rimbault, 3. The Blackfriars correspondence shows that the date 1581 given in Rimbault, 56, is wrong. A warrant of 1582 for a lease in reversion to his widow Anne is in Hatfield MSS. ii. 539.

[111] App. C, No. xlv.

[112] Cf. ch. xvii (Blackfriars).

[113] Wallace, i. 156; Stopes, Hunnis, 252; from S. P. D. Eliz. clxiii. 88.

[114] Cf. p. 50, which suggests that the boys occasionally ate in hall at festival times.

[115] The Chamber Accounts show no renewal of the payments.

[116] Cf. ch. xxiii (Hunnis).

[117] Cf. ch. xiii (Oxford’s), ch. xxiii (Lyly).

[118] Feuillerat, Eliz. 470. Sapho and Phao might, however, have been the unnamed Chapel play of Shrove Tuesday (27 Feb.) 1582.

[119] Perhaps Lyly was still associated with him. F. S. Boas (M. L. R. vi. 92) records payments in connexion with a visit by Leicester to Christ Church, Oxford, to Mr. Lyly and his man for the loan of apparel, as well as one of £5 to one Tipslowe ‘for the Revels’ (January 1585).

[120] Cf. supra (Paul’s).

[121] I have no means of dating ‘The order of the show to be done at the Turret, entring into the parke at Grenewich, the musick being within the turrett’, which is preserved in Egerton MS. 2877, f. 182, as ‘acted before Q. Elizabeth’. A speech of forty lines beginning ‘He Jove himselfe, that guides the golden spheare’, was delivered by ‘one of the biggest children of her Ma^{tes} Chappell’ as Goodwill, and was followed by a song beginning ‘Ye Helicon muses’.

[122] Rimbault, 4. A note of Anthony Wood’s (cf. D. N. B.) suggests that Bull joined the Chapel about 1572.

[123] Ashmole, Antiquities of Berks (ed. 1723), iii. 172, from tombstone at St. George’s, Windsor. The inscription gives him 49 years as Master at Windsor, in error for 39. A second stone described as also his by Ashmole is clearly his wife’s.

[124] Wallace, ii. 59, prints both from the Privy Seals of 2 and 3 July in the R. O. The appointment is enrolled in Patent Rolls, 39 Eliz. p. 12, and the commission in Patent Rolls, 39 Eliz. p. 9, m. 7 dorso. The appointment is for life, the commission not so specified, and therefore during pleasure only.

[125] The operative words of the appointment are ‘pro nobis heredibus et successoribus nostris damus et concedimus dilecto seruienti nostro Nathanieli Giles officium Magistri puerorum Capellae nostrae Regiae ... habendum ... durante vita sua naturali Damus etiam ... praefato Nathanieli Giles vada siue feoda quadraginta librarum sterling percipienda annuatim ... pro eruditione duodecem puerorum eiusdem Capellae nostrae ac pro eorum conveniente exhibitione vestiturae et lectuarii ... vnacum omnibus et omnimodis aliis vadis feodis proficubus iurisdiccionibus aucthoritate priuilegiis commoditatibus regardis et aduantagiis quibuscunque eodem officio quoquo modo debitis ... ac ... praedicto Nathanieli Giles locum siue officium illud vnius generosorum nostrorum dictae Capellae nostrae Regiae ... vnacum feodo seu annuali redditu triginta librarum ...’

[126] E. v. K. 211; K. v. P. 224, 230, 233 (misdated 44 Eliz. for 42 Eliz.), 239. These are only short recitals in the lawsuits. Apparently the fragmentary descriptions of the theatre in Wallace, ii. 39, 40, 41, 43, 49, are from a fuller Latin text of the terms of the lease, possibly recited in a common-law suit, which he has not printed in full.

[127] K. v. P. 230, 234.

[128] Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 317.

[129] Fleay, 124, 153; Wallace, ii. 56; cf. M. L. R. iv. 156. An initial date for the enterprise in 1600 fits in exactly with the seven years during which there had been plays at the house where K. B. P. was produced and the ten years’ training of Keysar’s company up to 1610 (cf. p. 57).

[130] Cf. ch. xi.

[131] Fleay, 127. Burn, 152, notes from Bodl. Tanner MS. 300 that among the misdemeanours punished in the Star Chamber was ‘Taking up a gentleman’s son to be a stage player’.

[132] Wallace, ii. 84, gives the endorsed date omitted by Greenstreet and Fleay, as ‘Marti decimo quinto Decembris Anno xliiij Elizabeth Regine’; the date set down for trial is indicated as ‘p Octab Hillar’. This agrees with the time indication of the offence in the complaint itself as ‘about one yere last past, and since your maiesties last free and generall pardon’. The pardon referred to must be that of 1597–8 (39 Eliz. c. 28; cf. R. O. Statutes, iv. 952). There was another passed by the Parliament of 1601 (43 Eliz. c. 19; cf. Statutes, iv. 1010) for all offences prior to 7 Aug. 1601, but presumably this was not yet law when the complaint was drawn. The Parliament sat to 19 December. Clifton, however, was only just in time.

[133] K. v. P. 248. The date is recited as ‘in or about the three and ffortieth yeare’ of Elizabeth, i.e. 1600–1, which is not exact. The reference can hardly be to any other than the Clifton affair. No Chancery documents in the case, other than the complaint, are known. It may be presumed that censure fell on Giles and Robinson, as well as Evans, but they were not concerned in K. v. P. Evans, of course, was technically acting as deputy to Giles under his commission, and Wallace, ii. 71, is not justified in citing the case as evidence that ‘These powers to Giles were supplemented by official concessions to Henry Evans that enabled him to rent the Blackfriars theatre and train the Queen’s Children of the Chapel there, with remunerative privileges’.

[134] K. v. P. 224, 230, 236, 242, 244, 248, 250.

[135] E. v. K. 211, 216; K. v. P. 237, 240, 245. These are recitals. Wallace, ii. 91, says that he has found two copies of the original bond, but the text he prints adds nothing to K. v. P. 240. Clearly he is wrong in describing it as ‘containing the Articles of Agreement’. That was a much more detailed document, which Evans unfortunately thought so ‘long and tedious’ that he did not insert it at large in his Answer in K. v. P. It was doubtless analogous to the King’s Revels Articles of 1608 (cf. infra). It provided for the rights of the partners to the use of rooms (E. v. K. 211) and presumably for the division of profits (K. v. P. 237).

[136] K. v. P. 244. Wallace, ii. 102, adds the actual terms of the bond. He takes Evans’s explanation to mean that hitherto Evans had maintained the boys and the plays out of official funds supplied through Kirkham as Yeoman of the Revels, but that now Evans’s name was to be kept out of the business, and disbursements made by his partners, who were to pay him 8_s._ a week as a kind of steward. I cannot suppose that Kirkham had been the channel of any official subvention, and, on the whole, think it probable that the second ‘compl^t’ in the extract from the pleading is an error for ‘def^t’. This leaves it not wholly clear why Evans should allege his relief from great weekly disbursements as a reason for receiving 8_s._ a week; but if we had the Articles of Agreement, the point would probably be clear. Possibly Evans had in the past made the equivalent of a weekly sum of 8_s._ out of board-wages passed on to him by Giles.

[137] Wallace, ii. 88.

[138] E. v. K. 213, 217, 220.

[139] G. von Bülow and W. Powell in R. H. S. Trans. vi. 26; Wallace, ii. 105; with translations.

[140] Wallace, ii. 126, summarizes his theory; cf. my review in M. L. R. v. 224.

[141] Wallace, ii. 99.

[142] E. v. K. 217; K. v. P. 224, 227, 229, 231, 236, 248.

[143] Wallace, ii. 73.

[144] Wallace, ii. 75, shows that the Blackfriars repertory would require twenty or twenty-five actors.

[145] Gawdy, 117.

[146] Wallace, ii. 95. Dudley Carleton wrote to John Chamberlain on 29 Dec. 1601 (S. P. D. Eliz. cclxxxii. 48), ‘The Q: dined this day priuatly at my L^d Chamberlains; I came euen now from the blackfriers where I saw her at the play with all her candidae auditrices’; cf. M. L. R. ii. 12.

[147] K. v. P. 235.

[148] Wallace, ii. 89, says that Evans paid £11 0_s._ 2_d._ for repairs on 8 Dec. 1603.

[149] M. S. C. i. 267, from Patent Roll, 1 Jac. I, pt. 8. Collier, i. 340, and Hazlitt, E. D. S. 40, print the signet bill, the former dating it 30 Jan. and the latter 31 Jan., and misdescribe it as a privy seal. Collier, N. F. 48, printed a forged letter from Daniel to Sir T. Egerton (cf. Ingleby, 244, 247) intended to suggest that Drayton, and perhaps also Shakespeare, had coveted his post.

[150] Wallace, ii. 80, mentions a case of the employment of a boy at the Blackfriars during James’s reign under a contract with his mother.

[151] M. S. C. i. 359. On 7 Oct. 1605 the Wardrobe provided holland for shirts for the 12 children and ‘for James Cutler, a Chappell boy gone off’ (Lafontaine, 46, from L. C. 804).

[152] Rimbault, 60; Stowe, Annales (ed. Howes), 1037. An order of 17 July 1604 (H. O. 301) continued the allowance of an increase of meat at festival times which the children had presumably enjoyed under Elizabeth.

[153] Middleton, Father Hubbard’s Tales (Works, viii. 64, 77). A reference in the same book to an ant as ‘this small actor in less than decimo sexto’ recalls the jest in the Induction to the Malcontent at the boys who played Jeronimo ‘in decimo sexto’.

[154] Cf. ch. xi.

[155] K. v. B. 340.

[156] Cf. ch. xxiii, s.v. plays named.

[157] Kirkham and Kendall were still associated in Aug. 1605, when apparel and properties were obtained from them for the plays at James’s visit to Oxford (M. S. C. i. 247). There was a performance at the Blackfriars as late as 16 June 1605 (Wallace, ii. 125), a date connected with a dispute in settlement of which Kirkham’s bond of £50 to Evans was exchanged for a new one to Hawkins (K. v. P. 244).

[158] Cf. M. L. R. iv. 159. The t.p. of Sophonisba only specifies performance ‘at the Blackfriars’; those of The Fleir and The Isle of Gulls ‘by the Children of the Revels at the Blackfriars’. Probably the ‘Children of the Revels’ of the t.p. of Day’s Law Tricks (1608) is also the Blackfriars company. No theatre is named, but the play is too early for the King’s Revels, who, moreover, do not seem to be described on other t.ps. as ‘Children of the Revels’ pure and simple. I take it that these t.p. descriptions follow the designations of the companies in use when the plays were last on the stage before publication, rather than those in use at the times of first production.

[159] Cf. ch. x.

[160] Cf. ch. xxiii, s.v. Day.

[161] Keysar was certainly associated with Kendall by the Christmas of 1606–7, when they supplied apparel and properties for the Westminster plays; cf. Murray, ii. 169.

[162] K. v. P. 249.

[163] M. S. C. i. 362, from P. R. O., Patent Roll, 4 James I, p. 18, dorso. Collier, i. 446, long ago noted the existence of a similar clause in a Caroline commission to Giles of 1626. It was probably the choristers who assisted in a quasi-dramatic performance on 16 July 1607, when James dined with the Merchant Taylors, and Giles received the freedom of the company in reward; cf. ch. iv.

[164] Cf. App. I.

[165] E. v. K. 221; K. v. P. 246. ‘The Children of the Revells’ who appeared at Leicester on 21 Aug. 1608 (Kelly, 248) might have been these boys, but might also have been the King’s Revels, if the King’s Revels were still in existence under that name, which is very doubtful.

[166] Cf. ch. xxiii, s.v. Chapman.

[167] S. P. D. Jac. I, xxxi. 73. The mine was no doubt the silver mine discovered at Hilderston near Linlithgow in 1607, and worked as a royal enterprise with little success; cf. R. W. Cochran-Patrick, Early Records relating to Mining in Scotland (1878), xxxvii. 116.

[168] Cf. ch. xxiii.

[169] K. v. B. 342.

[170] E. v. K. 222; K. v. P. 225, 231, 235, 246.

[171] Cf. ch. xvii (Blackfriars).

[172] K. v. P. 225, 249.

[173] E. v. K. 221; K. v. P. 245. In the earlier suit Evans says that the royal prohibition was ‘vpon some misdemeanors committed in or about the plaies there, and specially vpon the defendants [Kirkham’s] acts and doings thereabout’. Unless Kirkham was more directly concerned in the management during 1608 than appears probable, Evans must be reflecting upon the whole series of misdemeanours since 1604.

[174] On 9 May John Browne, ‘one of the playe boyes’, was buried at St. Anne’s.

[175] K. v. B. 347, gives the date of surrender in 1610 as ‘about the tenth of August last past’. Probably a year’s sub-tenancy under the King’s men explains the discrepancy with the ‘about August in the sixt year of his Majesties raigne’ of K. v. P. 235, and the confirmatory date of the King’s men’s leases.

[176] Cf. ch. supra (Paul’s). K. v. B. 355 tells us that Rosseter was in partnership with Keysar.

[177] M. S. C. i. 271, from P. R., 7 Jac. I, p. 13. Ingleby, 254, gave the material part in discussing a forged draft by Collier (N. F. 41), in which the names of the patentees are given as ‘Robert Daiborne, William Shakespeare, Nathaniel Field and Edward Kirkham’. A genuine note of the patent is in Sir Thomas Egerton’s note-book (N. F. 40). Ingleby adds that the signet office records (cf. Phillimore, 103) show that the warrant was obtained in Dec. 1609 by the influence of Monson. He was Anne’s household Chancellor and to him Rosseter and Campion dedicated their Book of Airs (1601) and Campion his Third Book of Airs (1617).

[178] K. v. B. 343.

[179] K. v. B. 343, 350.

[180] Evans, Mrs. Evans, Field, Underwood, Ostler, Baxstead, Rosseter, Marston, and Mrs. Hawkins were to be examined for the King’s men.

[181] E. v. K. 213. I presume that some of these are amongst the ‘twelve additional suits’ which Wallace, ii. 36, claims to have found.

[182] E. v. K. 218. In K. v. P. 225, he put the total annual profits during 1608–12 at £160.

[183] Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 317; cf. Hist. Hist. 416 (App. I), ‘Some of the chapel boys, when they grew men, became actors at the Blackfriars; such were Nathan Field and John Underwood’.

[184] The Chamber Accounts record no payment to the company (cf. App. B, introd.).

[185] Cf. ch. xvi.

[186] Murray, i. 361.

[187] E. Ashmole, Institution of the Garter (1672), 127; R. R. Tighe and J. E. Davis, Annals of Windsor, i. 426, 477; Report of Cathedrals Commission (1854), App. 467; V. H. Berks, ii. 106; H. M. C. Various MSS. vii. 10.

[188] Tighe-Davis, ii. 45, from Stowe’s account ‘of the Castell of Wyndsore’ (Harl. MS. 367, f. 13).

[189] Nichols, i. 81, and Collier, i. 170, print a copy in Ashm. MS. 1113, f. 252, from the Elizabethan commission preserved at Windsor, as follows:

‘Elizabeth R.

Whereas our castle of Windsor hath of old been well furnished with singing men and children, We, willing it should not be of less reputation in our days, but rather augmented and increased, declare, that no singing men or boys be taken out of the said chapel by virtue of any commission, not even for our household chapel: and we give power to the bearer of this to take any singing men and boys from any chapel, our own household and St. Paul’s only excepted. Given at Westminster, this 8^{th} of March in the second year of our reign.’

A further copy from Ashm. MS. 1113 is in Addl. MS. 4847, f. 117. Copies or notes of the three earlier commissions are in this MS. and in Ashm. MS. 1124. In Ashm. MS. 1132, f. 169, is a letter of 18 April 1599 from the Chapter to Sir R. Cecil defending their conduct in taking a singing man from Westminster.

[190] Gee, 230, in a list of deprived clergy from N. Sanders, De Visibili Monarchia (1571), 688, ‘Magistri Musices ... Prestonus in oppido Vindelisoriensi’. Can this Preston be the playwright (cf. ch. xxiii)?

[191] Rimbault, 1; Stopes, Shakespeare’s Environment, 243.

[192] Ashm. MS. 1132, f. 165^a.

[193] Rimbault, 2.

[194] M. L. R. (1906), ii. 6.

[195] Cf. ch. xvii (Blackfriars).

[196] Cf. App. B.

[197] Rimbault, 3; H. M. C., Hatfield MSS. ii. 539.

[198] Rimbault, 182; Musical Antiquary, i. 30; 10 N. Q. v. 341. A Christ Church, Oxford, MS., dated 1581, assigns to Farrant (cf. ch. xxiii) a possibly dramatic lament of Panthea for the death of Abradates, beginning ‘Ah, ah, alas ye salt sea Gods’. This is assigned to Robert Parsons by Addl. MSS. 17786–91, which assign to Farrant a song which may come from a play in which Altages is a character. The writer in the Musical Antiquary thinks that a lament for Guichardo (not from either of the known Gismund texts) in the Ch. Ch. MS. is much in Farrant’s style.

[199] Ashmole, Antiquities of Berks (ed. 1723), iii. 172; cf. p. 41.

[200] Ashm. MS. 1125, f. 41^v.

[201] Cf. ch. xiii (Chamberlain’s).

[202] Presumably, however, the ‘Gerry’ buried out of the Whitefriars play-house (q.v.) on 29 Sept. 1607 was of the company.

[203] Phillimore, 140; cf. App. A.

[204] S. P. D. Jac. I, lxxxi. 12.

[205] M. S. C. i. 279, from P. R. 13 Jac. I, pt. 20.

[206] Variorum, iii. 426; Collier, i. 394; Hazlitt, E. D. S. 49; from S. P. D. Jac. I, xcvii. 140.

[207] Collier, i. 396, not, as he says, from the P. C. Register, but from S. P. D. Jac. I, xcvii. 140.

[208] Clode, ii. 269; Nicholl, Ironmongers, 84; cf. ch. iv.

[209] Warton, iii. 313; Stowe, Survey, ed. Strype, v. 231.

[210] E. J. L. Scott in Athenaeum (1903), i. 220, from S. P. D. Eliz. xxxvi. 22; Murray, ii. 168.

[211] Observer. Other payments in this or another year were for ‘a haddocke occupied in the plaie’, ‘a thondre barrell’, ‘drawing the tytle of the comedee’.

[212] E. J. L. Scott in Athenaeum (1896), i. 95; (1903) ii. 220; Murray, ii. 168; Observer.

[213] Heywood-Wright, 632; Hazlitt-Warton, iii. 308.

[214] Collins, 215 (1566), ‘M^r Scholemaster towards his charges about the playes laste Christmas, 20/-’; Maxwell-Lyte,^4 154 (1566–7) ‘To M^r Scholemaster for his charge setting furthe ij playes 19^o Martii, iii^l, xiij^s, viij^d’, (1568–9) ‘For ij dossen of links at iij^d the linke for the childrens showes at Christmass, vj^s’, (1572–3) ‘For vj poundes of candles at the playes in the Halle, ix^d’.

[215] J. W. Hales in Englische Studien, xviii. 408 (cf. Mediaeval Stage, ii. 452), made the date of 1553–4 seem plausible, but his conjecture that the play was written for the Westminster boys is disposed of by A. F. Leach, who gives Udall’s appointment to Westminster from the Chapter Act Book as 16 Dec. 1555 (Encycl. Brit. s.v. Udall). It might be a Court play of 1553–4, but the parody of the Requiem would have been an indiscretion on Udall’s part at that date.

[216] G. C. Moore Smith (M. L. R. viii. 368) has an ingenious identification of him with the Wrenock of Spenser’s Shepheards Kalendar, xii. 41.

[217] Clode, Hist. of Merchant Taylors Company, i. 235, from Master’s Accounts. Before they opened their own school the Company had plays by the Westminster boys (q.v.).

[218] Clode, i. 234.

[219] The subject may have been Perseus and Andromeda, as the Revels prepared a picture of Andromeda this year. If so, it was probably the same play as that of 23 Feb. 1574.

[220] Whitelocke, Liber Famelicus (Camden Soc.), 12.

[221] Clode, i. 264, 280, 390.

[222] Mediaeval Stage, ii. 186, 256.

[223] The documents in W. Campbell, Materials for a History of the Reign of Henry VII, are full for the period 1485–90. There is nothing of King’s players, but certain ‘stuffures’ paid for by a warrant of 25 Nov. 1485 (Campbell, i. 178) included goods delivered to John English, apparently a royal tailor or valet, ‘servant unto my said sovereign’.

[224] Collier, i. 44, from a book of Exchequer payments, beginning Michaelmas 1493, in the Chapter-house (probably Misc. Books of the Treasury of the Receipt of the Exchequer, 131), ‘xvij Die Maij [1494] John Englissh, Edwardo Maye, Rico Gibbeson, & John Hammond, Lusoribus Regis, alias, in lingua Anglicana, les pleyars of the kyngs enterluds, de feodis suis V mrc. ꝓ Ann: le home, per lre Regis de privato Sigillo dormant de termino Michaelis alt: pte rec: denar: separatim ꝓ manus proprias, x mrc.’. The payment was continued half-yearly. Collier adds that Mr. Ouvry owned an original receipt signed by May and English for the salaries of the same four men. It is now Egerton MS. 2623 (3), f. 1, and appears to be a slip cut from some Exchequer record. F. Devon, Issues of the Exchequer, 516, gives similar payments for Michaelmas 1494 and Michaelmas 1503; it is in the latter that the names of William Rutter and John Scott appear. An Exchequer declaration of 1505–6 in Lansd. MS. 156, f. 135, has ‘To Richard Gibson, and other the kings plaiers, for their annuity for one yere, £13 6_s._ 8_d._’. Henry, History of Britain, xii. 456, gives from an Exchequer annuity list of 1507–8, ‘Ricardo Gybson et aliis lusoribus dom. reg. £13 6_s._ 8_d._’.

[225] Collier, i. 49, quotes: (a) Account of Robert Fowler (1501–2), ‘Oct. 26 [1501], Itm to John Englishe for his pagent, £6 13_s._ 4_d._ ... Jan. 1 [1502] Itm, to the Kinges players, over 40^s paid by Thomas Trollop, 20^s’; (b) Household Book of Henry VII (1492–1505, more correctly from Addl. MS. 7099 in Bentley, Excerpta Historica, 85), ‘Jan. 6 [1494] To the Kings Pleyers for a rewarde, £2 13_s._ 4_d._ ... Jan. 7 [1502] To John Englishe the Pleyer, 10_s._’; (c) The Kings Boke of Payments (1506–9, apparently Misc. Books of the Treasury of the Receipt of the Exchequer, 214), ‘Jan. 7 [1509] To the kings players in rewarde, £2’. Both (b) and (c) are Chamber Accounts.

[226] Leland, Collectanea (ed. Hearne), iv. 265.

[227] Lansd. MS. 171, cited by Collier, i. 72, is in fact an Elizabethan document, but a list of fees and annuities (1516) in Brewer, ii. 874 has, amongst those granted by Henry VII, ‘John Englisshe and other players £13 6_s._ 8_d._’, and amongst those recently granted, ‘John Englisshe and other players, in addition to the old annuity, £13 6_s._ 8_d._’.

[228] Collier, i. 97, 115, gives an Exchequer payment of 1525–6, ‘Rico Hole et Georgio Mayler, et aliis lusoribus Dom. Regis, de foedis suis inter se ad x marcos per ann. sibi debit: pro festo Michaelis, anno xvij Regis nunc Henrici VIII recept. denar. per manus proprias, per litt. curr. 66_s._ 8_d._’, and was informed by Mr. Devon of a similar payment of £3 6_s._ 8_d._ in 1530, in which John Roll, Richard Hole, and Thomas Sudbury are named. A household list of c. 1526 (Brewer, iv. 869) gives as on yearly wages ‘Ric. Hole and other players, £6 13_s._ 4_d._’. One later than March 1544 (Collier, i. 133) gives 8 players at £3 6_s._ 8_d._ each.

[229] Chamber Accounts (Brewer, v. 303; xiii. 2. 524; xiv. 2. 303; xvi. 178, 698; xvii. 474; xx. 2. 515; Nicolas, xxviii; Collier, i. 79, 96, 113, 116, 117; Trevelyan Papers, i. 149, 157, 170, 177, 195, 203) give John English (1521–31) at half-yearly ‘fee’ or ‘wages’ of £3 6_s._ 8_d._, John Slye or Slee (1539–40) at £1 13_s._ 4_d._ half-yearly, and Richard Parrowe or Parlowe (1540–5, appointed Christmas 1538), George Birch (1538–45), Robert Hinstock (1538–45), and George Maylour (1538–40), at 16_s._ 8_d._ or 11_s._ 1_d._ quarterly.

[230] Chamber Accounts (Brewer, ii. 1441; iii. 1533, &c.; Nicolas, xxviii; Collier, i. 76, 116). The reward for 1509–10 was £2 13_s._ 4_d._; during 1510–13, £3 6_s._ 8_d._; during 1513–21, £3 6_s._ 8_d._ to the ‘players’ and ‘£4’ to the ‘olde players’; and during 1529–41, £6 13_s._ 4_d._

[231] Collier, i. 69, from a ‘paper, folded up in the roll [of the Revels Account for 1513–14] and in a different handwriting’, ‘Inglyshe, and the oothers of the Kynges pleyers, after pleyed an Interluyt, whiche was wryten by Mayster Midwell, but yt was so long yt was not lykyd: yt was of the fyndyng of Troth, who was caryed away by ygnoraunce and ypocresy. The foolys part was the best, but the kyng departyd before the end to hys chambre.’ According to Collier, the paper is signed by William Cornish and also contains a description of a Chapel interlude. But Brewer, who calendars the Revels Account fully, does not notice it, and according to A. W. Reed in T. L. S. (3 April 1919) it cannot be traced at the R. O.

[232] Cf. ch. iii; Tudor Revels, 6.

[233] Brewer, ii. 1493. In 1546–7 they had 5_s._ for the loan of garments to the Revels (Kempe, 71).

[234] Grey Friars Chronicle (C. S.), 34, ‘Also this same yere John Scotte, that was one of the kynges playeres, was put in Newgate for rebukynge of the shreffes, and was there a sennet, and at the last was ledde betwene two of the offecers from Newgate thorrow London and soe to Newgat agayne, and then was delyveryd home to hys howse; but he toke such a thowte that he dyde, for he went in hys shurte’.

[235] John Slye and John Yonge, mercer, had been players to Queen Jane before her death in 1537, and were concerned about 1538 in a Chancery suit about a horse hired ‘to beare there playing garmentes’ (Stopes, Shakespeare’s Environment, 235). Perhaps this explains the annuity of £1 10_s._ 5_d._ (1_d._ a day) which Young drew from the Chamber during 1540–2. But he obtained a patent as King’s player, with an annual fee of £3 6_s._ 8_d._, on the death of Roo in 1539 (Brewer, xiv. 1. 423), and an ‘annuity’ of £3 6_s._ 8_d._ on the death of Sudbury in 1546 (Brewer, xxi. 2. 156). Collier, i. 134, cites a description of him in a fee list amongst the Fairfax MSS. as ‘Maker of Interludes, Comedies, and Playes’.

[236] Cf. Mediaeval Stage, ii. 183.

[237] G. H. Overend in N. S. S. Trans. (1877–9), 425.

[238] Collier, i. 93; Madden, Privy Purse Expenses of the Princess Mary, 104, 140; Rutland MSS. iv. 270; Brewer, iv. 340.

[239] Cf. Murray, passim, and Mediaeval Stage, App. E.

[240] Royal MS. 7, C. xvi, f. 97 (cited Collier, i. 137). The names are in a list of servants ‘nuely in ordinary of the Chamber’, and some illegible names of players are in an accompanying list of ‘Offycers in ordynary of the Chamber of the late Kynges Majestie now discharged’.

[241] Lord Chamberlain’s Records, Misc. v. 127, f. 23 (also with the error ‘E. and P.’ in Sullivan, 249), ‘three broade yerdes of redd wollen clothe for a liuery coate of suche prices as the yeomen officers of oure howseholde are accustomed to haue and iij^s and iiij^d vnto euery of them for the Enbrauderinge of theire saide coates withe the lettres E and R on the backe and on the breste’.

[242] Chamber Accounts in Trevelyan Papers, i. 195–205; ii. 17–31, and Collier, i. 136, 138, 148.

[243] S. P. D. Edw. VI, xiv.

[244] Stowe MS. 571, f. 27^v; Harl. MS. 240, f. 13.

[245] Feuillerat, Edw. and Mary, 89, 90, 97, 98, 119; cf. Mediaeval Stage, i. 406, where I think I was in error in taking John Smith as a name assumed by Will Somers.

[246] Hist. MSS. iii. 230, from book of annuities at Penshurst.

[247] Feuillerat, Edw. and Mary, 31, 39, 57, 86.

[248] Collier, i. 149. The reference to Ferrers’ ‘divine’ and ‘astronomer’ (cf. Mediaeval Stage, i. 407) fixes the date.

[249] Mediaeval Stage, ii. 201, from Lansd. MS. 824, f. 24.

[250] Fee-list in collection of Soc. of Antiquaries, cited by Collier, i. 161.

[251] Chamber Accounts in Collier, i. 161; Declared Accounts (Pipe Office), 541, m. 2^v.

[252] Reading was a London player in 1550 (App. D, No. v). The Chamber Accounts for the first few years of Elizabeth show an annuity to a George Birch under a warrant of 7 Jan. 1560.

[253] Eight players of interludes at £3 6_s._ 8_d._ each are in the fee-lists (cf. vol. i, p. 29), Stowe MS. 571, f. 148 (c. 1575–80), Sloane MS. 3194, f. 38 (1585), Stowe MS. 571, f. 168 (c. 1587–90), Lansd. MS. 171, f. 250 (c. 1587–91), S. P. D. Eliz. ccxxi, f. 16 (c. 1588–93), H. O. 256 (c. 1598), and with the error of £3 6_s._ in Hargreave MS. 215, f. 21^v (c. 1592–5), Lord Chamberlain’s Records, v. 33, f. 19^v (1593), Stowe MS. 572, f. 35^v (c. 1592–6), Harl. MS. 2078, f. 18^v (c. 1592–6). The inaccurate Cott. MS. Titus, B. iii, f. 176 (c. 1585–93) gives two ‘Plaiers on Interludes’ at £3 6_s._ The normal entry recurs in the Jacobean Lansd. MS. 272, f. 27 (1614) and Stowe MS. 575, f. 24 (1616), but a group of the early part of the reign (Addl. MS. 35848, f. 19; Addl. MS. 38008, f. 58^v; Soc. Antiq. MSS. 74, 75) have ‘Plaiers on the In lute’ or ‘on in Lutes’, at £3 6_s._ 8_d._ or £3 6_s._, which looks like an attempt to rationalize the Cotton MS. entry. And Stowe MS. 574, f. 16^v, has ‘Players on Lute’ at £3 6_s._ 8_d._, which some one has corrected by inserting the normal entry. All this suggests that many copyists of fee-lists in the seventeenth century confused the post of interlude player with that of a lute player, and the former was therefore probably obsolete, and its fee no longer paid to the royal players of the day (cf. ch. x). I cannot agree with E. Law, Shakespeare a Groom, of the Chamber, 26, 64, that the interlude players survived under James as ‘mummers, who, perhaps, sang in a sort of recitative at masques and anti-masques’.

[254] Chamber Declared Accounts (Pipe Office), 541, passim, 542, m. 3; Collier, i. 236; Cunningham, xxvii. I do not know how long John Young continued to draw his Exchequer ‘annuity’, but presumably he had retired on it.

[255] Fleay, 43, says, ‘There was no specific company called the Queen’s players till 1583; it was a generic title applied to any company who prepared plays for the Queen’s amusement. In 1561 the players probably were the Earl of Leicester’s servants.’ I need hardly say that I do not accept this, which would not explain the disappearance of the ‘Queen’s’ from provincial records between 1573 and 1583. For another use of the same improvised theory by Mr. Fleay, cf. App. D, No. lxxv.

[256] Murray, i. 19, adds records from other towns, and A. Clark (10 N. Q. xi. 41) for Saffron Walden.

[257] App. D, No. xi.

[258] Nichols, Eliz. i. 280, ‘To my L. of Leyester’s men for a reward, 2_s._ 6_d._’. Fleay, 18, says that the amount is too small to favour the supposition that these were players. But Elizabeth was at Saffron Walden at the time, and a present was made to the Master of the Revels of a podd of oysters costing no more than 3_s._ 6_d._ Probably Saffron Walden was an economical place, or the payment was only for some speech.

[259] Murray, i. 41.

[260] Printed in M. S. C. i. 348, from MS. F. 10 (213) in the Marquis of Bath’s collection at Longleat; also in 3 N. Q. xi. 350. The letter is undated but followed Procl. 663, on which cf. ch. viii and App. D, No. xix.

[261] Mediaeval Stage, i. 406; Kempe, 47. The garments provided for Ferrers by the Revels included fools’ coats for ‘Children, John Smyth, Ayer apparent ... Seame 2, Parkins 3, Elderton 4’.

[262] App. D, No. xviii.

[263] Cf. ch. ix. The patent is printed from the Patent Roll in M. S. C. i. 262; also from a copy of the entry on the Patent Roll preserved amongst Rymer’s papers in Sloane MS. 4625 by Steevens, Shakespeare (1773), ii. 156, and therefrom in Variorum, iii. 47. This text omits the words ‘oure Citie of London and liberties of the same as also within’. Collier, i. 203, and Hazlitt, E. D. S. 25, printed the Signet Bill, erroneously describing it as the Privy Seal, from the State Paper Office. This has the omitted words, and Collier correctly explains the omission in Steevens’s text as due to an inaccurate copyist, pointing in proof to the words ‘in oure said Citye of London’. This did not, however, prevent Fleay, 45, from asserting that in the Patent ‘an alteration had been made from the Privy Seal’, on the ground that its terms ‘infringed on the powers of the City authorities’. Such an alteration not merely did not take place, but would have been a diplomatic impossibility, as the Patent Roll was made up, not from the Letters Patent, but from the Privy Seals on which these were based.

[264] Probably they occupied the Theatre, at any rate in summer, until 1583. A letter of Gabriel Harvey’s in the summer of 1579 mentions ‘Lycesters’, the ‘Theater’, and ‘Wylson’, but in no very definite connexion with each other (cf. p. 4). The Privy Council letter of 23 Dec. 1579, for their toleration at the Blackfriars, printed by Collier, New Facts, 9, is a forgery (cf. ch. xvii).

[265] I should think the ‘Myngs’ of Murray, ii. 214, and Collier, Northbrooke, viii, more likely to be palaeographically accurate than the ‘Myngo’ of J. Latimer in 9 N. Q. xi. 444 and his Sixteenth Century Bristol. But a song of ‘Monsieur Mingo’ exists in a setting by Orlando de Lassus (cf. E. H. R. xxxiii. 83), and is quoted in 2 Hen. IV, v. iii. 78, and Summer’s Last Will and Testament, 968.

[266] Cf. App. D, No. xl.

[267] Cf. ch. xv, s.v. Baylye.

[268] Murray, i. 41, gives additional provincial records for 1576–82.

[269] Stowe, Annales, 717, from a description by William Segar.

[270] The show itself was perhaps of Italian origin, for on 17 June 1572 the Earl of Lincoln was entertained at Paris by the Duke of Anjou (2 Ellis, iii. 12, from Cott. MS. Vesp. F. vi, f. 93) with ‘an Italian comedie, which eandid, vaulting with notable supersaltes and through hoopes, and last of all the Antiques, of carying of men one uppon an other which som men call labores Herculis’.

[271] J. Bruce from Harl. MS. 287, f. 1, in Who was Will, my Lord of Leicester’s jesting player? (Sh. Soc. Papers, i. 88). Bruce thinks that ‘Will’ might be Johnson, Kempe, or Sly, but not Shakespeare, whose ‘earliest works bear upon them the stamp of a mind far too contemplative and refined’ for Sidney to call him ‘knave’ and ‘jesting player’. I do not subscribe to the reasoning. W. J. Thoms, Three Notelets on Shakespeare, 120, upholds the Shakespeare theory, and attempts to support it by evidence of military knowledge in the plays.

[272] Wright, Eliz. ii. 268, from Cott. MS. Galba C. viii; cf. M. L. R. iv. 88.

[273] Fleay, 82; but cf. Lee, 36, and pp. 124, 272. The thing is complicated by the influence of Malone’s suggestion (Variorum, ii. 166) that Shakespeare might have left Stratford with Leicester’s men on a visit to the town. This assumes its most fantastic form in the suggestion of Lee^1, 33, that Shakespeare was already in London, but ‘Shakespeare’s friends may have called the attention of the strolling players to the homeless youth, rumours of whose search for employment about the London theatres had doubtless reached Stratford’.

[274] At Exeter they are called the Lord Steward’s, certainly not the Marquis of Winchester’s, as Murray, ii. 95, suggests, for he was never Steward of Elizabeth’s household.

[275] Norfolk Archaeology, xiii. 11.

[276] J. M. Cowper, in 1 R. Hist. Soc. Trans. i. 218, records a performance by ‘my Lord of Leicester’s men’ at Faversham in 1589–90; but I think this must be an error.

[277] J. D. Walker, The Black Books of Lincoln’s Inn, i. 374, gives the name as ‘Lord Roche’, but this is probably a mistake. Viscount Roche of Fermoy in Ireland is not likely to have had players in London.

[278] J. de Perott (Rev. Germ. Feb. 1914) suggests that Portio and Demorantes may be the Lamorat and Porcia of the French version (1548) of Amadis de Grecia (1542), viii. 56.

[279] Murray, i. 307, and A. Clark (10 N. Q. xii. 41) add records for 1573–83.

[280] Murray, i. 307, has additional provincial records for 1585–91.

[281] I do not agree with Fleay, Sh. 18, 184, that Sussex’s were satirized in A Midsummer-Night’s Dream; cf. infra, s.v. Hertford’s.

[282] Dasent, xxiv. 209.

[283] Cf. App. C, No. lvii.

[284] Dasent, viii. 71, dating the warrant on 29 Feb.

[285] Ancaster MSS. (Hist. MSS.) 466.

[286] Hist. MSS. ix. 1. 156. The payment is given as to the Earl of ‘Waffyts’ men.

[287] Nichols, Eliz. i. 531.

[288] Wright and Halliwell, Reliquiae Antiquae, ii. 122, from Harl. MS. 7392, f. 97; cf. M. L. R. ii. 5.

[289] Mediaeval Stage, ii. 222.

[290] Cf. ch. viii.

[291] Ellis, i. 3, 32; Cooper, ii. 379; from S. P. D. Eliz. cxxxix. 26. The Privy Council letter of 30 Oct. 1575 (M. S. C. i. 195) forbids ‘open shewes’ and ‘assemblies in open places of multitudes of people’ within five miles of Cambridge.

[292] Murray, i. 348. I add Maldon (1581).

[293] Murray, i. 348. I add Stratford (1583–4). Dr. Boas kindly informs me that the Oxford City Accounts for 1584–5 have a payment to Oxford’s ‘musytions’.

[294] Cf. ch. xii (Chapel).

[295] The payment was made to Richard Woderam, but he is more likely to have been an agent of the Corporation than a member of the company.

[296] Mediaeval Stage, ii. 186, 256. The 1469 entry has been since published by A. Clark in 10 N. Q. vii. 181, ‘Et solut. lusoribus domini comitis Essex ludentibus coram burgensibus infra burgum hoc anno, v_s_.’

[297] Variorum, ii. 150. The ‘lord Cartleyes players’ recorded by B. S. Penley, The Bath Stage, 12, in 1580–1, 1582–3, and 1583–4 were perhaps Lord Berkeley’s. Murray, ii. 27, adds other provincial notices.

[298] This did not prevent Chalmers from giving the date 1581 and being set right by Malone (Variorum, iii. 442). Collier, i. 247, gives 1583, but misdates Tilney’s commission of 1581, and takes it for the instrument constituting the company.

[299] Feuillerat, Eliz. 359.

[300] Nicolas, Hatton, 271.

[301] Stowe, Annales (1615), 697, (1631), 698.

[302] Greg, Henslowe, ii. 79, citing Addl. MS. 5750, f. 113.

[303] Cf. ch. x.

[304] Halliwell, Affray at Norwich in 1583 in which Queen Elizabeth’s Players were involved (1864), and in Illustrations of the Life of Shakespeare, 118.

[305] Murray, i. 20, and A. Clark in 10 N. Q. xii. 41 (Saffron Walden) give other provincial records throughout. An Ipswich one for 1581–2 must be misplaced.

[306] Cf. App. D, No. lxxv.

[307] Fleay, 83.

[308] Variorum, ii. 166.

[309] M. S. C. i. 354. from P. R. O. Lay Subsidies, Household, 69/97.

[310] Fleay, 34.

[311] The illustration of Mr. Fleay’s methods of constructing stage history is delightful. In The True Tragedie of Richard the Third, a Queen’s play, the murderers of the princes in the Tower are Will Slawter or Sluter, ‘yet the most part calles him blacke Will’ (Hazlitt, Sh. L. v. 95), and Jack Denten or Douton. On this Mr. Fleay (ii. 316) comments, ‘One of the actors in it, Sc. 11, is called Will Slaughter, “yet the most part calls him Black Will”, i.e. the Black Will of Arden of Faversham, q.v., which had no doubt been acted by the same man. Another actor is called Jack Donton (Dutton) or Denten, an accommodation of the Dighton of history to the actor’s real name.’ Obviously there is no need to suppose that the characters in The True Tragedie bore the names of their actors. John Dutton is not very likely to have taken a part of four speeches, and Will Slawter is evidently added to the John Dighton of Holinshed, to give Edward V the ‘irony’ of a pun upon ‘slaughter’. As for Arden of Faversham, it is not known to have been a Queen’s play at all, and its ‘Black Will’ is taken from Holinshed. Having gone so far, I do not know why Mr. Fleay stopped short of identifying Black Will’s colleague ‘Shakebag’ with the name of an actor. Of course, Mr. Fleay’s blundering conjectures must be distinguished from the deliberate fabrications of Collier, who published in his New Facts, 11, from a forged document amongst the Bridgewater MSS., a certificate to the Privy Council under the date ‘Nov. 1589’, from ‘her Ma^{ts} poore playeres James Burbidge Richard Burbidge John Laneham Thomas Greene Robert Wilson John Taylor Anth. Wadeson Thomas Pope George Peele Augustine Phillippes Nicholas Towley William Shakespeare William Kempe William Johnson Baptiste Goodale and Robert Armyn being all of them sharers in the blacke Fryers playehouse’. On this cf. ch. xvii, and Ingleby, 249.

[312] Tarlton, 12, 13, 27, 29, 30, 31, 33, 37, ‘while the queenes players lay in Worcester’, ‘when the queenes players were restrained in summer, they travelled downe to S. James his fair at Bristow’, ‘in the country where the queenes plaiers were accepted into a gentlemans house’, ‘at Salisbury, Tarlton and his fellowes were to play before the maior and his brethren’, ‘the queenes players travelling into the west country to play, and lodging in a little village some ten miles from Bristow’.

[313] Tarlton, 16, ‘one in mockage threw him in this theame, he playing then at the Curtaine’.

[314] Tarlton, 24, ‘Tarlton then, with his fellowes, playing at the Bel by ... the Crosse-keyes in Gracious streete’.

[315] Tarlton, 13, ‘at the Bull in Bishops-gate-street, where the queenes players oftentimes played’. It was here (Tarlton, 24) that Tarlton and Knell played The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth.

[316] Nashe, Pierce Penilesse (Works, i. 197; cf. i. 308).

[317] Arber, ii. 526, ‘A sorowfull newe sonnette intituled Tarltons Recantacon uppon this theame gyven him by a gentleman at the Bel savage without Ludgate (nowe or ells never) beinge the laste theame he songe’. The tract is not extant.

[318] App. C, No. lvii. He names Knell, Bentley, Mills, Wilson, and Laneham.

[319] Cf. ch. xv, s.v. Alleyn, and ch. xviii.

[320] E. J. L. Scott in Athenaeum for 21 Jan. 1882.

[321] Cf. ch. xviii.

[322] Murray, ii. 398 (Southampton), ‘the Queenes maiesties & the Earle of Sussex players, xxx^s’; 240 (Coventry), ‘the Quenes players & the Erle of Sussex players, xv^s’; 284 (Gloucester), ‘the Queenes and the Earle of Sussex players, xxx^s’. At Faversham (Murray, ii. 274) separate payments of 1590–1 for the Queen’s (20_s._) and Essex’s (10_s._) are followed by ‘to the Queen’s Players and to the Earl of Essex’s Players’ (20_s._). It is conceivable that in this last entry ‘Essex’s’ may be a slip for ‘Sussex’s’.

[323] App. D, No. lxxxv.

[324] Nashe, Works, iii. 244.

[325] M. S. C. i. 190, from Lansd. MSS. 71, 75. The letters are both dated 18 Sept. 1592, and that to Burghley contained copies of the charters of Henry III and Elizabeth, of a Privy Council letter of 30 Oct. 1575 (cf. Dasent, ix. 39) forbidding shows within five miles of the University, and of the warrant of the Vice-Chancellor and other justices to the constables of Chesterton, dated 1 Sept. 1592.

[326] University Letter of 17 July 1593 in M. S. C. i. 200, from Lansd. MS. 75; Privy Council Act of 29 July 1593 in Dasent, xxiv. 427.

[327] M. S. C. i. 198, from Lansd. MS. 71.

[328] Henslowe, i. 4. The date in the diary is ‘8 of Maye 1593’, but I am prepared to accept Dr. Greg’s view (ii. 80) that as Francis was pawnbroking for his uncle all through 1593, this must be an error of Henslowe’s for ‘1594’. He seems to have actually left London on 18 May 1594.

[329] Henslowe, i. 6.

[330] W. H. Stevenson, Nottingham Records, iv. 244.

[331] Mediaeval Stage, ii. 186, 251.

[332] Sh. Homage, 154.

[333] Fleay, Shakespeare, 184.

[334] Collier, i. 259.

[335] Murray, i. 294. I add Maldon (1564–5). There is no proof that ‘Beeston and his fellowes’ at Barnstaple in 1560–1 were Strange’s.

[336] The Revels account for 1587–9 (Feuillerat, Eliz. 390) includes ‘a paire of fflanell hose for Symmons the Tumbler’, which is not in the separate account for 1587–8 (Feuillerat, Eliz. 380).

[337] App. D, No. lxxxii. The forged list of Queen’s men (q.v.) in 1589 is sometimes, by a further error, whose I do not know, assigned to Strange’s.

[338] I had better give the complicated and in some cases uncertain notices in full; the unspecified references are to Murray: Cambridge (1591–2), ‘my Lord Stranges plaiers’ (Cooper, ii. 518), and so also (ii. 229, 284) Canterbury (13 July 1592) and Gloucester (1591–2); Bath (1591–10 June 1592), ‘my Lord Admiralls players’ ... ‘my L. Stranges plaiers’ (ii. 202); Aldeburgh (1591–2), ‘my Lord Admirals players’ (Stopes, Hunnis, 314); Shrewsbury (30 Sept. 1591–29 Sept. 1592), ‘my L. Admeralls players’ ... ‘my l. Stranges and my l. Admyralls players’ (ii. 392, s. a. 1592–3, but the entries for the two years seem to be transposed; vide infra); Coventry (10 Dec. 1591–29 Nov. 1592), ‘the Lord Strange players’ (ii. 240); Leicester (19 Dec. 1592), ‘the Lorde Admiralls Playars’ (ii. 305); Shrewsbury (30 Sept. 1592–29 Sept. 1593), ‘The iii of Feb: 1592. Bestowed vppon the players of my Lorde Admyrall’ ... ‘my L. Darbyes men being players’ (ii. 392, s. a. 1591–2, but the detailed date and the name Derby make an error palpable); Bath (11 June 1592–10 Sept. 1593), ‘my L. Stranges plaiers’ (ii. 203); Coventry (30 Nov. 1592–26 Nov. 1593), ‘the Lo Admiralls players’ (ii. 240); York (April 1593), ‘the Lord Admerall & Lord Mordens players’ (ii. 412); Newcastle (May 1593), ‘my Lord Admiralls plaiers, and my Lord Morleis plaiers being all in one companye’ (G. B. Richardson, Extracts from Municipal Accounts of N.); Southampton (1592–3), ‘my L. Morleys players and the Earle of Darbyes’ (ii. 398, ‘c. 18 May’, but Strange became Derby on 25 Sept.); Leicester (Oct.–Dec. 1593), ‘the Erle of Darbyes playors’ (ii. 306); Coventry (2 Dec. 1593), ‘the Lo: of Darbyes players’ (ii. 240); Bath (11 Sept. 1593–1594), ‘the L. Admiralls, the L. Norris players’ (ii. 203); Ipswich (7 March 1594), ‘vnto therlle of Darbys players and to the Lorde Admirals players, the ij amongste’ (ii. 293, s. a. 1591–2, but on 7 March 1592 Strange was not yet Derby, and his men were playing for Henslowe).

[339] App. D, No. xcii.

[340] Henslowe, i. 13. The account is headed, ‘Jn the name of god Amen 1591 beginge the 19 of febreary my lord stranges mene a ffoloweth 1591’.

[341] Cf. ch. xxiv, s.v. 1 Jeronimo. Some marginal notes of sums of money are not clearly intelligible, but may represent sums advanced by Henslowe for the company.

[342] Henslowe, i. 15.

[343] Dasent, xxiv. 212.

[344] Cf. W. W. Greg in Henslowe, ii. 70.

[345] Dulwich MSS. i. 9–15 (Henslowe Papers, 34); cf. Henslowe, i. 3.

[346] Their patron was Edward Parker, Lord Morley (Murray, ii. 54). I suspect the Morden of the York entry and the Norris of the Bath entry of being both transcriber’s errors for Morley. No players of Lord Norris are on record, and those of Lord Mordaunt (Murray, ii. 90) only recur in 1585–6 and 1602.

[347] Text in Henslowe Papers, 130; on the nature of a ‘plott’, cf. App. N.

[348] The following rather hazardous identifications have been attempted by Greg (loc. cit.) and Fleay, 84: ‘Harry’ = Henry Condell (Fleay, Greg); ‘Kit’ = Christopher Beeston (Fleay, Greg); ‘Saunder’ = Alexander Cooke (Fleay, Greg); ‘Nick’ = Nicholas Tooley (Fleay, Greg); ‘Ro.’ or ‘R. Go.’ = Robert Gough (Fleay, Greg); ‘Ned’ = Edward Alleyn or Edmund Shakespeare (Fleay); ‘Will’ = William Tawyer (Fleay), William Tawler (Greg). The object is, of course, to establish the connexion between Strange’s and the Chamberlain’s men. Both writers assign two of the unallocated parts to Heminges and Shakespeare.

[349] For speculation as to Shakespeare’s early career, cf. s.v. Pembroke’s.

[350] Text in Henslowe Papers, 155.

[351] George Fanner to H. Galdelli and G. Tusinga in S. P. Dom. Eliz. cclxxi. 34, 35. I do not accept Mr. James Greenstreet’s theory that W. Stanley was the real W. Shakespeare.

[352] Hatfield MSS. xiii. 609.

[353] Murray, i. 295.

[354] Taylor, Penniless Pilgrimage (ed. Hindley), 67.

[355] Dulwich MS. i. 14, in Henslowe Papers, 40.

[356] Outlines, i. 122; ii. 329.

[357] Fleay, 136, ‘Pembroke’s men continued to act at the Curtain from 1589 to 1597’ is guesswork.

[358] Henslowe, i. 131; cf. ch. xxiii, s.v. Fulwell.

[359] Cf. infra (Chamberlain’s). Shank (cf. ch. xv) was once in Pembroke’s.

[360] The Council Register assigns this performance to the Chamberlain’s; cf. App. B.

[361] Fleay, Sh. 286, supposed Howard to be both Admiral and Chamberlain at this date, but this view was refuted by Halliwell-Phillipps in the Athenaeum for 24 April 1886, and resigned by Fleay, 31; cf. Greg, ii. 81.

[362] I. H. Jeayes, Letters of Philip Gawdy (Roxburghe Club), 23.

[363] Stopes, Hunnis, 322, names payees in error.

[364] Henslowe, ii. 83.

[365] Henslowe Papers, 31.

[366] Alleyn Papers, 11, 12; cf. Henslowe Papers, 32.

[367] Alleyn Papers, 1, 5.

[368] Ibid. 54.

[369] Henslowe, ii. 127.

[370] Henslowe, i. 17.

[371] Ibid. 198.

[372] Ibid. 17.

[373] Cf. the petitions assigned to 1592 (App. D, No. xcii).

[374] They may represent n[ew] e[nterlude], or merely ne[w].

[375] Fleay, 140; Henslowe, ii. 84.

[376] Henslowe, ii. 324.

[377] Ibid. ii. 133.

[378] Ibid. i. 126.

[379] Ibid. i. 44.

[380] Henslowe, i. 51; cf. Dr. Greg’s explanation in ii. 129 and my criticism in M. L. R. iv. 409. Wallace (E. S. xliii. 361) has a third explanation, that the figures represent the sharers’ takings. But (a) these would not all pass through Henslowe’s hands, (b) the amounts are often less than half the galleries, and (c) the columns are blank for some days of playing.

[381] I include Belin Dun, produced just before the separation of the Admiral’s and the Chamberlain’s, in the fifty-five; but I do not follow Dr. Greg in taking the sign ‘j’, which Henslowe attaches to Tamburlaine (30 Aug. 1594) and Long Meg of Westminster (14 Feb. 1595) as equivalent to ‘ne’. Were it so, these would furnish two, and the only two, examples of a second new production in a single week. Probably ‘j’ indicates in both instances the First Part of a two-part play. This view is confirmed by Henslowe’s note on 10 March 1595, ‘17 p[laies] frome hence lycensed’; cf. my criticism in M. L. R. iv. 408.

[382] Variously entered as ‘olimpo’, ‘seleo & olempo’, ‘olempeo & hengenyo’, &c.; but apparently only one play is meant.

[383] Alexander and Lodowick is actually entered for a second time as ‘ne’ on 11 Feb. 1597, but I have assumed this to be a mistake.

[384] It has been chiefly played by Fleay and Dr. Greg. The relations suggested are between 1 Caesar and Pompey and Chapman’s play of the same name, Disguises and Chapman’s May-day, Godfrey of Bulloigne and Heywood’s Four Prentices of London, Olympo, 1, 2 Hercules, and Troy and Heywood’s Golden, Silver, Brazen, and Iron Ages respectively. Five Plays in One and some of Heywood’s Dialogues and Dramas, The Wonder of a Woman and a supposed early version by Heywood of W. Rowley’s A New Wonder, or, A Woman Never Vexed, The Venetian Comedy and both the German Josephus Jude von Venedig and Dekker’s lost Jew of Venice, Diocletian and Dekker’s The Virgin Martyr, A Set at Maw and Dekker’s Match Me in London, The Mack and Dekker’s The Wonder of a Kingdom, Vortigern and Middleton’s The Mayor of Quinborough, Uther Pendragon and W. Rowley’s Birth of Merlin, Philipo and Hippolito and both Massinger’s lost Philenzo and Hypollita and the German Julio und Hyppolita. Full details will be found in Henslowe, ii. 165 sqq.

[385] Henslowe, i. 44, 128.

[386] Possibly identical with Mahomet, if that was Peele’s play. Dr. Greg’s identification with The Love of an English Lady strikes me as rather arbitrary.

[387] I assume that ‘valy a for’ entered on 4 Jan. 1595 is the same play. Conceivably it might be Vallingford, i. e. Fair Em, an old Strange’s play.

[388] An allusion in Field’s Amends for Ladies, ii. 1, shows that Long Meg still held the Fortune stage about 1611.

[389] Possibly identical with Longshanks.

[390] The relations suggested are between The Love of a Grecian Lady and the German Tugend-und Liebesstreit, The French Doctor and both Dekker’s Jew of Venice and the German Josephus Jude von Venedig, The Siege of London and Heywood’s 1 Edward IV, The Welshman and R. A.’s The Valiant Welshman, Time’s Triumph and Fortune’s and Heywood’s Timon. For details cf. Henslowe, ii. 165 sqq.

[391] This was on Whit-Tuesday 1596, and I rather suspect a mis-entry of iij^s for iij^{li}, the exact amount taken for the plays of the Monday and Wednesday in the same week.

[392] Henslowe, i. 5.

[393] Ibid. 44.

[394] Ibid. 31, 45.

[395] Henslowe, i. 29, 31, 43, 44, 199–201.

[396] I see no reason to agree with Dr. Greg in identifying ‘Black Dick’ with Jones, who would naturally have the ‘Mr.’; and the suggestions that ‘Dick’ might be Dick Juby and that ‘Will’ might be Will Barnes or Will Parr are mere guesses based on the occurrence of these names in other ‘plots’. ‘Will’ might just as well be Will Kendall.

[397] Henslowe, i. 45.

[398] Henslowe’s entry is (i. 54), ‘Martin Slather went for the company of my lord admeralles men the 18 of July 1597’. I think that ‘for’ must be meant for ‘from’. Elsewhere (i. 66) Henslowe writes ‘for’ for ‘from’.

[399] Henslowe, i. 47, 200.

[400] Ibid. 201–4; Egerton MS. 2623, f. 19 (a fragment from the Diary).

[401] Henslowe, ii. 89, 101.

[402] Henslowe, i. 105, 131, 134.

[403] Ibid. 40.

[404] Ibid. 199–201.

[405] App. D, No. cxii.

[406] Henslowe, i. 54; E. S. xliii. 351.

[407] Henslowe, i. 68–70.

[408] Ibid. 82.

[409] Ibid. ii. 91; cf. p. 200.

[410] Henslowe, i. 69, 73; Wallace in E. S. xliii. 382.

[411] Cf. p. 173.

[412] Henslowe, i. 81, 122.

[413] Ibid. 64, 67.

[414] Ibid. 63, 79.

[415] Henslowe, i. 72, ‘Lent W^m Borne to folowe the sewt agenste Thomas Poope’; cf. i. 26, 38, 47–8, 56, 63–9, 71–8, 80, 201, 205; and s.v. Pembroke’s.

[416] Henslowe, i. 84.

[417] During 1599–1602 Henslowe sometimes enters advances as made to the company through ‘W^m’ Juby, and in two cases corrects the entry by substituting ‘Edward’. As there is no other evidence for a William Juby as an actor, not to speak of a sharer, either Henslowe must have persistently mistaken the name, or William must have been a relative of Edward, acting as his agent (cf. Henslowe, ii. 290).

[418] Henslowe Papers, 48.

[419] Henslowe, i. 26.

[420] Henslowe Papers, 113.

[421] Henslowe, i. 122.

[422] Ibid. 122.

[423] Ibid. 66, 68, 91, 108.

[424] Ibid. 85.

[425] Henslowe, i. 72.

[426] Ibid. 63, 104.

[427] Ibid. 118.

[428] I find ‘Lorde Haywards’ men at Leicester during Oct.–Dec. 1599, ‘Lord Howardes’ at Bristol in 1599–1600, ‘Lord Heywardes’ at Bath in the same year, ‘Lord Howards’ at Coventry on 28 Dec. 1599, and ‘Lord Haywards’ in 1602–3. This must have been another company. The Admiral’s were playing in London at the time of the Leicester and the earlier Coventry visits, and Lord Howard of Effingham became Earl of Nottingham on 22 Oct. 1596. They were at Canterbury in 1599–1600.

[429] Henslowe, i. 120.

[430] Henslowe Papers, 49; Henslowe, i. 113.

[431] Henslowe Papers, 55; Henslowe, i. 122.

[432] Henslowe Papers, 56; Henslowe, i. 135, 147.

[433] Henslowe Papers, 56; Henslowe, i. 135.

[434] Henslowe Papers, 56–8.

[435] Henslowe, ii. 125.

[436] Henslowe, i. 84–107.

[437] Ibid. 103.

[438] Henslowe, i. 83, 101, 119.

[439] Ibid. ii. 124.

[440] Henslowe Papers, 113, from Malone (1790), i. 2. 300; the manuscript is now lost. The various sections of the document are headed: (a) ‘The booke of the Inventary of the goods of my lord Admeralles men, tacken the 10 of Marche in the yeare 1598’; (b) ‘The Enventary of the Clownes sewtes and Hermetes Swetes, with dievers others sewtes, as followeth, 1598, the 10 of March’; (c) ‘The Enventary of all the aparell for my Lord Admiralles men, tacken the 10 of Marche 1598--Leaft above in the tier-house in the cheast’; (d) ‘The Enventary tacken of all the properties for my Lord Admeralles men, the 10 of Marche 1598’; (e) ‘The Enventorey of all the aparell of the Lord Admeralles men, taken the 13^{th} of Marche 1598, as followeth’; (f) ‘A Note of all suche bookes as belong to the Stocke, and such as I have bought since the 3^d of Marche 1598’; (g) ‘A Note of all suche goodes as I have bought for the Companey of my Lord Admirals men, sence the 3 of Aprell, 1598, as followeth’. A comparison of the book-list with the diary payments makes it clear that ‘1598’ is 1597/8 and not 1598/9. The last book entered was bought in Aug. 1598. An undated inventory of Alleyn’s private theatrical wardrobe is in Henslowe Papers, 52.

[441] It should be borne in mind that these lists are based in part upon a rather conjectural interpretation of evidence. Full details, for which I have not space, will be found in Henslowe, ii. 186 sqq. I have annotated a few points of interest.

[442] So called in the book-inventory; in the diary it is Triplicity of Cuckolds.

[443] The first name appears in the inventory, the second in the diary.

[444] Only £4 was paid ‘to by a boocke’, which is low for a new play and high for an old one. Possibly Porter was in debt to the company.

[445] Once described as ‘other wisse called worsse feared then hurte’, whence Dr. Greg infers that the 1598–9 play of that name was a second part of it.

[446] So in the book-inventory; in the account it is only called The Cobler.

[447] Possibly Strange Flattery, but the manuscript is lost.

[448] They had to buy Mahomet, The Wise Man of West Chester, Longshanks, and Vortigern from Alleyn in 1601 and 1602.

[449] ‘the Mores lymes’, ‘iiij Turckes hedes’, ‘j Mores cotte’.

[450] ‘iiij genesareys gownes’, ‘owld Mahemetes head’.

[451] ‘Tamberlyne brydell’, ‘Tamberlynes cotte, with coper lace’, ‘Tamberlanes breches of crymson vellvet’.

[452] ‘j cauderm for the Jewe’.

[453] ‘j tree of gowlden apelles’.

[454] ‘j whell and frame in the Sege of London’.

[455] ‘Belendon stable’.

[456] ‘Tasso picter’, ‘Tasoes robe’.

[457] ‘senetores gowne’ and ‘capes’.

[458] ‘Kents woden leage’.

[459] ‘j mawe gowne of calleco for the quene’.

[460] ‘j sewtte for Nepton’, ‘Nepun forcke & garland’.

[461] ‘Harey the fyftes dublet’ and ‘vellet gowne’, ‘j payer of hosse for the Dowlfyn’.

[462] ‘j longe-shanckes sewte’.

[463] ‘j great horse with his leages’.

[464] ‘Vartemar sewtte’, ‘Valteger robe of rich tafitie’, ‘j payer of hosse & a gercken for Valteger’, ‘ij Danes sewtes, and ij payer of Danes hosse’.

[465] ‘j tome of Guido’, ‘j cloth clocke of russete with coper lace, called Guydoes clocke’.

[466] ‘Merlen gowne, and cape’.

[467] ‘my lord Caffes gercken & his hoose’.

[468] These include ‘Argosse head’, ‘Andersones sewte’, ‘Will Sommers sewtte’, ‘ij Orlates sewtes’, ‘Cathemer sewte’, ‘j Whittcomes dublett poke’, ‘Nabesathe sewte’, ‘j Hell mought’, ‘the cloth of the Sone & Mone’, ‘Tantelouse tre’, ‘Eves bodeyes’. Probably ‘Perowes sewte which W^m Sley were’ dated back to the days of Strange’s men. After 3 April 1598 Henslowe bought, inter alia, ‘a gown for Nembia’ and ‘a robe for to goo invisibell’.

[469] It looks as if the book-inventory were not exhaustive; perhaps it only includes books more or less in current use.

[470] There is a self-contradictory entry, ‘to paye vnto M^r Willson Monday & Deckers ... iiij^{ll} v^s in this maner Willson xxx^s Cheattell xxx^s Mondy xxv^s’.

[471] Regarded by Dr. Greg as 2 Hannibal and Hermes.

[472] I agree with Dr. Greg that this, for which Chapman had £4 in 1598–9, is probably identical with The Isle of a Woman, for which he had had earnests of £4 or £4 10_s._ in 1597–8.

[473] I think the play licensed as Brute Grenshallde in March 1599 was a second part written by Chettle to an old 1 Brute by Day, which would not need re-licensing.

[474] I do not see with what to identify the play licensed under this name in March 1599 except the unnamed ‘playe boocke’ and ‘tragedie’, for which Chapman had something under £9 in the previous Oct. and Jan.

[475] The title War without Blows and Love without Strife in one entry is probably an error.

[476] I agree with Dr. Greg that the entries point to two plays by Chettle and Dekker rather than one. They are probably incomplete owing to the hiatus in the manuscript.

[477] Dr. Greg makes two plays of this, but the entry ‘his boocke called the world rones a whelles & now all foolles but the foolle’ seems unambiguous, and the total payments of £8 10_s._ are not too high for a play by Chapman.

[478] No importance can be attached to Mr. Fleay’s childish identifications of War without Blows and Love without Suit, Joan as Good as my Lady, and The Four Kings with The Thracian Wonder, Heywood’s A Maidenhead well Lost, and Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes respectively.

[479] So called in Drayton’s autograph receipt, but Henslowe calls it William Longbeard.

[480] Henslowe, i. 72, 78.

[481] Cf. ch. xv, s.v. Alleyn.

[482] The only entry is of 15 July ‘to bye a boocke’, but the hiatus in the manuscript probably conceals earlier payments.

[483] Here also the hiatus has only left an entry of £2 ‘in full payment’ on 1 Aug. Dr. Greg, however, would identify Bear a Brain and The Gentle Craft.

[484] The entries are as follows: 2 Sept., ‘Thomas Deckers Bengemen Johnson Hary Chettell & other Jentellman in earneste of a playe calle Robart the second kinge of Scottes tragedie’; 15 Sept., ‘in earneste of a boocke called the Scottes tragedi vnto Thomas Dickers & Harey Chettell’; 16 Sept., ‘Hary Chettell ... in earneste of a boocke called the Scottes tragedie’; 27 Sept., ‘Bengemen Johnsone in earneste of a boocke called the Scottes tragedie’; 28 Sept., ‘vnto M^r Maxton the new poete in earneste of a boocke called [blank]’. Dr. Greg resists the fairly reasonable identification of ‘M^r Maxton the new poete’ with the ‘other Jentellman’. All the payments are called earnests, but the total is £6 10_s._ and therefore the play probably existed.

[485] ‘Lent vnto me W Birde the 9 of Februarye to paye for a new booke to Will Boyle cald Jugurth xxx^s which if you dislike Ile repaye it back.’ The price is the lowest ever entered for a ‘new’ book. Mr. Fleay’s suggestion that Will Bird, who already had one alias in Will Borne, was also himself Will Boyle, is one of those irresponsible guesses by which he has done so much to make hay of theatrical history.

[486] Both parts were entered on the Stationers’ Register, but no copy of 2 Sir John Oldcastle is known.

[487] Bodl. Ashm. MS. 236, f. 77^v (c. 1600), has Forman’s note of the ‘plai of Cox of Cullinton and his 3 sons, Henry Peter and Jhon’.

[488] Henslowe Papers, 49.

[489] This was taken up again in 1601, but still not finished. Dr. Greg, however, thinks that it is identical with Day’s Italian tragedy, and forms half of Two Lamentable Tragedies (1601), and that Chettle’s work in 1601 may have been the effecting of the combination with Thomas Merry.

[490] Dr. Greg, following Mr. Fleay, identifies this with Dekker’s Whore of Babylon, and as Time is a character in this play, cites the purchase of ‘a Robe for tyme’ in April 1600 as a proof that it was then performed. Time, however, might also have been a character in The Seven Wise Masters.

[491] Possibly finished later and identical with the pseudo-Marlowesque Lust’s Dominion.

[492] The payment-entry is cancelled. The play may have been finished for another company, and be identical with the extant Grim, the Collier of Croydon, or, The Devil and his Dame.

[493] Possibly the basis of Bird and Rowley’s Judas of 1601.

[494] It seems to me a little arbitrary of Dr. Greg to assume that the 10_s._ entered as an earnest for this was really a bonus on 1 The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green.

[495] Henslowe Papers, 51. I do not think that Dr. Greg recognizes the full significance of this when he suggests (Henslowe, ii. 94) that Alleyn was back on the stage by 1598; cf. my criticism in M. L. R. iv. 410. Dr. Greg relies mainly on the appearance of his name in the plot of The Battle of Alcazar, which, he says, ‘almost certainly belongs to 1598’. But I can find no reason why it should not belong to 1600–2; cf. p. 175.

[496] Henslowe, i. 56.

[497] Ibid. 162.

[498] Ibid. 141.

[499] Ibid. 144, 165, 174.

[500] Ibid. 134, 136, 140, 147.

[501] Dr. Greg puts it in 1598, on the assumption that Alleyn returned to the stage in that year. It might conceivably belong to 1597, between 18 Dec., when Bristow was bought, and 29 Dec., by which day Alleyn had left. It cannot be later than Feb. 1602, by which month Jones and Shaw had left. The prefix ‘M^r’ allotted to Charles and Sam is in favour of a date after their agreements on 16 Nov. 1598. Dr. Greg’s argument (Henslowe Papers, 138) that Kendall’s agreement expired 7 Dec. 1599 is not convincing, as there was nothing in it to prevent him from staying on, and the satire of the play in Jonson’s Poetaster of 1601, to which he refers, obviously tells in favour of a date nearer to 1601 than 1598.

[502] Henslowe, i. 38.

[503] Ibid. 131, 134.

[504] Ibid. 164.

[505] Ibid. 205.

[506] Cf. ch. x.

[507] The entry is ‘Thomas Deckers for his boocke called the fortewn tenes’. Collier read ‘forteion tenes’ and interpreted Fortunatus. Mr. Fleay furnished the alternatives of Fortune’s Tennis and Hortenzo’s Tennis. I should add that Dr. Greg assigns the ‘plot’ to this play.

[508] Dr. Greg thinks that this may be the same as Haughton’s The English Fugitives of the previous April. If so, it was probably finished, as the payments amount to £6.

[509] As the account of advances is continuous, I have drawn the line between 1600–1 and 1601–2 at the beginning of Aug. 1601.

[510] The Life became 2 Cardinal Wolsey, as The Rising, although written later, was historically 1 Cardinal Wolsey. The entries are complicated. It is just possible that the playwrights were working on an old play, for the property-inventories of 1598 include an unexplained ‘Will Sommers sewtte’ (cf. p. 168). A ‘W^m Someres cotte’ was, however, bought for The Rising on 27 May 1602.

[511] Possibly based on Haughton’s unfinished play of 1600.

[512] A note preserved at Dulwich (Henslowe Papers, 58) indicates that licensing fees were in arrear on 4 Aug. 1602 for ‘baxsters tragedy, Tobias Comedy, Jepha Judg of Israel & the Cardinall, Loue parts frendshipp’. But of course Warner’s identification of ‘baxsters tragedy’ with The Bristol Tragedy is conjectural.

[513] There is no 1 Tom Dough, unless this was an intended sequel to The Six Yeomen of the West.

[514] Already begun by Chettle in 1599.

[515] This may be identical with 1 The Six Clothiers, which is not called by Henslowe a ‘first part’, if, as is possible, that was a sequel to The Six Yeomen of the West.

[516] Possibly finished later as Dekker and Rowley’s The Noble Spanish Soldier. But it may have been an old play re-written, for C. R. Baskervill (M. P. xiv. 16) quotes from the preface to H. O.’s translation of Vasco Figueiro’s Spaniard’s Monarchie (1592), ‘albeit it hath no title fetched from the Bull within Bishopsgate, as a figge for a Spaniard’.

[517] I suppose this was unfinished. The only entry is on 22 June 1602, ‘vnto Bengemy Johnsone ... in earneste of a boocke called Richard Crockbacke & for new adicyons for Jeronymo the some of x^{ll}’. Jonson had already had £2 on 25 Sept. 1601 ‘vpon his writtinge of his adicians in Geronymo’. Unless Richard Crookback was nearly complete, his prices must have risen a good deal.

[518] Possibly finished later as Hoffman (1631).

[519] The £4 paid was cancelled and then reinstated, but the book was evidently transferred to Worcester’s men (cf. p. 227).

[520] Cf. p. 168.

[521] Cf. vol. i, p. 323. The Massacre was printed (N.D.) as an Admiral’s play.

[522] The conjectural rendering of Henslowe’s ‘ponesciones pillet’ finds support from the presence of garments for ‘Caffes’ or Caiaphas in the inventory of 1598; cf. p. 168.

[523] A payment to ‘John Daye & his felowe poetes’ implies at least three collaborators.

[524] For Samson cf. p. 367.

[525] All four entries merely show the payments as made to ‘Antony the poyete’.

[526] Finished later and extant; probably identical with the Danish Tragedy of 1601–2.

[527] I suppose that it was the play which Chettle ‘layd vnto pane’ to Mr. Bromfield, and which had to be redeemed for £1 (Henslowe, i. 174).

[528] The more so as I do not think that Dr. Greg’s survey in Henslowe. ii. 135, is accurate.

[529] Henslowe made the total £167 7_s._ 7_d._, but evidently the error was detected, as only £166 17_s._ 7_d._ was carried forward.

[530] Henslowe, ii. 133. Apparently Henslowe reverted to the plan of deducting three-quarters only, at the beginning of 1599–1600, but only for a fortnight, as the receipts from 20 Oct. are headed, ‘Heare I begane to receue the gallereys agayne which they receued begynynge at Myhellmas wecke being the 6 of October 1599’.

[531] I have disregarded an error of 15_s._ made by Henslowe.

[532] Henslowe, i. 85, 145.

[533] Ibid. ii. 33.

[534] Henslowe, i. 29, 47, 81, 96, 97, 118, 124, 136, 138, 144, 146, 148, 152, 153, 166, 172, &c.

[535] The exact date is uncertain, as they do not appear to have had a patent until 1606; but it must lie between their visit to Leicester as the Admiral’s on 18 Aug. 1603 and the making out of a warrant to them as the Prince’s men on 19 Feb. 1604 for their Christmas plays.

[536] N. Sh. Soc. Trans. (1877–9), 17*, from Lord Chamberlain’s Books, 58^a.

[537] Cf. ch. xvi (Hope).

[538] On the legend that he had developed moral scruples about the stage, cf. s.v. Marlowe, Dr. Faustus.

[539] Henslowe Papers, 18.

[540] Dulwich MS. iii. 15.

[541] Henslowe Papers, 13; cf. ch. xvi, s.v. Fortune.

[542] Henslowe Papers, 63.

[543] Ibid. 85.

[544] M. S. C. i. 268, from P. R. 4 Jac. I, pt. 19; also printed by T. E. Tomlins, and dated in error 1607, in Sh. Soc. Papers, iv. 42.

[545] Birch, Life of Henry, 455; Greg, Gentleman’s Magazine, ccc. 67, from Harl. MS. 252, f. 5, dated 1610.

[546] Henslowe, i. 175.

[547] Ibid. 214.

[548] There may be an allusion to this play in H. Parrot, Laquei Ridiculosi, Springes for Woodcocks (1613), ii. 162:

’Tis said that Whittington was rais’d of nought, And by a cat hath divers wonders wrought: But Fortune (not his cat) makes it appear, He may dispend a thousand marks a year.

Dr. Greg (Henslowe, ii. 65) has dispersed Collier’s myth of one Whittington ‘perhaps a sleeping partner in the speculation of the Fortune’.

[549] Most of the play-dates of 1605–12 are in Apps. A and B.

[550] A. for L. II. i. In III. iv a drawer says, ‘all the gentlewomen [from Bess Turnup’s] went to see a play at the Fortune, and are not come in yet, and she believes they sup with the players’.

[551] Cf. ch. xv, s.v. Garlick.

[552] Nichols, James, ii. 495.

[553] M. S. C. i. 275, from P. R. 10 Jac. I, pt. 25; also from signet bill in Collier, i. 366, and Hazlitt, E. D. S. 44. Greg (Henslowe, ii. 263) notes copies in Addl. MS. 24502, f. 60^v, and Lincoln’s Inn MS. clviii.

[554] Henslowe Papers, 106.

[555] Ibid. 64.

[556] Fennor’s Defence, or I am Your First Man (Taylor’s Works, 1630, ed. Spenser Soc. 314). The 1659 print of the Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green has at l. 2177, ‘Enter ... Captain Westford, Sill Clark’. The title-page professes to give the play as acted by the Prince’s men, but whether Clark was an actor of 1603–12 or not must remain doubtful.

[557] Henslowe, i. 17; cf. p. 140.

[558] Cf. App. D, No. ci. It is not ‘my newe companie’, as it is sometimes misprinted. But I do not think that either term can be interpreted as showing that the company had or had not a corporate existence before it came under Hunsdon’s patronage. The use which the company ‘have byn accustomed’ to make of the inn is only related to ‘this winter time’.

[559] The dates here assigned to Shakespeare’s plays are mainly based on the conclusions of my article on Shakespeare in the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

[560] Cf. ch. xxiv, s.v. Gesta Grayorum and M. L. R. ii. 11.

[561] Cf. my paper on The Occasion of A Midsummer-Night’s Dream in Shakespeare Homage, 154, and App. A.

[562] I have recently found confirmation of the date for Rich. II in a letter from Sir Edward Hoby inviting Sir R. Cecil to his house in Canon Row on 9 Dec. 1595, ‘where, as late as shall please you, a gate for your supper shall be open, and K. Richard present himself to your view’ (Hatfield MSS. v. 487).

[563] T. Lodge, Wits Miserie (S. R. 5 May 1596), 56, ‘the Visard of y^e ghost which cried so miserably at y^e Theator, like an oister wife, Hamlet, revenge’.

[564] Cf. ch. xvii (Blackfriars). There is a slight doubt as to the authenticity of the text of the petition, which the inclusion of Lord Hunsdon’s name can only emphasize. But the fact of the petition and its result are vouched for by a City document of later date. The counter-petition of the players published by Collier, i. 288, in which they are misdescribed as the Lord Chamberlain’s men, is a forgery. The names given are those of Pope, Burbadge, Heminges, Phillips, Shakespeare, Kempe, Sly, and Tooley. There is nothing to connect Tooley with the company before 1605.

[565] Cf. App. D, No. cvi.

[566] For the distinction between ‘bad’ and ‘good’ quartos, cf. ch. xxii.

[567] R. James (c. 1625), in the dedication to his manuscript Legend of Sir John Oldcastle (quoted by Ingleby, Shakespeare’s Centurie of Praise, 165), says, ‘offence beinge worthily taken by Personages descended from his title’.

[568] Raleigh wrote to R. Cecil on 6 July 1597 that Essex was ‘wonderful merry at your conceit of Richard II’ (Edwardes, ii. 169); for the later history of the play, vide infra.

[569] Cf. ch. xvi (Curtain).

[570] App. C, No. lii.

[571] Aubrey, ii. 12. The same writer is obviously confused when he says, on the authority of Sir Edward Shirburn, that Jonson ‘killed M^r Marlow the poet, on Bunhill, comeing from the Green-Curtain play-house’.

[572] Cf. ch. x. There is no reason to suppose that the Richard Hoope, W^m Blackwage, Rafe Raye, and W^m Ferney, to whom Henslowe lent money as ‘my lord chamberlenes men’ in 1595 (Henslowe, i. 5, 6), were actors. In fact Raye was a ‘man’ of Hunsdon’s before the company was in existence at all (Henslowe, ii. 305).

[573] The order of the Shakespearian actors named in the 1623 Folio, and the omission of the names of Duke and Beeston, rather suggests that these two were hired men, and that there were ten original sharers, Shakespeare, Burbadge, Heminges, Phillips, Kempe, Pope, Bryan, Condell, Sly, and Cowley.

[574] App. C. No. xlviii.

[575] Cf. ch. xxii.

[576] Henslowe, i. 72.

[577] Cf. ch. xxii.

[578] Malone, Variorum, ii. 166; Fleay, L. and W. 8.

[579] Hen. V, epil. 12.

[580] That the Famous Victories was reprinted in 1617 as a King’s men’s play proves nothing. It was to pass as Henry V; obviously the King’s men never acted it, Henry V being in existence.

[581] Henslowe, i. 72, 101.

[582] For further details, cf. ch. xvi (Globe).

[583] Cf. ch. xvi, introd.

[584] Fleay, 138; cf. Murray, ii. 125; Greg, Henslowe, ii. 108. A loan of 21 Sept. 1600 by Henslowe (i. 132) to Duke is only slight evidence, and the fact that Anne’s men chose to revive the already printed Edward II, once a Pembroke’s play, even slighter.

[585] Cf. ch. xv.

[586] Cf. ch. vii.

[587] Cf. ch. xxii.

[588] S. P. D. Eliz. cclxxviii. 72, 78, 85. Accounts consistent with this are given in depositions of Sir W. Constable and Sir Gilly Meyrick (ibid.), Camden, Annales, 867, Cobbett, State Trials, i. 1445, and Bacon, A Declaration of the Practices and Treasons attempted and committed by Robert late Earl of Essex and his Complices (1601; Works, ix. 289).

[589] Fleay, 123, 136; cf. M. L. R. ii. 12.

[590] Cf. ch. xiv (Scotland).

[591] For the texts cf. ch. xi.

[592] W. H. Griffin in Academy for 25 April 1896, suggests that the ‘innovation’ of 1604 was the same as the ‘noveltie’ of 1603, i.e. the setting up of child actors. But I am afraid that this leaves ‘inhibition’ without a meaning.

[593] Nichols, Eliz. iii. 552, prints, perhaps from a manuscript of Lord De La Warr’s (Hist. MSS. iv. 300), a note by W. Lambarde of a conversation with the Queen on 4 Aug. 1601, ‘Her Majestie fell upon the reign of King Richard II, saying, I am Richard II, know ye not that? W. L. Such a wicked imagination was determined and attempted by a most unkind Gent. the most adorned creature that ever your Majestie made. Her Majestie. He that will forget God, will also forget his benefactors; this tragedy was played 40^{tie} times in open streets and houses’. The performances here referred to must have been in 1596–7, not 1601.

[594] Cf. ch. xi.

[595] J. Manningham, Diary, 18.

[596] Cf. App. A.

[597] Collier, New Particulars, 57, and Egerton Papers, 343, ‘6 August 1602 Rewardes ... x^{li} to Burbidges players for Othello’; cf. Ingleby, 262.

[598] Wallace, ii, 108; cf. p. 367.

[599] Cf. ch. xv (Kempe).

[600] Cf. ch. ii.

[601] G. Dugdale, Time Triumphant (1604), sig. B.

[602] Printed in M. S. C. i. 264, from P. R. 1 Jac. I, pars 2, membr. 4; also in Rymer, xvi. 505, and Halliwell, Illustr. 83. Halliwell also prints the practically identical texts of the Privy Signet Bill, dated 17 May, and the Privy Seal, dated 18 May. The former is also in Collier, i. 334, Hazlitt, 38, and Halliwell-Phillipps, ii. 82.

[603] Cf. ch. xiv (Scotland).

[604] Except in one of Collier’s Blackfriars forgeries; cf. ch. xvi.

[605] W. Cory (Letters and Journals, 168) was told on a visit to Wilton in 1865 that a letter existed there, naming Shakespeare as present and the play as As You Like It; but the letter cannot now be found.

[606] Marston, Malcontent, Ind. 82.

[607] Bullen, Middleton, viii. 36, ‘Give him leaue to see the Merry Deuil of Edmonton or A Woman Killed with Kindness’.

[608] N. S. S. Trans. (1877–9), 15*, from Lord Chamberlain’s Records, vol. 58^a, now ix. 4 (5); cf. Law (ut infra), 10. Collier, Memoirs of Alleyn, 68, printed a list headed ‘Ks Company’ from the margin of the copy of the Privy Council order of 9 April 1604 at Dulwich. This is a forgery. To the nine genuine names Collier added those of Hostler and Day. The former joined the company some years later, the latter never; cf. Ingleby, 269.

[609] App. B; cf. E. Law, Shakespeare as a Groom of the Chamber (1910), and the Spanish narrative in Colección de Documentos inéditos para la historia de España, lxxi. 467.

[610] Cf. ch. x.

[611] For the exact dates and the difficult critical questions raised by the records, cf. App. B.

[612] Cf. App. B.

[613] Clode, Early Hist. of Merchant Taylors, i. 290, ‘To M^r Hemmyngs for his direccion of his boy that made the speech to his Maiestie 40^s, and 6^s given to John Rise the speaker’; cf. ch. iv.

[614] Cf. ch. x.

[615] App. C, No. lvii.

[616] Cf. ch. xii (Queen’s Revels).

[617] Fleay, 173, and Murray, i. 152, are wrong in saying that there were no Court plays this year; cf. M. L. R. iv. 154.

[618] Rye, 61, from narrative of tour of Lewis Frederick, Duke of Württemberg, ‘Lundi, 30 [Apr.] S. E. alla au Globe, lieu ordinaire où l’on joue les Commedies, y fut representé l’histoire du More de Venise’. Forman’s accounts of Macbeth from Bodl. Ashm. MS. 208, f. 207, and of Cymbeline from the preceding leaf, but undated, are printed in N. S. S. Trans. (1875–6), 417.

[619] Fleay, 190, says that Ecclestone came from the Queen’s Revels. I think he must have confused him with Field.

[620] Perhaps his place between Ostler and Underwood in the actor-list of the 1623 Folio gives some confirmation to the statement of the Burbadges; cf. p. 219.

[621] Cf. ch. iv.

[622] N. S. S. Trans. (1875–6), 415, from Simon Forman’s notes in Bodl. Ashm. MS. 208, f. 200.

[623] For the precise dates and their difficulties, cf. App. B.

[624] Clode, Early Hist. of the Merchant Taylors, i. 334.

[625] Text in M. S. C. i. 280, from Signet Bill in Exchequer, Treasury of Receipt, Privy Seals, 17 Jac. I, Bundle ix, No. 2; also in Collier, i. 400, and Hazlitt, E. D. S. 50.

[626] Tawyer, a ‘man’ of Heminges’s, played in some revival of M. N. D. before 1623, but not necessarily before 1619 (cf. ch. xv).

[627] M. L. R. iv. 395.

[628] Downes, 21, 24. Nevertheless, Taylor did not join the King’s men until three years after Shakespeare’s death.

[629] Murray, i. 56, adds 1563–83 records.

[630] G. Le B. Smith, Haddon Hall, 121.

[631] Kelly, 211, from Leicester Hall Papers, i, ff. 38, 42; Hist. MSS. viii. 1, 431. The latter part of the record, from the Earl’s licence onwards, was given by Halliwell in Sh. Soc. Papers, iv. 145, but with the date 1586, due to a misprint of ‘28^o Eliz.’ for ‘25^o Eliz.’ in the licence. This has misled Fleay, 86, and other writers. Maas, 49, and M. Bateson, Records of Leicester, iii. 198, introduce fresh errors of their own.

[632] Gildersleeve, 53.

[633] Cf. ch. ix and App. D, No. lvi.

[634] Halliwell-Phillipps, Notices of Players Acting at Ludlow; B. S. Penley, The Bath Stage, 12, from account for year ending 16 June 1584.

[635] Lord Herbert was, of course, Worcester’s son; not, as Dr. Greg (Henslowe, ii. 104) seems to think, one of the Pembroke family.

[636] Henslowe Papers, 31; cf. supra (Admiral’s).

[637] Fleay, 87.

[638] Murray, i. 58, adds 1589–94 records.

[639] App. D, No. cxxx.

[640] Henslowe, i. 179. As Henslowe paid 7_s._ ‘for my Lo^r Worsters mens warant for playinge at the cort vnto the clarke of the cownselles for geatynge the cownselles handes to yt’ (Henslowe Papers, 108), and the only warrant to these men was dated 28 Feb. 1602, the connexion with Henslowe probably began while they were still at the Boar’s Head.

[641] Henslowe, i. 160, 190.

[642] Cf. supra (Chamberlain’s).

[643] Henslowe, i. 132, 163.

[644] Ibid. 177.

[645] Ibid. 178, ‘Lent vnto Richard Perckens the 4 of September 1602 to buy thinges for Thomas Hewode play & to lend vnto Dick Syferweste to ride downe to his felowes’. This is, of course, a private loan, and not in the company’s account.

[646] Called in the earlier entries The Two Brothers.

[647] The two names do not occur together, but almost certainly indicate the same play.

[648] Spelt ‘Burone’ and ‘Berowne’ in the entries.

[649] Henslowe, i. 180, 183, 185, 186, 187, 190.

[650] Cf. p. 7. A further notice of the transfer is given by Thomas Heywood, Γυναικεῖον or General History of Women (1624), who says that he was one of Worcester’s men, who at James’s accession ‘bestowed me upon the excellent princesse Queen Anne’.

[651] N. S. S. Trans. (1877–9), 16*, from Lord Chamberlain’s Books, 58^a. In August the company served as grooms of the chamber (App. B).

[652] In assigning Kempe to the Queen’s Revels in 1605, Dr. Greg (Henslowe, ii. 108) has been tripped up by one of Collier’s forgeries; cf. my review in M. L. R. iv. 408.

[653] Printed in M. S. C. i. 265, from S. P. D. Jac. I, ii. 100; also by Collier, i. 336, and Halliwell-Phillipps, Illustrations, 106. It is a rough draft full of deletions, marked by square brackets, and of additions, printed in italics, in the text. The theory of Fleay, 191, that the document is a forgery is disposed of by Greg, Henslowe’s Diary, ii. 107.

[654] Printed in M. S. C. i. 270, from P. R. 7 Jac. I, pt. 39; also from P. R., but misdescribed as a Privy Seal, by T. E. Tomlins in Sh. Soc. Papers, iv. 45. The Signet Bill is indexed under April 1609 in Phillimore, 104.

[655] Cf. App. B.

[656] Rutland MSS. iv. 461. They stayed two days, and gave four performances.

[657] Kelly, 248, ‘Item the vj^{th} of June given to the Queenes Players xl^s.... Item the xxj^{th} of Auguste given to the Children of the Revells xx^s. Item the xxvj^{th} of September given to one other Companye of the Queenes playors xx^s.’

[658] Murray, ii. 245, ‘paid to the Queenes players to Thomas Swinerton xl^s’.

[659] Murray, ii. 340, from Mayor’s Court Books (18 April 1614), ‘Swynnerton one of the Quenes players in the name of himselfe & the rest of his company desyred leaue to play in the cytty accordinge to his Maiesties Lettres patents shewed forth. And M^r Maior & Court moved them to play onely on Wednesday, Thursday & Fryday in Easter weke.’

[660] Murray, ibid. (6 May 1615), ‘Thomas Swynnerton produced this day Letters Patents dated the x^{th} [? xv^{th}] of Aprill Anno Septimo Jacobi whereby hee & others are authorised to play as the Quenes men, vidz. Thomas Grene, Christofer Breston [? Beeston], Thomas Haywood, Richard Pyrkyns, Rob^t. Pallant, Tho. Swynnerton, John Duke, Robt. Lee, James Hoult, & Robt. Breston [? Beeston].’

[661] Kelly, 252, ‘Item given to the Queenes Maiesties Highnes Playors xl^s.... Item the xvj^{th} daye of October Given to the Queenes Playors xl^s. Item given to one other Companye of the Queenes Playors xxx^s.’

[662] Murray, ii. 340 (30 March 1616), ‘A Patent was this day brought into the Court by Thomas Swynerton made to Thomas Grene ... & Robert Beeston Servants to Quene Anne & the rest of their associats bearing Teste xv^o Aprilis Anno Septimo Jacobi. But the said Swynerton confesseth that hee himselfe & Robert Lee only are here to play the rest are absent....’; (29 May 1616), ‘Thomas Swynerton came this day into the Court & affirmed himselfe to be one of the players to the Quenes Maiestie & bringinge with him no patent desyred to haue leaue to play here ... the same company had liberty to play here at Easter last....’ Leave was refused on this occasion.

[663] Kelly, 253, ‘Item the sixt of Februarye given to the Queenes Playors. Item given to one other Companye of the Queenes Playors’.

[664] Hist. MSS. xi. 3. 26.

[665] App. D, No. clviii; cf. Murray, ii. 343.

[666] Murray, i. 204.

[667] Kelly, 254.

[668] Collier, i. 397, from a manuscript at Bridgewater House.

[669] Fleay, 192, guesses that her first husband was Robert Browne of the 1583 Worcester’s company. As Queen Anne’s men played at the Boar’s Head, he is very likely to have been the ‘Browne of the Boares head’ who ‘dyed very pore’ in the plague of 1603 (Henslowe Papers, 59).

[670] Murray, i. 193, appears to date this list c. 1612, and the allegation in the Bill (Fleay, 275) that the pensions were paid for five years supports this. But it cannot be earlier than 1613 as Read was still with the Lady Elizabeth’s in that year. Nor does it include Lee, who was payee for the Queen’s in 1614–16. It clearly belongs to the 1616 settlement.

[671] ‘Goodman Freshwater’ was furnishing stuffs to Worcester’s men in 1602–3 (Henslowe, i. 179, 187).

[672] Sanderson may be the ‘Sands’ who played with ‘Ellis’ [Worth] in Daborne’s Poor Man’s Comfort (q.v.), about 1617. Or James Sands, formerly a boy with the King’s men, may have come to the Queen’s.

[673] Adams, 351.

[674] M. S. C. i. 272, from P. R. 8 Jac. I, p. 8; also printed by T. E. Tomlins in Sh. Soc. Papers, iv. 47.

[675] Fleay, 188.

[676] Murray, i. 239, confuses the Duke’s with Lord Aubigny’s men.

[677] A letter, probably originally from Dulwich, but now Egerton MS. 2623, f. 25 (printed in Sh. Soc. Papers, i. 18, and Henslowe Papers, 126), is signed by William Rowley, as well as by Taylor and Pallant, and must therefore be later than this amalgamation, and not, as Dr. Greg suggests, from the Lady Elizabeth’s c. 1613. It confirms a purchase of clothes from Henslowe for £55.

[678] Text in Collier, Memoirs of Alleyn, 127; abstract in Henslowe Papers, 90.

[679] N. S. S. Trans. 1877–9, 19*; cf. Fleay, 265. Collier, i. 406, has an elegy by William Rowley on Hugh Attwell, servant to Prince Charles, who died 25 Sept. 1621.

[680] App. D, No. clviii.

[681] Henslowe Papers, 93.

[682] M. S. C. i. 274, from P. R. 9 Jac. I, p. 20.

[683] Henslowe Papers, 18, 111.

[684] Cf. App. B.

[685] Henslowe Papers, 86, from Dulwich MS. i. 106; also printed in Variorum, xxi. 416, and Collier, Alleyn Papers, 78.

[686] Greg, Henslowe Papers, 58, 87, thinks that the ‘Baxter’ of the Grievances was William Barksted or Backstede. It may be so.

[687] Thorndike, 66, thinks that the list belongs to an earlier production by the Queen’s Revels before 30 March 1610, when Taylor joined the Duke of York’s. But there is no evidence that he was ever in the Queen’s Revels.

[688] Henslowe Papers, 65, 125; A. E. H. Swaen, Robert Daborne’s Plays (Anglia, xx. 153). The account in Fleay, i. 75, is full of inaccuracies. The documents now form separate articles of Dulwich MS. 1. All, unless otherwise specified below, are letters or undertakings from Daborne to Henslowe. Most of them are dated, and I think that the following ordering, due to Dr. Greg, is reasonable: (i) Art. 70, 17 Apr. 1613; (ii) Art. 71, 17 Apr. 1613; (iii) Art. 72, 25 Apr. 1613; (iv) Art. 73, 3 May 1613; (v) Art. 74, 8 May 1613; (vi) Art. 75, 16 May 1613; (vii) Art. 77, 19 May 1613; (viii) Art. 78, 5 June 1613; (ix) Art. 79, 10 June 1613; (xi) Art. 80, 18 June 1613; (xii) Art. 81, 25 June 1613; (xiii)? Art. 100, Field to Henslowe, N.D.; (xiv)? Art. 69, Field to Henslowe, N.D.; (xv)? Art. 68, Field, Daborne, and Massinger to Henslowe, N.D.; (xvi) Art. 82, 16 July 1613; (xvii) Art. 83, 30 July 1613; (xviii)? Art. 76, N.D.; (xix)? Art. 99, Daborne to Edward Griffin (Henslowe’s scrivener), N.D.; (xx). Art. 84, 23 Aug. 1613; (xxi) Art. 85, 14 Oct. 1613; (xxii) Art. 86, 29 Oct. 1613; (xxiii) Art. 87, 5 Nov. 1613; (xxiv) Art. 88, 13 Nov. 1613; (xxv) Art. 89, 13 Nov. 1613; (xxvi). Art. 90, 27 Nov. 1613; (xxvii) Art. 91, 9 Dec. 1613; (xxviii) Art. 92, 10 Dec. 1613; (xxix) Art. 93, 24 Dec. 1613; (xxx)? Art. 95, N.D.; (xxxi) Art. 94, 31 Dec. 1613; (xxxii) Art. 96, 11 Mar. 1614; (xxxiii) Art. 97, 28 Mar. 1614; (xxxiv), Art. 98, 31 July 1614.

[689] Henslowe Papers, 68.

[690] Sh. Soc. Papers, i. 16; Henslowe Papers, 125, from Egerton MS. 2623, f. 24. This document cannot be dated, but it has probably been detached from the Dulwich series.

[691] Henslowe Papers, 82.

[692] Ibid. 71. I should suppose this, rather than, with Dr. Greg, Bartholomew Fair, to be the ‘Johnsons play’ contemplated on 13 Nov. (Henslowe Papers, 78), but others of Jonson’s plays may also have been revived.

[693] Ibid. 69, 70.

[694] Ibid. 71, 103, 111.

[695] Ibid. 76, 77, 78.

[696] Ibid. 71.

[697] Dr. Greg (Henslowe Papers, 75) makes them the same play, founded on Dekker’s tracts, The Bellman of London (1608) and Lanthorn and Candlelight, or the Bellman’s Second Night-walk (1609), but The Arraignment seems to have been too nearly finished on 5 June for this identification (Henslowe Papers, 72).

[698] Still more so the ascription (Fleay, i. 81) of The Faithful Friends to Daborne and the Lady Elizabeth’s men.

[699] Henslowe Papers, 23; also in Collier, Memoirs of Alleyn, 118. A few additional lines, much mutilated, appear to have provided for the allocation of half the daily takings of the galleries to the discharge of a debt of £124 due to Henslowe and Meade and of any further disbursements by them. This agrees with the Dawes articles infra, but the Articles of Grievance refer to a debt of £126.

[700] Fleay, 187; Greg, Henslowe Papers, 87, Henslowe’s Diary, ii. 138.

[701] Cf. p. 240.

[702] Henslowe Papers, 82.

[703] Ibid. 123, from Variorum, xxi. 413; also in Collier, Alleyn Papers, 75. The original, formerly at Dulwich, is now missing.

[704] Henslowe Papers, 72, 79.

[705] I agree with Dr. Greg that the ‘fower’ in Dawes’s articles is probably a mistake for ‘fourteen’.

[706] Bartholomew Fair, v. 3, ‘I thinke, one Taylor, would goe neere to beat all this company, with a hand bound behinde him’.

[707] Ibid. Cokes. Which is your Burbage now?

Lanterne. What meane you by that, Sir?

Cokes. Your best Actor. Your Field?

[708] Murray, ii. 254. This, however, was probably Long’s company; v. infra.

[709] Robert Pallant, one of the company, is noted (Henslowe, ii. 20) as visiting Henslowe on his death-bed.

[710] Variorum, iii. 59.

[711] App. D, No. clviii.

[712] Murray, i. 263; ii. 4. I add Belvoir on 1 March 1614.

[713] Cunningham, xliv.

[714] Murray, ii. 344.

[715] Lawrence, i. 128 (Early French Players in England). One can hardly, I suppose, assume that the Turkish acrobat of 1589–90 (cf. ch. xviii) was a real Turk.

[716] J. A. Lester, Italian Players in Scotland (M. L. N. xxiii. 240), traces histriones, whom he unjustifiably assumes to be actors, and tubicines in 1514–61.

[717] S. P. F. (1569–71), 413.

[718] Nichols, Eliz. i. 302.

[719] Murray, ii. 374.

[720] Feuillerat, Eliz. 225, 227, 458.

[721] Furnivall, Robert Laneham’s Letter, 18.

[722] Cf. App. B.

[723] Smith, 148, makes him then head of the Gelosi, but the authorities she cites do not bear her out.

[724] Baschet, 18, 25, 34, 43; D’Ancona, ii. 455, 457, 459; Rennert, 28, 479.

[725] R. B. M^cKerrow (Nashe, iv. 462) suggests that Tristano may have been ‘that famous Francatrip Harlicken’ represented in the dedication of An Almond for a Parrat (1590) as asking questions at Venice about Kempe. But Francatrippa seems to have been the stage name of Gabriello Panzanini da Bologna of the Gelosi (D’Ancona, ii. 469, 511).

[726] Is this ‘the nimble, tumbling Angelica’ of Marston’s Scourge of Villainy (1598), xi. 101? If so, a later visit may be suspected. Drusiano Martinelli was comedian to the Duke of Mantua, to whose son Angelica had been mistress, in 1595 (D’Ancona, ii. 518).

[727] Baschet, 72, 82, 90, 194, 199; D’Ancona, ii. 464, 479, 504, 518, 523, 526; Smith, 147. The main body of the Gelosi passed about this time under the leadership of Flaminio Scala, fifty of whose scenarii are printed in Il Teatro delle Fauole rappresentatiue (1611).

[728] Cf. ch. xviii as to traces of improvised comedy in England.

[729] G. E. P. Arkwright, Notes on the Ferrabosco Family (Musical Antiquary, iii. 221; iv. 42); G. Livi, The Ferrabosco Family (ibid. iv. 121). I may add that he was evidently the Bolognese groom of the chamber, favoured by the Queen as a musician, who dropped a hint for a Venetian embassy in 1575 (V. P. vii. 524). He left an illegitimate son, Alfonso, in England, who also was a Court musician by 1603, and was succeeded in turn by sons, Alfonso and Henry, in 1627 (Lafontaine, 45, 63).

[730] Feuillerat, Eliz. 159, 160.

[731] Ibid. 160, 301.

[732] Cunningham, 221; cf. D. N. B.; M. L. N. xxii. 2, 129, 201.

[733] Magdalene College, Cambridge, Pepys MS. ii. 663 (cf. _Hist. MSS. Comm. Report_, 190). The letter is endorsed, ‘To Q. Elizabeth: Ubaldino an Italian Musitian I suppose’.

[734] Cf. my letter in T.L.S. for 12 May 1921.

[735] Cf. ch. xiii (Interluders); Mediaeval Stage, ii. 187.

[736] Variorum, iii. 461; cf. Mediaeval Stage, ii. 202.

[737] Cf. p. 272.

[738] E. J. L. Scott in Athenaeum for 21 Jan. 1882. I am sorry to say that Mr. Scott suggests that Shakespeare was of the company.

[739] J. Scott, An Account of Perth, in Sir J. Sinclair, Statistical Account of Scotland, xviii (1796), 522.

[740] J. C. Dibdin, Annals of the Edinburgh Stage (1888), 20, from Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland. A True Accompt of the Baptism of Prince Henry Frederick, printed in 1594 (Somers Tracts, ii. 171), records plays amongst other festivities, but does not say that English actors took part.

[741] Scottish Papers, ii. 676. I suppose that this document is the authority on which P. F. Tytler, Hist. of Scotland, ix. 302, describing the events of 1599, says of Fletcher, ‘He had been there before, in 1594; and on his return to England, had suffered some persecution from his popularity with James’.

[742] D. H. Fleming, St. Andrews Kirk Session Register, ii. 870, ‘Ane Jnglishman haveing desyrit libertie of the session to mak ane publik play in this citie, it was voted and concludit that he suld nocht be permitted to do the samin’.

[743] Calderwood, Historie of the Kirk of Scotland (Wodrow Soc.), v. 765.

[744] Acts of the Privy Council of Scotland, vi. 39, 41. Calderwood seems to have put the whole business a week too late.

[745] Dibdin, 22.

[746] Lee, 83, from S. P. D. Scotland (R. O.), lxv. 64; cf. summary in Scottish Papers, ii. 777, ‘Performances of English players, Fletcher, Martin, and their company, by the King’s permission; enactment of the [Fower] Sessions, and preaching of the ministers against them. The bellows blowers say that they are sent by England to sow dissension between the King and the Kirk’.

[747] Dibdin, 24.

[748] J. Stuart, Extracts from the Council Register of the Burgh of Aberdeen (Spalding Club), ii. xxi, xxii, 222.

[749] Fleay, 136; cf. Furness, Macbeth, 407. Fleay goes so far as to ‘hazard the guess’ that the ‘speciall letter’ of recommendation from James produced at Aberdeen was ‘the identical letter that James wrote to Shakespeare with his own hand’, as recorded by Oldys.

[750] Henslowe, i. 45

[751] App. C, No. lvii.

[752] Sh.-Jahrbuch, xlv. 311, ‘5 Thaler den englischen Spielleuten, so ufm Rathaus ihr Spiel mit Springen und allerlei Kurzweil getrieben’.

[753] The inevitable attempt to show that Shakespeare ‘must’ have been of the party was made by J. Stefansson, Shakespeare at Elsinore, in Contemporary Review, lxix. 20, and disposed of by H. Logeman, Shakespeare te Helsingör in Mélanges Paul Fredericy (1904); cf. Sh.-Jahrbuch, xii. 241.

[754] Fürstenau, 69; Cohn, xxiii; Bolte, Sh.-Jahrbuch, xxiii. 99. Herz, 5, endeavours to show traces of a visit to Danzig by this company.

[755] M. Röchell, Chronik, in J. Janssen, Gesch. des Bisthums Münster (1852), iii. 174; Cohn, cxxxiv (misdated 1599); Sh.-Jahrbuch, xxxvi. 274.

[756] Henslowe Papers, 31. Greg, Henslowe, ii. 8, disposes of the confusion between Robert Browne and Alleyn’s step-father, John Browne.

[757] Cohn, xxxi. There seems nothing to connect the Andreas Röthsch who appeared at Leipzig in July 1591 with Browne, or even to justify the conjecture (Sh.-Jahrbuch, xlv. 311) that he was English.

[758] L. Ph. C. van den Bergh, ’s Gravenhaagsche Bijzonderheden (1857), 51 from Hague Archives; Cohn, xxviii. A letter from R. Jones to Alleyn (Henslowe Papers, 33), often assigned to this date, seems to me probably to belong to 1615: cf. p. 287.

[759] Another Admiral’s passport is printed in Rye, 47.

[760] G. van Hasselt, Arnhemsche Oudheden, i (1803), 244, naming Robert Bruyn, Johan Bradsdret, Thomas Saxwiell, Richardus Jonas, and Everhart Sauss.

[761] Bolte in Sh.-Jahrbuch, xxxiii. 104.

[762] Mentzel, 23.

[763] Cf. vol. i, p. 343.

[764] Sh.-Jahrbuch, xxi. 247.

[765] Archiv, xiv. 116.

[766] Mentzel, 25.

[767] Henslowe, i. 29.

[768] Cohn, xxxiii, xxxviii; Goedeke, ii. 519; Herz, 8. A conventional clown, variously called ‘Jahn Clam’, ‘Jahn Posset’, ‘Jahn der Engelländische Narr’, &c., also appears in plays, from 1596 onwards, by Jacob Ayrer of Nuremberg, who has other debts, including the ‘jig’, to the English players (Cohn, lxi; Goedeke, ii. 545).

[769] Sh.-Jahrbuch, xxiii. 103.

[770] Archiv, xii. 320; xiii. 316; xiv. 118; xv. 115; Mentzel, 26, 37. Herz, 34, points out that about this date the Duke of Brunswick’s Ehebrecherin and Vincentius Ladislaus were played in Frankfort, probably by these men. They are referred to at length by Marx Mangoldt, Markschiffs-Nachen (1597), in a passage beginning:

Da war nun weiter mein Intent, Zu sehen das Englische Spiel, Dauon ich hab gehört so viel. Wie der Narr drinnen, Jan genennt, Mit Bossen wer so excellent.

Herz, 34, also assigns to the company anonymous appearances at Ulm, Munich, and Tübingen in 1597 (Archiv, xii. 319; xiii. 316; xv. 212).

[771] Cohn, xxxiv.

[772] Cf. p. 279.

[773] Cohn, xxxiv.

[774] Herz, 37; T. Coryat, Crudities, ii. 291. Cf. also Ein Discurss von der Frankfurter Messe (1615):

Der Narr macht lachen, doch ich weht, --Da ist keiner so gut wie Jahn begeht-- Vor dieser Zeitt wol hat gethan, Jetzt ist er ein reicher Handelsmann.

[775] Cohn, xxxiv; Sh.-Jahrbuch, xl. 342.

[776] Henslowe Papers, 37.

[777] Cohn, xviii, lvii; Goedeke, ii. 522; Duncker, Landgrave Moritz von Hessen und die Englischen Komödianten in Deutsche Rundschau, xlviii. 260.

[778] Sh.-Jahrbuch, xiv. 361.

[779] Cohn, lviii; Herz, 13.

[780] Könnecke in Z. f. vergleichende Litteralurgeschichte, N. F. i. 85.

[781] Hatfield MSS. v. 174. Browne was also the agent for a similar transaction licensed on 11 July 1597 (S. P. D. Eliz. cclxiv).

[782] Archiv, xiv. 117; xv. 114.

[783] Rommel, vi. 390, from Cassel archives, ‘Robert Brown und John Wobster begleiteten ihn’. The payment therefore on behalf of the Admiral’s men about Oct. 1596 ‘to feache Browne’ (Henslowe, i. 45) is not very likely to refer to Robert.

[784] Cohn, lviii; Duncker, 265.

[785] Mentzel, 41.

[786] Archiv, xv. 115. Herz, 17, assigns to them, conjecturally, performances by ‘Englishmen’ at Memmingen, Cologne, Munich, Ulm, and Stuttgart during 1600. But the wording of the Strassburg documents suggests a continuous stay.

[787] On 21 Oct. 1603 Joan Alleyn wrote to Edward Alleyn (Henslowe Papers, 59), ‘All the companyes be come hoame & well for ought we knowe, but that Browne of the Boares head is dead & dyed very pore, he went not into the countrye at all’. Obviously this is not Robert Browne, who lived many years longer. But it may have been a relative, as Lord Derby’s men are very likely to have preceded Worcester’s at the Boar’s Head. There was at least one other actor of the name, Edward Browne, and possibly more (cf. ch. xv).

[788] Mentzel, 46.

[789] Mentzel, 45, 48; Archiv, xiv. 119. A performance at Dresden in Oct. 1600, assigned to them by Herz, 38, is anonymous.

[790] Mentzel, 48.

[791] Duncker, 267, from chronicle of Wilhelm Buch, ‘Anno 1602 hat er die Engländer alle mit einander von sich gejagt und des springens und tanzens müde geworden’.

[792] Mentzel, 50.

[793] Mentzel, 51; Bolte, Das Danziger Theater, 34.

[794] Archiv, xv. 117.

[795] Mentzel, 52.

[796] Mentzel, 50; Archiv, xiv. 122.

[797] The Frankfort archives call them ‘Thomas Blackreude’ and ‘Johannes Fheer’, which has prevented their identity with Worcester’s men from being noticed.

[798] Mentzel, 51.

[799] Mentzel, 53; Archiv, xv. 117. Herz, 18, assigns to Browne anonymous appearances by Englishmen at Strassburg in June 1601, Ulm in Nov. 1602, Nördlingen in May 1605, and Ulm in May and June 1605. At Nördlingen a play from the prophet Jonah, possibly Greene and Lodge’s Looking Glass for London and England, was given.

[800] Archiv, xv. 120. Coryat, ii. 183, saw him at Strassburg in 1608.

[801] Mentzel, 53; Meissner in Sh.-Jahrbuch, xix. 125; Archiv, xiii. 320; Duncker, 268. The Ottonium was named after Maurice’s son Otto, the friend of Prince Henry Frederick, who paid a visit to England in 1611 (Rye, 141).

[802] Archiv, xiv. 124.

[803] Cohn, lviii; R. P. Wülcker in Sh.-Jahrbuch, xiv. 360.

[804] Mentzel, 53.

[805] Henslowe Papers, 63.

[806] Bolte, 35.

[807] This might be Heywood’s King Edward IV.

[808] F. von Hurter, Gesch. Kaiser Ferdinands II, v. 395.

[809] The Proud Woman of Antwerp might be the lost piece by Day and Haughton.

[810] Meissner, 74, and in Sh.-Jahrbuch, xix. 128; cf. pp. 284–6. The text of Nobody and Somebody is printed from a manuscript at Rein by F. Bischoff in Mittheilungen des hist. Vereins für Steiermark, xlvii. 127. I think it is just possible that the companies of 1608 and 1617 may have been Spencer’s. There seem to have been Saxoni, as well as Angli, playing. These do not seem to have constituted a distinct company, and are perhaps more likely to have been with Spencer than with Green. Spencer, as well as Green, was in relations with the imperial court in 1617; cf. p. 290. But I think that the evidence of the Rein manuscript is fairly decisive in favour of Green.

[811] This may have been Green himself. A drawing of a red-haired actor, in the traditional get-up of Nobody, is on the Rein manuscript.

[812] Mentzel, 54, 55, 56, 58.

[813] Archiv, xiv. 125; xv. 215. Herz, 41, ascribes to them anonymous appearances at Ulm, Nördlingen, and Augsburg. John Price, afterwards well known as a musician at Dresden and Stuttgart, is said to be recorded at Stuttgart in 1609 (Cohn, cxxxviii), and may have been with the Hessian company.

[814] Cohn, lix; Duncker, 272.

[815] Meissner, 46; Duncker, 272. Herz, 41, ascribes to them anonymous appearances at the wedding of the Margrave John George, brother of the Elector of Brandenburg, and the Princess Christina of Saxony at Jägerndorf in July, and at Nuremberg and Ulm in November.

[816] Cohn, lix, without reference. Herz, 41, adds an anonymous performance of The Merchant of Venice at the Court of Margrave Christian of Brandenburg at Halle.

[817] Archiv, xiv. 126.

[818] Duncker, 273.

[819] Archiv, xiii. 319. If this is the company which, according to Alvensleben, Allgemeine Theaterchronik (1832), No. 158, played Daniel, The Chaste Susanna, and The Two Judges in Israel at Ulm in 1602, the identification with the company found at Nördlingen and Rothenburg is assisted.

[820] Cohn, lxxvii, from Erhard Cellius, Eques Auratus Anglo-Wirtembergicus (1605); cf. Rye, cvii.

[821] Archiv, xi. 625; xiii. 70. They also played Daniel in the Lions’ Den, Susanna (? by Henry Julius of Brunswick or another version), The Prodigal Son, A Disobedient Merchant’s Son (? The London Prodigal), Charles Duke of Burgundy, Annabella a Duke’s Daughter of Ferrara (? Marston’s Parasitaster), Botzarius an Ancient Roman, and Vincentius Ladislaus (? by Henry Julius of Brunswick). Three of these plays (Romeo and Juliet, The Prodigal Son, and Annabella) are in the repertories of John Green; cf. p. 285.

[822] Archiv, xiv. 122.

[823] Zeitschrift für vergleichende Litteraturgeschichte, N. F. vii. 61. They played in 1604 Daniel in the Lions’ Den, Melone of Dalmatia, Lewis King of Spain, Celinde and Sedea, Pyramus and Thisbe, Annabella a Duke’s Daughter of Montferrat; and in 1606 Charles Duke of Burgundy, Susanna, The Prodigal Son, A Disobedient Merchant’s Son, An Ancient Roman, Vincentius Ladislaus. The Nördlingen and Rothenburg companies must be the same. Celinde and Sedea, however, is found in a repertory, not of Green, but of Spencer; cf. p. 289.

[824] Herz, 42, 65.

[825] A. van Sorgen, De Tooneelspeelkunst in Utrecht.

[826] Bolte, 41, 47. Herz, 27, conjectures that these may have been the English players at Wolfenbüttel in May 1615; cf. p. 277.

[827] Schlager, 168; Meissner in Sh.-Jahrbuch, xix. 139.

[828] Cohn, xciii; cf. p. 282 as to the inference that Green was at Gräz in 1607–8.

[829] Archiv, xiv. 129.

[830] Archiv, xv. 120.

[831] Mentzel, 60.

[832] Bolte, 51.

[833] Herz, 22, from Wolter, 97.

[834] Mentzel, 61; Meissner, 65.

[835] Archiv, xiv. 130; Mentzel, 61.

[836] Herz, 30, from Wolter, 97; A. van Sorgen, De Tooneelspeelkunst in Utrecht.

[837] Herz, 30.

[838] Goedeke, ii. 543, could find no copy of Musarum Aoniarum tertia Erato (Hamburg, 1611), the title-page of which claims ‘etlichen Englischen Comedien’ as a source.

[839] The last two plays have some kind of relation to Shakespeare’s Two Gentlemen of Verona and Titus Andronicus. Sidonia and Theagenes is a prose version of Gabriel Rollenhagen’s Amantes Amentes (1609). A supplement to the 1620 collection, with six other plays and two jigs, appeared as Liebeskampff oder Ander Theil der Englischen Comödien und Tragödien (1630), but none of these are traceable before the Thirty Years’ War.

[840] Cf. pp. 279, 281, 283. The Dresden list is in Cohn, cxv.

[841] Played at Nördlingen in 1604. Cohn, 309, prints a German version from a Vienna manuscript.

[842] Possibly Heywood’s The Silver Age.

[843] Green played at Gräz in 1608 ‘Von ein Herzog von Florenz der sich in eines Edelmann’s Tochter verliebt hat’. This seems too early for Massinger’s Great Duke of Florence, but suggests the same story.

[844] Possibly 1 Jeronimo.

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