IV. THE PLAY-HOUSES (part 2 of 2)
[845] Possibly Dekker’s Patient Grissel.
[846] Played at Nördlingen and Rothenburg in 1604. Bolte, 177, prints from a Danzig manuscript a later German version based on Marston’s Parasitaster.
[847] Played by Green at Gräz in 1608, in a version extant in a Rein manuscript; a later one is in the 1620 collection. Cf. p. 282.
[848] Possibly Clyomon and Clamydes.
[849] Cohn, 236, prints a German version from a late copy.
[850] Possibly Robert Greene’s play.
[851] Played by Browne at Cassel in 1607; a text is in the 1620 collection.
[852] Probably Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy, played by Browne at Frankfort in 1601.
[853] Printed in the 1620 collection.
[854] Probably Dekker’s Virgin Martyr.
[855] Played by Green at Gräz in 1608.
[856] Possibly Robert Greene’s Alphonsus, King of Arragon or Mucedorus.
[857] Played by Green at Gräz in 1608. A version, related to Dekker’s Old Fortunatus, is in the 1620 collection.
[858] Played by an anonymous company at Halle in 1611; cf. p. 283. The Jew, played by Green at Passau and Gräz in 1607–8, might be either this play or The Jew of Malta. Dekker wrote a Jew of Venice, now lost; but a German version, printed by Meissner, 131, from a Vienna manuscript, is in part based on The Merchant of Venice.
[859] Could this be The Winter’s Tale?
[860] Green played The King of Cyprus and Duke of Venice at Gräz in 1608.
[861] Played at Nördlingen in 1604 and Rothenburg in 1606 and by Green at Passau and Gräz in 1607–8. A version is in the 1620 collection.
[862] Green played Dives and Lazarus at Gräz in 1608.
[863] Fleay, Sh. 307.
[864] Henslowe Papers, 33.
[865] Ibid. 94.
[866] Cf. ch. xvi, introd.
[867] C. F. Meyer in Sh.-Jahrbuch, xxxviii. 208.
[868] D. N. B. s.v. Giles Farnaby.
[869] Cf. pp. 279, 283.
[870] Cohn, lxxviii.
[871] Fürstenau, i. 76.
[872] Cf. p. 282. Herz, 44, identifies them with ‘English’ at The Hague (June 1606), Cologne (Feb. 1607), The Hague (April), Ulm (May), Nördlingen (June), and Munich (July).
[873] Wolter, 93.
[874] L. Schneider, Geschichte der Oper in Berlin, Beilage, lxx. 25; Fürstenau, i. 77.
[875] Cf. p. 283.
[876] Cohn, lxxxiv.
[877] Ibid. lxxxvii.
[878] Archiv, xiv. 128. Philole and Mariana may be Lewis Machin’s The Dumb Knight, and The Turk Mason’s play of that name. Celinde and Sedea had formed part of a repertory at Rothenburg in 1604 apparently related to those of Green; cf. p. 284. Spencer is not recorded to have played any other piece found in Green’s repertories.
[879] Archiv, xii. 320; xiv. 128.
[880] Schlager, 168; Elze in Sh.-Jahrbuch, xiv. 362; Meissner, 53, and in Sh.-Jahrbuch, xix. 120.
[881] Archiv, xiv. 129; Zeitschrift für vergl. Litt. vii. 64; Mentzel, 58.
[882] Archiv, xv. 118.
[883] Ibid. xii. 320; xiii. 322.
[884] Ibid. xv. 119.
[885] Ibid. xv. 215; cf. Herz, 48.
[886] Wolter, 96; Cohn in Sh.-Jahrbuch, xxi. 260; Cohn, xci, from Harl. MS. 3888, The Evangelic Fruict of the Seraphicall Franciscan Order.
[887] Archiv, xv. 119.
[888] Mentzel, 59.
[889] Cohn in Sh.-Jahrbuch, xxi. 261; Wolter, 96.
[890] Meissner, 59, and in Sh.-Jahrbuch, xix. 122.
[891] Cohn, lxxxviii.
[892] Ibid. lxxxiii; Mentzel, 54.
[893] Cohn in Sh.-Jahrbuch, xxi. 257; Wolter, 95.
[894] Archiv, xiv. 124; Mentzel, 54; Schlager, 168; Herz, 53.
[895] Cohn, xxxv; Bolte, 41.
[896] Cohn, xcii.
[897] Bolte, 51.
[898] Cohn, xcii; Meissner, 38, and in Sh.-Jahrbuch, xix. 122.
[899] Cf. pp. 275, 285.
[900] Archiv, xiv. 131.
[901] Ibid., xiii. 316; xiv. 116; Heywood, 60.
[902] Mentzel, 55. H. Chardon, La Troupe du Roman comique, 32, notices Maurice of Nassau’s company at Nantes in 1618 and Paris in 1625, but does not say that they were English.
[903] Archiv, xiii. 317; xiv. 121.
[904] Cohn, lxxvii.
[905] Sh.-Jahrbuch, xlv. 311.
[906] Cohn in Sh.-Jahrbuch, xxi. 253.
[907] Cf. p. 273.
[908] Pellicer, i. 80, citing the records of the Madrid hospital, ‘en 11 de Enero de 1583 voltearon unos ingleses en el Corral de la Pacheca’. The original record is probably lost, as it is not with those of 1579–82, 1590, and 1601–2 published from the Archivo de la Diputacion provincial de Madrid by C. Pérez Pastor in the Bulletin Hispanique (1906) and reprinted by Rennert, 345.
[909] E. Soulié, Recherches sur Molière, 153; cf. Rigal, 46; Jusserand, Shakespeare in France, 51.
[910] Henslowe, i. 114.
[911] Soulié et de Barthélemy, Journal de Jean Héroard, i. 88, 91, 92.
[912] H. C. Coote in Intermédiaire des Chercheurs et Curieux, ii. 105; cf. 5 N. Q. ix. 42. The idea was that ‘Tiph, toph’ represented a reminiscence of 2 Henry IV, II. i. 205, ‘This is the right fencing grace, my lord; tap for tap, and so part fair’. The phrase ‘tiff toff’ occurs in brackets in a speech of Crapula while he beats Mendacio in Lingua (Dodsley,^4 ix. 434). Collier explains it as hiccups; Fleay, ii. 261, on the authority of P. A. Daniel, as an Italian term for the thwack of stage blows.
[913] E. Fournier, Chansons de Gaultier Garguille, lix, and L’Espagne et ses Comédiens en France au xvii^e Siècle (Revue des Provinces, iv. 496), cites H. Ternaux in Revue Françoise et Étrangère, i. 78, for statements that the head of the English at Fontainebleau was Ganassa, who in Spain had had a mixed company of English, Italians, and Spanish, and on 11 Jan. 1583 had a share in the receipts of a troupe of English volteadores. I have not been able to see the work of M. Ternaux, who does not inspire confidence by calling Ganassa Juan instead of Alberto. There seems to be nothing to connect Ganassa with the volteadores of 1583, except the fact that the Corral de la Pacheca where they played was leased to him for nine or ten years in 1574 (Rennert, 29), and they may therefore have paid him rent. His troupe in 1581–2, as given by Rennert, 479, consisted entirely of Italians, with two Spanish musicians. He is said to have been in Spain in 1603 (Pellicer, i. 57, 72; Rennert, 30), but there is nothing to show that, if so, he went on to France. But Héroard tells us that there was a Spanish rope-dancer at Fontainebleau in 1604, and a very obscure passage in his diary suggests that this Spaniard was really an Irishman. Irish marauders (voleurs) were then giving trouble in Paris, which led Louis to say ‘Ce voleur qui voloit sur la corde étoit Irlandois?’ and Héroard comments, ‘Il étoit vrai; il accommoda le mot de voleur à l’autre signification, il l’avoit vu voler à Fontainebleau’ (Journal, i. 90, 126).
[914] F. Bischoff in Mittheilungen des hist. Vereins für Steiermark, xlvii. 127; cf. p. 282.
[915] De Bry, India Orientalis (1613), xii. 137, ‘Angli ludiones per Germaniam et Galliam vagantur’.
[916] Alleyn’s life is more fully dealt with than is here possible in G. F. Warner and F. Bickley, Catalogue of Dulwich MSS. (1881, 1903); G. F. Warner in D. N. B. (1885); W. Young, History of Dulwich College (1889); W. W. Greg, Henslowe Papers (1907), Henslowe’s Diary, vol. ii (1908). An earlier treatment of the material is that by J. P. Collier, Memoirs of Edward Alleyn (1841), Alleyn Papers (1843). On an account by G. Steevens in Theatrical Review (1763) with a forged letter from Peele to Marlowe, cf. Lee, 646.
[917] Dulwich Muniments, 106.
[918] Cf. ch. xiv.
[919] Henslowe Papers, 34, from Dulwich MSS., i. 9–15; Edward to Joan Alleyn, 2 May 1593; Henslowe to Edward Alleyn, 5 July 1593; Edward to Joan Alleyn, 1 August 1593; Henslowe to Edward Alleyn, c. August 1593; Henslowe to Edward Alleyn, 14 August 1593; Henslowe to Edward Alleyn, 28 September 1593; John Pyk (Alleyn’s ‘boy’) to Joan Alleyn, c. 1593. Later letters of 4 June and 26 September 1598 from Henslowe to Edward Alleyn and of 21 October 1603 from Joan to Edward Alleyn are in Henslowe Papers, 47, 59, 97.
[920] Works, i. 215, 296.
[921] Henslowe Papers, 32. The verses on the same theme in Collier, Memoirs, 13, are forged.
[922] Dekker, Plays, i. 280.
[923] Epigrammes (1599), iv. 23:
In Ed: Allen.
Rome had her Roscius and her Theater, Her Terence, Plautus,Ennius and Me[n]ander, The first to Allen, Phoebus did transfer The next, Thames Swans receiu’d fore he coulde land her, Of both more worthy we by Phoebus doome, Then t’ Allen Roscius yeeld, to London Rome.
[924] Heywood, Apology, 43.
[925] Fuller, Worthies (ed. 1840), ii. 385.
[926] S. Rowland, Knave of Clubs (1609), 29:
The gull gets on a surplis With a crosse upon his breast, Like Allen playing Faustus, In that manner he was drest.
[927] Heywood, Epistle to The Jew of Malta (1633), ‘the part of the Jew presented by so vnimitable an Actor as M^r Allin’; and Prologue,
And He, then by the best of Actors [in margin ‘Allin’] play’d: ... in Tamberlaine, This Jew, with others many, th’ other wan The Attribute of peerelesse, being a man Whom we may ranke with (doing no one wrong) Proteus for shapes, and Roscius for a tongue, So could he speake, so vary.
[928] E. Guilpin, Skialetheia (1598), Epig. xliii,
Clodius me thinks lookes passing big of late, With Dunston’s browes, and Allens Cutlacks gate.
[929] Henslowe Papers, 155.
[930] For this myth, cf. ch. xxiii, s.v. Marlowe.
[931] Tarlton, 22, ‘How Tarlton made Armin his adopted sonne, to succeed him’. The earliest extant edition of Tarlton’s Jests is that of 1611, but the Second Part, here quoted, was entered in S. R. on 4 Aug. 1600.
[932] Extract in Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 321; the unique copy of this edition is described in his Calendar of Shakespeare Rarities (1887), 145.
[933] Reprinted in the Shakespeare Society’s Fools and Jesters (1842).
[934] Variorum, iii. 159, 241, 242; M. S. C. i. 345.
[935] Jeaffreson, ii. 107, 110, 114, 120, 128, 220.
[936] Harleian Soc. Registers, ix. 62; xvii. 131.
[937] Collier, Actors, xxxi.
[938] M. S. C. i. 344.
[939] McKerrow, Nashe, i. 255.
[940] Collier, iii. 364.
[941] The biographical material collected by C. C. Stopes, Burbage and Shakespeare’s Stage (1913), is supplemented by the lawsuit records in C. W. Wallace, The First London Theatre, Materials for a History (1913, Nebraska University Studies, xiii. 1).
[942] Variorum, iii. 199, 476; Collier, iii. 367; P. C. Carter, Hist. of St. Mary Aldermanbury, 9, 11, 21, 58, 86, 87.
[943] Variorum, iii. 200, from P. C. C.; Collier, iii. 376.
[944] Collier, iii. 376, 380.
[945] Varioram, iii. 211.
[946] Henslowe Papers, 61.
[947] Collier, iii. 406; Rendle, Bankside, xxvi.
[948] Variorum, iii. 482, from P. C. C.; Collier, iii. 409.
[949] Collier, iii. 389.
[950] H. R. Plomer in 10 N. Q. vi. 368, from London Archdeaconry Wills, vi, f. 22.
[951] Heywood, Apology, 43.
[952] Fleay, 190; cf. The Sharers Papers.
[953] Collier, iii. 457; Rendle, Bankside, xxvi.
[954] K. B. P. i. 104, ‘Were you neuer none of Mr. Monkesters schollars?’
[955] Collier, iii. 411.
[956] Fleay, 85; Greg, Henslowe Papers, 133.
[957] Collier, iii. 473; Rendle, Bankside, xxvii.
[958] Variorum, iii. 472; Chester, London Marriage Licenses.
[959] Variorum, iii. 187.
[960] Ibid. 188.
[961] Ibid. 187.
[962] Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 31.
[963] Variorum, iii. 198, 475; Collier, iii. 308; P. C. Carter, _St. Mary, Aldermanbury_, 11, 58, 86, 87. Malone misread Beavis as Beatrice. An earlier John (1598) and a Swynnerton (1613) died as infants.
[964] Variorum, iii. 191.
[965] D. N. B. s.v.; Wood, Athenae, iii. 277.
[966] O. v. H. 16; cf. C. W. Wallace, in The Times for 2 and 4 Oct. 1909.
[967] N. U. S. x. 311.
[968] Kemps Nine Daies Wonder. Performed in a Daunce from London to Norwich (1600) is reprinted with a biography by A. Dyce (1840, Camden Soc.) and in Arber, English Garner^2, ii (Social England), 139, and E. Goldsmid, Collectanea Adamantea, ii (1884). Dissertations are J. Bruce, Who was ‘Will, my Lord of Leycester’s Jesting Player’? (1844, Sh. Soc. Papers, i. 88); B. Nicholson, Kemp and the Play of Hamlet (N. S. S. Trans. 1880–6, 57); Will Kemp (1887, Sh.-Jahrbuch, xxii. 255).
[969] Collier, iii. 391.
[970] Ibid. 395.
[971] Ibid. 396.
[972] Ibid. 397; Bodl.; Rendle, Bankside, xxvi.
[973] Norman, 91.
[974] For further details of his later career, cf. Collier and D. N. B.
[975] Downes, 24.
[976] Wright, 10.
[977] Variorum, iii. 211; Collier, iii. 403.
[978] Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 317.
[979] Collier, iii. 423.
[980] Henslowe, ii. 302; Henslowe Papers, 36, 41.
[981] Collier, iii. 322, 325; Rendle, Bankside, xxv.
[982] Variorum, iii. 470.
[983] S. Lee in Nineteenth Century for May 1906, quoting a manuscript by Smith in private hands, with the title A Brief Discourse of y^e causes of Discord amongst y^e Officers of arms and of the great abuses and absurdities comitted by painters to the great prejudice and hindrance of the same office. Northampton did not get his title until 1604.
[984] Collier, iii. 323.
[985] N. U. S. x. 308, 312; cf. ch. xvi (Globe).
[986] Henslowe, i. 72.
[987] Variorum, iii. 506; Collier, iii. 363.
[988] Collier, iii. 358; Rendle, Bankside, xxvi.
[989] Henslowe, i. 178; ii. 303.
[990] Cf. s.v. Phillips.
[991] Collier, iii. 488; J. 348; Bodl.
[992] Variorum, iii. 514; P. Cunningham in Sh. Soc. Papers, ii. 11; Collier, iii. 478.
[993] Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 314.
[994] Collier, iii. 482; Rendle, Bankside, xxvi.
[995] Collier, iii. 483.
[996] App. I (ii).
[997] Collier, iii. 481.
[998] Henslowe, i. 29.
[999] Henslowe Papers, 120.
[1000] Collier, iii. 381.
[1001] Variorum, iii. 477; Collier, iii. 385.
[1002] N. U. S. x. 317; O. v. H. 32.
[1003] J. O. Halliwell, Tarlton’s Jests ... With ... some Account of the Life of Tarlton (1844, Sh. Soc.; the Jests are reprinted with a few additions in Hazlitt, Jest-Books, ii. 189) and Papers respecting Disputes which arose from Incidents at the Death-bed of Richard Tarlton, the Actor (1866).
[1004] Collier, iii. 460; Rendle, Bankside, xxvi.
[1005] C. W. Wallace, Globe Theatre Apparel (1909).
[1006] M. L. Review, iv. 395, from Hist. MSS. iv. 299.
[1007] Downes, 21.
[1008] Wright, Hist. Hist. 405.
[1009] S. P. D. 1637–8, p. 99.
[1010] Cunningham, l.; Variorum, iii. 238.
[1011] Cunningham, l.; Wright, Hist. Hist. 411.
[1012] Variorum, iii. 484, from P. C. C.
[1013] Collier, iii. 447.
[1014] Henslowe, i. 152; Henslowe Papers, 61.
[1015] Collier, iii. 451.
[1016] Variorum, iii. 214.
[1017] Collier, iii. 443.
[1018] Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 313.
[1019] Mediaeval Stage, i. 383; ii. 184, 190, 380. It is, of course, doubtful whether the ‘theatrum nostrae civitatis’ at Exeter was permanent.
[1020] Ordish, 12, attempts to affiliate the ring type of baiting-place and theatre to Roman amphitheatres, Cornish ‘rounds’, and other circular places used for mediaeval entertainments. But a ring is so obviously the form in which the maximum number of spectators can see an object of interest, that too much stress must not be laid upon it as an evidence of folk ‘tradition’.
[1021] Cf. ch. xviii.
[1022] Mediaeval Stage, ii. 221.
[1023] G. Fothergill in 10 N. Q. vi. 287, from Guildhall MS. 1454, roll 70, ‘And wyth 22^s 2^d for money by them receyved for the hyer of Tryntie Halle for playes, the warmanthe [ward-moot] inquest and other assemblyes within the time of this accompt’.
[1024] Cf. ch. xxiii, s.v. Vennar.
[1025] Several galleried inns are illustrated in W. Rendle and P. Norman, The Inns of Old Southwark (1888), and by Ordish, 119 (Tabard), Baker, 200 (Four Swans), Adams, 4 (White Hart). Probably, however, none of these are pre-Restoration. The only ones still extant are the George in Southwark and a much later one in Theobalds Road (V. H. Surrey, iv. 128).
[1026] Mediaeval Stage, ii. 190, 223.
[1027] Cf. ch. ix.
[1028] Flecknoe tells us c. 1664 (App. I) that the actors, ‘about the beginning of Queen Elizabeth’s reign ... set up Theaters, first in the City (as in the Inn-yards of the Cross-Keyes, and Bull in Grace and Bishops-Gate Street at this day is to be seen)’.
[1029] Cf. App. C, No. xvii.
[1030] App. C, Nos. xv, xvii; App. D, No. xxii.
[1031] Cf. s.v. Hope.
[1032] K. D. Hassler, Die Reisen des Samuel Kiechel (1866) 29, ‘Werden auch täglichen commedien gehalten, sonderlichen ist lustig zu zusehen, wann der Königen comedianten agiren, aber einem frembden, der düe sprach nicht kan, verdrüslich, das ers nicht verstöth; es hat öttliche sonderbare heüser, wölche dozu gemacht sein, das ettwann drey genng ob ein ander sein, derowegen stöts ein grosse menge volckhs dohin kompt, solcher kurzweil zuzusehen. Es begibt sich wol, das süe uf einmal 50 in 60 dalr ufhöben; sonderlichen wann süe was neyes agiren, so zuvor nicht gehalten worden, mues mann doppelt gelt gebenn, und wehrt solchs vast alle tag durch düe wochen, onangesehen es freytag wüe auch samstags zu halten verbotten, würt es doch nicht gehalten.’ Cf. Rye, 87. Kiechel appears to have been in London from 12 Sept. to about 29 Oct. and from 14 to 17 Nov. 1585.
[1033] Lambarde, Perambulation of Kent (1596), 233. The passage is not in the first edition of 1576.
[1034] Mediaeval Stage, ii. 222; cf. ch. xiii (Oxford’s).
[1035] P. 2. Malone, in Variorum, iii. 46, refers the event to a date soon after 1580; but there is no justification for this in the text.
[1036] Cf. p. 477.
[1037] Rye, 216, from Itinerarium in Beckmann, Accessions Historiae Anhaltinae (1716), 165:
‘Hier besieht man vier spielhäuser, Darinnen man fürstelt die Fürsten, Könge, Keyser, In rechter lebens gröss, in schöner kleider pracht, Es wird der thaten auch, wie sie geschehn, gedacht.’
[1038] Text by H. B. Wheatley, On a Contemporary Drawing of the Interior of the Swan Theatre, 1596 (N. S. S. Trans. 1887–92, 215), from Utrecht Univ. Library MS. Var. 355, ff. 131^v, 132, with facsimile reproduction of drawing. The passage was first made known by K. T. Gaedertz, Zur Kenntniss der altenglischen Bühne (1888). The reproduction of the drawing published by Gaedertz and further reproduced from him in many modern books is not an exact facsimile; the only material difference is that the engraver has made the figure at the door of the loft rather more obviously a man than it is in the original. Letters of the early part of the seventeenth century from de Witt to Buchell, who was his fellow-student at Leyden in 1583, are also in the Utrecht Library (Gaedertz, 57). The last sentence of the passage appears from ‘narrabat’ to be a report by Buchell either of something not directly copied by him or of de Witt’s conversation; but the rest is pretty clearly from ‘ea quae alio loco a me notata sunt’ a verbatim extract from a manuscript of de Witt’s own. If so, ‘adpinxi’ further shows that the eye-witness of de Witt and not the imagination of Buchell is the source of the drawing. Gaedertz, 63, indeed suggests that the drawing is an original given by de Witt to Buchell, but as Wheatley, 219, points out, this is impossible, as the paper is the same as that used in the rest of the volume. There remains the question of date. De Witt is traceable at Amsterdam in Nov. 1594, at Utrecht in the winters of 1595 and 1596, and in 1599, and at Amsterdam again in March 1604 (Gaedertz, 58). His visit to London obviously falls between Nov. 1594, when the Swan was still only an intention, and Dec. 1598, when the Theatre was pulled down. Gaedertz, 55, puts it in the summer of 1596, largely because Shakespeare, whom he thinks de Witt would certainly have mentioned if he had met him, may have been in Stratford about that time. This is hopeless. Nor does the further suggestion of Gaedertz that a lameness from which de Witt was suffering in Dec. 1596 was due to his travels carry much conviction. But he is not likely, before that year, to have appended the words ‘A^o. 1596’ to his notice of Sir John Burgh’s tomb. If this is intended to be the date, not of his visit, but of the tomb, it is an error. Camden, Reges ... in Ecclesia ... West-monasterii sepulti (1600), gives the final words of the inscription as ‘G. B. A. M. P. anno Dom. 1595’, and although the tomb itself has disappeared since 1868 and some modern guides date it 1594 or 1598, Camden is confirmed by J. C[rull], Antiquities of Westminster (1711), 198. Burgh’s death, also given on the monument, was 7 March ‘1594’. On the whole 1596 is the most probable date for de Witt’s visit. Arend van Buchell was himself a traveller, and his Diarium has been edited (1907) by G. Brom and L. A. van Langeraad. But he did not visit England.
[1039] The emendation is due to Wallace (E. S. xliii. 356). Adams, 168, suggests that ‘cijn’ is Flemish for ‘swan’, but the dictionary gives ‘zwaen’, which is perhaps what de Witt wrote.
[1040] Cf. plan of the manor in Rendle, Bankside, i.
[1041] Cf. p. 456.
[1042] Hentzner, 196.
[1043] Survey (ed. Kingsford), i. 93. In 1603 the words ‘as the Theater, the Curtine, &c.’ are omitted from the body of the passage.
[1044] Survey, ii. 73. This passage was omitted altogether in 1603. The early draft in Harl. MS. 538 (Kingsford, ii. 369) runs, ‘Neare adjoyning are builded two houses for the shewe of Activities, Comedies, tragedies and histories, for recreation. The one of them is named the Curtayn in Holy Well, the other the Theatre.’
[1045] G. Binz in Anglia, xxii. 456 (from Platter’s narrative written in 1604–5 of his travels in 1595–1600, now in the Basle University Library): ‘Den 21 Septembris nach dem Imbissessen, etwan umb zwey vhren, bin ich mitt meiner geselschaft [:v]ber dz wasser gefahren, haben in dem streüwinen Dachhaus die Tragedy vom ersten Keyser Julio Caesare mitt ohngefahr 15 personen sehen gar artlich agieren; zu endt der Comedien dantzeten sie ihrem gebrauch nach gar [:v]berausz zierlich, ye zwen in mannes vndt 2 in weiber kleideren angethan, wunderbahrlich mitt einanderen.
Auf ein andere Zeitt hab ich nicht weit von unserem wirdtshaus in der Vorstadt, meines behaltens an der Bischofsgeet, auch nach essens ein Comoedien gesehen, da presentierten sie allerhandt nationen, mit welchen yeder zeit ein Engellender vmb ein tochter kempfete, vndt vberwandt er sie alle, aussgenommen den teütschen, der gewan die tochter mitt kempfen, satzet sich neben sie, trank ihme deszwegen mit seinem diener ein starken rausch, also dasz sie beyde beweinet wurden, vndt warfe der diener seinem Herren den schu an kopf, vnndt entschliefen beyde. Hiezwischen stige der engellender in die Zelten, vnndt entfuhret dem teütschen sein gewin, also [:v]berlistet er den teütschen auch. Zu endt dantzeten sie auch auf Englisch vnndt Irlendisch gar zierlich vnndt werden also alle tag vmb 2 vhren nach mittag in der stadt London zwo biszweilen auch drey Comedien an vnderscheidenen örteren gehalten, damitt einer den anderen lustig mache, dann welche sich am besten verhalten, die haben auch zum meisten Zuhörer. Die örter sindt dergestalt erbauwen, dasz sie auf einer erhöchten brüge spilen, vnndt yederman alles woll sehen kan. Yedoch sindt vnderscheidene gäng vnndt ständt da man lustiger vnndt basz sitzet, bezahlet auch deszwegen mehr. Dann welcher vnden gleich stehn beleibt, bezahlt nur 1 Englischen pfenning, so er aber sitzen will, lasset man ihn noch zu einer thür hinein, da gibt er noch 1^d, begeret er aber am lustigesten ort auf kissen ze sitzen, da er nicht allein alles woll sihet, sondern auch gesehen kan werden, so gibt er bey einer anderen thüren noch 1 Englischen pfenning. Vnndt tragt man in wehrender Comedy zu essen vndt zu trinken vnder den Leüten herumb, mag einer vmb sein gelt sich also auch erlaben.
Die Comedienspiler sindt beim allerköstlichsten vnndt zierlichsten bekleidet, dann der brauch in Engellandt, dasz wann fürnemme herren oder Ritter absterben, sie ihren dieneren vast die schönesten kleider verehren vndt vergaben, welche, weil es ihnen nicht gezimpt, solche kleider nicht tragen, sondern nachmahlen, den Comoedienspileren vmb ein ringen pfenning ze kaufen geben.
Was für zeit sie also in dem Comoedien lustig alle tag können zubringen, weisset yeglicher woll, der sie etwan hatt sehen agieren oder spilen....
... Midt solchen vndt viel anderen kurtzweilen mehr vertreiben die Engellender ihr zeit, erfahren in den Comedien, wasz sich in anderen Landen zutraget, vndt gehendt ohne scheüchen, mann vndt weibs personen an gemelte ort, weil mehrtheils Engellender nicht pflegen viel ze reysen, sondern sich vergnügen zehausz frembde sachen ze erfahren vnndt ihre kurtzweil ze nemmen.’
[1046] C. A. Mills in The Times (11 April 1914) from the travels of ‘a foreign nobleman, to be published by J. A. F. Orbaan from a Vatican MS.’. Mills says that the visit was to the Globe, but the passage quoted does not exclude the Rose or Swan.
[1047] G. von Bülow in 2 R. Hist. Soc. Trans. (1892), vi. 6, 10, from MS. penes Count von der Osten of Plathe, Pomerania; cf. Wallace, Blackfriars, 105, who identifies the Samson play, rightly, with that of the Admiral’s men at the Fortune (cf. p. 180), and that at the Blackfriars, wrongly I think, with Chapman’s The Widow’s Tears. He assumes that the theatre visited on 13 Sept, was the Globe, but it might have been the Rose.
[1048] ‘13. Den 13 ward eine comedia agirt, wie Stuhl-Weissenburg erstlich von den Türken, hernacher von den Christen wiederum erobert....
14. Auf den Nachmittag ward eine tragica comoedia von Samsone und dem halben Stamm Benjamin agirt. Als wir zu dem Theatro gingen ...’.
[1049] Cf. ch. xii (Chapel).
[1050] Grosart, Dekker, iv. 210 (S. R. July 1608, printed 1609). The ‘two houses’ are, of course, those of York and Lancaster. Note the final puns.
[1051] Cf. ch. x. Fynes Moryson says in his Itinerary, iii. 2. 2 (c. 1605–17), ‘The Theaters at London in England for Stage-plaies are more remarkeable for the number, and for the capacity, than for the building,’ and in the continuation (c. 1609–26, C. Hughes, Shakespeare’s Europe, 476), ‘The Citty of London alone hath foure or fiue Companyes of players with their peculiar Theaters capable of many thousands, wherein they all play euery day in the weeke but Sunday.... As there be, in my opinion, more Playes in London than in all the partes of the worlde I haue seene, so doe these players or Comedians excell all other in the worlde.’
[1052] Epigram 39. Both Curtain and Swan are named by W. Turner in Turners Dish of Stuffe, or a Gallimaufry (1662), but this cannot be dated; cf. ch. xv (Shank):
That’s the fat fool of the Curtain, And the lean fool of the Bull: Since Shancke did leave to sing his rhimes, He is counted but a gull: The players on the Bankside, The round Globe and the Swan, Will teach you idle tricks of love, But the Bull will play the man.
[1053] Jodocus Sincerus, Itineris Anglici brevissima delineatio in Itinerarium Galliae (1617), 370; cf. Rye, 131, who gives the first edition as 1616.
[1054] K. Feyerabend in E. S. xiv. 440, from manuscript in Cassel Library (cf. Rye, 143), ‘Zu Londen sind 7 theatra, da tägliche, die sonntäge ausgenommen, comoedien gehalten werden, unter welchen die vornehmste der glbs [sic, for globus], so über dem wasser liegt. Das theatrum, da die kinder spielen, ist auf diesseit des wassers, spielen um 3 uhr, aber nur von michaelis bis auf ostern; hier kostet der eingang einen halben schilling nur, da an andern orten wohl eine halbe kron. Diese [nämlich der Globus, Ed., but surely in error] spielen nur bei lichtern und is die beste Cumpani in London.’ The baiting is also mentioned; cf. p. 457.
[1055] Henslowe Papers, 72, 79.
[1056] Taylor, The True Cause of the Watermen’s Suit concerning Players, and the reasons that their Playing on London side is their extreame hindrances. With a Relation how farre that suit was proceeded in, and the occasions that it was not effected, reprinted by Hindley, ii, No. 15, from Taylor’s Works (1630), probably originally printed in 1614.
[1057] It cites Caesar’s promotion and describes the agitation by the watermen as taking place in ‘January last, 1613’, i. e. 161¾. Probably it was written in the winter of 1614, and touched up before 1630, since it refers to Bacon and Somerset as ‘then’ Attorney-General and Lord Chamberlain respectively. Bacon’s term of office was from 27 Oct. 1613 to 7 March 1617, Somerset’s from 10 July 1614 to 2 Nov. 1615.
[1058] There is, I suppose, no reason why Randolph’s Muses Looking Glass, 1. i. 55, should not have been written before Salisbury Court was built. Herein a ‘brother’ is said to pray--
That the Globe, Wherein (quoth he) reigns a whole world of vice, Had been consum’d: the Phoenix burnt to ashes: The Fortune whipp’d for a blind whore: Blackfriars, He wonders how it ’scaped demolishing I’ th’ time of reformation: lastly, he wish’d The Bull might cross the Thames to the Bear Garden, And there be soundly baited.
[1059] Stowe, Annales (1631), 1004. In the extract in Harrison, ii. 49*, the period covered is given in error as 1553–1613.
[1060] Cf. App. I.
[1061] S. A. Strong, Catalogue of Letters at Welbeck, 226.
[1062] Harrison, iv. 212, from Phillipps MS. 11613, f. 16, penes J. F. P. Fenwick, of Thirlestane House, Cheltenham, written about 1656–8. The writer is not quite accurate in some of his earlier dates.
[1063] Ward, iii. 280; Lawrence, ii. 138.
[1064] Baker, 135, gives an enlarged reproduction under the name of the Theatre; but that is an obvious mistake.
[1065] Rendle, Bankside, 1.
[1066] [Nicholas Goodman?] Hollands Leaguer or an historical Discourse of the Life and Actions of Dona Britanica Hollandia the Arch-Mistris of the wicked women of Evtopia (1632), sig. F 2; cf. C. W. Wallace in Engl. Stud. xliii. 392.
[1067] Stowe, Survey, ii. 52.
[1068] I cannot agree with Dr. Martin (Surrey Arch. Colls. xxiii. 186), who sees, both in the Delaram and the ‘Hondius’ engravings, an east to west highway running north of the cylindrical building, which he takes for Maid Lane.
[1069] The somewhat wanton suggestion of Dr. Martin (loc. cit. 188) that the engraver mistook the Rose for the Globe is sufficiently refuted by the fact that the Rose was extinct or at least long disused.
[1070] I do not know on what ground Adams, 458, says that Visscher’s view was drawn several years before it was printed, ‘and represents the city as it was in or before 1613’.
[1071] Martin, loc. cit. 192, again suggests that the houses are misnamed. He thinks that the Rose has been called the Globe in error and the Globe the Bear Garden, and that the unnamed house is the Globe. I cannot follow him in thinking that Merian represents the western house of the group as south of Maid Lane; all three are clearly to the north.
[1072] Adams, 458, thinks that Merian worked upon Visscher, ‘with additions from some other earlier view not yet identified’. If so, this might perhaps go back to 1605.
[1073] Cf. p. 463.
[1074] Rendle, Bankside, xxx.
[1075] Cf. p. 433.
[1076] B. Marsh, Records of the Worshipful Company of Carpenters, iii. 95. I have to thank Mr. Marsh for this reference.
[1077] Sloane MS. 2530, f. 11 et passim.
[1078] App. C, No. xviii.
[1079] Gosson, Schoole of Abuse, 40. The date renders very hazardous the identifications of Ptolemy with the Telomo shown at Court by Leicester’s men on 10 Feb. 1583, and of The Jew with R. W.’s Three Ladies of London (1584), which leads Fleay, 36, 40, to infer that Leicester’s men played at the Bull from 1560 to 1576.
[1080] App. D, Nos. lx-lxii.
[1081] Tarlton, 13, 24.
[1082] Birch, Elizabeth, i. 173, from Lambeth MS.; Spedding, viii. 314.
[1083] Cf. App. I.
[1084] Machyn, 238.
[1085] Feuillerat, Eliz. 277. The play may have only been rehearsed, so that the identification of it by Fleay, 36, with The Irish Knight shown at Court by Warwick’s men on 18 Feb. 1577 is untenable, and with it vanishes all ground for the assignment of the inn by Fleay, 40, to Rich’s men in 1568–70, Lane’s in 1571–3, Warwick’s in 1575–80, and Hunsdon’s in 1582–3.
[1086] Tarlton, 24.
[1087] Harben, 65.
[1088] Tarlton, 21. Apparently the Queen of Sheba, and not Pocahontas, was the original Belle Sauvage.
[1089] App. C, No. xiv.
[1090] App. C, No. xxii. The description reads like a compliment to Lyly, but does not justify the inference of Fleay, 39, that the Chapel boys played at the Bel Savage from 1559 to 1582.
[1091] Arber, ii. 526.
[1092] Sloane MS. 2530, ff. 7, 10, 11, 14; cf. the quotation from G. Silver, Paradoxe of Defence (1599), in Adams, 13.
[1093] Wallace, N. U. S. xiii. 82, 89.
[1094] Tarlton, 23.
[1095] App. D, No. ci. Fleay, 89, has no other material than these notices and an unjustifiable assumption of identity between the two companies for assigning the house to Leicester’s (1586–8) and Strange’s (1589–91).
[1096] Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 317; cf. p. 425.
[1097] Stowe, Survey (ed. Kingsford, ii. 262, 369), ends his account of Holywell in the 1598 edition, ‘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’. This is omitted from the 1603 edition, probably not so much, as has been suggested, because Stowe shared the Puritan dislike of the stage, as because in 1603 the Theatre was gone and the Curtain little used. Stowe’s draft (c. 1598) in Harl. MS. 538 runs, ‘Neare adjoyning are builded two houses for the shewe of Activities, Comedies, tragedies and histories, for recreation. The one of them is named the Curtayn in Holy Well, the other the Theatre.’ No contemporary map shows the Theatre, although that of Agas (c. 1561) gives a good idea of the Halliwell district before it was built. The representation from the seventeenth-century ‘Ryther’ map, given as the Theatre by Baker, 135, is presumably the Curtain.
[1098] Braines (1915), 4; Stopes, 185.
[1099] Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 345; Braines (1915), 5, 21.
[1100] Latin translations of parts of the lease are recited in pleadings of 1600 and 1602 (Wallace, 166, 268), and the description of parcels agrees with that in the draft lease of 1585, similarly recited in 1600 (Wallace, 169); cf. Braines (1915), 8.
[1101] The position of the well in Chassereau’s Survey of Shoreditch (1745) seems to me to bear out this identification, although, as Braines (1915), 4, points out, we do not know Chassereau’s authority. Under Burbadge’s lease all Giles Allen’s tenants in Holywell were to have access to the well. Stowe, Survey, i. 15, describes the holy well as ‘much decayed and marred with filthinesse purposely laide there, for the heighthening of the ground for garden plots’. It is clearly distinct from Dame Agnes a Cleere’s well, which was outside Holywell, towards the north (Stowe, Survey, i. 16; ii. 273; Stopes, 192).
[1102] Tarlton’s News out of Purgatory (S. R. 26 June 1590), in Tarlton, 54, 105, ‘I would needs to the Theatre to a play, where when I came, I founde such concourse of unrulye people, that I thought it better solitary to walk in the fields, then to intermeddle myselfe amongst such a great presse. Feeding mine humour with this fancie, I stept by dame Anne of Cleeres well, and went by the backside of Hogsdon, where, finding the sun to be hotte, and seeing a faire tree that had a coole shade, I sat me downe to take the aire, where after I had rested me a while, I fell asleepe.... And with that I waked, and saw such concourse of people through the fields that I knew the play was doon.’
[1103] Braines (1915), 27. Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 351, put the site on the present Deane’s Mews, but this is too far south, and does not allow for the interposition of Rutland’s holding between Holywell Lane and Allen’s. The shoring up of the barn to the Theatre is testified to in Wallace, 227, 231, 243. The exact site therefore cannot have been far east of the Curtain Road, which apparently occupies the strip of void land held by Burbadge between the old priory wall and the ditch bordering Finsbury fields.
[1104] Wallace, 134, 141, 153.
[1105] Ibid. 39.
[1106] Ibid. 139.
[1107] Wallace, 142 (Miles), 152 (Nicoll).
[1108] App. D, No. xxxiv.
[1109] Wallace, 135.
[1110] Ibid. 140.
[1111] Ibid. 151 (Nicoll).
[1112] Ibid. 152 (Nicoll).
[1113] Wallace, 73 (Bett), 102, 119 (Ralph Miles), 137 (Collins), 143 (Robert Miles), 152 (Nicoll), 157.
[1114] Ibid. 53, 107, 111 (Hyde), 73 (Bett), 143 (Robert Miles), 103, 120 (Ralph Miles). Brayne’s will was proved 10 Aug. 1586 (Wallace, 14).
[1115] Ibid. 104 (Ralph Miles), 146 (Robert Miles).
[1116] Ibid. 16, 55, 108 (Hyde), 73 (Bett), 145 (Miles).
[1117] Ibid. 46.
[1118] Wallace, 86 (Bett), 115 (Bishop), 122 (Ralph Miles).
[1119] Ibid. 109 (Hyde), 134 (Griggs), 137 (Collins), 106 (Ralph Miles), 139, 148 (Robert Miles).
[1120] Ibid. 83 (Bett), 88 (Gascoigne), 90 (James).
[1121] Ibid. 87 (Bett).
[1122] Griggs (Wallace, 134) puts Brayne’s expenditure at 1,000 marks and Burbadge’s at under £100; Collins (Wallace, 137) agrees as to Brayne’s and puts Burbadge’s at about £50; Miles (ibid. 141) says Brayne spent £600 or £700 in cash or credit and Burbadge about £50 in cash and material; Lanman (ibid. 148) had heard that the building cost 1,000 marks; Giles Allen (ibid. 164) valued it at £700 in 1599.
[1123] Robert Miles put Burbadge’s total profits from tenements and play-house in eight or nine years before 1592 at 2,000 marks, but in 1600 he only put the aggregate profits of James and Cuthbert from the play-house by itself at 1,000 marks (Wallace, 147, 263). Giles Allen (ibid. 198) put them at £2,000. Ralph Miles in 1592 had heard that Burbadge had received £700 or £800 in rents and profits since Brayne’s death in 1586 (ibid. 106). John Alleyn, a more disinterested witness, confirms this estimate, putting the figure at £100 or 200 marks a year for the five years before 1592 (ibid. 102).
[1124] Wallace, 76 (Ellam), 77 (Hudson).
[1125] Ibid. 47.
[1126] Wallace, 59 (C. Burbadge), 62 (J. Burbadge), 97, 114 (Bishop), 100, 126 (Alleyn), 105, 121 (Ralph Miles).
[1127] Ibid. 49, 66.
[1128] Ibid. 101, 127 (Alleyn). The two depositions are not quite consistent as to dates. From that of 6 Feb. 1592, one would infer that the dispute between Burbadge and the Admiral’s was at the time of the contempt of 16 Nov. 1590. The second, of 6 May 1592, apparently corrects the first, by giving the date of the insult to the Lord Admiral as ‘about a yere past’. The point is of importance, as bearing upon the length of the stay of the Admiral’s and Strange’s (cf. ch. xiii) at the Theatre. No doubt Mrs. Brayne, who came ‘dyvers tymes’ to the Theatre, continued her applications after laying her affidavit of contempt.
[1129] Wallace, 153.
[1130] Wallace, 156.
[1131] Ibid. 161, 263. Miles still held Burbadge’s bonds in 1600.
[1132] Ibid. 137, ‘iron worke which the said Braynes bestowed vppon the same Theater’.
[1133] Cf. ch. xviii.
[1134] Wallace, 62 (Burbadge), 88 (Bett), 125 (Alleyn), 149 (Lanman).
[1135] Cf. pp. 358, 362. This evidence outweighs the rather slight grounds on which T. S. Graves, The Shape of the First London Theatre (South Atlantic Quarterly, xiii. 280), conjectures that it may have been rectangular.
[1136] G. Harvey, Letter Book, 67, suggests in 1579 that he may be asked by Leicester’s, Warwick’s, Vaux’s or Rich’s men, or ‘sum other freshe starteup comedanties’ for ‘sum malt conceivid comedye fitt for the Theater, or sum other paintid stage’ (cf. p. 4). It is a pity he was not more precise.
[1137] Cf. App. C, Nos. xxii, xxx. Fleay, 40, 88, 145, identifies The Play of Plays in which Delight was a character with the Delight shown at Court by Leicester’s on 26 Dec. 1580, and Caesar and Pompey, which Gosson does not quite clearly assign to the Theatre at all, with the Pompey shown by Paul’s on 6 Jan. 1581; and conjectures successive occupations by Leicester’s (1576–83), Paul’s (1582), Queen’s and Hunsdon’s (1584), Queen’s and Oxford’s (1585), Queen’s (1586–93), Chamberlain’s (1594–7). He was unlucky in omitting the Admiral’s from his guesses.
[1138] Cf. App. D, Nos. xliii, xliv.
[1139] Wallace, 201 (Cuthbert Burbadge), 239 (Smith), 240 (May), 242 (Tilt).
[1140] Ibid. 11.
[1141] Cf. App. D, No. lxxiv.
[1142] Nashe, Pierce Penilesse (Works, i. 197). Harington, Metamorphosis of Ajax (1596), speaks of a vulgar word ‘admitted into the Theater with great applause by the mouth of Mayster Tarlton, the excellent comedian’. It was near the Theatre that the writer of Tarltons Newes of Purgatorie (Tarlton, 54) had his dream of the dead actor.
[1143] Cf. App. C, No. xl.
[1144] Lodge, Wits Miserie (1596), ‘pale as the visard of the ghost which cried so miserably at the Theator, like an oister wife, Hamlet, revenge’. In T. M., Black Book (1604), is a mention of ‘one of my divells in D^r Faustus, when the olde Theatre crackt and frighted the audience’. This was presumably before 1592, as Dr. Faustus seems to have been continuously in Henslowe’s hands from the beginning of that year. Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 363, quotes an allusion of Barnaby Rich in 1606 (Faultes Faults, and Nothing Else but Faultes, 7) to ‘Gravets part at the Theatre’, but this must not be pressed as a reference to the long-destroyed house.
[1145] Sloane MS. 2530, ff. 6, 11, 12, 46; cf. App. D, Nos. lxii, lxviii.
[1146] Cf. ch. xi, p. 371.
[1147] T. W., Sermon at Paul’s Cross (3 Nov. 1577), ‘Beholde the sumptuous Theatre houses’; Northbrooke (S. R. 2 Dec. 1577), 85, ‘places ... builded for such Playes and Enterludes, as the Theatre and Curtaine is’; Stockwood, Sermon at Paul’s Cross (24 Aug. 1578), ‘the Theatre, the Curtayne, and other places of Playes in the Citie ... the gorgeous Playing place erected in the fieldes ... as they please to have it called, a Theatre’; News from the North (1579), ‘the Theaters, Curtines ... and such places where the time is so shamefully mispent’; T. Twyne, Physic for Fortune (1579), i. xxx, 42, ‘the Curteine or Theater; which two places are well knowen to be enimies to good manners: for looke who goeth thyther evyl, returneth worse’; Stubbes (S. R. 1 March 1583), i. 144, ‘flockyng and runnyng to Theaters and Curtens ... Venus pallaces’; Field (1583), ‘the distruction bothe of bodye and soule that many are brought unto by frequenting the Theater, the Curtin and such like’; Rankins (1587), f. 4, ‘the Theater and Curtine may aptlie be termed for their abhomination, the chappell adulterinum’; Harrison, Chronologie (1588), i. liv, ‘It is an evident token of a wicked time when plaiers wexe so riche that they can build suche houses’.
[1148] App. D, Nos. XXXV, lxxiv. It appears to have been thought a good example to frequenters of the Theatre that the locality should occasionally be used for a public execution. Stowe, Annales (1615), 749, 750, records the hanging of W. Gunter, a priest from beyond the seas, ‘at the Theater’ on 28 Aug. 1588, and of W. Hartley, another priest, ‘nigh the Theator,’ on 1 Oct. 1588; cf. Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 351, from True Report of the Inditement of Weldon, Hartley, and Sutton, who Suffred for High Treason (1588).
[1149] Sir A. Ashley to Sir R. Cecil (Hatfield MSS. vii. 504).
[1150] Cf. ch. ix. In addition to the occasions described above, the Theatre and Curtain are particularly referred to in the City’s complaint to Walsingham on 3 May 1583, and in the Council’s inhibitions of 29 Oct. 1587, where the ‘Liberty’ of Holywell is clearly pointed at in the allusion to ‘places priviledged’, and 23 June 1592 (App. D, Nos. lxix, lxxx, xc).
[1151] App. D, No. xlii. The County records also contain entries of a recognisance by ‘James Burbage of Shorditch gent.’, Henry Bett, and [Cuthbert] Burbage in the Strond, yeoman’, on 6 April 1592, for the former’s appearance at the next Middlesex sessions, and a similar recognisance of ‘James Burbage of Hallywell, yeoman’, on 11 Sept. 1593 (Jeaffreson, i. 205, 217); but there is nothing to show the nature of the proceedings.
[1152] Cf. App. C, No. xxv.
[1153] App. D, No. cx.
[1154] E. Guilpin, Skialetheia, sat. v:
‘but see yonder, One, like the unfrequented Theater, Walkes in darke silence and vast solitude’.
[1155] Wallace, 169, 183, 191, 214, 218.
[1156] Ibid. 72, 76, 226.
[1157] Ibid. 232, 235.
[1158] Wallace, 195, 203, 212, 216, 220, 238. Robert Miles took occasion of the negotiations to renew his old claim by petitioning in the Court of Requests for an interest in the new lease. The proceedings, so far as preserved, are inconclusive (ibid. 158). Meanwhile Cuthbert Burbadge was co-operating with Giles Allen in defending a claim made by the Earl of Rutland to the ‘debateable’ ground, and remained a party to the consequent litigation in 1602, long after the Theatre had disappeared (Stopes, 184).
[1159] Wallace, 184, 196, 204.
[1160] Ibid. 221.
[1161] Ibid. 164, 179, 197, 217, 222, 238, 278. The dates are not quite certain; possibly the 20 Jan. of Allen v. Street was an error. Allen’s Answer in the Court of Requests places the whole transaction ‘aboute the feast of the Natiuitie’, and this in his Star Chamber suit becomes ‘aboute the eight and twentyth day of December’, without any suggestion that more than one day was occupied.
[1162] Ibid. 163.
[1163] Ibid. 181.
[1164] Wallace, 186, 215, 220.
[1165] Ibid. 285.
[1166] Ibid. 267, 275.
[1167] Aubrey, ii. 12, on the authority of J. Greenhill, says that Ben Jonson ‘acted and wrote, but both ill, at the Green Curtaine, a kind of nursery or obscure play-house, somewhere in the suburbes’ (I thinke towards Shoreditch or Clarkenwell), and on that of Sir Edward Shirburn that Jonson killed Marlowe, ‘on Bunhill, comeing from the Green-Curtain play-house’. Hoxton, where Jonson killed Gabriel Spencer, is of course not far from Bunhill, and both are in the Holywell neighbourhood. Probably Aubrey, in giving a name to the theatre, is babbling of green frieze, rather than green fields. Steevens and Malone (Variorum, iii. 54) committed themselves to the view that ‘the original sign hung out at this play-house was the painting of a curtain striped’.
[1168] Thomas Wilkins was perhaps related to George Wilkins the dramatist, who was buried at Shoreditch 9 Aug. 1613. Sir William Allen is not known to have had anything to do either with Edward Alleyn or with Giles Allen, the ground-landlord of the Theatre. Lanman was 54 on 30 July 1592. We cannot assume that the name is merely an orthographic variant of that of Laneham.
[1169] Reproduced in Ordish, 40.
[1170] Reproduced in Baker, 36, 135, with a photographic enlargement of the building, wrongly identified with the Theatre. It is shown as a round or hexagonal structure, with a large flag, standing in the middle of a square paled plot; but too much stress must not be laid on what is probably only a cartographic symbol. Immediately south of it is Bedlam. Kiechel tells us that the house had three galleries, and de Witt that it was an ‘amphitheatrum’ (cf. pp. 358, 362). In the epilogue to Three English Brothers (1607) it is a ‘round circumference’.
[1171] Cf. p. 393.
[1172] Fleay, 40, 88, 145, 201, 300, assigns it as follows: Sussex’s (1576–83), Arundel’s and Oxford’s (1584), Howard’s and Hunsdon’s (1585), Oxford’s (1586–8), Pembroke’s (1589–97), Chamberlain’s (1597–9), Derby’s (1599–1600), uncertain company (1601), Queen Anne’s (1604–9), Duke of York’s (1610–23). But, of course, this is guessing.
[1173] Tarlton, 16. If Tarlton’s Jig of a Horse Load of Fools, taken from a manuscript of Collier’s (Tarlton, xx), is genuine, that also was given at the Curtain.
[1174] Sloane MS. 2530, ff. 4, 12, 43, 44, 46.
[1175] Guilpin, Skialetheia (S. R. 8 Sept. 1598), Sat. v:
if my dispose Perswade me to a play, I’le to the Rose, Or Curtaine, one of Plautus comedies, Or the patheticke Spaniards tragedies;
and in the Preludium, of a ‘Cittizen ... comming from the Curtaine’.
[1176] Scourge of Villainy (1598), xi. 37 (Works, iii. 372):
Luscus, what’s play’d to-day? Faith now I know I set thy lips abroach, from whence doth flow Naught but pure Juliet and Romeo. Say who acts best? Drusus or Roscio? Now I have him, that ne’er of ought did speak But when of plays or players he did treat-- Hath made a commonplace book out of plays, And speaks in print: at least what e’er he says Is warranted by Curtain plaudities.
[1177] Cf. p. 365.
[1178] Jeaffreson, i. 259.
[1179] Heath, Epigram 39; Wither, Abuses, i. 1; ii. 3.
[1180] Cf. App. C, No. lix.
[1181] Variorum, iii. 54, 59; Ordish, 106, from Vox Graculi (1623) and Jeaffreson, iii. 164.
[1182] A writer in the Daily News for 9 April 1898 identifies the site of the theatre, without giving any evidence, as ‘between Clock Passage, Newington Butts, Swan Place, and Hampton Street’; cf. 9 N. Q. i. 386.
[1183] App. D, Nos. xlvi, lxxvi, xcii.
[1184] Cf. p. 373.
[1185] C. W. Wallace in N. U. S. xiii. 2, ‘as shown by a contemporary record to be published later’.
[1186] A Woman is a Weathercock, III. iii. 25.
[1187] Rendle, Antiquarian, viii. 60, ‘Among the early Surveys, 1 Edward VI, we see that this was not merely a name--the place was a veritable Rose Garden, and paid £1 3_s._ 4_d._ by the year, and the messuage called the Rose paid £4’.
[1188] Close Roll 6 Edw. VI, p. 5, m. 13; cf. Rendle, Bankside, xv; H. P. 1.
[1189] Egerton MS. 2623, f. 13, quoted in Henslowe, ii. 25. But in ii. 43 Dr. Greg misdescribes the Rose as on the west of the Barge, Bell, and Cock.
[1190] Henslowe Papers, 1.
[1191] Ibid. 2.
[1192] Henslowe, i. 209.
[1193] Cf. Dekker, Satiromastix, 1247, ‘th’ast a breath as sweet as the Rose, that growes by the Beare-garden’.
[1194] G. L. Gomme, The Story of London Maps (Geographical Journal, xxxi. 628), ‘1588. Henchley.--Item, we present Phillip Henchley to pull upp all the pylles that stand in the common sewer against the play-house to the stopping of the water course, the which to be done by midsomer next uppon paine of x^s yf it be undone. x^s (done)’. Wallace, in The Times (1914), says that these records mention the theatre as ‘new’ in April 1588, and show other amercements during the next eighteen years.
[1195] Dr. Greg, in Henslowe, ii. 46, is, I think, successful in showing that all the dated building entries belong to 1592 and not to 1591 or 1593. I suppose the scattered entries with the date ‘1591’ to have been written in first, and the continuous account under the date ‘1592’ added later, probably after Henslowe had changed the year-date in his play-entries, which seems to have been on 6 May.
[1196] Henslowe, i. 7.
[1197] App. D, No. xcii.
[1198] The words ‘Chomley when’ appear with other scribbles by Henslowe on the first page of the diary (Henslowe, i. 217).
[1199] Cf. p. 402.
[1200] Henslowe, i. 4.
[1201] Henslowe, i. 178.
[1202] Ibid. ii. 55.
[1203] Wallace, in The Times (1914).
[1204] Rendle, Bankside, xv, quotes
In the last great fire The Rose did expire,
and adds ‘but when that was, I am not clear’. It reads like Collier.
[1205] I cannot endorse the suggestion of Dr. Martin (cf. p. 378) that the ‘Globe’ of Visscher (1616) was really the Rose. Baker, 165, reproducing a cut from Hollar (1640), also misnames the Globe as the Rose.
[1206] Young, ii. 241.
[1207] Variorum, iii. 56. I should have been happier if Malone had quoted verbatim, but I do not see that Adams, 160, explains away the statement by suggesting that a source for Malone’s ‘error’ is a note on p. 66, where he again cites Herbert for fencing at the Red Bull in 1623.
[1208] E. S. xliii. 341; Index to Remembrancia, 277. It appears from Hatfield MSS. vi. 182, 184, that in May 1596 Langley was concerned in some negotiations about a missing diamond claimed by the Crown; cf. p. 396.
[1209] Printed from a contemporary copy in the Guildhall by W. Rendle in Appendix to Part II of Harrison’s Description of England (N. S. S., 1878) and Adams, 162. The original is held by the steward of the manor.
[1210] App. D, No. cii.
[1211] Cf. p. 361, and for the reliability and value of the record as evidence for the structure and staging of theatres, chh. xviii, xx.
[1212] S. v. L. 352, ‘the said howse was then lately afore vsed to have playes in hit’.
[1213] Ibid., ‘the Defendant should be allowed for the true value thereof out of the Complainantes moytie of the gains for the seuerall standinges in the galleries of the said howse which belonged to them’. As ‘which’ may follow on ‘moytie’, I see no reason for Wallace’s inference (360) that the galleries were structurally divided between the two parties, instead of the takings being shared.
[1214] Cf. ch. xiv (Pembroke’s) and ch. xxii (Nashe).
[1215] S. v. L. 353 (6 Feb. 1598), ‘the said Defendant hath euer synce had his said howse contynually from tyme to tyme exercysed with other players to his great gaines’.
[1216] App. D, No. cxiv.
[1217] App. D, No. cxv.
[1218] App. C, No. lii.
[1219] Cf. p. 362.
[1220] App. D, No. cxxiii.
[1221] Manningham, 130; Gawdy, 93.
[1222] Ch. xxiii (Vennar).
[1223] E. S. xliii. 342.
[1224] Act v, sc. i.
[1225] P. Norman, The Accounts of the Overseers of the Poor of Paris Garden, 1608–71 (1901, Surrey Arch. Colls. xvi. 55), from Addl. MS. 34, 110, and again by C. W. Wallace as a new discovery in E. S. xliii. 390. The amounts are £4 6_s._ 8_d._ in 1611, £5 3_s._ 4_d._ in 1612, £5 5_s._ in 1613, £3 0_s._ 10_d._ in 1614, 19_s._ 2_d._ in 1615, and £3 19_s._ 4_d._ in 1621.
[1226] It can hardly have been open at the time of the Watermen’s petition early in 1614 (cf. p. 370).
[1227] Herbert, 63; Variorum, iii. 56. Rendle, in Antiquarian Magazine, vii. 211, notes a ‘licence for T. B. and three assistants to make shows of Italian motion, at the Prince’s Arms, or the Swan’ in 1623; cf. Herbert, 47.
[1228] Cf. p. 376.
[1229] N. U. S. xiii. 279; cf. p. 399.
[1230] Wallace, in The Times (1914), ‘Ac de et in vna domo de novo edificata cum gardino eidem pertinenti in parochia S^{ci} Salvatoris praedicta in comitatu Surria praedicta in occupacione Willielmi Shakespeare et aliorum’.
[1231] Cf. p. 364.
[1232] A rather fantastic argument of Ordish, 85, for the Curtain on the ground of the martial character of the neighbourhood is answered by Murray, i. 99.
[1233] E. M. O. 4368.
[1234] O. v. H. l. 110.
[1235] O. v. H. l. 99; W. v. H. 313.
[1236] Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 317.
[1237] W. v. H. 314.
[1238] Century (Aug. 1910), 508; cf. p. 424.
[1239] W. v. H. 314.
[1240] O. v. H. l. 194.
[1241] W. v. H. 319.
[1242] Ibid. 317. Wallace dates the admission of Condell in 1610, but this seems to be an error.
[1243] O. v. H. l. 97; W. v. H. 321.
[1244] Rye, 61, from Relation of Hans Jacob Wurmsser von Vendenheym, ‘Lundi 30 [April 1610] S. E. [Prince Lewis Frederick of Württemberg] alla au Globe, lieu ordinaire ou l’on joue les Commedies, y fut representé l’histoire du More de Venise’; cf. p. 369 on visit of Prince of Hesse-Cassel in 1611.
[1245] W. v. H. 320.
[1246] Stowe, 926. Jonas, 104, cites another record of the date from A. Hopten, A Concordancy of Yeares (1615).
[1247] Birch, James, i. 253.
[1248] L. Pearsall Smith, Letters of Wotton, ii. 32.
[1249] Winwood, iii. 469.
[1250] Arber, iii. 528, ‘Simon Stafford ... a ballad called the sodayne Burninge of the Globe on the Bankside in the Play tyme on Saint Peters day last 1613’; ‘Edward White ... a doleful ballad of the general ouerthrowe of the famous theater on the Banksyde called the Globe &c. by William Parrat’.
[1251] Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines, i. 310, ‘from a manuscript of the early part of the seventeenth century, of unquestionable authenticity, preserved in the library of Sir Mathew Wilson, Bart., of Eshton Hall, co. York’. The Eshton Hall collection, originally formed by John Hopkinson in 1660, has recently been sold, with the verses, to Mr. G. D. Smith of New York. The ‘Sonnett’ was first printed [by Joseph Haslewood] in The Gentleman’s Magazine (1816), lxxxvi. 114, ‘from an old manuscript volume of poems and therefrom by Collier, i. 371, and Hazlitt, E. D. S. 225.
[1252] Taylors Water-Works (1614), reprinted as The Sculler (1630, Works, 515), ep. 22 of 3rd series.
[1253] Underwoods, lxii, written later than the Fortune fire of 9 Dec. 1621.
[1254] Histriomastix, 556.
[1255] Birch, James I, i. 329.
[1256] Cf. p. 374.
[1257] W. v. H. 320.
[1258] Ibid. 321.
[1259] A later statement by Shank in the Sharers Papers puts it at £1,400. Heminges describes Witter’s ‘parte’ by a slip as one-sixth instead of one-seventh of the moiety. If the £120 was one-twelfth of the total cost, his figure (£1,440) would agree with that of Shank. Professor Wallace says in The Times of 2 Oct. 1909, ‘This amount is in fact excessive.... I have other contemporary documents showing the cost was far less than £1,400.’
[1260] W. v. H. 323; Wallace in The Times (1914).
[1261] O. v. H. ll. 245 sqq.
[1262] Lambert, Shakespeare Documents, 87.
[1263] W. v. H. 323.
[1264] Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 312.
[1265] Cf. ch. xi. There was a much rougher type of audience at the Globe; cf. Shirley, Prologue at the Globe, to his Comedy called ‘The Doubtful Heir’, which should have been presented at the Blackfriars, quoted in Variorum, iii. 69.
[1266] Cf. ch. xvii (Blackfriars).
[1267] Wallace in The Times (1914). Bodley seems to have acquired a dubious title to hold the land in his own right in 1608, raised a fine of £20 for recognizing the players’ lease in 1609, and a fine of £2 on Heminges for leave to build his taphouse in 1615. Matthew Brend recovered the property through the Court of Wards, after the end of his minority, in 1622.
[1268] Rendle, Bankside, xvii, from Southwark Vestry Papers. Brend was knighted in 1622.
[1269] Cf. p. 374. Wallace, in The Times (1914), makes Matthew Brend’s lease end on 25 Dec. Yet he puts the destruction after the expiration of the lease.
[1270] Stowe, Survey, ii. 58.
[1271] Martin, 158.
[1272] Stopes, Burbage, 196; Martin, 169; from Close Roll, 3 Car. I, pt. 23, m. 22.
[1273] Martin, 174.
[1274] A. Hayward, Autobiography of Mrs. Piozzi, ii. 33.
[1275] History of St. Saviour’s (1795), 231.
[1276] T. Pennant, London (1791), 60, ‘A little west of S. Mary Overies (in a place still called Globe Alley) stood the Globe.... I have been told that the door was very lately standing’; Concanen and Morgan, 224, ‘Several of the neighbouring inhabitants remember these premises being wholly taken down about fifty years ago, having remained for many years in a very ruinous state: avoided by the young and superstitious as a place haunted by those imaginary beings called evil spirits’.
[1277] Martin, 165, 177. It is probably a mere coincidence that John Knowles held a garden next the Globe site in 1599.
[1278] Rendle, Bankside, xix; Antiquarian, viii. 216.
[1279] Chalmers, Apology (1797), 114, ‘I maintain, that the Globe was situated on the Bank, within eighty paces of the river, which has since receded from its former limits; that the Globe stood on the site of John Whatley’s windmill, which is at present used for grinding colours; as I was assured by an intelligent manager of Barclay’s brewhouse, which covers, in its ample range, part of Globe Alley; and that Whatley’s wind mill stands due south from the western side of Queenhythe by the compass, which I set for the express purpose of ascertaining the relative bearings of the windmill to the opposite objects on the Thames’; W. Wilson, History and Antiquities of Dissenting Churches (1814), iv. 148, 175, ‘In former days there stood here [in Globe Alley] a theatre called the “Globe”.... Near to this place stood the meeting-house.... Its dissolution took place about the year 1752.... It is at present used for warehousing goods. A mill was also erected over it for the purpose of grinding bones’; R. Wilkinson, Londina Illustrata (1819), i. 135, ‘Upon the disuse of the theatre, its site ... was formed into a meeting-house.... Afterwards a mill was erected here to grind bones; and it is at present appropriated for the purpose of grinding stones and similar materials’. The plan, however, which accompanies Wilkinson’s text, assigns the theatre to an improbable site some way west of the meeting-house. The Globe Alley meeting-house was built in 1672; it appears in a list of 1683, and is marked on Rocque’s map of 1746 on Rendle’s favourite site. Wilson only says the meeting-house was near the Globe; Wilkinson identifies the sites. Chalmers mentions the windmill, but not the meeting-house. I may add that a line drawn south from the west of Queenhithe would pass west of any possible site for the Globe. Malone’s ‘nearly opposite to Friday Street, Cheapside’ (Variorum, iii. 63) can also only be approximate.
[1280] Cf. facsimile from token-book in Martin, 157.
[1281] Concanen and Morgan, History of St. Saviour’s (1795), 224, ‘It was situated in what is now called Maid lane; the north side and building adjoining, extending from the west side of Counter-alley to the north side of the passage leading to Mr. Brook’s cooperage; on the east side beyond the end of Globe-alley, including the ground on which stood the late parish workhouse, and from thence continuing to the south end of Mr. Brook’s passage. Under this building was Fountain-alley, leading from Horseshoe-alley into Castle-lane.’ This account appears to make the site extend farther north than Dr. Martin allows for, right up, indeed, to Maid Lane.
[1282] Plan of 1810 in R. Taylor, Londina Illustrata, ii. (1825) 136; plan of 1818 in Taylor, Annals of St. Mary Overy (1833), 140.
[1283] Martin, 171. One cannot lay much stress upon hearsay locations of the site by employees of the brewery (Martin, 183), or the discovery of underground staging still farther south than Dr. Martin’s site on a spot which in 1599 must have been well within Winchester Park (Martin, 201), or of a stone inscribed ‘[T]heayter’, just south of Globe Alley (Martin, 184).
[1284] Martin, 164.
[1285] A Clink poor relief assessment of 1609 (Collier, Alleyn Memoirs, 91; Warner, 49) shows two names, each assessed for ‘halfe the parke’; this would hardly be the Bishop’s. The token-books also show persons resident in the park, but here the order of the entries points to a locality south of Maiden Lane, near the gate of the Bishop’s Park (11 N. Q. xii. 143).
[1286] Wallace in The Times (1914). Dr. Martin explains (11 N. Q. xii. 161) that, in order to conduct their patrons from Bankside to the play-house south of Maiden Lane, ‘the owners of the Globe had erected a bridge over the ditches and quagmire of Maid Lane’.
[1287] Dr. Wallace says that all these records were made by the Commissioners ‘in dealing with the property of Brend and others on the north side’ of Maiden Lane. But there is no reference to ‘the north side’ in the actual record. Bingham had, and Sellers may have had, more than one plot in the neighbourhood.
[1288] Cf. p. 379.
[1289] R. I. B. A. Journal, 3rd series, xvii. 26.
[1290] Halliwell-Phillipps (Calendar of Shakespeare Rarities, 81) had a document of 1653 concerning a sewer ‘in Maide Lane nere the place where the Globe play-house lately stood’, which he considered as establishing the exact locality of the theatre. It is probably now in America.
[1291] Cf. p. 436.
[1292] I ought not to have suggested in The Stage of the Globe, 356, that the first Globe might have been rectangular.
[1293] Variorum, iii. 67.
[1294] Henslowe Papers, 14; Henslowe, ii. 56.
[1295] Henslowe Papers, 16.
[1296] Ibid. 25.
[1297] Ibid. 108.
[1298] Printed by W. W. Greg, Henslowe Papers, 4, from Dulwich Muniments, 22; also in Variorum, iii. 338, and Halliwell-Phillipps, Illustrations, 81; Outlines, i. 304.
[1299] Quarterly Review, ccviii. 442; Architectural Review, xxiii. 239. Models by Mr. Godfrey are at the Columbia and Illinois Universities (Adams, 277). M. W. Sampson has pointed out in M. L. N. for June 1915 (cited by Adams, 279) that the passage in The Roaring Girl (1611), i. 1, where Sir Alexander Weargrave displays his house to his friends, is really a description of the Fortune when ‘Within one square a thousand heads are laid’.
[1300] Henslowe Papers, 25.
[1301] Ibid. 11.
[1302] App. D, Nos. cxvii, cxviii, cxxi, cxxii, cxxiv.
[1303] Cf. ch. viii and App. D, No. cl.
[1304] Henslowe Papers, 110.
[1305] Cf. ch. xi.
[1306] Henslowe Papers, 64.
[1307] Ibid. 25.
[1308] Ibid. 27.
[1309] Birch, James I, ii. 270.
[1310] Cf. ch. xi.
[1311] Birch, James I, ii. 280.
[1312] Young, ii. 225.
[1313] Henslowe Papers, 28.
[1314] Cf. App. I. It is this second house that is represented as a small angular flagged building in the ‘Ryther’ maps.
[1315] Fortnightly Review (May 1916).
[1316] W. J. Lawrence in Archiv (1914), 301; cf. p. 520.
[1317] Adams, 284, gives the history of the Fortune during 1621–49.
[1318] A Boar’s Head on the Bankside, which belonged to Henslowe in 1604 and previously to Alleyn (Henslowe, ii. 30), was apparently not an inn.
[1319] E. Gayton, Pleasant Notes upon Don Quixot (1654), 277, ‘Sir John of famous memory; not he of the Boares Head in Eastcheap’. Neither the text nor the stage-directions of Henry IV name the Boar’s Head; but the references to Eastcheap (1 Hen. IV, I. ii. 145, 176; II. iv. 16, 485; 2 Hen. IV, II. i. 76; II. ii. 161) are sufficient, and when Prince Hal asks (2 Hen. IV, II. ii. 159) ‘Doth the old boar feed in the old frank?’, Bardolph answers, ‘At the old place, my lord, in Eastcheap’. Doll Tearsheet (II. iv. 250) calls Falstaff a ‘whoreson little tidy Bartholomew boar-pig’.
[1320] Halliwell-Phillipps, ii. 258. Harben, 88, however, suggests that the name was transferred to this house from another on the north side of Great Eastcheap in St. Clement’s.
[1321] Stowe, Survey, i. 126; ii. 72. I suppose the inn is identical with the ‘Blue Bore Inne’ marked by Ogilby (1677). The site is at No. 30 on the north of Aldgate High Street (Harben, 87).
[1322] Dasent, vi. 168.
[1323] App. D, No. cxxx. The description of this letter in the Index to Remembrancia, 355, as referring to ‘the Boar’s Head in Eastcheap’ has proved misleading.
[1324] App. D, Nos. cxxv, cxxix, cxxxv.
[1325] Cf. ch. xiii (Anne’s).
[1326] Adams, 17; cf. ch. xiii (Duke of York’s). The further suggestion of Adams, 8, that Rawlidge in 1628 (cf. p. 360) wrote ‘Whitefriars’ for ‘Whitechapel’ is less plausible. Rawlidge is only dealing with play-houses within the City.
[1327] Adams, 17, identifies the site with Boar’s Head Yard, between Middlesex Street and Goulston Street, Whitechapel. But this is the house of 1557 (v. supra) within the liberties. Rocque (1746) shows an oval site, just east of Church Lane and south of the church of St. Mary, Whitechapel, which rather suggests an amphitheatre, but may be merely a churchyard.
[1328] Henslowe Papers, 59.
[1329] Cf. p. 374.
[1330] The section is reproduced in Adams, 294.
[1331] Not the mercer Stone who sold stuffs to the Admiral’s in 1601 and 1602 (Henslowe, ii. 313); he was doubtless William Stone (Knt. in 1604).
[1332] W. v. H. 296. Professor Wallace has confused this 1_s._ 6_d._ with the profits of Woodford’s seventh, and thinks that a gatherer got one-eighteenth of the receipts.
[1333] I think the inference is that the gallery profits were divided in the proportion of seven-eighteenths to the housekeepers and eleven-eighteenths to the players.
[1334] No order seems to have been made as to the gatherer’s place.
[1335] Knight of the Burning Pestle, IV. i. 43.
[1336] Travels of the Three Brothers (ed. Bullen, p. 88).
[1337] Dekker, Works, iv. 97; cf. p. 367.
[1338] Jeaffreson, ii. 64, 86.
[1339] Wither, Abuses Stript and Whipt (1613), i. 1,
‘His poetry is such as he can cull From plays he heard at Curtain or at Bull’;
Albumazar, II. i. 16, ‘Then will I confound her with compliments drawn from the plays I see at the Fortune and Red Bull, where I learn all the words I speak and understand not’; Gayton, 24, ‘I have heard that the poets of the Fortune and Red Bull had always a mouth-measure for their actors (who were terrible tear-throats) and made their lines proportionable to their compass, which were sesquipedales, a foot and a half’.
[1340] Collier, Memoirs of Alleyn, 107; D. N. B. s.v. Alleyn. The Diary (Young, ii. 51) runs:
‘Oct. 1, 1617. I came to London in the coach and went to the red Bull. 2^d.
Oct. 3. I went to the red bull and ℞ for the younger brother but 3. 6. 4, water 4^d.’
The Younger Brother was entered in the Stationers’ Register in 1653, but is not extant.
[1341] Heywood, Pleasant Dialogues and Dramas, 247.
[1342] Adams, 300.
[1343] Prynne, Epistle to Histriomastix (1633); W. C., London’s Lamentation for her Sins (1625), ‘Yet even then, Oh Lord, were the theatres magnified and enlarged’.
[1344] Fortnightly Review (May 1916).
[1345] Cf. App. I.
[1346] Cf. ch. xviii, Bibl. Note.
[1347] Mediaeval Stage, ii. 250; cf. i. 53, 68, 72; ii. 244 (Durham Priory), 246 (Thetford Priory), 247 (Winchester College), 248 (Magdalen, Oxford).
[1348] Strutt, Sports and Pastimes (ed. Cox), 195.
[1349] Rendle, Old Southwark, f. p., 31.
[1350] It is also, although unnamed, in Smith’s drawing of 1588, but that is probably based on Agas.
[1351] William Fitzstephen (c. 1170–82) in J. C. Robertson, Materials for the History of Becket (R. S.), iii. 11, ‘In hieme singulis feré festis ante prandium ... pingues tauri cornipetae, seu ursi immanes, cum objectis depugnant canibus’.
[1352] Erasmus, Adagia, 3354, ‘Sed intolerabilius est quod apud Britannos complures alunt greges ursorum ad saltationem, animal vorax et maleficum’. I owe the correct reference to Mr. P. S. Allen. Presumably ‘greges’ is no more than ‘numbers’.
[1353] Collier, i. 42, from Harl. MS. 433.
[1354] Egerton MS. 2623, f. 11. Collier, who owned this document, or some other modern, has substituted the name of John Dorrington. A copy, exemplified for Morgan Pope on 18 Nov. 1585, is at Dulwich; cf. Henslowe Papers, 1. Long became steward of Paris Garden in 1536 (Kingsford, 159).
[1355] Collier, i. 194, from list of fees payable by the Treasurer of the Chamber in 1571 (Cotton MS. Vesp. C. xiv), ‘keapers of Beares and Mastives, iij. Item to Mathew Becke, Sergeaunte of the beares, for his wages per ann. 12^l 10^s 7½^d. Item to Symon Powlter, yoman, per ann. 14^l 6^s 3^d. Item to Richard Darryngton M^r and kepar of the bandogges and mastives, per ann. 21^l 5^s 10^d’. Similarly, the Treasurer’s Declared Account for 1594–5 (Pipe Roll, 542) shows a total payment to keepers of Bears and Mastiffs of £48 12_s._ 8½_d._ There is an error in one or other entry of 10_s._
[1356] The Privy Council Acts record warrants inter alia to Ralph in 1574 (Dasent, viii. 257), Thomas in 1576, 1577, 1578, 1579, and 1580 (ix. 121, 153, 335; x. 148; xi. 70, 392), Ralph in 1581 (xii. 321), and Edward in 1581 and 1582 (xiii. 115, 311). Edward Bowes seems to have held the Keepership of Dogs, but disclaimed having a fee of £15 17_s._ 4_d._ at the subsidy of 1588 (M. S. C. i. 355).
[1357] Earlier licensees were William Payne and Simon Powlter (> 1574). Wistow (c. 1575), John Napton, Morgan Pope (c. 1585–7), Thomas Burnaby (c. 1590–4), and perhaps others; cf. p. 464; Wallace in The Times (1914); Kingsford, 171–8.
[1358] Alleyn Memoirs, 213; cf. Henslowe Papers, 4.
[1359] Henslowe, i. 71. Some payments of June 1597 on account of a privy seal and a patent for Alleyn (Henslowe, i. 200) may relate to this.
[1360] Henslowe Papers, 98. Possibly an undated letter from Arthur Langworth to Alleyn (Henslowe Papers, 99), in which he refers to Bowes’s illness and protests against a charge of not giving Alleyn sufficient help in procuring some ‘place’, relates to this. But it is allusive and obscure.
[1361] S. P. D. Eliz. cclxviii. 18; cf. Henslowe Papers, 12.
[1362] Probably Bowes had also held this keepership with his Mastership, as he was drawing a fee from the Chamber in 1596 (Henslowe, i. 128).
[1363] Muniment 19 in the Dulwich MSS. is a warrant of 24 Nov. 1599 by Meade to a deputy; cf. Henslowe, ii. 38. A list of fees c. 1600 in Henslowe Papers, 108, shows, under the general heading ‘Parris garden’, only two keeperships, instead of the three of 1571, that of Bears at £12 8_s._ 1½_d._, and that of Mastiffs at £21 5_s._ 10½_d._
[1364] Henslowe Papers, 12; cf. Henslowe, ii. 37.
[1365] Receipts by or on behalf of Dorrington dated Jan. and April 1602 are in Henslowe Papers, 101; Henslowe, i. 212. Each is for a quarter’s ‘rent’ of £10, and the earlier is specified as ‘for the commissyon for the Bear-garden’. A letter of May 1600 from Dorrington to Henslowe asking him and Meade to have the ‘games’ ready for Court is in Henslowe Papers, 100. In 1603 Henslowe spent 16_s._ 4_d._ ‘for sewinge at the cort’, on petitions to Dorrington, the Lord Chamberlain, and the Council, the drawing of two licences, and ‘our warent for baytynge’ (Henslowe Papers, 109). I think that from 1603, if not earlier, he had a regular appointment as deputy to Dorrington. On 18 April 1604 he received the Treasurer of the Chamber’s reward as ‘Deputy Master of the Game’.
[1366] Alleyn Memoirs, 213; cf. Henslowe Papers, 4.
[1367] S. P. D. Jac. I, 1603–10, p. 134.
[1368] Henslowe Papers, 101; S. P. D. Jac. I, x, p. 167. It appears from a memorandum of Alleyn’s in Henslowe Papers, 107, that he paid £250 for his share.
[1369] Henslowe Papers, 104.
[1370] This is recited in a warrant to one of their deputies in Henslowe Papers, 18.
[1371] Henslowe, ii. 38. Dr. Greg gives many interesting details of the business, and of the relations of the Masters with their agents, for which I have not space. Others, of Bowes’s time, are in Dasent, ix. 9; xiii. 101.
[1372] Sydney Papers, ii. 194 (12 May 1600), ‘This day she appointes to see a Frenchman doe feates upon a rope, in the Conduit court. To morrow she hath commanded the beares, the bull and the ape to be baited in the tiltyard. Upon Wednesday she will have solemn dawncing’; cf. Epicoene, iii. 1, ‘Were you ever so much as look’d upon by a lord or a lady, before I married you, but on the Easter or Whitsun-holidays? and then out at the banqueting-house window, when Ned Whiting or George Stone were at the stake?’ George Stone was killed during the visit of Christian of Denmark in 1606 (H. P. 105). The Court practice was followed by the Lord Mayor and Aldermen. Payments to the bearward of Paris Garden for pastime showed at the Conduit Heads are in Harrison, iv. 322.
[1373] Machyn, 198.
[1374] Ibid. 270; Nichols, Eliz. i. 305; ii. 469; Walsingham, Journal, 42; Boississe, i. 345. There is a spirited description of a baiting before Elizabeth at Kenilworth on 14 July 1575 in Laneham’s Letter (Furnivall, Captain Cox, 17); but I do not suppose that these were the London bears. Leicester, whose cognizance was the bear and ragged staff, doubtless kept his own ursine establishment.
[1375] Rye, 123.
[1376] Pipe Office Declared Account, 543, m. 194.
[1377] Stowe, Annales (1615), 835, 865, 895.
[1378] Translated by F. Madden in Archaeologia, xxiii. 354.
[1379] Machyn, 198.
[1380] Translated by G. von Bülow in 2 Transactions of Royal Hist. Soc. ix. 230, from a manuscript in the possession of Graf von der Osten at Plathe, Pomerania. I add for the sake of completeness the following lines from the Hodoeporica (1568, ed. 2, 1575), 224, of N. Chytraeus, whose visit was probably c. 1565–7:
Opposita in Tamesis ripa, longa area paruis Distincta aspicitur tectis, vbi magna canum vis Vrsorumque alitur diuersarumque ferarum, Quae canibus commissae Anglis spectacula praebent, Hospitibusque nouis, vincti dum praelia miscent, Luctantes aut ungue fero, vel dentibus uncis.
[1381] Cf. ch. xviii.
[1382] Translated in Rye, 45.
[1383] Cf. p. 362.
[1384] Hentzner, 196; cf. p. 363.
[1385] G. Binz in Anglia, xxii. 460, ‘Man pfleget auch alle Sontag vnndt mittwochen zu Londen, yenseits desz wassers den Berenhatz zu halten.... Der Schauplatz ist in die Ründe gebauwen, sind oben herumb viel geng, darauf man zusicht, vnden am boden vnder dem heiteren Himmel ist es nicht besetzet. Da bande man in mitten desz platzes einen grossen Beeren an ein stock am langen seil an.... Wie wir die stegen hinunter kamen, gungen wir hinder den schauwplatz, besahen die Englischen docken, deren bey 120 in einem bezirk beysamen, yedoch yetwederer in einem sonderbahren ställin an einer kettin angeheftet wahren.’
[1386] Hatfield MSS. xi. 382.
[1387] G. von Bülow in 2 Transactions of the Royal Hist. Soc. vi. 16, ‘16 Sept. Auf den Nachmittag haben wir den Bär u. Stierhetze zugesehen ... wohlmehr as 200 Hünde an selbigem Ort in einem besonderen Häuslein unterhalten’.
[1388] Rye, 61.
[1389] Rye, 133.
[1390] Englische Studien, xiv. 440.
[1391] Epigram xliii:
Publius, student at the common law, Oft leaves his books, and for his recreation, To Paris Garden doth himself withdraw, Where he is ravished with such delectation, As down among the bears and dogs he goes; Where, whilst he skipping cries, ‘To head! to head!’ His satin doublet and his velvet hose Are all with spittle from above bespread: When he is like his father’s country hall, Stinking with dogs and muted all with hawks; And rightly on him too this filth doth fall, Which for such filthy sports his books forsakes, Leaving old Ployden, Dyer, Brooke alone, To see old Harry Hunks, and Sacarson.
[1392] Merry Wives, I. i. 306.
[1393] Dekker, Work for Armourers (1609, Works, iv. 98), ‘At length a blind bear was tied to the stake, and instead of baiting him with dogs, a company of creatures that had the shapes of men and faces of Christians (being either colliers, carters, or watermen) took the office of beadles upon them, and whipped Monsieur Hunkes till the blood ran down his old shoulders’.
[1394] Coryats Crudities (1611), i. 114, ‘Hunks of the Beare-garden to be feared if he be nigh on’.
[1395] Cf. p. 453. Nashe, Strange News (1592, Works, i. 281, also names ‘great Ned’ and adds ‘Harry of Tame’. In 1590 Burnaby had at the Bear Garden ‘Tom Hunckes’, ‘Whitinge’, ‘Harry of Tame’, three other bears, three bulls, a horse, an ape. A ‘great’ bear was worth £8 or £10, a bull £4 or £5 (Kingsford, 175).
[1396] Puritan, iii. 5, ‘How many dogs do you think I had upon me?... almost as many as George Stone, the bear; three at once’.
[1397] Henslowe Papers, 106.
[1398] Copley Accounts, s. a. 1575, in Collectanea Genealogica et Topographica, viii. 253, ‘Gyven to the master of Paryshe Garden his man for goynge with Thos. Sharples into Barmensy Street to see certen mastyve dogges’.
[1399] R. Crowley, One and thyrtye Epigrammes (1550, ed. E. E. T. S.), 381:
And yet me thynke those men be mooste foles of all, Whose store of money is but verye smale, And yet euerye Sondaye they will surely spende One peny or two, the bearwardes lyuyng to mende. At Paryse garden, eche Sundaye, a man shall not fayle To fynde two or thre hundredes for the bearwardes vaile. One halpenye a piece they vse for to giue, When some haue no more in their purse, I belieue;
Jonson, Execration upon Vulcan (Works, iii. 322):
a threatning to the bears, And that accursed ground, the Paris-garden;
Taylor, Bull, Bear and Horse (1638):
And that we have obtained again the game, Our Paris Garden flag proclaims the same.
Cf. Sir John Davies’ lines already quoted; also Dekker, ii. 125 (News from Hell), iv. 109 (Work for Armourers), &c., &c.
[1400] Stowe, Annales, 695.
[1401] Henslowe Papers, 15, 104. Miss Dormer Harris kindly tells me that the Coventry Corporation rewarded the ‘Bearward of palace Garden’ in 1576–7.
[1402] Cf. p. 411.
[1403] Malone, Variorum, xix. 483; Rendle, Bankside, iii; Antiquarian, vii. 277; Ordish, 128.
[1404] Annales Monasterii de Bermundseia, s. a. 1113 (Luard, Annales Monastici, iii. 432), ‘Hoc anno Robertus Marmion dedit hidam de Wideflete cum molendino et aliis pertinentibus suis monachis de Bermundeseye’; Register of Hospital of St. John, s. a. 1420 (Monasticon Anglicanum, vi. 819), ‘Haec sunt statuta et ordinationes concernentia locum privilegiatum vocatum Parishgardyn, alias dictum Wideflete, sive Wiles, cum pertinentiis, facta per Johannem nuper Ducem Bedfordiae, firmarium ibidem, anno Domini mccc[c]xx’ [Rules for a sanctuary, with a dominus, senescallus, ballivus, constabularius, and societas, follow]; Liber Fundatorum of St. John (ibid. vi. 832), ‘Molendina de Wideflete cum gardino vocato Parish-gardin ... tenentur de Abbate de Barmondesey’ (1434). Kingsford, 157, traces the manor through Bermondsey priory, the Templars, and St. John’s Hospital to the Crown in 1536.
[1405] Blount, Glossographia (ed. 4, 1674), 469, quotes Close Roll, 16 Rich. II, dorso ii. Kingsford, 156, translates the writ, which is abstracted (Sharpe, Letter Book H, 392), ‘Writ to the Mayor and Sheriffs to proclaim ordinances made in the last Parliament at Winchester to the effect that the laystall or latrine (fimarium sive sterquilinium) on the bank of the Thames near the house of Robert de Parys be removed, and a house be built on its site for the use of butchers, where they may cut up their offal and take it in boats to mid-stream and cast it into the water at ebb-tide.... Witness the King at Westminster 21 Feb. 16 Rich. II’. The ordinance is recorded in Rot. Parl. iii. 306.
[1406] Index to Remembrancia, 478.
[1407] Brewer, xxi. 2. 88, ‘a licence for Thomas Fluddie, yeoman of your Majesty’s bears, to bait and make pastime with your Graces bears at the accustomed place at London, called the Stewes, notwithstanding the proclamation’ (Sept. 1546); Machyn, 78, ‘The sam day [9 Dec. 1554] at after-non was a bere-beytyn on the Banke syde, and ther the grett blynd bere broke losse, and in ronnyng away he chakt a servyng man by the calff of the lege, and bytt a gret pesse away, and after by the hokyll-bone, that within iij days after he ded’.
[1408] Foxe, Acts and Monuments (ed. 1846), v. 388. Collier, iii. 94, cites ‘a book of the expenses of the Northumberland family’ to the effect that the earl went to Paris Garden to behold the bear-baiting in 1525–6. Ordish, 129, criticizes this on the ground that the statement is not in the Northumberland Household Book printed by Percy. It was in fact a different book, from which Collier, i. 86, gives entries, of which one is of boat-hire from and to ‘Parys gardyn’. But there is nothing about bear-baiting.
[1409] Account of Treasurer of Chamber, s. a. 1515 (Brewer, ii. 1466), ‘Hen. Anesley, conveying the King’s barge from Greenwich to Parys Garden, 16^d’.
[1410] Ordish, 127.
[1411] In Shaw v. Langley (1597) the Swan is described as ‘in the oulde Parrisgardin’, although there is no specific mention of baiting (E. S. xliii. 345, 355).
[1412] Fleetwood, writing to Burghley on 13 July 1578 (Rendle, Antiquarian, vii. 274, from S. P. D. Eliz. cxxv. 21), describes intrigues of the French ambassador ‘on the Thames side behind Paris Garden toward Lambeth, in the fields ... I got a skuller to Paris Garden, but the place was dark and shadowed with trees, that one man cannot see another unless they have lynceos oculos or els cattes eys, shewing how admirable a place it was for such doings. The place is that boowre of conspiracies, it is the college of male cownsell.... There be certain virgulta or eightes of willows set by the Thames near that place; they grow now exceeding thick, and a notable covert for confederates to shrowd in; a milkmade lately did see the French ambassador land in that virgulta’.
[1413] The ring, without a name, is also shown in Smith’s drawing (1588), but this is probably based on one of the maps.
[1414] Rendle, Antiquarian, viii. 57, from Exchequer Depositions, 18 Jac. I. The depositions also mention a bull-house built in a dog-yard, a bear-house, a hay-house, a pond for the bears to wash in, and a pond for dead dogs. Kingsford, 175, gives fuller extracts.
[1415] Stowe, Survey, ii. 54. A short passage in i. 95 adds nothing.
[1416] Stowe (1615), 695.
[1417] Halliwell, Dr. Dee’s Diary (C. S.), 18; App. C, No. xxxi; App. D, No. lxiv. The ballad of which four stanzas are given by Collier, i. 244, is presumably a forgery.
[1418] More, Works (ed. 1557), 208, ‘This is much like as at Beuerlay late, whan much of the people beyng at a bere baytyng, the church fell sodeinly down at euensonge tyme, and ouer whelmed some that than were in it: a good felow, that after herde the tale tolde, “lo”, quod he, “now maie you see what it is to be at euensong whan ye should be at the bere baytynge”. How be it, the hurt was not ther in beinge at euensonge, but in that the churche was falsely wrought’.
[1419] App. D, No. lxx.
[1420] Rendle, Antiquarian, viii. 57.
[1421] Rendle, Antiquarian, viii. 57; Bankside, xxx, with map.
[1422] The tithes were for ‘the bear garden and for the ground adjoining to the same where the dogs are’ (Rendle, Bankside, v). It was for Morgan Pope that Bowes’s patent as Master of the Game was exemplified in 1585; cf. p. 450.
[1423] Henslowe, ii. 25, from Egerton MS. 2623, f. 13, and Dulwich MS. iv. 21.
[1424] Henslowe, i. 71, ‘Ano do 1595 the xxviij^{th} of Novembere Reseved of M^r Henslow the day and yeare abov written the som of syx poundes of curant mony of England and is in part of a mor som [yf he the sayd] by twyxt the sayd Phillyp Henslow and me consaning a bargen of the beargarden I say Reseved vj^{ll}. By me John Mavlthouse. Wittnes I E Alley.’ I take the words in square brackets, which are cancelled in the diary, to represent ‘if he proceed’. In Henslowe, i. 43, are further receipts for 40_s._ ‘in part of the bargen for the tenymentes on the bankes syd’ in Dec. 1595, and sums of £10, £20, and £4 for unspecified purposes in Jan. and Feb. 1596. Kingsford, 177, gives the date of Henslowe’s purchase.
[1425] Henslowe, i. 209; cf. Henslowe Papers, 109.
[1426] Henslowe, ii. 25.
[1427] Henslowe Papers, 107. I agree with Dr. Greg (Henslowe, ii. 30, 39) that it is difficult to see what a lease from Thomas Garland to Henslowe and Alleyn in 1608 of a close called Long Slip or Long Meadow in Lambeth can have had to do with the baiting. But Alleyn added the word ‘Bear-garden’ to the original endorsement ‘M^r Garlands lece’ (Henslowe Papers, 12). Perhaps the land was used for some subsidiary purpose in connexion with the Garden.
[1428] Henslowe Papers, 110; Architectural Review, xlvii. 152.
[1429] Full text in Alleyn Memoirs, 78; abstract in Henslowe Papers, 102.
[1430] Henslowe, i. 214; cf. p. 189 (supra).
[1431] Cf. p. 458.
[1432] Cf. ch. xviii.
[1433] Henslowe Papers, 19, from Dulwich Muniment 49; also printed in Variorum, iii. 343. Muniment 50 is Katherens’ bond, and Muniment 51 a sub-contract of 8 Sept. 1613 with John Browne, bricklayer, to do the brickwork for £80.
[1434] Cf. p. 370.
[1435] Taylor, Works (1630), 304, with a reply by Fennor and rejoinder by Taylor. Incidentally Taylor mentions the arras of the theatre and the tiles with which it was covered.
[1436] The Southwark vestry order of 1 May 1598 (App. D, No. cxv) seems to connect him with ‘play-houses’, but I doubt whether anything but the bear garden is meant.
[1437] Cf. Satiromastix, 1247, ‘Th’ast a breath as sweet as the Rose that growes by the Beare-Garden’.
[1438] Alleyn Memoirs, 159.
[1439] Ordish, 235. No date can be assigned to A North Countrey Song in Wit and Drollery (1656):
When I’se come there [to Paris Garden], I was in a rage, I rayl’d on him that kept the Beares, Instead of a Stake was suffered a Stage, And in Hunkes his house a crue of Players.
[1440] Collier, iii. 102.
[1441] Cf. p. 375.
[1442] Ordish, 244. A Bearsfoot Alley shown farther to the east by Rocque (1746) may derive from one of the earlier baiting-places.
[1443] C. W. Wallace in The Times (30 April 1914), ‘We present John Wardner William Sellors and all the land holders or their tenantes that holde anie landes gardeines ground or tenementes abbutting vpon the common sewer leadinge from Sellors gardin to the beare garden to cast clense and scoure their and euerie one of their seuerall partes of the common sewer by Candlemas nexte vpon paine of euerie pole then vndone ... ij^s’.
[1444] Cf. p. 458.
[1445] E. Hake, Newes out of Poules Churchyarde (1579), Sat. v:
What else but gaine and money gote Maintaines each Saboth day The bayting of the Beare and Bull? What brings this brutish play?
Many of the attacks on plays (App. C) also refer to baiting.
[1446] App. D, No. lxxxiv.
[1447] App. D, No. cxxxii.
[1448] ‘In the late quenes tyme fre libertie was permited with owt restrainte to bayght them which now is tacken a way frome vs especiallye one the Sondayes in the after none after devine service which was the cheffest meanes and benefit to the place’; cf. p. 452.
[1449] Cf. p. 375.
[1450] Henslowe Papers, 88, 125.
[1451] Printed in M. S. C. i. 277, from P. R. 13 Jac. I, pt. 20; also by Collier, i. 381, and Hazlitt, E. D. S. 46, from the Signet Bill, misdescribed as the Privy Seal, of 31 May.
[1452] Cf. App. D, No. clvii.
[1453] Cf. App. D, No. clx. Collier, i. 384, without giving his authority, says that the Corporation reported the carrying out of this mandate ‘before three days had elapsed’.
[1454] Shaw. ii. 107. Sir Thomas Saunders had the same lodgings c. 1551 (cf. p. 478, n. 4; M. S. C. ii. 120).
[1455] Cf. ch. xvii (Blackfriars); M. S. C. ii. 93, 110, 120.
[1456] W. P. Baildon, Black Books of Lincoln’s Inn, iv. 263; C. F. R. Palmer, The Friar-Preachers of Holborn, London (Reliquary, xvii. 33, 75).
[1457] Stowe, Survey, i. 9, 27, 40, 64, 339; ii. 14, 44, 89; (1720) i. 3. 177; Halle, ii. 150; Nicolas, Acts of Privy Council, passim; Rot. Parl. v. 171; Clapham, 58; V. H. i. 498; Brewer, iv. 2483; Riley, Memorials of London, 90; Baldwin, 154, 261, 355, 358, 499; Gairdner, Paston Letters, i. 426, ‘for the ease of resorting of the Lordys that are withinne the toun’.
[1458] V. H. i. 498.
[1459] Brewer, iii. 2. 1053.
[1460] Ibid. xiii. 2. 215.
[1461] Rymer, xiv. 609; Brewer, xiii. 2. 320.
[1462] M. S. C. ii. 3.
[1463] Ibid. ii. 4, 6, 8, 109, 114. Cawarden had had a lease of part of the property on 4 April 1548.
[1464] Stowe (1720), i. 3. 178.
[1465] Printed from Journal, 14, f. 129, as appendix to Memoranda, References, and Documents relating to the Royal Hospitals of the City of London (1836).
[1466] Stowe (1720), i. 3. 178. Portinari was a pensioner c. 1526 (Brewer, iv. 871), and he was aged 64 in 1572 (M. S. C. ii. 52). He was a Florentine by birth and an engineer by profession (Sp. P. ii. 399; Winwood, i. 145).
[1467] B. M. Lansd. MS. 155, f. 80^v.
[1468] M. S. C. ii. 2, 5, 103, 127; Stowe (1598), i. 339; Athenaeum (1886), ii. 91; Dasent, xxvi. 448; xxvii. 13.
[1469] In 1585 the Lord Mayor asked that the Blackfriars might contribute to the musters (Stowe, ed. Strype, i. 3. 180). In 1588 and 1593 requisitions for a levy were sent to the chief officer, i. e. the constable, and the inhabitants (Dasent, xv. 428; xxiv. 30). But in 1589 similar action was taken through the Lord Mayor (Dasent, xvii. 118). A local dispute was referred to Richard Young and another Middlesex justice in 1591, with whom the Lord Mayor was joined because a City company was involved (Dasent, xx. 245, 283). Young and others again received the Council’s instructions, after they had heard the inhabitants, on a building matter in 1591 (Dasent, xxi. 337). At a time of danger in 1592 the keeping of a midsummer watch was committed to Lord Cobham (Dasent, xxii. 551).
[1470] Stowe (1720), i. 3. 183; Dasent, iii. 235 (Letter of 14 March 1551 ‘to the Maiour of London to suffer the Lorde Cobham, the Lorde Wardein, and others dwelling within the Blacke Freres t’enjoye their liberties there’). The riot was put down by Sir Thomas Saunders, Sir Henry Jerningham, and William More.
[1471] Stowe (1720), i. 3. 183.
[1472] Stowe, ed. Strype (1720), i. 3. 184. The Blackfriars papers added by A. Munday in 1618 appear to be all notes and examinations taken by Sir Thomas Saunders, who appealed to the Earl of Arundel for support.
[1473] Dasent, viii. 240, 257.
[1474] Dasent, x. 429; xii. 19. Pending a decision the Lord Mayor was directed ‘not to intermeddle in any cawse within the saide liberties, savinge onlie for the punishment of fellons as heretofore he hath don’. The report dated 27 Jan. 1580 is printed by Ingleby, 250, from the Bridgewater MSS. It seems to be genuine. Collier does not print it, although he mentions it (New Facts, 9) in connexion with a forged Privy Council order which he dates 23 Dec. 1579. Wallace, ii. 22, describes an unprinted statement of the City’s case, dated 27 Jan. 1579, in Letter Book Z, f. 23^v.
[1475] Dasent, xv. 137; Stowe (1720), i. 3. 177.
[1476] This may be the undated petition relating both to the Blackfriars and the Whitefriars in B. M. Lansd. MS. 155, f. 79^v.
[1477] Wallace, i. 174, from Loseley MSS., bundle 425.
[1478] M. S. C. ii. 124; cf. Dasent, xiii. 76.
[1479] Dasent, xxvi. 448. Lord Hunsdon and Sir John Fortescue, both residents in or near the Blackfriars, sat on the commission with the chief justices. Lady Russell records the want of a steward and bailiff to keep order in 1597 (Hatfield MSS. vii. 298).
[1480] Dasent, xxvii. 13; xxx. 134, 149; cf. App. D, No. cxxvi.
[1481] W. de G. Birch, Historical Charters and Constitutional Documents of the City of London, 142. James is said to have made the City pay for the rebuilding of the Banqueting House (cf. ch. i) in return for this extension of jurisdiction (Goodman, ii. 176). Collier, N. F. 20, 22, 32, although ignorant of the charter, quotes documents relating to the status of the Blackfriars in 1608, of which two at least, a note of the interest of the players in the theatre and a letter in their favour signed ‘H. S.’, are forgeries (Ingleby, 244, 246, 256).
[1482] M. S. C. ii. 66, 114; cf. Cawarden’s i. p.m. in Fry, London Inquisitiones Post Mortem, i. 191.
[1483] The general lie of Blackfriars can be gathered from Stowe (1598), i. 313; ii. 11, with the maps described in the Bibl. Note to ch. xvi, and the modern ordnance maps. The earlier maps are largely picturesque, and notably place far too much of the precinct on the east of Water Lane. But they seem to preserve certain details, such as the arches over the north to south highway. The old lines of the roads appear to have been preserved at the rebuilding after the great fire of 1666. I have added some details from other sources.
[1484] M. S. C. ii. 115.
[1485] The reconstructed map of London by Emery Walker in C. L. Kingsford’s edition of Stowe gives this name in error to Water Lane.
[1486] The 1586 documents in Stowe (1720), i. 3. 178, state that the prior held of the lord of St. John’s, ‘who did make the bridge at the Thames’. Feuillerat, Eliz. 454, however, quotes a Declared Account of 1550 for ‘the ereccion and buyldynge ... of two bridges thone at the Blackfreers and thother at the Temple’. Under Elizabeth the liberty maintained the bridge as well as that at Bridewell (Lansd. MS. 155, f. 80^v). The tenure from St. John’s is also alleged (1587) in Dasent, xv. 137. It is rather curious that in an endorsement of the survey of St. John’s in 1586–7 (Feuillerat, Eliz. 47) that house, although in Clerkenwell, is described, perhaps by a slip, as in the Blackfriars.
[1487] M. S. C. ii. 115. For the ‘turngate’ cf. M. S. C. ii. 114; Strype (1720), i. 3. 184. This, with the great gate, and the gates at the Thames and Fleet bridges, made up the four gates of conventual times. The gate, over which Shakespeare had a house, where Ireland Yard debouches into St. Andrew’s Hill, was probably of later date.
[1488] M. S. C. ii. 6, 11, 109.
[1489] The upper gate is described in a lease as ‘a gate of the Citie of London’ (Loseley MS. 1396, f. 44). It may have been a relic of the pre-1276 wall. Its site is shown on the Ordnance map. The lower gate is visible in the maps of Braun and Agas. It seems to have carried Charles V’s gallery over the roadway to the guest-house.
[1490] M. S. C. ii. 9, 107, 110; Clapham, 64.
[1491] The details for the rest of this paragraph are mainly taken from Crown surveys of 1548 and 1550 (M. S. C. ii. 6, 8), and from a memorandum by Cawarden on the grants anterior to his own (M. S. C. ii. 1, 103), and Professor Feuillerat’s notes of the original patents which illustrate this.
[1492] M. S. C. ii. 9, 107, 114; Clapham, 62; London Inquisitiones Post Mortem, ii. 115.
[1493] Ibid. 9, 10, 112.
[1494] Ibid. 111, 113.
[1495] Ibid. 110; Clapham, 63.
[1496] Ibid. 10, 110, 114.
[1497] Ibid. 3.
[1498] Some vaulted fragments stood until 1900 at a spot which must have been just east of the school-house. Possibly they formed part of the provincial’s lodging. They are shown in a plan of c. 1670–80 (Clapham, 71), and their condition in 1900 was carefully recorded (Clapham, 69, 70, 78). Only a fragment of wall is now in situ, just north of what is now the west end of Ireland Yard, but appears on the seventeenth-century plan as Cloister Court. It must, however, have run out from the south-east corner of the cloister towards the east. The name Cloister Court has now passed to a yard farther south.
[1499] Clapham, 68; cf. p. 486.
[1500] Clapham suggests, plausibly enough, that the description (c. 1394) of a Dominican house in Pierce the Ploughmans Crede (ed. Skeat, E. E. T. S. 153–215) was based upon the London Blackfriars. The following passages relate to the cloister and refectory.
Þanne kam i to þat cloister . & gaped abouten Whouȝ it was pilered and peynt . & portred well clene, All y-hyled wiþ leed . lowe to þe stones, And y-paued wiþ peynt til . iche poynte after oþer; With kundites of clene tyn . closed all aboute, Wiþ lauoures of latun . louelyche y-greithed....
... Þanne was þe chaptire-hous wrouȝt . as a greet chirche, Coruen and couered . and queyntliche entayled; Wiþ semlich selure . y-set on lofte; As a Parlement-hous . y-peynted aboute....
... Þanne ferd y into fraytour . and fond þere an oþer, An halle for an heyȝ king . an housholde to holden, Wiþ brode bordes aboute . y-benched wel clene, Wiþ windowes of glas . wrouȝt as a Chirche....
... Chambers wiþ chymneyes . & Chapells gaie; And kychens for an hyȝe kinge . in castells to holden, And her dortour y-diȝte . wiþ dores ful stronge; Fermery and fraitur . with fele mo houses, And all strong ston wall . sterne opon heiþe, Wiþ gaie garites & grete . & iche hole y-glased; And oþere houses y-nowe . to herberwe þe queene.
[1501] M. S. C. ii. 1.
[1502] Ibid. 13, 115.
[1503] Ibid. 6, 8, gives the texts of two surveys (a) of the property leased to Cawarden on 4 April 1548, (b) of that included in his grant of 12 March 1550.
[1504] Ibid. 7, 12, 35; cf. p. 499.
[1505] London Inquisitiones Post Mortem, i. 191; cf. M. S. C. ii. 4, 12.
[1506] Stowe (1598), i. 341; Athenaeum (1886), ii. 91; M. S. C. ii. 2, 127; Hennessy, 88; Loseley MSS.
[1507] M. S. C. ii. 103.
[1508] Ibid. 92, 117.
[1509] Ibid. 21, 31, 92, 126.
[1510] Ibid. 21, 93, 119. They were let to Henry Knowles in 1565 and had been earlier occupied by Roger Lygon, Lady Parr, and Sir Thomas Saunders. Later Nicholas Saunders had them.
[1511] Ibid. 117, 124, 125, show Anthony Browne, probably, as tenant in 1560, Henry Lord Hunsdon, probably, in 1584 and 1585, and Ralph Bowes in 1596.
[1512] Dasent, xxi. 402, gives a Privy Council letter of 18 August 1591 to the Lord Mayor requiring him to repair the supply pipe from Clerkenwell; cf. p. 494.
[1513] (1548) ‘A Cuchin yarde, an owlde Cuchyn, an entre or passage Ioyninge to the same, conteyninge in lengethe 84 fote, abuttinge to the lane aforseide on the weste side, being in breddethe at that ende 68 fote, Abuttinge ageanste an owlde butery on the easte side, being in breddethe at that ende 74 foote, Abuttinge to M^r Portynarys parler nexte the lane on the Southe side, And to my lorde Cobhames brick wall and garden on the Northe syde. An owlde buttery and an entrye or passage with a greate stayre therin, with Sellers therunder, with a hall place at the vpper ende of the stayre and an entere there to the ffrater ouer the same buttery, all which conteyne in lengethe 36 foote and in breddethe 95 foote, abuttinge to the cloyster on the Este side, the Cuchin on the weste side, to the lorde Cobhams howse on the Northe syde, and on the Sowthe side to a blynd parlour that my lorde warden did clame.
A howse called the vpper frater conteyninge in lengethe 107 foote and in breddethe 52 foote, abuttinge Sowthe and easte to my ladye Kingestons howse and garden, Northe to a hall where the kinges revelles lyes at this presente, and weste towardes the seide Duchie Chamber and M^r Portynaryes howse.
[Sidenote: Memorandum my lorde warden clamethe the seide hall, parlour, Cutchin and Chaumber.]
A hall and a parlour vnder the seide frater of the same lengethe and breddethe, A litle Cuchen conteyning in lengethe 23 foote and in breddethe 22 foote abuttinge to the aforseide lane on the weste, towardes the seide parlour on the este, to M^r Portinarys howse on the northe, and to a waye ledinge to my ladye Kingestons howse on the southe, A litle Chamber with a voyde rome therunder, conteyning in lengethe 26 fote, in breddeth 10 foote, abuttinge weste to the cuchin, este to the parlour, northe to M^r Portinarys howse, and ye seid way to my ladie Kingestons howse Sowthe, with 4 small Sellers or darke holes therunder.
A voyde rome, beinge an entre towardes the lytle cytchin and colehowse, conteyning in lengeth 30 fote and in breddethe 17 fote.
A Chamber called the Duchie Chaumber, with a darke loginge therunder, conteyninge in lengthe 50 fote and in breddethe 16 foote, abuttinge este ageanste the north ende of the seide ffrater, abuttinge weste on M^r Portinaryes parlour ---- 66^s 8^d.’
(1550) ‘One Kitchyn yarde, an olde Kitchyn, an Entrie or passage ioyneinge to the same, Conteineinge in lengthe 84 fote, abutinge to the Lane aforesaid on the west side, beinge in bredethe at that ende three score fowrtene fote, abutinge to M^r Portinareys parler next the Lane on the southe side and to the Lord Cobham brickewall & gardeine on the Northe side. One olde Butterie & a Entrie or passage with a great staier therein, with Cellers therevnder, with a Hawle place at the vpper ende of the staiers and a entrie there to the ffrater ouer the same butterie, which all conteinethe in lengthe 95 fote and in bredethe 36 fote, abuttinge to the Cloyster on thest side, the kitchyn on the west side, to the Lorde Cobham howse on the northe side, and on the southe side to a blinde parler that my Lord warden did Clayme. One howse called the vpper ffrater conteinethe in Lengthe 107 fote and in bredethe 52 fote, Abuttinge southe and est to the Ladie Kingston howse and gardein, northe to a hawle where the Kinges Revelles Liethe at theis presentes, and west towardes the Duchie Chamber and M^r Portinareyes howse. A voide rome, beinge an Entrie towardes the Litle Kitchyn & Cole howse, conteininge in Lengthe 30 fote and in bredethe 17 fote. One Chamber called the Duchie chamber, with a darke Lodginge there vnder, conteininge in Lengthe 50 fote and in bredethe 16 fote, abuttinge est agaynst the northe ende of the said ffrater, and abuttinge west apon M^r Portinareys parler. All which premisses be valued to be worthe by yere ---- iij^{li} vj^s viij^d.’
[1514] M. S. C. ii. 14, 24, 116, 117, 119, 120; cf. p. 482. The stone gallery was removed in 1564.
[1515] Ibid. 13, 16, 115.
[1516] Ibid. 14, 16.
[1517] Ibid. 7, 11, ‘an entrye or passage with a greate stayre therin’ (1548, 1550), 21 ‘one entrye ledinge vnder parcell of the premysses demysed from that end of the house of William More wherin John Horleye his servaunt doth lodge’ (1560), 118, ‘the entre in the west ende of the garden openyng into the same garden’ (1560), 31, ‘an entrye leadynge from the sayde voyde ground into the sayd dwellynge howse or tenement of the sayd Sir William More’ (1576), 63, ‘the dore entry way voide ground and passage leadinge and vsed to and from the saide greate yard nexte the saide Pipe Office’ (1596), 126, ‘the gate-house with the appurtenances on the west side of the sayd monastery’ (1611), ‘the great gate near the play-house’ (1617).
[1518] M. S. C. ii. 20.
[1519] Ibid. 14 (cf. 116), ‘vnius paris graduum ducentium a coquina predicta vsque magnum claustrum’ (1546), 21, ‘the waye ledinge from the house and garden of William More towards the Water Lane’, ‘one entrye ledinge vnder parcell of the premysses demysed from the garden of William More to the voide grounde’ (1560), 119.
[1520] Ibid. 16.
[1521] Ibid. 115.
[1522] Ibid. 27, 29.
[1523] The whole length of the Neville-Farrant holding is given in 1560 (M. S. C. ii. 20) as 157½ ft., and in 1576 (M. S. C. ii. 29) as 156½ ft. As this included 37 ft. of the northern block, 119½ ft. or 120½ ft. seems to be left for the staircase and frater. The difference between inside and outside measurements often causes confusion in old surveys.
[1524] M. S. C. ii. 62, 119; cf. p. 504.
[1525] Ibid. 94.
[1526] Cf. p. 513.
[1527] M. S. C. ii. 105.
[1528] The room is described as ‘intrale seu le parlour’ in Cawarden’s grant of 1550.
[1529] M. S. C. ii. 105, 124. There was yet another room under the infirmary. One Kempe, an assign of Lady Kingston’s heir, tried to claim the Parliament Chamber from Cawarden, on the strength of her grant of the infirmary.
[1530] Cf. p. 504.
[1531] On Cheyne’s houses cf. p. 499.
[1532] M. S. C. ii. 42–51. This hall is doubtless the ground-floor frater referred to in a document of c. 1562 (M. S. C. ii. 105).
[1533] Cf. p. 499. The ‘blinde parler that my Lord warden did clayme’ and ‘the litle kitchyn and cole howse’ are mentioned in the survey of 1550 to define the position of other parcels. But the hall and parlour might be held to be covered by the grant of the ‘howse called the vpper frater’, and I do not know what the ‘little tenement’ near that held by Kirkham from Cheyne was, if it was not the little chamber and kitchen. It is noteworthy that the disputed rooms, after being included, with a note of Cheyne’s claim, in the survey of 1548, were left out of Cawarden’s lease of the same year.
[1534] M. S. C. ii. 109.
[1535] Brewer, ii. 2. 1494.
[1536] Tudor Revels, 7.
[1537] Feuillerat, Edw. and Mary, 255; Wallace, i. 140.
[1538] Athenaeum (1886), ii. 91.
[1539] Feuillerat, Eliz. 430; cf. M. S. C. ii. 120; Wallace, i. 192.
[1540] M. S. C. ii. 35. I do not know whether More deliberately confused the Tents and Revels.
[1541] Ibid. 52.
[1542] Ibid. 105.
[1543] Ibid. 14, 116; Hist. MSS. vii. 603.
[1544] Ibid. 15.
[1545] Only an abstract of title at the date of the sale exists (Barrett, Apothecaries, 46), but Apothecaries’ Hall occupies the site of these rooms.
[1546] M. S. C. ii. 4, 9; Feuillerat, Eliz. 440. In 1552 Jane Fremownte had succeeded Barnard (M. S. C. ii. 115), but she cannot have had the whole of the original lodge, as her 4 ft. entry on Water Lane is too small to have been the main access to the cloister. Probably part had been granted to her neighbour, Sir George Harper. Nor did all her holding pass to Cobham in 1554. Some of it was probably added to the house on the north, which occupied the site of the old church porch.
[1547] M. S. C. ii. 44, 53; cf. p. 502.
[1548] Ibid. 51, 121.
[1549] Ibid. 16.
[1550] Feuillerat, Edw. and Mary, 210, 230, 242, 301; Eliz. 103, 107.
[1551] M. S. C. ii. 118, ‘one other grete rome or vawte next the ground next the entre in the west ende of the garden openyng into the same garden wherin now the robes of the revelles do lye’ (Lease of 12 Feb. 1560).
[1552] M. S. C. ii. 19.
[1553] Cf. p. 489.
[1554] M. S. C. ii. 105, 118.
[1555] Ibid. 119, 120.
[1556] Wallace, i. 175.
[1557] M. S. C. ii. 119.
[1558] Ibid. 27; Wallace, i. 175.
[1559] Wallace, i. 175.
[1560] M. S. C. ii. 120.
[1561] Ibid. 27.
[1562] Jahrbuch, xlviii. 92; Wallace, i. 131.
[1563] Ibid. 93; M. S. C. ii. 28; Wallace, i. 132.
[1564] On the plays performed there, cf. chh. xii, xiii (Chapel, Paul’s, Oxford’s). Collier appears to have been aware, probably from the Lyly prologues and the reference in Gosson, P. C. 188, of the existence of the earlier Blackfriars play-house, and to have dated it, by a singular coincidence, in 1576. He knew nothing of the real facts, but inferred (H. E. D. P. i. 219) that the undated petition of the Blackfriars inhabitants, which is really of 1596, was of 1576, on the strength of a reference in it to a banishment of the players from the City, which an incorrect endorsement on a Lansdowne MS. (cf. App. D, No. lxxv) had led him to place in 1575. This did not prevent him from also assigning the petition, with a forged reply from the players, to 1596 (cf. p. 508). He proceeded to forge (a) an order dated 23 Dec. 1579 for the toleration of Leicester’s men at the Blackfriars (New Facts, 9), and (b) a memorial by Shakespeare and others as Queen’s men and Blackfriars ‘sharers’ in 1589 (New Facts, 11; cf. Ingleby, 244, 249).
[1565] Cf. ch. xii (Chapel).
[1566] Jahrbuch, xlviii. 99; Wallace, i. 152 (Will of Farrant, 30 Nov. 1580), 153 (Anne Farrant to More, 25 Dec. 1580), 154 (Leicester to More, 19 Sept. 1581), 158 (Anne Farrant to Walsingham, c. 1583), 159 (Court of Common Pleas, Farrant v. Hunnis and Farrant v. Newman, 1583–4), 160 (Court of Requests, Newman and Hunnis v. Farrant, 1584), 177 (Wolley to More, 13 Jan. 1587), 174 (Memoranda by More, c. 1587; cf. Dasent, xv. 137).
[1567] M. S. C. ii. 123. More’s rental of 1584 includes £50 from Hunsdon for the mansion house, £20 from Oxford, £8 from Lyly; that of 1585 the same three sums, all from Hunsdon. But the two smaller sums represent twice Farrant’s rent, which was £14.
[1568] Kempe, 495; M. S. C. ii. 123; Wallace, i. 186 (More to Hunsdon, 8 April 1586; Hunsdon to More, 27 April 1586; Hunsdon to More, 14 April 1590; More to Hunsdon, draft, 17 April 1590; More to Hunsdon, 18 April 1590). Did the Paul’s ‘boyes’ keep up connexion with the Blackfriars by learning dancing and perhaps playing in Frith’s school?
[1569] M. S. C. ii. 61, 93, 94, 98.
[1570] Ibid. 123 (Skinner to More, 11 Oct. 1591).
[1571] Ibid. 50, 54.
[1572] This may have been Thomas Hale, Groom of the Tents, who was a witness in the case (ibid. 44), or the Thomas Hall, musician, who in 1565 was sub-tenant of Frith’s garrets (ibid. 119).
[1573] Ibid. 35 (memorandum by More), 36 (award by arbitrators), 40 (depositions of More’s witnesses), 122 (notes of evidence by Pole’s witnesses).
[1574] On Bonetti’s career as a fencer, cf. Wallace, i. 187; M. S. C. ii. 122; Reyher, 257; G. Silver, Paradoxes of Defence, 64.
[1575] M. S. C. ii. 56; Wallace, i. 188 (Willoughby to More, July 1584), 190.
[1576] Wallace, i. 189; M. S. C. ii. 122. I do not think the lease of the fencing-school was in question between More and Bonetti. Both Raleigh’s letter and the workmen’s petition imply house-building, not mere internal repairs. Bonetti could have added no building to the fencing-school except perhaps the kitchen which adjoined in 1596 (ibid. 61). But the western house had been extensively rebuilt by 1584.
[1577] Ibid. 55.
[1578] Ibid. 56. The whole description from ‘All w^{ch} six foote & a halfe’ (l. 18) to ‘xxxix foote & viij inches’ (l. 29) is parenthetic, a point which the punctuation obscures.
[1579] Cf. chh. ii, xiii (Chamberlain’s).
[1580] M. S. C. ii. 124; cf. p. 490.
[1581] Ibid. 62; cf. p. 504.
[1582] M. S. C. ii. 36, 47, 51, 122.
[1583] Ibid. 36, 38, 56 (‘the tenemente of Margrett Poole on the south and weste’), 70, 77, 81, 85, 125. Here must have been the chamber which Thomas Blagrave, finding the butler’s lodging too small, hired of Parson Wythers, Cheyne’s servant, from 1552 to 1560, and which Pole still had in 1572 (ibid. 53). But if it was strictly ‘adjoininge’ to his house he must have had the ‘little kitchen’ as well as the ‘little chamber’.
[1584] Ibid. 63, 71.
[1585] Ibid. 125. An unfortunate hiatus in a document (ibid. 70) leaves it uncertain whether Tice occupied one of Mrs. Pole’s houses or More’s enlarged ‘little kitchen’.
[1586] Ibid. 50.
[1587] Cf. p. 504.
[1588] Kempe, 496; Wallace, i. 195; M. S. C. ii. 125, misdated 1595. The ‘other’ house was probably the mansion house, which was let to Ralph Bowes on 3 March 1596 (cf. p. 497). Hunsdon died on 22 July 1596.
[1589] Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 299, from enrolment in R. O.; M. S. C. ii. 60, from counterpart executed by Burbadge in Loseley MS. 348.
[1590] I suppose that this was the old lavatory. If so, probably Burbadge’s use terminated when this became a glass-house in 1601; cf. p. 506.
[1591] The account in Wallace, ii. 37, is not trustworthy; it assumes, in lieu of the Duchy Chamber and staircase tower, a ‘north section’ of the building 40 ft. from north to south.
[1592] Cf. p. 498.
[1593] Wallace, i. 196; ii. 38, is misleading here.
[1594] M. S. C. ii. 70.
[1595] Ibid. 76 (conveyance by Sir Richard Michelborne, George Pole, and Charles Pole), 84 (conveyance by Richard and Elizabeth Mansell), 125.
[1596] Variorum, iii. 62; Birch, ii. 426.
[1597] H. R. Plomer, The King’s Printing House under the Stuarts (2 Library ii. 353).
[1598] M. S. C. ii. 83 (Recital of conveyance by trustees of Lady Howard); cf. p. 512.
[1599] Ibid. 98 (Recital of lease in deed of sale of 1609).
[1600] Ibid. 93, ‘all that greate Vault or lowe roome adioyneing to the said greate Garden lyeing and being at the south west end of the said greate garden nowe vsed and imployed for a glassehowse’ (1609). By 26 June 1601 (M. S. C. ii. 70) the way south of the kitchen yard has become ‘the yard or way ... which leadeth towardes the glassehouse nowe in the tenure of Sir Ierom Bowes’. Bowes had obtained a patent for making drinking-glasses in 1592 and occupied a warehouse under the church in 1597 (D. N. B.). Dekker, Newes from Hell (1606, Works, ii. 97), says, ‘Like the Glass-house Furnace in Blacke-friers, the bonefiers that are kept there neuer goe out’.
[1601] M. S. C. ii. 92 (Deed of Sale).
[1602] Ibid. 126. There is some confusion as to the position of Mrs. Basil’s house. I think it was west of the gate-house.
[1603] Ibid. 88 (Deed of Sale, misdated 1602).
[1604] Ibid. 64.
[1605] Ibid. 83; S. P. D. Jac. I, viii. 18 (Grant to trustees for Lady Kildare). An inquisitio on Cobham’s Blackfriars property (1 Jac. I) appears to be amongst the Special Commissions and Returns in the Exchequer (R. O. Lists and Indexes, xxxvii. 61).
[1606] C. R. B. Barrett, History of the Society of Apothecaries, 42. The existing Hall dates from 1669–70. John Downes (cf. App. I, No. iii) and Pepys, i. 336, record the use of the older building by Davenant for plays at the Restoration. So Farrant’s tradition survived.
[1607] For text and discussion of bona fides cf. App. D, No. cvii. Collier, having already assigned the document to 1576 (cf. p. 496), uses it again for 1596 (H. E. D. P. i. 287). With it, in his first edition (i. 297), he printed a reply, now in S. P. D. Eliz. cclx. 117, by Pope, Richard Burbadge, Heminges, Phillips, Shakespeare, Kempe, Sly, and Tooley, on behalf of the players, which is palaeographically a forgery (Ingleby, 289) and could not be genuine in substance, since it refers to the Globe, which did not exist in 1596.
[1608] Cf. p. 511. Wallace, ii. 53, thinks this an error or invention of the City in 1619, because the Privy Council registers ‘giving all the official acts of that body, record no such order’. But the Privy Council registers notoriously do not record all the official acts of that body (cf. ch. ii). The petitioners of 1619 are not likely to have invented the ‘petition and indorsemente’ of 1596 to which they appealed.
[1609] In the Sharers Papers of 1635 (Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 317) Cuthbert and the other Burbadges then living say ‘now for the Blackfriers, that is our inheritance; our father purchased it at extreame rates, and made it into a play-house with great charge and troble’. Further, Cuthbert was associated with Richard in buying subsidiary property in 1601, 1610, 1612, and 1614 (cf. p. 505). But the leases of 1600 and 1608 were by Richard alone, and under one of these Cuthbert became his tenant.
[1610] Cf. p. 511.
[1611] Fleay, 211, 234, 240.
[1612] Cf. ch. xii.
[1613] Fleay, 224, 230, 245, 250. Evans maintained that the assignment to Hawkins was absolute, to cover his liability under the bond to Burbadge. But the court appears to have held that a reassignment was intended, but that ‘the conveyance was never perfected and sealed’.
[1614] Wallace, ii. 89, from unpublished document; Evans v. Kirkham in Fleay, 214.
[1615] Ibid. 235.
[1616] Ibid. 221, 231, 235, 246.
[1617] The Burbadges say in the Sharers Papers of 1635, ‘the more to strengthen the service, the boys daily wearing out, it was considered that house would be as fit for ourselves, and so purchased the lease remaining from Evans with our money, and placed men players, which were Hemings, Condall, Shakspeare, etc.’. They also say that the players had their shares ‘of us for nothing’. Very likely they paid no fine, but they had to pay their quota towards rent. It is reasonable to infer that Thomas Evans was a relative and nominee of Henry Evans. Kirkham’s allegation in the 1612 litigation that Henry Evans had shared in the Blackfriars profits during the past four years (Fleay, 225) was not seriously contested.
[1618] Cf. ch. xiii. Collier (New Facts, 16) printed a document professing to set out action taken by the City against scurrilities of Kempe and Armin at Blackfriars in 1605. But this cannot be traced in the City archives (S. Lee in D. N. B. s.v. Kempe), and the City did not obtain control of the Blackfriars until 1608 (cf. p. 480). It is probably a forgery.
[1619] Cf. vol. i, p. 357.
[1620] C. W. Wallace, Advance Sheets from Shakespeare, the Globe, and Blackfriars (p.p. 1909).
[1621] Sharers Papers in Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 312. Collier, Alleyn Memoirs, 105, conjectures that Alleyn bought Shakespeare’s interest in April 1612, and it appears from G. F. Warner, Dulwich MSS. 115, 172, 174, that he forged entries in documents relating to other property of Alleyn’s in Blackfriars, as a support to this conjecture.
[1622] Cf. p. 480.
[1623] Text in Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 311, and Harrison, iv. 323, from City Repertory, xxxiv, f. 38^v. The two petitions of the officials and inhabitants are in M. S. C. i. 90, from Remembrancia, v. 28, 29. They are undated, but can be identified from a recital in the order. The officials allege ‘that whereas in November 1596 divers both honorable persons and others then inhabiting the said precinct made knowne to the Lordes and others of the privie Counsell, what inconveniencies were likelie to fall vpon them, by a common Play-house which was then preparinge to bee erected there, wherevpon their Honours then forbadd the vse of the said howse for playes, as by the peticion and indorsemente in aunswere thereof may appeare.... Nevertheles ... the owner of the said play-house doth vnder the name of a private howse (respectinge indeed private comoditie only) convert the said howse to a publique play-house.’ They dwell on the inconvenience caused by the congested streets and the difficulty of getting to church ‘the ordinary passage for a great part of the precinct aforesaid being close by the play house dore’.
[1624] Text in M. S. C. i. 280.
[1625] Text in Collier, i. 455, from S. P. D. Car. I, ccv. 32, where it is accompanied by copies of the Privy Council order and letter of 22 June 1600 (App. D, No. cxxiv) and the City order of 21 Jan. 1619. Probably the copy of the petition of Blackfriars inhabitants in 1596 (cf. p. 508), now in S. P. D. Eliz. cclx. 116, originally belonged to this set of documents.
[1626] M. S. C. i. 386.
[1627] The report of the commissioners is printed by Collier, New Facts, 27, and H. E. D. P. i. 477. It is confirmed by a memorandum of Secretary Windebank in S. P. D. Car. I, ccli. p. 293, and I think Ingleby, 304, is wrong in suspecting a forgery (cf. M. S. C. i. 386). The commissioners allowed (a) £700 to Cuthbert and William Burbadge for 14 years’ purchase of the rent of £50 reserved to them by lease, (b) £1,134 for 14 years’ purchase of an interest in four tenements rated at £75 and a piece of void ground to turn coaches at £6, (c) £1,066 13_s._ 4_d._ for 100 marks apiece to 16 players for ‘the interest that some of them haue by lease in the said Play-house, and in respect of the shares which others haue in the benefits thereof’, and for compensation for removal. Collier, Reply, 39, mentions but does not print another document containing a summary of the players’ claim, with notes by Buck. But Buck was long dead. A third valuation published by Collier, in which Laz. Fletcher’s name occurs, is certainly a forgery (Ingleby, 246).
[1628] M. S. C. i. 386.
[1629] Fleay, 211, 213. I suppose it was on this that Evans spent £11 0_s._ 2_d._ in Dec. 1603 (Wallace, ii. 89).
[1630] In The Times of 12 Sept. 1906 Professor Wallace gives the number of new suits as four; in The Children of the Chapel at Blackfriars (1908), 36, as twelve. Presumably the Court of Requests suit of Keysar v. Burbadge et al., printed in Nebraska University Studies, x. 336, is one of these.
[1631] Wallace, ii. 39, 40, 41, 43, 49.
[1632] Cf. p. 511.
[1633] M. S. C. ii. 31, ‘all the Leds couerynge the premysses’ (1576), 61, ‘the stone staires leadinge vpp vnto the Leades or route over the saide seaven greate vpper romes oute of the saide seaven greate vpper romes’ (1596).
[1634] Wallace, ii. 40.
[1635] Marston, The Dutch Courtesan, v. iii. 162.
[1636] Cf. p. 425.
[1637] R. Flecknoe, Miscellania (1653), 141, ‘From thence passing on to the Black-fryers, and seeing never a Play-bil on the Gate, no Coaches on the place, nor Doorkeeper at the Play-house door, with his Boxe like a Churchwarden, desiring you to remember the poor Players, I cannot but say for Epilogue to all the Playes were ever acted there:
Poor House that in dayes of our Grand-sires, Belongst unto the Mendiant Fryers: And where so oft in our Fathers dayes We have seen so many of Shakspears Playes, So many of Johnsons, Beaumonts & Fletchers.’
[1638] I do not know what value to attach to a print in the Gardiner collection, reproduced by Baker, 44, 78, as representing the theatre. It shows a Renaissance façade, which can have been no part of the mediaeval building. Adams, 197, reproduces a painting of mediaeval fragments found in rebuilding The Times in 1872, small ground-floor rooms divided by entries. But The Times must cover the site of Hunsdon House as well as that of the theatre.
[1639] As an epilogue to this narrative and an example of how popular history is written, I quote D. E. Oliver, The English Stage (1912), 9, ‘Blackfriars House, a deserted monastery on the Thames side, was granted by Edward VI in 1596 to the Court Players for their use as a play-house, but it was not until the accession of Elizabeth that it received official sanction as a recognized place of public entertainment’.
[1640] Jonas, 132, however, quotes from the register of St. Dunstan’s, Whitefriars, with the date 29 Sept. 1607, ‘Gerry out of the play-house in the Friars buried’, which suggests use of the theatre before 1608. The King’s Revels may well have started by 1607. He also quotes, without date, ‘We present one play-house in the same precinct, not fitting these to be now tolerable’.
[1641] I do not know why Adams, 312, identifies the play-house with a cloister shown in Clapham’s plan. Surely it is more likely to have been the hall also shown at the north-west corner.
[1642] P. C. Acts (1613–14), 166. One Sturgis had leased a house and garden from Sir Edward Gorge, and sublet the garden to ‘one Rossetoe Kynman and others, who goe aboute to erecte a p[l]aye house thereupon’.
[1643] M. S. C. i. 91; cf. ch. xvii. The Blackfriars is still the ‘private house’ of the King’s men in the patent of 1619 issued to them after this controversy.
[1644] It is true that, when the prentices took up Whitefriars for The Hog Hath Lost His Pearl in 1613, the admission per bullettini is said to have been ‘for a note of distinction from ordinary comedians’. But the companies had no need to continue any special system of admission after they had the protection of their patents; Dekker (vide p. 523) speaks of gatherers at private houses in 1609. After the Restoration, ‘ballatine, or tickets sealed for all doors and boxes’ were introduced at the Duke’s Theatre in 1660 (R. W. Lowe, Thomas Betterton, 75).
[1645] Lawrence, i. 230; cf. App. D, No. xxxii.
[1646] The earliest example is The Troublesome Reign of King John (1591).
[1647] But ‘priuately’ is also used of strictly private performances on the title-pages of Caesar’s Revenge (1607) acted at Trinity College, Oxford, and, later, W. Montague’s Shepherd’s Paradise (1659) acted by amateurs at Court.
[1648] T. M., Black Book (1604), in Bullen, Middleton, viii. 42, ‘arch tobacco-taker of England ... upon stages both common and private’; Malcontent (1604), ind., ‘we may sit upon the stage at the private house’; Sophonisba (1606), ad fin., ‘it is printed only as it was represented by youths, and after the fashion of the private stage’; Dekker, Gull’s Horn Book (cf. App. H), ‘Whether therefore the gatherers of the publique or priuate Play-house stand to receiue the afternoones rent’; Dekker, Seven Deadly Sins (1606, Works, ii. 41), ‘All the Citty lookt like a priuate Play-house, when the windowes are clapt downe’; Roaring Girl (1611), ii. 1, ‘the private stage’s audience, the twelve-penny stool gentlemen’; Daborne to Henslowe (1613, Henslowe Papers, 79), ‘as good a play for your publique howse as ever was playd’.
[1649] Cf. Wright (App. I).
[1650] Lawrence (Fortnightly, May 1916) has shown that the rebuilt Fortune of 1623 and Red Bull of c. 1632 were probably roofed, and Wright’s description confuses the two phases of these houses.
[1651] Chapman’s Byron (1625) is said to have been acted ‘at the Blacke-Friers and other publique Stages’, Heywood’s English Traveller (1633), A Maidenhead Well Lost (1634), and Love’s Mistress (1636) to have been ‘publikely acted’ at the Cockpit, and Shirley’s Martyred Soldier (1638) to have been acted ‘at the Private House in Drury Lane and at other publicke Theaters’. This is exceptional terminology, but shows the obsolescence of the distinction.
[1652] Cf. ch. xvi.
[1653] Old Fortunatus (Rose, 1599), prol. 81, ‘this small circumference’; Warning for Fair Women (? Curtain, 1599), prol. 83, 88, ‘all this fair circuit ... this round’; Hen. V (Curtain or Globe, 1599), prol. 11, ‘this cockpit ... this wooden O’; E. M. O. (Globe, 1599), prol. 199, epil. 4406, ‘this thronged round ... this faire-fild Globe’; Sejanus (Globe, 1603), comm. v, ‘the Globe’s fair ring’; Three English Brothers (Curtain or Red Bull, 1607), epil., ‘this round circumference’; Merry Devil of Edmonton (Globe, 1608), prol. 5, ‘this round’. On the other hand, Whore of Babylon (Fortune, 1607), prol. 1, ‘The charmes of Silence through this Square be throwne’.
[1654] Ordish, 12.
[1655] Before the Swan was built, Nashe wrote in The Unfortunate Traveller (1594), ‘I sawe a banketting house belonging to a merchant that was the meruaile of the world.... It was builte round of green marble like a Theater without’ (Works, ii. 282).
[1656] Cf. chh. iv, xvi (introd.).
[1657] Atlantic Monthly (1906), xcvii. 369.
[1658] Kirkman also says in the preface to The Wits (1672), ‘I have seen the Red Bull Play-house, which was a large one’; but he is referring, more certainly than Wright, to the rebuilt house.
[1659] Cf. Albright, 40; Lawrence, i. 12, and E. S. xxxii. 44.
[1660] There is a dot in Wheatley’s facsimile over the second well-marked ‘r’ of the word ‘orchestra’. Is it possible that Van Buchell misread it ‘orchestia’?
[1661] Cf. Brereton in Homage, 204.
[1662] Cf. ch. xvi.
[1663] The Theatrum of Jonson’s 1616 Folio t.p. is oval, rather than round, but it is safer to take this, in spite of its hut, as representing Jonson’s notion of a classical theatre.
[1664] Cf. ch. xvi. Graves, 32, tries to minimize the structural influence of inn-yards on the theatres, and even doubts whether the actors preferred to act in these ‘rather than in the great halls’. But I do not think that he makes much of a case. Had the inns, indeed, ‘great halls’ at all?
[1665] Gosson, P. C. (1582), ‘it is the fashion of youthes to go first into the yarde, and to carry theire eye through every gallery’; Hamlet, III. ii. 10, ‘tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb-shows and noise’; Dekker, G. H. B. (1609), ‘your Groundling and Gallery-Commoner buyes his sport by the penny ... neither are you to be hunted from thence, though the Scar-crows in the yard hoot at you, hisse at you, spit at you, yea, throw durt euen in your teeth’; Bartholomew Fair (1614), ind. 51, ‘the vnderstanding Gentlemen o’ the ground here, ask’d my iudgement’, 59, 79; The Hog Has Lost His Pearl (1614), prol.:
We may be pelted off for ought we know, With apples, egges, or stones, from thence belowe;
W. Fennor, Descriptions (1616):
the understanding, grounded, men for their just reward, Shall gape and gaze among the fools in the yard.
So later, Vox Graculi (1623), ‘they will sit dryer in the galleries then those who are the understanding men in the yard’;
Shirley, The Changes (1632):
Many gentlemen Are not, as in the days of understanding, Now satisfied with a Jig;
Shirley, The Doubtful Heir (1640), prol.:
No shews, no frisk and, what you most delight in, Grave understanders, here’s no target-fighting.
[1666] Proscenium is the proper classical word for the space in front of the scena; cf. p. 539.
[1667] Albright has no justification for introducing into his reconstruction of a typical Shakespearian stage the tapering, instead of quadrangular, platform which characterizes the late engraving in The Wits, and to a less degree those in Roxana and Messallina.
[1668] Wegener, 125, collects examples of the use of traps. They served, inter alia, for the representation of ‘hell-mouth’, which the Elizabethan stage inherited from the miracle-plays (cf. p. 544), and the space under the stage was known as ‘hell’; cf. Dekker, News from Hell (1606, Works, ii. 92, 139), ‘Mary the question is, in which of the Play-houses he [the Devil] would have performed his prize.... Hell being vnder euerie one of their Stages, the Players (if they had owed him a spight) might with a false Trappe doore haue slipt him downe, and there kept him, as a laughing stocke to al their yawning spectators.... Tailors ... (as well as Plaiers) haue a hell of their owne, (vnder their shop-board).’
[1669] Cf. Graves, 41. The register of the association of Masters of Defence (Sloane MS. 2530; cf. extracts in A. Hutton, The Sword and the Centuries, 259) records many ‘prizes’ played at theatres and theatrical inns during the sixteenth century; cf. App. D, Nos. lx-lxii, Case is Altered, II. vii. 28, ‘First they [maisters of defence] are brought to the publicke Theater’, and for later periods Henslowe, i. 98 (the Rose, 1598), the fatal contest at the Swan in 1602, and Herbert, 47, 81. For acrobats cf. App. D, No. cxxiii, on the use of the Swan by Peter Bromvill in 1600. Henslowe, i. 98, 106, records loans in connexion with vaulting performances with a horse, perhaps at the Rose, in 1598 and 1599 by John Haslett or Hassett, who was also paid for court performances (App. B) in 1603 and 1608.
[1670] T. M. Black Book (1604, Bullen, Middleton, viii. 7) opens with Lucifer ascending, as Prologue to his own Play:
Now is hell landed here upon the earth, When Lucifer, in limbs of burning gold, Ascends the dusty theatre of the world,...
... my tortured spleen Melts into mirthful humour at this fate, That heaven is hung so high, drawn up so far, And made so fast, nailed up with many a star; And hell the very shop-board of the earth,...
... And now that I have vaulted up so high Above the stage-rails of this earthen globe, I must turn actor and join companies.
Rails are shown in the late Roxana and Messallina engravings of indoor stages.
[1671] Cf. H. Logeman in Anglia, xix. 117.
[1672] Dekker, G. H. B. (1609), ‘on the very Rushes where the Commedy is to daunce ... must our fethered Estridge ... be planted’ ... ‘Salute all your gentle acquaintance, that are spred either on the rushes, or on stooles about you ... take vp a rush, and tickle the earnest eares of your fellow gallants’; 1 Hen. IV, III. i. 214, ‘She bids you on the wanton rushes lay you down’. In The Gentleman Usher (c. 1604, Blackfriars), II. i. 72, ‘Enter Bassiolo with Servants, with rushes and a carpet’, and Bassiolo says,
lay me ’em thus, In fine smooth threaves; look you, sir, thus, in threaves. Perhaps some tender lady will squat here, And if some standing rush should chance to prick her, She’d squeak, and spoil the songs that must be sung.’
[1673] Lawrence, i. 39, 161.
[1674] G. Harvey (1579, Letter Book, 67), ‘sum maltconceivid comedye fitt for the Theater, or sum other paintid stage whereat thou and thy liuely copesmates in London may lawghe ther mouthes and bellyes full for pence or twoepence apeece’; Spenser, Tears of the Muses (1591), 176, ‘That wont with comick sock to beautefie The painted Theaters’; cf. Graves, 68. Coryat, i. 386, in 1608, found a Venice play-house ‘very beggarly and base in comparison of our stately Play-houses in England: neyther can their Actors compare with us for apparell, shewes and musicke’. So in Case is Altered, II. vii. 30, the plays in Utopia (= England) are ‘set foorth with as much state as can be imagined’.
[1675] App. I; but cf. p. 524, n. 1.
[1676] Malcontent (1604, Globe), ind., ‘Good sir, will you leave the stage? I’ll help you to a private room’; cf. Sir J. Davies’ epigram, infra.
[1677] Wright, Hist. Hist. 407, ‘The prices were small (there being no scenes)’.
[1678] L. Wager’s Mary Magdalene (1566) has a prologue which says that the actors will take ‘halfpence or pence’ from the audience, but this was probably used by strolling actors and continues the miracle-play tradition. At almost the same date, a jest in Merry Tales, Wittie Questions and Quick Answers (1567, Hazlitt, Jest Books, i. 145) tells how men stood at the gate of a play at Northumberland Place, ‘with a boxe (as the facion is) who toke of euery persone that came in a peny or an half peny at the least’.
[1679] J. Mayne in Jonsonus Virbius (1638):
So when thy Fox had ten times acted been, Each day was first, but that ’twas cheaper seen; And so thy Alchemist played o’er and o’er, Was new o’ the stage, when ’twas not at the door.
[1680] G. Harvey (p. 530, supra); Lyly, Pappe with an Hatchet (Works, iii. 408); cf. Martin’s Month’s Mind (1589, App. C, No. xl). Lodge, Scillaes Metamorphosis (1589), will not ‘tie my pen to Pennie-knaves delight’, and S. Rowlands, Letting of Humour’s Blood in the Head Vein (1600), bids poets not ‘To teach stage parrots speak for penny pleasure’; cf. Case is Altered, I. i. 104, ‘Tut, giue me the penny, giue me the peny, I care not for the Gentlemen, I, let me haue a good ground’.
[1681] Cf. ch. xvi, introd. Field says in 1583 (App. C, No. xxxi), ‘Euery dore hath a payment, & euery gallerie maketh a yearely stipend’.
[1682] E. M. O. (1599), ind. 425, ‘Let me neuer liue to looke as highe as the two-pennie roome, againe’; T. Garzoni, Hospitall of Incurable Fooles (tr. 1600), epist., ‘a Player that in speaking an Epilogue makes loue to the two pennie roume for a plaudite’; Satiromastix (1602), epil. 2690, ‘Are you pleas’d?... if you be not, by’th Lord Ile see you all--heere for your two pence a peice agen before Ile loose your company.... Good night, my two-penny Tenants’; Mad World, my Masters (c. 1604–6), v. ii. 36, ‘some ... that ... took a good conceit of their parts into th’ two-penny room’; Woman Hater (1607), prol. 5, ‘I do pronounce this, to the utter discomfort of all two-penny Gallery men, you shall have no bawdery’; Fleire (1607), ii. 30, ‘They (like your common players) let men come in for twopence a peece’; Dekker, News from Hell (1606, Works, ii. 96), ‘You may take him ... in the afternoones, in the twopeny roomes of a Play-house, like a Puny, seated Cheeke by Iowle with a punke’, Seven Deadly Sins (1606, ii. 53), ‘Sloth ... will come and sit in the two-pennie galleries amongst the gentlemen, and see their knaveries and their pastimes’, The Dead Term (1608, iv. 55), ‘Players ... prostitute themselues to the pleasures of euery two-penny drunken Plebeian’, Lanthorn and Candle-Light (1608, iii. 216), ‘Pay thy twopence to a Player, in his gallerie maist thou sitte by a Harlot’, Raven’s Almanac (1609, iv. 184), ‘As if you sat in the moste perspicuous place of the two-penny gallerie in a play-house’; Roaring Girl (1611), v. 1, ‘One of them is a nip; I took him once i’ the two-penny gallerie at the Fortune’; &c., &c.
[1683] Dekker, Seven Deadly Sins (1606, Works, ii. 53), ‘Their houses smoakt euery after noone with Stinkards who were so glewed together in crowdes with the steames of strong breath, that when they came foorth, their faces lookt as if they had beene per boyld’, Raven’s Almanac (1609, iv. 194), ‘Hee shall be glad to play three houres for two pence to the basest stinkard in London, whose breth is stronger than garlicke, and able to poison all the twelve penny roomes’, Work for Armourers (1609, iv. 96), ‘tearme times, when the Twopeny Clients and Peny Stinkards swarme together to heere the Stagerites’; vide n. 2, infra, and p. 534, n. 1.
[1684] Satiromastix (1602), 1669, ‘a Gentleman or an honest Cittizen shall not sit in your pennie-bench Theaters, with his Squirrell by his side cracking nuttes ... but he shall be Satyr’d and Epigram’d vpon’; T. M. Black Book (1604), ‘penny-rooms at theatres’; T. M. Ant and Nightingale (1604), ‘stinkards sitting in the penny galleries of a theatre, and yawning upon the players’; Dekker, Gull’s Horn Book (1609, Works, ii. 208), ‘thou ... hast vouchsafed to be acquainted with penny galleries’; Wit Without Money (c. 1614), iv. 1, ‘break in at plays like prentices for three a groat, and crack nuts with the scholars in peny rooms again’.
[1685] A. Copley, Wits, Fits and Fancies (1595; ed. 1614, p. 124), tells of a man cast off by his brother, an actor, who sent him sixpence in a sheet of paper, to show that, ‘though his brother had vowed not in seven years to see him, yet he for his sixpence could come and see him upon the stage at his pleasure’. If Platter’s 3_d._ was the highest normal charge in the sixteenth century, the 6_d._ may represent a first night’s charge.
[1686] Most of the allusions to 6_d._ charges relate to private houses (cf. p. 556), but Beaumont’s grammar lecture (cf. ch. xxiii) gives this price for the Bankside, and T. M. Black Book (1604, Bullen, Middleton, viii. 41) has ‘I give and bequeath to you Benedick Bottomless, most deep cut-purse, all the benefit of ... the sixpenny rooms in play-places, to cut, dive and nim’. Later, The Actors Remonstrance (1643) professes that the players will not admit into their ‘sixpenny rooms those unwholesome enticing harlots that sit there merely to be taken up by prentices or lawyers’ clerks’; cf. Lawrence, i. 36, who thinks that the lord’s rooms became the sixpenny rooms. For the 1_s._ charge, cf. p. 533, n. 1, and Malcontent (1604), ind. 63, ‘I say, any man that hath wit may censure, if he sit in the twelve-penny room’; Dekker, G. H. B. (1609), ‘When at a new play you take up the twelve-penny rome next the stage; (because the Lords and you may seeme to be haile fellow wel-met) there draw forth this booke, read alowd, laugh alowd, and play the Antickes, that all the garlike mouthed stinkards may cry out, Away with the fool’; Hen. VIII (1613), prol., ‘may see away their shilling’; Overbury, Characters (ed. Rimbault, 154, The Proud Man), ‘If he have but twelvepence in ’s purse he will give it for the best room in a play-house’.
[1687] They include women, and certainly look more like spectators than actors or musicians.
[1688] E. Guilpin, Skialetheia (1598), ep. 53:
See you him yonder, who sits o’re the stage, With the Tobacco-pipe now at his mouth?
In E. M. O. (1599), 1390 (Q_{1}), Brisk is said to speak of lords ‘as familiarlie as if hee had ... ta’ne tabacco with them ouer the stage i’ the Lords roome’. Dekker-Wilkins, Jests to Make you Merry (1607, Works, ii. 292), has a jest of ‘one that sat ouer the stage’ on a wench in the two-penny room. Farmer-Chetham MS. (seventeenth-century, ed. Grosart, i. 104) has an epigram on Spongus, who ‘Plays at Primero over the stage’.
[1689] Satiromastix (1602), 2612, ‘You must forsweare to venter on the stage when your play is ended, and to exchange curtezies and complements with gallants in the Lordes roomes’. The subject is well discussed by Lawrence (i. 29), The Situation of the Lords’ Room.
[1690] Sir J. Davies, Epigrams (prob. < 1596), ep. 28, In Sillam, ‘He that dares take Tobacco on the stage’; ep. 3, In Rufum:
Rufus the Courtier at the theatre Leauing the best and most conspicuous place, Doth either to the stage himselfe transfer, Or through a grate doth show his doubtful face, For that the clamorous frie of Innes of court Filles vp the priuate roomes of greater prise: And such a place where all may haue resort He in his singularitie doth despise.
It is not, I think, sitting on the stage that is satirized in J. Hall, Virgedemiarum (1597), i. 3, but a performance by illiterate amateurs on a ‘hired Stage’.
[1691] C. Revels (1601), ind. 138:
‘3. Child ... Here I enter.
1. What, vpon the stage too?
2. Yes: and I step forth like one of the children, and ask you, Would you have a Stool, Sir?
3. A Stoole Boy?
2. I Sir, if you’le giue me sixe Pence, I’le fetch you one.
3. For what I pray thee? what shall I doe with it?
2. O God Sir! will you betraye your Ignorance so much? why, throne your selfe in state on the stage, as other Gentlemen vse Sir’;
All Fools (c. 1604), prol. 30:
if our other audience see You on the stage depart before we end, Our wits go with you all and we are fools.
Isle of Gulls (1606), ind., ‘But come boy, furnish us with stools’.... ‘He [the author] is not on the stage amongst gallants preparing a bespoke Plaudite’.
K. B. P. (1607), ind. 41:
Wife below Rafe below.
Wife. Husband, shall I come vp husband?
Citizen. I cunny. Rafe helpe your mistresse this way: pray gentlemen make her a little roome, I pray you sir lend me your hand to helpe vp my wife.... Boy, let my wife and I haue a cupple stooles.... Come vp Rafe.
It must not be assumed from this burlesque that women usually sat on the stage, even at the private houses.
[1692] What You Will (1602), ind., ‘Let’s place ourselves within the curtains, for good faith the stage is so very little, we shall wrong the general eye else very much’; Faery Pastoral (1603), author’s note, ‘If so be that the Properties of any of These, that be outward, will not serue the turne by reason of concourse of the People on the Stage, Then you may omit the sayd Properties’. In Wily Beguiled (possibly a Paul’s play), 2021, comes the s. d. ‘Stands vpon a stoole’, in a wood scene.
[1693] E. M. O. (1599), 585 (Q_{1}), ‘Sit o’ the stage and flout; prouided, you haue a good suit’; 1784, ‘rich apparell ... takes possession of your stage at your new play’; A Mad World, my Masters (c. 1604–6), v. ii. 38, ‘The actors have been found i’ th’ morning in a less compass than their stage, though it were ne’er so full of gentlemen’; Woman Hater (1607), i. 3, ‘All the Gallants on the stage rise, vail to me, kiss their hand, offer me their places’. It is true that Roaring Girl (1611), ii. 1, has ‘the private stages audience, the twelve-penny stool gentlemen’, but this may only point to a higher price for a stool at the private house, and in any case cannot outweigh the allusions of Davies and Jonson before the Blackfriars, or probably Paul’s, were reopened, or T. M. Black Book (1604, Bullen, Middleton, viii. 42), ‘Barnaby Burning-glass, arch tobacco-taker of England, in ordinaries, upon stages both common and private’; Dekker, G. H. B. (1609), ‘Whether therefore the gatherers of the publique or priuate Play-house stand to receiue the afternoones rent, let our Gallant (hauing paid it) presently aduance himselfe vp to the Throne of the Stage’ (cf. the whole passage on the procedure and advantages of sitting on the stage, where Dekker clearly mingles traits of both types of house, in App. H). Wallace, ii. 130, argues that the custom was started at Blackfriars and was confined to the private houses, but is hopelessly confuted by C. R. Baskervill in M. P. viii. 581.
[1694] Malcontent (1604, Globe), ind.:
‘Enter W. Sly, a Tire-man following him with a stool.
Tire-man. Sir, the gentlemen will be angry if you sit here.
Sly. Why, we may sit upon the stage at the private house. Thou dost not take me for a country gentleman, dost? dost think I fear hissing?...
Lowin. Good sir, will you leave the stage? I’ll help you to a private room.
Sly. Come, coz, lets take some tobacco’;
M. D’Olive (1606, Blackfriars), IV. ii. 173, ‘I’ll take up some other fool for the Duke to employ: every ordinary affords fools enow; and didst not see a pair of gallants sit not far hence like a couple of bough-pots to make the room smell?’
[1695]
Yet, Grandee’s, would you were not come to grace Our matter, with allowing vs no place. Though you presume Satan a subtill thing, And may haue heard hee’s worne in a thumbe-ring; Doe not on these presumptions, force vs act, In compasse of a cheese-trencher. This tract Will ne’er admit our vice, because of yours. Anone, who, worse than you, the fault endures That your selues make? when you will thrust and spurne, And knocke vs o’ the elbowes, and bid, turne; As if, when wee had spoke, wee must be gone, Or, till wee speake, must all runne in, to one, Like the young adders, at the old ones mouth? Would wee could stand due North; or had no South, If that offend: or were Muscouy glasse, That you might looke our Scenes through as they passe. We know not how to affect you. If you’ll come To see new Playes, pray you affoord vs roome.
[1696] Wallace, ii. 142.
[1697] Dekker, G. H. B. (1609), ‘You may ... haue a good stoole for sixpence ... creepe from behind the Arras, with your Tripos or three-footed stoole in one hand, and a teston mounted betweene a forefinger and a thumbe in the other’; cf. pp. 535, n. 3, 536, n. 2.
[1698] Cf. ch. xx.
[1699] Godfrey (Architectural Review, xxiii. 239) has no authority for his internal roofed staircases and landings in the narrow spaces between the galleries and the sides of the stage.
[1700] Henslowe made a ‘penthowsse shed at the tyeringe howsse doore’ of the Rose in 1591. Doubtless the stage could also be reached from in front; cf. the K. B. P. passage on p. 536.
[1701] Gosson, P. C. (1582, App. C, No. xxx), tells how youths are wont ‘to go first into the yarde, and to carry theire eye through euery gallery’ in search of attractive company; cf. p. 532.
[1702] Cf. p. 541, and ch. xi.
[1703] Peacham, however, may be merely versifying the story of the choleric justice and the provincial audience which laughed when he ‘first peept out his head’ in Nashe, Pierce Penilesse (Works, i. 188), and reading in a feature, in the process, of the stage as known to himself; and the same applies to Davenant, The Unfortunate Lovers (c. 1638), prol., on the play-goers of old times:
For they, he swears, to the theatre would come, Ere they had din’d, to take up the best room; There sit on benches, not adorn’d with mats, And graciously did vail their high-crown’d hats To every half-dress’d player, as he still Through the hangings peeped to see how the house did fill.
For Caroline practice, cf. T. Goffe, _Careless Shepherdess_ ind.:
I never saw Rheade peeping through the curtain, But ravishing joy entered into my heart;
also Tatham’s prologue for the Fortune players, when they moved to the Red Bull in 1640:
Forbear Your wonted custom, banding tile and pear Against our curtains, to allure us forth; I pray, take notice, these are of more worth; Pure Naples silk, not worsted.
I defer a full consideration of stage hangings to the chapters on staging; cf. vol. iii, p. 78.
[1704] For the classical sense of Scaena, cf. the passage from Vitruvius quoted in vol. iii, p. 3. Florio, Dictionary (1598), s.v. Scena, ‘a skaffold, a pavillion, or forepart of a theatre where players make them readie, being trimmed with hangings, out of which they enter upon the stage’, points to the identity of scene and tire-house front. This structure has therefore precisely the double function of the ‘domus’ of the court plays; cf. ch. xix. I owe the quotation to Graves, 15, who adds, The Englysshe Mancyne upon the foure Cardynale Vertues (c. 1520), ‘a disgyser yt goeth into a secret corner callyd a sene of the pleyinge place to chaunge his rayment’, and Palsgrave, Acolastus (1540), prol., ‘our scenes, that is to saye, our places appoynted for our players to come forth of’. The English ‘Mancyne’ is a translation, earlier than A. Barclay’s, of Dominic Mancini’s De Quatuor Virtutibus (1516), and the original has only ‘Histrio, qui in scaenam vadit’. The notion of scena as not a mere wall, but a shelter for performers, is mediaeval, and appears to go back to an early definition from σκῆνος, a hut or tent, found, e. g., side by side with the regular mediaeval misunderstanding of the classical art of acting in Hugutius, Liber Derivationum, ‘Scena est umbraculum siue locus obumbratus in theatro et cortinis coopertus similis tabernaculis mercenariorum, quae sunt asseribus vel cortinis opertae, et secundum hoc scena potest dici a scenos, quod est domus, quae in modum domus erat constructa. In umbraculo latebant personae larvatae, quae ad vocem recitatoris exigebantur ad gestus faciendos’; cf. Herrmann, 280, W. Cloetta, Komödie und Tragödie im Mittelalter (1890), 38; Mediaeval Stage, ii. 208. It is revised on humanist lines by Jodocus Badius Ascensius in the Praenotamenta to his Terence of 1502, ‘Intra igitur theatrum ab una parte opposita spectatoribus erant scenae et proscenia, id est loca lusoria ante scenas facta. Scenae autem erant quaedam umbracula seu absconsoria, in quibus abscondebantur lusores, donec exire deberent. Ante autem scenas erant quaedam tabulata, in quibus personae qui exierant ludebant.’
[1705] The Roxana engraving shows a projecting building at the back of the stage, but this can hardly be regarded as throwing light upon sixteenth-century structure.
[1706] C. Revels (1601), ind. 160. The author is not ‘in the Tiring-house, to prompt us aloud, stampe at the Booke-holder, sweare for our Properties, cursse the poore Tire-man, rayle the Musique out of tune’; Bartholomew Fair (1614), ind. 8, ‘I am looking, lest the Poet heare me, or his man, Master Broome, behind the Arras.... Hee has (sirreuerence) kick’d me three, or foure times about the Tyring-house, I thanke him, for but offering to putt in, with my experience’; v. iii. 57, ‘I would be glad drinke with the young company; which is the Tiring-house?’
[1707] Every Woman in her Humour, p. 354, ‘He would ... stamp and stare (God blesse us,) like a play-house book-keeper when the actors misse their entrance’; R. J. I. iv. 7,
Nor no without-book prologue, faintly spoke After the prompter, for our entrance.
The actor’s signal for entrance was already his ‘cue’; cf. M. N. D. III. i. 77, ‘And so every one according to his cue’; Isle of Gulls, ii. 2, ‘you know your que’; ii. 3, ‘She hath entred the Dutches iust at her que’.
[1708] 2 Ant. Mellida, II. i. 30, ‘The tiring man hath not glued on my beard half fast enough’. A tireman appears in the inductions to Malcontent, ‘Enter W. Sly, a Tire-man following him with a stool’, and to What You Will, ‘Enter Tire-man with lights’. ‘Steven the tyerman’ of the Admiral’s in 1596 is probably the Steven Magett of other entries by Henslowe (i. 31, 44, 45).
[1709] Speakers in the induction to Bartholomew Fair (1614) are the Booke-Holder and the Stage-Keeper, who ‘kept the Stage in Master Tarletons time’, and whose work is ‘sweeping the Stage? or gathering vp the broken apples for the beares within?’
[1710] The Fortune company, c. 1617 (H. P. 85), offer to employ a dismissed ‘gatherer’ as ‘a nessessary atendaunt on the stage’ and to mend garments. On 27 Dec. 1624 the Master of Revels (Var. iii. 112; Herbert, 74) issued a warrant of protection for Nicholas Underhill, Robert Pallant, John Rhodes, and eighteen others ‘all imployed by the kings maiesties servantes in theire quallity of playinge as musitions and other necessary attendantes’. In Devil’s Charter (1607), 3016, is the s. d. ‘Alexander vnbraced betwixt two Cardinalls in his study looking vpon a booke, whilst a groome draweth the curtaine’. Is this ‘groom’ a character or an ‘attendant’? In any case attendants were naturally, with musicians and even ‘gatherers’ (on whom cf. ch. xi), used at need for supernumeraries; cf. the gatherers in the Frederick and Basilea plot (1597, H. P. 136) and 2 If You Know Not Me (1606), p. 297, ‘Enter ... the waits in sergeants’ gowns’. The long list of men and boys in the procession at the end of 1 Tamar Cham (1602, H. P. 148) must have taxed all such resources. For the use of boys as attendants, cf. Bartholomew Fair, V. iii. 65, ‘Ha’ you none of your pretty impudent boyes, now; to bring stooles, fill Tabacco, fetch Ale, and beg money, as they haue at other houses?’ Seventeenth-century gossip (Centurie of Prayse, 417) made Shakespeare join the stage as a ‘serviture’.
[1711] Lawrence, i. 75, ii. 159; Wegener, 150; G. H. Cowling, Music on the Shakespearian Stage, 29, 70, 80. I refer to Cowling and to E. W. Naylor, Shakespeare and Music, for discussions of the instruments used--drums, timbrels, bells (percussion instruments), sackbuts, trumpets, horns (brass instruments), cornets, hautboys, recorders, fifes (wood instruments), viols, lutes, citterns, pandores (string instruments)--of such terms as ‘flourish’, ‘sennet’, ‘tucket’, ‘peal’, ‘alarum’, ‘consort’, and of other technical matters with which I am not qualified to deal. The Admiral’s inventories of 1598 (H. P. 115, 116, 118) include ‘iij trumpettes and a drum, and a trebel viall, a basse viall, a bandore, a sytteren ... j chyme of bells ... iij tymbrells ... j sack-bute’.
[1712] Malcontent, ind. 89. The additions for the King’s are ‘to entertain a little more time, and to abridge the not-received custom of music in our theatre’. But ‘abridge’ only means shorten, and there are s. ds. for music between the acts of Sejanus (Globe, 1603) and in the plot of Dead Man’s Fortune (Admiral’s, c. 1590, H. P. 133); cf. Dekker, Belman of London (1608, Works, iii. 76), ‘These were appointed to be my Actes, in this goodly Theater, the musicke betweene, were the Singers of the Wood’. But such evidence is rare, and Lawrence, i. 75, and Cowling, 67, do not discriminate sufficiently the practice of the public theatres from that of the private theatres on the one hand and the early neo-classic court plays on the other. Here music is an integral part of the intermedii or dumb-shows, which are little more than survivals in the full-blown public drama; cf. F. A. Foster in E. S. xliv. 8, and Hamlet, III. ii. 13, ‘inexplicable dumb-shows’.
[1713] Cf. p. 551.
[1714] Alphonsus, prol., ‘after you haue sounded thrise, let Venus be let downe from the top of the Stage’; Heywood, Four Prentices, prol., ‘Do you not know that I am the prologue? Do you not see the long black velvet coat upon my back? Have I not all the signs of the prologue about me? Have you not sounded thrice?’; Dekker, Satiromastix, epist., ‘In steed of the trumpets sounding thrice, before the play begin, it shall not be amisse ... first to beholde this short Comedy of Errors’; G. H. B. (cf. App. H), ‘untill the quaking prologue hath (by rubbing) got cullor into his cheekes, and is ready to give the trumpets their cue that hee’s upon point to enter’; E. M. O. (Q_{1}), 107, ‘Inductio, sono secundo’, 402, ‘Sound the third time. Enter Prologue’. Jonson has a similar arrangement (F_{1}) in the private house plays Cynthia’s Revels and Poetaster, but probably the trumpets were here replaced by more elaborate music; cf. 1 Ant. Mellida, ind. 1, ‘the music will sound straight for entrance’; What You Will, ind. 1 (s. d.), ‘Before the music sounds for the Act’; C. Revels (Q_{1}), 1435, ‘Like an unperfect Prologue, at third musique’. Surely this is the origin of the ‘first’, ‘second’, and ‘third’ (or ‘curtain tune’) music of the Restoration and eighteenth-century overtures, described by Lawrence, ii. 155. Exceptionally the prologue in Percy’s C. and C. Errant is between the second and third sounding.
[1715] Chaste Maid in Cheapside, V. iv. 1 (s. d.), ‘There is a sad song in the music-room’; cf. Thracian Wonder, IV. i. 182, ‘Pythia speaks in the musick Room behind the Curtain’, 186, ‘Pythia above, behind the curtains.’ But these, although early plays, are in late prints, and the other examples of a music-room ‘above’ given by Lawrence, i. 91, are Caroline. Jasper Mayne says of Jonson (1638, Jonsonus Virbius), ‘Thou laid’st no sieges to the music-room’. My own impression is that when the lord’s room over the tire-house was disused by spectators (cf. p. 537) it became indifferently available for actors and for music, and that here, rather than, as is possible, higher still in the scenic wall, was the normal place for the seventeenth-century music, when it was not needed elsewhere, or the space needed for other purposes. The introduction of the high proscenium arch at the Restoration caused difficulties, and various experiments were tried in placing the music above (Lawrence, i. 91, 161; ii. 160; W. G. Keith, The Designs for the First Movable Scenery on the English Public Stage in Burlington Magazine, xxv. 29, 85), before the modern situation was adopted.
[1716] Cf. ch. x.
[1717] R. J., prol. 12, ‘the two hours’ traffic of our stage’; Alchemist, prol. 1, ‘these two short hours’; Hen. VIII, prol. 13, ‘two short hours’; T. N. K., prol. 28, ‘Sceanes ... worth two houres travell’; Heywood, Apology, 11 (Beeston’s c. v.), ‘two houres well spent’; Barth. Fair, ind., ‘the space of two hours and a half and somewhat more’. Perhaps plays tended to grow shorter. Fenton (1574) and Northbrooke (1577–8) give ‘two or three houres’, and Whetstone (1578) three hours (cf. App. C), but Dekker (cf. p. 533, n. 3) seems to regard three hours as an exceptionally long period.
[1718] Cotgrave, French-English Dict. (1611), s.v. Falot, ‘a cresset light (such as they use in play-houses) made of ropes wreathed, pitched and put into small and open cages of iron’; cf. Lawrence, ii. 13, who thinks the cressets were part of the lighting of private houses. But would they not smoke and smell badly, if used indoors? There is no particular reason for translating the lucernae of Christ Church hall in 1566, with Schelling and Lawrence, as ‘cressets’.
[1719] Nashe (iii. 329), epist. to Astrophel and Stella (1591), ‘here you shal find a paper stage streud with pearle, an artificial heau’n to ouershadow the faire frame’; Wagnerbook (1594, cf. ch. xx), ‘Now aboue all was there the gay Clowdes vsque quaque adorned with the heavenly firmament, and often spotted with golden teares which men callen Stars. There was liuely portrayed the whole Imperiall Army of the faire heauenly inhabitauntes’; Birth of Hercules (1597 <), i. 1, s. d., ‘Ad comoediae magnificentiam apprime conferet ut coelum Histrionium sit luna et stellis perspicue distinctum’; Heywood, Apology (c. 1608), 34, of the Roman theatre, ‘the covering of the stage, which we call the heavens’; Cotgrave, Dict. (1611), s.v. Volerie, ‘a place over a stage, which we call the heavens’. The same word was used for the state over a throne; cf. Cotgrave, s.v. Dais, ‘a cloth of estate, canopie, or Heaven, that stands over the heads of Princes thrones’. Graves, 24, gives examples of heavens used in Tudor pageants. It is to be noted that the ‘heavens’ and ‘hell’ (cf. p. 528) of a theatre continue characteristic features of mediaeval staging (cf. Mediaeval Stage, ii. 86, 137, 142); cf. All Fools, prol. 1:
The fortune of a stage (like Fortunes selfe) Amazeth greatest judgments; and none knowes The hidden causes of those strange effects That rise from this Hell, or fall from this Heaven.
The theory of J. Corbin in Century (1911), 267, that the heavens was a mere velarium or cloud of canvas thrown out from the hut, will not fit the evidence; cf. Lawrence, ii. 6.
[1720] Cf. vol. iii, p. 78. Is this, or the hut, the ‘garret’ of R. M.’s A Player (cf. p. 546)?
[1721] I do not now regard as tenable my suggestion in The Stage of the Globe (Stratford Town Shakespeare, x. 351) that De Witt represented as outstanding columns what were really mere pilasters in the tire-house wall.
[1722] Kempe, Nine Days Wonder, 6, ‘I remembred one of them to be a noted Cut-purse, such a one as we tye to a poast on our stage, for all people to wonder at, when at a play they are taken pilfring’; cf. Nobody and Somebody, 1893,
Somebody Once pickt a pocket in this Play-house yard, Was hoysted on the stage, and shamd about it;
also ch. xx, p. 75; ch. xxi, pp. 108, 141.
[1723] For criticism of the drawing of the heavens and hut, cf. Graves, 22, and Brereton in Homage, 204.
[1724] Henslowe paid in 1595 for ‘mackinge the throne in the heuenes’ at the Rose; cf. R. M., Micrologia (1629), in Morley, Character Writings, 285, A Player, ‘If his action prefigure passion, he raves, rages, and protests much by his painted heavens, and seems in the height of this fit ready to pull Jove out of the garret where perchance he lies leaning on his elbows, or is employed to make squibs and crackers to grace the play’. Wegener, 133, gives examples of the use of machines; for the throne, cf. vol. iii, p. 77.
[1725] Field (1583, App. C, No. xxxi), ‘Those flagges of defiance against God’; Vennar’s apology (1614) for England’s Joy (1602, cf. ch. xxiii). ‘The report of gentlemen and gentlewomens actions, being indeed the flagge to our theatre, was not meerely falcification’; A Mad World, my Masters (1604–6), I. i. 38, III. iii. 143, ‘’Tis Lent in your cheeks; the flag’s down’.... ‘The hair about the hat is as good as a flag upo’ th’ pole, at a common play-house, to waft company’; Dekker, Raven’s Almanac (1609, Works, iv. 210), ‘Another ciuill warre doe I finde will fal betweene players.... For it is thought that Flag will be aduanced (as it were in mortall defiance against Flag)’; Work for Armourers (1609, Works, iv. 96), ‘Play-houses stand ... the dores locked vp, the flagges ... taken down’; Curtain-Drawer of the World (1612), ‘Each play-house advanceth his flag in the aire, whither quickly at the waving thereof are summoned whole troops of men, women, and children’. The maps regularly show flags on the theatres. The Globe fire in 1613 ‘did not spare the silken flagg’ (cf. p. 421). Heywood, Apology, 22, mistranslates Ovid’s ‘Tunc neque marmoreo pendebant vela theatro’ as:
In those days from the marble house did waive No sail, no silken flag, no ensign brave.
[1726] Cf. p. 542; Cynthia’s Revels, ind., where the boys struggle for the cloak; Woman Hater, prol. 1, ‘Gentlemen, Inductions are out of date, and a Prologue in Verse, is as stale as a black Velvet Cloak, and a Bay Garland’; Birth of Hercules (1597 <), prol. 5, ‘Thepilogue is in fashion; prologues no more’; and much later. Coronation, prol. 4,
he That with a little Beard, a long black Cloak, With a starch’d face, and supple leg hath spoke Before the plays the twelvemonth.
The prologue appears to be a composite figure, partly representing the poet, and deriving also in part from the presenter of dumb-shows, in part from the Chorus of neo-classic tragedy, and in part from the ‘exposytour in doctorys wede’, developed by miracle-plays and moralities out of the Augustine of the Prophetae; cf. Mediaeval Stage, ii. 52, 72, 153, 417, 423, 426, 429, 448; F. A. Foster in E. S. xliv. 13; F. Lüders, Prolog und Epilog bei Shakespeare (Sh.-Jahrbuch, v. 274); Creizenach, 275. The short dramatic inductions, often introducing actors in propria persona, favoured by Jonson, Marston, and others about the beginning of the seventeenth century, attempt to give new life to a waning convention.
[1727] Cf. Mediaeval Stage, ii. 141, 156. Drums and trumpets were used as advertisements in the city at any rate until 1587 (App. C, Nos. xvii, xxxi, xxxviii), and were traditional in the provinces up to the middle of the eighteenth century (Lawrence, ii. 58). Parolles tells us (All’s Well, IV. iii. 298) that Captain Dumain ‘has led the drum before the English tragedians’. Henslowe (i. 118) bought a drum and two trumpets for the Admiral’s ‘when to go into the contry’ in Feb. 1600. In Histriomastix, ii. 80, ‘One of them steppes on the Crosse, and cryes, A Play’.
[1728] H. Moseley, pref. verses to F_{1} of Beaumont and Fletcher (1647):
As after th’ Epilogue there comes some one To tell spectators what shall next be shown; So here am I.
This is, of course, only Caroline evidence; for the continuance of the practice after the Restoration, cf. Lawrence, ii. 187.
[1729] Grindal to Cecil (1564, App. D, No. xv), ‘these Histriones, common playours who now daylye, butt speciallye on holydayes, sett vp bylles’; Merry Tales, &c. (1567; cf. ch. xxiii, s.v. Vennar), ‘billes ... vpon postes about London’; Northbrooke (1577, App. C, No. xvi), ‘they use to set vp their billes vpon postes certain dayes before’; Gosson, S. A. (1579, App. C, No. xxii), 44, ‘If players can ... proclame it in their billes, and make it good in theaters’; Rankins (1587, App. C, No. xxxviii), ‘sticking of their bills in London’; Marston, Scourge of Villainy (Bullen, iii. 302), ‘Go read each post, view what is play’d to-day’; Histriomastix, v. 69, ‘Text-bills must now be turned to iron bills’; Warning for Fair Women, (> 1599):
’Tis you have kept the Theatres so long, Painted in play-bills upon every post. That I am scorned of the multitude.
Wither, Abuses Stript and Whipt (1613), ii. 2:
But, by the way, a Bill he doth espy, Which showes theres acted some new Comedy.
In Bartholomew Fair, v. iii. 6, Cokes ‘reads the Bill’ of the motion; cf. Lawrence (ii. 55), The Origin of the Theatre Programme.
[1730] Devil an Ass, I. iv. 43, ‘Hee giues him the Play-bill’.
[1731] Arber, ii. 477; iii. 575.
[1732] Henslowe Papers, 106.
[1733] Lawrence, ii. 240.
[1734] Jonson, in printing plays, and following him the editors of the Beaumont and Fletcher F_{1} often give the scene and the actors’ names, and casts appear in Duchess of Malfi (1623). But these are not necessarily taken from any documents put before the audiences.
[1735] Lawrence, ii. 154; cf. the stipulation in Burbadge’s lease (p. 387), and W. Fennor, Compter’s Commonwealth (1617), 8, ‘he that first comes in is first seated, like those that come to see playes’.
[1736] Cf. p. 540 (Tatham), and the notices of Hentzner and Platter (ch. xvi, introd.). In K. B. P. the wife comes with her pockets full of sweetmeats, which she bestows upon the actors, liquorice (i. 77), green ginger (ii. 279), sugar-candy (ii. 366), and her husband brings beer (iii. 631). The liquorice would open Ralph’s pipes; cf. ch. xii (Westminster) and C. Revels, ind. 215, ‘I would thou hadst some sugar candyed, to sweeten thy mouth’; Overbury, Characters (ed. Rimbault, 113, A Puny-Clarke), ‘Hee eats ginger-bread at a play-house’.
[1737] Cf. pp. 534, 536 and Hentzner (ch. xvi, introd.); C. Revels, ind. 122, ‘I haue my three sorts of Tabacco, in my Pocket, my light by me’; K. B. P. i. 224, ‘Fie, this stinking Tobacco kils men, would there were none in England, now I pray Gentlemen, what good does this stinking Tobacco? do you nothing, I warrant you make chimnies a your faces’; Dekker, G. H. B., ‘By sitting on the stage, you may ... get your match lighted’; Scornful Lady, I. ii. 52, ‘They wear swords to reach fire at a play’; Sir Giles Goosecap, IV. ii. 87 (street-scene), ‘By this fire, they do, my lord’. Burn, 84, cites a note by Sir J. Caesar in Lansd. MS. 160, p. 302, of a speech by James in a Star Chamber case of 1613, in which he advised gentlemen of the Temple not to frequent plays, whence the smoke of tobacco and the presence of painted ladies should deter them.
[1738] W. Fennor, Descriptions (1616), ‘I suppose this Pamphlet will hap into your hands before a Play begin, with the importunate clamour of “Buy a new Booke!” by some needy companion that will be glad to furnish you with worke for a turned teaster’. Dekker, G. H. B. (cf. App. H), recommends cards.
[1739] V. P. xiv. 593, 599, records a charge against the ambassador Foscarini (1611–15) of pursuing a woman, and ‘sometimes attending the public comedies and standing among the people on the chance of seeing her’. Foscarini said he only went three or four times to the play and that the archduke’s ambassador and his wife did the same. It was given in evidence that the ambassador Giustiniani (Dec. 1605–Oct. 1608) went with the French ambassador and his wife to see Pericles at a cost of 20 crowns. This must have been at the Globe. For the presence of harlots, cf. pp. 534, 535; vol. i, p. 255.
[1740] Dekker, G. H. B. (1609, Works, ii. 201), ‘you can neither shake our Comick Theater with your stinking breath of hisses, nor raise it with the thunder-claps of your hands’ (cf. also App. H); Isle of Gulls, ind., ’Tis growne into a custome at playes if anyone rise (especially of any fashionable sort) about what serious busines soeuer, the rest thinking it in dislike of the play, tho he neuer thinks it, cry “Mew! by Jesus, vilde!” and leaue the poore hartlesse children to speake their Epilogue to the emptie seates’. Later a Gent. says, ‘See it be baudy, or by the light I and all my friends will hisse’, and the Prologue replies, ‘You shoulde not deale gentlemanlike with us els’; E. Guilpin, Skialetheia (1598), prol. to Sat., ‘It is the grand hisse to a filthy play’; Roaring Girl, prol., ‘If that he finds not here, he mews at it’; T. and C., epil.:
my fear is this, Some galled goose of Winchester would hiss;
Downfall of Robin Hood, ad fin.:
if I fail in this, Then let my pains be baffled with a hiss;
Devil an Ass, III. v. 41:
If I could but see a piece... Come but to one act, and I did not care-- But to be seene to rise, and goe away, To vex the Players, and to punish their Poet-- Keepe him in awe!
[1741] Isle of Gulls, ind., ‘a prepared company of gallants to aplaud his iests and grace out his play’; Histriomastix, ii. 137, ‘Belch.’ ‘What’s an Ingle? Posthaste. One whose hands are hard as battle doors with clapping at baldness’. For the special use of ‘ingle’ (= ‘intimate’) in the sense of a patron of players, cf. Poetaster, I. ii. 18, ‘What! shall I have my sonne a stager now? an enghle for players? a gull? a rooke? a shot-clogge? to make suppers, and bee laught at?’
[1742] Cf. p. 547, n. 1.
[1743] K. to K. a Knave (1594), ad fin.; Looking-Glass, 2282; Locrine, 2276; 2 Hen. IV, epil. 35, ‘And so kneele down before you; but indeed, to pray for the Queene’; Two Wise Men and All the Rest Fools (1619), epil., ‘It resteth that we render you very humble and hearty thanks, and that all our hearts pray for the king and his family’s enduring happiness, and our country’s perpetual welfare. Si placet, plaudite’; cf. ch. xxii.
[1744] Cf. ch. x.
[1745] M. N. D. v. i. 360, ‘Will it please you to see the epilogue, or to hear a Bergomask dance between two of our company?’; Much Ado, v. i. 130, ‘Strike vp, pipers. Dance’; A. Y. L. V. iv. 182.
[1746] Cf. ch. xiii (Leicester’s).
[1747] Murray, ii. 206, 293, 304, 367, ‘upon the Q. players at the dancing on the rop’ (1590, Bridgnorth), ‘vnto the Torkey Tumblers’ (1589–90, Ipswich), ‘to certen playars, playinge uppon ropes at the Crosse Keyes’ (1590, Leicester), ‘to the Quenes men when the Turke wente vpon roppes at Newhall’ (22 April 1590, Norwich); Coventry Corp. MS. A 7 (b), ‘the Queens players & the turk’ (1589–90, Coventry); cf. Nashe, Epistle to Strange Newes (1592, Works, i. 262), ‘Say I am as verie a Turke as hee that three yeeres ago ranne vpon ropes’. A Gloucester payment of 1594–5 for ‘a wagon in the pageant for the Turke’ (Murray, ii. 285) may or may not refer to the acrobat of 1590.
[1748] Cf. ch. xiv.
[1749] Both Hentzner (1598) and Platter (1599) describe it; cf. ch. xvi, introd. Platter saw it at both the Globe and the Curtain, where it was ‘Englisch unndt Irlendisch’. Von Wedel also describes something very much like a well-developed jig after a baiting on the Bankside in 1584 (cf. ch. xvi, Hope).
[1750] Gosson, P. C. (1582; cf. App. C, No. xxx), ‘daunsing of gigges’; Much Ado, II. i. 78, ‘Wooing ... is hot and hasty, like a Scotch jig, and full as fantastical’; Hamlet, III. ii. 132, ‘O God, your only jig-maker’; E. M. O. (Q_{1}), 1147, ‘a thing studied, and rehearst as ordinarily at his comming from hawking, or hunting, as a Iigge after a play’; Jack Drum, i. 404, ‘as the Iigge is cal’d for when the play is done’; R. Knolles, Six Bookes of a Commonweal (1606), 645, ‘Now adayes they put at the end of euerie Tragedie (as poyson into meat) a comedie or jigge’ (translating Bodin’s ‘obscoena quadam fabula turpissimis ac sordidissimis narrationibus condita’); Cotgrave (1611), ‘Farce ... also, the Iyg at the end of an Enterlude, wherein some pretie knauerie is acted’; Dekker, A Strange Horse Race (1613, Works, iii. 340), ‘As I haue often seene, after the finishing of some worthy Tragedy, or Catastrophe in the open Theaters, that the sceane after the Epilogue hath been more blacke (about a nasty bawdy jigge) then the most horrid sceane in the play was: The stinkards speaking all things, yet no man understanding any thing’; cf. the late Shirley allusion on p. 528. The term is sometimes more loosely used. In James IV, 82, 88, 620, 636, 661, 666, 673, 1116, the speakers of the Induction call the main action a jig; cf. 1 Tamburlaine, prol. 1, ‘iygging vaines of riming mother wits’. Swaen (Sh.-Jahrbuch, xlvi. 122) points out that a tune known as The Cobler’s Jig would fit the dialogue song by cobblers in Locrine, 569. Naylor, 124, gives some account of jig tunes and derives the term from giga, an instrument of the fiddle type.
[1751] Cf. the quotation from K. B. P. on p. 557, and ch. v.
[1752] Tarlton and Kempe (cf. ch. xv) are spoken of as acting in ‘merriments’. I doubt whether anything more technical is meant than a farcical episode in a play, perhaps helped out with such ‘gags’ as Hamlet, III. ii. 42, deprecates.
[1753] Arber, ii. 297, 298, 571, 600, 601, 669, 670, 671; iii. 49, 50, ‘a newe Northerne Jigge’ (5 Jan. 1591), ‘the seconde parte of the gigge betwene Rowland and the Sexton’ (16 Dec. 1591), ‘the thirde and last parte of Kempes Jigge’ (28 Dec. 1591), ‘a merrie newe Jigge betwene Jenkin the Collier and Nansie’ (14 Jan. 1592), ‘a plesant newe Jigge of the broome-man’, ascribed in the margin to Kempe (16 Jan. 1595), ‘a pleasant Jigge betwene a tincker and a Clowne’ (4 Feb. 1595), ‘a ballad of Cuttinge George and his hostis beinge a Jigge’ (17 Feb. 1595), ‘Master Kempes Newe Jigge of the kitchen stuffe woman’ (2 May 1595), ‘Phillips his gigg of the slyppers’ (26 May 1595), ‘a pretie newe Jigge betwene Ffrancis the gentleman Richard the farmer and theire wyves’ (14 Oct. 1595), and ‘Kemps newe Jygge betwixt a Souldiour and a Miser and Sym the clown’ (21 Oct. 1595); cf. ch. xv (Tarlton). Creizenach, 312, cites a list of jig titles by Hoenig in Anzeiger für deutsches Altertum, xxii. 304.
[1754] Have With You to Saffron Walden (Works, iii. 114).
[1755] Henslowe, i. 70, 82.
[1756] E. Guilpin, Skialetheia, Sat. v.
[1757] App. D, No. cl; cf. the quotation from Dekker, supra; Hamlet, II. ii. 522, of Polonius, ‘He ’s for a jig or a tale of bawdry, or he sleeps’; Wither, Abuses Stript and Whipt (1613), ii. 3, ‘a Curtaine Iigge, a Libell, or a Ballet’. Possibly the Middlesex order has a bearing on the curious variant in the Epistle to Jonson’s Alchemist (1612), where some copies lament ‘the concupiscence of jigges and daunces’, others of ‘daunces and antikes’.
[1758] The Black Man is in Kirkman’s The Wits (1672), and Singing Simpkin is ascribed in undated texts to the Caroline Robert Cox, but a tune of this name was known in Basle in 1592, and a German jig of 1620 seems to be a translation; cf. Herz, 132; F. Bolte, Die Singspiele der englischen Komödianten und ihrer Nachfolger (1893, Theatergeschichtliche Forschungen, vii); W. J. Lawrence (T. L. S. 3 July 1919).
[1759] A. Clark, Shirburn Ballads, 244 (cf. S. R. list, supra, s. a. 1595), ‘M^r Attowel’s Jigge: betweene Francis, a Gentleman; Richard, a farmer; and their wives’. It is in four scenes, sung respectively to the tunes of ‘Walsingham’, ‘The Jewishe Dance’, ‘Buggle-boe’, and ‘Goe from my windo’. In Roxburghe Ballads, i. 201; ii. 101, are ‘Clod’s Carroll, a proper new jigg’, and ‘A mery new Jigge’. Collier’s ‘Jigge of a Horse Loade of Fooles’ (New Facts, 18; cf. Halliwell, Tarlton, xx) is probably a fake.
[1760] Clark, 354, from Bodl. Rawlinson Poet. MS. 185 (c. 1590), ‘A proper new ballett, intituled Rowland’s god-sonne’. It is to the tune of ‘Loth to departe’. Nashe, Summer’s Last Will and Testament, 76, mentions this jig. Two parts of a ‘Rowlandes godson moralised’ were entered in S. R. on 18 and 29 April 1592. Rowland is not a character, and numerous German allusions to and adaptations of a jig beginning ‘Oh neighbour Rowland’ (Herz, 134) have probably some other original. A ‘Roland and the Sexton’ is in the S. R. list, supra. A verse dialogue in Alleyn Papers, 8, mentions ‘bonny Rowland’ and is probably a jig of his cycle; another (p. 29) does not read to me like a jig.
[1761] Cf. ch. xv (Tarlton, Wilson) and Nashe, Pierce Penilesse (Works, i. 244), ‘the queint Comaedians of our time, That when their Play is doone, do fal to ryme’. Armin’s (q.v.) Quips Upon Questions (1600) are probably themes, or based upon the conception of themes. A theme is introduced in Histriomastix, ii. 293. The Lord sets it:
Your poetts and your pottes Are knit in true-love knots,
and a sixteen-line ‘song extempore’ by Posthaste follows. The verses on ‘theames’ in Gascoigne’s Posies (ed. Cunliffe, 62) are not, I think, improvisations.
[1762] Smith, Commedia dell’ Arte, 175; cf. M. J. Wolff, Shakespeare und die Commedia dell’ arte (Sh.-Jahrbuch, xlvi. 1).
[1763] C. is A. II. vii. 36, of the players in Utopia (England), ‘Sebastian. And how are their plaies? as ours are? extemporall? Valentine. O no! all premeditated things’. The references of Whetstone, Heptameron (1582), Sp. Tragedy, IV. i. 163, Middleton, Spanish Gypsy, IV. ii. 38, are specifically to French and Italian practice, and so too, presumably, A. C. v. ii. 216, ‘The quick comedians Extemporally will stage us’. The interpretation of Hamlet, II. ii. 420, ‘For the law of writ and the liberty, these are the only men’, is open, but Falstaff says in 1 Hen. IV, II. iv. 309, ‘Shall we have a play extempore?’
[1764] Hamlet, III. ii. 42; cf. John a Kent and John a Cumber, iii, ad fin., ‘One of us Johns must play beside the book’.
[1765] In K. B. P., ind. 94, where Ralph ‘should have playd Jeronimo with a Shooemaker for a wager’; Ratseis Ghost (1605, Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 326), ‘I durst venture all the mony in my purse on thy head to play Hamlet with him for a wager’; Dekker, Jests to Make You Merrie (1607, Works, ii. 282), ‘A paire of players, growing into an emulous contention of one anothers worth, refusde to put themselves to a day of hearing (as any Players would haue done) but stood onely vpon their good parts’; cf. ch. xvi (Fortune), ch. xv (Alleyn).
[1766] Cf. ch. xi, p. 371.
[1767] 2 Ant. Mellida, prol., ‘within this round ... this ring’; cf. p. 536. Fawn (1604–6), prol., has ‘this fair-filled room’, but the play was transferred to Paul’s from Blackfriars.
[1768] For the existence of tiring-houses in private theatres, cf. inductions to Jack Drum’s Entertainment (Paul’s) and C. Revels (Blackfriars).
[1769] Cf. ch. xvii.
[1770] Dutch Courtesan (c. 1603, Blackfriars), V. iii. 162, ‘my very fine Heliconian gallants, and you my worshipful friends in the middle region’.
[1771] Cf. Wright (App. I). For the origin of the term, cf. the c. v. of L. Digges to Shakespeare’s Poems (1640):
Let but Beatrice And Benedicke be seene, loe in a trice The cockpit, galleries, boxes, are all full, To hear Malvoglio that crosse-garterd gull.
[1772] Dekker, G. H. B. (cf. App. H), with its mingling of ‘public’ and ‘private’ features, cannot be relied on. The Roxana and Wits engravings show spectators ‘over the stage’, but cannot be treated as evidence for the private houses. The Messallina engraving only shows a window closed by curtains.
[1773] Cf. p. 556, infra.
[1774] 1 Ant. Mellida (Paul’s), prol., ‘select and most respected auditors’; What You Will (Paul’s), ind., ‘the female presence, the genteletza, the women’; Jack Drum’s Entertainment (Paul’s), ind., ‘this choise selected influence’. But it was still mixed enough; cf. Jonson’s c. v. to Faithful Shepherdess (Revels, c. 1608–9):
The wise and many-headed bench that sits Upon the life and death of plays and wits-- Composed of gamester, captain, knight, knight’s man, Lady or pusill that wears mask or fan, Velvet or taffata cap, rank’d in the dark With the shop’s foreman, or some such brave spark, That may judge for his sixpence.
[1775] Cf. chh. i, x, and M. L. R. ii. 12.
[1776] Jonson, supra; Mich. Term (c. 1606, Paul’s), ‘sixpenny fees all the year long’; Otho of Hesse-Cassel (1611, Whitefriars), ‘hier kostet der eingang einen halben schilling nur, da an andern orten wohl eine halbe kron’; Scornful Lady (1613–16,? Whitefriars), IV. i. 238, ‘I ... can see a play For eighteen-pence again: I can, my lady’; Wit Without Money (? 1614, Whitefriars), i. 1, ‘And who extoled you in the halfcrown boxes, where you might sit and muster all the beauties’. So later, Jonson, Magnetic Lady (1632, Blackfriars), ind., ‘the faeces or grounds of your people, that sit in the oblique caves and wedges of your house, your sinful sixpenny mechanicks’. I am rather puzzled by Percy, C. and C. Errant, ‘Poules steeple stands in the place it did before; and twopence is the price for the going into a newe play there’. Even in 1589 (cf. p. 532) the price at Paul’s was 4_d._ according to a Marprelate tract, and William Darrell in that year paid 6_d._ (Hall, Society in Elizabethan Age, 211).
[1777] In Isle of Gulls (1606, Blackfriars), ind., a Gent. can only see an act or two out, for ‘I lay in bed till past three a clock, slept out my dinner and my stomache will toule to supper afore fiue’. Otho of Hesse-Cassel (1611) says that the Whitefriars plays were at three, and from Michaelmas to Easter only. Percy, on the other hand (cf. ch. xii), says that the Paul’s boys were not allowed to begin before four, after prayers, and the gates of Paul’s shut at six. So, too, Ram Alley (King’s Revels), epil., ‘Thus two hours have brought to end’. Gerschow in 1602 (cf. ch. xii) says that the Chapel acted once a week; cf. Eastward Hoe (1605, Blackfriars), epil., ‘May this attract you hither once a week’.
[1778] Dekker, Seven Deadly Sins (1606, Works, ii. 41), ‘All the Citty lookt like a priuate Play-house, when the windowes are clapt downe, as if some Nocturnall, or dismal Tragedy were presently to be acted’.
[1779] What You Will (1601, Paul’s), ‘Enter Atticus, Doricus, and Philomuse, they sit a good while on the stage before the Candles are lighted.... Enter Tier-man with lights’; Mich. Term (1607, Paul’s), ‘Ours [terms] haue but sixpenny fees all the year long, yet we dispatch you in two hours without demur: your suits hang not long here after candles be lighted’; Faithful Shepherdess (1608–9, Blackfriars), Beaumont’s c. v., ‘Some like, if the wax lights be new that day’. Otho of Hesse-Cassel (1611) says that the Whitefriars plays were ‘nur bei lichtern’. Later we have G. Wither, Fair Virtue (1622), 1781:
those lamps which at a play Are set up to light the day;
Lenton, The Young Gallants Whirligig (1629):
spangled, rare perfumed attires, Which once so glister’d at the torchy Friars.
Cf. Lawrence (ii. 1), Light and Darkness in the Elizabethan Theatre; also E. S. xlviii. 213.
[1780] Cf. ch. xii; and for evidence of inter-act music, Lawrence, i. 81; Cowling, 68. Papers on Early Elizabethan Stage Music in Musical Antiquary (Oct. 1909, Jan. 1913) show the origin of the musical tradition in the earlier boy companies; for its seventeenth-century development, cf. Wallace, ii. 114.
[1781] Faithful Shepherdess (1608–9, Blackfriars), Beaumont’s c. v.:
Nor wants there those who, as the boy doth dance Between the acts, will censure the whole play.
In K. B. P. (1607, Blackfriars) a boy dances after Acts i and iii, and the citizens comment, ‘I will haue him dance Fading; Fading is a fine Iigge’. After Act ii there are fiddlers. After Act iv Ralph intervenes with a May Day speech.
[1782] 2 Ant. Mellida, V. i. 50, ‘Andrugio’s ghost is placed betwixt the music-houses’; Faery Pastoral, s. ds., ‘Highest aloft and on the Top of the Musick Tree the Title The Faery Pastoral. Beneath him pind on Post of the Tree The Scene Eluida Forest Lowest of all ouer the Canopie ΝΑΠΑΙΤΒΟΔΑΙΟΝ or Faery Chappell’.... ‘Here they shutt both into the Canopie Fane or Trophey’; Cuck Queenes and Cuckolds Errants, prol. by Tarlton, ‘standing at entrance of the doore and right vnder the Beame I think Graves, 14, rightly explains ‘Trophey’ as ‘arch’, on the analogy of its use for a triumphal arch in Dekker, Coronation Pageant (1603). The only other use of ‘canopy’ for a structural part of a theatre seems to be in Sophonisba, iv. 1, ‘Play softly within the canopy’.... ‘Syphax hasteneth within the canopy, as to Sophonisba’s bed’. This is a Blackfriars play, but it might conceivably have been written for Paul’s.
Transcriber’s Notes:
1. Obvious printers’, punctuation and spelling errors have been corrected silently.
2. Where necessary, original spelling has been retained.
3. Where hyphenation is in doubt, it has been retained as in the original.
4. Hyphenated and non-hyphenated versions of the same words have been retained as in the original.
5. Some words seem to have been written as one word, e.g. thexecutor. These have been retained as in the original.
6. Superscripts are represented using the caret character, e.g. D^r. or X^{xx}.
7. Italics are shown as xxx.