THE PLAY-HOUSES
The world the stage, the prologue tears,
The acts vain hope and varied fears:
The scene shuts up with loss of breath,
And leaves no epilogue but death.
HENRY KING.
XVI
INTRODUCTION: THE PUBLIC THEATRES
[_Bibliographical Note._--Some notes in the _Gentleman’s
Magazine_ for 1813–16 by Eu. Hood [Joseph Haslewood] are
reprinted in _The Gentleman’s Magazine Library_, xv (1904),
86, and in _Roxburghe Revels_ (ed. J. Maidment, 1837). J. P.
Collier, _History of English Dramatic Poetry_, iii. 79, has
_An Account of the Old Theatres of London_, and chronological
sections on the subject are in F. G. Fleay, _A Chronicle History
of the London Stage_ (1890). T. F. Ordish, _Early London
Theatres_ (1894), covers the Shoreditch and Bankside theatres
‘in the Fields’ other than the Globe; a companion volume on
the urban houses has never appeared. The Bankside houses are
also dealt with by W. Rendle, _The Bankside, Southwark, and the
Globe_ (1877), being Appendix I to F. J. Furnivall, _Harrison’s
Description of England_, Part II (_N. Sh. Soc._), and in _Old
Southwark and its People_ (1878) and _The Play-houses at
Bankside in the Time of Shakespeare_ (_Walford’s Antiquarian_,
1885, vii. 207, 274; viii. 55). J. Q. Adams, _Shakespearean
Play-houses_ (1917), is a comprehensive and valuable work,
which reached me when this chapter was practically complete. I
am glad to find that our results so generally agree. The chief
London maps have been reproduced by the _London Topographical
Society_ and on a smaller scale by G. E. Mitton, _Maps of Old
London_ (1908). Some are also given as illustrations in G. P.
Baker, _The Development of Shakespeare as a Dramatist_ (1907).
They are classified by W. Martin, _A Study of Early Map-Views
of London_ in _The Antiquary_, xlv (1909), 337, 406, and their
evidence for the Bankside analysed by the same writer, with
partial reproductions, in _The Site of the Globe Play-house of
Shakespeare_ (1910, _Surrey Archaeological Collections_, xxiii.
149).
The evidence of the maps as to the position of the theatres
is obscured, partly by uncertainties as to the dates and
authorships both of the engravings and of the surveys on which
they were based, and partly by the pictorial character of the
topography. They are not strict plans in two dimensions, such
as modern cartographers produce, but either drawings in full
perspective, or bird’s-eye views in diminished perspective.
The imaginary standpoint is always on the south, and the
pictorial aspect is emphasized in the foreground, with the
result that, while the Bankside theatres, but not those north
of the river, are generally indicated, this is rarely with a
precision which renders it possible to locate them in relation
to the thoroughfares amongst which they stand. This is more
particularly the case since, while the general grouping of
buildings, gardens, and trees appears, from a comparison of
one view with another, to be faithfully given, it is probable
that the details are often both conventionally represented and
out of scale. The following classification is mainly borrowed
from Dr. Martin: (_a_) Pre-Reformation representations of
London throwing no light on the theatres; (_b_) _Wyngaerde_, a
pictorial drawing (_c._ 1543–50) by A. Van der Wyngaerde (_L.
T. Soc._ i; Mitton, i); (_c_) _Höfnagel_, a plan with little
perspective by G. Höfnagel, from a survey of _c._ 1554–7 (cf.
A. Marks in _Athenaeum_ for 31 March 1906), published (1572)
with the title _Londinum Feracissimi Angliae Regni Metropolis_
in G. Braun and F. Hohenburg, _Civitates Orbis Terrarum_ (L.
T. Soc. ii; Mitton, iv); (_d_) _Agas_, an engraving with
more perspective, but generally similar to that of Höfnagel
and possibly from the same survey, but drawn after 1561, and
assigned by G. Vertue, who reproduced it (1737), to Ralph Agas
(L. T. Soc. xvii; Mitton, ii); (_e_) _Smith_, a coloured drawing
by William Smith, possibly based on Höfnagel or Agas, in _B. M.
Sloane MS._ 2596, reproduced in H. B. Wheatley and E. W. Ashbee,
_W. Smith_, _The Particular Description of England, 1588_
(1879), and in G. P. Baker, _The Development of Shakespeare
as a Dramatist_ (1907), 18; (_f_) _Bankside Views_, small
representations of the same general character as (_c_), (_d_),
and (_e_), used as backgrounds to pictures and described by W.
Martin in _Antiquary_, xlv. 408; (_g_) _Norden_, engravings
in slight perspective of ‘London’ and ‘Westminster’ by P. Van
den Keere in J. Norden, _Speculum Britanniae_ (1593), from
survey of about the same date (L. T. Soc. vii; Mitton, v, vi;
Furnivall, _Harrison’s Description of England_, Part I, with
notes on p. lxxxix by H. B. Wheatley, reprinted by L. T. Soc.
in _Record_, ii); (_h_) _Delaram Group_, perspective views as
backgrounds to portrait (_c._ 1616) of James I by F. Delaram
(1620), reproduced by W. Martin in _Surrey A. Colls._ xxiii.
186, and other portraits probably based on some original of
_c._ 1603; (_i_) _Hondius Group_, (i) drawing by P. D. Hondius
(1610) in J. Speed, _Theatre of the Empire of Great Britain_
(1611), as inset to map of Britain (_L. T. Record_, ii, with
notes by T. F. Ordish; Baker, _f. p._), (ii) engraving on
title-page of R. Baker, _Chronicle_ (1643), reproduced by Martin
in _Surrey A. Colls._ xxiii. 187, (iii) engraving on title-page
of H. Holland, _Herwologia Anglica_ (1620), (iv) engraving of
triumphal arch at coronation entry of James I by W. Kip in S.
Harrison (cf. ch. xxiv), _The Arches of Triumph_ (1604), all
perhaps based on the same original or survey; (_k_) _Visscher_,
engraving in perspective by Nikolaus Janssen Visscher (1616),
‘Amstelodami, ex officina Judoci Hondii’, with mutilated text
from Camden’s _Britannia_, reproduced from unique copy in Brit.
Mus. (L. T. Soc. iv, with notes by T. F. Ordish in _L. T.
Record_, vi; also W. Martin in _Surrey A. Colls._ xxiii. 188,
and in Ordish, _Shakespeare’s London_, _f. p._ and elsewhere);
(_l_) _Merian Group_, (i) engraving in perspective by M. Merian
in J. L. Gottfried, _Neuwe Archontologia Cosmica_ (1638), 290,
reproduced by Martin, 191, and Adams, 256, and copied in (ii)
_f. p._ to James Howell, _Londinopolis_ (1657), reproduced
by Baker, 154, and (iii) R. Wilkinson, _Londina Illustrata_
(1819); (_m_) _‘Ryther’ Group_, (i) engraving in very slight
perspective from drawing unfinished as regards the Bankside in
Crace Collection, No. 32, without date, imprint, or indication
of authorship, reproduced by W. J. Loftie, _History of London_,
ii. 282, C. L. Kingsford, _Chronicles of London_, (1905) _f.
p._, and Baker, 36, 125, 135, and ascribed to Augustine Ryther
in 1604, but probably of about 1636–45 (cf. _4 N. Q._ ix. 95; _6
N. Q._ xii. 361, 393; _7 N. Q._ iii. 110; vi. 297; vii. 498) in
view of (ii) another version in Crace Coll., No. 31, with the
Bankside complete, bearing the imprint of ‘Cornelis Danckerts
grauer of maps’ in Amsterdam (_c._ 1631–56), and possibly by
Hollar, who worked for Danckerts, and was in England 1636–45,
(iii) map by T. Porter (_c._ 1666), based on (i) with later
additions (reproduced L. T. Soc. v); (_n_) _Hollar_, engraving
in perspective by W. Hollar (in London 1635–43), published
by Cornelius Danckerts in 1647 (L. T. Soc. xix; section by
Martin in _Surrey A. Colls._ xxiii. 194); (_o_) _Faithorne and
Newcourt_, engraving in conventional perspective by William
Faithorne from drawing by Richard Newcourt, published in
1658 (L. T. Soc. xviii; Mitton, vii). Of the various maps of
post-conflagration London the most useful are that of Leeke and
Hollar (_c._ 1666), of which a section is reproduced by Martin
in _Surrey A. Colls._ xxiii. 191, and those of John Ogilby and
W. Morgan (1677, Mitton, viii), John Ogilby and W. Morgan (1682,
L. T. Soc. xv), and John Rocque (1746, L. T. Soc. xxxiv, xxxv,
xxxvii; Mitton, ix; section in Martin, _ut supra_, 197). Rendle,
_Bankside_, has attempted to indicate the sites of the Bankside
theatres upon a reconstructed map based on Rocque, and Martin in
_Surrey A. Colls._ xxiii. 155, 202, gives parts of the Bankside
area as it now stands from the Ordnance Survey map (1896) and a
plan of the Anchor Brewery (1909).]
A. INTRODUCTION
The detailed notices, which will form the greater part of this chapter,
may with advantage be prefaced with some general observations upon
the historical sequence of the theatres and their distribution at
different periods over the London area. The earlier Tudor London
knew no theatre, in the sense of a building specially planned and
maintained for public dramatic performances, although Yarmouth had
its ‘game-house’ by 1538, and a _theatrum_ at Exeter was the scene
of satirical farces far back in the fourteenth century. The miracle
plays, not in London processional, were given in the open air, and
probably on temporary scaffolds. Similar stages may sometimes have
been used for the interludes, but these were ordinarily represented
in the winter-time, and sought the kindly shelter of a hall.[1019] In
the provision of specialized buildings, the drama appears to have been
anticipated by the ruder sport of baiting. Höfnagel’s pre-Elizabethan
map already shows on the Southwark side of the river the two rings,
with open centres and roofed seats for spectators, which are repeated
later on by Agas and by Smith. They stand in yards or gardens lined
with dog-kennels. One is lettered ‘The Bowll bayting’, the other
‘The beare bayting’. When the first Elizabethan theatres were built
in 1576, it was the hall on the one hand, and the ring on the other,
which determined the general structure of the two types of auditorium
that came simultaneously into being.[1020] The ‘private’ house, roofed
and lit, and with its seats arranged in tiers along three sides of a
long room, and the ‘public’ house, generally circular, with covered
stage and galleries, and a central yard or ‘pit’ open to the day,
co-existed for more than half a century, and finally merged in the
post-Restoration type of theatre which has come down to our own day.
The distinction between ‘private’ and ‘public’ is an unessential one,
depending probably upon some difference in the methods of paying for
admission necessitated by the regulations of the City or the Privy
Council.[1021] The performances in all the houses were public in the
ordinary sense. There was, however, another important factor, besides
the baiting ring, which greatly affected the structure of the open-air
theatre. This was the inn-yard. Long before 1576, interludes had been
given in public, as well as in the private halls of the great, and even
the need for some kind of permanent, or quasi-permanent, installation
had been felt. No doubt there were halls in London which could be
hired. The keeper of the Carpenters’ Hall in Shoreditch was prosecuted
towards the end of Henry VIII’s reign for procuring a Protestant
interlude ‘to be openly played’.[1022] Fees for the letting of Trinity
Hall for plays occur among the ‘casuall recepts’ of the churchwardens
of St. Botolph without Aldersgate in 1566–7.[1023] A jest-book of
1567 records a play at Northumberland Place.[1024] But an even more
convenient hospitality was afforded by the great court-yards of the
City inns, where there was sack and bottle-ale to hand, and, as the
Puritans averred, chambers ready for deeds of darkness to be done, when
the play was over.[1025] In these yards, approached by archways under
the inn buildings from one or more streets, and surrounded by galleries
with external staircases giving access to the upper floors, an audience
could quickly gather, behold at their ease, and escape payment with
difficulty. The actors could be accommodated with a tiring-room on the
ground floor, and perform as on a natural stage between the pillars
supporting the galleries. An upper gallery could be used to vary the
scene. The first performances in London inns upon record were at the
Saracen’s Head, Islington, and the Boar’s Head, Aldgate, both in
1557.[1026] By the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign the use of them was
normal. Plays ‘in hostels and taverns’ were specified for prohibition
by the proclamation of April 1559, and the City regulations of 1574 are
clearly aimed at the control of the ‘greate innes, havinge chambers
and secrete places adjoyninge to their open stagies and gallyries’,
and impose obligations for the sake of good order upon innkeepers
and tavern-keepers in the forefront of those regarded as likely to
harbour plays.[1027] It is not reading too much between the lines to
suggest that the owners of particular houses specially laid themselves
out to secure the attraction of public entertainments, entered into
regular contracts with players, and probably even undertook structural
alterations which in fact converted their yards into little less
than permanent theatres.[1028] We have, indeed, the record of a
trade dispute about the workmanship of play-scaffolds at the Red
Lion in Stepney as far back as 1567. The Red Lion stood outside the
jurisdiction of the City. Within it, and so far as we can judge, much
more important in the history of the stage were the Bell and the Cross
Keys, both in Gracechurch Street, the Bull in Bishopsgate Street,
and the Bel Savage on Ludgate Hill. No one of these four is in fact
mentioned by name as a play-house earlier than 1575, and although they
must have been hard hit by the regulations of 1574, it is clear that
they did not go altogether out of use, especially during the winter,
when climatic conditions rendered the suburbs unattractive, for another
twenty years. Stockwood, in 1578, speaks of six or eight ‘ordinarie
places’ where plays were then performed.[1029] Nevertheless the action
of the City, and the enterprise of James Burbadge, whose descendants
claimed for him the honour of being ‘the first builder of playhowses’,
led to a shifting of the dramatic focus. The Theatre and the Curtain,
both built in or about 1576, stood in ‘the fields’ to the north of
London proper, and were perhaps soon followed by Newington Butts on
the south side of the river, beyond St. George’s Fields; while the
Blackfriars, adapted in the same year (1576) by Richard Farrant to
house the performances of children, occupied an old monastic building
in the precinct of a ‘liberty’ which, although within the walls, was
largely exempt from the jurisdiction of the Corporation. This became
the home of the Children of the Chapel, while the Paul’s boys played
in their own ‘song-school’, either the church of St. Gregory or some
other building in the neighbourhood of St. Paul’s. How long this
arrangement had existed, or whether any company of children had played
in public at all before the date of Farrant’s experiment, we do not
know. From 1576 onwards, it is the Theatre and the Curtain which have
to bear the brunt of the Puritan attack, and the luxury of these, as
compared with the primitive accommodation of the inn-yards, arouses
a special indignation. ‘The sumptuous Theatre houses, a continual
monument of Londons prodigalitie and folly’, wails Thomas White in
1577. Stockwood in 1578 discommends ‘the gorgeous playing place erected
in the fieldes’; and William Harrison, perhaps about the same time,
finds it ‘an evident token of a wicked time when plaiers wexe so riche
that they can build such houses’.[1030] Presently the theatres became
notable amongst the sights which foreign travellers must see in London.
Lupold von Wedel in 1584 says nothing of them, although he records the
baiting and its rings.[1031] But they are noticed in the following year
by Samuel Kiechel, a merchant of Ulm, who writes:[1032]
‘Comedies are given daily. It is particularly mirthful to
behold, when the Queen’s comedians act, but annoying to a
foreigner who does not know the language, that he understands
nothing. There are some peculiar houses, which are so made as to
have about three galleries over one another, inasmuch as a great
number of people always enters to see such an entertainment. It
may well be that they take as much as from 50 to 60 dollars [£10
to £12] at once, especially when they act anything new, which
has not been given before, and double prices are charged. This
goes on nearly every day in the week; even though performances
are forbidden on Friday and Saturday, it is not observed.’
The Theatre and the London inns were still the chief playing-places,
when at some date between 1576 and 1596 William Lambarde illustrated
his account of the pilgrimages to Boxley, by explaining that those who
visited the shrine did not get off scot-free--
‘no more than such as goe to Parisgardein, the Bell Sauage, or
Theatre, to beholde Beare baiting, Enterludes, or Fence play,
can account of any pleasant spectacle, unlesse they first pay
one pennie at the gate, another at the entrie of the Scaffolde,
and the thirde for a quiet standing.’[1033]
Paris Garden was the generic name given to the successive places
for bear-baiting which lay on the Surrey side of the river, not in
Southwark proper, which was in the jurisdiction of the City, but in the
Liberty of the Clink, which stretched in a westerly direction along
the Bankside, or still farther to the west, in the Manor of Paris
Garden itself. In Surrey, no less than in London, plays had established
themselves at an early date. A performance was going on in Southwark,
while the priests of St. Saviour’s sang _Dirige_ for Henry VIII’s
soul in 1547.[1034] The Privy Council ordered the Surrey justices to
suppress plays in the Borough and the adjoining places during 1578; and
it seems probable that a regular play-house had been built south of
the river at a date not much later than that of the Theatre itself. It
stood far back behind Southwark, in the village of Newington, divided
from the river by St. George’s Fields. The distance and the bad roads
were against it; and it was not until the Rose was built in the Clink
about 1587, that the Bankside became a serious rival to the ‘fields’
in the north as the home of theatres. The Swan, in Paris Garden, was
built in 1595. Newington is too far to the south to appear in the maps,
but Norden’s map of 1593 shows two round buildings, standing between
Bankside and an unnamed road, which may safely be identified with that
called Maiden Lane. One is lettered ‘The Beare howse’, the other, more
to the east and the south, ‘The play howse’; and this must clearly be
the Rose.
In 1596 the City appear to have at last obtained the assent of the
Privy Council to the complete exclusion of plays from the area of
their jurisdiction. This is probably the proceeding described, with
no precise indication of date, in the following passage from Richard
Rawlidge’s _A Monster Lately Found out and Discovered, or the
Scourging of Tipplers_ (1628):[1035]
‘_London_ hath within the memory of man lost much of hir
pristine lustre, ... by being ... filled with ... sinnes,
which ... are ... maintained, in Play-houses, Ale-houses,
Bawdy-houses, Dising-houses, ... All which houses, and traps
for Gentlemen, and others, of such Receipt, were formerly taken
notice of by many Citizens, and well disposed graue Gentlemen
... wherevpon some of the pious magistrates made humble suit
to the late Queene Elizabeth of ever-liuing memorie, and her
priuy Counsaile, and obteined leaue from her Majesty to thrust
those Players out of the Citty and to pull downe the Dicing
houses: which accordingly was affected, and the Play-houses in
_Gracious street_, _Bishops-gate-street_, nigh _Paules_, that on
_Ludgate_ hill, the _White-Friars_ were put down, and other lewd
houses quite supprest within the Liberties, by the care of those
religious senators, ... and surely had all their successors
followed their worthy stepps, sinne would not at this day haue
beene so powerfull, and raigning as it is.’
The play-houses in Gracious or Gracechurch Street, Bishopsgate Street,
and Ludgate Hill were presumably the Bell and the Cross Keys, the
Bull, and the Bel Savage. By the house ‘nigh Paul’s’ Rawlidge possibly
meant the choir song-school; but in fact there had been no plays by
the Paul’s boys since 1590. If there was really a Whitefriars house
at so early a date, this is the only notice preserved of it. It may
be suspected that Rawlidge confused it with the Blackfriars, which
James Burbadge was apparently prevented, upon representations by the
City, from reopening in 1596. The claim of the City to exercise any
control over the old religious precincts of the Blackfriars and the
Whitefriars was a doubtful one; and although they ultimately secured
jurisdiction, they were not able to prevent the so-called ‘private’
theatres from establishing themselves in these ‘liberties’.[1036] With
these exceptions, however, and possibly that of the Boar’s Head, which
seems to have been used for a few years after 1602, but was more likely
just outside the bars, 1596 probably saw the last of playing within the
actual gates of the City.
Londoners had now to look wholly to the suburbs for their dramatic
entertainment. Prince Lewis of Anhalt-Cöthen found four theatres
in 1596.[1037] These were doubtless the Theatre and the Curtain on
the north and the Rose and the Swan on the south of the river. The
Newington house was still used in 1594, but even before that had long
been out of fashion. It was probably also about 1596 that John de
Witt wrote his _Observations Londinenses_. He too mentioned the
four theatres, together with the baiting house, and was particularly
struck by the newest, and as he avers, the largest and fairest of
them, the Swan, of the interior of which he attached a rough sketch to
his manuscript. This manuscript is lost, but fortunately an extract
survives, copied into a commonplace book by Arend van Buchell of
Utrecht. The following is the complete text:[1038]
EX OBSERVATIONIBUS LONDINENSIBUS JOHANNIS DE WITT.
De phano D. Pauli. Huic Paulino phano adheret locus ab
asservandis sacratioribus vestimentis Sacristi dictus, omnino
observatione dignus, quippe quo DIANAE delubrum fuisse
ferunt. Sacellum est rotundum, hemyphericum, concameratum,
cuius structura Romanam antiquitatem referre videtur. Aiunt
cum fundamenta templi iacerentur effossam ante huius aediculae
fores innumeram cervinorum capitum copiam; inde colligi Dianae
sacrificia (cui cervis litabatur) ibi olim peracta esse eique
hanc aedem sacratam fuisse; in eodem phano sunt epitaphia et
sepulcra varia praeter ea quae alio loco a me notata sunt,
Guilelmi Herberti Penbrochiae comitis Walliae praesidis qui
obijt A^o aetat. lxiii Christi vero 1569.
Ibidem in aede Westmonasteriensi sunt monumenta cum suis
elogiis: Guill. Thynne armigeri ex antiqua Bottevillorum
familia, Joannis Thynne fratris qui obijt 14 Martii 1584, item
Joannis Bourgh Duisburgi gubernatoris A^o 1596.
Amphiteatra Londinij sunt iv visendae pulcritudinis quae a
diversis intersigniis diuersa nomina sortiuntur: in iis varia
quotidie scaena populo exhibetur. Horum duo excellentiora vltra
Tamisim ad meridiam sita sunt, a suspensis signis ROSA et Cygnus
nominata: Alia duo extra vrbem ad septentrionem sunt, viâ quâ
itur per Episcopalem portam vulgariter Biscopgat nuncupatam.
Est etiam quintum, sed dispari [vsu?] et structura, bestiarum
concertationi destinatum, in quo multi vrsi, tauri, et stupendae
magnitudinis canes, discretis caueis & septis aluntur, qui
[_drawing occupies rest of page_] ad pugnam adseruantur,
iocundissimum hominibus spectaculum praebentes. Theatrorum autem
omnium prestantissimum est et amplissimum id cuius intersignium
est cygnus (vulgo te theatre off te cijn [off te swan]),[1039]
quippe quod tres mille homines in sedilibus admittat,
constructum ex coaceruato lapide pyrritide (quorum ingens in
Britannia copia est) ligneis suffultum columnis quae ob illitum
marmoreum colorem, nasutissimos quoque fallere possent. Cuius
quidem formam quod Romani operis vmbram videatur exprimere supra
adpinxi.
Narrabat idem se vidisse in Brittannia apud Abrahamum de
lyndeley [?] mercatorem Alberti Dureri omnia opera cartacea
elegantissima et absolutissima.
The account of Paul Hentzner, who was in London from 31 August to
8 September 1598, lays less stress upon the theatres than upon the
baiting, and is not altogether consistent with that of de Witt as to
the structure of the Swan, which was the nearest house to the moorings
of the royal barge at the west end of Paris Garden.[1040] Hentzner
writes:
‘Sunt porro Londini extra Urbem Theatra aliquot, in quibus
Histriones Angli Comoedias & Tragoedias singulis fere diebus, in
magna hominum frequentia agunt, quas variis etiam saltationibus,
suavissima adhibita musica, magno cum populi applausu finire
solent. Non longe ab uno horum theatrorum, quae omnia lignea
sunt, ad Thamesim navis est regia, quae duo egregia habet
conclavia, fenestris perlucidis, picturis & sculpturis eleganter
exornata, in sicco & quidem sub tecto collocata, propterea, ut a
pluviis & coeli injuria immunis sit.’
Hentzner then describes the baiting.[1041] He concludes:
‘Utuntur in hisce spectaculis sicut & alibi, ubicunque locorum
sint Angli, herba Nicotiana, quam Americano idiomate Tabacam
nuncupant (Paetum alii dicunt) hoc modo frequentissime; Fistulae
in hunc finem ex argilia factae, orificio posteriori, dictam
herbam probe exiccatam, ita ut in pulverem facile redigi possit,
immittunt, & igne admoto accendunt, unde fumus ab anteriori
parte ore attrahitur, qui per nares rursum, tanquam per
infurnibulum exit, & phlegma ac capitis defluxiones magna copia
secum educit. Circumferuntur insuper in hisce theatris varii
fructus venales, ut poma, pyra, nuces & pro ratione temporis,
etiam vinum & cerevisia.’[1042]
It is perhaps natural that foreign visitors should be more struck by
the English theatres at a time when the English stage was serving as a
model to northern Europe, than was the case with a native chronicler of
grave and slightly Puritanic tendencies. John Stowe, when he published
his _Survey of London_ in 1598, had nothing to say of the Bankside
houses, and but little of those in Middlesex. After writing of the
miracle plays, he says:
‘Of late time in place of those Stage playes, hath beene vsed
Comedies, Tragedies, Enterludes, and Histories, both true and
fayned: For the acting whereof certaine publike places as the
Theater, the Curtine, &c., haue been erected’ [_in margin_,
‘Theater and Curten for Comedies & other shewes’].[1043]
In another place, at the end of a description of Holywell, he adds:
‘And neare therevnto are builded two publique houses for the
acting and shewe of Comedies, Tragedies, and Histories, for
recreation. Whereof the one is called the Courtein, the other
the Theatre: both standing on the South-west side towards the
field.’[1044]
Even these scanty references were pruned in the second edition of
1603, after the Theatre had disappeared at the end of 1598 and the
Chamberlain’s men had left the Curtain. And of the Globe, built
during the earlier half of 1599, to which they migrated, Stowe takes
no notice. The Globe, however, appears, although unnamed, together
with two other theatres, of which one must be the Curtain, in the next
foreign account, a very full one by Thomas Platter of Basle, who was
in England from 18 September to 20 October 1599.[1045] I translate the
passage, of which sufficient use has not been made by historians of the
stage:
‘After dinner on the 21st of September, at about two o’clock,
I went with my companions over the water, and in the strewn
roof-house saw the tragedy of the first Emperor Julius with
at least fifteen characters very well acted. At the end of
the comedy they danced according to their custom with extreme
elegance. Two in men’s clothes and two in women’s gave this
performance, in wonderful combination with each other. On
another occasion, I also saw after dinner a comedy, not far from
our inn, in the suburb; if I remember right, in Bishopsgate.
Here they represented various nations, with whom on each
occasion an Englishman fought for his daughter, and overcame
them all except the German, who won the daughter in fight. He
then sat down with him, and gave him and his servant strong
drink, so that they both got drunk, and the servant threw his
shoe at his master’s head and they both fell asleep. Meanwhile
the Englishman went into the tent, robbed the German of his
gains, and thus he outwitted the German also. At the end they
danced very elegantly both in English and in Irish fashion.
And thus every day at two o’clock in the afternoon in the city
of London two and sometimes three comedies are performed,
at separate places, wherewith folk make merry together, and
whichever does best gets the greatest audience. The places are
so built, that they play on a raised platform, and every one
can well see it all. There are, however, separate galleries and
there one stands more comfortably and moreover can sit, but one
pays more for it. Thus anyone who remains on the level standing
pays only one English penny: but if he wants to sit, he is let
in at a further door, and there he gives another penny. If he
desires to sit on a cushion in the most comfortable place of
all, where he not only sees everything well, but can also be
seen, then he gives yet another English penny at another door.
And in the pauses of the comedy food and drink are carried round
amongst the people, and one can thus refresh himself at his own
cost.
‘The comedians are most expensively and elegantly apparelled,
since it is customary in England, when distinguished gentlemen
or knights die, for nearly the finest of their clothes to be
made over and given to their servants, and as it is not proper
for them to wear such clothes but only to imitate them, they
give them to the comedians to purchase for a small sum.
‘What they can thus produce daily by way of mirth in the
comedies, every one knows well, who has happened to see them
acting or playing.’
Platter then describes the Cockpit and the baiting. He concludes:
‘With such and many other pastimes besides the English spend
their time; in the comedies they learn what is going on in other
lands, and this happens without alarm, husband and wife together
in a familiar place, since for the most part the English do not
much use to travel, but are content ever to learn of foreign
matters at home, and ever to take their pastime.’
A year later than Platter, another traveller thus describes a visit to
the Bankside:[1046]
‘1600 die Lunae 3 Julii. Audivimus comoediam Anglicam; theatrum
ad morem antiquorum Romanorum constructum ex lignis, ita
formatum ut omnibus ex partibus spectatores commodatissime
singula videre possint. In reditu transivimus pontem magnificis
aedificiis ornatum e quibus uni adhuc affixa cernuntur capita
quorundam comitum et nobilium, qui laesae Majestatis rei
supplicio affecti sunt.’
When Lewis of Anhalt and de Witt wrote, there were four theatres,
exclusive of the City inn-yards, which were probably already closed.
Platter found two, and sometimes three, performances being given daily.
This agrees with the evidence available from other sources. After the
scandal of _The Isle of Dogs_ in 1597, the Privy Council decreed
a limitation of the London companies to two, the Chamberlain’s men and
the Admiral’s. The former played at the Curtain until 1599, when they
destroyed the Theatre and built the Globe. The latter played at the
Rose until 1600, when they migrated to the newly built Fortune. But
it is clear that the ordinance of the Privy Council was not strictly
observed. An intruding company was playing in February 1598, either
at the Theatre or the Swan. Platter’s three houses in 1599 included
the Curtain, together presumably with the Globe and the Rose. When the
Council sanctioned the opening of the Fortune in 1600, they understood
that the Curtain was to be ‘either ruinated or applied to some other
good use’, but it was still the scene of plays in 1601. Finally, in
the spring of 1602 Elizabeth ordered the Council to tolerate a third
company, that of the Earl of Worcester, Master of the Horse. This
was then playing at the Boar’s Head, a short-lived house of which
practically nothing is known; in the autumn it moved to the Rose. The
Swan possibly went out of use, except for the occasional performances
of acrobats and fencers, or of amateurs. On the other hand, Lord
Hertford’s men were in London during the winter of 1602–3, in addition
to the three privileged companies, and they must have practised
somewhere.
To the above must be added, for the closing years of Elizabeth’s
reign, the ‘private’ houses; Paul’s reopened in the winter of 1599,
the Blackfriars in that of 1600. Of these Platter knows nothing, but
Duke Philip Julius of Stettin-Pomerania, in the autumn of 1602, in
addition to performances at the Fortune and another theatre, saw also,
doubtless at the Blackfriars, the _Kinder-comoedia_. The following
is an extract from the diary of the visit kept by the duke’s secretary,
Frederic Gerschow:[1047]
‘13 [September] On the thirteenth a comedy was played, of
the taking of Stuhl-Weissenberg, firstly by the Turks, and
thereafter back again by the Christians.
14. In the afternoon was played a tragicomedy of Samson and the
half tribe of Benjamin.’[1048]
On 16 September the duke and his retinue saw the baiting. On 18
September they visited the Blackfriars, and Gerschow wrote an account
of the organization of the Children of the Chapel and of the nature of
their performances.[1049]
The Globe and the Fortune continued in regular use, as the houses of
the King’s men, and the Prince’s men respectively, during the new
reign, and endured to the closing of the theatres in 1642. Each was
destroyed by fire and rebuilt; the former in 1613, the latter in 1621.
Queen Anne’s men at first used the Boar’s Head and the Curtain, but
migrated from the Boar’s Head to the Red Bull, which had been built by
1606. This became their principal house, and they cannot be shown to
have used the Curtain after 1609. These were the only companies of men
players in London during 1603–8, and the Globe, the Fortune, and the
Red Bull are obviously the ‘three houses’ whose rivalry is referred to
by Dekker in the following passage from his _Raven’s Almanack_ of
1608:[1050]
‘Another ciuill warre doe I finde wil fal betweene players, who
albeit at the beginning of this fatall yeare, they salute one
another like sworne brothers, yet before the middle of it, shall
they wish one anothers throate cut for two pence. The contention
of the two houses, (the gods bee thanked) was appeased long
agoe, but a deadly warre betweene the three houses will I feare
burst out like thunder and lightning. For it is thought that
Flag will be aduanced (as it were in mortall defiance against
Flag), numbers of people will also bee mustred and fall to one
side or other, the drums and trumpets must be sounded, partes
will then (euen by the chiefest players) bee taken: words will
passe to and fro: speeches cannot so bee put vp, handes will
walke, an alarum be giuen, fortune must fauour some, or els they
are neuer able to stand: the whole world must sticke to others,
or else al the water in the theames wil not serue to carrie
those away that will bee put to flight, and a third faction must
fight like wilde Buls against Lyons, or else it will be in vaine
to march vp into the field.’
There were, however, more than three London companies about 1608. M.
de la Boderie tells us how one fell into disgrace during that year,
and how four others subscribed to buy off the consequent inhibition
of plays.[1051] The reconciliation is simple. Dekker has in mind only
the ‘public’ and not the ‘private’ houses. Of these Paul’s was closed
in 1606; it was made worth its Master’s while not to reopen it. The
Blackfriars was used by the successive boy companies, known generically
as the Queen’s Revels, until 1608 or 1609, when it passed to the King’s
men, who thereafter maintained it as a winter house, to supplement the
Globe. The Queen’s Revels then moved to the Whitefriars, a private
house built at some time before 1608, and occupied in that year by the
ephemeral company of the King’s Revels.
An increase in the number of adult companies now made fresh demands
upon theatrical house-room. It is presumably the Duke of York’s men
who were described at Leicester in 1608 as ‘the Princes players
of the White Chapple, London’. The description suggests that they
used the Boar’s Head, but if so, nothing more is heard of it, and
it is conceivable that they soon succeeded to the Curtain. The Lady
Elizabeth’s, who came into existence in 1611, are traceable at the
Swan, which Henslowe may have taken over to succeed the Rose, disused,
if not pulled down, by 1606. The following lines are in John Heath’s
_Two Centuries of Epigrammes_ (1610), but may of course, especially as
the Red Bull is not named, date back to the period when the Curtain
was still in the hands of the Queen’s men:
Momus would act the fooles part in a play,
And cause he would be exquisite that way,
Hies me to London, where no day can passe
But that some play-house still his presence has;
Now at the Globe with a judicious eye
Into the Vice’s action doth he prie.
Next to the Fortune, where it is a chaunce
But he marks something worth his cognisance.
Then to the Curtaine, where, as at the rest,
He notes that action downe that likes him best.[1052]
A foreign traveller again gives us help. The relation of the visit of
Prince Lewis Frederick of Württemberg in 1610 merely records that he
went to the Globe, and Justus Zingerling, who was in London at about
the same date, has the briefest note of the existence of ‘theatra
comoedorum et in quibus ursi et tauri cum canibus committuntur’.[1053]
But the itinerary of Prince Otto of Hesse-Cassel in the following year
is more expansive. The compiler writes:
‘In London there are seven theatres, where daily, except on
Sundays, comedies are performed, whereof the most important is
the Globe, which lies over the water. The theatre, where the
children play, is on the hither side of the water; they play
at three o’clock, but only from Michaelmas to Easter. Here it
only costs half a shilling to enter, but for the other places
at least half a crown. These play only with lights, and are the
best company in London.’[1054]
In addition to the Globe and the Whitefriars, the tale of seven
theatres is probably made up by the Blackfriars, the Fortune, the Red
Bull, the Curtain, and the Swan.
Henslowe’s correspondence with Daborne shows that he still had a
‘publique howse’, probably the Swan, in December 1613, and also that
in June of that year his company was only just thinking of ‘comming
over’ for a summer season, presumably from the Whitefriars, as he had
recently carried out an amalgamation between the Lady Elizabeth’s
men and the Queen’s Revels.[1055] In the following year occurred an
episode which curiously emphasizes the constant shifting of the focus
of theatrical interest during the whole of the period with which we
are concerned. Originally stageland was in the heart of the City
itself. With the building of the first theatres, it was transferred
to the Fields of the northern suburbs. During the last decade of the
sixteenth century the Fields in their turn gave way to the Bankside.
The Rose, the Swan, and the Globe successively made their appearance,
and the vestry of Southwark began to echo the earlier outcry of the
City against the iniquities of players, until their mouths were stopped
with tithes. But the transpontine period proved a brief one. Hardly was
the Globe up, before Alleyn’s choice of a site for the Fortune set the
fashion veering again, and opened up a new theatrical region in the
western suburbs. This was convenient for the Court and the great houses
along the Strand and for the lawyers in the Temple and at Westminster,
as well as for the City proper, and its tradition has endured until
quite recent years. The Red Bull and the Whitefriars followed in the
same area. On the other hand, the Rose had vanished, and the King’s
men, although they did not desert the Globe, acknowledged the change
of venue by taking up their winter quarters in the Blackfriars hard
by. One result was that men who had ridden to the Fields and been
ferried to the Bankside, now walked or drove in their coaches to the
theatre door. During the spring of 1614 things were probably at their
worst. Both the Globe, after its fire, and the Hope were still in the
builder’s hands, and if the Lady Elizabeth’s lingered again at the
Whitefriars, there can have been no plays across the water at all.
The watermen, who twenty years before had exercised the influence
of their patron, the Lord Admiral, to induce the Privy Council to
revoke an inhibition on the Bankside houses, sent up a bitter cry
of protest. John Taylor, the ‘water-poet’, whom they chose as their
spokesman, tells the story.[1056] A petition to the King was prepared,
to the effect that no play-house might be permitted ‘in London or in
Middlesex, within four miles of the City on that side of the Thames’,
and with this Taylor pursued James to Theobalds, Newmarket, and
Royston. It recited the service done by watermen in the navy during the
Armada invasion of 1588 and in such expeditions as those of Essex in
1596 and 1597. And it proceeded:
‘Afterwards the players began to play on the Bankside and to
leave playing in London and Middlesex (for the most part),
then there went such great concourse of people by water that
the small number of watermen remaining at home were not able
to carry them, by reason of the court, the terms, the players,
and other employments, so that we were enforced and encouraged
(hoping that this golden stirring would have lasted ever) to
take and entertain men and boys.’
It was calculated that the number of watermen and their dependants
between Windsor and Gravesend had now by 1614 reached 40,000:
‘The cause of the greater half of which multitude hath been
the players playing on the Bankside, for I have known three
companies besides the bear-baiting, at once there; to wit, the
Globe, the Rose, and the Swan. And it is an infallible truth
that, had they never played there, it had been better for
watermen by the one half of their living, for the company is
increased more than half by their means of playing there in
former times.’
Foreign employment had now come to an end:
‘And the players have all (except the King’s men) left their
usuall residency on the Bankside, and do play in Middlesex far
remote from the Thames, so that every day in the week they do
draw unto them three or four thousand people, that were used to
spend their monies by water.’
Such, Taylor assures us, was the effect of the petition. It was
referred by James to ‘his commissioners for suits’, that is to say, the
Court of Requests, composed of Sir Julius Caesar, Sir Thomas Parry, Sir
Francis Bacon, Sir Henry Montagu, Sir Walter Cope, George Calvert, and
Baron Sotherton. The King’s men exhibited a counter-petition, and the
case came on for hearing.
‘Sir Francis Bacon very worthily said that so far as the public
weal was to be regarded before pastimes, or a serviceable
decaying multitude before a handful of particular men, or
profit before pleasure, so far was our suit to be preferred
before theirs.’
The players appealed to the Earl of Somerset, who became Lord
Chamberlain and in that capacity their official protector on 10 July
1614, but he proved well affected towards the watermen. The hearing was
adjourned and never resumed, owing to the death of Cope on 31 July,
the promotion of Caesar to the Mastership of the Rolls on 1 October,
and the consequent dissolution of the commission. Ill feeling broke
out between Taylor and his fellows the watermen, who declared that
he met the players at supper at the Cardinal’s Hat on Bankside, and
took bribes of them to let the suit fall. Taylor, therefore, wrote his
pamphlet to vindicate his position.[1057] The completion of the new
Globe and the Hope during the progress of the dispute had probably
eased matters temporarily for the watermen, but the growing tendency
of things theatrical towards Middlesex was not permanently checked.
Some of the minor companies used the Hope until 1617, and then left
it to the bears again. The Globe survived, but will be found to have
occupied during the Caroline period a distinctly secondary position
to the Blackfriars in the economy of the King’s men. For this there
was another reason besides the geographical superiority of Middlesex
over Surrey. The acquisition of the Blackfriars, even though only for
winter purposes, in 1608 was an acknowledgement of the advantages for
adult companies of the ‘private’ or roofed type of theatre, hitherto
used only by boys. Once these advantages were realized, the doom of
the old ‘ring’ type, with its central opening, was written. Probably
the Hope was the only new house constructed on these lines after 1608,
and obviously the Hope required free ventilation to get rid of the
stink of bears and dogs. In 1615 Philip Rosseter and others obtained
sanction for the conversion of Porter’s Hall in the Blackfriars into
a theatre. This was to be used by children as well as adults, and was
probably roofed. It was pulled down again by what seems a somewhat
arbitrary decision in 1617. About the same time, the roofed Cockpit in
Drury Lane was converted into a theatre, under the name of the Phoenix,
for the occupation of the Queen’s men, who migrated to it from the Red
Bull. Whether or not the Fortune was given a roof at the rebuilding
of 1623, or the Red Bull at somewhat the same time, is uncertain; but
at any rate the Salisbury Court theatre, built near the Whitefriars
in 1629, perhaps to replace the old Whitefriars theatre, was a roofed
house.[1058] This was the last new theatre built before the civil
wars. The Blackfriars, the Cockpit, and Salisbury Court were the most
important of the Caroline stages, and in the post-Restoration houses,
although these were on a larger scale than the ‘private’ houses of the
past, the roofed model was invariably adopted.
Soon after the completion of Salisbury Court, Edmund Howes, who had
already edited the fourth edition of John Stowe’s _Annales_ in 1615,
was again revising the text for the fifth edition of 1631, and took
occasion to append to his account of the burnings of the Globe and the
Fortune the following summary of theatrical enterprise since 1569:[1059]
‘In the yeere one thousand sixe hundred twenty nine, there was
builded a new faire Play-house, neere the white Fryers. And this
is the seauenteenth Stage, or common Play-house, which hath
beene new made within the space of threescore yeeres within
London and the Suburbs, _viz._
‘Fiue Innes, or common Osteryes turned to Play-houses,
one _Cockpit_, S. _Paules_ singing Schoole, one in the
_Black-fryers_, and one in the _White-fryers_, which was built
last of all, in the yeare one thousand sixe hundred twenty
nine, all the rest not named, were erected only for common
Play-houses, besides the new built Beare garden, which was
built as well for playes, and Fencers prizes, as Bull bayting;
besides, one in former time at _Newington_ Buts; Before the
space of threescore yeares aboue-sayd, I neither knew, heard,
nor read, of any such Theaters, set Stages, or Play-houses, as
haue beene purposely built within mans memory.’
This passage serves as a fair summary of the detailed investigations
set out in this chapter. Howes only allows one house to the Blackfriars
and one to the Whitefriars, and must therefore be leaving out of
account the abortive Porter’s Hall house, and treating Salisbury Court
as a continuation of the earlier Whitefriars. The Hope and Newington
Butts are afterthoughts, and make his seventeen into nineteen. We can
identify his five inns as the Bull, the Bell, the Cross Keys, the
Bel Savage, and probably the Red Lion, although this just antedates
his period of sixty years; while his balance of eight unnamed common
play-houses must be the Theatre, the Curtain, the Rose, the Swan, the
Globe, the Fortune, the Boar’s Head, and the Red Bull.
Prynne, in his _Histriomastix_ (1633), records six ‘divels chappels’ as
then in use, and these are doubtless the six houses, the Blackfriars,
Globe, Cockpit, Salisbury Court, Fortune, and Red Bull, which are also
noted by the Restoration writers on the stage, John Downes and James
Wright, as surviving up to the cataclysm of the civil wars.[1060]
Somewhat more confused and vague in their datings are the reminiscences
about 1660 of the Marquis of Newcastle in his letter of advice to
Prince Charles, under the head of ‘Devertismentes for your Ma^{tie}
People’:[1061]
‘Firste for London Paris Garden will holde good for the meaner
People.
‘Then for severall Playe Houses as ther weare five att leaste In
my Time,--
‘Black-Friers, the Cock-Pitt, Salsburye Courte, the Fortune,
& the Redd Bull,--Ther weare the Boyes thatt played at
Black-Friers, & Paules, & then the Kinges Players played att the
Globe--which is nowe calde the Phenixe [!]--Some Played, att
the Bores heade, & att the Curtin In the feildes & some att the
Hope whiche Is the Beare Garden, and some at White Friers,--Butt
five or Sixe Playe Houses Is enough for all sortes off Peoples
divertion & pleasure In thatt kinde.’
The marquis is the only one of the chroniclers who definitely records
the Boar’s Head.
A manuscript continuation of Stowe’s _Annales_, found in a copy
of the 1631 edition, narrates the havoc wrought by Puritans and
ground-landlords:[1062]
‘Play Houses. The Globe play house on the Banks side in
Southwarke, was burnt downe to the ground, in the yeare 1612.
And now built vp againe in the yeare 1613, at the great charge
of King Iames, and many Noble men and others. And now pulled
downe to the ground, by Sir Matthew Brand, On Munday the 15 of
April 1644, to make tenements in the room of it.
‘The Blacke Friers players play-house in Blacke Friers, London,
which had stood many yeares, was pulled downe to the ground on
Munday the 6 day of August 1655, and tennements built in the
rome.
‘The play house in Salsbury Court, in Fleetstreete, was pulled
downe by a company of souldiers, set on by the sectuaries of
these sad times, on Saturday the 24 day of March 1649.
‘The Phenix in Druery Lane, was pulled downe also this day,
being Saterday the 24 day of March 1649, by the same souldiers.
‘The Fortune Play-house betweene White Crosse streete and
Golding Lane was burnd downe to the ground in the yeare 1618.
And built againe with brick worke on the outside in the yeare
1622. And now pulled downe on the inside by the souldiers this
1649.
‘The Hope, on the Banks side in Southwarke, commonly called
the Beare Garden, a Play House for Stage Playes on Mundayes,
Wedensdayes, Fridayes, and Saterdayes, and for the baiting of
the Beares on Tuesdayes and Thursdayes, the stage being made
to take vp and downe when they please. It was built in the
year 1610, and now pulled downe to make tennementes, by Thomas
Walker, a peticoate maker in Cannon Streete, on Tuesday the 25
day of March 1656. Seuen of M^r. Godfries beares, by the command
of Thomas Pride, then hie Sheriefe of Surry, were then shot to
death, on Saterday the 9 day of February 1655, by a company of
souldiers.’
Downes and Wright do not mention the Hope, as they were not discussing
baiting. On the other hand, the annalist says nothing of the fate of
the Red Bull, which in fact appears to have escaped destruction, to
have been occasionally used for ‘drolls’ during the Commonwealth, and
to have served once more, with the Cockpit and Salisbury Court, the
demolition of which was probably limited to the interior fittings,
for the first entertainments of the Restoration. The building of Vere
Street in 1660, Lincoln’s Inn Fields in 1661, and Drury Lane in 1663
made them obsolete.[1063]
These records leave ambiguous the fate of the Curtain and the Swan. The
Curtain is traceable in occasional use up to about 1627, and is figured
as a roundish building in the ‘Ryther’ maps, which are probably of a
decade later.[1064] It cannot, therefore, have vanished long before
the civil wars, and was the most long-lived of all the theatres. It
may, of course, have been rebuilt, later than its original foundation
in 1576, but as to this there is no evidence. The ‘Ryther’ maps also
show the Fortune. No other maps give any of the theatres on the north
of the river. Of the Bankside houses, the Swan is shown by a decagonal
ground-plan, with the inscription ‘Old Play house’, in the Paris Garden
Manor survey of 1627.[1065] And it is described as still existing side
by side with the Globe and the Hope, but clearly also as derelict, in
the following passage from _Holland’s Leaguer_ (1632):
‘Especially, and aboue all the rest, she was most taken with the
report of three famous _Amphytheators_, which stood so neere
scituated, that her eye might take view of them from the lowest
_Turret_, one was the _Continent of the World_, because halfe
the yeere a World of _Beauties_, and braue _Spirits_ resorted
vnto it; the other was a building of excellent _Hope_, and
though _wild beasts_ and _Gladiators_ did most possesse it, yet
the Gallants that came to behold those combats, though they were
of a mixt Society, yet were many Noble worthies amongst them;
the last which stood, and as it were shak’d handes with this
Fortresse, beeing in times past as famous as any of the other,
was now fallen to decay, and like a dying _Swanne_, hanging
downe her head, seemed to sing her owne dierge.’[1066]
I turn now to the maps of the Bankside, which, had they been datable,
and drawn with cartographical precision, ought not only to have
furnished valuable evidence as to the duration of the theatres, but
also to have indicated accurately the position of each amongst the
streets and lanes of the district. Neither condition is, however,
fulfilled. Even where the date of an engraving is known, the date of
the survey on which it was based can, as a rule, be only approximately
determined. And the constant intrusion of pictorial elements, which
gives the maps the character of perspective views rather than of
plans, is naturally emphasized on the Bankside, which has to serve as
a foreground to the design. The main topographical features which have
to be borne in mind are simple, and can easily be related to those
in John Rocque’s map of 1746, as interpreted by Strype’s _Survey_ of
1720, or in a modern Ordnance map. The whole region concerned lies
roughly between the southern approaches to London and Blackfriars
Bridges. It underwent a good deal of development during one period,
especially in the area of the Clink, a liberty lying between Southwark
on the east and another liberty of Paris Garden on the west, and
affording a convenient suburban resort outside the jurisdiction of
the City. Stowe’s account of the neighbourhood in 1598 is perhaps a
little misleading. He describes no more than the Bankside proper, ‘a
continuall building of tenements’ on the riverside, extending about
half a mile west of London Bridge. Here he places, from west to east,
the bear gardens, the former stews, the prison of the Clink, Winchester
House, and the church of St. Mary Overie in Southwark.[1067] This
agrees pretty well with the maps of Agas (_c._ 1561) and Norden
(1593), except that there was already a group of houses falling outside
Stowe’s purview, which stood on the river near Paris Garden Stairs
and practically continued the Bankside westwards. But there was also,
which Stowe does not mention, a marshy _hinterland_ to the Bankside,
of ponds and gardens, among which Agas, and still more Norden, show
a good many scattered houses. By the end of the century there was a
fairly definite north to south street known as Deadman’s Place, which
debouched from the east end of the Bankside, and from which in its turn
struck out one called Maid or Maiden Lane, which went in an irregular
line westwards over the marshes, and was finally joined by two
divergent ways, Love Lane and Gravel (afterwards Holland) Lane, to the
Paris Garden group of houses. Thus was formed a rough parallelogram,
half a mile long, and from 200 to 350 feet deep, within or near which
all the theatrical sites are placed by the maps. In Norden’s map of
1593, both the Bear House and the Play House, which must be the Rose,
stand considerably to the west of Deadman’s Place. The Bear House is
the most westerly of the two, and is about halfway between the Bankside
houses on the north and Maid Lane on the south. The Rose is a good
deal nearer Maid Lane. In the Delaram views (1603–20) there are three
flagged, but unnamed, structures. One which stands well back from
the river and, after allowing for the view-point, appears slightly
the most easterly of the three, is cylindrical; the upper half is
alone windowed, and has a smaller diameter than the lower half. It is
placed amongst trees and meadows. There is nothing which obviously
indicates Maid Lane.[1068] The two other buildings stand much nearer
the river’s edge, amongst houses; they are angled, probably octagonal,
and not cylindrical. The ‘Hondius’ views repeat the cylindrical
building and the most westerly of the two angled buildings much in
the same relative position; the intermediate one has disappeared. It
seems obvious that the cylindrical building must be the Globe, and
the other two the Bear Garden, afterwards the Hope, to the west, and
the Rose, left out of the ‘Hondius’ group, because it disappeared in
1605, in the centre. The Delaram and ‘Hondius’ views do not extend
far enough west to include the Swan. It is shown by Visscher in 1616,
and named. So are the Bear Garden and the Globe, both of which appear
as angled buildings, octagonal or hexagonal, about equidistant from
the Bankside houses, and north of Maid Lane, the angle of which next
Deadman’s Place is shown.[1069] As the change from a cylindrical to an
angled representation of the Globe coincides with the rebuilding of the
house in 1614, we may perhaps infer that the structural form is not
a mere cartographic convention.[1070] It is rather singular that in
the Merian maps (_circa_ 1638) there are four houses again, including
the Swan, well to the west. This, with two of the three houses in the
eastern group, is named by the engraver. A third unnamed house stands
between the Globe on the east and the Bear Garden on the west, which is
approximately where the Rose used to stand. It is distinctly nearer the
river than the other two, but all three are north of Maid Lane, from
which the Bear Garden is slightly more remote than the Globe.[1071]
If the Rose had actually a second term of existence, it was probably
only a brief one.[1072] The fullest of the Ryther maps (_c._ 1636–45)
has two angled buildings, one to the west, rather nearer to Bankside
than to Maid Lane; the other to the east, and south of Maid Lane,
standing in an angle between that and a track running from north-west
to south-east. There are no names, but obviously the eastern house is
the Globe, and the western the Hope, and indeed the dogs can be made
out. The track joining Maid Lane may be Globe Alley. The Hollar view of
1647 shows two cylindrical, not angled, buildings. One lettered ‘The
Globe’ is on the extreme brink of the river; the other, to the east and
south of it, is lettered ‘Beere bayting’. Faithorne and Newcourt, in
1658, give no theatres proper, but only a ring marked ‘Beare garden’.
Finally, Leeke and Hollar about 1666 give a single unnamed roundish
theatre, south of Maid Lane. Presumably it is the Globe, but copied
from a survey of earlier date, as the Globe had been pulled down for
tenements in 1644.
On the whole, the maps are disappointing guides. It seems more
probable than has quite been recognized, that the singular two-storied
structure shown by Hondius and Delaram really represents the earlier,
the Shakespearian, Globe. And the representation of a fourth house by
Merian, even if he did not know its name, gives support to the view
that the Rose may have had some kind of existence at a later date than
the Sewers records indicate. But as regards the alinement, the distance
from the river, and the relation to Maid Lane, of the three houses in
the Clink, it is clear that no consistent story is told. The general
impression one gets is that the Hope stood farthest to the west, then
the Rose, and then the Globe; and that the Rose stood nearest to the
river, then the Hope, and then the Globe. Nor is this inconsistent with
documentary evidence, which in particular indicates that the parcel of
land, on which the latest of the Bear Gardens was built, was contiguous
on the west to that known as ‘the little Rose’.[1073] Bear Garden and
Rose Alley, running side by side from the Bankside into Maid Lane
or Park Street, are traceable in eighteenth-century maps and in the
modern Ordnance map.[1074] Did one judge by the maps alone, one would
probably, in spite of the dissenting testimony of ‘Ryther’ and of Leeke
and Hollar, come to the conclusion that the Globe stood to the north
of Maid Lane. The balance of other evidence points unmistakably in the
other direction.[1075]
B. THE PUBLIC THEATRES
i. The Red Lion Inn.
ii. The Bull Inn.
iii. The Bell Inn.
iv. The Bel Savage Inn.
v. The Cross Keys Inn.
vi. The Theatre.
vii. The Curtain.
viii. Newington Butts.
ix. The Rose.
x. The Swan.
xi. The Globe.
xii. The Fortune.
xiii. The Boar’s Head.
xiv. The Red Bull.
xv. The Hope.
xvi. Porter’s Hall.
i. THE RED LION INN
The following record appears in the court books of the Carpenters’
Company:[1076]
Courte holden the xv^{th} daie of Julie 1567, Annoque Regni
Reginae Eliz. nono by M^r William Ruddoke, M^r Richard More,
Henrye Whreste & Richard Smarte wardeins, & M^r Bradshawe.
Memorandum that at courte holden the daie & yeare abovesayd
that, whear certaine varyaunce, discord & debate was betwene
Wyllyam Sylvester carpenter on thone partie & John Brayne
grocer on thother partie, yt is agreed, concluded & fullie
determyned by the saide parties, by the assent & consent of them
bothe, with the advise of the M^r & wardeins abovesayd that
Willyam Buttermore, John Lyffe, Willyam Snellinge & Richard
Kyrbye, Carpenters, shall with expedicon goe & peruse suche
defaultes as are & by them shalbe found of in & aboute suche
skaffoldes, as he the said Willyam hathe mad at the house called
the Red Lyon in the parishe of Stebinyhuthe, & the said Willyam
Sillvester shall repaire & amend the same with their advize
substancyallie, as they shall thinke good. And that the said
John Brayne, on Satterdaie next ensuenge the date above written,
shall paye to the sayd Willyam Sylvester the some of eight
poundes, tenne shillinges, lawfull money of England, & that
after the playe, which is called the storye of Sampson, be once
plaied at the place aforesaid the said John shall deliver to
the said Willyam such bondes as are now in his custodie for the
performaunce of the bargaine. In witnesse whereof both parties
hereunto hathe sett their handes.
by me John Brayne grocer.
[Sylvester’s mark.]
This is the only notice of the Red Lion playing-inn which has been
preserved, but John Brayne, grocer, is doubtless the same who financed
his brother-in-law, James Burbadge, in the far more important
enterprise of the Theatre in 1576. Stebunheth or Stepney was a parish
in Middlesex, lying to the east of the City, beyond Whitechapel, and,
although near enough to be in a sense a suburb, was outside the civic
jurisdiction.
ii. THE BULL INN
The first notice of the Bull is on 7 June 1575 when the playing of a
‘prize’ there is recorded in the register of the School of Defence.
It appears to have been the most popular of all localities for this
purpose and there are fourteen similar notices of its use in the
register, ending with one on 3 July 1590.[1077] Florio refers to it
as a place for plays in 1578.[1078] Stephen Gosson in his _Schoole of
Abuse_ (1579) exempts from his ordinary condemnation of plays _The Jew_
and _Ptolemy_ ‘shown at the Bull’.[1079] On 1 July 1582 the Earl of
Warwick asked permission from the Lord Mayor for his servant John David
to play his provost prizes at ‘the Bull in Bishopsgatestrete or some
other conuenient place to be assigned within the liberties of London’.
This was refused, much to Warwick’s annoyance, on the ground that an
inn was a place ‘somewhat to close for infection’, and David appointed
to play ‘in an open place of the Leaden hall’.[1080] The Bull, with
the Bell, was assigned by a civic order of 28 November 1583 to the
Queen’s men for their first winter season. Tarlton and the Queen’s men
are said in the _Jests_ to have played ‘oftentimes’ at ‘the Bull in
Bishops-gate-street’, and here their play of _The Famous Victories of
Henry the Fifth_, with Tarlton in the parts of the judge and the clown
and Knell in that of Henry, was given.[1081] This must, of course, have
been between 1583 and Tarlton’s death in 1588. In 1592 the translator
of _The Spaniard’s Monarchie_ disclaims any ‘title fetched from the
Bull within Bishopsgate, as a figge for a Spaniard’. I do not know
whether any old play underlying the Admiral’s (q.v.) _Spanish Fig_ of
1601–2 can be referred to. The house was still in use during 1594, for
in April or May of that year Anthony Bacon settled in Bishopsgate, to
the vexation of his mother, ‘on account of its neighbourhood to the
Bull Inn, where plays and interludes were continually acted, and would,
she imagined, corrupt his servants’.[1082] Richard Flecknoe mentions
the Bull in Bishopsgate Street, with the Cross-Keys, as one of the inns
turned into theatres at the beginning of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, as
was ‘at this day to be seen’ in 1664.[1083] The site was at No. 91 on
the west of Bishopsgate Street, and is shown in Hatton’s map of 1708,
and the Ordnance Survey maps of 1848–51 and 1875.
iii. THE BELL INN
This inn existed in 1560, for on 12 June of that year ‘the wyff of the
Bell in Gracyous-strett’ was carted as a bawd and whore.[1084] Plays
must have been used there in 1576–7, in the Revels Account for which
year an item of 10_d._ is included ‘ffor the cariadge of the partes
of y^e well counterfeit from the Bell in Gracious strete to St. Iohns
to be performed for the play of Cutwell’.[1085] With the Bull, it was
assigned to the Queen’s men by a civic order of 28 November 1583 for
their first winter season. _Tarlton’s Jests_ also mention Tarlton and
‘his fellowes’, probably the Queen’s men, as performing at the Bell
‘by’ the Cross Keys which was also in Gracious Street, and this must
have been before Tarlton’s death in 1588.[1086] Both houses may be
included in Rawlidge’s reference to play-houses in Gracious street and
elsewhere ‘put down’ by the City in Elizabeth’s time. I suppose that
the site is that of Bell Yard at No. 12 on the west of Gracechurch
Street.[1087]
iv. THE BEL SAVAGE INN
The Bel Savage is named as an early London play-house in the 1596
edition of Lambarde’s _Perambulation of Kent_. This inn, of which the
name is still preserved on Ludgate Hill, where it stood until 1873
(Harben, 63), must be distinguished from another in Gracechurch Street
once kept by Tarlton, which in his time was known as the Saba.[1088]
The origin of the name is obscure; a deed of 1452 refers to an ‘inn
... called Savages Inn, otherwise called the Bell on the Hoop, in the
parishe of St. Bride in Fleet Street’ (_L. T. R._ ii. 71). Probably
therefore the notion of the Belle Sauvage is a later perversion.
Gascoigne, in the prologue to his _Glass of Government_ (1575),
repudiates the ‘worthie jests’ and ‘vain delights’ of ‘Bellsavage
fair’.[1089] Gosson, in 1579, excepts from his general condemnation
of plays ‘the two prose books, played at the Belsavage, where you
shall find never a word without wit, never a line without pith, never
a letter placed in vain’.[1090] A play-house ‘on Ludgate Hill’ is
included by Rawlidge in his list of those ‘put down’ in Elizabeth’s
time. Probably the Queen’s men were acting at the Bel Savage in 1588,
for after the death of Tarlton in that year was published ‘a sorowfull
newe sonnette, intituled Tarltons Recantacion uppon this theame gyven
him by a gentleman at the Belsavage without Ludgate (nowe or els
never) beinge the laste theame he songe’.[1091] Prynne’s reference
to _Dr. Faustus_ (q.v.) at the Bel Savage suggests that at some time
the Admiral’s also played there. It was also occasionally used for
the playing of ‘prizes’; the earliest recorded date in the Register
of the School of Defence being in 1575–7 and the latest on 31 January
1589.[1092]
v. THE CROSS KEYS INN
This inn may have been the play-house, or one of the play-houses,
‘in Gracious Street’ said by Rawlidge to have been ‘put down’ under
Elizabeth. The first notice of it dates from 23 June 1579, on which
day James Burbadge was arrested at the suit of John Hynde for £5 1_s._
1_d._, ‘as he came down Gracious Street towards the Cross Keys there
to a play’. The house is described as the dwelling-house of Richard
Ibotson, citizen and brewer of London.[1093] It was in use as a place
of popular amusement during the life of Tarlton, who died in 1588,
for one of the Jests relates how he came from the Bell, where he was
playing to ‘the Crosse-Keyes in Gracious streete’ to see Banks’s
performing horse there.[1094] A company can first be definitely
located at it in 1589, on 5 November of which year Lord Strange’s men,
as reported by Lord Mayor Hart to Burghley, disobeyed an admonition
to forbear playing, and ‘went to the Crosse Keys and played that
afternoon’. In 1594 Strange’s men were absorbed in Lord Hunsdon’s, and
on 8 October 1594 Hunsdon wrote to the Lord Mayor to obtain toleration
for ‘my nowe companie of players’ who had been accustomed ‘to plaie
this winter time within the citye at the Crosse Kayes in Gracious
street’.[1095] How long Shakespeare’s fellows continued to use the
Cross Keys as a winter house is unknown; presumably it ceased to be
available in 1596. The adaptation of the inn as a theatre was still
visible at the Restoration, and is assigned by Richard Flecknoe to
‘about the beginning of Queen Elizabeth’s reign’. The site is shown in
Ogilby and Morgan’s map of 1677 and the Ordnance Survey map of 1848–51:
it is on the west of Gracechurch Street.
vi. THE THEATRE
[_Bibliographical Note._--Material is available in the records
of four litigations: (a) _Peckham v. Allen_ (Wards and Liveries,
1589) as to the title to the site; (b) _Burbadge v. Ames et al._
(Coram Rege, 1596–9) and _Earl of Rutland v. Allen and Burbadge_
(Exchequer, 1599–1602) as to the title to a neighbouring
plot; (c) _Burbadge v. Brayne_ (Chancery, 1588–95). _Brayne_
(afterwards _Miles_) _v. Burbadge_ (Chancery, 1590–5), and
_Miles v. Burbadge_ (Requests, 1597), as to the profits of the
house; (d) _Allen v. Street_ (Coram Rege, 1600), _Burbadge v.
Allen_ (Requests, 1600), _Allen v. Burbadge_ (Queen’s Bench,
1601–2), and _Allen v. Burbadge et al._ (Star Chamber, 1601–2),
as to the removal of the fabric. A few documents from these,
some of which he supposed to relate to the Blackfriars, were
printed by Collier in _Memoirs of the Actors_ (1846 and _H. E.
D. P._ iii. 257) and in _Original History of the Theatre in
Shoreditch_ (1849, _Sh. Soc. Papers_, iv. 63). A large number
were used by Halliwell-Phillipps for his excursus on _The
Theatre and Curtain_ (_Outlines_, i. 345), and in C. C. Stopes,
_Burbage and Shakespeare’s Stage_ (1913), where abstracts of
(a) and (b) may be consulted. The full texts of (c) and (d) are
printed in C. W. Wallace, _The First London Theatre, Materials
for a History_ (1913, _Nebraska University Studies_, xiii. 1).
The exact locality of the site has been carefully investigated
by W. W. Braines in _Holywell Priory and the Site of the
Theatre, Shoreditch_ (1915, _Indication of Houses of Historical
Interest in London_, xliii), and again in _The Site of the
Theatre, Shoreditch_ (1917, _L. T. R._ xi. 1).]
The following statement as to the beginnings of theatrical enterprise
in London is made by Cuthbert Burbadge and his family in the so-called
_Sharers Papers_ of 1635:[1096]
‘The father of us, Cutbert and Richard Burbage, was the first
builder of playehowses, and was himselfe in his younger yeeres
a player. The Theater hee built with many hundred poundes taken
up at interest. The players that lived in those first times had
onely the profitts arising from the dores, but now the players
receave all the commings in at the dores to themselves and halfe
the galleries from the houskepers. Hee built this house upon
leased ground, by which meanes the landlord and hee had a great
suite in law, and, by his death, the like troubles fell on us,
his sonnes; wee then bethought us of altering from thence, and
at like expence built the Globe.’
The accuracy of this is fully borne out by the records of the various
legal proceedings in connexion with the Theatre, which a painful
investigation has exhumed, and the topographical indications furnished
by the evidence in some of these have made it possible to locate with
some precision the site of London’s first regular play-house.
The Theatre stood in the Liberty of Halliwell or Holywell, part of the
Middlesex parish of St. Leonard’s, Shoreditch, immediately outside
the Bishopsgate entrance to the City.[1097] The name of the Liberty
was derived from an ancient holy well, which has now disappeared, and
its status from the fact that it had been the property of a priory of
Benedictine nuns. The buildings of the priory lay between Shoreditch
High Street, leading north from Bishopsgate, on the east and the open
Finsbury fields on the west. Its southern gate was in a lane leading
from the High Street to the Fields, then and still known as Holywell
Lane or Street, on the south of which lay the Prioress’s pasture
called the Curtain. Part of this south end of the liberty, lying on
both sides of Holywell Lane, had been leased in 1537 and 1538 to the
Earls of Rutland, who continued to hold it from the Crown after the
dissolution in 1539, and obtained a renewed lease in 1584.[1098] The
rest of the property, including the main conventual buildings, was
sold in 1544 to one Henry Webb, whose daughter Susan and her husband
Sir George Peckham sold it in 1555 to Christopher Bumsted, and he in
the same year to Christopher Allen and his son Giles. The alienation
of 1555 was challenged as illegal by Susan Peckham’s heirs in 1582,
and ultimately, but not until about thirty years later, they appear
to have made good their claim.[1099] In the meantime Giles Allen had
leased a part of the property, which became the site of the Theatre,
to James Burbadge on 13 April 1576.[1100] This was bounded to the
north by the wall of Allen’s own garden, probably corresponding to the
main cloister of the convent, on the east or south-east by the Earl
of Rutland’s holding, and on the west by a ditch dividing it from the
open Finsbury fields. Within the ditch and divided from it by a strip
of void ground, was the old brick wall of the precinct. On the extreme
south was a bit of void ground lying between an Oat Barn occupied by
Rutland and another Great Barn included in the lease. The Oat Barn and
the void ground were in fact debatable property claimed both by Allen
and Rutland. North of the Great Barn, and immediately to the east of
the precinct wall was more void and garden ground; farther to the east
the ‘inner court yarde’ of the convent. This held tenements backing
upon Allen’s garden to the north, and others, including a mill-house,
backing on the garden ground to the west. In this yard was a well,
probably the eponymous ‘Holywell’, which fed a horsepond by Rutland’s
stable on the south-east, and then drained away through the debatable
ground to the Finsbury ditch.[1101] Since Burbadge’s barn is known to
have been shored up to the Theatre, it is evident that this must have
been constructed in the void and garden ground between the tenements
and the precinct wall, and as there was no right of way through
Rutland’s holding from Holywell Lane, an entrance was made through
the wall direct from Finsbury fields. The Theatre itself, indeed, was
sometimes loosely spoken of as ‘in the fields’.[1102] Working from
later title-deeds of the locality, Mr. Braines has successfully located
the precise site of the building in the angle now formed by Curtain
Road, which occupies the strip of void ground between the precinct wall
and Finsbury ditch, and New Inn Yard, which occupies a strip of the
‘debateable ground’ and a strip also of the site of the Great Barn.
The site is now part of the premises of the Curtain Road Elementary
School.[1103]
Burbadge’s lease was for a term of twenty-one years from Lady Day 1576.
He was to pay a fine of £20 and an annual rent of £14. He covenanted
to spend £200 within the first ten years in improving the existing
buildings, and in return Allen covenanted to make a new lease for
twenty-one years at any time within the first ten years, and also to
allow the tenant at any time within the term of either lease ‘to take
down such building as should within the sayd tenne yeeres be erected
on the sayd voyde growndes for a theater or playinge place’. It was
also agreed that Allen and his wife and family ‘vpon lawfull request
therfore made’ should be entitled ‘to enter or come into the premisses
and their in some one of the vpper romes to have such convenient place
to sett or stande to se such playes as shalbe ther played freely
without any thinge therefore payeinge soe that the sayd Gyles hys wyfe
and familie doe com and take ther places before they shalbe taken vpp
by any others’. Burbadge, a joiner as well as a player, had probably
the technical qualifications for his enterprise. But he was a man of
small means, not worth above 100 marks, and had no credit.[1104] He
found a partner in his brother-in-law, John Brayne, a well-to-do grocer
of Bucklersbury, who had already been connected with a play-house
speculation at the Red Lion inn. The association proved a calamitous
one, and its history can only be traced through the dubious _ex parte_
statements of later litigation. Burbadge, in an unfortunately mutilated
document, appears to have alleged that Brayne acquired an interest by
means of a promise, which he afterwards evaded, to leave it to his
sister’s children.[1105] Robert Miles, of the George Inn, Whitechapel,
a friend of Brayne, who supported and ultimately inherited the case
of his widow, told a different story.[1106] He had heard Burbadge
‘earnestlie insynuate’ Brayne to join in the transaction, as one which
‘wold grow to ther contynual great profitt and commodytie’. Brayne was
‘verye loth to deale in the matter’, and complained later to Miles
that it was ‘his vtter vndoing’, and that he would never have touched
it, but for the ‘swete and contynuall’ persuasions of Burbadge. His
brother-in-law had assured him that the cost of erecting the play-house
would not exceed £200, and after it had already cost £500, urged that
‘it was no matter’, and that the profits ‘wold shortlie quyte the
cost vnto them bothe’. Obviously Brayne was out for profits, and had
to take his risks. But if the account of Miles is to be trusted, he
had also definite grievances against his partner. Burbadge’s small
contribution to the outlay was partly made in material, for which he
overcharged at the rate of sixpence for a groat’s worth. When funds
ran short, Brayne and his wife worked as labourers on the structure,
while Burbadge, if he set his hand to a job, took the regular rate
of wages for it. And there is some corroboration of a more serious
charge of ‘indyrect dealing’, after the house was opened, about the
‘collecting of the money for the gallories’.[1107] Miles alleged that
during a space of two years Burbadge used a secret key made by one
Braye, a smith in Shoreditch, to filch from ‘the commen box where the
money gathered at the said playes was putt in’, thus cheating ‘his
fellowes the players’ as well as Brayne. He would also ‘thrust some of
the money devident betwene him and his said ffellowes in his bosome
or other where about his bodye’. The Theatre was in use by 1 August
1577, as it is mentioned by name in the Privy Council inhibition of
that date.[1108] But it was opened before the work was completed, and
the last stages were paid for out of the profits.[1109] Moreover,
in addition to what Brayne and Burbadge could find, money had to
be raised on mortgage, with the result that Brayne never got full
security for his interest in the undertaking. He was not a party to
the original lease, thinking that if a joint lease were entered into,
the survivor would take all.[1110] When a draft assurance of a moiety
of the profits to him was prepared on 9 August 1577, it could not be
executed because the lease was at pawn, and ultimately, on 22 May
1578, Burbadge gave him a bond of £400 to assure in due course.[1111]
An assurance was, however, never made. The friction between the
partners led to violent disputes. On one occasion, after high words
in a scrivener’s shop, ‘Burbage did there strike him with his fist
and so they went together by the eares in somuch that this deponent
could herdly part them’.[1112] On 12 July 1578 they submitted their
differences to arbitrators, who decided that, with the exception of
10_s._ weekly for Brayne’s housekeeping and 8s. for Burbadge’s out of
the profits of ‘such playes as should be playd there vpon Sundaies’,
the first charge upon the rents and profits of the property should be
the repayment of debts due upon the theatre. Thereafter Brayne should
take them ‘till he shuld be answered suche somes of money which he had
lade out for and vpon the same Theatre more then the said Burbage had
done’. And when this claim too was discharged, the rents and profits
should ‘go in devydent equallye betwene them’. Should it be necessary
to raise money on mortgage, it should be a joint mortgage, and its
redemption would then come in as the first claim on the rents and
profits. Burbadge gave Brayne a further bond of £200 for the keeping
of this award.[1113] On 26 September 1579 a mortgage was in fact
entered into for a loan of £125 from John Hyde, grocer, to be repaid
in a year. The amount, however, was not forthcoming, and although
Hyde made an arrangement to take £5 a week out of the profits, he
only got it for four or five weeks. In June 1582 he arrested Burbadge
and got £20 out of him. Shortly afterwards he claimed forfeiture of
the lease, and as Burbadge warned him that Brayne ‘wold catch what
he cold’, appointed one of his own servants with Burbadge ‘to gather
vp v^{li} wekely during the tyme of playes’. In this way he got back
another £20 or £30. There was, however, still at least £30 outstanding
when Brayne died in August 1586.[1114] His widow Margaret claimed a
moiety of the interest under the lease as his heir. At first, we hear,
Burbadge allowed her ‘half of the profittes of the gallaries’, but only
so long as she could lay out money ‘to the necessary vse of the said
playe howsse’, and when she had so spent £30, he said that he must
take all the profits until the debts were paid, made her gather as a
servant, and finally thrust her out altogether.[1115] Meanwhile Hyde
was getting impatient for his money. He had promised Mrs. Brayne that,
if he were satisfied, he would reassure the lease to her and Burbadge
jointly, but not to either party separately. But now he said that he
must convey it to whichever would pay him first, and being approached
through Walter Cope, the master of Burbadge’s son Cuthbert, he did in
fact, on some promise that Mrs. Brayne should not be wronged, take his
£30 and make over the lease to Cuthbert Burbadge on 7 June 1589.[1116]
Henceforward Cuthbert, and not his father, was the ostensible tenant
of the property. This transaction stimulated Mrs. Brayne to assert her
claims. About a year before the Burbadges had brought an action against
her in Chancery, apparently in the hope of enforcing the alleged
promise of Brayne to leave his interest to his sister’s children; and
she now retorted with a counteraction against James and Cuthbert, in
which she claimed to have an assignment of a moiety of the lease.[1117]
Her chief witness was the Robert Miles on whose statements this
narrative has already drawn. He was not of unimpeachable reputation.
His long association with Brayne had ended in a quarrel. Brayne had
‘charged Miles with his deathe, by certaine stripes geven him by
Miles’. The widow had accused him before the coroner and procured his
indictment as ‘a comon barreter’. Afterwards they had become friends,
and he was now maintaining Mrs. Brayne in her suit.[1118] Much of his
evidence, however, received corroboration from his son Ralph, from
William Nicoll, a notary who had prepared the deeds connected with
the partnership, and from Edward Collins, who had acquired Brayne’s
grocery business in Bucklersbury. Burbadge, on the other hand, relied
largely on one Henry Bett, who had had an opportunity of perusing Mrs.
Brayne’s papers, and had then transferred his services to the other
side. We cannot perhaps assume that all the evidence in the cross-suits
is preserved. So far as what we have goes, there seems to have been
no attempt on Burbadge’s part to defend himself against the charge of
indirect dealing during the early years of partnership. Nor were the
main facts as to the history of the lease much in dispute. The chief
issue was as to Mrs. Brayne’s equitable claim to an interest in it,
and this of course turned largely on the state of the account between
Brayne and Burbadge at the death of the former. Miles asserted that
the expenditure on the building of the Theatre in cash and credit had
been practically all Brayne’s, that he had started as a rich man, but
had had to sell his lease and stock in Bucklersbury and pawn his own
wardrobe and his wife’s to get the work finished, that he was ruined,
and that Mrs. Brayne was now ‘vtterlye vndone’ by the suit, and owed
500 marks to her friends.[1119] On the other side it was claimed that
Brayne’s wealth, variously reputed at from £500 to £1,000, had been
exaggerated, that he was already involved when he took the Theatre in
hand, and that his downfall was largely due to unfortunate investments
outside the partnership, especially in a soap-making business carried
on with Miles at the George, where in fact Burbadge had incurred losses
in helping him.[1120] Bett, moreover, said that, while Brayne ‘would
never plainlie declare’ what his profits on the Theatre had been, ‘yt
seemed by his taulke, that he had gayned and receyved a grete deale of
monye, more than he had disbursed’.[1121] The actual figures produced
in the course of the case, which are sufficient to enable us to arrive
at a fair estimate of the main position, do not quite bear out this
suggestion. Towards the original outlay Burbadge seems to have found
about £50; Brayne as much and £239 more, which he claimed as due to him
from the partnership. In addition there were outside debts outstanding
at the time of his death to the amount of at least £220. Something,
moreover, had already been spent out of takings before 1586 in payments
on Hyde’s mortgage. So that we may perhaps reasonably accept the total
cost of the building as being somewhere about the 1,000 marks (£666) at
which common repute estimated it.[1122] A certain amount of building
material, worth perhaps 100 marks, was still in hand. All that Brayne
could be shown to have received as against his considerable outlay was
a sum of £135 1_s._, for which his receipt was produced. What Burbadge
had received it is difficult to say. A comparison of various estimates
suggests that after Brayne’s death it may have been between £100 and
£200 a year.[1123] On the other hand, he had paid off the debt of
£220 which Brayne had left outstanding. And throughout he had been
responsible, without aid from Brayne, for certain outgoings independent
of the structure of the Theatre, for which he was entitled to claim
credit. He had paid £230 in rent and laid out at least £220 in putting
the tenements in order, as well as at least £30 early in 1592 on the
repair of the Theatre itself.[1124]
The fortunes of the case in Chancery were various. In 1590 the
Court seemed inclined to grant a sequestration of half the profits;
but instead made an order that the arbitrament of 1578 should be
observed.[1125] On the strength of this Mrs. Brayne and Miles came
to the Theatre on more than one occasion, and claimed to appoint
collectors, including one Nicholas Bishop, who was asked to stand
‘at the door that goeth vppe to the gallaries of the said Theater to
take and receyve for the vse of the said Margarett half the money that
shuld be gyven to come vppe into the said gallaries at that door’. They
were, however, refused access, and on 16 November 1590 there was a row
royal, of which independent witness was borne by John Alleyn, of the
Admiral’s men, who were then playing at the Theatre. James Burbadge,
‘looking out at a wyndoe vpon them’, joined his wife in reviling them
as a murdering knave and whore, and expressed his contempt for the
order of Chancery; Cuthbert, who came home in the middle of the fray,
backed him up; while Richard Burbadge, the youngest son, snatched up a
broom-staff, and as he afterwards boasted, paid Robert Miles his moiety
with a beating. He also threatened Nicholas Bishop, ‘scornfully and
disdainfullye playing with this deponentes nose’. James said that at
their next coming his sons should provide pistols charged with powder
and hempseed to shoot them in the legs.[1126] Both Cuthbert and James
were summoned on 28 November for contempt before the court, which
instead of dealing with this charge proceeded to take the whole case
into further consideration.[1127] This was something of a triumph for
Burbadge, who continued to resist the order, and repeated with oaths
that twenty contempts and as many injunctions would not force him to
give up his property. This was heard by John Alleyn in the Theatre yard
about May 1591, and about eight days later ‘in the Attyring housse or
place where the players make them ready’, on the occasion of a dispute
with the Admiral’s men about some of ‘the dyvydent money between him
and them’ which he had detained, Burbadge was equally irreverent before
Alleyn and James Tunstall about the Lord Admiral himself, saying ‘by
a great othe, that he cared not for iij of the best lordes of them
all’.[1128] Margaret Brayne died in 1593, leaving her estate to Miles,
who thus became a principal in the suit.[1129] And on 28 May 1595 the
court came to the decision that it could not entertain the case, until
Miles had endeavoured to obtain relief at common law, by suing on the
two bonds which Burbadge had given to Brayne in 1578.[1130] He does not
seem to have thought it worth while to do this, probably because he
saw very little chance of recovering money from James Burbadge, while
Cuthbert, who now held the lease, was not a party to the bonds.[1131]
It is the personality of Burbadge rather than the conduct of the
Theatre that these details illumine. But we may gather that the
building was constructed mainly of timber with some ironwork, that it
had a tiring-house and galleries, one at least of which was divided
into upper rooms, where spectators could sit as well as stand, and
that money was taken by appointed gatherers, placed in locked boxes,
and subsequently shared out amongst those entitled to it.[1132] From
other sources it appears that 1_d._ was charged for admission to the
building and 1_d._ or 2_d._ more for a place in the galleries.[1133]
Apparently the players took the entrance fee and the owners of the
house the whole or an agreed proportion of the gallery money. In the
winter of 1585 an interesting arrangement was entered into between
Burbadge and Brayne on the one hand and Henry Lanman, owner of the
neighbouring Curtain, on the other, by which during a period of seven
years the Curtain was taken ‘as an Esore’ to the Theatre, and the
profits of both houses pooled and equally divided between the two
parties. This arrangement was still operative in 1592.[1134] Kiechel
tells us that the number of galleries was three, and De Witt that the
shape was that of an ‘amphitheatrum’.[1135] It is impossible to trace
with any certainty the successive occupation of the Theatre by various
companies of players or to reconstruct the list of plays produced upon
the boards. Its occupants were Burbadge’s ‘fellows’ at the time of his
frauds of 1576–8, and may reasonably be identified with Leicester’s,
of whom he was certainly one in 1574.[1136] Stephen Gosson tells us
in 1579 that amongst plays then ‘vsually brought in to the Theater’,
were _The Blacksmith’s Daughter_ and his own _Catiline’s Conspiracies_,
and in 1582 assigns to the same house Lodge’s, if it was Lodge’s,
_Play of Plays and Pastimes_ given on the last 23 February, the play
of _The Fabii_ and possibly the history of _Caesar and Pompey_.[1137]
Presumably _The Fabii_ is _The Four Sons of Fabius_, presented by
Warwick’s men at Court on 1 January 1580. Warwick’s men had therefore
probably replaced Leicester’s at the Theatre, and it was the same men,
then in the service of the Earl of Oxford, who were concerned in a riot
at the Theatre on 10 April 1580.[1138] In 1582 came the controversy
between Edmund Peckham and Giles Allen about the freehold of the
Theatre site, as a result of which Burbadge was ‘disturbed and trobled
in his possession’, and ‘the players for sooke the said Theater to
his great losse’.[1139] So there was probably another change at this
time. And in 1583 there was a complete reshuffling of all the London
companies on the formation of the Queen’s men. Professor Wallace, who
is primarily considering that part of the evidence which he has himself
discovered, says that the Queen’s did not act at the Theatre.[1140] But
most certainly they did. It is true that, when an inhibition against
the Theatre and Curtain was obtained on 14 June 1584, the owner of the
Theatre, ‘a stubburne fellow’, described himself as Lord Hunsdon’s man.
Nevertheless the only companies named as concerned are the Queen’s and
Arundel’s, and Burbadge may not himself have been then acting.[1141]
And as to the presence of the Queen’s in the Theatre at some date there
is no doubt. Tarlton is not traceable in any other company than the
Queen’s, and it was at the Theatre that Tarlton made jests of Richard
Harvey’s _Astrological Discourse upon the Conjunction of Saturn and
Jupiter_, published in 1583.[1142] The Queen’s certainly did not
confine themselves to the Theatre; but that they were there again in
1589 may be inferred from a mock testament of Martin Marprelate in
_Martins Month’s Mind_, in which he is made to admit that he learned
his twittle tattles ... at the Theater of Lanam and his fellows’. A
marginal note in the same pamphlet indicates that it was at the Theatre
that the ‘Maygame’ representing the ‘launcing and worming’ of Martin
was staged, and there is other evidence that Laneham, then one of the
Queen’s men, was one of the players who took a part in the ribald
controversy.[1143] Gabriel Harvey’s scoff at Lyly as ‘the Foolemaster
of the Theatre’ may perhaps indicate his authorship of plays for the
house. In 1590–1 it is clear that the Admiral’s men, probably already
associated with Strange’s, were at the Theatre, and their quarrel with
Burbadge doubtless led them to cross the river and join Henslowe at
the Rose. After the reconstitution of the companies in 1594, James
Burbadge’s son Richard became a leading member of the Chamberlain’s
men, and it is probable that, when this company left the Rose about the
middle of June, it was to the Theatre that they went. Here _Hamlet_,
which certainly belonged to them, was being acted in 1596.[1144] It
must be added that the Theatre was not strictly reserved for the
purposes of the legitimate drama. It was built for ‘activities’,
amongst other things, according to Stowe, and prizes of the School of
Defence were played at it between 1578 and 1585.[1145] On 22 February
1582, there took place at the Theatre ‘a scurvie play set oot al by one
virgin, which there proved a fyemarten without voice, so that we stayed
not the matter’.[1146]
It was a natural consequence of the success of Burbadge’s new departure
that the Theatre and its immediate successor, the Curtain, had to bear
the brunt of the Puritan denunciations of the stage. These incidentally
bore witness to the costly elaborateness of the new accommodation
provided for the players.[1147] Apart from the moral corruption upon
which the Puritans laid most stress, there is some evidence that the
position of the Theatre, with a great space of open ground before it,
made it a natural focus for the disorderly elements of society. As
early as 5 October 1577, just after the resumption of plays for the
autumn, the Mayor and Recorder Fleetwood were listening to ‘a brabell
betwene John Wotton and the Leuetenuntes sonne of the one parte, and
certain ffreholders of Shordyche, for a matter at the Theater’. There
was serious trouble in the course of 1584. Fleetwood wrote to Burghley
how on 8 June, ‘very nere the Theatre or Curten, at the tyme of the
playes, there laye a prentice sleping upon the grasse and one Challes
_alias_ Grostock dyd turne upon the too upon the belly of the same
prentice; whereupon the apprentice start up, and after wordes they
fell to playne bloues’; and how on 10 June, ‘one Browne, a serving man
in a blew coat, a shifting fellowe, having a perrelous witt of his
owne, entending a spoile if he cold have browght it to passe, did at
Theatre doore querell with certen poore boyes, handicraft prentises,
and strooke some of theym; and lastlie he with his sword wondend and
maymed one of the boyes upon the left hand; whereupon there assembled
nere a ml. people’.[1148] Unscrupulous characters might find congenial
companions in the throng. Somewhere in 1594 a diamond, which had gone
astray from the loot of a Spanish vessel, was shown in Finsbury Fields
by a mariner to certain goldsmiths, who said that they had met him
by chance at a play in the Theatre at Shoreditch.[1149] But James
Burbadge had obtained for himself a tactical advantage by building
outside the jurisdiction of the City and within that, less organized
or more easy-going, of the Middlesex magistrates. The Corporation were
powerless, except in so far as, directly by persuasion, or indirectly
by invoking the Privy Council, they could stir the county bench to
action. They lost no opportunity, which brawls or plague afforded, of
attempting this.[1150] An exceptionally troublous year was 1580. It
began with an indictment of John Brayne and James Burbadge ‘yeomen’ of
Shoreditch, at the Middlesex sessions, for bringing unlawful assemblies
together on 21 February and other days ‘_ad audienda et spectanda
quaedam colloquia sive interluda vocata_ playes or interludes’ by them
and others ‘_exercitata et practicata_’ at the Theatre in Holywell,
with the result of affrays and tumults leading to a breach of the
peace.[1151] On 6 April was the great earthquake, which threw down
chimneys in Shoreditch, and according to one account ‘shaked not only
the scenical Theatre, but the great stage and theatre of the whole
land’.[1152] Four days later was the riot between Lord Oxford’s men and
the Inns of Court, and the two events gave the Lord Mayor an excellent
opportunity of pointing out to the Council that the players of plays
which were used at the Theatre were ‘a very superfluous sort of men’
and of securing a suspension of performances until after Michaelmas.
The riot of 8 June 1584 similarly led to the inhibition by the Council
and Fleetwood already noticed, although it is clear that this was not
so permanent as the City probably hoped, when the authority for ‘the
suppressing and pulling downe of the Theatre and Curten’ reached them.
Matters came to a crisis again in 1597 with the production of _The Isle
of Dogs_ on the Bankside, and an appeal of the City on 28 July was
answered on the same day by mandates of the Council, of which one was
addressed to the Middlesex justices, and directed them to send for the
owners of the Theatre and Curtain, and enjoin them to ‘plucke downe
quite the stages, gallories and roomes that are made for people to
stand in, and so to deface the same as they maie not be ymploied agayne
to suche use’.[1153]
It is unlikely that the Theatre was ever opened again. It is certain
that the Chamberlain’s men had moved to the Curtain before the end of
1597, and the abandonment of the old house is referred to unmistakably
enough in a satire published in 1598.[1154] The explanation is to be
found in the relations of the Burbadges to their ground landlord,
Giles Allen. The following account is taken in the main from Cuthbert
Burbadge’s allegations in litigation of 1600. On 1 November 1585,
shortly before the termination of the first ten years of the lease,
James Burbadge, as he was entitled to do, presented Allen with a draft
of a new twenty-one years’ lease. This Allen evaded signing, apparently
alleging that it was not in verbatim agreement with the old lease, and
probably also that some of Burbadge’s covenants under the old lease
had remained unfulfilled.[1155] By way of precaution, Burbadge thought
it desirable to put on record in his account-book some evidence that
he had spent the £200 in improving the tenements, upon which his right
to remove the structure of the Theatre depended. He called in expert
craftsmen, and took two ‘views’, one on 20 November 1585, another,
after some further work had been done, on 18 July 1586. The first
estimate was £220, the second £240. This last was later confirmed by
a third view taken in connexion with the Brayne litigation in July
1591.[1156] The money had been spent, partly on ordinary repairs,
partly on converting the old barn into tenements, partly on putting up
two new houses, one of which was for Burbadge’s own occupation.[1157]
The matter of the new lease now slumbered until the expiration of the
old one on 13 April 1597 drew near. In 1596 negotiations took place
between landlord and tenant, and a compromise was mooted, by which
the new lease was to be granted, but for an increased rent of £24
instead of £14. Allen afterwards asserted and Cuthbert Burbadge denied
that there was a proviso that after five years the building should be
converted to some other use than that of a play-house.[1158] Cuthbert
continued the negotiations after James Burbadge’s death in February
1597, but they finally broke down, and for a year or so the tenancy
was only on sufferance.[1159] Finally, in the autumn of 1598, when
Cuthbert had agreed to demands which he thought extortionate, Allen
refused to accept his brother Richard as security, and all hope of a
settlement disappeared.[1160] Cuthbert now resolved to avail himself of
the covenant of the expired lease, under which the tenant was entitled
to pull down and remove the Theatre. This he began to do, in spite of
a protest from Allen’s representative, on 28 December 1598, with the
concurrence of his mother and brother, and the financial aid of one
William Smith of Waltham Cross.[1161] The work was still in progress
on 20 January 1599, when Burbadge’s agent, Peter Street, carpenter,
entered the close with ten or twelve men, and carried the timber to the
other side of the river for use in the erection of the Globe. For this
act Allen brought an action of trespass against Street in the Queen’s
Bench, alleging that he had trampled down grass in the close to the
value of 40_s._, and claiming damages for £800 in all, of which £700
represented his estimate of the value of the Theatre.[1162] Burbadge
applied to the Court of Requests to stop the common law suit, alleging
in effect that he was equitably entitled to act upon the covenant,
even though the lease had expired, on account of the unreasonable
refusal of Allen to grant the new lease when applied for, under the
terms of the old one, in 1585.[1163] The issue really turned upon
whether this refusal was reasonable. Allen said that James Burbadge had
been a troublesome tenant, that he had converted the barn into eleven
tenements, whose inhabitants became a nuisance to the parish by begging
for their 20_s._ rents, that he had not repaired the building but only
shored it up, that he had not spent the stipulated £200, and that £30
rent was in arrear at the time of the application of 1585 and was
still unpaid.[1164] Probably these last two were the only allegations
to which the court attached importance. Allen claimed that he had no
remedy against James Burbadge’s estate, for he had made deeds of gift
to his sons of his property, and his widow and administratrix was
without funds. Burbadge, however, produced evidence of the estimates
of 1585 and 1586, and suggested that his father had a counter-claim
against the rent in the expense to which he had been put in maintaining
his possession at the time of Peckham’s claim to the freehold. On 18
October 1600 the Court decided in his favour.[1165] Allen brought a
Queen’s Bench action against him in 1601 for breach of agreement, and
in 1601 complained to the Star Chamber of perjury on the part of the
expert witnesses and other wrongs done him in the course of the earlier
proceedings; but, although the conclusions of these suits are not on
record, it is not likely that he succeeded in obtaining a favourable
decision.[1166]
vii. THE CURTAIN
[_Bibliographical Note._--Some rather scanty material is
brought together by T. E. Tomlins, _Origin of the Curtain
Theatre and Mistakes regarding it_ in _Sh. Soc. Papers_,
i. 29, and Halliwell-Phillipps, _The Theatre and Curtain_
(_Outlines_, i. 345).]
The Curtain is included with the Theatre in Stowe’s general description
of Holywell as ‘standing on the South-west side towards the field’.
That it was somewhat south of the Theatre is indicated by a reference
to it in 1601 as in Moorfields, a name given to the open fields lying
south of and adjacent to Finsbury Fields. But, although it stood in
the parish of Shoreditch and the liberty of Holywell, it was not, like
the Theatre, actually within the precinct of the dissolved priory.
_Curtina_ is glossed by Ducange as ‘_minor curtis, seu rustica area,
quae muris cingitur_’, and the description is sufficiently met by the
piece of land lying outside the southern gate of the priory, and on
the other side of Holywell Lane into which that gate opened.[1167]
A priory lease to the Earl of Rutland of his town house in 1538
described it as ‘_infra muros et portas eiusdem monasterii_’, and
part of the holding consisted of stables and a hay-loft ‘_scituata
et existentia extra portas eiusdem monasterii prope pasturam dictae
Priorissae vocatam_ the Curtene’. Post-dissolution conveyances refer
to a ‘house, tenement or lodge’ called the Curtain, and to a parcel of
ground, enclosed with a wall on the west and north, called the Curtain
close, which lay south of the Earl of Rutland’s house, and on which
by 1581 stood various tenements, which were described as ‘sett, lyeng
and being in Halliwell Lane’. The property in question formed part of
the possessions of Sir Thomas Leigh of Hoxton at his death in 1543 and
had formerly been conveyed to him by Lord Wriothesley. Through Leigh’s
daughter Katharine it passed to her husband Lord Mountjoy. On 20
February 1567 it was sold for £40 to Maurice Long and his son William,
being then in the occupation of one Wilkingeson and Robert Manne. On
23 August 1571 Maurice Long conveyed it for £200 to Sir William Allen,
then Lord Mayor, possibly by way of mortgage in connexion with building
speculations, since on 18 March 1581 it was in the hands of William
Long, who then sold it to Thomas Herbert. There had evidently been an
increase in the number of tenements on the site, and Thomas Wilkinson,
Thomas Wilkins, Robert Medley, Richard Hicks, Henry Lanman, and Robert
Manne are named as tenants.[1168] As Henry Lanman or Laneman had the
profits of the theatre in 1585, there can be little doubt that it stood
on part of the land dealt with in the conveyances. Halliwell-Phillipps
thinks that it must have been situated ‘in or near the place which
is marked as Curtain Court in Chassereau’s plan of Shoreditch,
1745’,[1169] and is now known as Gloucester Street. If so, it was very
near the boundary between Holywell and Moorfields, much along the line
of which now runs Curtain Road. But it must be remembered that Curtain
Court may also have taken its name from the ‘house, tenement or lodge’
which already existed in 1567 and is mentioned as the Curtain House in
the Shoreditch registers as late as 1639; and certainly in Ryther’s map
(_c._ 1636–45) the theatre, though still bordering on Moorfields, is
shown a good deal farther, both to the east and the south, than the
point indicated by Halliwell-Phillipps.[1170]
The Burbadges claimed that James was the first builder of play-houses,
but the Curtain must have followed very soon after the Theatre. It is
not mentioned by name with its predecessor in the Privy Council order
of 1 August 1577, but is in Northbrooke’s treatise of the following
December. Up to 1597 its history is little more than a pendant to that
of the Theatre, with which it is generally coupled in the Puritan
attacks and in the occasional interferences of authority. From 1585 to
1592, indeed, it was used as an ‘easer’ to the Theatre, and the profits
of the two houses were pooled under an arrangement between Henry Lanman
and the Burbadges.[1171] The companies who occupied the Curtain can for
the most part only be guessed at.[1172] At the time of the inhibition
of 14 June 1584 it was probably occupied by Lord Arundel’s men. Tarlton
appeared at it, but not necessarily after the formation of the Queen’s
company.[1173] Prizes of the School of Defence were occasionally played
at it from 1579 to 1583.[1174] Unlike the Theatre, the Curtain was
certainly reopened after the inhibition of 1597. It is likely that the
Chamberlain’s men repaired to it in October of that year, and remained
at it until the Globe was ready in 1599. The same satirist, who tells
us that the Theatre was closed in 1598, tells us that the Rose, which
was continuously occupied by the Admiral’s men, and the Curtain were
open;[1175] and a clue to the actors at it is given by Marston’s
reference to ‘Curtain plaudities’ in the closest connexion with _Romeo
and Juliet_.[1176] In 1600 Robert Armin, of the Chamberlain’s men,
published his _Fool upon Fool_, in which he called himself ‘Clonnico de
Curtanio Snuffe’. In the 1605 edition he changed the name to ‘Clonnico
del Mondo Snuffe’. The direct connexion of the Chamberlain’s men with
the Curtain probably ended on the opening of the Globe. But a share in
it belonged to Thomas Pope, when he made his will on 22 July 1603, and
another to John Underwood, when he made his on 4 October 1624. Both
were of the Chamberlain’s men, although Underwood cannot have joined
them until about 1608.
The Curtain did not go entirely out of use when the Chamberlain’s left
it. It must have been the theatre near Bishopsgate at which Thomas
Platter saw a play in September or October 1599.[1177] It is possible
that Kempe (q.v.) was then playing there. In March 1600 one William
Hawkins, barber, of St. Giles’s without Cripplegate was charged at
the Middlesex Sessions with taking a purse and £1 6_s._ 6_d._ at the
Curtain, and Richard Fletcher, pewterer, of Norwich, was bound over to
give evidence.[1178]
On 22 June 1600, when the Privy Council gave authority for the opening
of the Fortune, they were given to understand by the Master of the
Revels that it would replace the Curtain, which was therefore to be
‘ruinated or applied to some other good use’. This arrangement seems to
suggest that the Curtain was in some way under the control of Alleyn
or Henslowe. It was, however, departed from, and apparently with the
tacit consent of the Council, as although they had occasion on 10
May 1601 to instruct the Middlesex justices to suppress a libellous
play produced at ‘the Curtaine in Moorefeilds’, they did not take,
as they might have done, the point that no play ought to have been
produced there at all. On 31 December they were again insisting on
the limitation of the theatres in use to two; and on 31 March 1602
they again departed from their own principles by licensing Oxford’s
and Worcester’s men to play at the Boar’s Head. Henceforward three
companies of men players were regularly tolerated, and when a draft
licence was prepared for Worcester’s, or as they had then become
Queen Anne’s, men early in the following year the Curtain and the
Boar’s Head were named as ‘there now usuall howsen’. The Curtain is
also specified for them in the Council’s warrant for the resumption
of plays on 9 April 1604. About 1606 they also took into use the Red
Bull, and thereafter but little is heard of the Curtain. The Queen’s
men, however, played Day, Wilkins, and Rowley’s _The Travels of Three
English Brothers_ there at some time before its entry on 29 June 1607.
It was still theirs in April 1609, but may perhaps soon have passed to
the Duke of York’s men. It is mentioned, with the Globe and Fortune, in
Heath’s _Epigrams_ of 1610, and plays heard ‘at _Curtaine_, or at Bull’
and ‘a Curtaine Iigge’ are objects of ridicule in Wither’s _Abuses
Stript and Whipt_ of 1613.[1179] It was used by an amateur company for
a performance of Wentworth Smith’s _Hector of Germany_ in 1615, and it
is obscurely referred to in I. H.’s _This World’s Folly_ of the same
year.[1180] Malone gathered from Sir Henry Herbert’s office-book that
it was used by Prince Charles’s men in 1622, and soon thereafter only
by prize-fighters. It was still in use in 1624, and still standing in
1627.[1181]
viii. NEWINGTON BUTTS
A theatre, of which the history is very obscure, but which may have
been built soon after the Theatre and Curtain, stood at Newington, a
village one mile from London Bridge, divided from the Bankside by St.
George’s Fields, and reachable by the road which continued Southwark
High Street.[1182] Here there were butts for the practice of archery.
Plays at Newington Butts, outside the City jurisdiction, are first
mentioned in a Privy Council letter of 13 May 1580 to the Surrey
justices. A similar letter of 11 May 1586 speaks more precisely of
‘the theater or anie other places about Newington’. A third letter,
undated, but probably belonging to 1591 or 1592, recites an order
of the Council restraining Strange’s men from playing at the Rose,
and enjoining them to play three days a week at Newington Butts, and
rescinds it, ‘by reason of the tediousness of the way, and that of long
time plays have not there been used on working days’.[1183] Possibly
the theatre had come into Henslowe’s hands, for his diary records that
it was at Newington that the combined companies of the Admiral’s and
Chamberlain’s men began their first season after the plague of 1592–4,
apparently playing there from 5 to 15 June 1594, and then going their
separate ways to the Rose and the Theatre respectively. The theatre is
mentioned in the list given by Howes in 1631.[1184] It is said to have
been ‘only a memory’ by 1599.[1185] A bad pun is called a ‘Newington
conceit’ in 1612.[1186]
ix. THE ROSE
[_Bibliographical Note._--All the more important documents are
printed or calendared from the _Dulwich MSS._ with a valuable
commentary in Greg, _Henslowe’s Diary_ and _Henslowe Papers_,
and in Collier, _Memoirs of Alleyn_ and _Henslowe’s Diary_.]
The Rose owed its name to the fact that it stood in what had been, as
recently as 1547–8, a rose garden.[1187] On 3 December 1552 Thomasyn,
widow of Ralph Symonds, fishmonger, granted to trustees, for her own
use during life and thereafter to the charitable uses of the parish of
St. Mildred, Bread Street, her ‘messuage or tennement then called the
little rose with twoe gardens’ formerly in St. Margaret’s and then in
St. Saviour’s, Southwark. St. Mildred’s still has a plan of the estate,
which extended to about three roods.[1188] A ‘tenement called the Rose’
is referred to in a recital of a lease of Henry VIII’s reign as the
eastern boundary of other tenements, by name the Barge, the Bell, and
the Cock, which lay ‘vppon the banke called Stewes’ in St. Margaret’s,
afterwards St. Saviour’s, parish, between the highway next the Thames
on the north and Maiden Lane on the south.[1189] It is located by
Mr. Rendle just to the east of the still existing Rose Alley. The
site therefore lay in the Liberty of the Clink midway between those
afterwards occupied by the Globe on the east and the Hope on the
west. On 20 November 1574 the parish let the property for thirty-one
years at £7 annually to William Griffin, vintner. Griffin assigned
it on 11 December 1579 to Robert Withens, vintner, and Withens on 24
March 1585 to Henslowe.[1190] There was as yet no theatre. The first
mention of one as in contemplation is in an agreement of 10 January
1587 between Henslowe and one John Cholmley, citizen and grocer of
London, for partnership during the next eight years and three months,
should both parties live so long, in a garden plot ninety-four feet
square on the Bankside in the parish of St. Saviour’s, Southwark, and
‘a playe howse now in framinge and shortly to be ereckted and sett vppe
vpone the same’. Under this Henslowe undertook to have ‘the saide play
house with all furniture thervnto belonginge’ set up ‘with as muche
expedicion as maye be’ by John Grigges, carpenter, to pay all rents due
on the premisses, and to repair the bridges and wharves belonging to
them before the following Michaelmas. Cholmley undertook to bear his
share of any further cost of maintaining the premises, and also to pay
Henslowe the sum of £816 in quarterly instalments. In consideration of
this, he was to take half of all such profits as ‘shall arysse grow be
colectted gathered or become due for the saide parcell of grounde and
playe howse when and after yt shalbe ereckted and sett vpe by reason of
any playe or playes, that shalbe showen or played there or otherwysse
howsoever’. The partners are jointly to appoint ‘players to vse
exersyse & playe in the saide playe howse’, and collect sums themselves
or by deputy of all persons coming to the performances ‘excepte yt
please any of the saide partyes to suffer theire frendes to go in for
nothinge’. Cholmley is also to have the sole right of selling food or
drink on the premises and a small house already in his tenure on the
south of the plot close to Maiden Lane, ‘to keepe victualinge in’ or
for any other purpose, and with a right of ingress from Thames side by
Rose Alley.[1191] The deed does not name the property, but it cannot
be doubted that it refers to a part of the Little Rose. Presumably the
theatre was to be built on a garden at the back of the holding, and the
existing tenement on Bankside was not to be interfered with. Henslowe
had ‘Rosse rentes’ of a residential character in 1602 or 1603.[1192]
Norden’s map (1593) puts the Rose farther from the river than the Bear
Garden. The Delaram and Merian drawings, on the other hand, put it
very near the river, and these, although of less authority than Norden,
are followed in Mr. Rendle’s plan. Probably Norden’s Bear Garden was
an older one than that which afterwards became the Hope.[1193] The
provision as to the wharfs and bridges seems to indicate an intention
to open the Rose at Michaelmas 1587, and I see no reason to doubt
that it was in fact ready for occupation by about that date. On 29
October the Privy Council called the attention of the Surrey justices
to complaints from Southwark of breaches of the rule against plays on
Sunday, ‘especiallie within the Libertie of the Clincke and in the
parish of St. Saviour’s in Southwarke’. There may, of course, have been
plays at inns in the Clink, but it is more natural to take the protest
as one against the newly opened Rose. No other regular theatre existed
in the Clink at this time. That the Rose was built by 1588 appears from
a record of the Sewer Commission for Surrey.[1194] It is not in Smith’s
plan of 1588, but this may easily not have been quite up to date.
The next that is heard of the Rose is probably in 1592.[1195] In March
and April of that year Henslowe, who had recently taken his famous
‘diary’ into use as a financial memorandum book, noted in it some
building expenditure, and a little later set out ‘a note of suche
carges as I haue layd owt a bowte my playe howsse in the yeare of our
lord 1592’.[1196] Henslowe is not known to have owned Newington Butts,
or any other theatre except the Rose, and it is reasonable to assume
that this is what he meant by ‘my playe howsse’. The work probably
began in or before January, as an entry halfway through the list is
dated on 6 February. It entailed the purchase of a barge and a certain
amount of breaking up and paling and wharfing. Henslowe appears to have
done the work himself and not by contract. He bought a mast, turned
balusters, boards and laths, in part from the carpenter Grigges who is
named in the agreement with Cholmley, and in part from a ‘timber man’
called Lee. He bought bolts, hinges, and nails from the ironmonger at
the Fryingpan in Southwark and from one Brader. He bought lime, sand,
chalk, and bricks. He paid wages to carpenters, workmen, and labourers,
and employed painters and a thatcher. The exact nature and extent of
the work are not specified, but it included the painting of the stage,
the ceiling of ‘my lords rome’, and ‘the rome ouer the tyerhowsse’, and
the ‘makeinge the penthowsse shed at the tyeringe howsse doore’. It has
sometimes been supposed that the Rose never got built in 1587, and that
these are the accounts, or part of them, for the original construction.
This seems to me most unlikely. The total expense, with the exception
of a small number of items lost by the mutilation of a page, only
amounted to about £108. This could not cover more than repairs. On
the other hand, these were clearly substantial repairs, and the fact
that they were needed suggests that the building cannot have been a
very new one. The lapse of five years since 1587 would, however, be
consistent with the necessity for them. Almost simultaneously with the
earliest dated entries in the building account, begins on 19 February
1592 the record of performances by Lord Strange’s men, which continues
to the following 22 June. If these were at the Rose, the paint on the
stage can hardly have been dry in time for them, unless, as Dr. Greg
suggests, the payments made in March and April were for work done a
little earlier. That it was at the Rose that Strange’s men played
seems indicated by the Privy Council order, reciting the restraint of
this company ‘from playinge at the Rose on the Banckside’, which it
is difficult to assign to any year but 1591 or 1592.[1197] It is a
little curious that nothing more is heard of John Cholmley, and I think
the natural inference is that he was dead and that the partnership
had thereby, in accordance with the terms of the agreement, been
automatically dissolved.[1198]