The assumption, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, that until

he acquired a share in the Fortune Henslowe had no proprietary interest

in any other theatre must explain the assignment to the Rose of all

the playing recorded in the diary between 1592 and the autumn of 1600,

with the exception of the few performances definitely stated to have

been at Newington Butts. The further conjecture must, I think, be

accepted that the season begun by the Admiral’s and Chamberlain’s men

at Newington Butts in the summer of 1594 was transferred, so far as the

Admiral’s men were concerned, to the Rose after 15 June. If so, the

Rose housed Strange’s men again from 29 December 1592 to 1 February

1593, Sussex’s from 26 December 1593 to 6 February 1594, the Queen’s

and Sussex’s together from 1 to 9 April 1594, and the Admiral’s from

14 to 16 May 1594, and then regularly from the following June until

their transference to the Fortune in 1600. The only actual mentions

of the theatre by name in the diary during this period are in the

agreements of 1597 between Henslowe and the players Jones and Borne,

in which Henslowe specifies ‘the Rosse’ as ‘my howsse’ in which they

are to play. It was no doubt in use when Guilpin’s _Skialetheia_ (S.

R. 8 September 1598) was written.[1199] In the Lenten interval of 1595

Henslowe made ‘A nott of what I haue layd owt abowt my playhowsse ffor

payntynge & doinge it abowt with ealme bordes & other repracyones’.

The expenditure reached a total of £108 19_s._, which was much about

the same as that of 1592, and was supplemented in the following June

by a further £7 2_s._ for carpenters’ work, including ‘mackinge the

throne in the heuenes’.[1200] The accounts of 1592 and 1595 suggest

that the building was of wood and plaster on a brick foundation, and

this is consistent with Hentzner’s statement of 1598. Part of it, at

least, was thatched. If the maps can be trusted, it was octagonal. In

1600 Henslowe had to find new occupants for the Rose. He records that

Pembroke’s men began to play there on 28 October, but only enters two

unprofitable performances. Possibly the Privy Council, who had decreed

in the previous July a limitation of houses to one on each side of the

river, interfered. But this limitation was certainly not permanent.

There is a receipt for a play bought for Worcester’s men ‘at the Rose’,

and they probably used the house during the term of their account with

Henslowe between August 1602 and May 1603. Subsequently they moved

to the Curtain and Boar’s Head. Henslowe’s lease of the site was due

to expire at the end of 1605, and this explains to some extent the

following entry in the diary:

‘The 25 of June 1603 I talked with M^r. Pope at the scryveners

shope wher he lisse consernynge the tackynge of the leace a new

of the littell Roosse & he showed me a wrytynge betwext the

pareshe & hime seallfe which was to paye twenty pownd a yeare

rent & to bestowe a hundred marckes vpon billdinge which I sayd

I wold rather pulle downe the playehowse then I wold do so & he

beade me do & sayd he gaue me leaue & wold beare me owt for yt

wasse in him to do yt.’[1201]

It is impossible to say whether ‘Mr. Pope’ was Thomas Pope of the

King’s men at the neighbouring Globe, or Morgan Pope, who was formerly

interested in the Bear House, or some other Pope; nor is it clear how

he was in a position to authorize Henslowe to pull down the theatre.

Dr. Greg draws the natural inference from the wording that he may have

given his consent as a prospective lessee of the property.[1202] In

any case the Rose was not pulled down until two or three years later.

The Sewers records show that in January 1604 not Philip but Francis

Henslowe was amerced 6_s._ 8_d._ for it, which may mean that Lennox’s

men were playing there; that on 4 October 1605 Philip Henslowe was

amerced, but return was made that it was ‘out of his hands’; that on

14 February 1606 Edward Box, of Bread Street, London, was amerced for

it; and that on 25 April 1606 Box was amerced for the site of ‘the late

play-house in Maid lane’.[1203]

There is no record of plays at the Rose after 1603.[1204] It is in

the Delaram engravings, but not in any later views except those of

the Merian group, where it appears, flagged but unnamed, on the river

edge.[1205] Nor is it mentioned with the Hope, Globe, and Swan in

_Holland’s Leaguer_ (1632). The explanation may perhaps be that the

Merian engraver followed some out-of-date authority, such as Delaram,

which had got the house farther north than Norden puts it, and as it

had long ceased to exist, did not know its name. On the other hand,

it is also just conceivable that for a short period the Rose, or some

other building at the north end of the Rose site, had a renewed life

as a place of public entertainment. Alleyn was paying ‘tithe dwe for

the Rose’ in 1622.[1206] And Malone cites Herbert’s ‘office-book’ for a

statement that after 1620 the Swan and the Rose were ‘used occasionally

for the exhibition of prize-fighters’.[1207]

x. THE SWAN

[_Bibliographical Note._--John de Witt’s description and plan

are published in K. T. Gaedertz, _Zur Kenntnis der altenglischen

Bühne_ (1888), and more exactly by H. B. Wheatley in _On a

Contemporary Drawing of the Swan Theatre_, 1596 (_N. S. S.

Trans. 1887–92_, 215). They are discussed by H. Logemann in

_Anglia_, xix. 117, by W. Archer in _The Universal Review_

for June 1888, by W. Rendle in _7 N. Q._ vi. 221, by J. Le G.

Brereton, _De Witt at the Swan_ (1916, _Sh.-Homage_, 204), by

myself in a paper on _The Stage of the Globe_ in _The Stratford

Town Shakespeare_, x. 351, and in most recent treatises on

Elizabethan staging; cf. chh. xviii, xx. Earlier material is

collected by W. Rendle in _The Play-houses at Bankside in the

Time of Shakespeare_ (_Antiquarian Magazine and Bibliographer_,

1885, vii. 207). The facts as to Langley’s purchase and the

pleadings and order in the suit of _Shawe et al. v. Langley_

before the Court of Requests in 1597–8 (cited as _S. v. L._)

are given by C. W. Wallace, _The Swan Theatre and the Earl of

Pembroke’s Servants_ (1911, _E. S._ xliii. 340). T. S. Graves,

_A Note on the Swan Theatre_ (_M. P._ ix. 431), discusses the

light thrown on the internal arrangements of the Swan by the

accounts of _England’s Joy_ in 1602.]

The Swan stood in the Liberty and Manor of Paris Garden, at the western

end of the Bankside. This manor, from which the royal ‘game’ of

bear-baiting took its traditional appellation, had come into the hands

of the Crown as part of the possessions of the dissolved monastery of

Bermondsey. It was granted in 1578 to nominees of Henry, Lord Hunsdon,

conveyed by them to the Cure family, and sold for £850 on 24 May 1589

by Thomas Cure the younger to Francis Langley, a citizen and goldsmith

of London. Langley, who was brother-in-law to Sir Anthony Ashley, one

of the clerks to the Privy Council, held the office of Alnager and

Searcher of Cloth, to which he had been appointed by the Corporation

on the recommendation of the Privy Council and Sir Francis Walsingham

in December 1582.[1208] The site of the theatre can be precisely

identified from a plan of the manor dated in 1627, but based on a

survey of 1 November 1624.[1209] It was in the north-east corner of the

demesne, east of the manor-house, twenty-six poles due south of Paris

Garden stairs, and immediately west of a lane leading to a house called

Copt Hall. The outline shown is that of a double circle, or perhaps

dodecahedron, divided into twelve compartments, with a small porch or

tiring-house towards the road. The exact date of building is unknown.

On 3 November 1594 the Lord Mayor wrote to Burghley that Langley

‘intendeth to erect a niew stage or Theater (as they call it) for the

exercising of playes vpon the Banck side’, and detailed the usual civic

objections to the stage as arguments in favour of the suppression of

the project.[1210] It is probable that Burghley refused to intervene

and that Langley proceeded at once with the erection of the Swan, which

may then have been ready for use in 1595. It is impossible, without

the Swan, to make up the tale of four ‘spielhäuser’ seen by the Prince

of Anhalt in 1596 (360). To 1596 again is assigned, although with

probability rather than certainty, the visit of John de Witt, who

not only names but also describes and delineates the Swan.[1211] In

any case the Swan had already been in use by players before February

1597, when Langley entered into an arrangement for its occupation by

Lord Pembroke’s men.[1212] The terms of the lease provided that he

should make the house ready and furnish apparel, which he alleged cost

him £300, and should get his return for this expenditure out of the

company’s moiety of the gallery takings, in addition of course to the

other moiety which in accordance with theatrical custom went to him as

rent.[1213] The enterprise was rudely interrupted by the production of

_The Isle of Dogs_ at the Swan itself, and the restraint of 28 July

1597 which was the result. The leading members of Pembroke’s company

joined or rejoined the Admiral’s at the Rose, and became involved in

litigation with Langley on account of their breach of covenant.[1214]

For a time Langley succeeded in keeping a company together, and the

Swan remained open.[1215] It was perhaps the intention of the Privy

Council order of 19 February 1598, against an intrusive ‘third company’

which was competing with the Chamberlain’s and the Admiral’s, to close

it.[1216] If so, Langley may still for a time have found means of

evasion, since on the following 1 May the vestry of St. Saviour’s

were viewing new buildings of his, and at the same time negotiating

with Henslowe and Meade for money for the poor ‘in regarde of theire

playe-houses’.[1217] During the next few years, however, such notices

as we get of the Swan, while showing that it was still in existence

and available for occasional entertainments, carry no evidence of any

use by a regular company. Francis Meres, in his _Palladis Tamia_ of

1598, tells us that it was the scene of a challenge in ‘extemporall’

versifying by Robert Wilson.[1218] It was one of the wooden theatres

which were seen by Hentzner in the same year, and no doubt the one

near which he describes the royal barge as lying.[1219] On 15 May

1600 the Council sanctioned its use for feats of activity by Peter

Bromvill.[1220] On 7 February 1602 it was occupied by fencers, and

while two of these, by names Turner and Dun, were playing their prizes

upon its stage, Dun was unfortunate enough to receive a mortal wound

in the eye.[1221] On 6 November 1602 it was chosen by Richard Vennar

for his impudent mystification of _England’s Joy_. The accounts of this

transaction show that it was fitted with ‘hangings, curtains, chairs,

and stools’, and capable of scenic effects, such as the appearance

of a throne of blessed souls in heaven and of black and damned souls

with fireworks from beneath the stage.[1222] Meanwhile Langley had

died in 1601 and in January 1602 the Paris Garden estate was sold to

Hugh Browker, a protonotary of the Court of Common Pleas, in whose

family it remained to 1655.[1223] About 1611 it was once more taken

into use for plays. _The Roaring Girl_ (1611), itself a Fortune play,

has an allusion to a knight who ‘lost his purse at the last new play

i’ the Swan’,[1224] and the accounts of the overseers of Paris Garden

contain entries of receipts from ‘the play house’ or ‘the Swan’ in

each April from 1611 to 1615.[1225] The last entry is of so small an

amount that it probably only covered a fraction of a year, and I think

the inference is that the Swan was disused on the opening of the Hope

in 1614.[1226] If so, it had probably been taken over by Henslowe for

the use of the Lady Elizabeth’s men, who came into existence in 1611,

and whose _Chaste Maid in Cheapside_ was published in 1630 as ‘often

acted at the Swan on the Bankeside’. The Hope itself was modelled

structurally upon the Swan. Its measurements were the same, and it

had similar partitions between the rooms and external staircases. Its

heavens, however, were to be supported without the help of posts from

the stage, since this had to be removable on days of bear-baiting.

It is obviously illegitimate to infer from this specification that

the stage of the Swan, which was not used for bear-baiting, was also

removable. The accounts of the overseers show one more payment from

the ‘players’ in 1621, which perhaps supports the statement contained

in one of Malone’s notes from Sir Henry Herbert’s office-book, that

after 1620 the Swan was ‘used occasionally for the exhibition of

prize-fighters’.[1227] The theatre is marked ‘Old Play-house’ in the

manor map of 1627. The last notice of it is in _Holland’s Leaguer_

(1632) as a famous amphitheatre, which was ‘now fallen to decay, and

like a dying swanne hanging downe her head seemed to sing her own

dierge’.[1228]

Many of the maps of the Bankside do not extend far enough west to

take in the Swan. It is named and shown as an octagonal or decagonal

building by Visscher (1616) and in maps of the Merian group (1638), but

not by Hollar (1647).

xi. THE GLOBE

[_Bibliographical Note._--The devolution of the Globe shares

can be traced in the documents of three lawsuits: (_a_) _Ostler

v. Heminges_, in the Court of King’s Bench in 1616 (_Coram Rege

Roll_ 1454, 13 Jac. I, Hilary Term, m. 692), described by C.

W. Wallace in _The Times_ of 2 and 4 Oct. 1909, and in part

privately printed by him in _Advance Sheets from Shakespeare,

the Globe, and Blackfriars_ (1909), here cited as _O. v. H._;

(_b_) _Witter v. Heminges and Condell_, in the Court of Requests

(1619–20), described by C. W. Wallace in _The Century_ of Aug.

1910, and printed by him in _Nebraska University Studies_, x

(1910), 261, here cited as _W. v. H._; and (_c_) the proceedings

before the Lord Chamberlain in 1635 known as the _Sharers

Papers_, and printed by Halliwell-Phillipps in _Outlines_, i.

312. Professor Wallace’s descriptive articles require some

corrections from the texts of his documents. Much evidence

bearing upon the site of the theatre was collected by W. Rendle

in _The Bankside, Southwark, and the Globe Play-house_ (1877),

printed by the N. S. S. as an appendix to Harrison, pt. ii

(cited as Rendle, _Bankside_), in _Walford’s Antiquarian_,

viii (1885), 209, and in _The Anchor Brewery_ (1888, _Inns of

Old Southwark_, 56), by G. Hubbard in _Journal of the Royal

Institute of British Architects_, 3rd series, xvii. 26, and

_London and Middlesex Arch. Soc. Trans._ n. s. ii (1912), pt.

iii, and most fully by W. Martin in _Surrey Archaeological

Collections_, xxiii (1910), 149. Some additional facts, from

records of the Sewers Commission for Kent and Surrey in the

possession of the London County Council, and from deeds

concerning the Brend estate, were published by Dr. Wallace in

_The Times_ of 30 April and 1 May 1914, and led to discussion

by Dr. Martin, Mr. Hubbard, and others in _11 N. Q._ x. 209,

290, 335; xi. 447; xii. 10, 50, 70, 121, 143, 161, 201, 224,

264, 289, 347, and by W. W. Braines in _The Site of the Globe

Play-house_ (1921). A paper by the present writer on _The Stage

of the Globe_ is in the _Stratford Town Shakespeare_, x. 351.]

In the building of the Globe use was made of the materials of the old

Theatre (q.v.) which, according to _Allen v. Burbadge_ (1602), the

Burbadges, with Peter Street and others, pulled down on 28 December

1598, carried ‘all the wood and timber therof unto the Banckside in

the parishe of St. Marye Overyes, and there erected a newe playehowse

with the sayd timber and woode’.[1229] An earlier account gives the

date of the audacious proceeding as 20 January 1599. The formal lease

of the new site from the freeholder, Nicholas Brend of West Molesey,

was executed on 21 February 1599. No doubt Street, who had assisted

in the transfer, was the builder and had finished his job when on 8

January 1600 he contracted with Henslowe and Alleyn to put up the

Fortune (q.v.) on the model, with certain modifications, of ‘the late

erected plaiehowse on the Banck in the saide parishe of St. Saviours

called the Globe’. This contract allowed twenty-eight weeks for the

work. Probably the Globe took about the same time, for it is described

as ‘de novo edificata’ in the inquisition on the property left by the

lessor’s father, Thomas Brend, which is dated on 16 May 1599.[1230] It

may not then have been quite finished, but it was doubtless ready for

the occupation of the Chamberlain’s men by the beginning of the autumn

season of 1599. One of the earliest plays there produced by them was

Shakespeare’s _Julius Caesar_ which on 21 September Thomas Platter

crossed the water to see ‘in dem streüwinen Dachhaus’.[1231] Whether

the Globe or its predecessor the Curtain was the ‘wooden O’ of _Henry

V_, 1, prol. 13, must be more doubtful, as the prologue to Act V of the

same play contemplates the triumphant return of Essex from Ireland, and

in fact Essex left England on 27 March and returned, not triumphant,

on 28 September 1599.[1232] Jonson refers to ‘this faire-fild Globe’

as the scene of his _Every Man Out of his Humour_, produced in the

autumn of 1600.[1233] The Privy Council order of the previous 22 June,

which enacts that there shall be one allowed house only ‘in Surrey in

that place which is commonlie called the Banckside or there aboutes’,

goes on to recite that the Chamberlain’s men had chosen the Globe to be

that one. The allowance of the house ‘in Surrey called the Globe’ is

confirmed by the Privy Council letter of 27 December 1601. The order

of 9 April 1604 authorizes the opening after the plague of ‘the Globe

scituate in Maiden Lane on the Banckside in the Countie of Surrey’.

This order evidently contemplates that the King’s men will use the

house, which was assigned to them by name as ‘theire nowe vsual howse

called the Globe within our County of Surrey’ by the terms of the

patent of 19 May 1603. The precedent is followed in the later patents

of 1619 and 1625, and there is nothing to indicate that any other

company than the Chamberlain’s or King’s men ever performed, even

temporarily, at the theatre.

The Globe was held by a syndicate, composed mainly of members of

the company, on a leasehold tenure. The site, which had been garden

ground, was described in the original lease with some minuteness as

follows:[1234]

‘totam illam parcellam fundi nuper praeantea inclusam & factam

in quatuor separalia gardina nuper in tenuris & occupacionibus

Thomae Burt & Isbrand Morris diers & Lactantii Roper Salter

civis Londoniae continentem in longitudine ab oriente vsque

occidentem ducentos & viginti pedes assisae vel eo circiter

iacentem & adiungentem viae sive venellae ibidem ex vno

latere & abbuttantem super peciam terrae vocatam the Parke

super boream & super gardinum tunc vel nuper in tenura siue

occupacione cuiusdam Johannis Cornishe versus occidentem &

super aliud gardinum tunc vel nuper in tenura sive occupacione

cuiusdam Johannis Knowles versus orientem cum omnibus domibus

aedificiis structuris vijs easiamentis commoditatibus &

pertinentiis adinde spectantibus vel aliquo modo pertinentibus

quae dicta praemissa sunt scituata iacentia & existentia infra

parochiam sancti Salvatoris in Southwarke in Comitatu Surria

aceciam totam illam parcellam terrae nuper praeantea inclusam

& factam in tria separalia gardina vnde duo eorundem nuper in

tenura sive occupacione cuiusdam Johannis Robertes carpenter

ac aliud nuper in occupacione cuiusdam Thomas Ditcher civis &

mercatoris scissoris Londoniae scituatam iacentem & existentem

in parochia praedicta in praedicto comitatu Surria continentem

in longitudine ab oriente ad occidentem per estimacionem centum

quinquaginta & sex pedes assisae vel eo circiter & in latitudine

a borea ad austrum centum pedes assisae per estimacionem vel eo

circiter iacentem & adiungentem super alio latere viae sive

venellae praedictae & abbuttantem super gardinum ibidem tunc vel

nuper praeantea in occupacione Willelmi Sellers versus orientem

& super vnum aliud gardinum ibidem tunc vel nuper praeantea

in tenura Johannis Burgram sadler versus occidentem & super

venellam ibidem vocatam Mayden lane versus austrum cum omnibus

domibus aedificijs structuris vijs easiamentis commoditatibus &

pertinentiis ultimis recitatis praemissis seu alicui parti vel

parcellae inde spectantibus seu aliquo modo pertinentibus simul

cum libero ingressu egressu & regressu & passagio ... per &

trans praedictam viam sive venellam iacentem & existentem inter

praemissa praedicta.’

The lease was granted for a term of thirty-one years from Christmas

1598 to Christmas 1629, and conveyed the property in two equal

moieties, the one to Cuthbert and Richard Burbadge and the other to

William Shakespeare, Augustine Phillips, Thomas Pope, John Heminges,

and William Kempe.[1235] With the exception of Cuthbert Burbadge

these were all members of the Chamberlain’s company. Each moiety was

charged with a ground-rent of £7 5_s._ There is nothing to show how

the funds for building were found. ‘Wee’, said the Burbadges in 1635,

‘at like expence built the Globe, with more summes of money taken up

at interest, which lay heavy on us many yeeres; and to ourselves wee

joyned those deserveing men, Shakspere, Hemings, Condall, Philips, and

others, partners in the profittes of that they call the House, but

makeing the leases for twenty-one yeeres hath beene the destruction of

ourselves and others, for they dyeing at the expiration of three or

four yeeres of their lease, the subsequent yeeres became dissolved to

strangers, as by marrying with their widdowes and the like by their

children.’[1236] This is, however, not a strictly accurate account

of what took place in 1599, for Condell was not one of the original

‘housekeepers’, and the original lease was for thirty-one, not

twenty-one, years. In any case, the Burbadges contributed the woodwork

of the Theatre.

Between the execution of the lease and the completion of the

play-house, Shakespeare and his four fellows assigned their moiety to

William Levison and Thomas Savage, who ‘reassigned to euerye of them

seuerally a fift parte of the said moitie’, so that after the building

each of the five had a ‘ioynt tenancie’ with the other four in a moiety

of the ground and galleries, and was also ‘tenant in common’ during the

term of the lease.[1237] Professor Wallace explains that ‘the purpose

of a joint-tenancy was to prevent the breaking up and scattering of an

estate into fractions by keeping the property always in the hands of

the members, or the longest survivors, or survivor, of them all, thus

not allowing it to descend to heirs’. The legal distinction is no doubt

sound, but we shall find that, whatever the intention of the assignment

and reassignment may have been, the Globe shares did in fact descend

to heirs, and that a good deal of trouble and litigation was thereby

caused.[1238]

Shortly after the house was built Kempe, no doubt on his withdrawal

from the company, assigned his interest to Shakespeare, Heminges, and

Phillips, who by further assignments to and from one Thomas Cressey

brought in Pope, with the result that each of the four now held a

fourth part of the moiety.[1239] Pope died before 13 February 1604 and

left his interest to Mary Clark, _alias_ Wood, and Thomas Bromley.

Mary Clark must have married John Edmonds, another legatee under the

will, for in 1612 an interest corresponding to Pope’s was held by

John and Mary Edmonds and Basil Nicoll.[1240] Nicoll, who was Pope’s

executor, was presumably acting as trustee for Thomas Bromley. Edmonds,

though an actor, belonged not to the King’s men, but was a Queen’s

man by 1618. One-eighth of the house, therefore, was alienated from

the company in 1604. A further alienation, which proved particularly

troublesome in its results, took place on the death of Phillips in May

1605. The exact facts became a matter of legal dispute. But it appears

that Phillips’ interest passed first to his widow Anne as executrix,

and, when her marriage in the course of 1606 to the spendthrift John

Witter became known, to Heminges, who succeeded her as executor under

the terms of the will. In this capacity Heminges leased an interest

to the Witters on 14 February 1611 for a term of eighteen years from

Christmas 1610.[1241] This interest was not a fourth, but only a sixth

of the moiety, since at some date between the death of Phillips and

that of Sly on 16 August 1608 the moiety had been redivided to allow of

the introduction of Henry Condell and William Sly into the syndicate

of housekeepers.[1242] A similar transaction took place on 20 February

1612, when Basil Nicoll and John and Mary Edmonds, then holding

one-sixth of the moiety, Shakespeare and Witter, each also holding

one-sixth, and Heminges and Condell, holding three-sixths, joined to

convey one-seventh of the moiety to William Ostler.[1243] It must, I

think, be assumed that Heminges and Condell had together purchased the

share left by Sly to his son Robert.

The acquisition of the Blackfriars by the King’s men in 1608 did not,

at first at least, detract from the importance of the Globe as the

leading London theatre. It is so accepted by foreign visitors in 1610

and again in 1611.[1244]

On 29 June 1613 the house was ‘casually burnt downe and consumed with

fier’.[1245] The event was important enough to find a record in Howes’

continuation of Stowe’s _Annales_:[1246]

‘Upon S. Peters day last, the play-house or Theater, called the

Globe, upon the Banckside near London, by negligent discharging

of a peal of ordinance, close to the south-side thereof, the

thatch took fire, and the wind sodainly disperst the flame round

about, and in a very short space the whole building was quite

consumed, and no man hurt; the house being filled with people to

behold the play, viz. of Henry the Eighth. And the next spring

it was new builded in far fairer manner than before.’

Many other contemporary accounts exist. Thus Thomas Lorkin wrote to Sir

Thomas Puckering on 30 June:[1247]

‘No longer since than yesterday, while Burbage’s company were

acting at the Globe the play of Henry VIII, and there shooting

off certain chambers in way of triumph, the fire catched and

fastened upon the thatch of the house, and there burned so

furiously, as it consumed the whole house, all in less than two

hours, the people having enough to do to save themselves.’

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

‘Now, to let matters of state sleep, I will entertain you at

the present with what has happened this week at the Bank’s

side. The King’s players had a new play, called _All is True_,

representing some principal pieces of the reign of Henry VIII,

which was set forth with many extraordinary circumstances

of pomp and majesty, even to the matting of the stage; the

Knights of the Order with their Georges and garters, the Guards

with their embroidered coats, and the like: sufficient in

truth within a while to make greatness very familiar, if not

ridiculous. Now, King Henry making a masque at the Cardinal

Wolsey’s house, and certain chambers being shot off at his

entry, some of the paper, or other stuff, wherewith one of them

was stopped, did light on the thatch, where being thought at

first but an idle smoke, and their eyes more attentive to the

show, it kindled inwardly, and ran round like a train, consuming

within less than an hour the whole house to the very grounds.

This was the fatal period of that virtuous fabric, wherein

yet nothing did perish but wood and straw, and a few forsaken

cloaks; only one man had his breeches set on fire, that would

perhaps have broiled him, if he had not by the benefit of a

provident wit put it out with bottle ale.’

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

‘The burning of the Globe, or play-house, on the Bankside, on

St. Peter’s day, cannot escape you; which fell out by a peal of

chambers (that I know not upon what occasion were to be used in

the play), the tamplin or stopple of one of them lighting in the

thatch that covered the house, burn’d it down to the ground in

less than two hours, with a dwelling-house adjoining, and it was

a great marvaile and fair grace of God, that the people had so

little harm, having but two narrow doors to get out.’

Nor was poetic chronicles of the disaster lacking. On the day after the

fire took place, two ballads about it were entered in the Stationers’

Register.[1250] Neither is known in print, but the use of the word

‘doleful’ suggests that one of them, of which the author was William

Parrat, is probably identical with the following set of verses,

preserved in manuscript:[1251]

_A Sonnett upon the pittiful burneing of the Globe playhowse

in London._

Now sitt the downe, Melpomene,

Wrapt in a sea-cole robe,

And tell the dolefull tragedie,

That late was playd at Globe;

For noe man that can singe and saye

[But ?] was scard on St. Peters daye.

Oh sorrow, pittifull sorrow, and yett all this is true.

All yow that please to understand,

Come listen to my storye,

To see Death with his rakeing brand

Mongst such an auditorye;

Regarding neither Cardinalls might,

Nor yett the rugged face of Henry the Eight.

Oh sorrow, &c.

This fearfull fire beganne above,

A wonder strange and true,

And to the stage-howse did remove,

As round as taylors clewe;

And burnt downe both beame and snagg,

And did not spare the silken flagg.

Oh sorrow, &c.

Out runne the knightes, out runne the lordes,

And there was great adoe;

Some lost their hattes, and some their swordes;

Then out runne Burbidge too;

The reprobates, though druncke on Munday,

Prayd for the Foole and Henry Condye.

Oh sorrow, &c.

The perrywigges and drumme-heades frye,

Like to a butter firkin;

A wofull burneing did betide

To many a good buffe jerkin.

Then with swolne eyes, like druncken Flemminges,

Distressed stood old stuttering Heminges.

Oh sorrow, &c.

No shower his raine did there downe force

In all that Sunn-shine weather,

To save that great renowned howse;

Nor thou, O ale-howse, neither.

Had itt begunne belowe, sans doubte,

Their wives for feare had pissed itt out.

Oh sorrow, &c.

Bee warned, yow stage-strutters all,

Least yow againe be catched,

And such a burneing doe befall,

As to them whose howse was thatched;

Forbeare your whoreing, breeding biles,

And laye up that expence for tiles.

Oh sorrow, &c.

Goe drawe yow a petition,

And doe yow not abhorr itt,

And gett, with low submission,

A licence to begg for itt

In churches, sans churchwardens checkes,

In Surrey and in Midlesex.

Oh sorrow, pittifull sorrow, and yett all this is true.

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

As gold is better that’s in fier try’d,

So is the Bankside _Globe_, that late was burn’d;

For where before it had a thatched hide,

Now to a stately theator ’tis turn’d:

Which is an emblem, that great things are won

By those that dare through greatest dangers run.

Ben Jonson, in his _Execration upon Vulcan_, writes as if he had been

an eye-witness:[1253]

Well fare the wise men yet, on the Bank side,

My friends the watermen! they could provide

Against thy fury, when to serve their needs,

They made a Vulcan of a sheaf of reeds,

Whom they durst handle in their holiday coats,

And safely trust to dress, not burn their boats.

But O those reeds! thy mere disdain of them

Made thee beget that cruel stratagem,

Which some are pleased to style but thy mad prank,

Against the Globe, the glory of the Bank:

Which, though it were the fort of the whole parish,

Flanked with a ditch, and forced out of a marish,

I saw with two poor chambers taken in,

And razed; ere thought could urge this might have been!

See the World’s ruins! nothing but the piles

Left, and wit since to cover it with tiles.

The Brethren they straight nosed it out for news,

’Twas verily some relict of the Stews;

And this a sparkle of that fire let loose,

That was raked up in the Winchestrian goose,

Bred on the Bank in time of Popery,

When Venus there maintained the mystery.

But others fell with that conceit by the ears,

And cried it was a threatning to the bears,

And that accursed ground, the Paris-garden:

‘Nay,’ sighed a sister, ‘Venus’ nun, Kate Arden,

Kindled the fire!’ But then, did one return,

No fool would his own harvest spoil or burn!

If that were so, thou rather wouldst advance

The place that was thy wife’s inheritance.

‘Oh no,’ cried all, ‘Fortune, for being a whore,

Scaped not his justice any jot the more:

He burnt that idol of the Revels too.

Nay, let Whitehall with revels have to do,

Though but in dances, it shall know his power;

There was a judgement shewn too in an hour.’

The Puritans did in fact draw such morals as Jonson satirized. Prynne,

for example, finds the hand of God in ‘the sudden feareful burning,

even to the ground, both of the Globe and Fortune play-houses, no man

perceiving how these fires came’.[1254]

The Globe was at once rebuilt. It was open again by 30 June 1614,

when John Chamberlain wrote to Alice Carleton that he had called

upon her sister Williams, and found her ‘gone to the new Globe, to a

play. Indeed’, he says, ‘I hear much speech of this new play-house,

which is said to be the fairest that ever was in England, so that if

I live but seven years longer, I may chance to take a journey to see

it’.[1255] The manuscript continuator of Stowe, describing the end

of the theatre, says that the rebuilding was ‘at the great charge

of King Iames, and many Noble men and others’.[1256] The lawsuit

documents contain no indication that any part of the burden fell upon

any one but the ‘housekeepers’, who being bound under their lease to

‘mainteyne and repaire’ the house, resolved to ‘reedifie the same’.

The first estimate of cost seems to have been about £700 to £800, for

a levy of ‘50^{li} or 60^{li}’ was called upon each seventh share

of the moiety.[1257] Witter was unable to meet this demand, and as

he was also behindhand with his share of the ground-rent and other

payments, Heminges resumed possession of the seventh and gave half of

it ‘gratis’ to Henry Condell. By this time it had been ascertained that

the re-edifying would be ‘a verie greate charge’, and Heminges claims

that the re-edifying of Witter’s ‘parte’ had in fact cost himself and

Condell ‘about the somme of cxx^{li}’.[1258] This would mean a total

cost of about £1,680.[1259] Heminges appears to have taken a sub-lease

at 20_s._ a year from his partners of two small parcels of the land

in 1615, and to have built on them a house, probably a taphouse, as a

private enterprise.[1260]

Ostler died in December 1614, and Heminges took possession of his

interest and drew the profits until October 1615, when his daughter

Thomasina, Ostler’s widow, brought an action against him for them, the

result of which is unknown.[1261] Shakespeare died in April 1616, and

his interest, if not previously alienated, would have passed under

his will, with other ‘leases’ to John and Susanna Hall.[1262] At some

time earlier than April 1619, probably when he joined the company

about 1616, Field was admitted to be a housekeeper, and the moiety was

then divided into eighths instead of sevenths.[1263] In April 1619

Witter brought an action against Heminges and Condell in the Court of

Requests, to recover the interest which he had forfeited at the time of

the rebuilding. He estimated the present annual value of the seventh,

which he had held, at £30 to £40, and in the course of the proceedings

expressed his willingness either to pay a rent of £13 6_s._ 8_d._ for

the half of that seventh which Heminges had not passed over to Condell,

or, alternatively, to take the profits of the houses on the site, other

than the theatre, and in return for those to become responsible for the

whole of the ground-rents due under the principal leases. The defence

consisted in a denial of Witter’s claim to benefit under the will of

Augustine Phillips, and an assertion that, after Heminges had allowed

him to draw considerable sums in respect of the share, he had deserted

his wife, at whose death Heminges ‘out of charitie was at the charges

of the buryeing of her’. The depositions of the witnesses, who included

Thomas Woodford and one James Knasborough, are unfortunately missing.

Ultimately Witter failed to proceed with his case, and on 29 November

1620 the Court gave judgement for the defendants.

In October 1624 died John Underwood and left a share in the Globe in

trust for his children to Condell and others as his executors. It must

be supposed that he had succeeded to Field’s eighth, when the latter

left the King’s men in 1619. Condell himself died in December 1627

and left his interest to his son William until he should have made

£300 out of it, and thereafter to his widow. Heminges died in October

1630, and his interest passed to his son William as his executor.

During the last years of their lives Heminges and Condell, following

out the policy of absorption which has already been illustrated,

appear to have acquired in one way or another the whole of the shares

formerly held by Shakespeare, by Basil Nicoll and John Edmonds as

successors of Sly, and by Underwood. This fact emerges from the records

known as the _Sharers Papers_, which start with a petition from

Robert Benfield, Eliard Swanston, and Thomas Pollard, then important

members of the King’s company, to the Lord Chamberlain in 1635, to

be admitted to shares as ‘housekeepers’ in the profits of the Globe

and the Blackfriars.[1264] The allegations show that the Globe had

been ‘formerly’ divided into sixteen shares, of which eight were

held by Cuthbert Burbadge and Richard Burbadge’s widow Winifred, now

Mrs. Robinson, in her own right and that of her son William, four by

Mrs. Condell, and four by William Heminges. Afterwards Joseph Taylor

and John Lowin were allowed to acquire shares, and later still the

remaining Heminges interest was ‘surreptitiously’ purchased by John

Shank. At the date of the petition, therefore, the Burbadges held

seven shares, Mrs. Condell two, Shank three, and Taylor and Lowin two

each. The case furnishes valuable information as to the organization

of the theatre, and as to the division of outgoing and profits between

the housekeepers and the actors as such. It is pretty evident that

by 1635 the Globe took a secondary place to the Blackfriars in the

economy of the King’s men.[1265] Shank admitted that he had bought

a two years’ term of one Globe share in 1633 and a one year’s term

of two more in 1634, together with interests in the Blackfriars, and

seems to have thought that the £506 which he gave was full value for

the purchases.[1266] The Burbadges protested against being called upon

to part with any part of their property to ‘men soe soone shott up’

and not having the ‘antiquity and desert’, which had customarily been

looked for in housekeepers. In support of their plea they recalled

the early services of their father in the building of theatres and

the claims of their family to profit by ‘the great desert of Richard

Burbadge for his quality of playing’. They suggested that ‘makeing

the leases for twenty-one yeeres’ to their fellows, whose widows or

children subsequently alienated the profits from the company, had been

their ‘destruction’. The Lord Chamberlain, however, directed that

the Burbadges should transfer two shares and Shank one to the three

petitioners, ‘at the usual and accustomed rates, and according to the

proportion of the time and benefit they are to injoy’. This the order

states, in the case of the Globe, as five years. Probably there is an

error here. The terms bought by Shank were to expire in 1635, but at

the time of the petition a suit was pending in the Court of Requests

for the confirmation of a ‘lease paroll’ from Sir Matthew Brend for

a further nine years from 25 March 1635. The original lease of 1599

from Nicholas Brend was for thirty-one years and would have expired in

1629. But on 26 October 1613, when the rebuilding of the theatre was

in hand, a fresh lease extending the term to 1635 had been granted by

Sir John Bodley as trustee for Nicholas’s son Matthew, who was then a

minor. Not content with this, the syndicate had procured a promise of

a further extension to 1644 from young Matthew himself, which he now

repudiated.[1267] I think that Bodley must have taken the opportunity

in 1613 to raise the ground-rent from £14 10_s._ to £20. A draft for a

return of new and divided houses, made for the Earl Marshal in 1634,

has the following entry:

‘The Globe play-house nere Maid lane built by the company of

players, with the dwelling-house thereto adjoyninge, built with

timber, about 20 yeares past, upon an old foundation, worth

14^{li} to 20^{li} per ann., and one house there adjoyning

built about the same tyme with timber, in the possession of W^m

Millet, gent., worth per ann. 4^{li} [_In margin_, Play-house &

house, S^r Mathew Brend’s inheritance].’

A corrected return of 1637 runs:

‘The Globe play-house nere Maide lane built by the Company

of Players with timber about 20 yeares past uppon an old

foundacion, worth 20^{li} per ann. beinge the inheritance of S^r

Mathew Brand, K^{nt}.’[1268]

The petitioners in the _Sharers Papers_ declare that up to Lady Day

1635 the rent for the Globe and Blackfriars together was not above

£65. The original rent of the Blackfriars was £40, but this also may

have been put up on the expiration of the first lease in 1629. The

Court of Requests finally confirmed the extension of the lease to

1644, apparently at a still further increased rent of £55, as Shank

states the combined rent of the two houses as £100. The Globe was

‘pulled downe to the ground, by Sir Matthew Brand, on Munday the 15

of April 1644, to make tenements in the room of it’; that is to say,

immediately upon the expiration of the nine years’ term from Lady Day

1635 contemplated in the _Sharers Papers_.[1269]

The precise locality of the Globe has been matter of controversy.

The various contemporary documents already quoted place it beyond

doubt in Surrey, and ‘on the Bankside’, a term which must certainly

be taken to cover, not merely the row of houses looking directly upon

the river, but also the whole of the western part of Southwark lying

behind and south of these. With somewhat greater minuteness, the

parish of St. Mary Overies is specified in the lawsuit of _Allen v.

Burbadge_, and the parish of St. Saviour’s in the Fortune contract.

There is no inconsistency here. The two ancient parishes of St. Mary

Magdalen and St. Margaret on the Hill were amalgamated under the name

of St. Saviour’s at the Reformation.[1270] I do not know that the

ancient boundaries are upon record. The Rose stood in what had been St.

Margaret’s, and one would therefore expect to find the Globe nearer

than the Rose to the old priory church of St. Mary’s. In the Privy

Council order of 1604 the situation is described as ‘in Maiden lane’,

and in the return to the Earl Marshal of 1637 as ‘nere Maide lane’.

But, apart from the difference between ‘in’ and ‘nere’, Maiden Lane

is a fairly long thoroughfare, and so far as these indications are

concerned, the Globe may have been either to the north or the south of

it. Local tradition, as elaborated by Southwark antiquaries, has been

inclined to put it to the south, within the area occupied by what was

formerly Thrale’s and is now Barclay and Perkins’s Anchor Brewery, of

which Maiden Lane, now Park Street, forms the northern boundary. The

main reason for this is the inclusion within the brewery of the course

of a passage known as Globe Alley, which ran west from Deadman’s Place

in a parallel line to Maiden Lane for about 360 feet and then turned

northwards for another 100 feet until it debouched into the Lane. So

far as measurements go, Globe Alley might be the _venella_ of the

1599 lease. The name first appears in the St. Saviour’s token book

for 1614, where it is applied to houses formerly described as Brand’s

Rents, and from 1613 onwards as Sir John Bodley’s Rents.[1271] Land

south of Maiden Lane certainly formed part of the Brend estate, and

a plot of it conveyed by Sir Matthew Brend to one Hilary Memprise in

1626 was bounded on the south by a sewer dividing it from the Bishop

of Winchester’s park, and on the north by ‘the alley or way leading to

the Gloabe Play-house commonly called Gloabe Alley’.[1272] A century

later, property acquired for the brewery in 1732 is similarly described

as ‘fronting a certain alley or passage called Globe Alley, in antient

times leading from Deadman’s Place to the Globe Play-house’.[1273]

It was certainly a belief in the Thrale family that the site of the

theatre itself had passed into their hands. Mrs. Piozzi, Johnson’s

friend, who married Henry Thrale in 1763, left the following

autobiographical note of her residence in Southwark between that date

and her husband’s death in 1781:

‘For a long time, then--or I thought it such--my fate was bound

up with the old Globe Theatre, upon the Bankside, Southwark;

the alley it had occupied having been purchased and thrown down

by M^r Thrale to make an opening before the windows of our

dwelling-house. When it lay desolate in a black heap of rubbish,

my Mother, one day, in a joke, called it the Ruins of Palmyra;

and after that they laid it down in a grass-plot. Palmyra was

the name it went by, I suppose, among the clerks and servants of

the brewhouse.... But there were really curious remains of the

old Globe Play-house, which though hexagonal in form without,

was round within.’[1274]

Dr. Martin seems to think that the lady’s recollection was confused and

that the garden called Palmyra stood on the east of Deadman’s Place

opposite to Globe Alley. But, according to Concanen and Morgan it was

‘on the opposite side of the street’ to the brewery.[1275] However

this may be, there are other notices which show that, however complete

the demolition of 1644, the theatre or part of it was still regarded

by tradition as standing a hundred years later amongst the tenements

by which it was replaced.[1276] In 1787 the brewery was purchased

by Barclay and Perkins, and the conveyance recites amongst other

property a plot of ground between Globe Alley and a common sewer, from

which had been cleared in 1767 some ‘ruinous and decayed’ tenements

formerly occupied in 1715 by John Knowles and others.[1277] This is

probably the clearance referred to by Mrs. Piozzi. Under Acts of 1786

and 1812 Globe Alley was closed, and it is now covered over within the

brewery precinct. Horwood’s map of 1799 shows the eastern end already

obliterated. The western end is called Globe Walk, and to the north of

it is Globe Court, perhaps representing the space cleared in 1767.

On the assumption that the theatre stood in Globe Alley, there has

been divergence of opinion as to the precise part of the Alley in

which it stood. Mr. Rendle fixed on a spot on the north side, about

80 or 100 feet from the Deadman’s Place end.[1278] To this he was

guided, partly by a further local tradition, according to which the

site was occupied successively by a meeting-house and a windmill, and

partly by an argument derived from the entries in the St. Saviour’s

token-book for 1621.[1279] Here, under the heading ‘Sir John Bodley’s

Rentes’ are recorded in succession about ten names. Then comes a new

heading, differently written, ‘Gloab Alley’, then two more names, then

in the margin of the page the word ‘Gloabe’. This Mr. Rendle took

to mean that the Globe was about twelve houses from the east end of

the alley. If this is an indication of the site of the Globe at all,

which is a mere conjecture, I should myself draw the inference that it

stood, not twelve, but two houses from the end of the alley, and that

a part, if not the whole, of Bodley’s Rents was outside the alley. And

why should the enumerator be supposed to have worked from the east,

rather than from the north end of the alley? Dr. Martin, in fact,

turns Mr. Rendle’s argument round in this way, and uses the token-book

to support a theory which places the theatre south of Globe Alley,

just at the angle where it turns to the north, and 360 feet, instead

of Mr. Rendle’s 80 or 100 feet, west of Deadman’s Place.[1280] Here

it appears to be located in a borough history of 1795;[1281] and is

certainly located in more than one early nineteenth-century plan.[1282]

Dr. Martin has attempted to obtain confirmation of this siting from an

investigation of the brewery title-deeds. From 1727 onwards the history

of the angle site is clear. In that year it was transferred, subject

to a mortgage, by Timothy Cason and his wife Elizabeth, heiress of the

Brend estate, to certain parishioners of St. Saviour’s. Upon it was

built the parish workhouse referred to by Concanen and Morgan. This

stood just at the outer south-west angle of Globe Alley, which Dr.

Martin conceives to have been occupied by the theatre. In 1774 a new

workhouse was built, and the site of the old one bought by the Thrales.

It was conveyed with the rest of the brewery to Barclay and Perkins

in 1787, and was then described as the ground ‘on which lately stood

all that great shop or workhouse formerly used for a meeting-house’.

Dr. Martin thinks that this forgotten meeting-house may have been

confused in local tradition with that further to the east along Globe

Alley.[1283] Dr. Martin suggests that the property transferred by

the Casons in 1727 is to be identified with that described in a deed

executed by the same persons in 1706, of which a copy is also to be

found amongst the brewery title-deeds, as consisting of tenements built

‘where the late play-house called the Globe stood and upon the ground

thereunto belonging’. If this were so, he would of course have proved

his point. The deed of 1706 seems to have been a family settlement

covering various fragments of Brend property in Southwark, which had

only just been brought together in the hands of Elizabeth Cason. The

Globe site had been settled by Sir Matthew Brend in 1624 upon his

wife Frances as a jointure. She died in 1673, and it then passed as

a jointure to Judith, wife of Sir Matthew’s son Thomas and mother of

Elizabeth, under a deed of 1655 in which the reference to ‘the late

play-house called the Globe’, repeated in that of 1706, first occurs.

Judith Brend had died in 1706.

As a matter of fact, it is almost impossible to reconcile the Southwark

tradition that the Globe stood on the south of Maiden Lane, either

in Mr. Rendle’s or in Dr. Martin’s interpretation of it, with more

than one bit of evidence which we owe to the research of Professor

Wallace. The first of these is the lease of 1599 itself, as recited

in the pleadings of _Ostler v. Heminges_. This states quite clearly

that the leased plot abutted on a piece of land called the Park ‘super

boream’ and on Maiden Lane ‘versus austrum’, and it is difficult to

take very seriously either the Latinity which makes ‘versus austrum’

mean that the leased plot was on the south, or the suggestion that the

draughtsman was working carelessly from a plan which had the south

instead of the north of the plot at the top of the sheet, and got

the points of his compass wrong.[1284] I daresay that such things do

sometimes happen in conveyancer’s offices, but it is hardly legitimate

to call them in aid as a canon of interpretation. No doubt it is

tempting to identify the piece of land called the Park with the Bishop

of Winchester’s park, which lay at a reasonable distance to the south

and not to the north of Maiden Lane, but after all this must once have

extended nearly up to the Bankside, since Maiden Lane itself is known

to have been cut out of it, and it is not at all improbable that some

little strip of land retained the name.[1285] It can only have been

a very little one. The lease describes the Globe site as consisting

of two plots lying apparently on opposite sides of a way or alley

(_venella_) by which access was obtainable to them. One of these, that

next the Park, had been the gardens of Thomas Burt, Isbrand Morris,

and Lactantius Roper. It was 220 feet in length and lay between the

garden of John Knowles on the east and John Cornish on the west. The

southern plot, bounded by Maiden Lane on the south, had similarly been

the gardens of John Roberts and Thomas Ditcher. This was only 156 feet

long and 100 feet deep, and lay between the gardens of William Sellers

to the east and John Burgram to the west. Now the whole space between

Maiden Lane and the Thames is only from 200 to 350 feet at various

points, so that there could not have been room for much of a ‘park’

between the Globe site and the Bankside houses.

The evidence of the lease is confirmed in various ways by the records

of presentments made by the Commissioners of Sewers for Kent and Surrey

against negligent occupiers in this marshy neighbourhood. The most

important entry is one of 14 February 1606:

‘It is ordered that Burbidge and Heminges and others, the owners

of the Play-house called the Globe in Maid-Lane shall before the

xx^{th} day of Aprill next pull vp and take cleane out of the

Sewar the props or postes which stand vnder their bridge on the

north side of Mayd-lane vpon paine to forfeit xx^s.’

This is endorsed ‘done’, but another order of the same day requiring

the same men to ‘well and sufficientlye pyle boorde and fill vp viij

poles more or lesse of theire wharfe against theire said Play-house’

needed a repetition on 25 April before it received attention.[1286]

Earlier records, before the Globe came into existence, relate to some

of the garden-holders named in the lease. A plot of John Bingham or

Burgram abutted on a Maiden Lane sewer in 1596, and this is probably

identical with the ‘common sewer leading from Sellors gardin to the

beare garden’, which William Sellers and others were ordered to cleanse

on 5 December 1595. Certainly the bear garden was to the north and

not the south of Maiden Lane. There was also a sewer bordering upon

the park, and on this Jasper Morris and Thomas Burt had encroached in

1593.[1287]

The old maps, as usual, do not give much help when it comes to a pinch,

although the balance of their authority, for what it is worth, seems to

me to be in favour of a northern site.[1288] Mr. Hubbard, calculating

from Visscher’s map, would put the Globe on the site of the present

Central Wharf, 15 feet south of the Bankside houses and 136 feet west

of Bank End, and therefore not very near Maiden Lane at all.[1289] I do

not think that he sufficiently recognizes the imperfections of the maps

from a surveyor’s point of view. I doubt whether more is to be got out

of them than that the Globe stood more to the east and probably more to

the south than either the Hope or the Rose.[1290]

The foregoing paragraphs show the state of the controversy when the

body of this chapter was written. Since then Mr. Braines has taken

up the investigation where it was left by Dr. Martin, with the help

of the brewery title-deeds and many other documents bearing on the

distribution of tenements in Maiden Lane and Globe Alley over more than

a century. It now seems clear that, in view of the known history of

properties north of Maiden Lane, there is no room for the Globe plot

there, that this plot did pass from the Casons to the workhouse and

ultimately the brewery, and that it did lie at Dr. Martin’s angle site,

being indeed precisely located on the map by Concanen and Morgan’s

description of 1795. We must therefore assume that the points of the

compass were, as Dr. Martin conjectured, inverted in the lease of

1599, east with west and north with south, and that the Globe company

maintained a bridge over the sewer on the opposite side of Maiden Lane

to the theatre, for the convenience of visitors coming down Horseshoe

Alley from the river. The _venella_ of 1599 must have been a westward

extension of Globe Alley, afterwards disused.

Some notion of the structural character of the Globe may be gleaned

from the builder’s contract for the Fortune in 1600.[1291] The Globe

was then the last new thing in theatres, and in entering into his

agreement for the Fortune with Peter Street, the builder of both

houses, Henslowe was careful to specify that the Globe should be taken

as the model, alike as regards the arrangement of the galleries and

staircases, the contrivances and fashioning of the stage, and all

other minor points not particularly indicated. The only alterations of

design set out in the agreement were that the scantlings or standard

measurements of the timber should be rather stouter than those of the

Globe, and that the main posts of the stage and auditorium should

be shaped square and carved with figures of satyrs. It is probable,

however, that a more important difference is passed without notice.

The Fortune was rectangular; the Globe was almost certainly round. The

reference to a circular house in _Henry V_ and _A Warning for Fair

Women_, both plays of about 1599, may indeed belong to the Curtain

rather than the Globe, but there are similar references in _E. M.

O._ (1599) and in _The Merry Devil of Edmonton_ (1608), which are

certainly Globe plays, and there seems no reason to doubt that the

Globe is represented by the cylindrical buildings, windowless below,

windowed and of narrower diameter above, which are shown in the maps

of the Hondius group and in the background of Delaram’s portrait of

James I.[1292] A few details are furnished by the various narratives

of the fire of 1613. The roof was thatched, whence arose the accident.

The walls were of timber, for nothing was burnt but wood and straw.

The building was ‘flanked with a ditch, and forced out of a marish’.

It had a stage-house ‘round as taylors clewe’, and carried a silken

flag. There were two narrow doors, and hard by stood an alehouse. The

new Globe built after the fire was tiled for greater safety. In other

respects there was probably no great change. The building is described

in 1634 as of timber, upon an old foundation. The maps, if they can be

trusted, figure it as polygonal, rather than strictly round. No doubt

it was round inside; an ‘amphytheator’, it is called in _Holland’s

Leaguer_. The _Sharers Papers_ of 1635 mention the tiring-house door,

at which money was taken. James Wright tells us that it was a summer

house, large and partly open to the weather, and that the acting was

always by daylight. Malone conjectured that the name ‘Globe’ was taken

from the sign, ‘which was a figure of Hercules supporting the Globe,

under which was written _Totus mundus agit histrionem_’.[1293] I do not

know where he got this information.

xii. THE FORTUNE

[_Bibliographical Note._--Most of the documents are at Dulwich,

and are printed in full or in abstract by W. W. Greg in

_Henslowe Papers_, and by J. P. Collier in _Alleyn Memoirs_

and _Alleyn Papers_. The _Register_ of the Privy Council adds

a few of importance. Valuable summaries of the history of the

theatre are given by W. W. Greg, _Henslowe’s Diary_, ii. 56,

and W. Young, _History of Dulwich College_ (1889), ii. 257.

_The Catalogue of the Manuscripts and Muniments at Dulwich_

(1881–1903) by G. F. Warner and F. B. Bickley is also useful.]

The settlement of the Chamberlain’s men in 1599 at the Globe, hard by

the Rose, on Bankside, probably led Henslowe and Alleyn to plan during

the same year a countermove, by the transference of the Admiral’s

men to a new theatrical locality in the rapidly growing districts on

the north-west boundary of the City. The Rose, although not built

fifteen years, was in decay, and the swamps of the Bankside had not,

especially in bad weather, proved attractive to visitors. The new

centre might be expected to serve in summer and winter alike, and,

while in a place ‘remote and exempt’ from the City jurisdiction, would

be convenient for the well-to-do population, which was establishing

itself in the western suburbs, along the main roads of Holborn and the

Strand. The Fortune on the north, and the Blackfriars, opened about

the same time on the south, delimited a region which has remained

almost to our own day the head-quarters of the stage. The actual site

selected lay just outside Cripplegate between Golding or Golden Lane

and Whitecross Street, in the county of Middlesex, the lordship or

liberty of Finsbury, and the parish of St. Giles without Cripplegate.

The title-deeds at Dulwich make it possible to trace the history of

the property or part of it back to the reign of Henry VIII, but for

the present purpose it is sufficient to begin with 11 July 1584, the

date of a lease by Daniel Gill, son of William Gill, gardener, to

Patrick Brewe, goldsmith, of five tenements on the east side of Golding

Lane and one on the west side of Whitecross Street at a rent of £12 a

year. This lease Brewe assigned to Alleyn on 22 December 1599, for a

sum of £240. Subsequently, in 1610, Alleyn bought up a reversionary

lease for £100, and also, after troublesome negotiations with the

numerous descendants of Daniel Gill, the freehold of the property for

£340.[1294] This purchase, however, and probably also the original

lease, included a good deal more than the actual plot on which the

theatre was built. The deed of sale recites six tenements on the east

of Golden Lane and six on the west of Whitecross Street. It is pretty

clear, from the boundaries described, as compared with those in a

temporary assignment by Alleyn of the lease, that the property dealt

with in 1584 and in 1610 was the same, and it is natural to conclude

that Alleyn had himself added to the number of tenements.[1295] This

is confirmed by a note of Alleyn’s that, in addition to building the

play-house, he spent £120 ‘for other priuat buildings of myn owne’. One

such building adjoined the south side of the play-house in 1601.[1296]

Alleyn’s note gives the cost of the play-house itself as £520, making

up with the private buildings and the purchase of leasehold, reversion,

and freehold, a total expenditure of £1,320.[1297] The contract for

building the framework was taken by Peter Street, carpenter, at £440,

which presumably left Alleyn £80 for the painting and other decorative

work excluded from the contract. The following is the text of the

contract, which is preserved at Dulwich:[1298]

‘This Indenture made the Eighte daie of Januarye 1599, and in

the Twoe and Fortyth yeare of the Reigne of our sovereigne Ladie

Elizabeth, by the grace of god Queene of Englande, Fraunce

and Irelande, defender of the Faythe, &c. betwene Phillipp

Henslowe and Edwarde Allen of the parishe of S^{te} Saviours

in Southwark in the Countie of Surrey, gentlemen, on thone

parte, and Peeter Streete, Cittizen and Carpenter of London,

on thother parte witnesseth That whereas the saide Phillipp

Henslowe & Edward Allen, the daie of the date hereof, haue

bargayned, compounded & agreed with the saide Peter Streete

ffor the erectinge, buildinge & settinge upp of a new howse

and Stadge for a Plaiehouse in and vppon a certeine plott or

parcell of grounde appoynted oute for that purpose, scytuate

and beinge nere Goldinge lane in the parishe of S^{te} Giles

withoute Cripplegate of London, to be by him the saide Peeter

Streete or somme other sufficyent woorkmen of his provideinge

and appoyntemente and att his propper costes & chardges, for

the consideracion hereafter in theis presentes expressed, made,

erected, builded and sett upp in manner & forme followinge (that

is to saie); The frame of the saide howse to be sett square and

to conteine ffowerscore foote of lawfull assize everye waie

square withoutt and fiftie fiue foote of like assize square

everye waie within, with a good suer and stronge foundacion

of pyles, brick, lyme and sand bothe without & within, to be

wroughte one foote of assize att the leiste aboue the grounde;

And the saide fframe to conteine three Stories in heighth,

the first or lower Storie to conteine Twelue foote of lawfull

assize in heighth, the second Storie Eleaven foote of lawfull

assize in heigth, and the third or vpper Storie to conteine

Nyne foote of lawfull assize in height; All which Stories

shall conteine Twelue foote and a halfe of lawfull assize in

breadth througheoute, besides a juttey forwardes in either

of the saide twoe vpper Stories of Tenne ynches of lawfull

assize, with ffower convenient divisions for gentlemens roomes,

and other sufficient and convenient divisions for Twoe pennie

roomes, with necessarie seates to be placed and sett, aswell

in those roomes as througheoute all the rest of the galleries

of the saide howse, and with suchelike steares, conveyances &

divisions withoute & within, as are made & contryved in and to

the late erected Plaiehowse on the Banck in the saide parishe

of S^{te} Saviours called the Globe; With a Stadge and Tyreinge

howse to be made, erected & settupp within the saide fframe,

with a shadowe or cover over the saide Stadge, which Stadge

shalbe placed & sett, as alsoe the stearecases of the saide

fframe, in suche sorte as is prefigured in a plott thereof

drawen, and which Stadge shall conteine in length Fortie and

Three foote of lawfull assize and in breadth to extende to the

middle of the yarde of the saide howse; The same Stadge to be

paled in belowe with good, stronge and sufficyent newe oken

bourdes, and likewise the lower Storie of the saide fframe

withinside, and the same lower storie to be alsoe laide over

and fenced with stronge yron pykes; And the saide Stadge to

be in all other proporcions contryved and fashioned like vnto

the Stadge of the saide Plaie howse called the Globe; With

convenient windowes and lightes glazed to the saide Tyreinge

howse; And the saide fframe, Stadge and Stearecases to be

covered with Tyle, and to haue a sufficient gutter of lead to

carrie & convey the water frome the coveringe of the saide

Stadge to fall backwardes; And also all the saide fframe and

the Stairecases thereof to be sufficyently enclosed withoute

with lathe, lyme & haire, and the gentlemens roomes and Twoe

pennie roomes to be seeled with lathe, lyme & haire, and all

the fflowers of the saide Galleries, Stories and Stadge to

be bourded with good & sufficyent newe deale bourdes of the

whole thicknes, wheare need shalbe; And the saide howse and

other thinges beforemencioned to be made & doen to be in all

other contrivitions, conveyances, fashions, thinge and thinges

effected, finished and doen accordinge to the manner and

fashion of the saide howse called the Globe, saveinge only that

all the princypall and maine postes of the saide fframe and

Stadge forwarde shalbe square and wroughte palasterwise, with

carved proporcions called Satiers to be placed & sett on the

topp of every of the same postes, and saveinge alsoe that the

said Peeter Streete shall not be chardged with anie manner of

pay[ntin]ge in or aboute the saide fframe howse or Stadge or

anie parte thereof, nor rendringe the walls within, nor seeling

anie more or other roomes then the gentlemens roomes, Twoe

pennie roomes and Stadge before remembred. Nowe theiruppon the

saide Peeter Streete dothe covenant, promise and graunte ffor

himself, his executours and administratours, to and with the

saide Phillipp Henslowe and Edward Allen and either of them,

and thexecutours and administratours of them and either of

them, by theis presentes in manner & forme followeinge (that

is to saie); That he the saide Peeter Streete, his executours

or assignes, shall & will att his or their owne propper costes

& chardges well, woorkmanlike & substancyallie make, erect,

sett upp and fully finishe in and by all thinges, accordinge

to the true meaninge of theis presentes, with good, stronge

and substancyall newe tymber and other necessarie stuff, all

the saide fframe and other woorkes whatsoever in and vppon

the saide plott or parcell of grounde (beinge not by anie

aucthoretie restrayned, and haveinge ingres, egres & regres to

doe the same) before the ffyue & twentith daie of Julie next

commeinge after the date hereof; And shall alsoe at his or

theire like costes and chardges provide and finde all manner

of woorkmen, tymber, joystes, rafters, boordes, dores, boltes,

hinges, brick, tyle, lathe, lyme, haire, sande, nailes, lade,

iron, glasse, woorkmanshipp and other thinges whatsoever, which

shalbe needefull, convenyent & necessarie for the saide fframe

& woorkes & euerie parte thereof; And shall alsoe make all the

saide fframe in every poynte for Scantlinges lardger and bigger

in assize then the Scantlinges of the timber of the saide newe

erected howse called the Globe; And alsoe that he the saide

Peeter Streete shall furthwith, aswell by himself as by suche

other and soemanie woorkmen as shalbe convenient & necessarie,

enter into and vppon the saide buildinges and woorkes, and shall

in reasonable manner proceede therein withoute anie wilfull

detraccion vntill the same shalbe fully effected and finished.

In consideracion of all which buildinges and of all stuff &

woorkemanshipp thereto belonginge, the saide Phillipp Henslowe

& Edward Allen and either of them, ffor themselues, theire, and

either of theire executours & administratours, doe joynctlie

& seuerallie covenante & graunte to & with the saide Peeter

Streete, his executours & administratours by theis presentes,

that they the saide Phillipp Henslowe & Edward Allen or one of

them, or the executours administratours or assignes of them or

one of them, shall & will well & truelie paie or cawse to be

paide vnto the saide Peeter Streete, his executours or assignes,

att the place aforesaid appoynted for the erectinge of the saide

fframe, the full somme of Fower hundred & Fortie Poundes of

lawfull money of Englande in manner & forme followeinge (that

is to saie), att suche tyme and when as the Tymber-woork of

the saide fframe shalbe rayzed & sett upp by the saide Peeter

Streete his executours or assignes, or within seaven daies

then next followeinge, Twoe hundred & Twentie poundes, and

att suche time and when as the saide fframe & woorkes shalbe

fullie effected & ffynished as is aforesaide, or within seaven

daies then next followeinge, thother Twoe hundred and Twentie

poundes, withoute fraude or coven. Prouided allwaies, and it

is agreed betwene the saide parties, that whatsoever somme or

sommes of money the saide Phillipp Henslowe & Edward Allen or

either of them, or the executours or assignes of them or either

of them, shall lend or deliver vnto the saide Peter Streete his

executours or assignes, or anie other by his appoyntemente or

consent, ffor or concerninge the saide woorkes or anie parte

thereof or anie stuff thereto belonginge, before the raizeinge

& settinge upp of the saide fframe, shalbe reputed, accepted,

taken & accoumpted in parte of the firste paymente aforesaid

of the saide some of Fower hundred & Fortie poundes, and all

suche somme & sommes of money, as they or anie of them shall

as aforesaid lend or deliver betwene the razeinge of the

saide fframe & finishinge thereof and of all the rest of the

saide woorkes, shalbe reputed, accepted, taken & accoumpted

in parte of the laste pamente aforesaid of the same somme

of Fower hundred & Fortie poundes, anie thinge abouesaid to

the contrary notwithstandinge. In witnes whereof the parties

abouesaid to theis presente Indentures Interchaungeably haue

sett theire handes and seales. Yeoven the daie and yeare ffirste

abouewritten.

P S

Sealed and deliuered by the saide Peter Streete in the presence

of me William Harris Pub[lic] Scr[ivener] And me Frauncis Smyth

appr[entice] to the said Scr[ivener]

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

The constant references in the terms of the contract to the model

of the Globe, while bearing testimony to the stimulus which the

building of the Globe had given to theatrical competition, leaves

some uncertainty as to many details of planning, and it is matter

for regret that the ‘plot’ of the stage and staircases furnished to

the builder has not itself been preserved. We learn, however, that

the house was a square one, 80 feet each way by outside and 55 feet

by inside measurement; that the stage was 43 feet wide and projected

into the middle of the yard; that the framework was of wood, on a

foundation of brick and piles, and with an outer coating of plaster;

that the framework and stage were boarded within and strengthened

with iron pikes; that there were three galleries rising to a total

height of 32 feet, and that sections of these were partitioned off and

ceiled as ‘gentlemens rooms’, of which there were four, and ‘two-penny

rooms’; that the tiring-house had glazed windows; that there was a

‘shadowe or cover’ over the stage, and that this, with the galleries

and staircases, were tiled and supplied with lead gutters to carry off

the rain-water. Two divergences from the Globe model are specified:

the timber work is to be stouter, and the principal posts of the frame

work and stage are to be square and carved with satyrs. An ingenious

attempt has been made by Mr. William Archer and Mr. W. H. Godfrey to

reconstruct the plan of the theatre from these and other indications,

with a liberal allowance of conjecture.[1299] It will be observed

that Henslowe, as well as Alleyn, was a party to the contract; but

it is pretty clear from Alleyn’s note already referred to that he

found the money, and although Henslowe did in fact become his partner

in the enterprise, this was under a lease of 4 April 1601, whereby

he took over a moiety of the play-house and its profits for a term

of twenty-four years from the previous 25 March at an annual rent

of £8.[1300] This lease did not include Alleyn’s private tenements,

but it did include some enclosed ‘growndes’ on the north and west of

the house, and a passage 30 feet long by 14 feet wide running east

from the south-west angle of the building ‘from one doore of the said

house to an other’. It is, I think, to be inferred from this that the

main approach to the earlier Fortune theatre was from the Golden Lane

side. The contract with Street is dated on 8 January 1600 and provides

for the completion of the work by the following 25 July, and for the

payment of the price in two instalments, one when the framework was

up and the other upon completion. In fact, however, the acquittances

by Street and others, endorsed upon the Dulwich indenture, show that

Henslowe acted as a kind of banker for the transaction, and made

advances from time to time to Street, or to pay workmen or purchase

materials, all of which were debited against the amounts payable under

the contract. Work seems to have begun before 17 January. By 20 March

Henslowe had paid £180 and by 4 May £240. It is therefore a little

puzzling to find a payment ‘at the eand of the fowndations’ on 8 May.

About £53 more was paid before 10 June, making nearly £300 in all by

that date. The last entry is one of 4s. to Street ‘to pasify him’,

which suggests that some dispute had taken place. Here the acquittances

stop, but Henslowe’s _Diary_ indicates that he was frequently dining

in company with Street from 13 June to August 8, and probably the work

was completed about the latter date.[1301] Alleyn had had to face some

opposition in carrying out his project. He began by arming himself with

the authority of his ‘lord’, the Earl of Nottingham, who wrote in his

favour to the Middlesex justices on 12 January 1600, explaining the

reasons for leaving the Bankside and the general convenience of the new

locality, and citing the Queen’s ‘special regarde of fauor’ towards

the company as a reason why the justices should allow his servant to

build ‘w^{th}out anie yo^r lett or molestation’. This action did not

prove sufficient to avert a local protest. Lord Willoughby and others

complained to the Council, who on 9 March wrote to the Middlesex

justices informing them that the erection of a new play-house, ‘wherof

ther are to manie allreadie not farr from that place’, would greatly

displease the Queen, and commanding the project to be ‘staied’. Alleyn,

however, was secure in the royal favour. He also, by offering a weekly

contribution to the relief of the poor, succeeded in obtaining a

certificate from the petty officials and other inhabitants of Finsbury

of their consent to the toleration of the house; and on 8 April the

Council wrote again to the justices, withdrawing their previous

inhibition and laying special stress on Elizabeth’s desire that Alleyn

personally should revive his services as a player, ‘wheareof, of late

he hath made discontynuance’. The letter also referred to the fact

that another house was pulled down instead of the Fortune, and a

formal Privy Council order of 22 June, laying down that there shall

in future be one house in Middlesex for the Admiral’s men, and one on

the Bankside for the Chamberlain’s, makes it clear that the condemned

theatre was the Curtain.[1302] Nevertheless, it is certain that neither

the Curtain nor the Rose was in fact plucked down at this date.

The Fortune was opened in the autumn of 1600 by the Admiral’s men,

probably with Dekker’s _1 Fortune’s Tennis_, and its theatrical history

is closely bound up with that of the same company, who occupied it

continuously, as the Admiral’s to 1603, then as Prince Henry’s men

to his death in 1612, and finally as the Palsgrave’s men. It is

only necessary to deal here with matters that directly concern the

building. That it became something of a centre of disturbance in the

peaceful suburbs of the north-west is shown by various entries in the

records of the Middlesex Bench. On 26 February 1611, two butchers,

Ralph Brewyn and John Lynsey, were charged with abusing gentlemen

there. On 1 October 1612, the justices regarded it as the resort

of cutpurses, and were thereby led to suppress the jigs at the end

of plays, which especially attracted such persons. In 1613 a true

bill was found against Richard Bradley for stabbing Nicholas Bedney

there on 5 June.[1303] The upkeep of the structure was expensive. A

note in Alleyn’s hand of sums laid out upon the play-house during

the seven years 1602–8 shows an average amount of about £120. Only

£4 2_s._ was spent during 1603, for the greater part of which year

the theatres were closed, but £232 1_s._ 8_d._ in 1604.[1304] No

doubt wooden buildings, open to the weather, perished rapidly. It is

not unreasonable to suppose that the relations between the company

and their landlords were much what they had been at the Rose; that

is to say that the latter took half the gallery receipts and bore

repairs, while the former took the rest of the receipts and met all

other outgoings. An unexecuted draft lease to Thomas Downton of 1608

indicates that Alleyn and Henslowe then had it in mind to bind the

company more closely to the theatre, by dividing a quarter of their

interest amongst the eight members of the company.[1305] Possibly the

plan was carried out. In asking a loan from Alleyn on a date apparently

earlier than August 1613, Charles Massye, who was one of the eight, not

only offers repayment out of his ‘gallery mony’ and ‘house mony’, but

also the assignment of ‘that lyttell moete I have in the play housses’

as a security.[1306] Certainly the company took over the house after

Henslowe’s death on 6 January 1616. His share in the building passed

to his widow, who contemplated a sale of it to Gregory Franklyn, Drew

Stapley, and John Hamond.[1307] But the deed remained unexecuted at her

death in 1617, and the whole property was now once more in Alleyn’s

hands. On 31 October 1618 he leased it to the company for £200 a year,

to be reduced to £120 at his death. With it went a taphouse occupied by

Mark Brigham, the rent of a two-room tenement held by John Russell, and

a strip of impaled ground 123 feet by 17 feet, lying next the passage

on the south.[1308] This is perhaps the garden in which, according to

John Chamberlain, the players, ‘not to be overcome with courtesy’,

banqueted the Spanish ambassador when he visited the theatre on 16 July

1621.[1309] John Russell is presumably the same whose appointment by

Alleyn as a ‘gatherer’ lead to a protest from William Bird on behalf

of the company.[1310] A few months after the ambassador’s visit, John

Chamberlain records the destruction of the Fortune on 9 December

1621:[1311]

‘On Sonday night here was a great fire at the Fortune in

Golden-Lane, the fayrest play-house in this towne. It was quite

burnt downe in two howres, & all their apparell & play-bookes

lost, wherby those poore companions are quite undone.’

Alleyn also notes the event in his diary.[1312] On 20 May 1622 he

formed a syndicate, and leased to it the site at a rent of £128 6_s._,

under an obligation to build a new theatre at a cost of £1,000.[1313]

This, ‘a large round brick building’, was erected in the following

year.[1314] The site conveyed covered a space of almost exactly 130

feet square, and on it had stood, besides the buildings named in the

lease of 1618, other tenements, in one of which William Bird himself

lived. Mr. Lawrence has suggested that the new Fortune may have been a

roofed-in house, but his evidence is hardly sufficient to outweigh the

explicit statement of Wright that it ‘lay partly open to the weather,

and there they always acted by daylight’.[1315] This can hardly refer

only to the earlier building. The Fortune was dismantled in 1649 and

‘totally demolished’ by 1662, and the façade still extant in 1819

cannot therefore have belonged to it, although it may have belonged

to a Restoration ‘nursery’ for young actors, possibly upon the same

site.[1316] No acting seems to have taken place at the Fortune after

1649.[1317]

xiii. THE BOAR’S HEAD

There appear to have been at least six city inns under this sign.[1318]

The most famous was that on the south side of Great Eastcheap, in

St. Michael’s, which seems to have been regarded in the middle of

the sixteenth century as the traditional locality of the tavern

scenes in _Henry IV_.[1319] This inn was in the occupation of Joan

Broke, widow, in 1537, and in that of Thomas Wright, vintner, about

1588.[1320] Another Boar’s Head stood ‘without’ Aldgate, in the

extra-mural Portsoken ward, which lay between that gate and the bars

with which the liberties of the City terminated at Hog Lane. Here,

according to Stowe, there were ‘certaine faire Innes for receipt of

trauellers repayring to the Citie’.[1321] At the Aldgate inn had

been produced in 1557 a ‘lewd’ play called _The Sackful of Newes_,

which provoked the interference of Mary’s Privy Council.[1322] But it

seems to me exceedingly improbable that either this or the Eastcheap

inn was converted into the play-house, of which we have brief and

tantalizing records in the seventeenth century. Both were within the

City jurisdiction, where the licensing of play-houses seems to have

definitely terminated in 1596. It is true that a Privy Council letter

of 31 March 1602, which directs that the combined company of Oxford’s

and Worcester’s men shall be allowed to play at the Boar’s Head, is

addressed to the Lord Mayor.[1323] But so are other letters of the

same type, the object of which is to limit plays to a small number of

houses outside the liberties, and to restrain them elsewhere over the

whole area of the City and the suburbs.[1324] And when, a year or two

later, Worcester’s men became Queen Anne’s, and a draft patent was

drawn up to confirm their right to play in the Curtain and the Boar’s

Head, both houses are described, not as in the City, but as ‘within

our County of Middlesex’.[1325] Presumably Anne’s men left the Boar’s

Head when the Red Bull became available for their use in 1606, and Mr.

Adams has explained a mention, which had long puzzled me, of the Duke

of York’s men as ‘the Prince’s Players of Whitechapel’ in 1608 by the

suggestion that they succeeded to the vacant theatre.[1326] If this is

so, I think it affords further evidence for the theory that the Boar’s

Head, although it may have taken its name from the Aldgate inn, was

not itself that inn, and probably not a converted inn at all, but lay

just outside and not just inside the City bars. For, although part of

the street between Aldgate and Whitechapel is sometimes called, as in

Ogilby’s map of 1677 and Rocque’s of 1746, ‘Whitechapel Street’, yet

Whitechapel proper lay outside the liberties, farther to the east

along the Mile End Road.[1327] The only other contemporary record of

the Boar’s Head is a letter to Edward Alleyn from his wife Joan on 21

October 1603, in which she says, ‘All the companyes be come hoame &

well for ought we knowe, but that Browne of the Boares head is dead

& dyed very pore, he went not into the countrye at all’.[1328] This

Browne cannot be identified, and it is perhaps idle to conjecture

that he may have been related to Robert Browne, and that it may have

been at the Boar’s Head that the latter played with Derby’s men in

1599–1601. The Boar’s Head seems to have been generally forgotten by

the Restoration, but is recalled by the Marquis of Newcastle _c._

1660.[1329]

xiv. THE RED BULL

[_Bibliographical Note._--The records of the suit of _Woodford

v. Holland_ (1613) were printed by J. Greenstreet in the

_Athenaeum_ for 28 Nov. 1885 from _Court of Requests Books_,

xxvi, ff. 780, 890, and cxxviii, and therefrom by Fleay, 194;

and more fully with those of the later suit of 1619 (misdated

1620) by C. W. Wallace in _Nebraska University Studies_, ix. 291

(cited as _W. v. H._). Collier, i. 374, mentions evidence on the

same transactions as ‘in the Audit Office’, and misnames the

complainant John Woodward.]

Our chief knowledge of the early history of the Red Bull is derived

from disputes before the Court of Requests in 1613 and 1619 between

Thomas Woodford and Aaron Holland. It appears that Holland held a

lease of the site, which was at the upper end of St. John Street in

the parish of St. James, Clerkenwell, from Anne, widow and executrix

of Christopher Bedingfield, and had there built a play-house. The

indication of a Red Bull Yard in Ogilby and Morgan’s map of 1677 to

the west of St. John Street, and just north of the angle which it

forms with Clerkenwell Green, no doubt defines the locality with some

precision.[1330] In _3 Jac. I_, that is, at some date between 24 March

1605 and 23 March 1606, he assigned one-seventh of the house to Thomas

Swynnerton, ‘with a gatherers place thereto belonging’. This Swynnerton

transferred for £50 to Philip Stone.[1331] It was subject to a rent

of £2 10_s._, and Holland gave Stone an indenture in February 1609,

which was alleged not to constitute a proper lease. In 1612–13 Stone

sold his seventh for £50 to Woodford, who took profits for a quarter,

and then entrusted his interest to Holland, instructing his servant

Anthony Payne to pay the rent. He alleged that Holland persuaded Payne

to be behindhand with the rent, and withheld the profits, estimated

at £30 a year. He therefore brought his action a little before May

1613. The Court called upon Holland to show cause why he should not

account for the arrears of profits, and for 1_s._ 6_d._ a week due

to the gatherer’s place.[1332] Holland replied, and the issues were

referred to the arbitration of counsel, including Woodford’s ‘demaund

of the eighteenth penny and the eighteenth part of such moneys & other

comodities as should be collected or receaued ... for the profittes of

the galleries or other places in or belonging to the play howse’.[1333]

Counsel made an arrangement, but did not agree in their reports of its

terms, and the Court ordered Holland to give Woodford an indenture

similar to that given to Stone.[1334] Holland got a writ of prohibition

from the King’s Bench, always jealous of the jurisdiction of the Court

of Requests, on 6 November 1613, and Woodford began a suit against

Holland in Stone’s name for not making a proper indenture in 1609.

This, he says, Stone conspired with Holland to withdraw. In 1619 he

brought another action for his profits before the Court of Requests,

in which Holland describes him as ‘Woodford, _alias_ Simball’, but the

result is unknown.

The Red Bull, then, was built not later and probably not much earlier

than 1606, a little before the first recorded mention of it in the

following passage from _The Knight of the Burning Pestle_, which was

almost certainly produced in the winter of 1607:

_‘Citizen._ Why so sir, go and fetch me him then, and let

the Sophy of Persia come and christen him a childe.

_‘Boy._ Beleeue me sir, that will not doe so well, ’tis

stale, it has beene had before at the red Bull.’[1335]

The allusion is to an incident in the last scene of Day, Rowley, and

Wilkins’ _Travels of the Three Brothers_.[1336] This, according to the

entry in the Stationers’ Register on 29 June 1607, was played at the

Curtain, and according to its title-page of 1607 by the Queen’s men.

But there is no reason why it should not also have been played at the

Red Bull, since both houses are specified as occupied by the Queen’s

men in their patent of 15 April 1609. In their earlier draft patent of

about 1603–4, the Boar’s Head and Curtain are named, and in a Privy

Council letter of 9 April 1604 the Curtain only. Presumably, therefore,

the Red Bull was taken into use by the Queen’s men, of whom Swynnerton

was one, as soon as it was built at some date between 1604 and 1606.

The Red Bull is one of the three houses whose contention is predicted

in Dekker’s _Raven’s Almanack_ of 1608, and Dekker refers to it again

in his _Work for Armourers_, written during the plague of 1609, when

the bear garden was open and the theatres closed. He says, ‘The pide

_Bul_ heere keepes a tossing and a roaring, when the _Red Bull_ dares

not stir’.[1337] Its existence caused trouble from time to time to the

Middlesex justices. At the end of May 1610, William Tedcastle, yeoman,

and John Fryne, Edward Brian, Edward Purfett, and Thomas Williams,

felt-makers, were called upon to give recognisances to answer for a

‘notable outrage at the play-house called the Red Bull’; and on 3

March 1614 Alexander Fulsis was bailed out on a charge of picking

Robert Sweet’s pocket of a purse and £3 at this theatre.[1338] Further

references to it are to be found in Wither’s _Abuses Stript and Whipt_

(1613), in Tomkis’s _Albumazar_ (1615), and in Gayton’s _Pleasant Notes

on Don Quixot_ (1654).[1339]

An entry in Alleyn’s _Diary_ for 1617 has been supposed to indicate

that he had an interest in the Red Bull. To me it only suggests that he

sold the actors there a play.[1340]

The Queen’s men most likely occupied the Red Bull at least until 1617

when, as shown by the lawsuit of 1623, they were on the point of moving

to the Cockpit in Drury Lane. Plays of theirs were printed as acted

there in 1608, 1611, 1612, and 1615. _Swetnam the Woman Hater Arraigned

by Women_, printed in 1620, was also played there, before Anne’s

death in 1619. In 1637 Thomas Heywood, formerly one of the Queen’s

men, included in his _Pleasant Dialogues and Dramas_, a Prologue and

Epilogue, to which he prefixed the note ‘A young witty lad playing the

part of Richard the third: at the Red Bull: the Author because hee

was interessed in the play to incourage him, wrot him this Prologue

and Epilogue’.[1341] This was probably, and certainly if the play

was Shakespeare’s, some quite exceptional performance. Similarly the

‘companie of young men of this citie’, who are stated on the title-page

of Wentworth Smith’s _Hector of Germany_ (1615) to have acted it at the

Red Bull and Curtain, must be supposed to have used these theatres by

some arrangement with the Queen’s men.

The Red Bull afterwards passed to other companies, continued in use up

to, and even occasionally during, the Commonwealth, and had a revived

life after the Restoration to 1663.[1342] Before 1633, and probably

before 1625, it had been re-edified and enlarged.[1343] Mr. Lawrence

suggests that at this time it became a roofed house, which it seems

certainly to have been after the Restoration.[1344] But it is difficult

to get away from Wright’s explicit statement that it ‘lay partly open

to the weather, and there they always acted by daylight’.[1345] Nor

need the quite modern identification of it with the roofed interior

depicted in _The Wits_ rest upon anything but an incidental reference

to the house in the text of the pamphlet.[1346] Nothing is known as to

the shape or galleries of the Red Bull.

xv. THE HOPE

[_Bibliographical Note._--The Dulwich papers relating to the

connexion of Henslowe and Alleyn with the bear-baiting and the

Hope are to be found with a commentary in Greg, _Henslowe’s

Diary_ and _Henslowe Papers_. Valuable material on the Bankside

localities is in W. Rendle, _The Bankside, Southwark, and the

Globe_, 1877 (Appendix I to Furnivall, _Harrison’s Description

of England_, Part II, with a reconstructed map of the Bankside

and a 1627 plan of Paris Garden), _Old Southwark and its

People_ (1878), _The Play-houses at Bankside in the Time of

Shakespeare_ (1885, _Walford’s Antiquarian_, vii. 207, 274;

viii. 55), _Paris Garden and Blackfriars_ (1887, _7 N. Q._ iii.

241, 343, 442). Some notes of Eu. Hood [Joseph Haslewood] in

1813 and A. J. K[empe] in 1833 are reprinted in _The Gentleman’s

Magazine Library_, xv (1904), 74, 117. Other writings on Paris

Garden are by W. H. Overall (1869) in _Proc. Soc. Antiq._ 2nd

series, iv. 195, J. Meymott, _The Manor of Old Paris Garden_

(1881), P. Norman, _The Accounts of the Overseers of the Poor

of Paris Garden, Southwark, 1608–1671_ (1901) in _Surrey Arch.

Colls._ xvi. 55. Since I wrote this chapter, C. L. Kingsford

(1920, _Arch._ lxx. 155) has added valuable material.]

It is convenient, in connexion with the Hope, to deal with the

whole rather troublesome question of the Bankside Bear Gardens. The

_ursarius_ or bearward was a recognized type of mediaeval _mimus_, and

the rewards in which his welcome found expression are a recurring item

in many a series of municipal or domestic accounts. Thus, to take one

example only, the corporation of Shrewsbury entertained between 1483

and 1542 the _ursinarii_, _ursuarii_, or _ursiatores_ of the King, the

Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, the Marquises of Dorset and Exeter, the

Earl of Derby, and the town of Norwich.[1347] On more than one occasion

the payment is said to be _pro agitacione bestiarum suarum_. The phrase

is perhaps not free from ambiguity. The dancing bear was, until quite

recently, a familiar sight in provincial England, and I have seen one

even on the sophisticated slopes of Notting Hill. And illuminations

dating back as far as the tenth century bear evidence to the antiquity

of his somewhat grotesque _tripudium_.[1348] But in the robust days

of our forefathers there was an even more attractive way of agitating

bears. The traditional victim of an English baiting was no doubt the

bull. A Southwark map of 1542 shows a ‘Bolrynge’ in the middle of the

High Street and a neighbouring alley still bore the name in 1561.[1349]

The maps of Höfnagel (_c._ 1560) and Agas (_c._ 1570) show another

ring, marked ‘The bolle bayting’ and with a very palpable bull inside

it, upon the Bankside, not far from where the Hope must afterwards

have stood.[1350] But the bear was also baited in London, at least

from the twelfth century.[1351] Erasmus is often cited as declaring

that in the reign of Henry VIII ‘herds’ of the animal were kept for

the purpose. This is an error. Erasmus wrote of dancing bears; but I

am afraid it must be assumed that the chief function of the bearward

attached to the Tudor Royal Household was to provide exhibitions of the

more brutal, noisy, and occasionally dangerous sport.[1352] A regular

office is traceable back to 1484, when Richard III in the first year

of his reign appointed his bearward John Browne to be ‘Maister, Guyder

and Ruler of all our Beres and Apes’.[1353] It was still a part of

the establishment of the Royal Household under Elizabeth. A patent

of 2 June 1573 to Ralph Bowes describes it as ‘the room or office of

Cheif Master Overseer and Ruler of all and singular our game pastymes

and sportes, that is to saie of all and everie our beares bulles and

mastyve dogges’, and names as Bowes’s predecessors Cuthbert Vaughan and

Sir Richard Long.[1354] The grant was of the nature of a commission,

authorizing the holder, personally or by deputy, to ‘take up’ or

press animals for the royal service, and giving him the sole right of

baiting the Queen’s bears, to the exclusion of any other officer or

under officer appertaining to the bears, not specially licensed or

appointed by him. The Master was presumably expected to make his profit

out of the privileges granted, for the patent did not assign him any

fee, such as the under officers, known as the Keepers of Bears and

Mastiffs, enjoyed at the hands of the Treasurer of the Chamber.[1355]

But he received a reward, similar to those given to players, of £5

through the Treasurer on the Council’s warrant, when the baiting was

shown before the Queen. These rewards are generally expressed as ‘for

the Game of Paris Garden’ or ‘to the Master of her Majesty’s Game at

Paris Garden’; and Bowes must have joined sons or other relatives

with him as deputies, since Edward Bowes and Thomas Bowes were often

payees instead of Ralph Bowes during his term of office.[1356] Towards

the end of Bowes’s life it would seem that Henslowe and Alleyn, who

had been baiting bears on the Bankside as licensees since 1594,

were in negotiation to obtain the Mastership.[1357] Probably the

first idea was to buy a surrender of the office from Bowes, since

the Dulwich manuscripts contain an unexecuted draft of a patent to

Henslowe, following the terms of that to Bowes himself and reciting

such a surrender.[1358] I should suppose this negotiation to be that

in connexion with which Henslowe spent £2 15_s._ 6_d._ during 1597

upon visits to Sir Julius Caesar, Master of Requests, and other Court

officials, and in a fee to the Clerk of the Signet. The expenditure

is entered in the diary as incurred ‘a bowt the changinge of ower

comysion’.[1359] But before a surrender was effected it would seem that

Henslowe had had to turn his thoughts to a succession. In this he was

disappointed. On 4 June 1598 he wrote to Alleyn that Bowes was very

sick and expected to die, and that he much feared he should lose all.

Neither Caesar nor the Lord Admiral had done anything for him, and

although he had received help from Lady Edmondes and Mr. Langworth, he

now learnt that the reversion of the Mastership was already promised

by the Queen to one Mr. Dorrington, a pensioner.[1360] Bowes did in

effect die very shortly after, and on 11 August 1598 John Dorrington

received his patent for the Mastership.[1361] To this was joined the

office of Keeper of the Bandogs and Mastiffs, with a fee of 10_d._ a

day for exercising this office and keeping twenty mastiff bitches, and

a further fee of 4_d._ for a deputy.[1362] It is not unlikely that John

Dorrington was related to the Richard Darrington who had held this

keepership with the same fees, amounting to £21 5_s._ 10_d._ a year,

in 1571. Another keepership, that of the Bears, was held in 1599 by

Jacob Meade, who was closely associated with Henslowe and Alleyn in the

management of the Bear garden.[1363] Dorrington’s grant was confirmed

by James I on 14 July 1603, and on 23 July he was knighted.[1364] About

this time Henslowe and Alleyn, who were paying Dorrington £40 a year

for licence to bait,[1365] must have contemplated fresh negotiations

for a transfer of the patent, for the draft in the Dulwich manuscripts,

originally drawn up about 1597, has been altered by Henslowe so as

to adapt it to the new reign and to a surrender by Dorrington.[1366]

But once again they were unsuccessful, for Dorrington died, and on 20

July 1604 the Mastership was granted to one of the invading Scots,

Sir William Stuart.[1367] From him, however, Henslowe and Alleyn did

succeed in obtaining an assignment, and a draft patent as joint Masters

and Keepers, with the fees of 10_d._ and 4_d._, is dated 24 November

1604. They had, indeed, been rather in Stuart’s hands, for he had

refused either to give them a licence or to take over their house and

bears, and they had to pay for the surrender at what they considered

the high rate of £450.[1368] This we learn from a petition of about

1607, in which they appealed to the King for an increase in the daily

fee by 2_s._ 8_d._, in view of their losses through restraints and

the deaths of bears, and of their heavy expenses, amounting to £200

a month, whereby their privilege, which was once worth £100 a year,

could now not be let at all.[1369] It is doubtful whether they got any

relief. They had a new patent on 24 November 1608;[1370] but about 1612

they sent up another petition in very similar terms. A grant of £42

10_s._ and 12_d._ a day had, indeed, been made them in March 1611 for

keeping a lion and two white bears. But this was probably menagerie

work and quite apart from the baiting. They continued as joint Masters

until Henslowe’s death in 1616, when the whole office passed to Alleyn

in survivorship.[1371]

When baiting seemed desirable to the soul of the sovereign, the ‘game’

was generally brought to the Court, wherever the Court might happen to

be.[1372] The rewards of the Treasurer of the Chamber were most often

for attendances in the Christmas holidays or at Whitsuntide. But the

game might be called for at any time to add lustre to the entertainment

of an ambassador or other distinguished visitor to Court. Thus on 25

May 1559 French ambassadors dined with Elizabeth, ‘and after dener to

bear and bull baytyng, and the Quens grace and the embassadurs stod in

the galere lokyng of the pastym tyll vj at nyght’.[1373] Later French

embassies of 1561, 1572, 1581, and 1599, and a Danish embassy of 1586

were similarly honoured.[1374] The custom continued during the next

reign. On 19 August 1604 there was a grand banquet at Whitehall for

Juan Fernandez de Velasco, Constable of Castile, on the completion of

peace between England and Spain, and thereafter a ball, and after the

ball ‘all then took their places at the windows of the room which

looked out upon a square, where a platform was raised, and a vast

crowd had assembled to see the King’s bears fight with greyhounds.

This afforded great amusement. Presently a bull, tied to the end of a

rope, was fiercely baited by dogs.’[1375] James had introduced a new

and dangerous element into the sport by using the lions which were

kept in the Tower, and this also became the scene of baitings. On 5

March 1607 the Treasurer of the Chamber paid Henslowe and Alleyn no

less than £30, partly for attendances with the game at Greenwich during

the visit of the King of Denmark and at Whitehall during that of the

Prince de Joinville, and partly for baiting of the lions in the Tower

on three several occasions.[1376] Stowe gives detailed descriptions

of lion-baitings in 1604, 1605, 1609, and 1610, of which the first

is interesting, because it was under the personal superintendence of

Edward Alleyn, ‘now sworne the Princes man and Maister of the Beare

Garden’.[1377]

But the profit of the thing, from the point of view of the Master of

the Game, was not so much in the attendances at Court, as in the public

baitings, which he and those holding licences from him were privileged

to give with the bears and dogs, ‘taken up’ by virtue of the commission

or bought at their own expense, during such times as these were not

required for the royal service. These public spectacles were held at

what was known as the Bear Garden, under conditions much resembling

those of a theatre. They played a considerable part in the life of

London; literature is full of allusions to them; and they are described

with more or less detail in the narratives of many travellers from

abroad. An early account is that from the Spanish of a secretary to

the Duke of Najera, who visited Henry VIII in 1544.[1378] He describes

the bears as baited daily, with three or four dogs to each bear, in an

enclosure where they were tied with ropes, and adds:

‘Into the same place they brought a pony with an ape fastened on

its back, and to see the animal kicking amongst the dogs, with

the screams of the ape, beholding the curs hanging from the ears

and neck of the pony, is very laughable.’

In 1559 the same French ambassadors, who saw the baiting at Whitehall,

were taken on the following day to Paris Garden, and ‘ther was boyth

bare and bull baytyng, and the capten with a c. of the gard to kepe

rowme for them to see the baytyng’.[1379] The next notice of any

value is that of Lupold von Wedel, who was at Southwark on 23 August

1584.[1380]

‘There is a round building three stories high, in which are

kept about a hundred large English dogs, with separate wooden

kennels for each of them. These dogs were made to fight singly

with three bears, the second bear being larger than the first

and the third larger than the second. After this a horse was

brought in and chased by the dogs, and at last a bull, who

defended himself bravely. The next was that a number of men

and women came forward from a separate compartment, dancing,

conversing and fighting with each other: also a man who threw

some white bread among the crowd, that scrambled for it. Right

over the middle of the place a rose was fixed, this rose being

set on fire by a rocket: suddenly lots of apples and pears fell

out of it down upon the people standing below. Whilst the people

were scrambling for the apples, some rockets were made to fall

down upon them out of the rose, which caused a great fright but

amused the spectators. After this, rockets and other fireworks

came flying out of all corners, and that was the end of the

play.’

It is interesting to observe that the baiting proper was supplemented

with fireworks and an entertainment, which must have been of the nature

of a jig.[1381] The visit of Frederick, Duke of Württemberg, on 1

September 1592, is also recorded by his secretary, who says:[1382]

‘His Highness was shown in London the English dogs, of which

there were about 120, all kept in the same enclosure, but each

in a separate kennel. In order to gratify his Highness, and at

his desire, two bears and a bull were baited; at such times you

can perceive the breed and mettle of the dogs, for although they

receive serious injuries from the bears, are caught by the horns

of the bull, and tossed into the air so as frequently to fall

down again upon the horns, they do not give in, so that one is

obliged to pull them back by their tails, and force open their

jaws. Four dogs at once were set on the bull; they, however,

could not gain any advantage over him, for he so artfully

contrived to ward off their attacks that they could not well get

at him; on the contrary, the bull served them very scurvily by

striking and butting at them.’

De Witt briefly notices the ‘amphitheatrum’ of the Bear Garden in 1596.

He says:[1383]

‘Est etiam quintum sed dispari [vsu?] et structura, bestiarum

concertationi destinatum, in quo multi vrsi, tauri, et stupendae

magnitudinis canes discretis caueis et septis aluntur, qui

ad pugnam adseruantur, iocundissimum hominibus spectaculum

praebentes.’

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

‘Est et alius postea locus Theatri quoque formam habens,

Ursorum & Taurorum venationibus destinatus, qui à postica parte

alligati à magnis illis canibus & molossis Anglicis, quos lingua

vernacula Docken appellant, mire exagitantur, ita tamen, ut

saepe canes isti ab Ursis vel Tauris, dentibus arrepti, vel

cornibus impetiti, de vita periclitari, aliquando etiam animam

exhalare soleant, quibus sic vel sauciis vel lassis statim

substituuntur alii recentes & magis alacres. Accedit aliquando

in fine hujus spectaculi Ursi plane excaecati flagellatio, ubi

quinque, vel sex, in circulo constituti, Ursum flagellis misere

excipiunt, qui licet alligatus auffugere nequeat, alacriter

tamen se defendit, circumstantes, & nimium appropinquantes, nisi

recte & provide sibi caveant, prosternit, ac flagella e manibus

cadentium eripit atque confringit.’

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

‘The London bearbaitings usually take place every Sunday and

Wednesday, across the water. The play house is built in circular

form; above are a number of seated galleries; the ground space

under the open sky is unoccupied. In the midst of this a great

bear is fastened to a stake by a long rope. When we came down

the stairs, we went behind the play house, and saw the English

dogs, of which there were about 120 chained up, each in his

separate kennel, in a yard.’

Platter also describes the actual baiting of the bull and bear and

of the blind bear, much as did his predecessors. On 7 September 1601

the Duc de Biron was taken to the Bear Garden, as one of the sights

of London, by no less a cicerone than Sir Walter Raleigh.[1386] A

visit of 16 September 1602 is described in the diary of Philip Julius,

Duke of Stettin in Pomerania.[1387] The vogue of the Bear Garden

amongst foreigners evidently lasted into James’s reign, but the

notices are briefer. Lewis Frederick of Württemberg, saw on 26 April

1610 the baiting both of bears and bulls ‘and monkeys that ride on

horseback’;[1388] and Justus Zingerling of Thuringia, who was in London

about the same year, mentions the ‘_theatra comoedorum_, in which bears

and bulls fight with dogs’.[1389] Even more summary is the reference

in an itinerary of Prince Otto von Hesse-Cassel in 1611.[1390] But

the extracts given sufficiently describe the nature of the sport, and

show that bulls continued to be baited up to a late date, as well as

bears, and that the serious business of the spectacle was diversified

by regular humorous episodes, such as the monkey on horseback and the

whipping of the blind bear. He, by the way, was called Harry Hunks,

and is named by Sir John Davies in his _Epigrams_[1391] of _c._ 1594,

in company with the Sackerson who gave rise to a boast on the part of

Master Slender,[1392] and at a later date by Dekker[1393] and Henry

Peacham.[1394] Two other famous bears were Ned Whiting and George

Stone. Both are alluded to in Ben Jonson’s _Epicoene_ (1609),[1395]

and the latter also in _The Puritan_ (1607).[1396] The death of the

‘goodlye beare’ George Stone at a baiting before the King of Denmark

in 1606 is lamented in the petition of Henslowe and Alleyn to the King

for increased fees already described. One other interesting notice of

the sport may be added from the Dulwich collection, and that is an

advertisement or ‘bill’ of the entertainment, which runs as follows:

‘Tomorrowe beinge Thursdaie shalbe seen at the Beargardin on the

banckside a greate mach plaid by the gamstirs of Essex who hath

chalenged all comers what soeuer to plaie v dogges at the single

beare for v pounds and also to wearie a bull dead at the stake

and for your better content shall haue plasant sport with the

horse and ape and whiping of the blind beare. Viuat Rex.’[1397]

Where then was the Bear Garden? This is a point upon which the foreign

visitors are not very explicit. From them we could infer little more

than that it was transpontine. It has already been pointed out that

in official documents, at any rate those of a less formal character

than a patent under the great seal, the Mastership is described

as the Mastership of the Game of, or at, Paris Garden. With this

common parlance agrees.[1398] In the allusions of the pamphleteers

and poets, from the middle of the sixteenth to the middle of the

seventeenth century, Paris or Parish Garden is regularly the place of

baiting.[1399] ‘The Beare-garden, commonly called Paris Garden’, says

Stowe, speaking of 1583.[1400] At Paris Garden, or as it is sometimes

corruptly spelt, ‘Pallas Garden’, Henslowe and Alleyn have their office

as Masters[1401] in 1607, and near it Alleyn is living in 1609. Now

the Liberty and Manor of Paris Garden is a quite well defined part of

the Bankside. It lay at the extreme west end, bordering upon Lambeth

Marsh, with the Clink upon its east. In it stood from about 1595 the

most westerly of the theatres, the Swan.[1402] Historians of Southwark

are fond of suggesting that it had been the abode of the bears from

an almost immemorial antiquity, and follow a late edition of Blount’s

seventeenth-century _Glossographia_ in connecting it with the _domus_

of a certain Robert de Parys, near which the butchers of London were

ordered to throw their garbage in 1393.[1403] I think the idea is that

the garbage was found useful for feeding the bears. This theory I

believe to be as much a myth as Taylor the water-poet’s derivation of

the name from Paris, son of Priam. Parish, rather than Paris Garden,

seems, in fact, to be the earlier form, although there is nothing in

the history of the place that very particularly explains it.[1404]

Many residents in London were of course ‘de Parys’ in the fourteenth

century, and the _domus_ of the Robert in question, who lived some

time after the first mention of ‘Parish’ Garden, was pretty clearly on

the City and not the Surrey side of the river.[1405] It is, however,

the case that before the Civil War the Butchers’ Company had been

accustomed to send their offal by a beadle to ‘two barrow houses,

conveniently placed on the river side, for the provision and feeding

of the King’s Game of Bears’, and were directed to resume the practice

after the Restoration; and possibly this is what misled Blount.[1406]

Obviously, however, what the butchers did in the seventeenth century

is no proof of what they did in the fourteenth. And, in fact, the

ordinance of 1393 is explicit in its direction that the offal is

ultimately to be, not devoured by bears, but cast into mid-stream.

There is in fact nothing, so far as I know, to locate the royal Game on

the Bankside at all until the middle of the sixteenth century, when it

was already hard by the stews in the Liberty of the Clink, and still

less, except the persistence of the name, to locate it definitely in

the Liberty of Paris Garden.[1407] The notice which brings Paris Garden

nearest is in Foxe’s _Book of Martyrs_, which contains an account of an

adventure of one Ralph Morice, secretary to Cranmer, who was foolish

enough to take a book of his master’s, containing criticisms of the

Six Articles, in a wherry from Westminster Bridge to Paul’s Wharf. It

chanced that Henry VIII ‘was then in his barge with a great number of

barges and boats about him, then baiting of bears in the water, over

against the Bank’. The waterman stopped to see the fun, and the bear

broke loose, and climbed into the wherry, which upset. The dangerous

book fell into the Thames and was picked up by the bearward, who was

the Lady Elizabeth’s bearward and ‘an arrant Papist’. It was only

through the good offices of Cromwell that Morice escaped serious

trouble. This was about July 1539.[1408] Certainly it was the custom

from an early date to moor the King’s barge off Paris Garden.[1409]

The spot was marked later by the Old Barge Stairs, which stood at

the west end of that part of the Bank lying in front of the Garden,

just as Paris Garden Stairs stood at its east end. But the barge was

not necessarily at its moorings when Henry was baiting from it. Mr.

Ordish suggests that it was the common use of Paris Garden Stairs by

visitors to the baiting, which led to the name being transferred to

the Bear Garden itself, without any one troubling to inquire very

minutely whether it stood a little to the east or a little to the

west of the landing.[1410] On the whole, however, I regard it as

reasonably probable that there was at one time a Bear Garden in the

Liberty, which fixed the traditional name for the sport, even after it

had been transferred farther along the Bank.[1411] It may, perhaps,

be a slight confirmation of this view that the 1627 survey of Paris

Garden shows a space, apparently laid out as a garden and arranged as a

circle within a square, which may represent the site. It stands nearly

opposite Paris Garden Stairs in a triangular bit of ground between

Holland Street and the lane leading to Copt Hall. This seems to have

been rather a desolate region in Elizabeth’s reign, at any rate when

you got beyond the row of houses which lined the bank.[1412] If there

was a Bear Garden there, it had clearly been abandoned some little time

before 1546, as the Stews were then ‘the accustomed place’. Somewhat

later, the maps of Höfnagel (_c._ 1560) and Agas (_c._ 1570) show, in

addition to the Bull ring already mentioned, another ring marked ‘The

Beare bayting’, standing immediately west of it, and like it in the

Clink.[1413] The animals at the stake are discernible in the rings, and

to the south of each stretches a yard with a pond in the middle and

kennelled dogs along the sides. It is in the Clink, too, that Norden

in 1593 shows ‘The Beare howse’, a little west and north of ‘The play

howse’, which is the Rose. This evidence is consistent with what little

is upon written record about the locality of the Bear Gardens. The most

important document is a deposition of John Taylor, not the water-poet,

in a suit of 1620:[1414]

‘He saith that he remembreth that the game of bear-bayting hath

been kept in fower severall places (vizt.) at Mason Steares on

the bankside; neere Maid-lane by the corner of the Pyke Garden;

at the beare garden which was parcell of the possession of

William Payne; and the place where they are now kept.’

Taylor was then an old man of seventy-seven and his memory would easily

go back to the time of the early maps. To his testimony may be added

that of Stowe, who says in his _Survey of London_ (1598):[1415]

‘Now to returne to the West banke, there be two Beare gardens,

the olde and new places, wherein be kept Beares, Buls and other

beastes to be bayted. As also Mastiues in severall kenels,

nourished to baite them. These Beares and other Beasts are there

bayted in plottes of ground, scaffolded about for the Beholders

to stand safe. Next on this banke was sometime the Bordello or

stewes.’

In his _Annales_ Stowe records the fall of ‘the old and under

propped scaffolds round about the Beare-garden, commonly called

Paris garden’, and the consequent death of eight persons, at 4 p.m.

on Sunday, 13 January 1583. It was, he says, ‘a friendly warning to

such as more delight themselves in the cruelty of beasts, than in the

works of mercy, the fruits of a true professed faith, which ought to

be the Sabbath day’s exercise’.[1416] Dr. Dee also noted the accident

in his diary, and it was reported to Burghley on the next day by the

Lord Mayor and on 19 January by Recorder Fleetwood.[1417] Both of

these adopt the view expressed by Stowe that it must be regarded as

divine punishment for the violation of the Sabbath, and Fleetwood

refers to ‘a booke sett downe vpon the same matter’, which may be

John Field’s _Godly Exhortation by Occasion of the late Judgment of

God showed at Paris Garden_. The shrewd irony of Sir Thomas More,

upon a similar event, when it was the church that fell, many years

before at Beverley, found little echo in the mind of the Elizabethan

Puritan.[1418] A further letter from the Lord Mayor to the Privy

Council on 3 July 1583 states that by then the Paris Garden scaffolds

were ‘new builded’.[1419]

I find it very difficult to say which of the numerous bear gardens

mentioned by Taylor and Stowe was in use at any given time. Mr. Rendle

thought that Taylor’s first two, that at Mason Stairs and that at the

corner of the Pike Garden, were the two shown as ‘The bolle bayting’

and ‘The Bearebayting’ by Agas.[1420] If so, they are quite out of

scale. This is likely, since they are drawn large enough to show the

animals. They are shown east and west of each other. Rendle puts the

Pike Garden due south of Mason Stairs, but it clearly extended more to

the east in 1587. In any case both these earlier sites were farther

to the west of the Clink than the Hope. Where then was the place on

William Payne’s ground? Mr. Rendle, after a careful comparison of

Rocque’s map of 1746 and other later maps, puts it at ‘the north

courtelage in the lane known as the Bear Garden’ and the Hope at the

south courtelage in the same lane.[1421] I take him to mean that the

Bear Garden on Payne’s ground was that in use until 1613, and that the

Hope was built a little to the south of it. The terms of the contract

with Katherens, however, suggest that the same or practically the same

site was used. Mr. Rendle adds that ‘William Payne’s place next the

Thames can be traced back into the possession of John Allen, until it

came down to Edward Alleyn, and was sold by him at a large profit to

Henslowe; the same for which Morgan Pope in 1586 paid to the Vestry

of St. Saviour’s “6_s._ 8_d._ by the year for tithes”.’[1422] This I

cannot quite follow. There seem to have been two properties standing

respectively next and next but one on the west to the ‘little Rose’.

Next the Rose stood messuages called The Barge, Bell and Cock. They

were leased by the Bishop of Winchester to William Payne in 1540. His

widow Joan Payne assigned them to John White and John Malthouse on 1

August 1582, and White’s moiety was assigned to Malthouse on 5 February

1589.[1423] From him Henslowe bought the lease in 1593–4.[1424] The

tenements upon it were in his hands as ‘Mr. Malthowes rentes’ in

1603 and Alleyn was living in one of them.[1425] And the lease of

the Barge, Bell and Cock passed to Alleyn and was assigned by his

will towards the settlement of his second or third wife, Constance,

daughter of Dean Donne.’[1426] To the west of this property in 1540

was a tenement once held by the prioress of Stratford. This passed to

the Crown, and then to Thomas and Isabella Keyes under a Crown lease

which was in Henslowe’s hands by 1597. Some notes of deeds--leases,

deputations, bonds--concerning the Bear Garden were left by Alleyn.

Four of the deeds have since been found by Mr. Kingsford in the Record

Office. It appears that, before Henslowe, both Pope and Burnaby had

some of the Keyes land on a sub-lease, and that Burnaby probably had

the Keyes lease itself. Payne carried on baiting in a ring just south

of the Barge. The site was called Orchard Court in 1620, and stood

north of the Hope. This agrees with the relation suggested by Mr.

Rendle between the two courtelages’. The object of the suit of 1620

was to determine whether the Hope also stood upon episcopal, or upon

Crown land. Taylor’s testimony was ambiguous. But it follows that the

transfer southwards must have been due to a tenant who held under

both leases. It was suggested in 1620 that Pope rebuilt the scaffold

standings round the ring as galleries with a larger circuit. This was

doubtless after the ruin of 1583. Nothing is said of a change of site

at this time. Moreover, both Pope and Burnaby seem to have used the

site of the Hope and its bull-house as a dog-yard. Probably, therefore,

the change was made by Henslowe and Alleyn. Alleyn left a record of

‘what the Bear garden cost me for my owne part in December 1594’. He

paid £200 to Burnaby, perhaps only for a joint interest with Henslowe

or Jacob Meade, and £250 for the ‘patten’, that is, I suppose, the

Mastership bought from Sir William Stuart in 1604. He held his interest

for sixteen years and received £60 a year, and then sold it to ‘my

father Hinchloe’ for £580 in February 1611.[1427] There must have been

considerable outgoings on the structure during this period. Another

memorandum in Alleyn’s hand shows an expenditure of £486 4_s._ 10_d._

during 1602–5, and a further expenditure during 1606–8 of £360 ‘p^d.

for ye building of the howses’.[1428] This last doubtless refers in

part, not to the baiting ring itself, but to a tavern and office built

on ‘the foreside of the messuage or tenemente called the Beare garden,

next the river of Thames in the parish of St. Saviors’, for which there

exists a contract of 2 June 1606 between Henslowe and Alleyn and Peter

Street the carpenter.[1429] But this only cost £65, and it seems to

me most likely that the Bear Garden was rebuilt on the southern site

at the same time. Further light is thrown on the profits of the Bear

Garden by a note in Henslowe’s diary that the receipts at it for the

three days next after Christmas 1608 were £4, £6, and £3 14_s._, which

may be compared with the average of £1 18_s._ 3_d._ received from the

Fortune during the same three days.[1430] It may be added that Crowley

notes the ‘bearwardes vaile’ somewhat ambiguously as ½_d._, 1_d._, or

2_d._,[1431] and that Lambarde in 1596 includes Paris Garden with the

Theatre and Bel Savage as a place where you must pay ‘one pennie at

the gate, another at the entrie of the scaffolde, and the thirde for a

quiet standinge’.[1432]

Yet another building enterprise was undertaken in 1613, by which time

an interest in the property had certainly been leased to Jacob Meade.

On 29 August a contract was entered into between Henslowe and Meade and

Gilbert Katherens, carpenter, for the pulling down of the Bear Garden

and the erection before the following 30 November on or near the same

site of a play-house on the model of the Swan, but with a movable

stage, so as to enable the building to be used also for baitings. I

reproduce the document here from Dr. Greg’s text:[1433]

Articles, Covenauntes, grauntes, and agreementes, Concluded and

agreed vppon this Nyne and Twenteithe daie of Auguste, Anno

Domini 1613, Betwene Phillipe Henslowe of the parishe of S^t

Saviour in Sowthworke within the countye of Surrey, Esquire,

and Jacobe Maide of the parishe of S^t Olaves in Sowthworke

aforesaide, waterman, of thone partie, And Gilbert Katherens of

the saide parishe of S^t Saviour in Sowthworke, Carpenter, on

thother partie, As followeth, That is to saie--