The Parlor was described as "a great room, paved," and was said to have been "used and occupied by the friars themselves to their own proper use as a parlor to dine and sup in."[296] Sir John Portynary, whose house adjoined the Duchy Chamber, tells us that in 1550, when King Edward granted the Blackfriars property to Cawarden, "Sir Thomas Cawarden, knight, entered into the same house in the name of all that which the King had given him within the said friars, and made his lodging there; and about that time did invite this examinant and his wife to supper there, together with diverse other gentlemen; and they all supped together with the said Sir Thomas Cawarden, in the same room [the Parlor] where the said school of fence is now kept, and did there see a play."[297]

[Footnote 296: Feuillerat, Blackfriars Records, pp. 43, 47, 48.]

[Footnote 297: Ibid., p. 52.]

Later Cawarden leased the Parlor to a keeper of an ordinary: "One Woodman did hold the said house where the said school of fence is kept, and another house thereby of Sir Thomas Cawarden, and in the other room kept an ordinary table, and had his way to the same through the said house where the said school of fence is kept."[298]

[Footnote 298: Ibid., p. 51.]

In 1563 William Joyner established in the rooms the school of fence mentioned above, which was still flourishing in 1576.[299]

[Footnote 299: Feuillerat, Blackfriars Records, p. 121.]

When in 1583 John Lyly became interested in the First Blackfriars Playhouse, he obtained a lease of the rooms, but it is not clear for what purpose. Later he sold the lease to Rocho Bonetti, the Italian fencing-master, who established there his famous school of fence.[300] In George Silver's Paradoxes of Defence, 1599, is a description of Bonetti's school, which will, I think, help us to reconstruct in our imagination the "great room, paved" which was destined to become Shakespeare's playhouse:

He caused to be fairely drawne and set round about the schoole all the Noblemen's and Gentlemen's Armes that were his schollers, and, hanging right under their Armes, their Rapiers, Daggers, Gloves of Male, and Gantlets. Also he had benches and stooles, the roome being verie large, for Gentlemen to sit about his schoole to behold his teaching.

He taught none commonly under twentie, fortie, fifty, or an hundred pounds. And because all things should be verie necessary for the Noblemen and Gentlemen, he had in his schoole a large square table, with a green carpet, done round with a verie brode rich fringe of gold; alwaies standing upon it a verie faire standish covered with crimson velvet, with inke, pens, pen-dust, and sealing-waxe, and quiers of verie excellent fine paper, gilded, readie for the Noblemen and Gentlemen (upon occasion) to write their letters, being then desirous to follow their fight, to send their men to dispatch their businesse.

And to know how the time passed, he had in one corner of his Schoole, a Clocke, with a verie faire large diall; he had within that Schoole a roome the which he called his privie schoole, with manie weapons therein, where he did teach his schollers his secret fight, after he had perfectly taught them their rules. He was verie much loved in the Court.

[Footnote 300: Ibid., p. 122.]

We are further told by Silver that Bonetti took it upon himself "to hit anie Englishman with a thrust upon anie button." It is no wonder that Shakespeare ridiculed him in Romeo and Juliet as "the very butcher of a silk button," and laughed at his school and his fantastic fencing-terms:

Mercutio. Ah! the immortal "passado"! the "punto reverso"! the "hay"!

Benvolio. The what?

Mercutio. The pox of such antick, lisping, affecting fantasticoes! These new tuners of accents!—"By Jesu, a very good blade!"

At the date of the sale to Burbage, February 4, 1596, the fencing school of Bonetti, had become "those rooms and lodgings, with the kitchen thereunto adjoining, called the Middle Rooms or Middle Stories, late being in the tenure or occupation of Rocco Bonetti, and now being in the tenure or occupation of Thomas Bruskett, gentleman."

To make his playhouse Burbage removed all the partitions in the Middle Rooms, and restored the Parlor to its original form—a great room covering the entire breadth of the building, and extending fifty-two feet in length from north to south. To this he added the Hall at the north, which then existed as two rooms in the occupation of Peter Johnson. The Hall and Parlor when combined made an auditorium described as "per estimacionem in longitudine ab australe ad borealem partem eiusdem sexaginta et sex pedes assissae sit plus sive minus, et in latitudine ab occidentale ad orientalem partem eiusdem quadraginto et sex pedes assissae sit plus sive minus."[301] The forty-six feet of width corresponds to the interior width of the Frater building, for although it was fifty-two feet wide in outside measurement, the stone walls were three feet thick. The sixty-six feet of length probably represents the fifty-two feet of the Parlor plus the breadth of the Hall.

[Footnote 301: Wallace, The Children of the Chapel at Blackfriars, p. 39, note 1.]

The ceiling of these two rooms must have been of unusual height. The Infirmary, which was below the Parliament Chamber at the south, was three stories high; and the windows of the Parlor, if we may believe Pierce the Ploughman, were "wrought as a chirche":

An halle for an heygh kinge . an household to holden, With brode bordes abouten . y-benched well clene, With windowes of glas . wrought as a chirche.



As a result Burbage was able to construct within the auditorium at least two galleries,[302] after the manner of the public theatres. The Parliament Chamber above was kept, as I have stated, for residential purposes. This is why the various legal documents almost invariably refer to the playhouse as "that great hall or room, with the rooms over the same."[303]

[Footnote 302: Mr. Wallace, The Children of the Chapel at Blackfriars, p. 42, quotes from the Epilogue to Marston's The Dutch Courtesan, acted at Blackfriars, "And now, my fine Heliconian gallants, and you, my worshipful friends in the middle region," and adds that the "reference to 'the middle region' makes it clear there were three" galleries. Does it not, however, indicate that there were only two galleries?]

[Footnote 303: See the documents printed in Fleay's A Chronicle History of the London Stage, pp. 211, 215, 240, etc. Mr. Wallace, however (The Children of the Chapel at Blackfriars, p. 40 ff.), would have us believe that an additional story was added: "the roof was changed, and rooms, probably of the usual dormer sort, were built above." I am quite sure he is mistaken.]

The main entrance to the playhouse was at the north, over the "great yard" which extended from the Pipe Office to Water Lane.[304] The stage was opposite this entrance, or at the southern end of the hall, as is shown by one of the documents printed by Mr. Wallace.[305] Since the building was not, like the other playhouses of London, open to the sky, the illumination was supplied by candles, hung in branches over the stage; as Gerschow noted, after visiting Blackfriars, "alle bey Lichte agiret, welches ein gross Ansehen macht."[306] The obvious advantage of artificial light for producing beautiful stage effects must have added not a little to the popularity of the Blackfriars Playhouse.

[Footnote 304: Cf. Playhouse Yard in the London of to-day.]

[Footnote 305: The Children of the Chapel at Blackfriars, p. 43, note 3.]

[Footnote 306: The Diary of the Duke of Stettin-Pomerania, in Transactions of the Royal Historical Society (1892), VI, 26.]

The cost of all the alterations and the equipment could hardly have been less than L300, so that the total cost of the property was at least L900, or in modern valuation approximately $35,000. Burbage's sons, in referring to the building years later, declared that their father had "made it into a playhouse with great charge."

"And," they added significantly, "with great trouble." The aristocratic inhabitants of the Blackfriars precinct did not welcome the appearance in their midst of a "public," or, as some more scornfully designated it, a "common," playhouse; and when they discovered the intentions of Burbage, they wrote a strong petition to the Privy Council against the undertaking. This petition, presented to the Council in November, 1596, I quote below in part:

To the right honorable the Lords and others of Her Majesty's most honorable Privy Council.—Humbly shewing and beseeching your honors, the inhabitants of the precinct of the Blackfriars, London, that whereas one Burbage hath lately bought certain rooms in the same precinct near adjoining unto the dwelling houses of the right honorable the Lord Chamberlaine [Lord Cobham] and the Lord of Hunsdon, which rooms the said Burbage is now altering, and meaneth very shortly to convert and turn the same into a common playhouse, which will grow to be a very great annoyance and trouble, not only to all the noblemen and gentlemen thereabout inhabiting, but also a general inconvenience to all the inhabitants of the same precinct, both by reason of the great resort and gathering together of all manner of vagrant and lewd persons ... as also for that there hath not at any time heretofore been used any common playhouse within the same precinct, but that now all players being banished by the Lord Mayor from playing within the city ... they now think to plant themselves in liberties, etc.[307]

[Footnote 307: For the full document see Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines, I, 304. For the date, see The Malone Society's Collections, I, 91.]

The first person to sign the petition was the Dowager Lady Elizabeth Russell; the second was none other than George Cary, Lord Hunsdon, at the time the patron of Burbage's company of actors.[308] It is not surprising, therefore, that as a result of this petition the Lords of the Privy Council (of which Lord Cobham was a conspicuous member) issued an order in which they "forbad the use of the said house for plays."[309] This order wrecked the plans of Burbage quite as effectively as did the stubbornness of Gyles Alleyn.

[Footnote 308: Shortly after this he was appointed Lord Chamberlain, under which name his troupe was subsequently known.]

[Footnote 309: Petition of 1619, The Malone Society's Collections, I, 91.]

Possibly the mental distress Burbage suffered at the hands of the Privy Council and of Gyles Alleyn affected his health; at least he did not long survive this last sling of fortune. In February, 1597, just before the expiration of the Alleyn lease, he died, leaving the Theatre to his son Cuthbert, the bookseller, Blackfriars to his actor-son, Richard, the star of Shakespeare's troupe, and his troubles to both. With good reason Cuthbert declared many years later that the ultimate success of London theatres had "been purchased by the infinite cost and pains of the family of Burbages."

When later in 1597 the Lord Chamberlain's Players were forced to leave Cuthbert's Theatre, Richard Burbage was not able to establish them in his comfortable Blackfriars house; instead, they first went to the old Curtain in Shoreditch, and then, under the leadership of the Burbage sons, erected for themselves a brand-new home on the Bankside, called "The Globe."

The order of the Privy Council had summarily forbidden the use of Blackfriars as a "public" playhouse. Its proprietor, however, Richard Burbage, might take advantage of the precedent established in the days of Farrant, and let the building for use as a "private" theatre.[310] Exactly when he was first able to lease the building as a "private" house we do not know, for the history of the building between 1597 (when it was completed) and 1600 (when it was certainly occupied by the Children of the Chapel) is very indistinct. We have no definite evidence to connect the Chapel Children, or, indeed, any specific troupe, with Blackfriars during these years. Yet prior to 1600 the building seems to have been used for acting. Richard Burbage himself seems to say so. In leasing the building to Evans, in 1600, he says that he considered "with himself that" Evans could not pay the rent "except the said Evans could erect and keep a company of playing-boys or others to play plays and interludes in the said playhouse in such sort as before time had been there used."[311] Now, unless this refers to Farrant's management of the Chapel Boys in Blackfriars—nearly a quarter of a century earlier—it means that before 1600 some actors, presumably "playing-boys," had used Burbage's theatre. Moreover, there seems to be evidence to show that the troupe thus vaguely referred to was under the management of Evans; for, in referring to his lease of Blackfriars in 1600, Evans describes the playhouse as "then or late in the tenure or occupation of your said oratour."[312] What these vague references mean we cannot now with our limited knowledge determine. But there is not sufficient evidence to warrant the usual assumption that Evans and Giles had opened the Blackfriars with the Children of the Chapel in 1597.[313]

[Footnote 310: The constables and other officers in the Petition of 1619 say: "The owner of the said playhouse, doth under the name of a private house ... convert the said house to a public playhouse." (The Malone Society's Collections, I, 91.)]

[Footnote 311: Fleay, A Chronicle History of the London Stage, p. 234.]

[Footnote 312: Ibid., p. 211.]

[Footnote 313: This theory has been urged by Fleay, by Mr. Wallace in The Children of the Chapel at Blackfriars, and by others.]

The known history of Blackfriars as a regular theatre may be said to begin in the autumn of 1600. On September 2 of that year, Henry Evans signed a lease of the playhouse for a period of twenty-one years, at an annual rental of L40. This interesting step on the part of Evans calls for a word of explanation as to his plans.

The Children of the Chapel Royal, who had attained such glory at Blackfriars during the Farrant-Hunnis-Evans-Oxford-Lyly regime, had thereafter sunk into dramatic insignificance. Since 1584, when Lyly was forced to give up his playhouse, they had not presented a play at Court. Probably they did not entirely cease to act, for they can be vaguely traced in the provinces during a part of this period; but their dramatic glory was almost wholly eclipsed. Evans, who had managed the Boys under Hunnis, Oxford, and Lyly, hoped now to reestablish the Children of the Chapel at Blackfriars as they had been in his younger days. Like James Burbage, he was a man of ideas. His plan was to interest in his undertaking the Master of the Chapel, Nathaniel Giles, who had succeeded to the office at the death of Hunnis in 1597, and then to make practical use of the patent granted to the Masters of the Children to take up boys for Her Majesty's service. Such a patent, in the normal course of events, had been granted to Giles, as it had been to his predecessors. It read in part as follows:

Elizabeth, by the grace of God, &c., to all mayors, sheriffs, bailiffs, constables, and all other our officers, greeting. For that it is meet that our Chapel Royal should be furnished with well-singing children from time to time, we have, and by these presents do authorize our well-beloved servant, Nathaniel Giles, Master of our Children of our said Chapel, or his deputy, being by his bill subscribed and sealed, so authorized, and having this our present commission with him, to take such and so many children as he, or his sufficient deputy, shall think meet, in all cathedral, collegiate, parish churches, chapels, or any other place or places, as well within liberty as without, within this our realm of England, whatsoever they be.[314]

[Footnote 314: The full commission is printed in Wallace, The Children of the Chapel at Blackfriars, p. 61.]

In such a commission Evans saw wonderful possibilities. He reasoned that since the Queen had forced upon the Chapel Children the twofold service of singing at royal worship and of acting plays for royal entertainment, this twofold service should be met by a twofold organization, the one part designed mainly to furnish sacred music, the other designed mainly to furnish plays. Such a dual organization, it seemed to him, was now more or less necessary, since the number of boy choristers in the Chapel Royal was limited to twelve, whereas the acting of plays demanded at least twice as many. Once the principle that the Chapel Royal should supply the Queen with plays was granted, the commission could be used to furnish the necessary actors; and the old fiction, established by Farrant and Hunnis, of using a "private" playhouse as a means of exercising or training the boys for Court service, would enable the promoters to give public performances and thus handsomely reimburse themselves for their trouble.

Such was Evans's scheme, based upon his former experience with the Children at Farrant's Blackfriars, and suggested, perhaps, by the existence of Burbage's Blackfriars now forbidden to the "common" players. He presented his scheme to Giles, the Master of the Children; and Giles, no doubt, presented it at Court; for he would hardly dare thus abuse the Queen's commission, or thus make a public spectacle of the royal choristers, without in some way first consulting Her Majesty, and securing at least her tacit consent. That Giles and Evans did secure royal permission to put their scheme into operation is certain, although the exact nature of this permission is not clear. Later, for misdemeanors on the part of the management, the Star Chamber ordered "that all assurances made to the said Evans concerning the said house, or plays, or interludes, should be utterly void, and to be delivered up to be cancelled."[315]

[Footnote 315: Fleay, A Chronicle History of the London Stage, p. 248.]

Armed with these written "assurances," and with the royal commission to take up children, Evans and Giles began to form their company. This explains the language used by Heminges and Burbage: "let the said playhouse unto Henry Evans ... who intended then presently to erect or set up a company of boys."[316] Their method of recruiting players may best be told by Henry Clifton, in his complaint to the Queen:

But so it is, most excellent Sovereign, that the said Nathaniel Giles, confederating himself with one James Robinson, Henry Evans, and others,[317] yet unto Your Majesty's said subject unknown how [many], by color of Your Majesty's said letters patents, and the trust by Your Highness thereby to him, the said Nathaniel Giles, committed, endeavoring, conspiring, and complotting how to oppress diverse of Your Majesty's humble and faithful subjects, and thereby to make unto themselves an unlawful gain and benefit, they, the said confederates, devised, conspired, and concluded, for their own corrupt gain and lucre, to erect, set up, furnish, and maintain a playhouse, or place in the Blackfriars, within Your Majesty's city of London; and to the end they might the better furnish their said plays and interludes with children, whom they thought most fittest to act and furnish the said plays, they, the said confederates, abusing the authority and trust by Your Highness to him, the said Nathaniel Giles, and his deputy or deputies, by Your Highness's said letters patents given and reposed, hath, sithence Your Majesty's last free and general pardon, most wrongfully, unduly, and unjustly taken diverse and several children from diverse and sundry schools of learning and other places, and apprentices to men of trade from their masters, no way fitting for Your Majesty's service in or for your Chapel Royal, but the children have so taken and employed in acting and furnishing of the said plays and interludes, so by them complotted and agreed to be erected, furnished, and maintained, against the wills of the said children, their parents, tutors, masters, and governors, and to the no small grief and oppressions [of] Your Majesty's true and faithful subjects. Amongst which numbers, so by the persons aforesaid and their agents so unjustly taken, used and employed, they have unduly taken and so employed one John Chappell, a grammar school scholar of one Mr. Spykes School near Cripplegate, London; John Motteram, a grammar scholar in the free school at Westminster; Nathaniel Field, a scholar of a grammar school in London kept by one Mr. Monkaster;[318] Alvery Trussell, an apprentice to one Thomas Gyles; one Phillipp Pykman and [one] Thomas Grymes, apprentices to Richard and George Chambers; Salmon Pavy,[319] apprentice to one Peerce; being children no way able or fit for singing, nor by any the said confederates endeavoured to be taught to sing, but by them, the said confederates, abusively employed, as aforesaid, only in plays and interludes.[320]

[Footnote 316: Ibid., p. 234. Note that Evans is not to "continue" a troupe there, as Fleay and Wallace believe, but to "erect" one.]

[Footnote 317: Possibly Robinson and the "others" were merely deputies.]

[Footnote 318: Field became later famous both as an actor and playwright. His portrait is preserved at Dulwich College.]

[Footnote 319: Salathiel Pavy, whose excellent acting is celebrated in Jonson's tender elegy, quoted in part below.]

[Footnote 320: Star Chamber Proceedings, printed in full by Fleay, op. cit., p. 127.]

In spite of the obvious animosity inspiring Clifton's words, we get from his complaint a clear notion of how Evans and Giles supplemented the Children of the Chapel proper with actors. In a short time they brought together at Blackfriars a remarkable troupe of boy-players, who, with Jonson and Chapman as their poets, began to astonish London. For, in spite of certain limitations, "the children" could act with a charm and a grace that often made them more attractive than their grown-up rivals. Middleton advises the London gallant "to call in at the Blackfriars, where he should see a nest of boys able to ravish a man."[321] Jonson gives eloquent testimony to the power of little Salathiel Pavy to portray the character of old age:

Years he numbered scarce thirteen When Fates turned cruel, Yet three filled zodiacs had he been The stage's jewel; And did act, what now we moan, Old men so duly, As, sooth, the Parcae thought him one, He played so truly.[322]

[Footnote 321: Father Hubbard's Tales (ed. Bullen, VIII, 77).]

[Footnote 322: Jonson, Epigrams, CXX, An Epitaph on Salathiel Pavy, a Child of Queen Elizabeth's Chapel.]

And Samuel Pepys records the effectiveness of a child-actor in the role of women: "One Kinaston, a boy, acted the Duke's sister, but made the loveliest lady that ever I saw in my life."[323]

[Footnote 323: Diary, August 18, 1660.]

Moreover, to expert acting these Boys of the Chapel Royal added the charms of vocal and instrumental music, for which many of them had been specially trained. The Duke of Stettin-Pomerania, who upon his grand tour of the European countries in 1602 attended a play at Blackfriars, bears eloquent testimony to the musical powers of the children: "For a whole hour before the play begins, one listens to charming [koestliche] instrumental music played on organs, lutes, pandorins, mandolins, violins, and flutes; as, indeed, on this occasion, a boy sang cum voce tremula to the accompaniment of a bass-viol, so delightfully [lieblich] that, if the Nuns at Milan did not excel him, we had not heard his equal in our travels."[324] In addition, the Children were provided with splendid apparel—though not at the cost of the Queen, as Mr. Wallace contends.[325] Naturally they became popular. On January 6, 1601, they were summoned to Court to entertain Her Majesty—the first recorded performance of the Children of the Chapel at Court since the year 1584, when Sir William More closed the first Blackfriars.

[Footnote 324: The Diary of the Duke of Stettin-Pomerania, printed in Transactions of the Royal Historical Society (1890). The diary was written by the Duke's tutor, Gerschow, at the express command of the Duke.]

[Footnote 325: It is hard to believe Mr. Wallace's novel theory that the Children of the Chapel were subsidized by Elizabeth, as presented in his otherwise valuable The Children of the Chapel at Blackfriars. Burbage and Heminges knew nothing of such a royal patronage at Blackfriars (see Fleay, op. cit., p. 236), nor did Kirkham, the Yeoman of the Revels (ibid., p. 248). Kirkham and his partners spent L600 on apparel, etc., according to Kirkham's statement.]

Perhaps the most interesting testimony to the success of the Chapel Children in their new playhouse is that uttered by Shakespeare in Hamlet (1601), in which he speaks of the performances by the "little eyases" as a "late innovation." The success of the "innovation" had driven Shakespeare and his troupe of grown-up actors to close the Globe and travel in the country, even though they had Hamlet as an attraction. The good-natured way in which Shakespeare treats the situation is worthy of special observation:

Ham. What players are they?

Ros. Even those you were wont to take delight in, the tragedians of the city.[326]

Ham. How chances it they travel? their residence, both in reputation and profit, was better both ways.[327]

Ros. I think their inhibition comes by means of the late innovation.

Ham. Do they hold the same estimation they did when I was in the city? are they so followed?

Ros. No, indeed, they are not!

Ham. How comes it? do they grow rusty?

Ros. Nay, their endeavour keeps in the wonted pace; but there is, sir, an aerie of children,[328] little eyases, that cry out on the top of question, and are most tyrannically clapped for 't. These are now the fashion, and so berattle the "common stages"—so they call them—that many wearing rapiers [i.e., gallants] are afraid of goose-quills, and dare scarce come thither.

Ham. What! are they children? who maintains 'em? how are they escoted? Will they pursue the quality no longer than they can sing?

[Footnote 326: The Children were acting light comedies such as Cynthia's Revels; the Lord Chamberlain's Men were acting Hamlet.]

[Footnote 327: Shakespeare's troupe is known to have been traveling in the spring of 1601.]

[Footnote 328: Cf. Middleton's Father Hubbard's Tales, already quoted, "a nest of boys." Possibly the idea was suggested by the fact that the children were lodged and fed in the building.]

The passage ends with the question from Hamlet: "Do the boys carry it away?" which gives Rosencrantz an opportunity to pun on the sign of the Globe Playhouse: "Ay, that they do, my lord; Hercules and his load, too."

Shortly after the great dramatist had penned these words, the management of Blackfriars met with disaster. The cause, however, went back to December 13, 1600, when Giles and Evans were gathering their players. In their overweening confidence they made a stupid blunder in "taking up" for their troupe the only son and heir of Henry Clifton, a well-to-do gentleman of Norfolk, who had come to London for the purpose of educating the boy. Clifton says in his complaint that Giles, Evans, and their confederates, "well knowing that your subject's said son had no manner of sight in song, nor skill in music," on the 13th day of December, 1600, did "waylay the said Thomas Clifton" as he was "walking quietly from your subject's said house towards the said school," and "with great force and violence did seize and surprise, and him with like force and violence did, to the great terror and hurt of him, the said Thomas Clifton, haul, pull, drag, and carry away to the said playhouse." As soon as the father learned of this, he hurried to the playhouse and "made request to have his said son released." But Giles and Evans "utterly and scornfully refused to do" this. Whereupon Clifton threatened to complain to the Privy Council. But Evans and Giles "in very scornful manner willed your said subject to complain to whom he would." Clifton suggested that "it was not fit that a gentleman of his sort should have his son and heir (and that his only son) to be so basely used." Giles and Evans "most arrogantly then and there answered that they had authority sufficient so to take any nobleman's son in this land"; and further to irritate the father, they immediately put into young Thomas's hand "a scroll of paper, containing part of one of their said plays or interludes, and him, the said Thomas Clifton, commanded to learn the same by heart," with the admonition that "if he did not obey the said Evans, he should be surely whipped."[329]

[Footnote 329: The full complaint is printed by Fleay, op. cit., p. 127.]

Clifton at once appealed to his friend, Sir John Fortescue, a member of the Privy Council, at whose order young Thomas was released and sent back to his studies. Apparently this ended the episode. But Clifton, nourishing his animosity, began to investigate the management of Blackfriars, and to collect evidence of similar abuses of the Queen's commission, with the object of making complaint to the Star Chamber. In October, 1601, Evans, it seems, learned of Clifton's purpose, for on the 21st of that month he deeded all his property to his son-in-law, Alexander Hawkins.[330] Clifton finally presented his complaint to the Star Chamber on December 15, 1601,[331] but his complaint was probably not acted on until early in 1602, for during the Christmas holidays the Children were summoned as usual to present their play before the Queen.[332]

[Footnote 330: Ibid., pp. 244-45.]

[Footnote 331: Wallace, The Children of the Chapel at Blackfriars, p. 84, note 4.]

[Footnote 332: On December 29, 1601, Sir Dudley Carleton wrote to his friend John Chamberlain: "The Queen dined this day privately at My Lord Chamberlain's. I came even now from the Blackfriars, where I saw her at the play with all her candidae auditrices." From this it has been generally assumed that Elizabeth visited the playhouse in Blackfriars to see the Children act there; and Mr. Wallace, in his The Children of the Chapel at Blackfriars, pp. 26, 87, 95-97, lays great emphasis upon it to show that the Queen was directly responsible for establishing and managing the Children at Blackfriars. But the assumption that the Queen attended a performance at the Blackfriars Playhouse is, I think, unwarranted. The Lord Chamberlain at this time was Lord Hunsdon, who lived "in the Blackfriars." No doubt on this Christmas occasion he entertained the Queen with a great dinner, and after the dinner with a play given, not in a playhouse, but in his mansion. (Lord Cobham, who was formerly Lord Chamberlain, and who also lived in Blackfriars, had similarly entertained the Queen with plays "in Blackfriars"; cf. also The Malone Society's Collections, II, 52.) Furthermore, the actors on this occasion were probably not the Children of the Chapel, as Mr. Wallace thinks, but Lord Hunsdon's own troupe. Possibly one of Shakespeare's new plays (Hamlet?) was then presented before the Queen for the first time.]

Shortly after this, however, the Star Chamber passed on Clifton's complaint. The decree itself is lost, but the following reference to it is made in a subsequent lawsuit: "The said Evans ... was censured by the right honorable Court of Star Chamber for his unorderly carriage and behaviour in taking up of gentlemen's children against their wills and to employ them for players, and for other misdemeanors in the said Decree contained; and further that all assurances made to the said Evans concerning the said house or plays or interludes should be utterly void, and to be delivered up to be canceled."[333] Doubtless the decree fell with equal force upon Giles and the others connected with the enterprise, for after the Star Chamber decree Giles and Robinson disappear from the management of the playhouse. Evans was forbidden to have any connection with plays there; and for a time, no doubt, the building was closed.

[Footnote 333: Fleay, op. cit., p. 248.]

Evans, however, still held the lease, and was under the necessity of paying the rent as before. Then came forward Edward Kirkham, who, in his official capacity as Yeoman of the Revels, had become acquainted with the dramatic activities of the Children of the Chapel. He saw an opportunity to take over the Blackfriars venture now that Evans and probably Giles had been forbidden by the Star Chamber to have any connection with plays in that building. Having associated with him William Rastell, a merchant, and Thomas Kendall,[334] a haberdasher, he made overtures to Evans, the owner of the lease. Evans, however, was determined to retain a half-interest in the playhouse, and to evade the order of the Star Chamber by using his son-in-law, Alexander Hawkins, as his agent. Accordingly, on April 20, 1602, "Articles of Agreement" were signed between Evans and Hawkins on the one part, and Kirkham, Rastell, and Kendall on the other part, whereby the latter were admitted to a half-interest in the playhouse and in the troupe of child-actors. Kirkham, Rastell, and Kendall agreed to pay one-half of the annual rent of L40,[335] to pay one-half of the repairs on the building, and in addition to spend L400 on apparel and furnishings for the troupe. Under this reorganization—with Evans as a secret partner—the Children continued to act with their customary success.

[Footnote 334: We find in Henslowe's Diary a player named William Kendall, but we do not know that he was related to Thomas.]

[Footnote 335: The agreements remind one of the organization of the Globe. It seems clear that Kirkham, Rastell, and Kendall held their moiety in joint tenancy.]

About a month later, however, Lord Hunsdon, the Lord Chamberlain, whose house adjoined Blackfriars, seems to have inquired into the affairs of the new organization.[336] What Kirkham told him led him to order Evans off the premises. Evans informs us that he was "commanded by his Lordship to avoid and leave the same; for fear of whose displeasure, the complainant [Evans] was forced to leave the country."[337] He felt it prudent to remain away from London "for a long space and time"; yet he "lost nothing," for "he left the said Alexander Hawkins to deal for him and to take such benefit of the said house as should belong unto him in his absence."[338]

[Footnote 336: Fleay, op. cit., pp. 211-13; 216; 220.]

[Footnote 337: Ibid., p. 220.]

[Footnote 338: Ibid., p. 217.]

If we may judge from the enthusiastic account given by the Duke of Stettin-Pomerania, who visited Blackfriars in the September following, the Children were just as effective under Kirkham's management as they had been under the management of Giles and Evans. It is to be noted, however, that Elizabeth did not again invite the Blackfriars troupe to the Court.

The death of the Queen in 1603 led to the closing of all playhouses. This was followed by a long attack of the plague, so that for many months Blackfriars was closed, and "by reason thereof no such profit and commodity was raised and made of and by the said playhouse as was hoped for."[339] Evans actually "treated" with Richard Burbage "about the surrendering and giving up the said lease," but Burbage declined to consider the matter.

[Footnote 339: Fleay, op. cit., p. 235.]

Shortly after this the plague ceased, and acting, stimulated by King James's patronage, was resumed with fervor. The Blackfriars Company was reorganized under Edward Kirkham, Alexander Hawkins (acting for Evans), Thomas Kendall, and Robert Payne: and on February 4, 1604, it secured a royal patent to play under the title "The Children of the Queen's Revels."[340] According to this patent, the poet Samuel Daniel was specially appointed to license their plays: "Provided always that no such plays or shows shall be presented before the said Queen our wife by the said Children, or by them anywhere publicly acted, but by the approbation and allowance of Samuel Daniel, whom her pleasure is to appoint for that purpose." At this time, too, or not long after, John Marston was allowed a share in the organization, and thus was retained as one of its regular playwrights.

[Footnote 340: For the patent, commonly misdated January 30, see The Malone Society's Collections, I, 267. Mr. Wallace, in The Century Magazine (September, 1910, p. 747), says that the company secured its patent "through the intercessions of the poet Samuel Daniel." It is true that the Children of Her Majesty's Royal Chamber of Bristol secured their patent in 1615 at the intercession of Daniel, but I know of no evidence that he intervened in behalf of the Blackfriars troupe.]

The success of the new company is indicated by the fact that it was summoned to present a play at Court in February, 1604, and again two plays in January, 1605. Evans's activity in the management of the troupe in spite of the order of the Star Chamber is evident from the fact that the payment for the last two court performances was made directly to him.

In the spring of 1604 the company gave serious offense by acting Samuel Daniel's Philotas, which was supposed to relate to the unfortunate Earl of Essex; but the blame must have fallen largely on Daniel, who not only wrote the play, but also licensed its performance. He was summoned before the Privy Council to explain, and seems to have fully proved his innocence. Shortly after this he published the play with an apology affixed.[341]

[Footnote 341: A letter from Daniel to the Earl of Devonshire vindicating the play is printed in Grosart's Daniel, I, xxii.]

The following year the Children gave much more serious offense by acting Eastward Hoe, a comedy in which Marston, Chapman, and Jonson collaborated. Not only did the play ridicule the Scots in general, and King James's creation of innumerable knights in particular, but one of the little actors was actually made, it seems, to mimic the royal brogue: "I ken the man weel; he is one of my thirty pound Knights." Marston escaped by timely flight, but Jonson and Chapman were arrested and lodged in jail, and were for a time in some danger of having their nostrils slit and their ears cropped. Both Chapman and Jonson asserted that they were wholly innocent, and Chapman openly put the blame of the offensive passages on Marston.[342] Marston, however, was beyond the reach of the King's wrath, so His Majesty punished instead the men in control of Blackfriars. It was discovered that the manager, Kirkham, had presented the play without securing the Lord Chamberlain's allowance. As a result, he and the others in charge of the Children were prohibited from any further connection with the playhouse. This doubtless explains the fact that Kirkham shortly after appears as one of the managers of Paul's Boys.[343] It explains, also, the following statement made by Evans in the course of one of the later legal documents: "After the King's most excellent Majesty, upon some misdemeanors committed in or about the plays there, and specially upon the defendant's [Kirkham's] acts and doings there, had prohibited that no plays should be more used there," etc.[344] Not only was Kirkham driven from the management of the troupe and the playhouse closed for a time, but the Children were denied the Queen's patronage. No longer were they allowed to use the high-sounding title "The Children of the Queen's Majesty's Revels"; instead, we find them described merely as "The Children of the Revels," or as "The Children of Blackfriars."[345]

[Footnote 342: See Dobell, "Newly Discovered Documents," in The Athenaeum, March 30, 1901.]

[Footnote 343: Cunningham, Revels, p. xxxviii.]

[Footnote 344: Fleay, op. cit., p. 221.]

[Footnote 345: Except carelessly, as when sometimes called "The Children of the Chapel."]

For a time, no doubt, affairs at the playhouse were at a standstill. Evans again sought to surrender his lease to Burbage, but without success.[346] Marston, having escaped the wrath of the King by flight, decided to end his career as a playwright and turn country parson. It was shortly after this, in all probability, that he sold his share in the Blackfriars organization to one Robert Keysar, a goldsmith of London, for the sum of L100.[347]

[Footnote 346: Wallace, Shakespeare and his London Associates, p. 82.]

[Footnote 347: Ibid., pp. 81, 86, 89, 93.]

Keysar, it seems, undertook to reopen the playhouse, and to continue the Children there at his own expense.[348] From the proprietors he rented the playhouse, the stock of apparel, the furnishings, and playbooks. This, I take it, explains the puzzling statement made by Kirkham some years later:

This repliant [Kirkham] and his said partners [Rastell and Kendall] have had and received the sum of one hundred pounds per annum for their part and moiety in the premises without any manner of charges whatsoever [i.e., during Kirkham's management of the troupe prior to 1605].[349] And after that this replyant and his said partners had received the foresaid profits [i.e., after Kirkham and his partners had to give up the management of the Children in 1605], the said Children, which the said Evans in his answer affirmeth to be the Queen's Children [i.e., they are no longer the Queen's Children, for after 1605 they had been deprived of the Queen's patronage; but Kirkham was in error, for Evans with legal precision had referred to the company as 'The Queen's Majesty's Children of the Revels (for so it was often called)'] were masters themselves [i.e., their own managers], and this complainant and his said partners received of them, and of one Keysar who was interest with them, above the sum of one hundred and fifty pounds per annum only for the use of the said great hall, without all manner of charges, as this replyant will make it manifest to this honorable court.[350]

[Footnote 348: Wallace, Shakespeare and his London Associates, p. 80 ff.]

[Footnote 349: That is, L33, more or less, a share. We have documentary evidence to show that a share in the Red Bull produced L30, and a share in the Globe L30 to L40 per annum.]

[Footnote 350: Fleay, op. cit., p. 249. The yearly rental must have included not only the playhouse and its equipment, but the playbooks, apparel, properties, etc., belonging to the Children. These were on July 26, 1608, divided up among the sharers, Kirkham, Rastell, Kendall, and Evans.]

Under Keysar's management the Blackfriars troupe continued to act as the Children of the Revels. But, unfortunately, they had not learned wisdom from their recent experience, and in the very following year we find them again in serious trouble. John Day's Isle of Guls, acted in February, 1606, gave great offense to the Court. Sir Edward Hoby, in a letter to Sir Thomas Edwards,[351] writes: "At this time was much speech of a play in the Blackfriars, where, in the Isle of Guls, from the highest to the lowest, all men's parts were acted of two diverse nations. As I understand, sundry were committed to Bridewell."[352]

[Footnote 351: Birch, Court and Times of James the First, I, 60; quoted by E.K. Chambers, in Modern Language Review, IV, 158.]

[Footnote 352: Possibly an aftermath of the King's displeasure is to be found in the cancellation of Giles's long-standing commission to take up boys for the Chapel, and the issuance of a new commission to him, November 7, 1606, with the distinct proviso that "none of the said choristers or children of the Chapel so to be taken by force of this commission shall be used or employed as commedians or stage players." (The Malone Society's Collections, I, 357.)]

The Children, however, were soon allowed to resume playing, and they continued for a time without mishap. But in the early spring of 1608 they committed the most serious offense of all by acting Chapman's Conspiracy and Tragedy of Charles, Duke of Byron. The French Ambassador took umbrage at the uncomplimentary representation of the contemporary French Court, and had an order made forbidding them to act the play. But the Children, "voyant toute la Cour dehors, ne laisserent de la faire, et non seulement cela, mais y introduiserent la Reine et Madame de Verneuil, traitant celle-ci fort mal de paroles, et lui donnant un soufflet." Whereupon the French Ambassador made special complaint to Salisbury, who ordered the arrest of the author and the actors. "Toutefois il ne s'en trouva que trois, qui aussi-tot furent menes a la prison ou ils sont encore; mais le principal, qui est le compositeur, echapa."[353] The Ambassador observes also that a few days before the Children of the Revels had given offense by a play on King James: "Un jour ou deux avant, ils avoient depeche leur Roi, sa mine d'Ecosse, et tous ses Favoris d'une etrange sorte; car apres lui avoir fait depiter le Ciel sur le vol d'un oisseau, et fait battre un Gentilhomme pour avoir rompu ses chiens, ils le depeignoient ivre pour le moins une fois le jour."[354] As a result of these two offenses, coming as a climax to a long series of such offenses, the King was "extremement irrite contre ces marauds-la," and gave order for their immediate suppression. This marked the end of the child-actors at Blackfriars.

[Footnote 353: From the report of the French Ambassador, M. de la Boderie, to M. de Puisieux at Paris, Ambassades de Monsieur de la Boderie en Angleterre, 1750, III, 196; quoted by E.K. Chambers in Modern Language Review, IV, 158.]

[Footnote 354: The name of this play is not known; probably the King was satirized in a comic scene foisted upon an otherwise innocent piece. Mr. Wallace, in The Century Magazine (September, 1910, p. 747), says: "From a document I have found in France the Blackfriars boys now satirized the King's efforts to raise money, made local jokes on the recent discovery of his silver mine in Scotland, brought him on the stage as drunk, and showed such to be his condition at least three times a day, caricatured him in his favorite pastime of hawking, and represented him as swearing and cursing at a gentleman for losing a bird." I do not know what document Mr. Wallace has found; the French document quoted above has been known for a long time.]

Naturally Kirkham, Rastell, and Kendall, since there was "no profit made of the said house, but a continual rent of forty pounds to be paid for the same," became sick of their bargain with Evans. An additional reason for their wishing to withdraw finally from the enterprise was the rapid increase of the plague, which about July 25 closed all playhouses. So Kirkham, "at or about the 26 of July, 1608, caused the apparrels, properties, and goods belonging to the copartners, sharers, and masters" to be divided. Kirkham and his associates took away their portions, and "quit the place," the one-time manager using to Evans some unkind words: "said he would deal no more with it, 'for,' quod he, 'it is a base thing,' or used words to such or very like effect."[355] Evans, thus deserted by Kirkham, Rastell, and Kendall, regarded the organization of the Blackfriars as dissolved; he "delivered up their commission which he had under the Great Seal authorizing them to play, and discharged diverse of the partners and poets."

[Footnote 355: Fleay, op. cit., pp. 221-22.]

Robert Keysar, however, the old manager, laid plans to keep the Children together, and continue them as a troupe after the cessation of the plague. For a while, we are told, he maintained them at his own expense, "in hope to have enjoyed his said bargain ... upon the ceasing of the general sickness."[356] And he expected, by virtue of the share he had purchased from John Marston, to be able to use the Blackfriars Playhouse for his purpose.

[Footnote 356: Wallace, Shakespeare and his London Associates, pp. 83, 97.]

In the meanwhile Evans began negotiations with Burbage for the surrender of the lease: "By reason the said premises lay then and had long lyen void and without use for plays, whereby the same became not only burthensome and unprofitable unto the said Evans, but also ran far into decay for want of reparations ... the said Evans began to treat with the said Richard Burbage about a surrender of the said Evans his said lease."[357] This time Burbage listened to the proposal, for he and his fellow-actors at the Globe "considered that the house would be fit for themselves." So in August, 1608, he agreed to take over the building for the use of the King's Men.

[Footnote 357: Ibid., p. 87.]

Even after Evans's surrender of the lease, Keysar, it seems, made an effort to keep the Children together. On the following Christmas, 1608-09, we find a record of payment to him for performances at Court, by "The Children of Blackfriars." But soon after this the troupe must have been disbanded. Keysar says that they were "enforced to be dispersed and turned away to the abundant hurt of the said young men";[358] and the Burbages and Heminges declare that the children "were dispersed and driven each of them to provide for himself by reason that the plays ceasing in the City of London, either through sickness, or for some other cause, he, the said complainant [Keysar], was no longer able to maintain them together."[359] In the autumn of 1609, however, Keysar assembled the Children again, reorganized them with the assistance of Philip Rosseter, and placed them in Whitefriars Playhouse, recently left vacant by the disruption of the Children of His Majesty's Revels. Their subsequent history will be found related in the chapter dealing with that theatre.

[Footnote 358: Ibid., p. 90.]

[Footnote 359: Wallace, Shakespeare and his London Associates, p. 97.]

When in August, 1608, Richard Burbage secured from Evans the surrender of the Blackfriars lease, he at once proceeded to organize from the Globe Company a syndicate to operate the building as a playhouse. He admitted to partnership in the new enterprise all of the then sharers in the Globe except Witter and Nichols, outsiders who had secured their interest through marriage with the heirs of Pope and Phillips, and who, therefore, were not entitled to any consideration. In addition, he admitted Henry Evans, doubtless in fulfillment of a condition in the surrender of the lease. The syndicate thus formed was made up of seven equal sharers, as follows: Richard Burbage, Cuthbert Burbage, Henry Evans, William Shakespeare, John Heminges, Henry Condell, and William Slye. These sharers leased the building from Richard Burbage for a period of twenty-one years,[360] at the old rental of L40 per annum, each binding himself to pay annually the sum of L5 14s. 4d.[361] The method of distributing the profits between the sharers (known as "housekeepers") and the actors (known as the "company") was to be the same as that practiced at the Globe.[362]

[Footnote 360: Twenty-one years was a very common term for a lease to run; but in this case, no doubt, it was intended that the lease of Blackfriars should last as long as the lease of the Globe, which then had exactly twenty-one years to run.]

[Footnote 361: Shortly after this agreement had been made William Slye died, and his executrix delivered up his share to Richard Burbage "to be cancelled and made void." See the Heminges-Osteler documents printed by Mr. Wallace in the London Times, October 4, 1909. In 1611 Burbage let William Osteler have this share.]

[Footnote 362: The method is clearly explained in the documents of 1635 printed by Halliwell-Phillipps, in Outlines, I, 312.]

Soon after this organization was completed, the King's Men moved from the Globe to the Blackfriars. They did not, of course, intend to abandon the Globe. Their plan was to use the Blackfriars as a "winter home," and the Globe as a "summer house."[363] Malone observed from the Herbert Manuscript that "the King's Company usually began to play at the Globe in the month of May";[364] although he failed to state at what time in the autumn they usually moved to the Blackfriars, the evidence points to the first of November.

[Footnote 363: See Wright, Historia Histrionica, Hazlitt's Dodsley, XV, 406.]

[Footnote 364: Malone, Variorum, III, 71.]

Such a plan had many advantages. For one thing, it would prevent the pecuniary losses often caused by a severe winter. In the Poetaster (1601), Jonson makes Histrio, representing the Globe Players, say: "O, it will get us a huge deal of money, and we have need on't, for this winter has made us all poorer than so many starved snakes; nobody comes at us."[365] This could not be said of the King's Men after they moved to the Blackfriars. Edward Kirkham, a man experienced in theatrical finances, offered to prove to the court in 1612 that the King's Men "got, and as yet doth, more in one winter in the said great hall by a thousand pounds than they were used to get on the Bankside."[366]

[Footnote 365: Act III, scene iv. Cf. also Webster's Preface to The White Devil, acted at the Red Bull about 1610.]

[Footnote 366: Fleay, A Chronicle History of the London Stage, p. 248.]

Kirkham's testimony as to the popularity of the King's Men in their winter home is borne out by a petition to the city authorities made by "the constables and other officers and inhabitants of Blackfriars" in January, 1619. They declared that to the playhouse "there is daily such resort of people, and such multitudes of coaches (whereof many are hackney-coaches, bringing people of all sorts), that sometimes all our streets cannot contain them, but that they clog up Ludgate also, in such sort that both they endanger the one the other, break down stalls, throw down men's goods from their shops, and the inhabitants there cannot come to their houses, nor bring in their necessary provisions of beer, wood, coal, or hay, nor the tradesmen or shopkeepers utter their wares, nor the passenger go to the common water stairs without danger of their lives and limbs." "These inconveniences" were said to last "every day in the winter time from one or two of the clock till six at night."[367]

[Footnote 367: The Malone Society's Collections, I, 91.]

As a result of this petition the London Common Council ordered, January 21, 1619, that "the said playhouses be suppressed, and that the players shall from thenceforth forbear and desist from playing in that house."[368] But the players had at Court many influential friends, and these apparently came to their rescue. The order of the Common Council was not put into effect; and so far as we know the only result of this agitation was that King James on March 27 issued to his actors a new patent specifically giving them—described as his "well-beloved servants"—the right henceforth to play unmolested in Blackfriars. The new clause in the patent runs: "as well within their two their now usual houses called the Globe, within our County of Surrey, and their private house situate in the precinct of the Blackfriars, within our city of London."[369] At the accession of King Charles I, the patent was renewed, June 24, 1625, with the same clause regarding the use of Blackfriars.[370]

[Footnote 368: Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines, I, 311.]

[Footnote 369: The Malone Society's Collections, I, 281.]

[Footnote 370: Ibid., I, 282.]

In 1631, however, the agitation was renewed, this time in the form of a petition from the churchwardens and constables of the precinct of Blackfriars to William Laud, then Bishop of London. The document gives such eloquent testimony to the popularity of the playhouse that I have inserted it below in full:

To the Right Honorable and Right Reverend Father in God, William, Lord Bishop of London, one of His Majesty's Honorable Privy Council. The humble petition of the churchwardens and constables of Blackfriars, on the behalf of the whole Parish, showing that by reason of a playhouse, exceedingly frequented, in the precinct of the said Blackfriars, the inhabitants there suffer many grievances upon the inconveniences hereunto annexed, and many other.

May it therefore please your Lordship to take the said grievances into your honorable consideration for the redressing thereof. And for the reviving the order, which hath been heretofore made by the Lords of the Council, and the Lord Mayor and the Court of Aldermen, for the removal of them. And they shall, according to their duties, ever pray for your Lordship.

Reasons and Inconveniences Inducing the Inhabitants of Blackfriars, London, to Become Humble Suitors to Your Lordship for Removing the Playhouse in the Said Blackfriars:

1. The shopkeepers in divers places suffer much, being hindered by the great recourse to the plays (especially of coaches) from selling their commodities, and having their wares many times broken and beaten off their stalls.

2. The recourse of coaches is many times so great that the inhabitants cannot in an afternoon take in any provision of beer, coals, wood, or hay, the streets being known to be so exceeding straight and narrow.

3. The passage through Ludgate to the water [i.e., Water Lane] is many times stopped up, people in their ordinary going much endangered, quarrels and bloodshed many times occasioned, and many disorderly people towards night gathered thither, under pretense of attending and waiting for those at the plays.

4. If there should happen any misfortune of fire, there is not likely any present order could possibly be taken, for the disorder and number of the coaches, since there could be no speedy passage made for quenching the fire, to the endangering of the parish and city.

5. Christenings and burials, which usually are in the afternoon, are many times disturbed, and persons endangered in that part, which is the greatest part of the parish.

6. Persons of honor and quality that dwell in the parish are restrained by the number of coaches from going out, or coming home in seasonable time, to the prejudice of their occasions. And some persons of honor have left, and others have refused houses for this very inconvenience, to the prejudice and loss of the parish.

7. The Lords of the Council in former times have by order directed that there shall be but two playhouses tolerated, and those without the city, the one at the Bankside, the other near Golding Lane (which these players still have and use all summer), which the Lords did signify by their letters to the Lord Mayor; and in performance thereof the Lord Mayor and the Court of Aldermen did give order that they should forbear to play any longer there, which the players promised to the Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas (while he was Recorder of London) to observe, entreating only a little time to provide themselves elsewhere.[371]

[Footnote 371: Collier, History of English Dramatic Poetry (1879), I, 455.]

Bishop Laud endorsed the petition with his own hand "To the Coun. Table," and in all probability he submitted it to the consideration of the Privy Council. If so, the Council took no action.

But in 1633, as a result of further complaints about the crowding of coaches, the Privy Council appointed a committee to estimate the value of the Blackfriars Theatre and "the buildings thereunto belonging," with the idea of removing the playhouse and paying the owners therefor. The committee reported that "the players demanded L21,000. The commissioners [Sir Henry Spiller, Sir William Beecher, and Laurence Whitaker] valued it at near L3000. The Parishioners offered towards the removing of them L100."[372] Obviously the plan of removal was not feasible, if indeed the Privy Council seriously contemplated such action. The only result of this second agitation was the issuance on November 20 of special instructions to coachmen: "If any persons, men or women, of what condition soever, repair to the aforesaid playhouse in coach, as soon as they are gone out of their coaches, the coachmen shall depart thence and not return till the end of the play."[373] Garrard, in a letter to the Lord Deputy dated January 9, 1633, says: "Here hath been an order of the Lords of the Council hung up in a table near Paul's and the Blackfriars to command all that resort to the playhouse there to send away their coaches, and to disperse abroad in Paul's Churchyard, Carter Lane, the Conduit in Fleet Street, and other places, and not to return to fetch their company, but they must trot afoot to find their coaches. 'Twas kept very strictly for two or three weeks, but now I think it is disordered again."[374] The truth is that certain distinguished patrons of the theatre did not care "to trot afoot to find their coaches," and so made complaint at Court. As a result it was ordered, at a sitting of the Council, December 29, 1633 (the King being present): "Upon information this day given to the Board of the discommodity that diverse persons of great quality, especially Ladies and Gentlewomen, did receive in going to the playhouse of Blackfriars by reason that no coaches may stand ... the Board ... think fit to explain the said order in such manner that as many coaches as may stand within the Blackfriars Gate may enter and stay there."[375]

[Footnote 372: The Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1633, p. 293. The report of the commissioners in full, as printed by Collier in New Facts (1835), p. 27, and again in History of English Dramatic Poetry (1879), I, 477, is not above suspicion, although Mr. E.K. Chambers is inclined to think it genuine. According to this document the actors estimated the property to be worth L21,990, but the committee thought that the actors might be persuaded to accept L2900 13s. 4d.]

[Footnote 373: The Malone Society's Collections, I, 99; 387.]

[Footnote 374: The Earl of Strafforde's Letters (Dublin, 1740), I, 175.]

[Footnote 375: The Malone Society's Collections, I, 388.]

All this agitation about coaches implies a fashionable and wealthy patronage of the Blackfriars. An interesting glimpse of high society at the theatre is given in a letter written by Garrard, January 25, 1636: "A little pique happened betwixt the Duke of Lenox and the Lord Chamberlain about a box at a new play in the Blackfriars, of which the Duke had got the key, which, if it had come to be debated betwixt them, as it was once intended, some heat or perhaps other inconvenience might have happened."[376] The Queen herself also sometimes went thither. Herbert records, without any comment, her presence there on the 13 of May, 1634.[377] It has been generally assumed that she attended a regular afternoon performance; but this, I am sure, was not the case. The Queen engaged the entire building for the private entertainment of herself and her specially invited guests, and the performance was at night. In a bill presented by the King's Men for plays acted before the members of the royal family during the year 1636 occurs the entry: "The 5th of May, at the Blackfryers, for the Queene and the Prince Elector ... Alfonso." Again, in a similar bill for the year 1638 (see the bill on page 404) is the entry: "At the Blackfryers, the 23 of Aprill, for the Queene ... The Unfortunate Lovers." The fact that the actors did not record the loss of their "day" at their house, and made their charge accordingly, shows that the plays were given at night and did not interfere with the usual afternoon performances before the public.

[Footnote 376: The Earl of Strafforde's Letters (Dublin, 1740), I, 511.]

[Footnote 377: The Herbert MS., Malone, Variorum, III, 167.]

The King's Men continued to occupy the Blackfriars as their winter home until the closing of the theatres in 1642. Thereafter the building must have stood empty for a number of years. In 1653 Sir Aston Cokaine, in a poem prefixed to Richard Brome's Plays, looked forward prophetically to the happy day when

Black, and White Friars too, shall flourish again.

But the prophecy was not to be fulfilled; for although Whitefriars (i.e., Salisbury Court) did flourish as a Restoration playhouse, the more famous Blackfriars had ceased to exist before acting was allowed again. The manuscript note in the Phillipps copy of Stow's Annals (1631) informs us that "the Blackfriars players' playhouse in Blackfriars, London, which had stood many years, was pulled down to the ground on Monday the 6 day of August, 1655, and tenements built in the room."[378]

[Footnote 378: See The Academy, 1882, XXII, 314. Exactly the same fate had overtaken the Globe ten years earlier.]



CHAPTER XII

THE GLOBE

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

[Footnote 379: That even James Burbage is to be put in this class cannot be disputed.]

[Footnote 380: Cuthbert Burbage in 1635 says: "The players that lived in those first times had only the profits arising from the doors, but now the players receive all the comings-in at the doors to themselves and half the galleries from the housekeepers." (Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines, I, 317.)]



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

[Footnote 381: See, for example, Thomas Heywood's Apology for Actors (1612). In enumerating the greatest actors of England he says: "Gabriel, Singer, Pope, Phillips, Sly—all the right I can do them is but this, that though they be dead, their deserts yet live in the remembrance of many."]

According to the original plan there were to be ten shares in the new enterprise, the Burbage brothers holding between them one-half the stock, or two and a half shares each, and the five actors holding the other half, or one share each. All the expenses of leasing a site, erecting a building, and subsequently operating the building as a playhouse, and likewise all the profits to accrue therefrom, were to be divided among the sharers according to their several holdings.

This organization, it should be understood, merely concerned the ownership of the building. Its members stood in the relation of landlords to the players, and were known by the technical name of "housekeepers." Wholly distinct was the organization of the players, known as the "company." The company, too, was divided into shares for the purpose of distributing its profits. The "housekeepers," in return for providing the building, received one-half of the income from the galleries; the company, for entertaining the public, received the other half of the income from the galleries, plus the takings at the doors. Those actors who were also "housekeepers" shared twice in the profits of the playhouse; and it was a part of the plan of the "housekeepers" to admit actors to be sharers in the building as soon as they attained eminence, or otherwise made their permanent connection with the playhouse desirable. Thus the two organizations, though entirely distinct, were interlocking.

Such a scheme had many advantages. In the first place, it prevented the company from shifting from one playhouse to another, as was frequently the case with other troupes. In the second place, it guaranteed both the excellence and the permanency of the company. Too often good companies were dissolved by the desertion of a few important members; as every student of the drama knows, the constant reorganization of troupes is one of the most exasperating features of Elizabethan theatrical history. In the third place, the plan, like all profit-sharing schemes, tended to elicit from each member of the organization his best powers. The opportunity offered to a young actor ultimately to be admitted as a sharer in the ownership of the building was a constant source of inspiration,[382] and the power to admit at any time a new sharer enabled the company to recruit from other troupes brilliant actors when such appeared; as, for example, William Osteler and Nathaniel Field, who had attained fame with the Children at Blackfriars and elsewhere. Finally, the plan brought the actors together in a close bond of friendship that lasted for life. Heminges was loved and trusted by them all. Shakespeare was admired and revered; three members of the troupe seem to have named their sons for him. Indeed, there is nothing more inspiring in a close study of all the documents relating to the Globe than the mutual loyalty and devotion of the original sharers. The publication of Shakespeare's plays by Heminges and Condell is merely one out of many expressions of this splendid comradeship.

[Footnote 382: "The petitioners have a long time with much patience expected to be admitted sharers in the playhouses of the Globe and the Blackfriars, whereby they might reap some better fruit of their labour than hitherto they have done, and be encouraged to proceed therein with cheerfulness." (The Young Players' Petition, 1635, printed by Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines, I, 312.)]

The plan of organization having been evolved, and the original members having been selected, the first question presenting itself was, Where should the new playhouse be erected? Burbage, Heminges, and the rest—including Shakespeare—probably gave the question much thought. Their experience in Holywell had not been pleasant; the precinct of Blackfriars, they now well realized, was out of the question; so they turned their eyes to the Bankside. That section had recently become the theatrical centre of London. There were situated the Rose, the Swan, and the Bear Garden, and thither each day thousands of persons flocked in search of entertainment. Clearly the Bankside was best suited to their purpose. Near the fine old church of St. Mary Overies, and not far from the Rose and the Bear Garden, they found a plot of land that met their approval. Its owner, Sir Nicholas Brend, was willing to lease it for a long term of years, and at a very reasonable rate. They made a verbal contract with Brend, according to which the lease was to begin on December 25, 1598.



Three days later, on December 28, Richard and Cuthbert Burbage, having secured the services of the carpenter, Peter Street, and his workmen, tore down the old Theatre and transported the timber and other materials to this new site across the river; and shortly after the Globe began to lift itself above the houses of the Bankside—a handsome theatre surpassing anything then known to London playgoers.

In the meantime the lawyers had drawn up the lease, and this was formally signed on February 21, 1599. The company had arranged a "tripartite lease," the three parties being Sir Nicholas Brend, the Burbage brothers, and the five actors.[383] To the Burbages Sir Nicholas leased one-half of the property at a yearly rental of L7 5s.; and to the five actors, he leased the other half, at the same rate. Thus the total rent paid for the land was L14 10s. The lease was to run for a period of thirty-one years.

[Footnote 383: Exact information about the lease and the organization of the company is derived from the Heminges-Osteler and the Witter-Heminges documents, both discovered and printed by Mr. Wallace. And with these one should compare the article by the same author in the London Times, April 30, May 1, 1914.]

The five actors, not satisfied with tying up the property in the "tripartite lease," proceeded at once to arrange their holdings in the form of a "joint tenancy." This they accomplished by the following device:

William Shakespeare, Augustine Phillips, Thomas Pope, John Heminges, and William Kempe did shortly after grant and assign all the said moiety of and in the said gardens and grounds unto William Levison and Thomas Savage, who regranted and reassigned to every one of them severally a fifth part of the said moiety of the said gardens and grounds.[384]

[Footnote 384: Wallace, Shakespeare and his London Associates, p. 53. Shakespeare's leadership in the erection of the Globe is indicated in several documents; for example, the post-mortem inquisition of the estate of Sir Thomas Brend, May 16, 1599.]

The object of the "joint tenancy" was to prevent any member of the organization from disposing of his share to an outsider. Legally at the death of a member his share passed into the possession of the other members, so that the last survivor would receive the whole. In reality, however, the members used the "joint tenancy" merely to control the disposition of the shares, and they always allowed the heirs-at-law to receive the share of a deceased member.

The wisdom of this arrangement was quickly shown, for "about the time of the building of said playhouse and galleries, or shortly after," William Kempe decided to withdraw from the enterprise. He had to dispose of his share to the other parties in the "joint tenancy," Shakespeare, Heminges, Phillips, and Pope, who at once divided it equally among themselves, and again went through the process necessary to place that share in "joint tenancy." After the retirement of Kempe, the organization, it will be observed, consisted of six men, and the shares were eight in number, owned as follows: Richard Burbage and Cuthbert Burbage, each two shares, Shakespeare, Heminges, Phillips, and Pope, each one share.



The tract of land on which the new playhouse was to be erected is minutely described in the lease[385] as follows:

All that parcel of ground just recently before enclosed and made into four separate garden plots, recently in the tenure and occupation of Thomas Burt and Isbrand Morris, diers, and Lactantius Roper, salter, citizen of London, containing in length from east to west two hundred and twenty feet in assize or thereabouts, lying and adjoining upon a way or lane there on one [the south] side, and abutting upon a piece of land called The Park[386] upon the north, and upon a garden then or recently in the tenure or occupation of one John Cornishe toward the west, and upon another garden plot then or recently in the tenure or occupation of one John Knowles toward the east, with all the houses, buildings, structures, ways, easements, commodities, and appurtenances thereunto belonging.... And also all that parcel of land just recently before enclosed and made into three separate garden plots, whereof two of the same [were] recently in the tenure or occupation of John Roberts, carpenter, and another recently in the occupation of one Thomas Ditcher, citizen and merchant tailor of London ... containing in length from east to west by estimation one hundred fifty and six feet of assize or thereabouts, and in breadth from the north to the south one hundred feet of assize by estimation or thereabouts, lying and adjoining upon the other side of the way or lane aforesaid, and abutting upon a garden plot there then or recently just before in the occupation of William Sellers toward the east, and upon one other garden plot there, then or recently just before, in the tenure of John Burgram, sadler, toward the west, and upon a lane there called Maiden Lane towards the south, with all the houses....

[Footnote 385: The lease is incorporated in the Heminges-Osteler documents, which Mr. Wallace has translated from the Anglicized Latin. The original Latin text may be found in Martin, The Site of the Globe Playhouse of Shakespeare, pp. 161-62. Since, however, that text is faultily reproduced, I quote Mr. Wallace's translation.]

[Footnote 386: What is meant by "The Park" is a matter of dispute. Some contend that the Park of the Bishop of Winchester is meant; it may be, however, that some small estate is referred to. In support of the latter contention, one might cite Collier's Memoirs of Edward Alleyn, p. 91. Part of the document printed by Collier may have been tampered with, but there is no reason to suspect the two references to "The Parke."]

This document clearly states that the Globe property was situated to the north of Maiden Lane, and consequently near the river. Virtually all the contemporary maps of London show the Globe as so situated. Mr. Wallace has produced some very specific evidence to support the document cited above, and he claims to have additional evidence as yet unpublished. On the other hand, there is at least some evidence to indicate that the Globe was situated to the south of Maiden Lane.[387]

[Footnote 387: For the discussions of the subject, see the Bibliography.]

For the purposes of this book it is sufficient to know that the Globe was "situate in Maiden Lane"; whether on the north side or the south side is of less importance. More important is the nature of the site. Strype, in his edition of Stow's Survey, gives this description: "Maiden Lane, a long straggling place, with ditches on each side, the passage to the houses being over little bridges, with little garden plots before them, especially on the north side, which is best both for houses and inhabitants." In Maiden Lane, near one of these ditches or "sewers," the Globe was erected; and like the other houses there situated, it was approached over a bridge.[388] In February, 1606, the Sewer Commission ordered that "the owners of the playhouse called the Globe, in Maid Lane, shall before the 20 day of April next pull up and take clean out of the sewer the props or posts which stand under their bridge on the north side of Maid Lane."[389] The ground on which the building was erected was marshy, and the foundations were made by driving piles deep into the soil. Ben Jonson tersely writes:[390]

The Globe, the glory of the Bank.... Flanked with a ditch, and forced out of a marish.

[Footnote 388: This was probably not the only means of approach.]

[Footnote 389: Wallace, in the London Times, April 30, 1914, p. 10; Notes and Queries (XI series), XI, 448.]

[Footnote 390: An Execration upon Vulcan.]

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

[Footnote 391: The Guls Hornbook, published in 1609, but written earlier.]



A few quotations from the Fortune contract will throw some light upon the Globe:

With such-like stairs, conveyances, and divisions [to the galleries], without and within, as are made and contrived in and to the late-erected playhouse ... called the Globe.

And the said stage to be in all other proportions contrived and fashioned like unto the stage of the said playhouse called the Globe.

And the said house, and other things before mentioned to be made and done, to be in all other contrivations, conveyances, fashions, thing, and things, effected, finished and done according to the manner and fashion of the said house called the Globe, saving only that all the principal and main posts ... shall be square and wrought pilasterwise, with carved proportions called satyrs to be placed and set on the top of every of the said posts.

What kind of columns were used in the Globe and how they were ornamented, we do not know, but presumably they were round. Jonson, in Every Man Out of His Humour, presented on the occasion of, or shortly after, the opening of the Globe in 1599, says of one of his characters: "A well-timbered fellow! he would have made a good column an he had been thought on when the house was abuilding."[392] That Jonson thought well of the new playhouse is revealed in several places; he speaks with some enthusiasm of "this fair-fitted Globe,"[393] and in the passage already quoted he calls it "the glory of the Bank."

[Footnote 392: Jonson's Works, ed. Cunningham, I, 71.]

[Footnote 393: In the first quarto edition of Every Man Out of His Humour.]

In shape the building was unquestionably polygonal or circular, most probably polygonal on the outside and circular within. Mr. E.K. Chambers thinks it possible that it was square;[394] but there is abundant evidence to show that it was not. The very name, Globe, would hardly be suitable to a square building; Jonson describes the interior as a "round";[395] the ballad on the burning of the house refers to the roof as being "round as a tailor's clew"; and the New Globe, which certainly was not square, was erected on the old foundation.[396] The frame, we know, was of timber, and the roof of thatch. In front of the main door was suspended a sign of Hercules bearing the globe upon his shoulders,[397] under which was written, says Malone, the old motto, Totus mundus agit histrionem.[398]

[Footnote 394: The Stage of the Globe, p. 356.]

[Footnote 395: Induction to Every Man Out of His Humour (ed. Cunningham, I, 66).]

[Footnote 396: I have not space to discuss the question further. The foreign traveler who visited a Bankside theatre, probably the Globe, on July 3, 1600, described it as "Theatrum ad morem antiquorum Romanorum constructum ex lignis" (London Times, April 11, 1914). Thomas Heywood, in his Apology for Actors (1612), describing the Roman playhouses, says: "After these they composed others, but differing in form from the theatre or amphitheatre, and every such was called Circus, the frame globe-like and merely round." The evidence is cumulative, and almost inexhaustible.]

[Footnote 397: See Hamlet, II, ii, 378.]

[Footnote 398: Malone, Variorum, III, 67.]

The earliest representation of the building is probably to be found in the Delaram View of London (opposite page 246), set in the background of an engraving of King James on horseback. This view, which presents the city as it was in 1603 when James came to the throne, shows the Bear Garden at the left, polygonal in shape, the Rose in the centre, circular in shape, and the Globe at the right, polygonal in shape. It is again represented in Visscher's magnificent View of London, which, though printed in 1616, presents the city as it was several years earlier (see page 253). The Merian View of 1638 (opposite page 256) is copied from Visscher, and the View in Howell's Londinopolis (1657) is merely a slavish copy of Merian; these two views, therefore, so far as the Globe is concerned, have no special value.[399]

[Footnote 399: The circular playhouse in Delaram's View is commonly accepted as a representation of the First Globe, but without reason. The evidence which establishes the identity of the several playhouses pictured in the various maps of the Bankside comes from a careful study of the Bear Garden, the Hope, the Rose, the First Globe, the Second Globe, and their sites, together with a study of all the maps and views of London, considered separately and in relation to one another. Such evidence is too complicated to be given here in full, but it is quite conclusive.]



The cost of the finished building is not exactly known. Mr. Wallace observes that it was erected "at an original cost, according to a later statement, of L600, but upon better evidence approximately L400."[400] I am not aware of the "better evidence" to which Mr. Wallace refers,[401] nor do I know whether the estimate of L400 includes the timber and materials of the old Theatre furnished by the Burbages. If the Theatre of 1576 cost nearly L700, and the second Globe cost L1400, the sum of L400 seems too small.

[Footnote 400: The London Times, October 2, 1909.]

[Footnote 401: Possibly he gives this evidence in his The Children of the Chapel at Blackfriars, p. 29, note 4.]

Nor do we know exactly when the Globe was finished and opened to the public. On May 16, 1599, a post-mortem inquisition of the estate of Sir Thomas Brend, father of Sir Nicholas, was taken. Among his other properties in Southwark was listed the Globe playhouse, described as "vna domo de novo edificata ... in occupacione Willielmi Shakespeare et aliorum."[402] From this statement Mr. Wallace infers that the Globe was finished and opened before May 16, 1599. Though this is possible, the words used seem hardly to warrant the conclusion. However, we may feel sure that the actors, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, had moved into the building before the end of the summer.

[Footnote 402: Wallace, in the London Times, May 1, 1914.]

Almost at once they rose to the position of leadership in the drama, for both Shakespeare and Burbage were now at the height of their powers. It is true that in 1601 the popularity of the Children at Blackfriars, and the subsequent "War of the Theatres" interfered somewhat with their success; but the interference was temporary, and from this time on until the closing of the playhouses in 1642, the supremacy of the Globe players was never really challenged. When James came to the throne, he recognized this supremacy by taking them under his royal patronage. On May 19, 1603, he issued to them a patent to play as the King's Men[403]—an honor that was as well deserved as it was signal.

[Footnote 403: Printed in The Malone Society Collections, I, 264.]

In the autumn of 1608 the proprietors of the Globe acquired the Blackfriars Theatre for the use of their company during the severe winter months. This splendid building, situated in the very heart of the city, was entirely roofed in, and could be comfortably heated in cold weather. Henceforth the open-air Globe was used only during the pleasant season of the year; that is, according to the evidence of the Herbert Manuscript, from about the first of May until the first of November.

On June 29, 1613, the Globe caught fire during the performance of a play, and was burned to the ground—the first disaster of the sort recorded in English theatrical history. The event aroused great interest in London, and as a result we have numerous accounts of the catastrophe supplying us with full details. We learn that on a warm "sunne-shine" afternoon the large building was "filled with people"—among whom were Ben Jonson, John Taylor (the Water-Poet), and Sir Henry Wotton—to witness a new play by William Shakespeare and John Fletcher, called All is True, or, as we now know it, Henry VIII, produced with unusual magnificence. Upon the entrance of the King in the fourth scene of the first act, two cannon were discharged in a royal salute. One of the cannon hurled a bit of its wadding upon the roof and set fire to the thatch; but persons in the audience were so interested in the play that for a time they paid no attention to the fire overhead. As a result they were soon fleeing for their lives; and within "one short hour" nothing was left of the "stately" Globe.

I quote below some of the more interesting contemporary accounts of this notable event. Howes, the chronicler, thus records the fact in his continuation of Stow's Annals:

Upon St. Peter's Day last, the playhouse or theatre called the Globe, upon the Bankside, near London, by negligent discharge of a peal of ordnance, close to the south side thereof, the thatch took fire, and the wind suddenly dispersed the flames round about, and in a very short space the whole building was quite consumed; and no man hurt: the house being filled with people to behold the play, viz. of Henry the Eight.[404]

[Footnote 404: Howes's continuation of Stow's Annals (1631), p. 1003.]

Sir Henry Wotton, in a letter to a friend, gives the following gossipy account:

Now to let matters of state sleep. I will entertain you at the present with what happened this week at the Bankside. The King's Players had a new play, called All is True, representing some principal pieces of the reign of Henry the Eighth, which was set forth with many extraordinary circumstances of pomp and majesty, even to the matting of the stage; the Knights of the Order with their Georges and Garter, the guards with their embroidered coats, and the like—sufficient in truth within awhile to make greatness very familiar, if not ridiculous. Now King Henry, making a masque at the Cardinal Wolsey's house, and certain cannons being shot off at his entry, some of the paper or other stuff wherewith one of them was stopped, did light on the thatch, where being thought at first but an idle smoke, and their eyes more attentive to the show, it kindled inwardly, and ran round like a train, consuming within less than an hour the whole house to the very ground. This was the fatal period of that virtuous fabrick; wherein yet nothing did perish but wood and straw, and a few forsaken cloaks; only one man had his breeches set on fire, that would perhaps have broiled him, if he had not, by the benefit of a provident wit, put it out with bottle ale.[405]

[Footnote 405: Reliquiae Wottonianae (ed. 1672), p. 425.]

John Chamberlain, writing to Sir Ralph Winwood, July 8, 1613, refers to the accident thus:

The burning of the Globe or playhouse on the Bankside on St. Peter's Day cannot escape you; which fell out by a peal of chambers (that I know not upon what occasion were to be used in the play), the tampin or stopple of one of them lighting in the thatch that cover'd the house, burn'd it down to the ground in less than two hours, with a dwelling house adjoining; and it was a great marvel and fair grace of God that the people had so little harm, having but two narrow doors to get out.[406]

[Footnote 406: Ralph Winwood, Memorials of Affairs of State (ed. 1725), III, 469.]



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

No longer since than yesterday, while Burbage's company were acting at the Globe the play of Henry VIII, and there shooting off certain chambers in way of triumph, the fire catched and fastened upon the thatch of the house, and there burned so furiously, as it consumed the whole house, all in less than two hours, the people having enough to do to save themselves.[407]

[Footnote 407: Printed in Birch, The Court and Times of James the First (1849), I, 251.]

A contemporary ballad[408] gives a vivid and amusing account of the disaster:

A Sonnet upon the Pitiful Burning of the Globe Playhouse in London

Now sit thee down, Melpomene, Wrapt in a sea-coal robe, And tell the dolefull tragedy That late was played at Globe; For no man that can sing and say Was scared on St. Peter's day. Oh sorrow, pitiful sorrow, and yet all this is true.[409]

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

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