Out run the Knights, out run the lords, And there was great ado; Some lost their hats, and some their swords; Then out run Burbage, too. The reprobates, though drunk on Monday, Prayd for the fool and Henry Condy. Oh sorrow, etc.

The periwigs and drum-heads fry Like to a butter firkin; A woeful burning did betide To many a good buff jerkin. Then with swolen eyes, like drunken Flemminges Distressed stood old stuttering Heminges. Oh sorrow, etc.

[Footnote 408: Printed by Haslewood in The Gentleman's Magazine (1816), from an old manuscript volume of poems. Printed also by Halliwell-Phillipps (Outlines, I, 310) "from a manuscript of the early part of the seventeenth century of unquestionable authenticity." Perhaps it is the same as the "Doleful Ballad" entered in the Stationers' Register, 1613. I follow Halliwell-Phillipps's text, but omit the last three stanzas.]

[Footnote 409: Punning on the title All is True.]

Ben Jonson, who saw the disaster, left us the following brief account:

The Globe, the glory of the Bank, Which, though it were the fort of the whole parish, Flanked with a ditch, and forced out of a marish, I saw with two poor chambers taken in, And razed ere thought could urge this might have been! See the world's ruins! nothing but the piles Left—and wit since to cover it with tiles.[410]

[Footnote 410: An Execration upon Vulcan.]

The players were not seriously inconvenienced, for they could shift to their other house, the Blackfriars, in the city. The owners of the building, however, suffered a not inconsiderable pecuniary loss. For a time they hesitated about rebuilding, one cause of their hesitation being the short term that their lease of the ground had to run. Possibly a second cause was a doubt as to the ownership of the ground, arising from certain transactions recorded below. In October, 1600, Sir Nicholas Brend had been forced to transfer the Globe estate, with other adjacent property, to Sir Matthew Brown and John Collett as security for a debt of L2500; and a few days after he died. Since the son and heir, Matthew Brend, was a child less than two years old, an uncle, Sir John Bodley, was appointed trustee. In 1608 Bodley, by unfair means, it seems, purchased from Collett the Globe property, and thus became the landlord of the actors. But young Matthew Brend was still under age, and Bodley's title to the property was not regarded as above suspicion.[411]

[Footnote 411: These interesting facts were revealed by Mr. Wallace in the London Times, April 30 and May 1, 1914.]



Four months after the burning of the Globe, on October 26, 1613, Sir John Bodley granted the proprietors of the building a renewal of the lease with an extension of the term until December 25, 1635.[412] But a lease from Bodley alone, in view of the facts just indicated, was not deemed sufficient; so on February 14, 1614, Heminges, the two Burbages, and Condell visited the country-seat of the Brends, and secured the signature of the young Matthew Brend, and of his mother as guardian, to a lease of the Globe site with a term ending on December 25, 1644.

[Footnote 412: Did he increase the amount of the rental to L25 per annum? The rent paid for the Blackfriars was L40 per annum; in 1635 the young actors state that the housekeepers paid for both playhouses "not above L65."]

Protected by these two leases, the Globe sharers felt secure; and they went forward apace with the erection of their new playhouse. They made an assessment of "L50 or L60" upon each share.[413] Since at this time there were fourteen shares, the amount thus raised was L700 or L840. This would probably be enough to erect a building as large and as well equipped as the old Globe. But the proprietors determined upon a larger and a very much handsomer building. As Howes, the continuer of Stow's Annals, writes, "it was new builded in far fairer manner than before"; or as John Taylor, the Water-Poet, puts it:

As gold is better that's in fire tried, So is the Bankside Globe that late was burn'd.[414]

[Footnote 413: Wallace, Shakespeare and his London Associates, p. 60.]

[Footnote 414: Works (1630), p. 31; The Spenser Society reprint, p. 515.]

Naturally the cost of rebuilding exceeded the original estimate. Heminges tells us that on one share, or one-fourteenth, he was required to pay for "the re-edifying about the sum of L120."[415] This would indicate a total cost of "about" L1680. Heminges should know, for he was the business manager of the organization; and his truthfulness cannot be questioned. Since, however, the adjective "about," especially when multiplied by fourteen, leaves a generous margin of uncertainty, it is gratifying to have a specific statement from one of the sharers in 1635 that the owners had "been at the charge of L1400 in building of the said house upon the burning down of the former."[416] Heminges tells us that "he found that the re-edifying of the said playhouse would be a very great charge," and that he so "doubted what benefit would arise thereby" that he actually gave away half of one share "to Henry Condell, gratis."[417] But his fears were unfounded. We learn from Witter that after the rebuilding of the Globe the "yearly value" of a share was greater "by much" than it had been before.[418]

[Footnote 415: Wallace, Shakespeare and his London Associates, p. 61.]

[Footnote 416: Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines, I, 316. This evidence seems to me unimpeachable. I should add, however, that Mr. Wallace considers the estimate "excessive," and says that he has "other contemporary documents showing the cost was far less than L1400." (The London Times, October 2, 1909.)]

[Footnote 417: Wallace, Shakespeare and his London Associates, p. 61. There is, I think, no truth in the statement made by the inaccurate annotator of the Phillipps copy of Stow's Annals, that the Globe was built "at the great charge of King James and many noblemen and others." (See The Academy, October 28, 1882, p. 314.) The Witter-Heminges documents sufficiently disprove that. We may well believe, however, that the King and his noblemen were interested in the new building, and encouraged the actors in many ways.]

[Footnote 418: Wallace, Shakespeare and his London Associates, p. 70.]

The New Globe, like its predecessor, was built of timber,[419] and on the same site—indeed the carpenters made use of the old foundation, which seems not to have been seriously injured. In a "return" of 1634, preserved at St. Saviour's, we read: "The Globe playhouse, near Maid Lane, built by the company of players, with a dwelling house thereto adjoining, built with timber, about 20 years past, upon an old foundation."[420] In spite of the use made of the old foundation, the new structure was unquestionably larger than the First Globe; Marmion, in the Prologue to Holland's Leaguer, acted at Salisbury Court in 1634, speaks of "the vastness of the Globe," and Shirley, in the Prologue to Rosania, applies the adjective "vast" to the building. Moreover, the builders had "the wit," as Jonson tells us, "to cover it with tiles." John Taylor, the Water-Poet, writes:

For where before it had a thatched hide, Now to a stately theatre is turn'd.

[Footnote 419: I see no reason to accept Mr. Wallace's suggestion (The Children of the Chapel at Blackfriars, p. 34, note 7) that "it seems questionable, but not unlikely, that the timber framework was brick-veneered and plastered over." Mr. Wallace mistakenly accepts Wilkinson's view of the second Fortune as genuine.]

[Footnote 420: Rendle, Bankside, p. xvii.]

The Second Globe is represented, but unsatisfactorily, in Hollar's View of London, dated 1647 (opposite page 260). It should be noted that the artist was in banishment from 1643 (at which time the Globe was still standing) until 1652, and hence, in drawing certain buildings, especially those not reproduced in earlier views of London, he may have had to rely upon his memory. This would explain the general vagueness of his representation of the Globe.

The construction was not hurried, for the players had Blackfriars as a home. Under normal conditions they did not move from the city to the Bankside until some time in May; and shortly after that date, in the early summer of 1614, the New Globe was ready for them. John Chamberlain writes to Mrs. Alice Carleton on June 30, 1614:

I have not seen your sister Williams since I came to town, though I have been there twice. The first time she was at a neighbor's house at cards, and the next she was gone to the New Globe to a play. Indeed, I hear much speech of this new playhouse, which is said to be the fairest that ever was in England.[421]

[Footnote 421: Birch, The Court and Times of James the First, I, 329; quoted by Wallace, The Children of the Chapel at Blackfriars, p. 35.]



With this New Globe Shakespeare had little to do, for his career as a playwright had been run, and probably he had already retired from acting. Time, indeed, was beginning to thin out the little band of friends who had initiated and made famous the Globe organization. Thomas Pope had died in 1603, Augustine Phillips in 1605, William Slye in 1608, and, just a few months after the opening of the new playhouse, William Osteler, who had been admitted to the partnership in 1611. He had begun his career as a child-actor at Blackfriars, had later joined the King's Men, and had married Heminges's daughter Thomasine.

A more serious blow to the company, however, fell in April, 1616, when Shakespeare himself died. To the world he had been "the applause, delight, the wonder" of the stage; but to the members of the Globe Company he had been for many years a "friend and fellow." Only Burbage and Heminges (described in 1614 as "old Heminges"), now remained of the original venturers. And Burbage passed away on March 13, 1619:

He's gone! and with him what a world are dead Which he reviv'd—to be revived so No more. Young Hamlet, old Hieronimo, Kind Lear, the grieved Moor, and more beside That lived in him have now for ever died![422]

[Footnote 422: From a folio MS. in the Huth Library, printed by J.P. Collier in The History of English Dramatic Poetry (1879), I, 411, and by various others.]

Many elegies in a similar vein were written celebrating his wonderful powers as an actor; yet the tribute that perhaps affects us most deals with him merely as a man. The Earl of Pembroke, writing to the Ambassador to Germany, gives the court news about the mighty ones of the kingdom: "My Lord of Lenox made a great supper to the French Ambassador this night here, and even now all the company are at a play; which I, being tender-hearted, could not endure to see so soon after the loss of my old acquaintance Burbage."[423]

[Footnote 423: Printed by Mrs. Stopes, Burbage and Shakespeare's Stage, p. 117, with many other interesting references to the great actor.]



In 1623 Heminges and Condell, with great "care and paine," collected and published the plays of Shakespeare, "onely to keep the memory of so worthy a Friend and Fellow alive"; and shortly after, they too died, Condell in 1627 and Heminges in 1630.

After the passing of this group of men, whose names are so familiar to us, the history of the playhouse seems less important, and may be chronicled briefly.

When young Matthew Brend came of age he recovered possession of the Globe property by a decree of the Court of Wards. Apparently he accepted the lease executed by his uncle and guardian, Bodley, by which the actors were to remain in possession of the Globe until December 25, 1635; but in 1633 he sought to cancel the lease he himself had executed as a minor, by which the actors were to remain in possession until 1644. His purpose in thus seeking to gain possession of the Globe was to lease it to other actors at a material increase in his profits.[424] Naturally the owners of the Globe were alarmed, and they brought suit in the Court of Requests. In 1635, one of the sharers, John Shanks, declares that he "is without any hope to renew" the lease; and he refers thus to the suit against Brend: "When your suppliant purchased his parts [in 1634] he had no certainty thereof more than for one year in the Globe, and there was a chargeable suit then pending in the Court of Requests between Sir Mathew Brend, Knight, and the lessees of the Globe and their assigns, for the adding of nine years to their lease in consideration that their predecessors had formerly been at the charge of L1400 in building of the said house."[425] The lessees ultimately won their contention, and thus secured the right to occupy the Globe until December 25, 1644—a term which, as it happened, was quite long enough, for the Puritans closed all playhouses in 1642.

[Footnote 424: Wallace, "Shakespeare and the Globe," in the London Times, April 30 and May 1, 1914.]

[Footnote 425: The Petition of the Young Actors, printed by Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines, I, 312. Mrs. Stopes, in Burbage and Shakespeare's Stage, p. 129, refers to a record of the suit mentioned by Shanks, dated February 6, 1634.]

What disposition, if any, the sharers made of the Globe between 1642 and 1644 we do not know. But before the lease expired, it seems, Brend demolished the playhouse and erected tenements on its site. In the manuscript notes to the Phillipps copy of Stow's Annals, we find the statement that the Globe was "pulled down to the ground by Sir Mathew Brend, on Monday the 15 of April, 1644, to make tenements in the room of it";[426] and the statement is verified by a mortgage, executed in 1706, between Elizabeth, the surviving daughter and heir of Thomas Brend, and one William James, citizen of London. The mortgage concerns "all those messuages or tenements ... most of which ... were erected and built where the late playhouse called the Globe stood, and upon the ground thereunto belonging."[427]

[Footnote 426: Printed in The Academy, October 28, 1882, p. 314. Should we read the date as 1644/5?]

[Footnote 427: William Martin, The Site of the Globe, p. 171.]

After this the history of the property becomes obscure. Mrs. Thrale (later Mrs. Piozzi), the friend of Samuel Johnson, whose residence was near by in Deadman's Place, thought that she saw certain "remains of the Globe" discovered by workmen in the employ of her husband:[428] "For a long time, then,—or I thought it such,—my fate was bound up with the old Globe Theatre, upon the Bankside, Southwark; the alley it had occupied having been purchased and [the tenements] thrown down by Mr. Thrale to make an opening before the windows of our dwelling-house. When it lay desolate in a black heap of rubbish, my mother one day in a joke called it the Ruins of Palmyra; and after that they had laid it down in a grass-plot Palmyra was the name it went by.... But there were really curious remains of the old Globe Playhouse, which though hexagonal in form without, was round within." In spite of serious difficulties in this narrative it is possible that the workmen, in digging the ground preparatory to laying out the garden, uncovered the foundation of the Globe, which, it will be recalled, was formed of piles driven deep into the soil, and so well made that it resisted the fire of 1613.[429]

[Footnote 428: Printed in The Builder, March 26, 1910, from the Conway MSS. in Mrs. Thrale's handwriting.]

[Footnote 429: For later discoveries of supposed Globe relics, all very doubtful, see the London Times, October 8, 1909; George Hubbard, The Site of the Globe Theatre; and William Martin, The Site of the Globe, p. 201.]

At the present time the site of the Globe is covered by the extensive brewery of Messrs. Barclay, Perkins, and Company. Upon one of the walls of the brewery, on the south side of Park Street, which was formerly Maiden Lane, has been placed a bronze memorial tablet[430] showing in relief the Bankside, with what is intended to be the Globe Playhouse conspicuously displayed in the foreground. This is a circular building designed after the circular playhouse in the Speed-Hondius View of London, and represents, as I have tried to show, not the Globe, but the Rose. At the left side of the tablet is a bust of the poet modeled after the Droeshout portrait. At the right is the simple inscription:

HERE STOOD THE GLOBE PLAYHOUSE OF SHAKESPEARE

[Footnote 430: The tablet was designed by Dr. William Martin and executed by Professor Lanteri. For photographs of it and of the place in which it is erected, see The London Illustrated News, October 9, 1909, CXXXV, 500.]

Yet it is very doubtful whether the Globe really stood there. Mr. Wallace has produced good evidence to show that the building was on the north side of Park Street near the river; and in the course of the present study I have found that site generally confirmed.



CHAPTER XIII

THE FORTUNE

The erection of the Globe on the Bankside within a few hundred yards of the Rose was hardly gratifying to the Admiral's Men. Not only did it put them in close competition with the excellent Burbage-Shakespeare organization, but it caused their playhouse (now nearly a quarter of a century old, and said to be in a state of "dangerous decay") to suffer in comparison with the new and far handsomer Globe, "the glory of the Bank." Accordingly, before the Globe had been in operation much more than half a year, Henslowe and Alleyn decided to move to another section of London, and to erect there a playhouse that should surpass the Globe both in size and in magnificence. To the authorities, however, they gave as reasons for abandoning the Rose, first, "the dangerous decay" of the building, and secondly, "for that the same standeth very noisome for resort of people in the winter time."

The new playhouse was undertaken by Henslowe and Alleyn jointly, although the exact arrangement between them is not now clear. Alleyn seems to have advanced the money and to have held the titles of ownership; but on April 4, 1601, he leased to Henslowe a moiety (or one-half interest) in the playhouse and other properties connected with it for a period of twenty-four years at an annual rental of L8—a sum far below the real value of the moiety.[431]

[Footnote 431: Greg, Henslowe Papers, p. 25; Wallace, Three London Theatres, p. 53. Later, Alleyn rented to the actors the playhouse alone for L200 per annum. In the document, Alleyn v. William Henslowe, published by Mr. Wallace in Three London Theatres, p. 52, it is revealed that this annual rental of L8 was canceled by Alleyn's rental of a house from Henslowe on the Bankside; hence no actual payments by Henslowe appear in the Henslowe-Alleyn papers.]

Whatever the details of the arrangement between the two partners, the main outlines of their procedure are clear. On December 22, 1599, Alleyn purchased for L240 a thirty-three-year lease[432] of a plot of ground situated to the north of the city, in the Parish of St. Giles without Cripplegate. This plot of ground, we are told, stood "very tolerable, near unto the Fields, and so far distant and remote from any person or place of account as that none can be annoyed thereby";[433] and yet, as the Earl of Nottingham wrote, it was "very convenient for the ease of people."[434]

[Footnote 432: Later, by a series of negotiations ending in 1610, Alleyn secured the freehold of the property. The total cost to him was L800. See Greg, Henslowe Papers, pp. 14, 17, 108.]

[Footnote 433: Ibid., p. 50.]

[Footnote 434: Ibid., p. 49; cf. p. 51.]

The property thus acquired lay between Golding Lane and Whitecross Street, two parallel thoroughfares running north and south. There were tenements on the edge of the property facing Whitecross Street, tenements on the edge facing Golding Lane, and an open space between. Alleyn and Henslowe planned to erect their new playhouse in this open space "between Whitecross Street and Golding Lane," and to make "a way leading to it" from Golding Lane. The ground set aside for the playhouse is described as "containing in length from east to west one hundred twenty and seven feet and a half, a little more or less, and in breadth, from north to south, one hundred twenty and nine feet, a little more or less."[435]

[Footnote 435: Collier, The Alleyn Papers, p. 98. For a slightly different measurement of the plot see Collier, Memoirs of Edward Alleyn, p. 167.]

The lease of this property having been consummated on December 22, 1599, on January 8, 1600, Henslowe and Alleyn signed a contract with the carpenter, Peter Street (who had recently gained valuable experience in building the Globe), to erect the new playhouse. The contract called for the completion of the building by July 25, 1600, provided, however, the workmen were "not by any authority restrained."

The latter clause may indicate that Peter Street anticipated difficulties. If so, he was not mistaken, for when early in January his workmen began to assemble material for the erection of the building, the authorities, especially those of the Parish of St. Giles, promptly interfered. Alleyn thereupon appealed to the patron of the troupe, the Earl of Nottingham, the Lord Admiral. On January 12, 1600, Nottingham issued a warrant to the officers of the county "to permit and suffer my said servant [Edward Alleyn] to proceed in the effecting and furnishing of the said new house, without any your let or molestation toward him or any of his workmen."[436] This warrant, however, seems not to have prevented the authorities of St. Giles from continuing their restraint. Alleyn was then forced to play his trump card—through his great patron to secure from the Privy Council itself a warrant for the construction of the building. First, however, by offering "to give a very liberal portion of money weekly" towards the relief of "the poor in the parish of St. Giles," he persuaded many of the inhabitants to sign a document addressed to the Privy Council, in which they not only gave their full consent to the erection of the playhouse, but actually urged "that the same might proceed."[437] This document he placed in the hands of Nottingham to use in influencing the Council. The effort was successful. On April 8 the Council issued a warrant "to the Justices of the Peace of the County of Middlesex, especially of St. Giles without Cripplegate, and to all others whom it shall concern," that they should permit Henslowe and Alleyn "to proceed in the effecting and finishing of the same new house."[438]

[Footnote 436: Greg, Henslowe Papers, p. 49.]

[Footnote 437: Ibid., p. 50.]

[Footnote 438: Ibid., p. 51.]



This warrant, of course, put an end to all interference by local authorities. But as the playhouse reared itself high above the walls of the city to the north, the Puritans were aroused to action. They made this the occasion for a most violent attack on actors and theatres in general, and on the Fortune in particular. With this attack the city authorities, for reasons of their own, heartily sympathized, but they had no jurisdiction over the Parish of St. Giles, or over the other localities in which playhouses were situated. Since the Privy Council had specially authorized the erection of the Fortune, the Lord Mayor shifted the attack to that body, and himself dispatched an urgent request to the Lords for reformation. In response to all this agitation the Lords of the Privy Council on June 22, 1600, issued the following order:

Whereas divers complaints have heretofore been made unto the Lords and other of Her Majesty's Privy Council of the manifold abuses and disorders that have grown and do continue by occasion of many houses erected and employed in and about London for common stage-plays; and now very lately by reason of some complaint exhibited by sundry persons against the building of the like house in or near Golding Lane ... the Lords and the rest of Her Majesty's Privy Council with one and full consent have ordered in manner and form as follows. First, that there shall be about the city two houses, and no more, allowed to serve for the use of the common stage-plays; of the which houses, one [the Globe] shall be in Surrey, in that place which is commonly called the Bankside or thereabouts, and the other [the Fortune] in Middlesex. Secondly, ... it is likewise ordered that the two several companies of players assigned unto the two houses allowed may play each of them in their several houses twice a week and no oftener; and especially that they shall refrain to play on the Sabbath day ... and that they shall forbear altogether in the time of Lent.

The first part of this order, limiting the playhouses and companies to two, was merely a repetition of the order of 1598.[439] It meant that the Lords of the Privy Council formally licensed the Admiral's and the Lord Chamberlain's Companies to play in London (of course the Lords might, when they saw fit, license other companies for specific periods). The second part of the order, limiting the number of performances, was more serious, for no troupe could afford to act only twice a week. The order if carried out would mean the ruin of the Fortune and the Globe Companies. But it was not carried out. The actors, as we learn from Henslowe's Diary, did not restrict themselves to two plays a week. Why, then, did the Lords issue this order, and why was it not put into effect? A study of the clever way in which Alleyn, Nottingham, and the Privy Council overcame the opposition of the puritanical officers of St. Giles who were interfering with the erection of the Fortune will suggest the explanation. The Lords were making a shrewd move to quiet the noisy enemies of the drama. They did not intend that the Admiral's and the Chamberlain's Men should be driven out of existence; they were merely meeting fanaticism with craft.

[Footnote 439: See page 174.]

Alleyn and Henslowe must have understood this,—possibly they learned it directly from their patron Nottingham,—for they proceeded with the erection of their expensive building. The work, however, had been so seriously delayed by the restraints of the local authorities that the foundations were not completed until May 8.[440] On that day carpenters were brought from Windsor, and set to the task of erecting the frame. Since the materials had been accumulating on the site since January 17, the work of erection must have proceeded rapidly. The daily progress of this work is marked in Henslowe's Diary by the dinners of Henslowe with the contractor, Peter Street. On August 8, these dinners ceased, so that on that date, or shortly after, we may assume, the building proper was finished.[441]

[Footnote 440: Greg, Henslowe Papers, p. 10.]

[Footnote 441: Greg, Henslowe's Diary, I, 158-59.]

For erecting the building Street received L440. But this did not include the painting of the woodwork (which, if we may judge from De Witt's description of the Swan, must have been costly), or the equipment of the stage. We learn from Alleyn's memoranda that the final cost of the playhouse was L520.[442] Hence, after Street's work of erection was finished in August, the entire building had to be painted, and the stage properly equipped with curtains, hangings, machines, etc. This must have occupied at least two months. From Henslowe's Diary it appears that the playhouse was first used about the end of November or the early part of December, 1600.[443]

[Footnote 442: Greg, Henslowe Papers, p. 108.]

[Footnote 443: Greg, Henslowe's Diary, I, 124.]

The original contract of Henslowe and Alleyn with Peter Street for the erection of the Fortune, preserved among the papers at Dulwich College, supplies us with some very exact details of the size and shape of the building. Although the document is long, and is couched in the legal verbiage of the day, it will repay careful study. For the convenience of the reader I quote below its main specifications:[444]

Foundation. A good, sure, and strong foundation, of piles, brick, lime, and sand, both without and within, to be wrought one foot of assize at the least above the ground.

Frame. The frame of the said house to be set square, and to contain fourscore foot of lawful assize every way square without, and fifty-five foot of like assize square every way within.

Materials. And shall also make all the said frame in every point for scantlings larger and bigger in assize than the scantlings of the said new-erected house called the Globe.

Exterior. To be sufficiently enclosed without with lath, lime, and hair.

Stairs. With such like stairs, conveyances, and divisions, without and within, as are made and contrived in and to the late erected playhouse ... called the Globe.... And the staircases thereof to be sufficiently enclosed without with lath, lime, and hair.

Height of galleries. And the said frame to contain three stories in height; the first, or lower story to contain twelve foot of lawful assize in height; the second story eleven foot of lawful assize in height; and the third, or upper story, to contain nine foot of lawful assize in height.

Breadth of galleries. All which stories shall contain twelve foot of lawful assize in breadth throughout. Besides a jutty forward in either of the said two upper stories of ten inches of lawful assize.

Protection of lowest gallery. The lower story of the said frame withinside ... [to be] paled in below with good, strong, and sufficient new oaken boards.... And the said lower story to be also laid over and fenced with strong iron pikes.

Divisions of galleries. With four convenient divisions for gentlemen's rooms, and other sufficient and convenient divisions for two-penny rooms.... And the gentlemen's rooms and two-penny rooms to be ceiled with lath, lime, and hair.

Seats. With necessary seats to be placed and set, as well in those rooms as throughout all the rest of the galleries.

Stage. With a stage and tiring-house to be made, erected, and set up within the said frame; with a shadow or cover over the said stage. Which stage shall be placed and set (as also the staircases of the said frame) in such sort as is prefigured in a plot thereof drawn. [The plot has been lost.] And which stage shall contain in length forty and three foot of lawful assize, and in breadth to extend to the middle of the yard of the said house. The same stage to be paled in below with good, strong, and sufficient new oaken boards.... 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 ... stage ... to be covered with tile, and to have a sufficient gutter of lead to carry and convey the water from the covering of the said stage to fall backwards.

Tiring-house. With convenient windows and lights, glazed, to the said tiring-house.

Flooring. And all the floors of the said galleries, stories, and stage to be boarded with good and sufficient new deal boards, of the whole thickness where need shall be.

Columns. All the principal and main posts of the said frame and stage forward shall be square, and wrought pilaster-wise, with carved proportions called satyrs to be placed and set on the top of every of the said posts.

Roof. And the said frame, stage, and staircases to be covered with tile.

Miscellaneous. 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.

[Footnote 444: For the full document see Greg, Henslowe Papers, p. 4.]

It is rather unfortunate for us that the building was to be in so many respects a copy of the Globe, for that deprives us of further detailed specifications; and it is unfortunate, too, that the plan or drawing showing the arrangement of the stage was not preserved with the rest of the document. Yet we are able to derive much exact information from the contract; and with this information, at least two modern architects have made reconstructions of the building.[445]

[Footnote 445: See the Bibliography. A model of the Fortune by Mr. W.H. Godfrey is preserved in the Dramatic Museum of Columbia University in New York City, and a duplicate is in the Museum of European Culture at the University of Illinois. For a description of the model see the Architect and Builders' Journal (London), August 16, 1911.]

No representation of the exterior of the Fortune has come down to us. In the so-called Ryther Map of London, there is, to be sure, what seems to be a crude representation of the playhouse (see page 278); but if this is really intended for the Fortune, it does little more than mark the location. Yet one can readily picture in his imagination the playhouse—a plastered structure, eighty feet square and approximately forty feet high,[446] with small windows marking the galleries, a turret and flagpole surmounting the red-tiled roof, and over the main entrance a sign representing Dame Fortune:

I'le rather stand here, Like a statue in the fore-front of your house, For ever, like the picture of Dame Fortune Before the Fortune Playhouse.[447]

[Footnote 446: The three galleries (twelve, eleven, and nine feet, respectively) were thirty-two feet in height; but to this must be added the elevation of the first gallery above the yard, the space occupied by the ceiling and flooring of the several galleries, and, finally, the roof.]

[Footnote 447: Thomas Heywood, The English Traveller (1633), ed. Pearson, IV, 84. We do not know when the play was written, but the reference is probably to the New Fortune, built in 1623. Heywood generally uses "picture" in the sense of "statue."]



Nor is there any pictorial representation of the interior of the playhouse. In the absence of such, I offer the reader a verbal picture of the interior as seen from the stage during the performance of a play. In Middleton and Dekker's The Roaring Girl, acted at the Fortune, Sir Alexander shows to his friends his magnificent house. Advancing to the middle of the stage, and pointing out over the building, he asks them how they like it:

Goshawk. I like the prospect best.

Laxton. See how 't is furnished!

Sir Davy. A very fair sweet room.

Sir Alex. Sir Davy Dapper, The furniture that doth adorn this room Cost many a fair grey groat ere it came here; But good things are most cheap when they're most dear. Nay, when you look into my galleries, How bravely they're trimm'd up, you all shall swear You're highly pleas'd to see what's set down there: Stories of men and women, mix'd together, Fair ones with foul, like sunshine in wet weather; Within one square a thousand heads are laid, So close that all of heads the room seems made; As many faces there, fill'd with blithe looks Shew like the promising titles of new books Writ merrily, the readers being their own eyes, Which seem to move and to give plaudities; And here and there, whilst with obsequious ears Throng'd heaps do listen, a cut-purse thrusts and leers With hawk's eyes for his prey; I need not shew him; By a hanging, villainous look yourselves may know him, The face is drawn so rarely: then, sir, below, The very floor, as 't were, waves to and fro, And, like a floating island, seems to move Upon a sea bound in with shores above.

All. These sights are excellent![448]

[Footnote 448: The Roaring Girl, I, i. Pointed out by M.W. Sampson, Modern Language Notes, June, 1915.]

A closer view of this audience—"men and women, mix'd together, fair ones with foul"—is furnished by one of the letters of Orazio Busino,[449] the chaplain of the Venetian Embassy, who visited the Fortune playhouse shortly after his arrival in London in 1617:

The other day, therefore, they determined on taking me to one of the many theatres where plays are performed, and we saw a tragedy, which diverted me very little, especially as I cannot understand a word of English, though some little amusement may be derived from gazing at the very costly dresses of the actors, and from the various interludes of instrumental music and dancing and singing; but the best treat was to see such a crowd of nobility so very well arrayed that they looked like so many princes, listening as silently and soberly as possible. These theatres are frequented by a number of respectable and handsome ladies, who come freely and seat themselves among the men without the slightest hesitation. On the evening in question his Excellency [the Venetian Ambassador] and the Secretary were pleased to play me a trick by placing me amongst a bevy of young women. Scarcely was I seated ere a very elegant dame, but in a mask, came and placed herself beside me.... She asked me for my address, both in French and English; and on my turning a deaf ear, she determined to honour me by showing me some fine diamonds on her fingers, repeatedly taking off no fewer than three gloves, which were worn one over the other.... This lady's bodice was of yellow satin richly embroidered, her petticoat of gold tissue with stripes, her robe of red velvet with a raised pile, lined with yellow muslin, with broad stripes of pure gold. She wore an apron of point lace of various patterns; her head-tire was highly perfumed, and the collar of white satin beneath the delicately-wrought ruff struck me as extremely pretty.

[Footnote 449: "Diaries and Despatches of the Venetian Embassy at the Court of King James I, in the Years 1617, 1618. Translated by Rawdon Brown." (The Quarterly Review, CII, 416.) It is true that the notice of this letter in The Calendar of State Papers, Venetian, XV, 67, makes no mention of the Fortune; but the writer in The Quarterly Review, who had before him the entire manuscript, states positively that the Fortune was the playhouse visited. I have not been able to examine the manuscript itself, which is preserved in Venice.]

That the players were prepared to entertain distinguished visitors both during the performance and after is shown by a letter from John Chamberlain, July 21, 1621, to Sir Dudley Carleton. "The Spanish Ambassador," he writes, "is grown so affable and familiar, that on Monday, with his whole train, he went to a common play at the Fortune in Golding Lane; and the players (not to be overcome with courtesy) made him a banquet, when the play was done, in the garden adjoining."[450]

[Footnote 450: Nichols, The Progresses of King James, IV, 67.]

Upon its completion the new building was occupied by the Admiral's Men, for whom it had been erected. This troupe of players, long famous under the leadership of Edward Alleyn, was now one of the two companies authorized by the Privy Council, and the chief rival of the Chamberlain's Men at the Globe. Henslowe was managing their affairs, and numerous poets were writing plays for them. They continued to act at the Fortune under the name, "The Admiral's Men," until May 5, 1603, when, as Henslowe put it, they "left off play now at the King's coming."[451]

[Footnote 451: Greg, Henslowe's Diary, I, 174.]

After a short interruption on account of the plague, during a part of which time they traveled in the provinces, the Admiral's Men were taken under the patronage of the youthful Henry, Prince of Wales, and in the early spring of 1604 they resumed playing at the Fortune under their new name, "The Prince's Servants."



For a time all went well. But from July, 1607, until December, 1609, the plague was severe in London, and acting was seriously interrupted. During this long period of hardship for the players, Henslowe and Alleyn seem to have made an attempt to hold the troupe together by admitting its chief members to a partnership in the building, just as the Burbages had formerly admitted their chief players to a partnership in the Globe. At this time there were in the troupe eight sharers, or chief actors.[452] Henslowe and Alleyn, it seems, proposed to allot to these eight actors one-fourth of the Fortune property. In other words, according to this scheme, there were to be thirty-two sharers in the new Fortune organization, Alleyn and Henslowe together holding three-fourths of the stock, or twelve shares each, and the eight actors together holding one-fourth of the stock, or one share each. A document was actually drawn up by Henslowe and Alleyn, with the name of the leader of the Fortune troupe, Thomas Downton, inserted;[453] but since the document was not executed, the scheme, it is to be presumed, was unsuccessful—at least, we hear nothing further about it.[454]

[Footnote 452: See the Company's Patent of 1606, in The Malone Society's Collections, I, 268.]

[Footnote 453: Greg, Henslowe Papers, p. 13.]

[Footnote 454: For an ordinance concerning "lewd jiggs" at the Fortune in 1612, see Middlesex County Records, II, 83.]

On November 6, 1612, the death of the young Prince of Wales left the company without a "service." On January 4, 1613, however, a new patent was issued to the players, placing them under the protection of the Palsgrave, or Elector Palatine, after which date they are known as "The Palsgrave's Men."

On January 9, 1616, Henslowe, so long associated with the company and the Fortune, died; and a year later his widow, Agnes, followed him. As a result the entire Fortune property passed into the hands of Alleyn. But Alleyn, apparently, did not care to be worried with the management of the playhouse; so on October 31, 1618, he leased it to the Palsgrave's Men for a period of thirty-one years, at an annual rental of L200 and two rundlets of wine at Christmas.[455]

[Footnote 455: Greg, Henslowe Papers, p. 27; Young, The History of Dulwich College, II, 260.]

On April 24, 1620, Alleyn executed a deed of grant of lands by which he transferred the Fortune, along with various other properties, to Dulwich College.[456] But he retained during his lifetime the whole of the revenues therefrom, and he specifically reserved to himself the right to grant leases for any length of years. The transference of the title, therefore, in no way affected the playhouse, and Alleyn continued to manage the property as he had been accustomed to do in the past.

[Footnote 456: The deed is printed by Young, op. cit., I, 50. The Fortune property, I believe, is still a part of the endowment of the college.]

His services in this capacity were soon needed, for on December 9, 1621, the Fortune was burned to the ground. Alleyn records the event in his Diary thus: "Memorandum. This night at 12 of the clock the Fortune was burnt." In a less laconic fashion John Chamberlain writes to Sir Dudley Carleton: "On Sunday night here was a great fire at the Fortune in Golding-Lane, the fairest playhouse in this town. It was quite burnt down in two hours, and all their apparel and playbooks lost, whereby those poor companions are quite undone."[457]

[Footnote 457: Birch, The Court and Times of James the First, II, 280. Howes, in his continuation of Stow's Annals (1631), p. 1004, attributes the fire to "negligence of a candle," but gives no details.]

The "poor companions" thus referred to were, of course, the players, who lost not only their stock of apparel, playbooks, and stage furniture, but also their lease, which assured them of a home. Alleyn, however, was quite able and ready to reconstruct the building for them; and we find him on May 20, 1621, already organizing a syndicate to finance "a new playhouse" which "there is intended to be erected and set up." The stock of the new enterprise he divided into twelve equal shares, which he disposed of, as the custom was, in the form of whole and half shares, reserving for himself only one share.[458] The plot of ground on which the old playhouse stood he leased to the several sharers for a period of fifty-one years at an annual rental of L10 13s. 10d. a share, with the express condition that the building to be erected thereon should never be used for any purpose other than the acting of stage-plays. The sharers then proceeded to the task of constructing their playhouse. It was proposed to make the new building larger[459] and handsomer than the old one, and to build it of brick[460] with a tiled roof—possibly an attempt at fireproof construction. It was decided, also, to abandon the square shape in favor of the older and more logical circular shape. Wright, in his Historia Histrionica, describes the New Fortune as "a large, round, brick building,"[461] and Howes assures us that it was "farre fairer" than the old playhouse.[462] We do not know how much the building cost. At the outset each sharer was assessed L83 6s. 8d. towards the cost of construction,[463] which would produce exactly L1000; but the first assessment was not necessarily all that the sharers were called upon to pay. For example, when the Globe was rebuilt each sharer was at first assessed "L50 or L60," but before the building was finished each had paid more than L100. So the Fortune may well have cost more than the original estimate of L1000. In 1656 two expert assessors appointed by the authorities of Dulwich College to examine the playhouse declared that "the said building did in our opinions cost building about two thousand pound."[464] This estimate is probably not far wrong. The playhouse was completed in June or July of 1623, and was again occupied by the Palsgrave's Men.[465]

[Footnote 458: Greg, Henslowe Papers, pp. 28-30; 112. The names of the sharers are not inspiring: Thomas Sparks, merchant tailor; William Gwalter, innholder; John Fisher, barber-surgeon; Thomas Wigpitt, bricklayer; etc.]

[Footnote 459: Prynne, Histriomastix, Epistle Dedicatory.]

[Footnote 460: The writer of the manuscript notes in the Phillipps copy of Stow's Annals (see The Academy, October 28, 1882, p. 314), who is not trustworthy, says that the Fortune was burned down in 1618, and "built again with brick work on the outside," from which Mr. Wallace assumed that he meant that the building was merely brick-veneered. If the writer meant this he was in error. See the report of the commission appointed by Dulwich College to examine the building (Greg, Henslowe Papers, p. 95).]

[Footnote 461: Hazlitt's Dodsley, XV, 408.]

[Footnote 462: Stow, Annals, 1631.]

[Footnote 463: Greg, Henslowe Papers, p. 29. Half-shares were L41 13s. 4d., which Murray (English Dramatic Companies) confuses with whole shares.]

[Footnote 464: Greg, Henslowe Papers, p. 95. This estimate was made after the interior of the building had been "pulled down," and hence refers merely to the cost of erection.]

[Footnote 465: For an account of "a dangerous and great riot committed in Whitecross Street at the Fortune Playhouse" in May, 1626, see Jeaffreson, Middlesex County Records, III, 161-63.]

On November 25, 1626, Edward Alleyn died, and the Fortune property came into the full possession of Dulwich College. This, however, did not in any way affect the syndicate of the Fortune housekeepers, who held from Alleyn a lease of the property until 1672. According to the terms of this lease each of the twelve sharers had to pay a yearly rental of L10 13s. 10d.; this rental now merely went to the College instead of to Alleyn.

In 1631 the Palsgrave's Men seem to have fallen on hard times; at any rate, they had to give up the Fortune, and the playhouse was taken over, about December, by the King's Revels, who had been playing at the small private playhouse of Salisbury Court.[466] The Palsgrave's Men were reorganized, taken under the patronage of the infant Prince Charles, and placed in the Salisbury Court Playhouse just vacated by the King's Revels.

[Footnote 466: For details of this move see the chapter on the Salisbury Court Playhouse.]

In 1635 there was a general shifting of houses on the part of the London companies. The King's Revels left the Fortune and returned to their old quarters at Salisbury Court; the Prince Charles's Men, who had been at Salisbury Court, moved to the Red Bull; and the Red Bull Company transferred itself to the Fortune.

The stay of the Red Bull Company at the Fortune was not happy. Towards the end of 1635 the plague was seriously interfering with their performance of plays;[467] and on May 10, 1636, the Privy Council closed all theatres, and kept them closed, except for a few days, until October 2, 1637.[468] This long inhibition not only impoverished the actors and drove them into the country, but came near ruining the lessees of the Fortune, who, having no revenue from the playhouse, could not make their quarterly payments to the College. On September 4, 1637, the Court of Assistants at Dulwich noted that the lessees were behind in their rent to the extent of L132 12s. 11d.; "and," the court adds, "there will be a quarter's rent more at Michaelmas next [i.e., in twenty-five days], which is doubted will be also unpaid, amounting to L33 1s. 4d."[469] The excuse of the lessees for their failure to pay was the "restraint from playing."[470]

[Footnote 467: Young, The History of Dulwich College, I, 114.]

[Footnote 468: The Malone Society's Collections, I, 391, 392; Malone, Variorum, III, 239.]

[Footnote 469: Young, The History of Dulwich College, I, 114.]

[Footnote 470: The College appealed to the Lord Keeper, who on January 26 ordered the payment of the sum. But two years later, February, 1640, we find the College again petitioning the Lord Keeper to order the lessees of the Fortune property to pay an arrearage of L104 14s. 5d. See Collier, The Alleyn Papers, pp. 95-98.]

This "restraint" was removed on October 2, 1637, and the players resumed their performances at the Fortune. But in the early summer of 1639 they fell victims to another bit of ill luck even more serious than their long inhibition. In a letter of Edmond Rossingham, dated May 8, 1639, we read: "Thursday last the players of the Fortune were fined L1000 for setting up an altar, a bason, and two candlesticks, and bowing down before it upon the stage; and although they allege it was an old play revived, and an altar to the heathen gods, yet it was apparent that this play was revived on purpose in contempt of the ceremonies of the Church."[471]

[Footnote 471: Printed in The Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1639, p. 140.]

During the Easter period, 1640, the players returned to their old quarters at the Red Bull. After their unhappy experiences at the Fortune they were apparently glad to occupy again their former home. The event is celebrated in a Prologue entitled Upon the Removing of the Late Fortune Players to the Bull, written by John Tatham, and printed in Fancies Theatre (1640):[472]

Here, gentlemen, our anchor's fixt; and we Disdaining Fortune's mutability, Expect your kind acceptance.

[Footnote 472: The Prologue is printed in full by Malone, Variorum, III, 79.]

The writer then hurls some uncomplimentary remarks at the Fortune, observing complacently: "We have ne'er an actor here has mouth enough to tear language by the ears." It is true that during these later years the Fortune had fallen into ill repute with persons of good taste. But so had the Red Bull, and the actors there had no right to throw stones. Apparently the large numbers that could be accommodated in the great public theatres, and the quality of the audience attracted by the low price of admission, made noise and rant inevitable.[473] As chief sinners in this respect the Fortune and the Red Bull are usually mentioned together.

[Footnote 473: Not even the Globe was entirely free from this; see the Prologue to The Doubtful Heir.]

Upon the departure of the Red Bull Company, the Prince Charles's Men (originally the Admiral's, and later the Palsgrave's Men), who had been occupying the Red Bull, came to the Fortune.[474] Thus after an absence of nearly nine years, the old company (though sadly altered in personnel), for which the Fortune had been built, returned to its home to remain there until the end.

[Footnote 474: Malone, Variorum, III, 79.]

On September 2, 1642, the Long Parliament passed an ordinance suppressing all stage-plays; but for a time the actors at the Fortune seem to have continued their performances. In the fifth number of The Weekly Account, September 27-October 4, 1643, we find among other entries: "The players' misfortune at the Fortune in Golding Lane, their players' clothes being seized upon in the time of a play by authority from the Parliament."[475] This, doubtless, led to the closing of the playhouse.

[Footnote 475: The Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1643, p. 564.]

After the Fortune was thus closed, the lessees were in a predicament. By a specific clause in their lease they were prevented from using the building for any purpose other than the acting of stage-plays, and now Parliament by a specific ordinance had forbidden the acting of stage-plays. Hence the lessees, some of whom were poor persons, being unable to make any profit from the building, refused to pay any rent. The College entered suit against them, and exhausted all legal means to make them pay, but without success.[476]

[Footnote 476: For an interesting comment on the situation, especially in the year 1649, see Notes and Queries (series X), I, 85.]

When the ordinance prohibiting plays expired in January, 1648, the actors promptly reopened the Fortune, and we learn from The Kingdom's Weekly Intelligencer that on January 27 no fewer than one hundred and twenty coaches were crowded about the building. But on February 9 Parliament passed a new and even more stringent ordinance against dramatic performances, placing penalties not only upon the players, but also upon the spectators. This for ever put an end to acting at the Fortune.

In 1649 the arrears of the lessees having reached the sum of L974 5s. 8d., the authorities of the College took formal possession of the playhouse.

From certain manuscript notes[477] entered in the Phillipps copy of Stow's Annals (1631), we learn that "a company of soldiers, set on by the sectaries of these sad times, on Saturday, the 24 day of March, 1649," sacked the Salisbury Court Playhouse, the Phoenix, and the Fortune. The note states that the Fortune was "pulled down on the inside by the soldiers"; that is, the stage and the seats were dismantled[478] so as to render the building unusable for dramatic purposes.

[Footnote 477: Printed in The Academy, October 28, 1882, p. 314.]

[Footnote 478: See The Journals of the House of Commons, July 26, 1648.]

In the following year, 1650, the inhabitants of the Parish of St. Giles "represent that they are poor, and unable to build a place of worship for themselves, but think it would be convenient if that large building commonly known by the name of the Fortune Playhouse might be allotted and set apart for that purpose." The request was not granted.[479]

[Footnote 479: Warner, Catalogue, XXXI; Greg, Henslowe's Diary, II, 65.]

By July, 1656, the condition of the old playhouse was such that the Masters and Wardens of the College appointed two experts to view the building and make recommendations. They reported "that by reason the lead hath been taken from the said building, the tiling not secured, and the foundation of the said playhouse not kept in good repair, great part of the said playhouse is fallen to the ground, the timber thereof much decayed and rotten, and the brick walls so rent and torn that the whole structure is in no condition capable of repair, but in great danger of falling, to the hazard of passengers' lives"; and they add: "The charge for demolishing the same will be chargeable and dangerous. Upon these considerations our opinion is that the said materials may not be more worth than eighty pound."[480]

[Footnote 480: The entire report is printed in Greg, Henslowe Papers, p. 95.]

The authorities of Dulwich took no action on this report. However, on March 5, 1660, they ordered that the property be leased, making a casual reference to the playhouse as "at present so ruinous that part thereof is already fallen down, and the rest will suddenly follow." Accordingly, they inserted in the Mercurius Politicus of February 14-21, 1661, the following advertisement: "The Fortune Playhouse, situate between Whitecross Street and Golding Lane, in the parish of St. Giles, Cripplegate, with the ground thereto belonging, is to be let to be built upon."[481]

[Footnote 481: Discovered by Stevens, and printed in Malone, Variorum, III, 55, note 5. Mr. W.J. Lawrence, Archiv fuer das Studium der Neueren Sprachen und Literaturen (1914), p. 314, says that the date of this advertisement is 1660. But the same advertisement is reprinted by H.R. Plomer in Notes and Queries (series X), VI, 107, from The Kingdom's Intelligencer of March 18, 1661.]

No one seems to have cared to lease the property; so on March 16, following, the materials of the building were sold to one William Beaven for the sum of L75;[482] and in the records of the College, March 4, 1662, we read that "the said playhouse ... is since totally demolished."[483]

[Footnote 482: Young, The History of Dulwich College, II, 265.]

[Footnote 483: Collier, The Alleyn Papers, p. 101. I am aware of the fact that there are references to later incidents at the Fortune (for example, the statement that it was visited by officers in November, 1682, in an attempt to suppress secret conventicles that had long been held there), but in view of the unimpeachable documentary evidence cited above (in 1662 the College authorities again refer to it as "the late ruinous and now demolished Fortune playhouse"), we must regard these later references either as inaccurate, or as referring to another building later erected in the same neighborhood. The so-called picture of the Fortune, printed in Wilkinson's Londina Illustrata, and often reproduced by modern scholars, cannot possibly be that of the playhouse erected by Alleyn. For an interesting surmise as to the history of this later building see W.J. Lawrence, Restoration Stage Nurseries, in Archiv fuer das Studium der Neueren Sprachen und Literaturen (1914), p. 301.]



CHAPTER XIV

THE RED BULL

The builder of the Red Bull Playhouse[484] was "one Aaron Holland, yeoman," of whom we know little more than that he "was utterly unlearned and illiterate, not being able to read."[485] He had leased "for many years" from Anne Beddingfield, "wife and administratrix of the goods and chattles of Christopher Beddingfield, deceased," a small plot of land, known by the name of "The Red Bull." This plot of land, which contained one house, was situated "at the upper end of St. John's Street" in the Parish of St. James, Clerkenwell, the exact location being marked by "Red Bull Yard" in Ogilby and Morgan's Map of London, printed in 1677. The property was not much more distant from the heart of the city than the Fortune property, and since it could be easily reached through St. John's Gate, it was quite as well situated for dramatic purposes as was the Fortune.

[Footnote 484: This playhouse is not to be confused with the famous Bull Tavern in Bishopsgate Street, for many years used as a theatre.]

[Footnote 485: These statements are based upon the Woodford v. Holland documents, first discovered by Collier, later by Greenstreet, and finally printed in full by Wallace, Three London Theatres.]



In or before 1605[486] Holland erected on this plot of ground "a playhouse for acting and setting forth plays, comedies, and tragedies." We may suspect that he did this at the instigation of the Earl of Worcester's Men, who had just been taken under the patronage of the Queen, and had been selected by the Privy Council as one of three companies to be "allowed." The warrant of the Privy Council, April 9, 1604, orders the Lord Mayor to "permit and suffer the three companies of players to the King, Queen, and Prince publickly to exercise their plays in their several and usual houses for that purpose, and no other, viz. the Globe, situate in Maiden Lane on the Bankside in the county of Surrey, the Fortune in Golding Lane, and the Curtain, in Holywell."[487] Among these three companies, as Dekker tells us, there was much rivalry.[488] No doubt the Queen's Men, forced to occupy the old Curtain Playhouse, suffered by comparison with the King's Men at the handsome Globe, and the Prince's Men at the new and magnificent Fortune; and this, I suspect, furnished the immediate cause for the erection of the Red Bull. In a draft of a license to the Queen's Men, made late in 1603 or early in 1604, the fact is disclosed that the actors, of whom Thomas Greene was the leader, were contemplating a new playhouse. The company was licensed to use any "playhouse not used by others, by the said Thomas Greene elected, or by him hereafter to be built."[489] Whether or no Greene and his fellows had some understanding with Holland, we cannot say. But in 1605 we find Holland disposing of one share in the new playhouse to Thomas Swynnerton, a member of Queen Anne's Troupe; and he may at the same time have disposed of other shares to other members, for his transaction with Swynnerton comes to our notice only through a subsequent lawsuit. The words used in the documents connected with the suit clearly suggest that the playhouse was completed at the time of the purchase. From the fact that Holland granted "a seventh part of the said playhouse and galleries, with a gatherer's place thereto belonging or appertaining, unto the said Thomas Swynnerton for diverse years,"[490] it appears that the ownership of the playhouse had been divided into seven shares, some of which, according to custom, may have been subdivided into half-shares.

[Footnote 486: Sir Sidney Lee (A Life of William Shakespeare, p. 60) says that the Red Bull was "built about 1600." He gives no evidence, and the statement seems to be merely a repetition from earlier and unauthoritative writers.]

[Footnote 487: The original warrant is preserved at Dulwich, and printed by Greg, Henslowe Papers, p. 61. Cf. also Dasent, Acts of the Privy Council, XXXII, 511.]

[Footnote 488: Raven's Almanack (1609); Dekker's Works (ed. Grosart), IV, 210.]

[Footnote 489: The Malone Society's Collections, I, 265.]

[Footnote 490: Wallace, Three London Theatres, p. 18.]

The name of the playhouse, as in the case of the Rose and the Curtain, was taken from the name of the estate on which it was erected. Of the building we have no pictorial representation; the picture in Kirkman's The Wits (1672), so often reproduced by scholars as "The Interior of the Red Bull," has nothing whatever to do with that building. The Kirkman picture shows a small enclosed room, with a narrow stage illuminated by chandeliers and footlights; the Red Bull, on the contrary, was a large, open-air building, with its stage illuminated by the sun. It is thus described in Wright's Historia Histrionica (1699): "The Globe, Fortune, and Bull were large houses, and lay partly open to the weather."[491] Before its door was displayed a sign on which was painted a red bull; hence the playhouse is sometimes referred to simply as "at the sign of the Red Bull."

[Footnote 491: Hazlitt's Dodsley, XV, 408. If the Kirkham picture represents the interior of any playhouse, it more likely represents the Cockpit, which was standing at the time of the Restoration.]

The building, as I have indicated, seems to have been completed in or before 1605; but exactly when the Queen's Men moved thither from the Curtain is not clear. The patent issued to the company on April 15, 1609, gives them license to play "within their now usual houses, called the Red Bull in Clerkenwell, and the Curtain in Holywell."[492] Since they would hardly make use of two big public playhouses at the same time, we might suspect that they were then arranging for the transfer. Moreover, Heath, in his Epigrams, printed in 1610 but probably written a year or two earlier, refers to the three important public playhouses of the day as the Globe, the Fortune, and the Curtain. Yet, that the Queen's Men were playing regularly at the Red Bull in 1609 is clear from Dekker's Raven's Almanack,[493] and they may have been playing there at intervals after 1605.

[Footnote 492: The Malone Society's Collections, I, 270.]

[Footnote 493: Dekker's Works (ed. Grosart), IV, 210-11. I cannot understand why Murray (English Dramatic Companies, I, 152-53) and others say that Dekker refers to the Fortune, the Globe, and the Curtain. His puns are clear: "Fortune must favour some ... the whole world must stick to others ... and a third faction must fight like Bulls."]

Dekker, in the pamphlet just mentioned, predicted "a deadly war" between the Globe, the Fortune, and the Red Bull. And he had good reasons for believing that the Queen's Men could successfully compete with the two other companies, for it numbered among its players some of the best actors of the day. The leader of the troupe was Thomas Greene, now chiefly known for the amusing comedy named, after him, Greene's Tu Quoque, but then known to all Londoners as the cleverest comedian since Tarleton and Kempe:

Scat. Yes, faith, brother, if it please you; let's go see a play at the Globe.

But. I care not; any whither, so the clown have a part; for, i' faith, I am nobody without a fool.

Gera. Why, then, we'll go to the Red Bull; they say Green's a good clown.[494]

[Footnote 494: Greene's Tu Quoque, Hazlitt's Dodsley, XI, 240. In May, 1610, there was "a notable outrage at the Playhouse called the Red Bull"; see Middlesex County Records, II, 64-65.]

The chief playwright for the troupe was the learned and industrious Thomas Heywood, who, like Shakespeare, was also an actor and full sharer in his company. Charles Lamb, who was an ardent admirer of Heywood's plays, enthusiastically styled him "a prose Shakespeare"; and Wordsworth, with hardly less enthusiasm, declared him to have been "a great man."

In 1612 Thomas Greene died, and the leadership of the troupe was taken over by Christopher Beeston, a man well known in the theatrical life of the time. Late in February, 1617, Beeston transferred the Queen's Men to his new playhouse in Drury Lane, the Cockpit; in little more than a week the sacking of the Cockpit drove them back to their old quarters, where they remained until the following June. But even after this they seem not to have abandoned the Red Bull entirely.

Edward Alleyn, in his Account Book, writes: "Oct. 1, 1617, I came to London in the coach and went to the Red Bull"; and again under the date of October 3: "I went to the Red Bull, and received for The Younger Brother but L3 6s. 4d."[495] What these two passages mean it is hard to say, for they constitute the only references to the Red Bull in all the Alleyn papers; but they do not necessarily imply, as some have thought, that Alleyn was part owner of the playhouse; possibly he was merely selling to the Red Bull Company the manuscript of an old play.[496]

[Footnote 495: Malone, Variorum, III, 223; Young, The History of Dulwich College, II, 51; Warner, Catalogue, p. 165; Collier, Memoirs of Edward Alleyn, p. 107.]

[Footnote 496: The play is not otherwise known; a play with this title, however, was entered on the Stationers' Register in 1653.]

At the death of Queen Anne, March 2, 1619, the company was deprived of its "service," and after attending her funeral on May 13, was dissolved. Christopher Beeston joined Prince Charles's Men, and established that troupe at the Cockpit;[497] the other leading members of Queen Anne's Men seem to have continued at the Red Bull under the simple title "The Red Bull Company."

[Footnote 497: For details of this change, and of the quarrels that followed, see the chapter on the Cockpit.]

In April, 1622, a feltmaker's apprentice named John Gill,[498] while seated on the Red Bull stage, was accidentally injured by a sword in the hands of one of the actors, Richard Baxter. A few days later Gill called upon his fellow-apprentices to help him secure damages. In the forenoon he sent the following letter, now somewhat defaced by time, to Baxter:

Mr. Blackster [sic]. So it is that upon Monday last it ... to be upon your stage, intending no hurt to any one, where I was grievously wounded in the head, as may appear; and in the surgeon's hands, who is to have xs. for the cure; and in the meantime my Master to give me maintenance ... [to my] great loss and hindrance; and therefore in kindness I desire you to give me satisfaction, seeing I was wounded by your own hand ... weapon. If you refuse, then look to yourself and avoid the danger which shall this day ensue upon your company and house. For ... as you can, for I am a feltmaker's prentice, and have made it known to at least one hundred and forty of our ... who are all here present, ready to take revenge upon you unless willingly you will give present satisfaction. Consider there ... think fitting. And as you have a care for your own safeties, so let me have answer forthwith.[499]

[Footnote 498: The name is also given, incorrectly, as Richard Gill.]

[Footnote 499: Jeaffreson, Middlesex County Records, II, 165-66; 175-76.]

Baxter turned the letter over to the authorities of Middlesex (hence its preservation), who took steps to guard the playhouse and actors. The only result was that prentices "to the number of one hundred persons on the said day riotously assembled at Clerkenwell, to the terror and disquiet of persons dwelling there."

On July 8, 1622, the Red Bull Company secured a license "to bring up children in the quality and exercise of playing comedies, histories, interludes, morals, pastorals, stage-plays and such like ... to be called by the name of the Children of the Revels."[500] The Children of the Revels occupied the Red Bull until the summer of the following year, 1623, when they were dissolved. The last reference to them is in the Herbert Manuscript under the date of May 10, 1623.[501]

[Footnote 500: Malone, Variorum, III, 62; The Malone Society's Collections, I, 284.]

[Footnote 501: Chalmers, Supplemental Apology, p. 213.]

In August, 1623, we find the Red Bull occupied by Prince Charles's Men,[502] who, after the dissolution of the Revels Company, had moved thither from the less desirable Curtain.

[Footnote 502: Ibid., pp. 213-14.]

Two years later, in 1625, Prince Charles became King, and took under his patronage his father's troupe, the King's Men. Some of the members of the Prince Charles Troupe were transferred to the King's Men, and the rest constituted a nucleus about which a new company was organized, known simply as "The Red Bull Company."

About this time, it seems, the playhouse was rebuilt and enlarged. The Fortune had been destroyed by fire in 1621, and had just been rebuilt in a larger and handsomer form. In 1625 one W.C., in London's Lamentation for her Sins, writes: "Yet even then, Oh Lord, were the theatres magnified and enlarged."[503] This doubtless refers to the rebuilding of the Fortune and the Red Bull. Prynne specifically states in his Histriomastix (1633) that the Fortune and Red Bull had been "lately reedified [and] enlarged." But nothing further is known of the "re-edification and enlargement" of the Red Bull.

[Footnote 503: Quoted by Collier, The History of English Dramatic Poetry (1879), III, 121.]

After its enlargement the playhouse seems to have acquired a reputation for noise and vulgarity. Carew, in 1630, speaks of it as a place where "noise prevails" and a "drowth of wit," and yet as always crowded with people while the better playhouses stood empty. In The Careless Shepherdess, acted at Salisbury Court, we read:

And I will hasten to the money-box, And take my shilling out again; I'll go to the Bull, or Fortune, and there see A play for two-pence, and a jig to boot.[504]

[Footnote 504: Malone, Variorum, III, 70.]

In 1638, a writer of verses prefixed to Randolph's Poems speaks of the "base plots" acted with great applause at the Red Bull.[505] James Wright informs us, in his Historia Histrionica, that the Red Bull and the Fortune were "mostly frequented by citizens and the meaner sort of people."[506] And Edmund Gayton, in his Pleasant Notes, wittily remarks: "I have heard that the poets of the Fortune and Red Bull had always a mouth-measure for their actors (who were terrible tear-throats) and made their lines proportionable to their compass, which were sesquipedales, a foot and a half."[507] Probably the ill repute of the large public playhouses at this time was chiefly due to the rise of private playhouses in the city.

[Footnote 505: Randolph's Works (ed. Hazlitt), p. 504.]

[Footnote 506: Hazlitt's Dodsley, XV, 407.]

[Footnote 507: Pleasant Notes on Don Quixote, p. 24.]

In 1635 the Red Bull Company moved to the Fortune, and Prince Charles's Men occupied the Red Bull.

Five years later, at Easter, 1640, Prince Charles's Men moved back to the Fortune, and the Red Bull Company returned to its old home. In a prologue written to celebrate the event,[508] the members of the company declared:

Here, gentlemen, our anchor's fix't.

[Footnote 508: J. Tatham, Fancies Theatre. For a fuller discussion of the shifting of companies in 1635 and 1640 see the chapter on "The Fortune."]

This proved true, for the company remained at the Red Bull until Parliament passed the ordinance of 1642 closing the playhouses and forbidding all dramatic performances. The ordinance, which was to hold good during the continuance of the civil war, was renewed in 1647, with January 1, 1648, set as the date of its expiration. Through some oversight a new ordinance was not immediately passed, and the actors were prompt to take advantage of the fact. They threw open the playhouses, and the Londoners flocked in great crowds to hear plays again. At the Red Bull, so we learn from the newspaper called Perfect Occurrences, was given a performance of Beaumont and Fletcher's Wit Without Money.

But on February 9, 1648, Parliament made up for its oversight by passing an exceptionally severe ordinance against dramatic exhibitions, directing that actors be publicly flogged, and that each spectator be fined the sum of five shillings.

During the dark years that followed, the Red Bull, in spite of this ordinance, was occasionally used by venturous actors. James Wright, in his Historia Histrionica, tells us that upon the outbreak of the war the various London actors had gone "into the King's army, and, like good men and true, served their old master, though in a different, yet more honourable capacity. Robinson was killed at the taking of a place (I think Basing House) by Harrison.... Mohun was a captain.... Hart was cornet of the same troop, and Shatterel quartermaster. Allen, of the Cockpit, was a major.... The rest either lost or exposed their lives for their king."[509] He concludes the narrative by saying that when the wars were over, those actors who were left alive gathered to London, "and for a subsistence endeavoured to revive their old trade privately." They organized themselves into a company in 1648 and attempted "to act some plays with as much caution and privacy as could be at the Cockpit"; but after three or four days they were stopped by soldiers. Thereafter, on special occasions "they used to bribe the officer who commanded the guard at Whitehall, and were thereupon connived at to act for a few days at the Red Bull, but were sometimes, notwithstanding, disturbed by soldiers."[510] To such clandestine performances Kirkman refers in his Preface to The Wits, or Sport upon Sport (1672): "I have seen the Red Bull Playhouse, which was a large one, so full that as many went back for want of room as had entered; and as meanly as you may now think of these drolls, they were then acted by the best comedians then and now in being." Not, however, without occasional trouble. In Whitelocke's Memorials, p. 435, we read: "20 Dec., 1649. Some stage-players in St. John's Street were apprehended by troopers, their clothes taken away, and themselves carried to prison"; again, in The Perfect Account, December 27-January 3, 1654-1655: "Dec. 30, 1654.—This day the players at the Red Bull, being gotten into all their borrowed gallantry and ready to act, were by some of the soldiery despoiled of all their bravery; but the soldiery carried themselves very civilly towards the audience."[511] In the Weekly Intelligencer, September 11-18, 1655, we find recorded still another sad experience for the actors: "Friday, September 11, 1655.—This day proved tragicall to the players at the Red Bull; their acting being against the Act of Parliament, the soldiers secured the persons of some of them who were upon the stage, and in the tiring-house they seized also upon their clothes in which they acted, a great part whereof was very rich."[512]

[Footnote 509: Hazlitt's Dodsley, XV, 409.]

[Footnote 510: Ibid., 409-10.]

[Footnote 511: Cited by C.H. Firth, in Notes and Queries, August 18, 1888, series VII, vol. VI, p. 122.]

[Footnote 512: Ibid.]

On this occasion, however, the soldiers, instead of carrying themselves "very civilly" towards the audience, undertook to exact from each of the spectators the fine of five shillings. The ordinance of Parliament, passed February 9, 1648, read: "And it is hereby further ordered and ordained, that every person or persons which shall be present and a spectator at such stage-play or interlude, hereby prohibited, shall for every time he shall be present, forfeit and pay the sum of five shillings to the use of the poor of the parish."[513] But the spectators did not submit to this fine without a struggle. Jeremiah Banks wrote to Williamson on September 16, 1655: "At the playhouse this week many were put to rout by the soldiers and had broken crowns; the corporal would have been entrapped had he not been vigilant."[514] And in the Weekly Intelligencer, September 11-18, we read: "It never fared worse with the spectators than at this present, for those who had monies paid their five shillings apiece; those who had none, to satisfy their forfeits, did leave their cloaks behind them. The Tragedy of the spectators was the Comedy of the soldiers. There was abundance of the female sex, who, not able to pay five shillings, did leave some gage or other behind them, insomuch that although the next day after the Fair was expected to be a new fair of hoods, of aprons, and of scarfs; all which, their poverty being made known, and after some check for their trespass, were civilly again restored to the owners."[515]

[Footnote 513: Hazlitt, The English Drama and Stage, p. 69.]

[Footnote 514: The Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1655, p. 336.]

[Footnote 515: For a further account of this episode see Mercurius Fumigosus, No. 69.]

At the period of the Restoration the Red Bull was among the first playhouses to reopen. John Downes, in his Roscius Anglicanus, writes: "The scattered remnant of several of these houses, upon King Charles' Restoration, framed a company, who acted again at the Bull."[516] Apparently the company was brought together by the famous old Elizabethan actor, Anthony Turner. From the Middlesex County Records (III, 279) we learn that at first the players were interrupted by the authorities:

12 May, 1659.—Recognizances, taken before Ra: Hall, esq. J.P., of William Wintershall and Henry Eaton, both of Clerkenwell, gentlemen, in the sum of fifty pounds each; "Upon condition that Antony Turner shall personally appear at the next Quarter Sessions of the Peace to be holden at Hicks Hall for the said County of Middlesex; for the unlawful maintaining of stage-plays and interludes at the Red Bull in St. John's Street, which house he affirms that they hire of the parishioners of Clerkenwell at the rate of twenty shillings a day over and above what they have agreed to pay towards the relief of their poor and repairing their highways, and in the meantime to be of good behaviour and not to depart the Court without license.—Ra: Hall." Also similar Recognizances, taken on the same day, before the same J.P., of the same William Wintershall and Henry Eaton, gentlemen, in the same sum of fifty pounds each; for the appearance of Edward Shatterall at the next. Q.S.P. for Middlesex at Hicks Hall, "to answer for the unlawful maintaining of stage-plays and interludes at the Red Bull in St. John's Street &c." S.P.R., 17, May, 1659.

[Footnote 516: Cf. Wright, Historia Histrionica, p. 412; and for the general history of the actors at the Red Bull during this period see the Herbert records in Halliwell-Phillipps, A Collection of Ancient Documents.]

Later, it seems, they secured a license from the authorities, and thenceforth acted without interruption. Samuel Pepys made plans "to go to the Red Bull Playhouse" with Mrs. Pierce and her husband on August 3, 1660, but was prevented by business. An account of his visit there on March 23, 1661, is thus given in his Diary:

All the morning at home putting papers in order; dined at home, and then out to the Red Bull (where I had not been since plays came up again), but coming too soon I went out again and walked up and down the Charterhouse Yard and Aldersgate Street. At last came back again and went in, where I was led by a seaman that knew me, but is here as a servant, up to the tiring-room, where strange the confusion and disorder that there is among them in fitting themselves, especially here, where the clothes are very poor and the actors but common fellows. At last into the pit, where I think there was not above ten more than myself, and not one hundred in the whole house. And the play, which is called All's Lost by Lust, poorly done; and with so much disorder, among others, that in the musique-room, the boy that was to sing a song not singing it right, his master fell about his ears and beat him so, that it put the whole house in an uproar.

The actors, however, did not remain long at the Red Bull. They built for themselves a new theatre in Drury Lane, whither they moved on April 8, 1663;[517] and after this the old playhouse was deserted. In Davenant's The Play-House to Be Let (1663), I, i, we read:

Tell 'em the Red Bull stands empty for fencers:[518] There are no tenants in it but old spiders.

[Footnote 517: After November 8, 1660, they acted also in Gibbon's Tennis Court in Clare Market, which they had fitted up as a theatre; see Halliwell-Phillipps, A Collection of Ancient Documents, p. 34.]

[Footnote 518: See Pepys' Diary, April 25, 1664.]



CHAPTER XV

WHITEFRIARS

The district of Whitefriars, lying just outside the city wall to the west, and extending from Fleet Street to the Thames, was once in the possession of the order of White Friars, and the site of an important monastery; but in Elizabeth's time the church had disappeared, most of the ancient buildings had been dismantled, and in their place, as Stow tells us, were "many fair houses builded, lodgings for noblemen and others." Since at the dissolution of the monasteries the property had come into the possession of the Crown, it was not under the jurisdiction of the London Common Council—a fact which made Whitefriars, like Blackfriars, a desirable refuge for players seeking to escape the hostility of the city authorities.[519] One might naturally expect the appearance of playing here at an early date, but the evidence is slight.[520]

[Footnote 519: Whitefriars passed under city control in 1608 by grant of King James I, but certain rights remained, notably that of sanctuary. This has been celebrated in Shadwell's play, The Squire of Alsatia, and in Scott's romance, The Fortunes of Nigel.]

[Footnote 520: Prynne, in Histriomastix (1633), p. 491, quotes a passage from Richard Reulidge's Monster Lately Found Out and Discovered (1628), in which there is a reference to a playhouse as existing in Whitefriars "not long after" 1580. By "playhouse" Reulidge possibly meant an inn used for acting; but the whole passage, written by a Puritan after the lapse of nearly half a century, is open to grave suspicion, especially in its details. Again Richard Flecknoe, in A Short Discourse of the English Stage (1664), states that the Children of the Chapel Royal acted in Whitefriars. But that he confused the word "Whitefriars" with "Blackfriars" is shown by the rest of his statement.]

The first appearance of a regular playhouse in Whitefriars dates from the early years of King James's reign. With our present knowledge we cannot fix the date exactly, yet we can feel reasonably certain that it was not long before 1607—probably about 1605.

The chief spirit in the organization of the new playhouse seems to have been the poet Michael Drayton, who had secured a patent from King James to "erect" a company of child actors, to be known as "The Children of His Majesty's Revels."[521] Obviously his hope was to make the Children of His Majesty's Revels at Whitefriars rival the successful Children of Her Majesty's Revels at Blackfriars. In this ambitious enterprise he associated with himself a wealthy London merchant, Thomas Woodford, whom we know as having been interested in various theatrical investments.[522] These two men leased from Lord Buckhurst for a short period of time a building described as a "mansion house" formerly a part of the Whitefriars monastery: "the rooms of which are thirteen in number, three below, and ten above; that is to say, the great hall, the kitchen by the yard, and a cellar, with all the rooms from the Master of the Revells' office as the same are now severed and divided."[523] The "great hall" here mentioned, once the refectory of the monks, was made into the playhouse. Its "great" size may be inferred from the fact that there were ten rooms "above"; and its general excellence may be inferred from the fact that it was leased at L50 per annum, whereas Blackfriars, in a more desirable location and fully equipped as a theatre, was rented for only L40.

[Footnote 521: Fleay, Murray, and others are wrong in assuming that this troupe was merely a continuation of the Paul's Boys. So far as I can discover, there is no official record of the patent issued to Drayton; but that such a patent was issued is clear from the lawsuits of 1609, printed by Greenstreet in The New Shakspere Society's Transactions (1887-90), p. 269.]

[Footnote 522: He was part proprietor of the Red Bull. In the case of Witter v. Heminges and Condell he was examined as a witness (see Wallace, Shakespeare and his London Associates, p. 74), but what connection, if any, he had with the Globe does not appear.]

[Footnote 523: Greenstreet, The New Shakspere Society's Transactions (1887-90), p. 275.]

From an early seventeenth-century survey of the Whitefriars property (see the opposite page), we are able to place the building very exactly. The part of the monastery used as a playhouse—the Frater—was the southern cloister, marked in the plan, "My Lords Cloyster." The "kitchen by the yard" mentioned in the document just quoted is clearly represented in the survey by the "Scullere." The size of the playhouse is hard to ascertain, but it was approximately thirty-five feet in width and eighty-five feet in length.[524] In the London of to-day it extended roughly from Bouverie Street to Ashen-tree Court, and lay just north of George Yard.

[Footnote 524: The stipple walls, in the original survey colored gray, were of stone; the thinner walls of the adjoining "tenements," in the original colored red, were of brick.]



Of the career of the Children under the joint management of Drayton and Woodford we know almost nothing. But in March, 1608, a new management assumed charge of the troupe, and from this point on the history of the playhouse is reasonably clear.

The original lease of the building, it seems, expired on March 5, 1608. But before the expiration—in the latter part of 1607 or in the early part of 1608—Drayton and Woodford secured a new lease on the property for six years, eight months, and twenty days, or until December 25 (one of the four regular feasts of the year), 1614. In February, 1608, after having secured this renewal of the lease, Thomas Woodford suddenly determined to retire from the enterprise; and he sold his moiety to one David Lording Barry,[525] author of the play Ram Alley. Barry and Drayton at once made plans to divide the property into six shares, so as to distribute the expenses and the risks as well as the hoped-for profits. Barry induced his friend, George Androwes, to purchase one share, and hence the lawsuit from which we derive most of our knowledge of the playhouse. From this suit I quote below the more significant part relating to the new organization:

Humbly complaining, sheweth unto your honorable lordship, your daily orator, George Androwes, of London, silkweaver, that whereas one Lordinge Barry, about February which was in the year of our Lord 1607 [i.e., 1608], pretending himself to be lawfully possessed of one moiety of a messuage or mansion house, parcel of the late dissolved monastery called the Whitefriars, in Fleet Street, in the suburbs of London, by and under a lease made thereof, about March then next following, from the right honorable Robert, Lord Buckhurst, unto one Michael Drayton and Thomas Woodford, for the term of six years, eight months, and twenty days then following, for and under the yearly rent of fifty pounds reserved thereupon; the moiety of which said lease and premisses, by mean assignment from the said Thomas Woodford, was lawfully settled in the said Lordinge Barry, as he did pretend, together with the moiety of diverse play-books, apparel, and other furnitures and necessaries used and employed in and about the said messuage and the Children of the Revels,[526] there being, in making and setting forth plays, shows, and interludes, and such like. And the said Lordinge Barry ... being desirous to join others with him in the interest of the same, who might be contributory to such future charges as should arise in setting forth of plays and shows there, did thereupon ... solicit and persuade your orator to take from the said Barry an assignment of a sixth part of the messuage, premisses, and profits aforesaid.

[Footnote 525: By a stupid error often called Lodowick Barry. For an explanation of the error see an article by the present writer in Modern Philology, April, 1912, IX, 567. Mr. W.J. Lawrence has recently shown (Studies in Philology, University of North Carolina, April, 1917) that David Barry was the eldest son of the ninth Viscount Buttevant, and was called "Lording" by courtesy. At the time he became interested in the Whitefriars Playhouse he was twenty-two years old. He died in 1610.]

[Footnote 526: At this time the Children of Blackfriars had lost their patent, so that the Children at Whitefriars were the only Revels troupe.]



This passage gives us an interesting glimpse of Drayton and Barry in their efforts to organize a syndicate for exploiting the Children of His Majesty's Revels. They induced several other persons to buy half-shares; and then they engaged, as manager of the Children, Martin Slaiter,[527] a well-known and thoroughly experienced actor. For his services as manager, Slaiter was to receive one whole share in the organization, and lodgings for himself and his family of ten in the building. The syndicate thus formed was made up of four whole-sharers, Michael Drayton, Lordinge Barry, George Androwes, and Martin Slaiter, and four half-sharers, William Trevell, William Cooke, Edward Sibthorpe, and John Mason.[528]

[Footnote 527: Also spelled Slater, Slaughter, Slather, Slawghter. Henslowe often refers to him as "Martin."]

[Footnote 528: Mr. Wallace (The Century Magazine, 1910, LXXX, 511) incorrectly says that Whitefriars was held by "six equal sharers."]

The "great hall" had, of course, already been fitted up for the acting of plays, and the new lessees did not at first contemplate any expenditure on the building. Later, however,—if we can believe Androwes,—they spent a not inconsiderable sum for improvements. The Children already had certain plays, and to these were added some new ones. Among the plays in their repertoire were Day's Humour Out of Breath, Middleton's Family of Love, Armin's The Two Maids of Moreclacke, Sharpham's Cupid's Whirligig, Markham and Machin's The Dumb Knight, Barry's Ram Alley, and Mason's The Turk. The last two writers were sharers, and it seems likely that Drayton, also a sharer and experienced as a dramatist, contributed some plays towards the stock of the company.

The new organization, with bright prospects for success, was launched in March, 1608. Almost at once, however, it began to suffer from ill luck. In April the Children at Blackfriars, by their performance of Byron, caused King James to close all playhouses in London. How long he kept them closed we do not know, but we find the lessees of Whitefriars joining with the three other London companies in seeking to have the inhibition raised. As the French Ambassador informed his Government: "Pour lever cette defense, quatres autres compagnies, qui y sont encore, offrent deja cent mille francs, lesquels pourront bien leur en ordonner la permission."[529]

[Footnote 529: Letter of M. De La Boderie, the French Ambassador to England; quoted by E.K. Chambers, Modern Language Review, IV, 159.]

Even if this inhibition was shortly raised, the Whitefriars organization was not much better off, for in July the plague set in with unusual violence, and acting was seriously if not wholly interrupted for the next twelve months and more. As a result, the profits from the theatre did not come up to the "fair and false flattering speeches" which at the outset Barry had made to prospective investors, and this led to bad feeling among the sharers.

The company at Blackfriars, of course, was suffering in a similar way. On August 8, 1608, their playhouse was surrendered to the owner, Richard Burbage, and the Children being thus left without a home were dispersed. Early in 1609, probably in February, Robert Keysar (the manager of the Blackfriars troupe), Philip Rosseter, and others secured the lease of the Whitefriars Playhouse from Drayton and the rest of the discontented sharers, and reassembled there the Children of Blackfriars. What became of the Whitefriars troupe we do not know; but it is highly likely that the new organization took over the better actors from Drayton's company. At any rate, we do not hear again of the Children of His Majesty's Revels.

When Keysar and this new troupe of child-actors moved into Whitefriars, Slaiter and his family of ten were expelled from the building. This led to a lawsuit, and explains much in the legal documents printed by Greenstreet. Slaiter complained with no little feeling that he had been "riotously, willfully, violently, and unlawfully, contrary to the said articles and pretended agreement [by which he had been not only engaged as a manager, but also guaranteed a home for the period of "all the term of years in the lease"], put and kept out of his said rooms of habitation for him, this defendant, and his family, and all other his means of livelihood, thereby leaving this defendant and his whole family, being ten in number, to the world to seek for bread and other means to live by."[530]

[Footnote 530: Greenstreet, The New Shakspere Society's Transactions (1887-90), p. 283.]

The new Whitefriars troupe acted five plays at Court during the winter of 1609-10. Payments therefor were made to Robert Keysar, and the company was referred to merely as "The Children of the Whitefriars." But on January 4, 1610, the company secured a royal patent authorizing the use of the title "The Children of the Queen's Revels."[531] The patent was granted to Robert Daborne, Philip Rosseter, John Tarbock, Richard Jones, and Robert Browne; but Keysar, though not named in the grant, was still one of the important sharers.[532]