[1052] Epigram 39. Both Curtain and Swan are named by W. Turner in Turners Dish of Stuffe, or a Gallimaufry (1662), but this cannot be dated; cf. ch. xv (Shank):
[1053] Jodocus Sincerus, Itineris Anglici brevissima delineatio in Itinerarium Galliae (1617), 370; cf. Rye, 131, who gives the first edition as 1616.
[1054] K. Feyerabend in E. S. xiv. 440, from manuscript in Cassel Library (cf. Rye, 143), ‘Zu Londen sind 7 theatra, da tägliche, die sonntäge ausgenommen, comoedien gehalten werden, unter welchen die vornehmste der glbs [sic, for globus], so über dem wasser liegt. Das theatrum, da die kinder spielen, ist auf diesseit des wassers, spielen um 3 uhr, aber nur von michaelis bis auf ostern; hier kostet der eingang einen halben schilling nur, da an andern orten wohl eine halbe kron. Diese [nämlich der Globus, Ed., but surely in error] spielen nur bei lichtern und is die beste Cumpani in London.’ The baiting is also mentioned; cf. p. 457.
[1055] Henslowe Papers, 72, 79.
[1056] Taylor, The True Cause of the Watermen’s Suit concerning Players, and the reasons that their Playing on London side is their extreame hindrances. With a Relation how farre that suit was proceeded in, and the occasions that it was not effected, reprinted by Hindley, ii, No. 15, from Taylor’s Works (1630), probably originally printed in 1614.
[1057] It cites Caesar’s promotion and describes the agitation by the watermen as taking place in ‘January last, 1613’, i. e. 161¾. Probably it was written in the winter of 1614, and touched up before 1630, since it refers to Bacon and Somerset as ‘then’ Attorney-General and Lord Chamberlain respectively. Bacon’s term of office was from 27 Oct. 1613 to 7 March 1617, Somerset’s from 10 July 1614 to 2 Nov. 1615.
[1058] There is, I suppose, no reason why Randolph’s Muses Looking Glass, 1. i. 55, should not have been written before Salisbury Court was built. Herein a ‘brother’ is said to pray—
[1059] Stowe, Annales (1631), 1004. In the extract in Harrison, ii. 49*, the period covered is given in error as 1553–1613.
[1060] Cf. App. I.
[1061] S. A. Strong, Catalogue of Letters at Welbeck, 226.
[1062] Harrison, iv. 212, from Phillipps MS. 11613, f. 16, penes J. F. P. Fenwick, of Thirlestane House, Cheltenham, written about 1656–8. The writer is not quite accurate in some of his earlier dates.
[1063] Ward, iii. 280; Lawrence, ii. 138.
[1064] Baker, 135, gives an enlarged reproduction under the name of the Theatre; but that is an obvious mistake.
[1065] Rendle, Bankside, 1.
[1066] [Nicholas Goodman?] Hollands Leaguer or an historical Discourse of the Life and Actions of Dona Britanica Hollandia the Arch-Mistris of the wicked women of Evtopia (1632), sig. F 2; cf. C. W. Wallace in Engl. Stud. xliii. 392.
[1067] Stowe, Survey, ii. 52.
[1068] I cannot agree with Dr. Martin (Surrey Arch. Colls. xxiii. 186), who sees, both in the Delaram and the ‘Hondius’ engravings, an east to west highway running north of the cylindrical building, which he takes for Maid Lane.
[1069] The somewhat wanton suggestion of Dr. Martin (loc. cit. 188) that the engraver mistook the Rose for the Globe is sufficiently refuted by the fact that the Rose was extinct or at least long disused.
[1070] I do not know on what ground Adams, 458, says that Visscher’s view was drawn several years before it was printed, ‘and represents the city as it was in or before 1613’.
[1071] Martin, loc. cit. 192, again suggests that the houses are misnamed. He thinks that the Rose has been called the Globe in error and the Globe the Bear Garden, and that the unnamed house is the Globe. I cannot follow him in thinking that Merian represents the western house of the group as south of Maid Lane; all three are clearly to the north.
[1072] Adams, 458, thinks that Merian worked upon Visscher, ‘with additions from some other earlier view not yet identified’. If so, this might perhaps go back to 1605.
[1073] Cf. p. 463.
[1074] Rendle, Bankside, xxx.
[1075] Cf. p. 433.
[1076] B. Marsh, Records of the Worshipful Company of Carpenters, iii. 95. I have to thank Mr. Marsh for this reference.
[1077] Sloane MS. 2530, f. 11 et passim.
[1078] App. C, No. xviii.
[1079] Gosson, Schoole of Abuse, 40. The date renders very hazardous the identifications of Ptolemy with the Telomo shown at Court by Leicester’s men on 10 Feb. 1583, and of The Jew with R. W.’s Three Ladies of London (1584), which leads Fleay, 36, 40, to infer that Leicester’s men played at the Bull from 1560 to 1576.
[1080] App. D, Nos. lx-lxii.
[1081] Tarlton, 13, 24.
[1082] Birch, Elizabeth, i. 173, from Lambeth MS.; Spedding, viii. 314.
[1083] Cf. App. I.
[1084] Machyn, 238.
[1085] Feuillerat, Eliz. 277. The play may have only been rehearsed, so that the identification of it by Fleay, 36, with The Irish Knight shown at Court by Warwick’s men on 18 Feb. 1577 is untenable, and with it vanishes all ground for the assignment of the inn by Fleay, 40, to Rich’s men in 1568–70, Lane’s in 1571–3, Warwick’s in 1575–80, and Hunsdon’s in 1582–3.
[1086] Tarlton, 24.
[1087] Harben, 65.
[1088] Tarlton, 21. Apparently the Queen of Sheba, and not Pocahontas, was the original Belle Sauvage.
[1089] App. C, No. xiv.
[1090] App. C, No. xxii. The description reads like a compliment to Lyly, but does not justify the inference of Fleay, 39, that the Chapel boys played at the Bel Savage from 1559 to 1582.
[1091] Arber, ii. 526.
[1092] Sloane MS. 2530, ff. 7, 10, 11, 14; cf. the quotation from G. Silver, Paradoxe of Defence (1599), in Adams, 13.
[1093] Wallace, N. U. S. xiii. 82, 89.
[1094] Tarlton, 23.
[1095] App. D, No. ci. Fleay, 89, has no other material than these notices and an unjustifiable assumption of identity between the two companies for assigning the house to Leicester’s (1586–8) and Strange’s (1589–91).
[1096] Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 317; cf. p. 425.
[1097] Stowe, Survey (ed. Kingsford, ii. 262, 369), ends his account of Holywell in the 1598 edition, ‘And neare therevnto are builded two publique houses for the acting and shewe of Comedies, Tragedies, and Histories, for recreation. Whereof the one is called the Courtein, the other the Theatre: both standing on the South-west side towards the field’. This is omitted from the 1603 edition, probably not so much, as has been suggested, because Stowe shared the Puritan dislike of the stage, as because in 1603 the Theatre was gone and the Curtain little used. Stowe’s draft (c. 1598) in Harl. MS. 538 runs, ‘Neare adjoyning are builded two houses for the shewe of Activities, Comedies, tragedies and histories, for recreation. The one of them is named the Curtayn in Holy Well, the other the Theatre.’ No contemporary map shows the Theatre, although that of Agas (c. 1561) gives a good idea of the Halliwell district before it was built. The representation from the seventeenth-century ‘Ryther’ map, given as the Theatre by Baker, 135, is presumably the Curtain.
[1098] Braines (1915), 4; Stopes, 185.
[1099] Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 345; Braines (1915), 5, 21.
[1100] Latin translations of parts of the lease are recited in pleadings of 1600 and 1602 (Wallace, 166, 268), and the description of parcels agrees with that in the draft lease of 1585, similarly recited in 1600 (Wallace, 169); cf. Braines (1915), 8.
[1101] The position of the well in Chassereau’s Survey of Shoreditch (1745) seems to me to bear out this identification, although, as Braines (1915), 4, points out, we do not know Chassereau’s authority. Under Burbadge’s lease all Giles Allen’s tenants in Holywell were to have access to the well. Stowe, Survey, i. 15, describes the holy well as ‘much decayed and marred with filthinesse purposely laide there, for the heighthening of the ground for garden plots’. It is clearly distinct from Dame Agnes a Cleere’s well, which was outside Holywell, towards the north (Stowe, Survey, i. 16; ii. 273; Stopes, 192).
[1102] Tarlton’s News out of Purgatory (S. R. 26 June 1590), in Tarlton, 54, 105, ‘I would needs to the Theatre to a play, where when I came, I founde such concourse of unrulye people, that I thought it better solitary to walk in the fields, then to intermeddle myselfe amongst such a great presse. Feeding mine humour with this fancie, I stept by dame Anne of Cleeres well, and went by the backside of Hogsdon, where, finding the sun to be hotte, and seeing a faire tree that had a coole shade, I sat me downe to take the aire, where after I had rested me a while, I fell asleepe.... And with that I waked, and saw such concourse of people through the fields that I knew the play was doon.’
[1103] Braines (1915), 27. Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 351, put the site on the present Deane’s Mews, but this is too far south, and does not allow for the interposition of Rutland’s holding between Holywell Lane and Allen’s. The shoring up of the barn to the Theatre is testified to in Wallace, 227, 231, 243. The exact site therefore cannot have been far east of the Curtain Road, which apparently occupies the strip of void land held by Burbadge between the old priory wall and the ditch bordering Finsbury fields.
[1104] Wallace, 134, 141, 153.
[1105] Ibid. 39.
[1106] Ibid. 139.
[1107] Wallace, 142 (Miles), 152 (Nicoll).
[1108] App. D, No. xxxiv.
[1109] Wallace, 135.
[1110] Ibid. 140.
[1111] Ibid. 151 (Nicoll).
[1112] Ibid. 152 (Nicoll).
[1113] Wallace, 73 (Bett), 102, 119 (Ralph Miles), 137 (Collins), 143 (Robert Miles), 152 (Nicoll), 157.
[1114] Ibid. 53, 107, 111 (Hyde), 73 (Bett), 143 (Robert Miles), 103, 120 (Ralph Miles). Brayne’s will was proved 10 Aug. 1586 (Wallace, 14).
[1115] Ibid. 104 (Ralph Miles), 146 (Robert Miles).
[1116] Ibid. 16, 55, 108 (Hyde), 73 (Bett), 145 (Miles).
[1117] Ibid. 46.
[1118] Wallace, 86 (Bett), 115 (Bishop), 122 (Ralph Miles).
[1119] Ibid. 109 (Hyde), 134 (Griggs), 137 (Collins), 106 (Ralph Miles), 139, 148 (Robert Miles).
[1120] Ibid. 83 (Bett), 88 (Gascoigne), 90 (James).
[1121] Ibid. 87 (Bett).
[1122] Griggs (Wallace, 134) puts Brayne’s expenditure at 1,000 marks and Burbadge’s at under £100; Collins (Wallace, 137) agrees as to Brayne’s and puts Burbadge’s at about £50; Miles (ibid. 141) says Brayne spent £600 or £700 in cash or credit and Burbadge about £50 in cash and material; Lanman (ibid. 148) had heard that the building cost 1,000 marks; Giles Allen (ibid. 164) valued it at £700 in 1599.
[1123] Robert Miles put Burbadge’s total profits from tenements and play-house in eight or nine years before 1592 at 2,000 marks, but in 1600 he only put the aggregate profits of James and Cuthbert from the play-house by itself at 1,000 marks (Wallace, 147, 263). Giles Allen (ibid. 198) put them at £2,000. Ralph Miles in 1592 had heard that Burbadge had received £700 or £800 in rents and profits since Brayne’s death in 1586 (ibid. 106). John Alleyn, a more disinterested witness, confirms this estimate, putting the figure at £100 or 200 marks a year for the five years before 1592 (ibid. 102).
[1124] Wallace, 76 (Ellam), 77 (Hudson).
[1125] Ibid. 47.
[1126] Wallace, 59 (C. Burbadge), 62 (J. Burbadge), 97, 114 (Bishop), 100, 126 (Alleyn), 105, 121 (Ralph Miles).
[1127] Ibid. 49, 66.
[1128] Ibid. 101, 127 (Alleyn). The two depositions are not quite consistent as to dates. From that of 6 Feb. 1592, one would infer that the dispute between Burbadge and the Admiral’s was at the time of the contempt of 16 Nov. 1590. The second, of 6 May 1592, apparently corrects the first, by giving the date of the insult to the Lord Admiral as ‘about a yere past’. The point is of importance, as bearing upon the length of the stay of the Admiral’s and Strange’s (cf. ch. xiii) at the Theatre. No doubt Mrs. Brayne, who came ‘dyvers tymes’ to the Theatre, continued her applications after laying her affidavit of contempt.
[1129] Wallace, 153.
[1130] Wallace, 156.
[1131] Ibid. 161, 263. Miles still held Burbadge’s bonds in 1600.
[1132] Ibid. 137, ‘iron worke which the said Braynes bestowed vppon the same Theater’.
[1133] Cf. ch. xviii.
[1134] Wallace, 62 (Burbadge), 88 (Bett), 125 (Alleyn), 149 (Lanman).
[1135] Cf. pp. 358, 362. This evidence outweighs the rather slight grounds on which T. S. Graves, The Shape of the First London Theatre (South Atlantic Quarterly, xiii. 280), conjectures that it may have been rectangular.
[1136] G. Harvey, Letter Book, 67, suggests in 1579 that he may be asked by Leicester’s, Warwick’s, Vaux’s or Rich’s men, or ‘sum other freshe starteup comedanties’ for ‘sum malt conceivid comedye fitt for the Theater, or sum other paintid stage’ (cf. p. 4). It is a pity he was not more precise.
[1137] Cf. App. C, Nos. xxii, xxx. Fleay, 40, 88, 145, identifies The Play of Plays in which Delight was a character with the Delight shown at Court by Leicester’s on 26 Dec. 1580, and Caesar and Pompey, which Gosson does not quite clearly assign to the Theatre at all, with the Pompey shown by Paul’s on 6 Jan. 1581; and conjectures successive occupations by Leicester’s (1576–83), Paul’s (1582), Queen’s and Hunsdon’s (1584), Queen’s and Oxford’s (1585), Queen’s (1586–93), Chamberlain’s (1594–7). He was unlucky in omitting the Admiral’s from his guesses.
[1138] Cf. App. D, Nos. xliii, xliv.
[1139] Wallace, 201 (Cuthbert Burbadge), 239 (Smith), 240 (May), 242 (Tilt).
[1140] Ibid. 11.
[1141] Cf. App. D, No. lxxiv.
[1142] Nashe, Pierce Penilesse (Works, i. 197). Harington, Metamorphosis of Ajax (1596), speaks of a vulgar word ‘admitted into the Theater with great applause by the mouth of Mayster Tarlton, the excellent comedian’. It was near the Theatre that the writer of Tarltons Newes of Purgatorie (Tarlton, 54) had his dream of the dead actor.
[1143] Cf. App. C, No. xl.
[1144] Lodge, Wits Miserie (1596), ‘pale as the visard of the ghost which cried so miserably at the Theator, like an oister wife, Hamlet, revenge’. In T. M., Black Book (1604), is a mention of ‘one of my divells in Dr Faustus, when the olde Theatre crackt and frighted the audience’. This was presumably before 1592, as Dr. Faustus seems to have been continuously in Henslowe’s hands from the beginning of that year. Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 363, quotes an allusion of Barnaby Rich in 1606 (Faultes Faults, and Nothing Else but Faultes, 7) to ‘Gravets part at the Theatre’, but this must not be pressed as a reference to the long-destroyed house.
[1145] Sloane MS. 2530, ff. 6, 11, 12, 46; cf. App. D, Nos. lxii, lxviii.
[1146] Cf. ch. xi, p. 371.
[1147] T. W., Sermon at Paul’s Cross (3 Nov. 1577), ‘Beholde the sumptuous Theatre houses’; Northbrooke (S. R. 2 Dec. 1577), 85, ‘places ... builded for such Playes and Enterludes, as the Theatre and Curtaine is’; Stockwood, Sermon at Paul’s Cross (24 Aug. 1578), ‘the Theatre, the Curtayne, and other places of Playes in the Citie ... the gorgeous Playing place erected in the fieldes ... as they please to have it called, a Theatre’; News from the North (1579), ‘the Theaters, Curtines ... and such places where the time is so shamefully mispent’; T. Twyne, Physic for Fortune (1579), i. xxx, 42, ‘the Curteine or Theater; which two places are well knowen to be enimies to good manners: for looke who goeth thyther evyl, returneth worse’; Stubbes (S. R. 1 March 1583), i. 144, ‘flockyng and runnyng to Theaters and Curtens ... Venus pallaces’; Field (1583), ‘the distruction bothe of bodye and soule that many are brought unto by frequenting the Theater, the Curtin and such like’; Rankins (1587), f. 4, ‘the Theater and Curtine may aptlie be termed for their abhomination, the chappell adulterinum’; Harrison, Chronologie (1588), i. liv, ‘It is an evident token of a wicked time when plaiers wexe so riche that they can build suche houses’.
[1148] App. D, Nos. XXXV, lxxiv. It appears to have been thought a good example to frequenters of the Theatre that the locality should occasionally be used for a public execution. Stowe, Annales (1615), 749, 750, records the hanging of W. Gunter, a priest from beyond the seas, ‘at the Theater’ on 28 Aug. 1588, and of W. Hartley, another priest, ‘nigh the Theator,’ on 1 Oct. 1588; cf. Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 351, from True Report of the Inditement of Weldon, Hartley, and Sutton, who Suffred for High Treason (1588).
[1149] Sir A. Ashley to Sir R. Cecil (Hatfield MSS. vii. 504).
[1150] Cf. ch. ix. In addition to the occasions described above, the Theatre and Curtain are particularly referred to in the City’s complaint to Walsingham on 3 May 1583, and in the Council’s inhibitions of 29 Oct. 1587, where the ‘Liberty’ of Holywell is clearly pointed at in the allusion to ‘places priviledged’, and 23 June 1592 (App. D, Nos. lxix, lxxx, xc).
[1151] App. D, No. xlii. The County records also contain entries of a recognisance by ‘James Burbage of Shorditch gent.’, Henry Bett, and [Cuthbert] Burbage in the Strond, yeoman’, on 6 April 1592, for the former’s appearance at the next Middlesex sessions, and a similar recognisance of ‘James Burbage of Hallywell, yeoman’, on 11 Sept. 1593 (Jeaffreson, i. 205, 217); but there is nothing to show the nature of the proceedings.
[1152] Cf. App. C, No. xxv.
[1153] App. D, No. cx.
[1154] E. Guilpin, Skialetheia, sat. v:
[1155] Wallace, 169, 183, 191, 214, 218.
[1156] Ibid. 72, 76, 226.
[1157] Ibid. 232, 235.
[1158] Wallace, 195, 203, 212, 216, 220, 238. Robert Miles took occasion of the negotiations to renew his old claim by petitioning in the Court of Requests for an interest in the new lease. The proceedings, so far as preserved, are inconclusive (ibid. 158). Meanwhile Cuthbert Burbadge was co-operating with Giles Allen in defending a claim made by the Earl of Rutland to the ‘debateable’ ground, and remained a party to the consequent litigation in 1602, long after the Theatre had disappeared (Stopes, 184).
[1159] Wallace, 184, 196, 204.
[1160] Ibid. 221.
[1161] Ibid. 164, 179, 197, 217, 222, 238, 278. The dates are not quite certain; possibly the 20 Jan. of Allen v. Street was an error. Allen’s Answer in the Court of Requests places the whole transaction ‘aboute the feast of the Natiuitie’, and this in his Star Chamber suit becomes ‘aboute the eight and twentyth day of December’, without any suggestion that more than one day was occupied.
[1162] Ibid. 163.
[1163] Ibid. 181.
[1164] Wallace, 186, 215, 220.
[1165] Ibid. 285.
[1166] Ibid. 267, 275.
[1167] Aubrey, ii. 12, on the authority of J. Greenhill, says that Ben Jonson ‘acted and wrote, but both ill, at the Green Curtaine, a kind of nursery or obscure play-house, somewhere in the suburbes’ (I thinke towards Shoreditch or Clarkenwell), and on that of Sir Edward Shirburn that Jonson killed Marlowe, ‘on Bunhill, comeing from the Green-Curtain play-house’. Hoxton, where Jonson killed Gabriel Spencer, is of course not far from Bunhill, and both are in the Holywell neighbourhood. Probably Aubrey, in giving a name to the theatre, is babbling of green frieze, rather than green fields. Steevens and Malone (Variorum, iii. 54) committed themselves to the view that ‘the original sign hung out at this play-house was the painting of a curtain striped’.
[1168] Thomas Wilkins was perhaps related to George Wilkins the dramatist, who was buried at Shoreditch 9 Aug. 1613. Sir William Allen is not known to have had anything to do either with Edward Alleyn or with Giles Allen, the ground-landlord of the Theatre. Lanman was 54 on 30 July 1592. We cannot assume that the name is merely an orthographic variant of that of Laneham.
[1169] Reproduced in Ordish, 40.
[1170] Reproduced in Baker, 36, 135, with a photographic enlargement of the building, wrongly identified with the Theatre. It is shown as a round or hexagonal structure, with a large flag, standing in the middle of a square paled plot; but too much stress must not be laid on what is probably only a cartographic symbol. Immediately south of it is Bedlam. Kiechel tells us that the house had three galleries, and de Witt that it was an ‘amphitheatrum’ (cf. pp. 358, 362). In the epilogue to Three English Brothers (1607) it is a ‘round circumference’.
[1171] Cf. p. 393.
[1172] Fleay, 40, 88, 145, 201, 300, assigns it as follows: Sussex’s (1576–83), Arundel’s and Oxford’s (1584), Howard’s and Hunsdon’s (1585), Oxford’s (1586–8), Pembroke’s (1589–97), Chamberlain’s (1597–9), Derby’s (1599–1600), uncertain company (1601), Queen Anne’s (1604–9), Duke of York’s (1610–23). But, of course, this is guessing.
[1173] Tarlton, 16. If Tarlton’s Jig of a Horse Load of Fools, taken from a manuscript of Collier’s (Tarlton, xx), is genuine, that also was given at the Curtain.
[1174] Sloane MS. 2530, ff. 4, 12, 43, 44, 46.
[1175] Guilpin, Skialetheia (S. R. 8 Sept. 1598), Sat. v:
and in the Preludium, of a ‘Cittizen ... comming from the Curtaine’.
[1176] Scourge of Villainy (1598), xi. 37 (Works, iii. 372):
[1177] Cf. p. 365.