[1574] On Bonetti’s career as a fencer, cf. Wallace, i. 187; M. S. C. ii. 122; Reyher, 257; G. Silver, Paradoxes of Defence, 64.

[1575] M. S. C. ii. 56; Wallace, i. 188 (Willoughby to More, July 1584), 190.

[1576] Wallace, i. 189; M. S. C. ii. 122. I do not think the lease of the fencing-school was in question between More and Bonetti. Both Raleigh’s letter and the workmen’s petition imply house-building, not mere internal repairs. Bonetti could have added no building to the fencing-school except perhaps the kitchen which adjoined in 1596 (ibid. 61). But the western house had been extensively rebuilt by 1584.

[1577] Ibid. 55.

[1578] Ibid. 56. The whole description from ‘All w^ch six foote & a halfe’ (l. 18) to ‘xxxix foote & viij inches’ (l. 29) is parenthetic, a point which the punctuation obscures.

[1579] Cf. chh. ii, xiii (Chamberlain’s).

[1580] M. S. C. ii. 124; cf. p. 490.

[1581] Ibid. 62; cf. p. 504.

[1582] M. S. C. ii. 36, 47, 51, 122.

[1583] Ibid. 36, 38, 56 (‘the tenemente of Margrett Poole on the south and weste’), 70, 77, 81, 85, 125. Here must have been the chamber which Thomas Blagrave, finding the butler’s lodging too small, hired of Parson Wythers, Cheyne’s servant, from 1552 to 1560, and which Pole still had in 1572 (ibid. 53). But if it was strictly ‘adjoininge’ to his house he must have had the ‘little kitchen’ as well as the ‘little chamber’.

[1584] Ibid. 63, 71.

[1585] Ibid. 125. An unfortunate hiatus in a document (ibid. 70) leaves it uncertain whether Tice occupied one of Mrs. Pole’s houses or More’s enlarged ‘little kitchen’.

[1586] Ibid. 50.

[1587] Cf. p. 504.

[1588] Kempe, 496; Wallace, i. 195; M. S. C. ii. 125, misdated 1595. The ‘other’ house was probably the mansion house, which was let to Ralph Bowes on 3 March 1596 (cf. p. 497). Hunsdon died on 22 July 1596.

[1589] Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 299, from enrolment in R. O.; M. S. C. ii. 60, from counterpart executed by Burbadge in Loseley MS. 348.

[1590] I suppose that this was the old lavatory. If so, probably Burbadge’s use terminated when this became a glass-house in 1601; cf. p. 506.

[1591] The account in Wallace, ii. 37, is not trustworthy; it assumes, in lieu of the Duchy Chamber and staircase tower, a ‘north section’ of the building 40 ft. from north to south.

[1592] Cf. p. 498.

[1593] Wallace, i. 196; ii. 38, is misleading here.

[1594] M. S. C. ii. 70.

[1595] Ibid. 76 (conveyance by Sir Richard Michelborne, George Pole, and Charles Pole), 84 (conveyance by Richard and Elizabeth Mansell), 125.

[1596] Variorum, iii. 62; Birch, ii. 426.

[1597] H. R. Plomer, The King’s Printing House under the Stuarts (2 Library ii. 353).

[1598] M. S. C. ii. 83 (Recital of conveyance by trustees of Lady Howard); cf. p. 512.

[1599] Ibid. 98 (Recital of lease in deed of sale of 1609).

[1600] Ibid. 93, ‘all that greate Vault or lowe roome adioyneing to the said greate Garden lyeing and being at the south west end of the said greate garden nowe vsed and imployed for a glassehowse’ (1609). By 26 June 1601 (M. S. C. ii. 70) the way south of the kitchen yard has become ‘the yard or way ... which leadeth towardes the glassehouse nowe in the tenure of Sir Ierom Bowes’. Bowes had obtained a patent for making drinking-glasses in 1592 and occupied a warehouse under the church in 1597 (D. N. B.). Dekker, Newes from Hell (1606, Works, ii. 97), says, ‘Like the Glass-house Furnace in Blacke-friers, the bonefiers that are kept there neuer goe out’.

[1601] M. S. C. ii. 92 (Deed of Sale).

[1602] Ibid. 126. There is some confusion as to the position of Mrs. Basil’s house. I think it was west of the gate-house.

[1603] Ibid. 88 (Deed of Sale, misdated 1602).

[1604] Ibid. 64.

[1605] Ibid. 83; S. P. D. Jac. I, viii. 18 (Grant to trustees for Lady Kildare). An inquisitio on Cobham’s Blackfriars property (1 Jac. I) appears to be amongst the Special Commissions and Returns in the Exchequer (R. O. Lists and Indexes, xxxvii. 61).

[1606] C. R. B. Barrett, History of the Society of Apothecaries, 42. The existing Hall dates from 1669–70. John Downes (cf. App. I, No. iii) and Pepys, i. 336, record the use of the older building by Davenant for plays at the Restoration. So Farrant’s tradition survived.

[1607] For text and discussion of bona fides cf. App. D, No. cvii. Collier, having already assigned the document to 1576 (cf. p. 496), uses it again for 1596 (H. E. D. P. i. 287). With it, in his first edition (i. 297), he printed a reply, now in S. P. D. Eliz. cclx. 117, by Pope, Richard Burbadge, Heminges, Phillips, Shakespeare, Kempe, Sly, and Tooley, on behalf of the players, which is palaeographically a forgery (Ingleby, 289) and could not be genuine in substance, since it refers to the Globe, which did not exist in 1596.

[1608] Cf. p. 511. Wallace, ii. 53, thinks this an error or invention of the City in 1619, because the Privy Council registers ‘giving all the official acts of that body, record no such order’. But the Privy Council registers notoriously do not record all the official acts of that body (cf. ch. ii). The petitioners of 1619 are not likely to have invented the ‘petition and indorsemente’ of 1596 to which they appealed.

[1609] In the Sharers Papers of 1635 (Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 317) Cuthbert and the other Burbadges then living say ‘now for the Blackfriers, that is our inheritance; our father purchased it at extreame rates, and made it into a play-house with great charge and troble’. Further, Cuthbert was associated with Richard in buying subsidiary property in 1601, 1610, 1612, and 1614 (cf. p. 505). But the leases of 1600 and 1608 were by Richard alone, and under one of these Cuthbert became his tenant.

[1610] Cf. p. 511.

[1611] Fleay, 211, 234, 240.

[1612] Cf. ch. xii.

[1613] Fleay, 224, 230, 245, 250. Evans maintained that the assignment to Hawkins was absolute, to cover his liability under the bond to Burbadge. But the court appears to have held that a reassignment was intended, but that ‘the conveyance was never perfected and sealed’.

[1614] Wallace, ii. 89, from unpublished document; Evans v. Kirkham in Fleay, 214.

[1615] Ibid. 235.

[1616] Ibid. 221, 231, 235, 246.

[1617] The Burbadges say in the Sharers Papers of 1635, ‘the more to strengthen the service, the boys daily wearing out, it was considered that house would be as fit for ourselves, and so purchased the lease remaining from Evans with our money, and placed men players, which were Hemings, Condall, Shakspeare, etc.’. They also say that the players had their shares ‘of us for nothing’. Very likely they paid no fine, but they had to pay their quota towards rent. It is reasonable to infer that Thomas Evans was a relative and nominee of Henry Evans. Kirkham’s allegation in the 1612 litigation that Henry Evans had shared in the Blackfriars profits during the past four years (Fleay, 225) was not seriously contested.

[1618] Cf. ch. xiii. Collier (New Facts, 16) printed a document professing to set out action taken by the City against scurrilities of Kempe and Armin at Blackfriars in 1605. But this cannot be traced in the City archives (S. Lee in D. N. B. s.v. Kempe), and the City did not obtain control of the Blackfriars until 1608 (cf. p. 480). It is probably a forgery.

[1619] Cf. vol. i, p. 357.

[1620] C. W. Wallace, Advance Sheets from Shakespeare, the Globe, and Blackfriars (p.p. 1909).

[1621] Sharers Papers in Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 312. Collier, Alleyn Memoirs, 105, conjectures that Alleyn bought Shakespeare’s interest in April 1612, and it appears from G. F. Warner, Dulwich MSS. 115, 172, 174, that he forged entries in documents relating to other property of Alleyn’s in Blackfriars, as a support to this conjecture.

[1622] Cf. p. 480.

[1623] Text in Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 311, and Harrison, iv. 323, from City Repertory, xxxiv, f. 38^v. The two petitions of the officials and inhabitants are in M. S. C. i. 90, from Remembrancia, v. 28, 29. They are undated, but can be identified from a recital in the order. The officials allege ‘that whereas in November 1596 divers both honorable persons and others then inhabiting the said precinct made knowne to the Lordes and others of the privie Counsell, what inconveniencies were likelie to fall vpon them, by a common Play-house which was then preparinge to bee erected there, wherevpon their Honours then forbadd the vse of the said howse for playes, as by the peticion and indorsemente in aunswere thereof may appeare.... Nevertheles ... the owner of the said play-house doth vnder the name of a private howse (respectinge indeed private comoditie only) convert the said howse to a publique play-house.’ They dwell on the inconvenience caused by the congested streets and the difficulty of getting to church ‘the ordinary passage for a great part of the precinct aforesaid being close by the play house dore’.

[1624] Text in M. S. C. i. 280.

[1625] Text in Collier, i. 455, from S. P. D. Car. I, ccv. 32, where it is accompanied by copies of the Privy Council order and letter of 22 June 1600 (App. D, No. cxxiv) and the City order of 21 Jan. 1619. Probably the copy of the petition of Blackfriars inhabitants in 1596 (cf. p. 508), now in S. P. D. Eliz. cclx. 116, originally belonged to this set of documents.

[1626] M. S. C. i. 386.

[1627] The report of the commissioners is printed by Collier, New Facts, 27, and H. E. D. P. i. 477. It is confirmed by a memorandum of Secretary Windebank in S. P. D. Car. I, ccli. p. 293, and I think Ingleby, 304, is wrong in suspecting a forgery (cf. M. S. C. i. 386). The commissioners allowed (a) £700 to Cuthbert and William Burbadge for 14 years’ purchase of the rent of £50 reserved to them by lease, (b) £1,134 for 14 years’ purchase of an interest in four tenements rated at £75 and a piece of void ground to turn coaches at £6, (c) £1,066 13s. 4d. for 100 marks apiece to 16 players for ‘the interest that some of them haue by lease in the said Play-house, and in respect of the shares which others haue in the benefits thereof’, and for compensation for removal. Collier, Reply, 39, mentions but does not print another document containing a summary of the players’ claim, with notes by Buck. But Buck was long dead. A third valuation published by Collier, in which Laz. Fletcher’s name occurs, is certainly a forgery (Ingleby, 246).

[1628] M. S. C. i. 386.

[1629] Fleay, 211, 213. I suppose it was on this that Evans spent £11 0s. 2d. in Dec. 1603 (Wallace, ii. 89).

[1630] In The Times of 12 Sept. 1906 Professor Wallace gives the number of new suits as four; in The Children of the Chapel at Blackfriars (1908), 36, as twelve. Presumably the Court of Requests suit of Keysar v. Burbadge et al., printed in Nebraska University Studies, x. 336, is one of these.

[1631] Wallace, ii. 39, 40, 41, 43, 49.

[1632] Cf. p. 511.

[1633] M. S. C. ii. 31, ‘all the Leds couerynge the premysses’ (1576), 61, ‘the stone staires leadinge vpp vnto the Leades or route over the saide seaven greate vpper romes oute of the saide seaven greate vpper romes’ (1596).

[1634] Wallace, ii. 40.

[1635] Marston, The Dutch Courtesan, v. iii. 162.

[1636] Cf. p. 425.

[1637] R. Flecknoe, Miscellania (1653), 141, ‘From thence passing on to the Black-fryers, and seeing never a Play-bil on the Gate, no Coaches on the place, nor Doorkeeper at the Play-house door, with his Boxe like a Churchwarden, desiring you to remember the poor Players, I cannot but say for Epilogue to all the Playes were ever acted there:

[1638] I do not know what value to attach to a print in the Gardiner collection, reproduced by Baker, 44, 78, as representing the theatre. It shows a Renaissance façade, which can have been no part of the mediaeval building. Adams, 197, reproduces a painting of mediaeval fragments found in rebuilding The Times in 1872, small ground-floor rooms divided by entries. But The Times must cover the site of Hunsdon House as well as that of the theatre.

[1639] As an epilogue to this narrative and an example of how popular history is written, I quote D. E. Oliver, The English Stage (1912), 9, ‘Blackfriars House, a deserted monastery on the Thames side, was granted by Edward VI in 1596 to the Court Players for their use as a play-house, but it was not until the accession of Elizabeth that it received official sanction as a recognized place of public entertainment’.

[1640] Jonas, 132, however, quotes from the register of St. Dunstan’s, Whitefriars, with the date 29 Sept. 1607, ‘Gerry out of the play-house in the Friars buried’, which suggests use of the theatre before 1608. The King’s Revels may well have started by 1607. He also quotes, without date, ‘We present one play-house in the same precinct, not fitting these to be now tolerable’.

[1641] I do not know why Adams, 312, identifies the play-house with a cloister shown in Clapham’s plan. Surely it is more likely to have been the hall also shown at the north-west corner.

[1642] P. C. Acts (1613–14), 166. One Sturgis had leased a house and garden from Sir Edward Gorge, and sublet the garden to ‘one Rossetoe Kynman and others, who goe aboute to erecte a p[l]aye house thereupon’.

[1643] M. S. C. i. 91; cf. ch. xvii. The Blackfriars is still the ‘private house’ of the King’s men in the patent of 1619 issued to them after this controversy.

[1644] It is true that, when the prentices took up Whitefriars for The Hog Hath Lost His Pearl in 1613, the admission per bullettini is said to have been ‘for a note of distinction from ordinary comedians’. But the companies had no need to continue any special system of admission after they had the protection of their patents; Dekker (vide p. 523) speaks of gatherers at private houses in 1609. After the Restoration, ‘ballatine, or tickets sealed for all doors and boxes’ were introduced at the Duke’s Theatre in 1660 (R. W. Lowe, Thomas Betterton, 75).

[1645] Lawrence, i. 230; cf. App. D, No. xxxii.

[1646] The earliest example is The Troublesome Reign of King John (1591).

[1647] But ‘priuately’ is also used of strictly private performances on the title-pages of Caesar’s Revenge (1607) acted at Trinity College, Oxford, and, later, W. Montague’s Shepherd’s Paradise (1659) acted by amateurs at Court.

[1648] T. M., Black Book (1604), in Bullen, Middleton, viii. 42, ‘arch tobacco-taker of England ... upon stages both common and private’; Malcontent (1604), ind., ‘we may sit upon the stage at the private house’; Sophonisba (1606), ad fin., ‘it is printed only as it was represented by youths, and after the fashion of the private stage’; Dekker, Gull’s Horn Book (cf. App. H), ‘Whether therefore the gatherers of the publique or priuate Play-house stand to receiue the afternoones rent’; Dekker, Seven Deadly Sins (1606, Works, ii. 41), ‘All the Citty lookt like a priuate Play-house, when the windowes are clapt downe’; Roaring Girl (1611), ii. 1, ‘the private stage’s audience, the twelve-penny stool gentlemen’; Daborne to Henslowe (1613, Henslowe Papers, 79), ‘as good a play for your publique howse as ever was playd’.

[1649] Cf. Wright (App. I).

[1650] Lawrence (Fortnightly, May 1916) has shown that the rebuilt Fortune of 1623 and Red Bull of c. 1632 were probably roofed, and Wright’s description confuses the two phases of these houses.

[1651] Chapman’s Byron (1625) is said to have been acted ‘at the Blacke-Friers and other publique Stages’, Heywood’s English Traveller (1633), A Maidenhead Well Lost (1634), and Love’s Mistress (1636) to have been ‘publikely acted’ at the Cockpit, and Shirley’s Martyred Soldier (1638) to have been acted ‘at the Private House in Drury Lane and at other publicke Theaters’. This is exceptional terminology, but shows the obsolescence of the distinction.

[1652] Cf. ch. xvi.

[1653] Old Fortunatus (Rose, 1599), prol. 81, ‘this small circumference’; Warning for Fair Women (? Curtain, 1599), prol. 83, 88, ‘all this fair circuit ... this round’; Hen. V (Curtain or Globe, 1599), prol. 11, ‘this cockpit ... this wooden O’; E. M. O. (Globe, 1599), prol. 199, epil. 4406, ‘this thronged round ... this faire-fild Globe’; Sejanus (Globe, 1603), comm. v, ‘the Globe’s fair ring’; Three English Brothers (Curtain or Red Bull, 1607), epil., ‘this round circumference’; Merry Devil of Edmonton (Globe, 1608), prol. 5, ‘this round’. On the other hand, Whore of Babylon (Fortune, 1607), prol. 1, ‘The charmes of Silence through this Square be throwne’.

[1654] Ordish, 12.

[1655] Before the Swan was built, Nashe wrote in The Unfortunate Traveller (1594), ‘I sawe a banketting house belonging to a merchant that was the meruaile of the world.... It was builte round of green marble like a Theater without’ (Works, ii. 282).

[1656] Cf. chh. iv, xvi (introd.).

[1657] Atlantic Monthly (1906), xcvii. 369.

[1658] Kirkman also says in the preface to The Wits (1672), ‘I have seen the Red Bull Play-house, which was a large one’; but he is referring, more certainly than Wright, to the rebuilt house.

[1659] Cf. Albright, 40; Lawrence, i. 12, and E. S. xxxii. 44.

[1660] There is a dot in Wheatley’s facsimile over the second well-marked ‘r’ of the word ‘orchestra’. Is it possible that Van Buchell misread it ‘orchestia’?

[1661] Cf. Brereton in Homage, 204.

[1662] Cf. ch. xvi.

[1663] The Theatrum of Jonson’s 1616 Folio t.p. is oval, rather than round, but it is safer to take this, in spite of its hut, as representing Jonson’s notion of a classical theatre.

[1664] Cf. ch. xvi. Graves, 32, tries to minimize the structural influence of inn-yards on the theatres, and even doubts whether the actors preferred to act in these ‘rather than in the great halls’. But I do not think that he makes much of a case. Had the inns, indeed, ‘great halls’ at all?

[1665] Gosson, P. C. (1582), ‘it is the fashion of youthes to go first into the yarde, and to carry theire eye through every gallery’; Hamlet, III. ii. 10, ‘tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb-shows and noise’; Dekker, G. H. B. (1609), ‘your Groundling and Gallery-Commoner buyes his sport by the penny ... neither are you to be hunted from thence, though the Scar-crows in the yard hoot at you, hisse at you, spit at you, yea, throw durt euen in your teeth’; Bartholomew Fair (1614), ind. 51, ‘the vnderstanding Gentlemen o’ the ground here, ask’d my iudgement’, 59, 79; The Hog Has Lost His Pearl (1614), prol.:

W. Fennor, Descriptions (1616):

So later, Vox Graculi (1623), ‘they will sit dryer in the galleries then those who are the understanding men in the yard’; Shirley, The Changes (1632):

Shirley, The Doubtful Heir (1640), prol.:

[1666] Proscenium is the proper classical word for the space in front of the scena; cf. p. 539.

[1667] Albright has no justification for introducing into his reconstruction of a typical Shakespearian stage the tapering, instead of quadrangular, platform which characterizes the late engraving in The Wits, and to a less degree those in Roxana and Messallina.

[1668] Wegener, 125, collects examples of the use of traps. They served, inter alia, for the representation of ‘hell-mouth’, which the Elizabethan stage inherited from the miracle-plays (cf. p. 544), and the space under the stage was known as ‘hell’; cf. Dekker, News from Hell (1606, Works, ii. 92, 139), ‘Mary the question is, in which of the Play-houses he [the Devil] would have performed his prize.... Hell being vnder euerie one of their Stages, the Players (if they had owed him a spight) might with a false Trappe doore haue slipt him downe, and there kept him, as a laughing stocke to al their yawning spectators.... Tailors ... (as well as Plaiers) haue a hell of their owne, (vnder their shop-board).’

[1669] Cf. Graves, 41. The register of the association of Masters of Defence (Sloane MS. 2530; cf. extracts in A. Hutton, The Sword and the Centuries, 259) records many ‘prizes’ played at theatres and theatrical inns during the sixteenth century; cf. App. D, Nos. lx-lxii, Case is Altered, II. vii. 28, ‘First they [maisters of defence] are brought to the publicke Theater’, and for later periods Henslowe, i. 98 (the Rose, 1598), the fatal contest at the Swan in 1602, and Herbert, 47, 81. For acrobats cf. App. D, No. cxxiii, on the use of the Swan by Peter Bromvill in 1600. Henslowe, i. 98, 106, records loans in connexion with vaulting performances with a horse, perhaps at the Rose, in 1598 and 1599 by John Haslett or Hassett, who was also paid for court performances (App. B) in 1603 and 1608.

[1670] T. M. Black Book (1604, Bullen, Middleton, viii. 7) opens with Lucifer ascending, as Prologue to his own Play: