Part II

, with a reconstructed map of the Bankside and a 1627 plan of Paris Garden), _Old Southwark and its People_ (1878), _The Play-houses at Bankside in the Time of Shakespeare_ (1885, _Walford’s Antiquarian_, vii. 207, 274; viii. 55), _Paris Garden and Blackfriars_ (1887, _7 N. Q._ iii. 241, 343, 442). Some notes of Eu. Hood [Joseph Haslewood] in 1813 and A. J. K[empe] in 1833 are reprinted in _The Gentleman’s Magazine Library_, xv (1904), 74, 117. Other writings on Paris Garden are by W. H. Overall (1869) in _Proc. Soc. Antiq._ 2nd series, iv. 195, J. Meymott, _The Manor of Old Paris Garden_ (1881), P. Norman, _The Accounts of the Overseers of the Poor of Paris Garden, Southwark, 1608–1671_ (1901) in _Surrey Arch. Colls._ xvi. 55. Since I wrote this chapter, C. L. Kingsford (1920, _Arch._ lxx. 155) has added valuable material.]

It is convenient, in connexion with the Hope, to deal with the whole rather troublesome question of the Bankside Bear Gardens. The _ursarius_ or bearward was a recognized type of mediaeval _mimus_, and the rewards in which his welcome found expression are a recurring item in many a series of municipal or domestic accounts. Thus, to take one example only, the corporation of Shrewsbury entertained between 1483 and 1542 the _ursinarii_, _ursuarii_, or _ursiatores_ of the King, the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, the Marquises of Dorset and Exeter, the Earl of Derby, and the town of Norwich.[1347] On more than one occasion the payment is said to be _pro agitacione bestiarum suarum_. The phrase is perhaps not free from ambiguity. The dancing bear was, until quite recently, a familiar sight in provincial England, and I have seen one even on the sophisticated slopes of Notting Hill. And illuminations dating back as far as the tenth century bear evidence to the antiquity of his somewhat grotesque _tripudium_.[1348] But in the robust days of our forefathers there was an even more attractive way of agitating bears. The traditional victim of an English baiting was no doubt the bull. A Southwark map of 1542 shows a ‘Bolrynge’ in the middle of the High Street and a neighbouring alley still bore the name in 1561.[1349] The maps of Höfnagel (_c._ 1560) and Agas (_c._ 1570) show another ring, marked ‘The bolle bayting’ and with a very palpable bull inside it, upon the Bankside, not far from where the Hope must afterwards have stood.[1350] But the bear was also baited in London, at least from the twelfth century.[1351] Erasmus is often cited as declaring that in the reign of Henry VIII ‘herds’ of the animal were kept for the purpose. This is an error. Erasmus wrote of dancing bears; but I am afraid it must be assumed that the chief function of the bearward attached to the Tudor Royal Household was to provide exhibitions of the more brutal, noisy, and occasionally dangerous sport.[1352] A regular office is traceable back to 1484, when Richard III in the first year of his reign appointed his bearward John Browne to be ‘Maister, Guyder and Ruler of all our Beres and Apes’.[1353] It was still a part of the establishment of the Royal Household under Elizabeth. A patent of 2 June 1573 to Ralph Bowes describes it as ‘the room or office of Cheif Master Overseer and Ruler of all and singular our game pastymes and sportes, that is to saie of all and everie our beares bulles and mastyve dogges’, and names as Bowes’s predecessors Cuthbert Vaughan and Sir Richard Long.[1354] The grant was of the nature of a commission, authorizing the holder, personally or by deputy, to ‘take up’ or press animals for the royal service, and giving him the sole right of baiting the Queen’s bears, to the exclusion of any other officer or under officer appertaining to the bears, not specially licensed or appointed by him. The Master was presumably expected to make his profit out of the privileges granted, for the patent did not assign him any fee, such as the under officers, known as the Keepers of Bears and Mastiffs, enjoyed at the hands of the Treasurer of the Chamber.[1355] But he received a reward, similar to those given to players, of £5 through the Treasurer on the Council’s warrant, when the baiting was shown before the Queen. These rewards are generally expressed as ‘for the Game of Paris Garden’ or ‘to the Master of her Majesty’s Game at Paris Garden’; and Bowes must have joined sons or other relatives with him as deputies, since Edward Bowes and Thomas Bowes were often payees instead of Ralph Bowes during his term of office.[1356] Towards the end of Bowes’s life it would seem that Henslowe and Alleyn, who had been baiting bears on the Bankside as licensees since 1594, were in negotiation to obtain the Mastership.[1357] Probably the first idea was to buy a surrender of the office from Bowes, since the Dulwich manuscripts contain an unexecuted draft of a patent to Henslowe, following the terms of that to Bowes himself and reciting such a surrender.[1358] I should suppose this negotiation to be that in connexion with which Henslowe spent £2 15_s._ 6_d._ during 1597 upon visits to Sir Julius Caesar, Master of Requests, and other Court officials, and in a fee to the Clerk of the Signet. The expenditure is entered in the diary as incurred ‘a bowt the changinge of ower comysion’.[1359] But before a surrender was effected it would seem that Henslowe had had to turn his thoughts to a succession. In this he was disappointed. On 4 June 1598 he wrote to Alleyn that Bowes was very sick and expected to die, and that he much feared he should lose all. Neither Caesar nor the Lord Admiral had done anything for him, and although he had received help from Lady Edmondes and Mr. Langworth, he now learnt that the reversion of the Mastership was already promised by the Queen to one Mr. Dorrington, a pensioner.[1360] Bowes did in effect die very shortly after, and on 11 August 1598 John Dorrington received his patent for the Mastership.[1361] To this was joined the office of Keeper of the Bandogs and Mastiffs, with a fee of 10_d._ a day for exercising this office and keeping twenty mastiff bitches, and a further fee of 4_d._ for a deputy.[1362] It is not unlikely that John Dorrington was related to the Richard Darrington who had held this keepership with the same fees, amounting to £21 5_s._ 10_d._ a year, in 1571. Another keepership, that of the Bears, was held in 1599 by Jacob Meade, who was closely associated with Henslowe and Alleyn in the management of the Bear garden.[1363] Dorrington’s grant was confirmed by James I on 14 July 1603, and on 23 July he was knighted.[1364] About this time Henslowe and Alleyn, who were paying Dorrington £40 a year for licence to bait,[1365] must have contemplated fresh negotiations for a transfer of the patent, for the draft in the Dulwich manuscripts, originally drawn up about 1597, has been altered by Henslowe so as to adapt it to the new reign and to a surrender by Dorrington.[1366] But once again they were unsuccessful, for Dorrington died, and on 20 July 1604 the Mastership was granted to one of the invading Scots, Sir William Stuart.[1367] From him, however, Henslowe and Alleyn did succeed in obtaining an assignment, and a draft patent as joint Masters and Keepers, with the fees of 10_d._ and 4_d._, is dated 24 November 1604. They had, indeed, been rather in Stuart’s hands, for he had refused either to give them a licence or to take over their house and bears, and they had to pay for the surrender at what they considered the high rate of £450.[1368] This we learn from a petition of about 1607, in which they appealed to the King for an increase in the daily fee by 2_s._ 8_d._, in view of their losses through restraints and the deaths of bears, and of their heavy expenses, amounting to £200 a month, whereby their privilege, which was once worth £100 a year, could now not be let at all.[1369] It is doubtful whether they got any relief. They had a new patent on 24 November 1608;[1370] but about 1612 they sent up another petition in very similar terms. A grant of £42 10_s._ and 12_d._ a day had, indeed, been made them in March 1611 for keeping a lion and two white bears. But this was probably menagerie work and quite apart from the baiting. They continued as joint Masters until Henslowe’s death in 1616, when the whole office passed to Alleyn in survivorship.[1371]

When baiting seemed desirable to the soul of the sovereign, the ‘game’ was generally brought to the Court, wherever the Court might happen to be.[1372] The rewards of the Treasurer of the Chamber were most often for attendances in the Christmas holidays or at Whitsuntide. But the game might be called for at any time to add lustre to the entertainment of an ambassador or other distinguished visitor to Court. Thus on 25 May 1559 French ambassadors dined with Elizabeth, ‘and after dener to bear and bull baytyng, and the Quens grace and the embassadurs stod in the galere lokyng of the pastym tyll vj at nyght’.[1373] Later French embassies of 1561, 1572, 1581, and 1599, and a Danish embassy of 1586 were similarly honoured.[1374] The custom continued during the next reign. On 19 August 1604 there was a grand banquet at Whitehall for Juan Fernandez de Velasco, Constable of Castile, on the completion of peace between England and Spain, and thereafter a ball, and after the ball ‘all then took their places at the windows of the room which looked out upon a square, where a platform was raised, and a vast crowd had assembled to see the King’s bears fight with greyhounds. This afforded great amusement. Presently a bull, tied to the end of a rope, was fiercely baited by dogs.’[1375] James had introduced a new and dangerous element into the sport by using the lions which were kept in the Tower, and this also became the scene of baitings. On 5 March 1607 the Treasurer of the Chamber paid Henslowe and Alleyn no less than £30, partly for attendances with the game at Greenwich during the visit of the King of Denmark and at Whitehall during that of the Prince de Joinville, and partly for baiting of the lions in the Tower on three several occasions.[1376] Stowe gives detailed descriptions of lion-baitings in 1604, 1605, 1609, and 1610, of which the first is interesting, because it was under the personal superintendence of Edward Alleyn, ‘now sworne the Princes man and Maister of the Beare Garden’.[1377]

But the profit of the thing, from the point of view of the Master of the Game, was not so much in the attendances at Court, as in the public baitings, which he and those holding licences from him were privileged to give with the bears and dogs, ‘taken up’ by virtue of the commission or bought at their own expense, during such times as these were not required for the royal service. These public spectacles were held at what was known as the Bear Garden, under conditions much resembling those of a theatre. They played a considerable part in the life of London; literature is full of allusions to them; and they are described with more or less detail in the narratives of many travellers from abroad. An early account is that from the Spanish of a secretary to the Duke of Najera, who visited Henry VIII in 1544.[1378] He describes the bears as baited daily, with three or four dogs to each bear, in an enclosure where they were tied with ropes, and adds:

‘Into the same place they brought a pony with an ape fastened on its back, and to see the animal kicking amongst the dogs, with the screams of the ape, beholding the curs hanging from the ears and neck of the pony, is very laughable.’

In 1559 the same French ambassadors, who saw the baiting at Whitehall, were taken on the following day to Paris Garden, and ‘ther was boyth bare and bull baytyng, and the capten with a c. of the gard to kepe rowme for them to see the baytyng’.[1379] The next notice of any value is that of Lupold von Wedel, who was at Southwark on 23 August 1584.[1380]

‘There is a round building three stories high, in which are kept about a hundred large English dogs, with separate wooden kennels for each of them. These dogs were made to fight singly with three bears, the second bear being larger than the first and the third larger than the second. After this a horse was brought in and chased by the dogs, and at last a bull, who defended himself bravely. The next was that a number of men and women came forward from a separate compartment, dancing, conversing and fighting with each other: also a man who threw some white bread among the crowd, that scrambled for it. Right over the middle of the place a rose was fixed, this rose being set on fire by a rocket: suddenly lots of apples and pears fell out of it down upon the people standing below. Whilst the people were scrambling for the apples, some rockets were made to fall down upon them out of the rose, which caused a great fright but amused the spectators. After this, rockets and other fireworks came flying out of all corners, and that was the end of the play.’

It is interesting to observe that the baiting proper was supplemented with fireworks and an entertainment, which must have been of the nature of a jig.[1381] The visit of Frederick, Duke of Württemberg, on 1 September 1592, is also recorded by his secretary, who says:[1382]

‘His Highness was shown in London the English dogs, of which there were about 120, all kept in the same enclosure, but each in a separate kennel. In order to gratify his Highness, and at his desire, two bears and a bull were baited; at such times you can perceive the breed and mettle of the dogs, for although they receive serious injuries from the bears, are caught by the horns of the bull, and tossed into the air so as frequently to fall down again upon the horns, they do not give in, so that one is obliged to pull them back by their tails, and force open their jaws. Four dogs at once were set on the bull; they, however, could not gain any advantage over him, for he so artfully contrived to ward off their attacks that they could not well get at him; on the contrary, the bull served them very scurvily by striking and butting at them.’

De Witt briefly notices the ‘amphitheatrum’ of the Bear Garden in 1596. He says:[1383]

‘Est etiam quintum sed dispari [vsu?] et structura, bestiarum concertationi destinatum, in quo multi vrsi, tauri, et stupendae magnitudinis canes discretis caueis et septis aluntur, qui ad pugnam adseruantur, iocundissimum hominibus spectaculum praebentes.’

Hentzner, who visited London in the autumn of 1598, says:[1384]

‘Est et alius postea locus Theatri quoque formam habens, Ursorum & Taurorum venationibus destinatus, qui à postica parte alligati à magnis illis canibus & molossis Anglicis, quos lingua vernacula Docken appellant, mire exagitantur, ita tamen, ut saepe canes isti ab Ursis vel Tauris, dentibus arrepti, vel cornibus impetiti, de vita periclitari, aliquando etiam animam exhalare soleant, quibus sic vel sauciis vel lassis statim substituuntur alii recentes & magis alacres. Accedit aliquando in fine hujus spectaculi Ursi plane excaecati flagellatio, ubi quinque, vel sex, in circulo constituti, Ursum flagellis misere excipiunt, qui licet alligatus auffugere nequeat, alacriter tamen se defendit, circumstantes, & nimium appropinquantes, nisi recte & provide sibi caveant, prosternit, ac flagella e manibus cadentium eripit atque confringit.’

To 1599 belongs the account of Thomas Platter of Basle:[1385]

‘The London bearbaitings usually take place every Sunday and Wednesday, across the water. The play house is built in circular form; above are a number of seated galleries; the ground space under the open sky is unoccupied. In the midst of this a great bear is fastened to a stake by a long rope. When we came down the stairs, we went behind the play house, and saw the English dogs, of which there were about 120 chained up, each in his separate kennel, in a yard.’

Platter also describes the actual baiting of the bull and bear and of the blind bear, much as did his predecessors. On 7 September 1601 the Duc de Biron was taken to the Bear Garden, as one of the sights of London, by no less a cicerone than Sir Walter Raleigh.[1386] A visit of 16 September 1602 is described in the diary of Philip Julius, Duke of Stettin in Pomerania.[1387] The vogue of the Bear Garden amongst foreigners evidently lasted into James’s reign, but the notices are briefer. Lewis Frederick of Württemberg, saw on 26 April 1610 the baiting both of bears and bulls ‘and monkeys that ride on horseback’;[1388] and Justus Zingerling of Thuringia, who was in London about the same year, mentions the ‘_theatra comoedorum_, in which bears and bulls fight with dogs’.[1389] Even more summary is the reference in an itinerary of Prince Otto von Hesse-Cassel in 1611.[1390] But the extracts given sufficiently describe the nature of the sport, and show that bulls continued to be baited up to a late date, as well as bears, and that the serious business of the spectacle was diversified by regular humorous episodes, such as the monkey on horseback and the whipping of the blind bear. He, by the way, was called Harry Hunks, and is named by Sir John Davies in his _Epigrams_[1391] of _c._ 1594, in company with the Sackerson who gave rise to a boast on the part of Master Slender,[1392] and at a later date by Dekker[1393] and Henry Peacham.[1394] Two other famous bears were Ned Whiting and George Stone. Both are alluded to in Ben Jonson’s _Epicoene_ (1609),[1395] and the latter also in _The Puritan_ (1607).[1396] The death of the ‘goodlye beare’ George Stone at a baiting before the King of Denmark in 1606 is lamented in the petition of Henslowe and Alleyn to the King for increased fees already described. One other interesting notice of the sport may be added from the Dulwich collection, and that is an advertisement or ‘bill’ of the entertainment, which runs as follows:

‘Tomorrowe beinge Thursdaie shalbe seen at the Beargardin on the banckside a greate mach plaid by the gamstirs of Essex who hath chalenged all comers what soeuer to plaie v dogges at the single beare for v pounds and also to wearie a bull dead at the stake and for your better content shall haue plasant sport with the horse and ape and whiping of the blind beare. Viuat Rex.’[1397]

Where then was the Bear Garden? This is a point upon which the foreign visitors are not very explicit. From them we could infer little more than that it was transpontine. It has already been pointed out that in official documents, at any rate those of a less formal character than a patent under the great seal, the Mastership is described as the Mastership of the Game of, or at, Paris Garden. With this common parlance agrees.[1398] In the allusions of the pamphleteers and poets, from the middle of the sixteenth to the middle of the seventeenth century, Paris or Parish Garden is regularly the place of baiting.[1399] ‘The Beare-garden, commonly called Paris Garden’, says Stowe, speaking of 1583.[1400] At Paris Garden, or as it is sometimes corruptly spelt, ‘Pallas Garden’, Henslowe and Alleyn have their office as Masters[1401] in 1607, and near it Alleyn is living in 1609. Now the Liberty and Manor of Paris Garden is a quite well defined part of the Bankside. It lay at the extreme west end, bordering upon Lambeth Marsh, with the Clink upon its east. In it stood from about 1595 the most westerly of the theatres, the Swan.[1402] Historians of Southwark are fond of suggesting that it had been the abode of the bears from an almost immemorial antiquity, and follow a late edition of Blount’s seventeenth-century _Glossographia_ in connecting it with the _domus_ of a certain Robert de Parys, near which the butchers of London were ordered to throw their garbage in 1393.[1403] I think the idea is that the garbage was found useful for feeding the bears. This theory I believe to be as much a myth as Taylor the water-poet’s derivation of the name from Paris, son of Priam. Parish, rather than Paris Garden, seems, in fact, to be the earlier form, although there is nothing in the history of the place that very particularly explains it.[1404] Many residents in London were of course ‘de Parys’ in the fourteenth century, and the _domus_ of the Robert in question, who lived some time after the first mention of ‘Parish’ Garden, was pretty clearly on the City and not the Surrey side of the river.[1405] It is, however, the case that before the Civil War the Butchers’ Company had been accustomed to send their offal by a beadle to ‘two barrow houses, conveniently placed on the river side, for the provision and feeding of the King’s Game of Bears’, and were directed to resume the practice after the Restoration; and possibly this is what misled Blount.[1406] Obviously, however, what the butchers did in the seventeenth century is no proof of what they did in the fourteenth. And, in fact, the ordinance of 1393 is explicit in its direction that the offal is ultimately to be, not devoured by bears, but cast into mid-stream.

There is in fact nothing, so far as I know, to locate the royal Game on the Bankside at all until the middle of the sixteenth century, when it was already hard by the stews in the Liberty of the Clink, and still less, except the persistence of the name, to locate it definitely in the Liberty of Paris Garden.[1407] The notice which brings Paris Garden nearest is in Foxe’s _Book of Martyrs_, which contains an account of an adventure of one Ralph Morice, secretary to Cranmer, who was foolish enough to take a book of his master’s, containing criticisms of the Six Articles, in a wherry from Westminster Bridge to Paul’s Wharf. It chanced that Henry VIII ‘was then in his barge with a great number of barges and boats about him, then baiting of bears in the water, over against the Bank’. The waterman stopped to see the fun, and the bear broke loose, and climbed into the wherry, which upset. The dangerous book fell into the Thames and was picked up by the bearward, who was the Lady Elizabeth’s bearward and ‘an arrant Papist’. It was only through the good offices of Cromwell that Morice escaped serious trouble. This was about July 1539.[1408] Certainly it was the custom from an early date to moor the King’s barge off Paris Garden.[1409] The spot was marked later by the Old Barge Stairs, which stood at the west end of that part of the Bank lying in front of the Garden, just as Paris Garden Stairs stood at its east end. But the barge was not necessarily at its moorings when Henry was baiting from it. Mr. Ordish suggests that it was the common use of Paris Garden Stairs by visitors to the baiting, which led to the name being transferred to the Bear Garden itself, without any one troubling to inquire very minutely whether it stood a little to the east or a little to the west of the landing.[1410] On the whole, however, I regard it as reasonably probable that there was at one time a Bear Garden in the Liberty, which fixed the traditional name for the sport, even after it had been transferred farther along the Bank.[1411] It may, perhaps, be a slight confirmation of this view that the 1627 survey of Paris Garden shows a space, apparently laid out as a garden and arranged as a circle within a square, which may represent the site. It stands nearly opposite Paris Garden Stairs in a triangular bit of ground between Holland Street and the lane leading to Copt Hall. This seems to have been rather a desolate region in Elizabeth’s reign, at any rate when you got beyond the row of houses which lined the bank.[1412] If there was a Bear Garden there, it had clearly been abandoned some little time before 1546, as the Stews were then ‘the accustomed place’. Somewhat later, the maps of Höfnagel (_c._ 1560) and Agas (_c._ 1570) show, in addition to the Bull ring already mentioned, another ring marked ‘The Beare bayting’, standing immediately west of it, and like it in the Clink.[1413] The animals at the stake are discernible in the rings, and to the south of each stretches a yard with a pond in the middle and kennelled dogs along the sides. It is in the Clink, too, that Norden in 1593 shows ‘The Beare howse’, a little west and north of ‘The play howse’, which is the Rose. This evidence is consistent with what little is upon written record about the locality of the Bear Gardens. The most important document is a deposition of John Taylor, not the water-poet, in a suit of 1620:[1414]

‘He saith that he remembreth that the game of bear-bayting hath been kept in fower severall places (vizt.) at Mason Steares on the bankside; neere Maid-lane by the corner of the Pyke Garden; at the beare garden which was parcell of the possession of William Payne; and the place where they are now kept.’

Taylor was then an old man of seventy-seven and his memory would easily go back to the time of the early maps. To his testimony may be added that of Stowe, who says in his _Survey of London_ (1598):[1415]

‘Now to returne to the West banke, there be two Beare gardens, the olde and new places, wherein be kept Beares, Buls and other beastes to be bayted. As also Mastiues in severall kenels, nourished to baite them. These Beares and other Beasts are there bayted in plottes of ground, scaffolded about for the Beholders to stand safe. Next on this banke was sometime the Bordello or stewes.’

In his _Annales_ Stowe records the fall of ‘the old and under propped scaffolds round about the Beare-garden, commonly called Paris garden’, and the consequent death of eight persons, at 4 p.m. on Sunday, 13 January 1583. It was, he says, ‘a friendly warning to such as more delight themselves in the cruelty of beasts, than in the works of mercy, the fruits of a true professed faith, which ought to be the Sabbath day’s exercise’.[1416] Dr. Dee also noted the accident in his diary, and it was reported to Burghley on the next day by the Lord Mayor and on 19 January by Recorder Fleetwood.[1417] Both of these adopt the view expressed by Stowe that it must be regarded as divine punishment for the violation of the Sabbath, and Fleetwood refers to ‘a booke sett downe vpon the same matter’, which may be John Field’s _Godly Exhortation by Occasion of the late Judgment of God showed at Paris Garden_. The shrewd irony of Sir Thomas More, upon a similar event, when it was the church that fell, many years before at Beverley, found little echo in the mind of the Elizabethan Puritan.[1418] A further letter from the Lord Mayor to the Privy Council on 3 July 1583 states that by then the Paris Garden scaffolds were ‘new builded’.[1419]

I find it very difficult to say which of the numerous bear gardens mentioned by Taylor and Stowe was in use at any given time. Mr. Rendle thought that Taylor’s first two, that at Mason Stairs and that at the corner of the Pike Garden, were the two shown as ‘The bolle bayting’ and ‘The Bearebayting’ by Agas.[1420] If so, they are quite out of scale. This is likely, since they are drawn large enough to show the animals. They are shown east and west of each other. Rendle puts the Pike Garden due south of Mason Stairs, but it clearly extended more to the east in 1587. In any case both these earlier sites were farther to the west of the Clink than the Hope. Where then was the place on William Payne’s ground? Mr. Rendle, after a careful comparison of Rocque’s map of 1746 and other later maps, puts it at ‘the north courtelage in the lane known as the Bear Garden’ and the Hope at the south courtelage in the same lane.[1421] I take him to mean that the Bear Garden on Payne’s ground was that in use until 1613, and that the Hope was built a little to the south of it. The terms of the contract with Katherens, however, suggest that the same or practically the same site was used. Mr. Rendle adds that ‘William Payne’s place next the Thames can be traced back into the possession of John Allen, until it came down to Edward Alleyn, and was sold by him at a large profit to Henslowe; the same for which Morgan Pope in 1586 paid to the Vestry of St. Saviour’s “6_s._ 8_d._ by the year for tithes”.’[1422] This I cannot quite follow. There seem to have been two properties standing respectively next and next but one on the west to the ‘little Rose’. Next the Rose stood messuages called The Barge, Bell and Cock. They were leased by the Bishop of Winchester to William Payne in 1540. His widow Joan Payne assigned them to John White and John Malthouse on 1 August 1582, and White’s moiety was assigned to Malthouse on 5 February 1589.[1423] From him Henslowe bought the lease in 1593–4.[1424] The tenements upon it were in his hands as ‘Mr. Malthowes rentes’ in 1603 and Alleyn was living in one of them.[1425] And the lease of the Barge, Bell and Cock passed to Alleyn and was assigned by his will towards the settlement of his second or third wife, Constance, daughter of Dean Donne.’[1426] To the west of this property in 1540 was a tenement once held by the prioress of Stratford. This passed to the Crown, and then to Thomas and Isabella Keyes under a Crown lease which was in Henslowe’s hands by 1597. Some notes of deeds--leases, deputations, bonds--concerning the Bear Garden were left by Alleyn. Four of the deeds have since been found by Mr. Kingsford in the Record Office. It appears that, before Henslowe, both Pope and Burnaby had some of the Keyes land on a sub-lease, and that Burnaby probably had the Keyes lease itself. Payne carried on baiting in a ring just south of the Barge. The site was called Orchard Court in 1620, and stood north of the Hope. This agrees with the relation suggested by Mr. Rendle between the two courtelages’. The object of the suit of 1620 was to determine whether the Hope also stood upon episcopal, or upon Crown land. Taylor’s testimony was ambiguous. But it follows that the transfer southwards must have been due to a tenant who held under both leases. It was suggested in 1620 that Pope rebuilt the scaffold standings round the ring as galleries with a larger circuit. This was doubtless after the ruin of 1583. Nothing is said of a change of site at this time. Moreover, both Pope and Burnaby seem to have used the site of the Hope and its bull-house as a dog-yard. Probably, therefore, the change was made by Henslowe and Alleyn. Alleyn left a record of ‘what the Bear garden cost me for my owne part in December 1594’. He paid £200 to Burnaby, perhaps only for a joint interest with Henslowe or Jacob Meade, and £250 for the ‘patten’, that is, I suppose, the Mastership bought from Sir William Stuart in 1604. He held his interest for sixteen years and received £60 a year, and then sold it to ‘my father Hinchloe’ for £580 in February 1611.[1427] There must have been considerable outgoings on the structure during this period. Another memorandum in Alleyn’s hand shows an expenditure of £486 4_s._ 10_d._ during 1602–5, and a further expenditure during 1606–8 of £360 ‘p^d. for ye building of the howses’.[1428] This last doubtless refers in part, not to the baiting ring itself, but to a tavern and office built on ‘the foreside of the messuage or tenemente called the Beare garden, next the river of Thames in the parish of St. Saviors’, for which there exists a contract of 2 June 1606 between Henslowe and Alleyn and Peter Street the carpenter.[1429] But this only cost £65, and it seems to me most likely that the Bear Garden was rebuilt on the southern site at the same time. Further light is thrown on the profits of the Bear Garden by a note in Henslowe’s diary that the receipts at it for the three days next after Christmas 1608 were £4, £6, and £3 14_s._, which may be compared with the average of £1 18_s._ 3_d._ received from the Fortune during the same three days.[1430] It may be added that Crowley notes the ‘bearwardes vaile’ somewhat ambiguously as ½_d._, 1_d._, or 2_d._,[1431] and that Lambarde in 1596 includes Paris Garden with the Theatre and Bel Savage as a place where you must pay ‘one pennie at the gate, another at the entrie of the scaffolde, and the thirde for a quiet standinge’.[1432]

Yet another building enterprise was undertaken in 1613, by which time an interest in the property had certainly been leased to Jacob Meade. On 29 August a contract was entered into between Henslowe and Meade and Gilbert Katherens, carpenter, for the pulling down of the Bear Garden and the erection before the following 30 November on or near the same site of a play-house on the model of the Swan, but with a movable stage, so as to enable the building to be used also for baitings. I reproduce the document here from Dr. Greg’s text:[1433]

Articles, Covenauntes, grauntes, and agreementes, Concluded and agreed vppon this Nyne and Twenteithe daie of Auguste, Anno Domini 1613, Betwene Phillipe Henslowe of the parishe of S^t Saviour in Sowthworke within the countye of Surrey, Esquire, and Jacobe Maide of the parishe of S^t Olaves in Sowthworke aforesaide, waterman, of thone partie, And Gilbert Katherens of the saide parishe of S^t Saviour in Sowthworke, Carpenter, on thother partie, As followeth, That is to saie--

Inprimis the saide Gilbert Katherens for him, his executours, administratours, and assignes, dothe convenaunt, promise, and graunt to and with the saide Phillipe Henslowe and Jacobe Maide and either of them, thexecutors, administratours, & assigns of them and either of them, by theise presentes in manner and forme following: That he the saied Gilbert Katherens, his executours, administratours, or assignes shall and will, at his or theire owne proper costes and charges, vppon or before the last daie of November next ensuinge the daie of the date of theise presentes above written, not onlie take downe or pull downe all that same place or house wherin Beares and Bulls haue been heretofore vsuallie bayted, and also one other house or staple wherin Bulls and horsses did vsuallie stande, sett, lyinge, and beinge vppon or neere the Banksyde in the saide parishe of S^t Saviour in Sowthworke, comonlie called or knowne by the name of the Beare garden, but shall also at his or theire owne proper costes and charges vppon or before the saide laste daie of November newly erect, builde, and sett vpp one other same place or Plaiehouse fitt & convenient in all thinges, bothe for players to playe in, and for the game of Beares and Bulls to be bayted in the same, and also a fitt and convenient Tyre house and a stage to be carryed or taken awaie, and to stande vppon tressells good, substanciall, and sufficient for the carryinge and bearinge of suche a stage; And shall new builde, erect, and sett vp againe the saide plaie house or game place neere or vppon the saide place, where the saide game place did heretofore stande; And to builde the same of suche large compasse, fforme, widenes, and height as the Plaie house called the Swan in the libertie of Parris garden in the saide parishe of S^t Saviour now is; And shall also builde two stearecasses without and adioyninge to the saide Playe house in suche convenient places, as shalbe moste fitt and convenient for the same to stande vppon, and of such largnes and height as the stearecasses of the saide playehouse called the Swan nowe are or bee; And shall also builde the Heavens all over the saide stage, to be borne or carryed without any postes or supporters to be fixed or sett vppon the saide stage, and all gutters of leade needfull for the carryage of all suche raine water as shall fall vppon the same; And shall also make two Boxes in the lowermost storie fitt and decent for gentlemen to sitt in; And shall make the particions betwne the Rommes as they are at the saide Plaie house called the Swan; And to make turned cullumes vppon and over the stage; And shall make the principalls and fore fronte of the saide Plaie house of good and sufficient oken tymber, and no furr tymber to be putt or vsed in the lower most, or midell stories, except the vpright postes on the backparte of the saide stories (all the byndinge joystes to be of oken tymber); The inner principall postes of the first storie to be twelve footes in height and tenn ynches square, the inner principall postes in the midell storie to be eight ynches square, the inner most postes in the vpper storie to be seaven ynches square; The prick postes in the first storie to be eight ynches square, in the seconde storie seaven ynches square, and in the vpper most storie six ynches square; Also the brest sommers in the lower moste storie to be nyne ynches depe, and seaven ynches in thicknes, and in the midell storie to be eight ynches depe and six ynches in thicknes; The byndinge jostes of the firste storie to be nyne and eight ynches in depthe and thicknes, and in the midell storie to be viij and vij ynches in depthe and thicknes. Item to make a good, sure, and sufficient foundacion of brickes for the saide Play house or game place, and to make it xiij^{teene} ynches at the leaste above the grounde. Item to new builde, erect, and sett vpp the saide Bull house and stable with good and sufficient scantlinge tymber, plankes, and bordes, and particions of that largnes and fittnes as shalbe sufficient to kepe and holde six bulls and three horsses or geldinges, with rackes and mangers to the same, and also a lofte or storie over the saide house as nowe it is. And shall also at his & theire owne proper costes and charges new tyle with Englishe tyles all the vpper rooffe of the saide Plaie house, game place, and Bull house or stable, and shall fynde and paie for at his like proper costes and charges for all the lyme, heare, sande, brickes, tyles, lathes, nayles, workemanshipe and all other thinges needfull and necessarie for the full finishinge of the saide Plaie house, Bull house, and stable; And the saide Plaiehouse or game place to be made in althinges and in suche forme and fashion, as the saide plaie house called the Swan (the scantling of the tymbers, tyles, and foundacion as ys aforesaide without fraude or coven). And the saide Phillipe Henslow and Jacobe Maide and either of them for them, thexecutors, administratours, and assignes of them and either of them, doe covenant and graunt to and with the saide Gilbert Katherens, his executours, administratours, and assignes in manner and forme followinge (That is to saie) That he the saide Gilbert or his assignes shall or maie haue, and take to his or theire vse and behoofe, not onlie all the tymber, benches, seates, slates, tyles, brickes, and all other thinges belonginge to the saide Game place & Bull house or stable, and also all suche olde tymber whiche the saide Phillipe Henslow hathe latelie bought, beinge of an old house in Thames street, London, whereof moste parte is now lyinge in the yarde or backsyde of the saide Beare-garden; And also to satisfie and paie vnto the saide Gilbert Katherens, his executors, administratours, or assignes for the doinge and finishinges of the workes and buildinges aforesaid the somme of Three Hundered and three score poundes of good and lawffull monie of England, in manner and forme followinge (That is to saie) In hande at thensealinge and delivery hereof, Three score pounds which the saide Gilbert acknowlegeth him selfe by theise presentes to haue receaued; And more over to paie every weeke weeklie, duringe the firste six weekes, vnto the saide Gilbert or his assignes, when he shall sett workemen to worke vppon or about the buildinge of the premisses the somme of Tenne poundes of lawffull monie of Englande to paie them there wages (yf theire wages dothe amount vnto somuche monie); And when the saide plaie house, Bull house, and stable are reared, then to make vpp the saide wages one hundered poundes of lawffull monie of England, and to be paide to the saide Gilbert or his assignes; And when the saide Plaie house, Bull house, and stable are Reared, tyled, walled, then to paie vnto the saide Gilbert Katherens or his assignes one other hundered poundes of lawffull monie of England; And when the saide Plaie house, Bull house, and stable are fullie finished, builded, and done in manner and forme aforesaide, then to paie vnto the saide Gilbert Katherens or his assignes one other hundred Poundes of lawffull monie of England in full satisfacion and payment of the saide somme of CCClx^{li}. And to all and singuler the covenantes, grauntes, articles, and agreementes above in theise presentes contayned, whiche on the parte and behalfe of the saide Gilbert Katherens, his executours, administratours, or assignes are ought to be observed, performed, fulfilled, and done, the saide Gilbert Katherens byndeth himselfe, his executours, administratours, and assignes vnto the saide Phillipe Henslowe and Jacob Maide and to either of them, thexecutours, administratours, and assignes of them or either of them, by theise presentes. In witnes whereof the saide Gilbert Katherens hath herevnto sett his hande and seale, the daie and yere firste above written

The mark G K of Gilbert Katherens

Sealed and Delivered in the presence of witnes Moyses Bowler Edwarde Griffin

The execution of the contract must have been delayed, for the rebuilt Bear Garden is fairly to be identified with the Hope, of which no mention is made in the petition of the spring of 1614 described by Taylor in _The True Cause of the Watermen’s Suit_, although it had certainly come into use by the following autumn.[1434] Here was arranged for 7 October a trial of wit between this same Taylor and the shifty rhymer William Fennor.[1435] The latter failed to turn up, and Taylor, who, according to his own account, had advertised ‘this Bear Garden banquet of dainty conceits’ and collected a great audience, was left ‘in a greater puzzell then the blinde beare in the midst of all her whip-broth’. After acting part of what he had intended, he resigned the stage to the regular company:

Then came the players, and they play’d an act, Which greatly from my action did detract, For ’tis not possible for any one To play against a company alone, And such a company (I’ll boldly say) That better (nor the like) e’r played a play.

This company was no doubt the Lady Elizabeth’s, as reconstituted in the previous March under an agreement with Nathaniel Field on their behalf, of which a mutilated copy exists. To it Meade was a party, and there is nothing to establish a connexion between Meade and any other theatre than the Hope.[1436] Jonson names the Lady Elizabeth’s men as the actors of _Bartholomew Fair_, and in the Induction thereto, after a dialogue between the Stage-keeper, who is taunted with ‘gathering up the broken apples for the beares within’, and the Book-holder, a Scrivener reads ‘Articles of Agreement, indented, between the Spectators or Hearers, at the Hope on the Bankeside, in the County of Surrey on the one party; and the Author of Bartholmew Fayre in the said place, and County on the other party: the one and thirtieth day of Octob. 1614’. According to Jonson the locality was suitable for a play on Bartholomew Fair, for it was ‘as durty as _Smithfield_, and as stinking euery whit’.[1437] There were disputes between Henslowe and the company, partly arising out of an arrangement that they should ‘lie still’ one day a fortnight for the baiting, and the combination broke up. Some of its members, apparently then Prince Charles’s men, are found after Henslowe’s death signing an agreement with Alleyn and Meade to play at the Hope, and to set aside a fourth of the gallery takings towards a sum of £200 to be accepted in discharge of their debt to Henslowe. Alleyn had of course resumed his part proprietorship of the house as executor and ultimate heir to Henslowe. Meade probably took actual charge of the theatre, and there is an undated letter from Prince Charles’s men to Alleyn, written possibly in 1617, in which they explain their removal from the Bankside as due to the intemperate

## action of his partner in taking from them the day which by course was

theirs. I suppose that this dispute also was due to the competition of baiting with the plays. In 1619 some disputes between Alleyn and Meade had to be settled by arbitration, and from Alleyn’s memoranda in connexion with these it appears that Meade was his deputy under his patent as Master of the Game, and had also a lease from him of the house at £100 a year.[1438] The Hope is mentioned from time to time, chiefly as a place of baiting, up to the civil wars.[1439] It is one of the three Bankside theatres alluded to in _Holland’s Leaguer_ (1632), where it is described as ‘a building of excellent hope’ for players, wild beasts, and gladiators. Bear-baiting was suppressed by the House of Commons in 1642,[1440] and the house was dismantled in 1656. The manuscript continuation of Stowe’s _Annales_ describes its end and the slaughter of the bears, but gives the date of its erection erroneously as 1610 instead of 1613.[1441]

After the Restoration the Bear Garden was restored, and a lane called Bear Gardens, running from Bankside to New Park Street, and a sign therein of The White Bear still mark its name.[1442] Its site is pretty well defined in the seventeenth-century maps as to the west of the Globe and, where that is shown, the Rose, and generally as a little nearer Maid Lane than the latter. This is consistent with a notice in the Sewers records for 5 December 1595 of a sewer which ran to the Bear Garden from a garden known to have lain a little farther east along Maid Lane than the Globe.[1443]

The traditional day for baiting was Sunday. Crowley in 1550 describes it as taking place on ‘euerye Sondaye’.[1444] Naturally this did not pass without Puritan comment, to which point was given by the fall of Paris Garden on a Sunday in 1583.[1445] A general prohibition of shows on Sunday seems to have followed, from which it is not likely that bear-baiting was excepted. It may be inferred that Thursday was substituted, for a Privy Council order of 25 July 1591 called attention, not only to a neglect of the rule as to Sunday, but also to the fact that every day ‘the players do use to recite their plays to the great hurt and destruction of the game of bear-baiting and like pastimes, which are maintained for Her Majesty’s pleasure if occasion require’, and forbade plays both on Sunday and on Thursday, on which day ‘those other games usually have been always accustomed and practised’.[1446] Henslowe’s diary seems to show that up to 1597 he kept the Sunday prohibition and disregarded the Thursday one, which is a little odd, as he was interested in the Bear Garden. But a proclamation of 7 May 1603 on the accession of James repeats the warning that there was neglect of the Sabbath, and renews the prohibition both for baiting and for plays.[1447] Henslowe and Alleyn in their petition of about 1607 for increased fees lay stress on this restraint as a main factor in their alleged loss.[1448] It seems from the notes of Stowe’s manuscript _continuator_ that during the first half of the seventeenth century Tuesday and Thursday became the regular baiting days.[1449] But the agreements made by Henslowe and Meade with the Lady Elizabeth’s men in 1614 profess only to reserve one day in fourteen for this purpose, of which apparently notice was to be given on the previous Monday.[1450]

xvi. PORTER’S HALL

Authority was given for the erection of a new theatre by the following patent of 3 June 1615:[1451]

[Sidenote: De concessione regard Phillippo Rosseter et aliis.]

Iames by the grace of God &c. To all Maiors, Sheriffes, Iustices of peace, Bayliffes, Constables, headboroughes, and to all other our Officers, Ministers, and loving Subiectes, to whome these presentes shall come, greeting. Whereas wee by our letteres Patentes sealed with our great seale of England bearing date the ffourth day of Ianuary in the seaventh yeare of our Raigne of England Fraunce and Ireland and of Scotland the three and ffortieth for the consideracions in the same letteres patentes expressed did appoint and authorise Phillipp Rosseter and certaine others from tyme to tyme to provide, keepe, and bring vppe a convenient nomber of children, and them to practise and exercise in the quallitie of playing by the name of the children of the Revelles to the Queene, within the white ffryers in the Suburbs of our Cittie of London, or in any other convenient place where they the said Phillipp Rosseter and the rest of his partners should thinke fitting for that purpose, As in and by the said letteres patentes more at large appeareth, And whereas the said Phillipp Rosseter and the rest of his said partners have ever since trayned vppe and practised a convenient nomber of children of the Revelles for the purpose aforesaid in a Messuage or mansion house being parcell of the late dissolved Monastery called the white ffryers neere Fleetestreete in London, which the said Phillipp Rosseter did lately hold for terme of certaine yeres expired, And whereas the said Phillipp Rosseter, together with Phillipp Kingman, Robert Iones, and Raphe Reeve, to continue the said service for the keeping and bringing vppe of the children for the solace and pleasure of our said most deere wife, and the better to practise and exercise them in the quallitie of playing by the name of children of the Revelles to the Queene, have latelie taken in lease and farme divers buildinges, Cellers, sollars, chambers, and yardes for the building of a Play-house therevpon for the better practising and exercise of the said children of the Revelles, All which premisses are scituate and being within the Precinct of the Blacke ffryers neere Puddlewharfe in the Suburbs of London, called by the name of the lady Saunders house, or otherwise Porters hall, and now in the occupation of the said Robert Iones. Nowe knowe yee that wee of our especiall grace, certaine knowledge, and meere mocion have given and graunted, And by theise presentes for vs, our heires, and successors, doe give and graunte lycense and authoritie vnto the said Phillipp Rosseter, Phillipp Kingman, Robert Iones, and Raphe Reeve, at their proper costes and charges to erect, build, and sett vppe in and vppon the said premisses before mencioned one convenient Play-house for the said children of the Revelles, the same Play-house to be vsed by the Children of the Revelles for the tyme being of the Queenes Maiestie, and for the Princes Players, and for the ladie Elizabeths Players, soe tollerated or lawfully lycensed to play exercise and practise them therein, Any lawe, Statute, Act of Parliament, restraint, or other matter or thing whatsoever to the contrary notwithstanding. Willing and commaunding you and every of you our said Maiors, Sheriffes, Iustices of peace, Bayliffes, Constables, headboroughes and all other our officers and ministers for the tyme being, as yee tender our pleasure, to permitt and suffer them therein, without any your lettes, hinderance, molestacion, or disturbance whatsoever. In witnes whereof, &c. Witnes our selfe at Westminster the third day of Iune. per breve de priuato sigillo &c.

The statements made in the patent as to the objects of the promoters can be confirmed from other sources. We know that the lease of the Whitefriars expired at the end of 1614, that there had been an amalgamation of the Queen’s Revels and the Lady Elizabeth’s men in 1613, and that in all probability this arrangement was extended to bring in Prince Charles’s men during 1615. Unfortunately for Rosseter and his associates, the patent had hardly been granted before it was called in question. Presumably the inhabitants of the Blackfriars, who had already one theatre in their midst, thought that that one was enough. At any rate the Corporation approached the Privy Council, and alleged divers inconveniences, in particular the fact that the theatre, which was described as ‘in Puddle Wharfe’, would ‘adjoine so neere vnto’ the church of St. Anne’s as to disturb the congregation.[1452] The Council referred the patent to the Lord Chief Justice, Sir Edward Coke, no friend of players, or of the royal prerogative which expressed itself in patents; and when he found a technical flaw, in that the Blackfriars, having been brought within the City jurisdiction by the charter of 1608, was not strictly within ‘the suburbs’, ordered on 26 September 1615 that the building, which had already been begun, should be discontinued. Nevertheless, the work must have gone so far as to permit of the production of plays, for the title-page of Field’s _Amends for Ladies_ (1618) testifies that it was acted ‘at the Blacke-Fryers both by the Princes Servants and the Lady Elizabeths’. Moreover, on 27 January 1617 the Privy Council wrote again to the Lord Mayor, enjoining him to see to the suppression of a play-house in the Blackfriars ‘neere vnto his Majestyes Wardrobe’, which is said to be ‘allmost if not fully finished’.[1453]

It does not appear possible to say exactly where in the Blackfriars’ precinct the Porter’s Hall once occupied by Lady Saunders stood. It was certainly not the porter’s lodge at the north-west corner of the great cloister, for this was still in 1615, as it had been since 1554, part of the Cobham house. One Ninian Sawnders, a vintner, took a lease of the chancel of the old conventual church from Sir Thomas Cawarden in 1553, and this would have been close to St. Anne’s, which stood at the north-east corner of the great cloister. But Ninian died in 1553 and never got knighted. On the other hand, the rooms on the south side of the great cloister, generally described as Lygon’s lodgings, had been in the tenure of one Nicholas Saunders shortly before their sale by Sir George More to John Freeman and others in 1609. Nicholas Saunders is said to have been knighted in 1603.[1454] These lodgings adjoined More’s own mansion house, and might at some time have served as a lodge for his porter.[1455] But I do not feel that they would very naturally be described either as ‘near’ or ‘in’ Puddle Wharf, or as ‘near’ the Wardrobe. These indications suggest some building approached either from Puddle Wharf proper or from the hill, afterwards known as St. Andrew’s Hill, which ran up from it to the Wardrobe, outside the eastern wall of the Priory precinct. The Cawarden estate did not extend to this wall, and the Saunders family may quite well, in addition to Lygon’s lodgings, have had a house, either on the site of the old convent gardens, or higher up the hill on the Blackwell estate, near where Shakespeare’s house stood, and near also to St. Anne’s. Perhaps there had been a porter’s lodge on the east of the old prior’s house.

XVII

THE PRIVATE THEATRES

i. THE BLACKFRIARS

[_Bibliographical Note._--Many documents bearing upon the history of the theatre are preserved at Loseley, and the most important are collected by Professor A. Feuillerat in vol. ii of the _Malone Society’s Collections_ (1913). A few had been already printed or described by A. J. Kempe in _The Loseley Manuscripts_ (1835), by J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps in _Outlines_, i. 299, by J. C. Jeaffreson in the 7th _Report of the Hist. MSS. Commission_ (1879), by Professor Feuillerat himself in _Shakespeare-Jahrbuch_, xlviii (1912), 81, and by C. W. Wallace, with extracts from others, in _The Evolution of the English Drama up to Shakespeare_ (1912, cited as Wallace, i). In the same book and in _The Children of the Chapel at Blackfriars_ (1908, cited as Wallace, ii), Professor Wallace prints or extracts documents from other sources, chiefly lawsuits in the Court of Requests and elsewhere, which supplement those discovered by J. Greenstreet and printed in F. G. Fleay, _Chronicle History of the London Stage_ (1890). The references to the theatre in J. P. Collier, _History of English Dramatic Poetry_ (1837 and 1879), are seriously contaminated by forgeries. Some material for the general history of the precinct is furnished in the various editions of John Stowe, _Survey of London_ (1598, 1603, ed. Munday, 1618, ed. Strype, 1720, ed. Kingsford, 1908), in W. Dugdale, _Monasticon_ (1817–30), by M. Reddan in the _Victoria History of London_, i. 498, and in the _Athenaeum_ (1886), ii. 91. A. W. Clapham, _On the Topography of the Dominican Priory of London_ (_Archaeologia_, lxiii. 57), gives a valuable account of the history and church of the convent, but had not the advantage of knowing the Loseley documents, and completely distorts the plan of the domestic buildings and the theatre. An account by J. Q. Adams is in _S. P._ xiv (1917), 64. The status of the liberty is discussed by V. C. Gildersleeve, _Government Regulation of the Elizabethan Drama_, 143.]

The Dominicans, also called the ‘preaching’ or ‘black’ friars, came to England in 1221. Their first house was in Holborn.[1456] In 1275 they acquired a site on the sloping ground between St. Paul’s and the river, just to the east of Fleet ditch, and obtained leave to divert the walls of the City so as to furnish a north and north-west boundary to their precinct. Here grew up a very famous convent, the motherhouse of all the Dominican settlements in the country. It received favours from several sovereigns, notably from Edward I and his Queen Eleanor, who were regarded as its founders; and in return held its great buildings available for national purposes. In 1322–3 it furnished a depository for state records. It housed divers parliaments, at first in its church and later in a great chamber which will be of singular interest to us, and from as early as 1311 was often found a convenient meeting-place for the Privy Council. In 1522 it was the lodging of the Emperor Charles V, and a wooden bridge and gallery were carried over the Fleet, to facilitate communications with his train in Bridewell palace. In 1529 its parliament chamber was the scene of the legatine sittings which tried the case of divorce between the same Emperor’s niece Katharine and the conscience-stricken Henry VIII.[1457]

By this time the friars had ceased to be a power in the land. Those of the convent had numbered seventy in 1315; there were no more than sixteen or seventeen in 1538.[1458] Parts of the buildings, now all too spacious, were let out as residences. It was, perhaps, the neighbourhood of the Wardrobe, whose Master had an official residence contiguous to the east wall of the precinct, which made the Blackfriars a favourite locality for those about the Court. A list of ‘them that hath lodgings within the Blak Freers’, which was drawn up in 1522, probably in connexion with the imperial visit, contains the names of Lord Zouch of Harringworth, Lord Cobham, Sir William Kingston, then carver and afterwards comptroller of the household, Sir Henry Wyatt, afterwards treasurer of the chamber, Sir William Parr, Sir Thomas Cheyne, afterwards warden of the Cinque ports and treasurer of the household, Jane, widow of Sir Richard Guildford, formerly master of the horse, and Christopher More, a clerk of the exchequer.[1459] It is to be feared that some of these tenants cast a covetous eye upon the fee-simple of their dwellings, and that it was not all zeal for church reform which made Lord Cobham, for example, write to Sir Thomas Wyatt, the poet and son of Sir Henry, on 7 October 1538, ‘No news, but I trust there shall not be a friar left in England before you return’.[1460] Cobham and his friends had not long to wait. The deed by which the friars surrendered their property into the hands of the King is dated 12 November 1538. The annual income, derived from the rented premises, was reckoned as £104 15_s._ 5_d._, but of course this in no way represents the capital value of the site and buildings.[1461] The partition of spoils, under the supervision of the Court of Augmentations, followed in due course. Cobham got his house, although not immediately, at nine years’ purchase; and between 1540 and 1550 some sixteen other parcels of the estate, many of them very substantial, were similarly alienated.[1462] Finally, on 12 March 1550, during the liberal distribution of crown lands for which the authority of Henry VIII was alleged by his executors in the Privy Council, a comprehensive grant was made of all that still remained unalienated in the precinct to Sir Thomas Cawarden, the Master of the Revels, whose office had for some years past been established within its walls. Apparently Cawarden paid nothing for it, but on the other hand the King owed him a good deal for moneys spent in the service of the Revels.[1463]

The Blackfriars long remained an anomaly in the local government of London. Like all monastic establishments, the friars had maintained extensive privileges within their own precinct. Nightly their porter had shut their four gates upon the city. They had done their own paving. The Lord Mayor had claimed a jurisdiction, but if this was admitted, it was only in cases of felony. The ordinary functions of civil magistracy had been exercised, when called for, by Sir William Kingston and other important tenants.[1464] Naturally there had been friction from time to time with the Corporation, and on the surrender the latter, like the tenants, hoped that their opportunity was come. They addressed a petition to Henry, in which they expressed their gratification that he had ‘extirped and extinct the orders of Freers to the great exaltacion of Crystes doctryne and the abolucion of Antecriste theyr first founder and begynner’, and asked for a grant of the church and the whole precinct of the Blackfriars, together with those of the three other London friaries, to be used for the special benefit of non-parishioners and of those infected by pestilence.[1465] Henry, however, had not gone to the trouble of obtaining a surrender merely to inflate the powers and the revenues of a municipality. He is reported to have replied that ‘he was as well hable to keep the liberties as the Friers were’, and to have handed the keys to Sir John Portinari, one of his gentlemen pensioners, who dwelt in the precinct.[1466] The Blackfriars, therefore, continued to be an exempt place or ‘liberty’, an enclave within the walls of the City, but not part of it, and with a somewhat loose and ill-defined organization of its own. The inhabitants agreed together and appointed a porter and a scavenger. A constable was appointed for them by the justices of the verge.[1467] The precinct was constituted an ecclesiastical parish, known as St. Anne’s after a chapel which had once served its inhabitants; and was provided with a church.[1468] Petty offences were tried, and any exceptional affairs managed, as might have been done in a rural parish, by the justices, and it was to these that any administrative orders thought necessary by the Privy Council were ordinarily addressed.[1469] It perhaps goes without saying that the City were not content with a single rebuff. They attempted to interfere at the time of a riot in 1551, and were snubbed by the Privy Council.[1470] Under Mary they promoted legislation with a view to annexing the liberties, but without success.[1471] In 1562 a sheriff, who entered the liberty to enforce a proclamation, was shut in by the prompt action of the constable, and faced with an inhibition which one of the justices hurried to obtain from a privy councillor.[1472] The city remained persistent. In 1574 the Council had again to intervene.[1473] In 1578 a controversy arose as to the right of the City to dispose of the goods of felons and other escheats. It was referred to two chief justices, who made a report to the effect that, while the inhabitants of both the Blackfriars and the Whitefriars enjoyed certain immunities from civic levies and liabilities, nevertheless the soil of the precincts lay within the City, and the City was entitled to exercise jurisdiction therein. It may be doubted whether effect was given to this opinion.[1474]

In 1587 the Council ordered another inquiry, in order to ascertain the precise nature of the Queen’s title in the Blackfriars.[1475] There had been a petition for redress of inconveniences from the inhabitants.[1476] About the same time the chief landowner, Sir William More, appears to have suggested that the liberty should be converted into a manor, and manorial rights conferred upon him.[1477] These are signs that residence in a liberty hard by a thronging population had disclosed a seamy side. Undesirable persons were bound to throng to a district where the Lord Mayor’s writ did not run. An open space, for example, filled with immemorial trees planted by the friars, had been ruined to house alleys for bowling and other unlawful games.[1478] Doubtless there were those who resented the fact that the attempt of the City to discourage interludes had been met by the establishment of a Blackfriars theatre in 1576, which lasted until 1584. It appears to have been a protest from the inhabitants which led the Privy Council to forbid the public theatre contemplated by James Burbage in 1596, although some years later they winked at the opening of the building as a private house. In 1596 the church fell down, and in appointing a commission to apportion the responsibility for repairs, the council also instructed them to consider the government of the liberty, ‘which being grown more populus than heretofore and without any certaine and knowen officer to keepe good orders there, needeth to be reformed in that behalfe’.[1479] The nature of the commission’s findings is not upon record, but that the ultimate solution lay in the incorporation of the liberty in the City could hardly be doubtful. As far back as 1589 the Council had found it convenient to use the Lord Mayor as an agent for securing a proper contribution from the Blackfriars towards a levy. From 1597 onwards they showed an increased tendency to make similar use of an administrative machinery far more completely organized than that of the justices of the peace. In that year the Lord Mayor was instructed to make a collection in aid of the Blackfriars church repairs. In 1600 it again fell to him to assess the share of the liberty in a levy of men and money. In 1601 it is he who is called upon to suppress plays in Blackfriars during Lent.[1480] The final step was, however, deferred until 20 September 1608, when the new Jacobean charter formally extended the jurisdiction of the city to various liberties, including both the Blackfriars and the Whitefriars, with certain exemptions as regards assessments and the tenure of offices, but with none as regards responsibility for petty offences and the keeping of the peace.[1481]

I have anticipated, in order to get the question of jurisdiction out of the way. I must now return to the topography. Sir Thomas Cawarden died on 29 August 1559. He had no son, and his executors, Lady Cawarden and Sir William More, personally took over the Blackfriars estate in survivorship, as part of the settlement of his affairs.[1482] Lady Cawarden’s death on 20 February 1560 left More sole owner. He retained the property until his own death in 1601, and the muniment room of his house at Loseley near Guildford contains innumerable documents relating to the business transactions in which it involved him, together with some of earlier date which he inherited from Cawarden. The researches of Professor Feuillerat in these archives render it possible to reconstruct with some minuteness the arrangement of the Blackfriars and its buildings at the time of the surrender, to trace many of the changes of the next half-century, and, as part of the process, to indicate pretty definitely the locality and nature of the structures which were turned to theatrical uses.

The precinct covered a space of about five acres.[1483] In shape it was a rough parallelogram, wider at the north than at the south. The great gate was towards the east end of the north boundary. It was reached by a short entry on the south of Bowier Row, now Ludgate Hill, just east of Ludgate. This seems to have been called Gate Street. It is now the north end of Pilgrim Street.[1484] From here the boundary was the city wall, westwards for about 450 ft. to the Fleet ditch, and then southwards for about 800 ft. along the east side of the ditch. There were towers at intervals. One of these stood about 200 ft. down from the angle, and immediately south of this was the bridge over the Fleet towards Bridewell. The south and east boundaries were also walled. Between the south wall and the river ran Castle Lane, which was not within the precinct.[1485] A gate in the south wall gave access across the lane to the Blackfriars ‘bridge’ or ‘stairs’, a common landing place, originally built by the Prior of St. John’s, from whom, in some way not clear to me, the Friars held their estate.[1486] The south-east angle of the precinct was near Puddle Wharf, and from here the boundary ran up the west side of St. Andrew’s Hill to Carter Lane, bending out eastwards near the top, where the buildings of the Wardrobe joined it by an arch over the roadway, was then driven in sharply westwards by the end of Carter Lane, which was butt up against a turngate in the friars’ wall, and finally ran in an irregularly diagonal line from the junction of Creed and Carter Lanes north-west to the great gate again. Internally the precinct was unequally divided by an irregular highway which ran north and south, from the great gate to the Blackfriars stairs. This started out of Gate Street as High Street, and lower down became Water Lane.[1487] All the conventual buildings lay on the east of the highway. Here was the larger division of the precinct, measuring about 450 ft. from east to west. The western division, measuring about 150 ft., contained only a few houses and gardens. Across it ran from Bridewell Bridge to Water Lane a strip of unoccupied land, containing nothing but a ruined gallery, probably part of the provision made for the accommodation of Charles V in 1522. One of Cawarden’s first acts, when he got his property, was to make a new road, with tenements and gardens to the south of it, along this strip. It became known as Bridewell Lane, and is represented by the present Union Street.[1488] It must have joined Water Lane just south of a little place or _parvis_ which lay in front of the west porch of the church and the adjoining entrance to the cloister. The _parvis_ contained one or two houses and shops, and formed part of the continuous thoroughfare from north to south, communicating by gateways with High Street and Water Lane.[1489] The conventual church itself divided the eastern portion of the precinct from west to east, extending not quite so far east as the present Friar Street. It was 220 ft. long and 66 ft. wide, and had two aisles and a chancel, which, as usual in conventual churches, was as long as the nave. There was a square porch tower over the west end. Over the junction of nave and chancel stood a belfry, visible in Wyngaerde’s drawing of _c._ 1543–50, and to the north of the chancel a chapel, probably the quasi-parochial chapel of St. Anne, and a vestry.[1490] Beyond these was the churchyard.[1491] This was 300 ft. long by 90 ft. deep, and occupied about two-thirds of the space between the High Street on the west, the church on the south, and the north-eastern boundary of the precinct. A group of houses stood between it and the great gate towards Ludgate, and three others separated it from the High Street at the south west corner.[1492] One of these, built up against the church and the High Street gateway, was a recluse’s cell or Ankerhouse.[1493] Cawarden cut a new road across the churchyard, 20 ft. north of the site of the chancel and just north of the Ankerhouse and the High Street gate. This continued Carter Lane, the turngate at the end of which was converted into a gate practicable for carts, and with Bridewell Lane provided a thoroughfare across the Blackfriars from east to west in addition to that from north to south. That part of the existing Carter Lane, west of Creed Lane, which was formerly known as Shoemakers’ Row, doubtless represents Cawarden’s new way.[1494]

On the south of the nave stood the great cloister, entered by a porter’s lodge in its north-west corner. It was 110 ft. square. Its eastern alley was probably in a line with a way across the church under the belfry to a door into the churchyard, and this line, preserved by Cawarden in order to provide access to the cloister from his new way, is represented by the existing Church Entry.[1495] The north side of the cloister was formed by the wall of the nave. Behind the other three sides were ranged the domestic buildings of the convent. On the east were the ample Prior’s lodging, which stretched back over the space south of the chancel, and farther to the south the Convent garden, covering an acre. Over part of this lodging and over the cloister alley itself was the east dorter of the friars, communicating direct with the church by a stairway.[1496] The east side of the cloister also contained the Chapter-house, which probably stood in the middle, and to the south of this a school-house.[1497] Behind the south-east corner were the provincial’s lodging, a store-house, the common jakes, and another garden, known as the hill garden.[1498] Another dorter stood over the south cloister alley and over some ground-floor buildings of uncertain use, which divided this alley from an inner cloister, flanked on the east by the library, and in part on the west by the infirmary, behind which were the bakehouse, brewhouse, and stables. The western end of the south alley of the main cloister formed a lavabo, and was apparently sunk to a lower level than the rest.[1499] Down the western side of both cloisters extended a continuous range of buildings, the details of which will require subsequent examination. These formed two main blocks. The northern, flanking the main cloister, contained the buttery and parts of the guest-house and porter’s lodge; the southern, flanking the inner cloister, was devoted to the refectory, the lower end of which, owing to the slope of the hill, seems to have stood over the infirmary. The irregular outline of Water Lane, jutting a good deal to the west after it emerged from the _parvis_ in front of the church porch, left a space of some 84 ft. at its widest between this range of buildings and the lane itself. The guest-house and porter’s lodge extended back into this space; it also held the convent kitchen and other subsidiary buildings.[1500]

When Cawarden got his grant in 1550, a great deal of the property had already been disposed of.[1501] Except for the strip where he laid out Bridewell Lane and two small garden plots, nothing was left for him in the western division of the precinct. To the north the group of houses between the churchyard and the great gate had gone. To the south, Cobham had taken the rooms over the porter’s lodge, with a closet window looking into the church, and he and one Sir George Harper had divided the rest of the guest-house block--‘fayer great edifices’, says Cawarden--that lay behind.[1502] Sir Francis Bryan had taken the Prior’s lodging and the convent garden, and from him they had passed to the Bishop of Ely and then to one William Blackwell. Lady Kingston had taken the inner cloister, with part of the south dorter and the rooms beneath it, the library, the infirmary, the brewhouse, bakehouse, and stables. Others had taken the school-house, some more of the south dorter, the provincial’s lodging, the jakes, the store-house, and the hill garden, and these ultimately passed to Lady Grey. Sir Thomas Cheyne, the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, had taken some of the buildings west of the frater. Everything farther south, down towards the river, had also been alienated. What was left for Cawarden consisted mainly of the church itself and the churchyard, the ankerhouse, the great cloister, the chapter-house, the east dorter, the porter’s lodge and buttery block, with all the rooms over these except Cobham’s, the frater, the kitchen, and such buildings standing between the frater and Water Lane, as did not belong to Cheyne.[1503] Much trouble was caused to Cawarden’s successors by uncertainty as to the extent of Cheyne’s claim.[1504] No doubt the grant constituted Cawarden the chief landowner in the district, but he complained that hardly any of his property was ‘mansionable’, and even at the time of his death he had only brought the annual value up to £70.[1505] The survey taken for the purposes of the grant puts it at no more than £19. On the other hand, the value of the stone and timber and other material of the buildings is estimated in the same survey at £879 3_s._ 4_d._, including an item of £709 11_s._ 0_d._ for lead alone. Evidently it was from the site-value and the judicious erection of new buildings and conversion of old ones, with the aid of this material, into ‘mansionable’ property, that Cawarden’s profit was to come. A convinced Protestant, he looked upon the church as a quarry. He pulled it down, with the exception of the south wall of the nave, which was to serve him as a garden wall, and the porch which he turned into a tenement. Other tenements were built on the site, and the rest of it, with so much of the churchyard as was not required for the new road, was let off. One of the tenants appears to have made tennis-courts on the site of the chancel. The demolition included St. Anne’s Chapel. This had been closed during Henry’s reign and used as a store-house for the Offices of Tents and Revels. For a while the inhabitants were allowed to worship in a room under an old gallery, presumably that which became the site of Bridewell Lane; but now this passed into Cawarden’s hands and he evicted them. When they plucked up heart, under Mary, to protest, he first offered them a site in the churchyard and a roof if they would be at the expense of building, and ultimately gave them an upper room, apparently at the north end of the east dorter. This fell down in 1597, and was rebuilt by the parishioners, who finally bought it, with a piece of the site of the old conventual church as a churchyard, from Sir George More in 1607–8.[1506] Cawarden effected an adjustment of boundaries on the east of the cloister with the Bishop of Ely.[1507] He then proceeded to build dwelling rooms along the south and east sides of the cloister.[1508] They must have been fairly shallow, for they left him a great square garden, but no doubt the recess of the chapter-house permitted increased depth towards the east. Under the west wing of the new building, adjoining the buttery, was a great vaulted room, 57 ft. by 25, which must, I think, have been the lavabo of the friars.[1509] East of this was a set of rooms capable of use as a separate dwelling, which came to be known as Lygon’s lodgings.[1510] The rest formed the capital mansion of the property, the ‘great house’, and was clearly intended for Cawarden’s own residence. It seems to have been sometimes let and sometimes occupied by Sir William More.[1511] The great garden must have been pleasant enough, with the north and west cloister alleys left standing, and a tinkling conduit in the west end, filled by a pipe from Clerkenwell.[1512]

The important part of the Blackfriars, from the point of view of theatrical topography, is the range of buildings on the western side of the two cloisters, parallel to Water Lane. The two blocks constituting this range, or so much of them as passed to Cawarden, are referred to in the surveys of 1548 and 1550 as the ‘olde butterie’ and the ‘vpper ffrater’.[1513] From the details given in these surveys and in the leases and other documents preserved at Loseley, it is possible to form a very fair notion of their structure and uses. The chief rooms in both blocks were upon an upper floor. The northern block was 110 ft. in length from north to south and 36 ft. in width. The upper rooms, however, were only 26 ft. wide, as 10 ft. was taken up by a high stone gallery which ran along the west of the building, and was perhaps connected with the wooden gallery leading to the Fleet.[1514] These rooms were four in number. That to the north, 21 ft. long, belonged to Cobham, and had a closet window looking into the church upon the south wall of which, for 20 ft. of its width, the block abutted.[1515] Then came two central rooms, a large and a small one, measuring together 52 ft. in length, and then a southern one, which with an entry measured 47 ft.[1516] The surveys treat the three rooms which fell to Cawarden as a single ‘hall place’. All four rooms had probably formed part of the guest-house of the convent, and had lodged Charles V. The ground floor held low rooms pierced at intervals by entries and with cellars underneath them. The chief entry or gate-house was at the southern end and served Cawarden’s mansion house when that was built.[1517] North of this came the buttery proper and a pantry, occupying with a small entry connecting them 29 ft.;[1518] then another stepped entry into the cloister serving afterwards as Cawarden’s garden gate;[1519] then probably more rooms under the two central upper rooms; then a staircase to Cobham’s upper room;[1520] and finally rooms belonging to the porter’s lodge, which were 21 ft. in length. This lodge extended backwards towards Water Lane, and over and around it were other rooms of Cobham’s and yet others forming the house of Sir George Harper.[1521] Some or all of these had also probably been part of the guest-house. Together with a garden of Cobham’s, they occupied rather less than half the space between the northern block and Water Lane. South of them, and included in Cawarden’s grant, were the convent kitchen with a room over it, and the kitchen yard, forming a space 84 ft. wide, and in length 74 ft. at the buttery end and 68 ft. at the lane end.

The northern block, being 110 ft. long, extended right down to the southern line of the cloister, which was 110 ft. square. Here it abutted upon the southern block. This was 52 ft. wide. The length of the upper frater is given in the surveys as 107 ft., and in two of More’s leases as 110 ft.[1522] The latter figure is probably the right one.[1523] The north end of this block contained a ‘great stair’, which gave access both to the frater and to the guest-house, and was itself convenient of approach both from the gate-house entry and from the lavabo at the south-west angle of the cloister. Probably this end was built in the form of a tower, as there were rooms on and over the staircase and over the adjoining Duchy Chamber, and garrets over those.[1524] There was a garret also over the south end of the northern block.[1525] It is doubtful whether anything stood over the main portion of the southern block.[1526] This had a flat leaded roof, whereas the northern block, as its lead is not mentioned in the survey, probably had a gabled and tiled roof. Apart from the staircase tower, the upper floor of the southern block consisted of the ‘upper’ frater or refectory, a spacious apartment, which had been used for Parliaments and the legatine trial of Henry VIII’s divorce case, and was sometimes known as ‘the Parliament chamber’.[1527] The ground floor is a little more difficult. The survey of 1548 assigns to it a ‘blind’, that is, I suppose, a windowless, or at any rate dark, parlour, which came next the buttery block, and a hall, to which the parlour served as an entry.[1528] These are said to be ‘vnder the seide frater of the same lengethe and breddethe’. This might naturally be taken to mean that they were, together, of the same size as the frater above. In fact it must, I think, mean that they were of the same size as each other, for we know from another source that the south end of the frater was over a room not belonging to Cawarden at all but to Lady Kingston, and itself standing over the infirmary, which, owing to the fall of the ground, formed at that end a lower story of the block.[1529] The survey does not say what the sizes of the parlour and hall were, but a later document suggests that together they underlay over two-thirds of the frater and occupied a space of 74 ft. from north to south and 52 ft. from east to west.[1530] Under Cawarden’s part of the southern block were cellars. To the west lay what was known as the Duchy Chamber, probably from some official use in connexion with the Duchy of Lancaster. This was a two-story building, 50 ft. long by 16 ft. wide, jutting out at right angles to the extreme north end of the frater. South of it was a house, apparently belonging to Sir Thomas Cheyne and occupied by Sir John Portinari, which touched the frater at one end, and at the other had a parlour, interposed between the end of the Duchy Chamber and Water Lane, and bounded on the north, as the Duchy Chamber itself must have been, by the kitchen yard. South of this again were a little chamber and a kitchen, with an entry from Water Lane, probably between Portinari’s parlour and another house belonging to Cheyne.[1531] The little chamber and kitchen were used in conjunction with the hall under the upper frater. This hall, which was paved and stood ‘handsome to’ the buttery, had also been a frater, serving as a breakfast room for the friars, and in the little chamber had lived their butler.[1532] Now it is noted in the surveys that Sir Thomas Cheyne had laid claim to the paved hall, the ‘blind’ parlour, the little chamber, and the kitchen, and it seems very doubtful whether they were covered by the specifications of Cawarden’s grant.[1533] He succeeded, however, in occupying them; and the inevitable lawsuit was left for his successor.

Cawarden had had the buttery, frater, kitchen, and Duchy chamber on lease since 4 April 1548.[1534] Some of these, as well as other conventual buildings, he had occupied from a still earlier date in his capacity as Master of the Tents and Revels. For these offices the propinquity of the Wardrobe rendered the Blackfriars very convenient. Already in 1511 temporary use had been made of some room in the precinct to prepare a pageant in for a joust at Westminster.[1535] Before Cawarden became Master, the regular store-house of the Revels office had been at Warwick Inn.[1536] The transfer to Blackfriars was not completed until February 1547, but it perhaps began earlier, since the papers of the Court of Augmentations contain receipts by John Barnard, for sums spent by the King’s surveyor on ‘the reparayng and amendyng of the Blacke Fryers in London store howse for the seyd tentes and revelles’ during 1545.[1537] The Chapel of St. Anne had been requisitioned with other houses ‘to laye in tentes, maskes and revels’ before the end of Henry VIII’s reign.[1538] As to the exact location of the Tents there is some interesting, although conflicting, evidence. An order of the Augmentations in 1550 allowed Sir Thomas Cheyne £5 a year for the use of his great room by the Tents from 25 March 1545 onwards.[1539] The room intended was undeniably the paved hall or breakfast room under the frater, but Sir William More maintained in 1572 that the payment by the Augmentations was an irregular one, and that the paved hall had never been used for the Revels and was never in fact Cheyne’s.[1540] Sir John Portinari gave evidence that for some time after the surrender of the convent it had remained empty, and that he had himself kept the keys until Cawarden took possession of it in 1550. Cawarden then invited him to a supper and a play in the hall.[1541] The Revels seem to have had the use of the upper frater or parliament chamber during Henry VIII’s reign.[1542] But the surveys of 1548 and 1550 locate them to the north of this, in the southernmost of the four halls of the old guest-house. The two central halls, together with the convent kitchen, had been tenanted as far back as 1539 by successive Lords Cobham, to whose house they were adjacent.[1543] In 1554, however, Cawarden sold the two rooms to George Lord Cobham, together with the porter’s lodge, which underlay his original holding, and received as part of his consideration a release from any claim which Cobham may have had to the kitchen yard and to the property granted to Cawarden on the west side of Water Lane.[1544] With the upper rooms transferred to Cobham went ‘appurtenances’, which probably included the corresponding ground-floor rooms, as these are not traceable in More’s possession and apparently formed part of the Cobham estate when that was disposed of in the next century.[1545] The porter’s lodge was all on the ground floor. It had a frontage of 21 ft. on the cloister and ran back for 47 ft. towards Water Lane. At the time of Cawarden’s grant in 1550 it had been occupied by John Barnard, clerk comptroller of the Tents and Revels, but he had died in the same year.[1546] Naturally it was convenient for the officers of the Revels to live in the Blackfriars. John Holt, the yeoman, had a house to the north of the churchyard. Thomas Philipps, the clerk, had the ‘little chamber’ west of the frater. The paved hall served him as a wood store, and from time to time some of Cawarden’s servants lay there. About 1552 Cawarden moved Philipps to the Ankerhouse, and put into the little chamber the deputy clerk, Thomas Blagrave, who found it too small, and rented an adjoining chamber from Cheyne.[1547] The paved hall was then let, with other neighbouring rooms on more than one floor, to one Woodman, who kept an ordinary in the hall and did a good deal of damage to the property.[1548] Meanwhile, the Revels had apparently been moved from this first-floor hall where they lay in 1550, for when this hall is recited as the south boundary of Cobham’s purchase in 1554, it is described as a house in the tenure of Sir John Cheke or his assigns.[1549] So long as the Tents and Revels continued to be housed in Crown property, the offices had of course nothing to pay for rent. But after 1550 Cawarden, as naturally, claimed an allowance for rent, and in 1555 he was permitted to charge six years’ arrears from Michaelmas 1549 at the rate of £3 6_s._ 8_d._ a year each for the official residences of the comptroller, clerk, and yeoman, £6 13_s._ 4_d._ for his own, £6 13_s._ 4_d._ for the office of the tents, and £6 13_s._ 4_d._ for the ‘store and woorke howses of the revelles’. In the accounts for 1555–9 similar charges recur annually, but the allowance for Cawarden’s own house is raised to £10 and that for the houses of the other officers to £5 each; and the £6 13_s._ 4_d._ for the Revels office is specified as being ‘for the rente of fyve greate roomes within the Blackefryers for the woorke and store howses of the Revelles’.[1550] About 1560 the store-house was certainly not the hall over the buttery, but the great vaulted room in the south-west corner of the cloister, which had been the lavabo of the friars.[1551] On the other hand, Sir John Cheke’s tenure of his house had ceased and the vacated rooms had become available for workhouses. This is evident from the terms of a lease of the same rooms to Sir Henry Neville, executed on 10 June 1560, just after the Revels had been removed to St. John’s.[1552] Cawarden had died on the previous 29 August, and the lease was one of the first dealings of William More with the property. The principal rooms leased were precisely four in number. They had been ‘lately called or knowen by the name of Mr. Chekes lodginge and sythence vsed by Sir Thomas Cawarden knight deceased for the office of the Quenes Maiesties Revelles’. They were bounded on the north by Lord Cobham’s house, on the east by the houses of More and of Sir Henry Jerningham, who was Lady Kingston’s son and heir, and on the west by another house of More’s in the occupation of Richard Frith, and by the way leading to More’s house and garden and a piece of void ground. Under them and leased with them were the buttery and pantry; and the lease also covered a cellar and a ‘greate rome in manner of a grete seller having a chimpney’ which I suppose to have been the late Revels store-house. The upstairs rooms were approximately 157 ft. long, 27 ft. wide at the north end, and 22 ft. wide at the south end.[1553] The length agrees approximately with the sum of the lengths of the upper frater and of the hall over the buttery not included in Cobham’s purchase of 1554; and it was evidently from these that Neville’s holding was taken. But the head of the staircase must have interfered with his width in the middle, and it will be observed that, while he had the full width of the northern block, he had less than half the full width (52 ft.) of the frater. Evidently Cawarden had partitioned the frater to make it ‘mansionable’, and in particular had divided it into two tenements by a partition from north to south. Neville’s was the eastern division. The western division and the rooms at the top of the staircase tower were in the tenure of Richard Frith, who had taken a twenty-four years’ lease from Cawarden in April 1555 and had obtained a renewal from More on 24 December 1559. Here, in 1561, Frith kept a dancing-school.[1554] Neville’s lease also gave him a share in More’s water-supply, a strip of the void ground, formerly the convent kitchen yard, between the northern block and Water Lane, and a right of way to the buttery and pantry through the rest of that ground, which was reserved to More. Neville’s strip lay just south of Cobham’s garden wall. That reserved by More was partly taken up by ways to his garden and gate-house entries. In the space between these was erected in 1561 a public conduit, which received the water-supply after it left More’s tap, and passed it on to the Earl of Pembroke’s house at Baynard’s Castle. Here also stood a tennis ground, tenanted with a cellar under the northern block by Frith.[1555] The gate-house entry, or at least the way to it, served Frith’s house, as well as More’s own. Near it were certain rooms, reserved for More’s use or that of his servant John Horley, which may have been constructed out of the ‘blind’ parlour. The great stairs in the tower between the two blocks were probably assigned to Frith. They were not included in Neville’s lease, and he was specifically debarred from any right of access through More’s house or garden except by More’s licence. It was probably contemplated that he would build stairs to the upper floor for himself, and this is perhaps why More exacted no fine on the execution of the lease.[1556] At any rate Neville did build stairs on the west of the house, placing them not in his own strip of yard but in More’s, with his water-cock in a little room at the stair foot. The pale of Frith’s tennis court was altered to allow of access between it and Neville’s stairs from More’s garden entry to his gate-house entry.[1557] In his own strip Neville built a kitchen and another set of stairs behind it which must have led into the extreme north end of his house, as the site of the kitchen underlay, not Neville’s own rooms, but those purchased by Cobham in 1554. The rest of the strip served as a woodyard, and had a privy in it. Presumably the original convent kitchen acquired by Cawarden had been pulled down. Within the house Neville put up partitions, turning his four rooms into six, of which it may be inferred that two lay in the northern block and four in the southern, and adorning one of these latter with wainscoting most of the way round, and with a great round portal.[1558] About Lady Day 1568 More bought back the lease from Neville for £100, doubtless in consideration of the improvements.[1559] For a time it seems to have been occupied by the Silk Dyers Company.[1560] On 6 February 1571 it was let to William Lord Cobham, the terms of whose lease closely resemble those of Neville’s, but record the changes made during his predecessor’s tenancy.[1561] Cobham gave up the house in 1576, and on 27 August of that year Neville wrote to More to recommend a new applicant for the tenancy, his friend Richard Farrant. With it came an application from Farrant himself. Apparently his tenancy entailed the removal of an Italian, who may have been one of the silk dyers, and he desired to be allowed to take down one of the partitions. On 17 September he wrote to ask that a small room, 6 ft. by 4½ ft., occupied by More’s man Bradshaw might be added to his holding.[1562] His lease was executed on 20 December.[1563] It gives him all the rooms which Neville had had, with the exception of the former Revels store-house, which is now described as ‘that great rome nowe vsed for a wasshynge howse’; and it adds the little room specially asked for, which had been contrived by throwing together a privy and a coal-house. Richard Farrant was Master of the Children of Windsor Chapel, and deputy to William Hunnis as Master of the Children of the Chapel Royal, and his object in taking the house was to have a room in which the children could give public representations for profit of the plays which they were afterwards to perform at Court. He carried out his plan, and so the old frater of the friars, once the parliament chamber of the realm, became the first Blackfriars theatre.[1564]

More, according to his own account, was not best pleased at the use made of his house. He complained that Farrant, after pretending that he only meant to teach the children in it, had made it a ‘continuall howse for plays’ to the offence of the precinct, and to fit it for the purpose had pulled down and defaced Neville’s partitions, spoiled the windows, and brought the house to great ruin. He had also sublet certain portions, and, as he was not entitled to do this under his lease without licence, More claimed the forfeiture of the lease. At this moment, on 30 November 1580, Farrant died, leaving the house to his widow Anne. For some months there were no plays in the theatre. Then Hunnis resolved to carry on Farrant’s enterprise himself, and on a recommendation from the Earl of Leicester More appears to have given at least a tacit consent to a sub-letting by Anne to Hunnis and one John Newman on 20 December 1581. They were to do repairs and pay her £6 13_s._ 4_d._ in rent more than the £14 due to More. An unfortunate slip of the scrivener’s pen cut Mrs. Farrant’s profit down to £6 6_s._ 8_d._ They also gave bonds of £100 each for the due fulfilment of their covenants, and according to Newman’s statement to More, paid £30 down. According to Mrs. Farrant they neglected their repairs and were extremely irregular with their rent, so that she was put to great shifts in order to satisfy Sir William More, disposing of a small reversion given her by the Queen, pawning her plate and jewels, selling a dozen of gold buttons here and a set of viols there, and borrowing of powerful friends such as Lord Cobham or Henry Sackford, the Master of the Tents. Meanwhile Hunnis and Newman disposed of their interest to one Henry Evans, a scrivener, and More, incensed at this, took definite steps in the spring of 1583 to recover his house by executing a fresh lease to one of his men, Thomas Smallpiece, and setting Smallpiece to sue for the ejectment of Evans. The latter tried to elude him by a further transfer of the sub-lease to the Earl of Oxford, who passed it on to John Lyly, the poet; and thus, says More, the title was ‘posted over from one to another from me’ contrary to the conditions of the original lease. Doubtless Hunnis, Lyly, and Evans were all working together under the Earl’s patronage, for a company under Oxford’s name was taken to Court by Lyly in the winter of 1583–4 and by Evans in the winter of 1584–5, and it seems pretty clear that in 1583–4, at any rate, it was in fact made up of boys from the Chapel and Paul’s.[1565] More, however, pursued his point, and about Easter 1584 recovered legal possession of his house. Some months before, Anne Farrant, in despair, had appealed to Sir Francis Walsingham, and had also brought actions at common law against Hunnis and Newman for the forfeiture of their bonds. They applied to the Court of Requests to take over the case, and there is no formal record of the outcome. But in January 1587 Mrs. Farrant was again complaining to the Privy Council, and Sir John Wolley was asked to bring about a settlement between her and More, who was his father-in-law.[1566]

So ends the story of the first Blackfriars theatre. The premises which it had occupied came into the hands of Henry Lord Hunsdon, who was also about the same time tenant of More’s mansion house and garden.[1567] It would seem that Lord Oxford and Lyly had passed on to Hunsdon their sub-leases from the Farrants and that, even when he recovered legal possession from the court, More did not care to interfere with this arrangement. But there was evidently some friction. The sub-leases were due to expire in 1590 or 1591, and in April 1586 More refused to renew them. His excuse was that ‘The howses yow had of Lyllye I determyne that assone as theye bothe shall cum into my handes to kepe them to the onelye vse of me and mye chylderne’. In acknowledging this decision, Hunsdon complained that the pipe of water belonging to one of the houses had been diverted to serve that of Lord Cobham. In 1590 he made a fresh attempt to secure a renewal. More at first drafted a letter of consent, but then changed his mind and told Hunsdon that he needed the houses for his daughter Lady Wolley and for himself on his visits to London. Hunsdon had suffered annoyance because the tenant of the next house ‘having the vse of the leades, either by negligence or otherwise, suffereth the boyes to cutt upp the lead with knifes or to boore yt through with bodkyns wherby the rayne cometh throwghe’.[1568] This allusion, together with that to the pipe of water, makes it clear that Hunsdon’s houses included the rooms covered by Neville’s lease of 1560, in which the right of dancing-master Frith to use the leads over the southern block is expressly safeguarded. I think it is probable that the two houses are merely the southern and northern sections of the Farrant holding, separately sublet to Hunsdon. It is known that Farrant himself, while in occupation of the theatre, had let off certain rooms. More’s wish to retain the property for family reasons did not long outlast its immediate purpose of decently covering a refusal to the Lord Chamberlain. Frith’s tenancy also came to an end, and for some period between 1590 and 1596 the rooms formerly constituting the upper frater were reunited in the occupation of William de Laune, a doctor of physic. The rooms to the north of them, after his appointment as Chamberlain of the Exchequer on 23 November 1591, were used by More for the purposes of the Pipe Office.[1569] The buttery and pantry beneath were probably also relet in 1591.[1570]

I must now turn to the history of the ‘paved hall’ and ‘blind parlour’ under the upper frater and the little chamber and kitchen to the west of these, all of which, when Cawarden obtained possession in 1550, were under the shadow of a claim by Sir Thomas Cheyne. Blagrave’s occupation of the little chamber terminated when the Revels Office moved to St. John’s in 1560, and on 10 December 1564 More drafted a lease of it to one Laurence Bywater, who had in fact been in occupation since 1560.[1571] It is described as consisting of a hall, a chamber above, a little room below, a kitchen, a yard, ‘a long entrie coming in ouer the yard bourded and railed’, and a vault or cellar. The paved hall had been let by 1572 to William Joyner, who used it as a fencing-school. In this year Cheyne’s claim was renewed by one Henry Pole and his wife Margaret, who was the widow of Cheyne’s eldest son. The rooms chiefly in dispute were the paved hall and Bywater’s house, but the Poles seem also to have claimed rooms in the tenures of Richard Frith and Thomas Hale.[1572] It may be conjectured that these were the rooms constructed out of the blind parlour. On the other hand More made a counter-claim, probably not very serious, to Pole tenements in the occupation of Christopher Fenton, Thomas Austen, and John Lewes. Incidentally, it appears that Cawarden had not succeeded in removing all signs of papistry from the Blackfriars, for Bywater’s house is throughout described in the interrogatories taken as the little house having chalices and singing cakes painted in the window. The matter was referred to arbitration.[1573] Pole’s case rested entirely on the question of fact as to what the holding of Cheyne and his predecessors actually comprised in 1540, since the grant named no boundaries but merely gave Cheyne the houses and lands then in his own occupation and formerly in those of Jasper Fylole and of Thomas Ferebye and William Lylgrave. Pole produced some witnesses who declared that before the surrender by the friars one Purpointe had dwelt in Bywater’s house and kept a tavern in the fencing-school, and that subsequently Ferebye and Lylgrave had occupied these premises. They could not say that Cheyne himself had ever had possession of them, but Pole was able to cite the order of the Court of Augmentation in 1550 allowing Cheyne rent for his large room as a store-house for the tents. In More’s view this rent was paid under a misunderstanding, and he seems to have suggested that the only houses occupied by Cheyne and his predecessors were that afterwards occupied by Portinari and one ‘new built’ by Cheyne, in which apparently Lord Henry Seymour was living at the time of the suit. Moreover, he produced a number of witnesses, including Bywater, Blagrave, Thomas Hale, groom of the Tents, Portinari himself, and Elizabeth Baxter, widow of the former porter of the friars, who agreed in deposing that the friars had never let these rooms, which were essential as a breakfast room and a butler’s lodging to their daily life, and gave a perfectly consistent account of the various uses of them after the surrender by Cawarden, Woodman, Phillips, Blagrave, and Bywater, which have already been indicated in this narrative. It does not transpire that More confided to the arbitrators the suspicious references to Cheyne’s claim in the surveys of 1548 and 1550. However this may be, their decision was in his favour on the substantial issue. The Poles were required to acknowledge his right to Bywater’s house and the paved hall, as well as to the tenements of Frith and Hale. More, on the other hand, was to abandon his claim to the tenements of Fenton, Austen, and Lewes, and by way of compromise was to execute a lease of Bywater’s house to the Poles at a nominal rent for fifty years or the term of their lives. This he accordingly did. Nothing more is heard of any of the premises involved until July 1584, just after More had succeeded in putting an end to Lyly’s theatrical enterprise. By this date both Bywater and Joyner had gone, and their places had been taken by another fencing-master, an Italian, Rocco Bonetti by name.[1574] Bonetti had acquired from Margaret Pole, now a widow, her life-interest in the butler’s lodging. He had also taken over from Lyly two leases, one of the fencing-school, the other of a house, the property of More, immediately west of the butler’s lodging.[1575] The latter he had repaired at some cost. He had even been rash enough to put up additional buildings on More’s land. And he had not paid his workmen, to whom he owed £200. The butler’s lodging is described as being in great decay. But this also, or its site, he appears to have enlarged, at the expense of his neighbouring tenement on the west. He feared the expiration of his interests, and got his friends, of whom were Lord Willoughby, Sir John North, and Sir Walter Raleigh, to approach More for an extension of tenure. As regards the western house, More seems to have consented, after much reluctance in view of Bonetti’s indebted condition, to a lease for seven years in 1586.[1576] As regards the butler’s lodging, he was mainly interested in the reversion after Mrs. Pole’s death, and of this reversion he granted Bonetti a ten years’ term by a lease of 20 March 1585.[1577] The holding is described in much the same terms as those used in Bywater’s lease of 1564. The measurements, however, are also given. The length from north to south was 25 ft. 2 in., and the width from east to west 22 ft. 6 in. But 4 ft. 6 in. of the length and 2 ft. of the width were not covered by Mrs. Pole’s lease, and were taken, probably by an encroachment which the lease was intended to regularize, from More’s tenement to the west. For the sake of greater accuracy, the measurements and boundaries of this western tenement are given. It was 33 ft. from north to south and 39 ft. 8 in. from east to west. It was bounded on the north by More’s yard, on the south and west by a house of Mrs. Pole’s, on the south by the way to Sir George Carey’s house, and on the east by More’s house in Bonetti’s tenure, that is to say the house which is the subject of the lease.[1578]

Sir George Carey was the eldest son of Lord Hunsdon, and himself became Lord Hunsdon on 22 July 1596.[1579] He is not traceable in the Blackfriars before 1585, but continued to reside there until his death in 1603. The way to his house corresponds in position with the way to Lady Kingston’s house of the 1548 survey, and he had pretty clearly acquired some or all of her property, including the infirmary under the upper frater.[1580] The way must have followed a line from Water Lane, much the same as that of the present Printing House Lane. The fencing-school was accessible from it by a door next to Carey’s.[1581] Certain other data of the early surveys are a little difficult to reconcile with those of the later documents. The surveys indicate three parallel rows of buildings, of a comparatively insignificant character, extending over a space roughly 80 ft. square between the frater block and Water Lane. The north row consisted of the two-storied Duchy Chamber, a narrow building 50 ft. by 17 ft., and the parlour of Sir John Portinari’s house. These had a frontage on the kitchen yard. South of them came the rest of Portinari’s house, and south of this the little chamber, 26 ft. long by 10 ft. wide, the little kitchen, 23 ft. long by 22 ft. wide, and an entry to the latter, 30 ft. long by 17 ft. wide, which I suppose to have debouched upon Water Lane. The little chamber and kitchen had their frontage on the way leading to Lady Kingston’s. The house referred to as Cheyne’s in the 1550 survey is probably that occupied by Portinari. But Cheyne must also have had other property in the same neighbourhood, which the surveys do not mention. There was the house, probably that described as ‘new built’ in 1572, which he occupied himself, and which afterwards passed to Lord Henry Seymour.[1582] And there were the three tenements which More claimed, but did not secure in 1572. These premises were leased as a whole by the Poles to Christopher Fenton on 31 May 1571, and appear to have been gradually cut up into smaller holdings. By 1610 there were four tenants and by 1614 five. They bounded More’s property, and must have lain in the angle of Water Lane and the way to Lady Kingston’s, just south of the entry to the little kitchen.[1583]

The little chamber of 1548 is undoubtedly the butler’s lodging leased to Bywater in 1564 and to Bonetti in 1585, which was a subject of the lawsuit in 1572. But whereas it measured 26 ft. by 10 ft. in 1548, it measured 22 ft. 6 in. by 25 ft. 2 in. in 1585, and the enumeration of rooms in the two leases show that, although Bonetti may have built a small additional room upon a bit of land filched from More, there had been no substantial change since 1564. Further, while in 1548 it was bounded on the north by Portinari’s holding, it was reached in 1564 by a railed and boarded entry across its yard, and documents of 1596 and 1601 make it clear that this entry terminated in a small porch opening on the kitchen yard.[1584] Similarly the little kitchen, 23 ft. by 22 ft., of 1548 had been replaced in 1584 by a house 33 ft. by 39 ft. 8 in., and of this also Portinari’s house had ceased to be the boundary, and a yard of More’s had been substituted. Finally, More’s successor, Sir George More, was in a position in 1603 to sell to one John Tice a strip of land bounded by Tice’s house on the south, Water Lane on the west, and the kitchen yard on the north and east, which must have been just about where Portinari’s parlour stood at the time of the 1548 survey.[1585] I am now approaching the region of conjecture, but there is only one way of accounting for the facts. More must have acquired and pulled down Portinari’s house, and thus not only let light and air into the somewhat congested district west of the frater, but also left room for extensions in the rear of the little houses fronting on the way to Lady Kingston’s. The extension of the little chamber he had probably himself undertaken before 1564. It did not interfere with the chalices and singing cakes in the window, or prevent the house from being in decay in 1585. In 1572 it could be seen that the house had been covered with lead, but presumably was so no longer.[1586] The extension of the little kitchen seems to have been an enterprise of Bonetti, of which More reaped the profits. The rest of the space gained was utilized for the fencing-school kitchen, for a staircase behind the Duchy Chamber, and for certain yards, all of which were in existence in 1596.[1587] It is just possible that More also pulled down the west end of the Duchy Chamber.

By 1596 both the fencing-school and the butler’s lodging had passed from the occupation of Bonetti. One Thomas Bruskett had the former and one John Favour the latter. This is the year of James Burbadge’s great enterprise of the second Blackfriars theatre. Our first intimation of it is from Lord Hunsdon, in a letter to More of 9 January 1596.[1588] He has heard that More has parted with part of his house for a play-house, and makes an offer for ‘your other howse, which once I had also’. The deed of sale by More to James Burbadge is dated 4 February 1596.[1589] The purchase money was £600. The rooms transferred are carefully described, but only a few of the measurements and boundaries are given. There were seven great upper rooms, ‘sometyme being one greate and entire room’, enclosed with great stone walls, and reached by a great pair of winding stairs from the great yard next the Pipe Office. Other stone stairs reached leads above. These rooms had been lately in the tenure of William de Laune, doctor of physic. Beneath them, or beneath an entry between them and the Pipe Office, lay a vault, of which Burbadge was to have the use only, by a ‘stoole and tonnell’ contrived in the thickness of his north wall.[1590] Under some part of De Laune’s seven rooms, and included in the sale, lay also rooms 52 ft. long and 37 ft. wide, known as the ‘midle romes’ or ‘midle stories’. These extended south to Sir George Carey’s house, and were reached from a lane leading thereto, by a door next to Carey’s gate. They had been in the tenure of Rocco Bonetti and were now in that of Thomas Bruskett, together with a kitchen adjoining, and two cellars reached by stairs from the kitchen, and lying under the north end of the middle rooms. Bruskett had one of these, and the other was occupied by John Favor, who dwelt in the house held for the term of her life by Mrs. Pole. This house did not go to Burbadge, but he had one of two small yards of which Favor had the other, between Mrs. Pole’s house and the cellars. This yard was occupied by Peter Johnson, and Burbadge also took four rooms tenanted by Johnson, and surrounded by his yard on the south, Mrs. Pole’s entry on the west, and the great yard next the Pipe Office on the north. Two of these were under De Laune’s late rooms. The other two were under rooms, to the west of the north end of De Laune’s, which were occupied by Charles Bradshaw, possibly the Bradshaw whose room was begged by Farrant in 1576. Bradshaw also occupied a little buttery, an entry and passage from the seven rooms, and a little room for wood and coals. This lay over the buttery, on the west side of a staircase leading to two rooms or lofts, one of which was over the east and north of Bradshaw’s rooms and the other over the entry between the seven rooms and the Pipe Office. These were in the occupation of Edward Merry, who also had a room or garret over them reached by a further staircase. A staircase also led from Peter Johnson’s yard to Bradshaw’s rooms. Both Bradshaw’s and Merry’s rooms were included in Burbadge’s purchase, which was completed by a small yard and privy on the north side of Pipe Office yard, east of Water Lane, south of Cobham’s house, and west of a house of More’s also occupied by Cobham. Burbadge was also to have the right of depositing coal and other goods for a reasonable time in the old kitchen yard, now called ‘the greate yarde next the Pipe Office’, provided he did not interfere with access to the Pipe Office itself, or to More’s garden or other parts of his premises. The description seems complicated, as one reads the deed, but I think that the disposition of the rooms is fairly intelligible.[1591] The seven upper rooms, once a single great room, can only represent the whole of the old parliament chamber or upper frater, formerly divided into two distinct holdings. This, as we know, abutted across the staircase upon the hall in the northern block which had formed part of Farrant’s holding and which More had converted into the Pipe Office in 1591.[1592] The middle rooms, together with the two easternmost of Johnson’s rooms, must together represent the space of the paved hall and blind parlour. There is no reason to suppose that Burbadge bought from More, or that More ever possessed, anything beyond this space on the ground floor of the frater block; and if the hall and parlour were, as I have suggested, of equal size, the total space passing to Burbadge on this floor was 74 ft. from north to south and 52 ft. from east to west. The rest of the floor had been Lady Kingston’s and passed to Sir George Carey.[1593] Johnson’s other two rooms and Bradshaw’s rooms above them, lying to the west of the north end of the seven great rooms, must be the two floors of the Duchy Chamber. The yards behind them were rendered possible by the clearance of Portinari’s house. Bradshaw’s two smaller rooms were on the staircase tower, and Merry’s rooms and garret were partly at the top of this staircase and partly above the Duchy Chamber.

DIAGRAMS OF BLACKFRIARS

1596

[Illustration: A. LOWER STORY]

[Illustration: B. UPPER STORY]

The property purchased by Burbadge was extended at various dates after his death in February 1597 by his sons Cuthbert and Richard. On 26 June 1601 they bought for £95 from Sir George More the reversion of the butler’s lodging, subject to the life-interest of Mrs. Pole and to the ten years’ lease after her death, which had in the interval since 1585 passed from Rocco Bonetti to Thomas Bruskett.[1594] On 30 May 1610 they purchased two-thirds of the interests of the heirs of Mrs. Pole and of a mortgagee in the houses formerly held by Christopher Fenton, and on 7 July 1614 also purchased the remaining interest. These houses cost them in all £170.[1595] If, as is not unlikely, they also purchased at some time the house which in 1585 stood on the site of the little kitchen of 1548, and the bit of land sold to John Tice in 1603, the whole of the plot between the frater on the east, Water Lane on the west, the kitchen yard on the north, and the way to Lord Hunsdon’s house on the south, will have passed into their hands. There is no indication that they ever acquired any part of Lord Hunsdon’s house. This was apparently occupied by the French ambassador in 1623, when one of its upper rooms, used as a chapel, fell, and many persons were killed. Camden in his notes for Jacobean annals confused this room with the theatre.[1596] About 1629 the King’s printers, Robert Barker and John Bill, secured Hunsdon House for their press, and it remained the King’s printing house until the Great Fire.[1597] On 19 December 1612 the Burbadges obtained from the Cobham estate a piece of land for the enlargement of the yard near the Pipe Office, which was serving twenty years later to turn coaches in.[1598]

To make an end for the present of topography, the fortunes of the property to the north of the Burbadge purchases may be briefly traced. Sir William More died in 1601 and his son and successor, Sir George, had no need for a Pipe Office. The rooms were therefore leased, with others, on 23 April 1601 to Sir Jerome Bowes at a rent of £14 6_s._ 8_d._ ‘and certein glasses’.[1599] I think that the other rooms included the old lavatory of the friars, once a Revels store-house and thereafter a wash-house for More’s mansion, and that it was in this room that Bowes established the glass-house which became an important industry of the Blackfriars.[1600] On 19 June 1609 Sir George More sold this property, subject to Bowes’s lease, together with the mansion house, the great garden and all that remained to him within the great cloister, to a syndicate, whose members in 1611 divided the purchase amongst themselves.[1601] The former Pipe Office, now called the gate-house, with its yard, part of the glass-house, and a strip of the garden 23 ft. 10 in. wide passed to William Banister. Banister’s son Thomas sold them in 1616 to Gideon De Laune and De Laune in 1617 to Jacob Hardratt. Then Hardratt rebuilt the property and in 1619 sold back to De Laune a tenement which extended 43 ft. from north to south, and 24 ft. westwards from ‘the great gate near the play-house’ to the tenement occupied by a widow Basil. It had a small garden on the east, lying south of another garden belonging to De Laune.[1602] The length of 43 ft. exceeds by 6 ft., the width of an entry, that of the Pipe Office rooms, the site of which De Laune’s tenement no doubt occupied.

The big sale of 1609 did not include the kitchen and kitchen stairs built by Sir Henry Neville about 1560, or the wood yard which enclosed them. A bit of this yard had been included in Burbadge’s purchase of 1596. The rest of the property, with the water supply, had been bought on 11 March 1601, by Henry Lord Cobham, whose house it underlay.[1603] It had in fact been held by his father as far back as 1596.[1604] In 1603 Cobham was attainted. His Blackfriars property was forfeited to the Crown, but regranted to his widow, Lady Kildare, and for some years remained in the hands of trustees for her and her daughter Lady Howard.[1605] In 1612 an additional bit of the wood yard was sold, as already stated, to the Burbadges. Finally, in 1632 the estate was conveyed to the Company of Apothecaries, in whose hands it has since remained.[1606] They must also have acquired the house of Gideon De Laune, who was one of their founders, and therefore their present premises, in their extent of 116 ft. from north to south, exactly replace the ‘northern block’ of buildings which stood to the west of the main Blackfriars cloister, when Sir Thomas Cawarden took possession of it in 1550.

James Burbadge was not destined to see the success of his adventure. After all, he was prevented from establishing his theatre in 1596. Play-houses had just been suppressed in the City, and a number of the more important inhabitants of the Blackfriars disliked the idea of one being opened in their select residential precinct, where no common play-house had yet been seen. Farrant’s theatre, nominally intended for the private practice of the Chapel boys, was presumably regarded as not falling within the category of common play-houses. A petition was sent to the Privy Council, amongst the signatories to which were Burbadge’s neighbour, Sir George Carey, now Lord Hunsdon, Elizabeth Lady Russell, who lived a little farther up Water Lane, and Richard Field, the printer of Shakespeare’s poems.[1607] The extant copy of the petition is not dated, but later references assign it to November 1596, and inform us that as a result the Privy Council forbade the use of the house.[1608] On James Burbadge’s death in February 1597 the Blackfriars property passed to his son Richard.[1609] It is not known what use he made of it before 1600, but in that year the resumption of plays by the Chapel children under Nathaniel Giles gave him an opportunity of following Farrant’s example, and letting the theatre for what were practically public performances ‘vnder the name of a private howse’.[1610] With Giles were associated one James Robinson and Henry Evans, who had already been concerned in the enterprise of John Lyly and the Earl of Oxford; and it was to Evans that, on 2 September 1600, Burbadge leased ‘the great hall or roome, with the roomes over the same, scituate within the precinct of the black Friours’, for a term of twenty-one years from Michaelmas 1600, at a rent of £40,[1611] while Evans and his son-in-law Alexander Hawkins gave a joint bond in £400 as collateral security for due payment. Evans set up a company, which under various names, and throughout shifting financial managements, maintained a substantial continuity of existence, and occupied the Blackfriars for a period of eight years. Its fortunes are dealt with in detail elsewhere.[1612] Only those points directly bearing upon the theatre as such need now be noted. In October 1601, when Evans was negotiating a partnership with Edward Kirkham, William Rastall, and Thomas Kendall, he apparently undertook to transfer his lease to Hawkins in trust to reassign a moiety of the interest under it to these partners.[1613] No reassignment, however, was in fact made. Evans carried out some repairs in December 1603, and trouble arose with his partners because he severed the school-house and chamber over the same from the great hall and used them as private apartments to dine and sup in.[1614] When the playing companies were hard hit by the plague of 1603–4, Evans began to treat with Burbadge for a surrender of the lease.[1615] This came to nothing at the time, but in August 1608, when the Revels company was in disgrace for playing Chapman’s _Byron_ and Kirkham had declared a desire to make an end of the speculation, the suggestion was revived, and the surrender, probably with the assent of Hawkins, actually took place.[1616] As part of his consideration, Evans, through a nominee, was admitted by Burbadge into a new syndicate, of which the other members were Burbadge himself and his brother Cuthbert, and some of the leading players of the King’s company, by whom it was intended that the Blackfriars should now be used.[1617] The King’s men probably entered upon their occupation of the theatre in the autumn of 1609, and thereafter used it alternatively with the Globe, as their winter house, up to the end of their career in 1642.[1618] The new syndicate consisted of seven partners, who may be called ‘housekeepers’, in accordance with the terminology found in use in 1635, in order to distinguish them from the ‘sharers’ in the

## acting profits of the company.[1619] On 9 August 1608 Richard Burbadge

executed six leases, each conveying a seventh part of the play-house for a term of twenty-one years from the previous midsummer, and entailing the payment of a seventh part of the rent of £40. The six lessees were his brother Cuthbert, John Heminges, William Shakespeare, Henry Condell, William Sly, and Thomas Evans. The remaining interest he no doubt retained himself. Sly, however, died five days later, and his share was surrendered by his executrix, and divided amongst the other partners. On 25 August 1611 it was transferred to William Ostler. After his death on 16 December 1614 it should have passed to his widow, Thomasina, but her father John Heminges retained it, and in 1629 she estimated that he had thus defrauded her of profits at the rate of £20 a year.[1620] At some date later than 1611 John Underwood must have been admitted to a share, for he owned one at his death in 1624. The original leases terminated in 1629. Probably new ones were then entered into, for by 1633 we find that the rent had been increased to £50, and in 1635 that the interest of the housekeepers had still four years to run, and that it was divided not into seven, but into eight parts. Cuthbert Burbadge and the widows of Richard Burbadge and Henry Condell still represented the original holders. Two parts had been bought in 1633 and 1634 from Heminges’s son by John Shank. One part was still held in the name of Underwood, but a third of it was apparently in the hands of Eillart Swanston. John Lowin and Joseph Taylor had each a part. As a result of the dispute the Lord Chamberlain ordered a new

## partition under which Shank resigned one share to be divided between

Swanston, Thomas Pollard, and Robert Benfield.[1621]

The occupation of the Blackfriars by the King’s men was not wholly peaceful. The beginning of their tenure almost exactly coincided with the grant of the new charter by which the jurisdiction of the City was extended to the precinct.[1622] It was not, however, until 1619 that an attempt was made to invoke this jurisdiction against them. In that year the officials of the precinct and the church of St. Anne’s, backed up by a few of the inhabitants, sent a petition to the Corporation, in which they recited the inconveniences due to a play-house in their midst, recalled the action taken by the Privy Council in 1596, as well as the Star Chamber order of 1600 limiting the London play-houses to two, and begged that conformity to the wishes of the Council might be enforced. The Corporation made an order for the suppression of the Blackfriars on 21 January 1619.[1623] It clearly remained inoperative, but explains why the King’s men thought it desirable to obtain a fresh patent, dated on 27 March 1619, in which their right to play at ‘their private house scituate in the precinctes of the Blackfriers’, as well as at the Globe, was explicitly stated.[1624] They had to face another attack in 1631. Their opponents on this occasion approached Laud, then Bishop of London.[1625] After some delay Laud seems to have brought the matter before the Privy Council. The idea was mooted of buying the players out and on 9 October 1633 a commission of Middlesex justices was appointed to report as to the value of their interests.[1626] These were estimated by the players at £21,990, and by the commissioners at £2,900. The only offer towards a compensation fund was one of £100 from the parish of St. Anne’s.[1627] Evidently the proposal was allowed to drop. On 20 November 1633, the Privy Council made an order forbidding coaches to stand in Ludgate or St. Paul’s Churchyard while the performances were going on, but even this regulation was practically cancelled by an amending order made at a meeting presided over by the King in person on 29 December.[1628]

It is rather disappointing that the numerous documents bearing upon the occupation of the Blackfriars between 1600 and 1608 should throw so little light upon the way in which James Burbadge adapted his purchase ‘with great charge and troble’ to the purposes of a theatre. The lease of 1600 did not cover the whole of the property, but only a ‘great hall or roome, with the roomes over the same’. Presumably this was the case also with the leases of 1608, since the rent was the same as in 1600. The rest of the premises, with those purchased later by the younger Burbadges, may be represented by the four tenements valued at £75 a year in 1633, and the ‘piece of void ground to turn coaches’ valued at £6 was doubtless the fragment of the old kitchen yard north of the approach. The Kirkham lawsuits tell us that one or two rooms were reserved for the residence of Evans in 1602 and that during the early part of 1604 ‘a certen rome, called the Scholehouse, and a certen chamber over the same’ had been ‘seuered from the said great hall, and made fitt by’ Evans ‘at his owne proper cost and chardges, to dyne and supp in’.[1629] Professor Wallace has a number of additional lawsuits, still unpublished.[1630] But the extracts from these given by him in 1908 add only a few details to those formerly known. They seem to amount to this. The hall was 66 ft. from north to south and 46 ft. from east to west. It was paved, and had a stage, galleries, and seats of which a schedule was attached to the lease. The stage was at one end of the hall. The school-house was at the north end of the hall.[1631] At this end also must have been the entrance, as one of the petitions of 1619 locates it near the way used from part of the precinct in going to church.[1632] It was doubtless by the gate-house entry to the cloister, just beyond where the coaches turned. Unfortunately one is left quite in doubt upon the critical question as to which of the rooms known to us from earlier records were used for the theatre. It might have been the upper frater with the partitions removed; it might have been constructed out of the paved hall and blind parlour beneath, which appear to be represented by the ‘midle romes’ and two of the rooms in the occupation of Peter Johnson enumerated in the conveyance to Burbadge. _A priori_ one would have thought the upper frater the most likely. It may very well have been paved, like the hall beneath it, and a chamber which had held parliaments and a legatine trial could amply suffice to hold a theatre. On this supposition the rooms ‘above’ the hall which were conveyed by the lease of 1600, and one of which Evans converted into a dining-room can only have been the room over the staircase and the garret over that. These, indeed, may have extended over the north end of the frater proper, although in the main that building appears, down to the time when Burbadge bought it, to have had nothing over it but leads.[1633] There is a serious difficulty in the way of the alternative theory, which would identify the theatre with the ‘midle romes’ on the ground floor. This is that these would most likely only be low rooms, vaulted to carry the heavy floor of the parliament chamber above. On the whole, the balance of probability appears to be strongly in favour of the upper frater.

Professor Wallace’s account of the matter is categorical. ‘The south section’, he says, ‘underwent a thorough transformation. The two stories were converted into the auditorium called “the great Hall or Room”.... The roof was changed, and rooms, probably of the usual dormer sort, were built above the Great Hall.’[1634] I do not know whether there is any evidence for this theory, which disregards a good many structural difficulties, in those parts of his recently discovered documents which Professor Wallace has not published; there is certainly none in those which he has. If not, I do not think we must assume that Burbadge undertook expensive building operations, when he had all the facilities for planning an admirable auditorium without them. Professor Wallace seems to have been led into his conjecture by an assumed necessity for providing space for three tiers of galleries. There is no such necessity, and in fact no evidence for more than one tier, although I dare say that the upper frater taken by itself was high enough for two. Professor Wallace cites a reference to ‘porticibus _anglice_ galleryes’, and points out that ‘galleryes’ is a plural. This is so, but the ‘galleryes’ were not necessarily superimposed; if one ran along the east side of the hall and the other along the west, they would still constitute a plural. Professor Wallace takes the step from his plural to three with the aid of Cockledemoy’s address to ‘my very fine Heliconian gallants, and you, my worshipful friends in the middle region’.[1635] Obviously the ‘middle region’ is not bound to be the middle one of three galleries; it may just as well be the space between the stage and the galleries.

It is beyond the scope of this inquiry to trace the detailed fortunes of the Blackfriars during its later years. By Caroline times it took place of the Globe as the principal and most profitable house of the King’s men.[1636] In 1653, when like the rest of the theatres it was closed, Richard Flecknoe recalled its origin and wrote its epitaph.[1637] It was pulled down on 6 August 1655.[1638] This site was used for tenements, which in course of time were replaced by _The Times_ office which now occupies the site.[1639]

ii. THE WHITEFRIARS

[_Bibliographical Note._--The relevant dissertations are P. Cunningham, _The Whitefriars, the Salisbury Court, and the Duke’s Theatres_ (1849, _Sh. Soc. Papers_, iv. 89), J. Greenstreet, _The Whitefriars Theatre in the Time of Shakspere_ (1888, _N. S. S. Trans._ 269), with text of the Bill and Answer in the Chancery suit of _Androwes v. Slater_ (1609), and A. W. Clapham, _The Topography of the Carmelite Priory of London_ (1910, _Brit. Arch. Assoc. Journal_, n. s. xvi. 15), with seventeenth-century plan of the precinct, reproduced by Adams, 312.]

The only suggestion of a sixteenth-century play-house in the Whitefriars is to be found in the statement of Richard Rawlidge in 1628 that one was suppressed there at a date under Elizabeth which he does not specify, but which may most plausibly be put at 1596 (cf. p. 359). It is not improbable that Rawlidge wrote ‘Whitefriars’ when he should have written ‘Blackfriars’, but Malone (_Var._ iii. 46, 52) accepted the statement and assigned the suppression to 1580. I do not suppose that Collier had any other basis than this for the ‘more then 30 yeares’ of the following description which he alleged to be an extract from ‘an original survey of some part of the precinct, made in March 1616’ in his possession, and printed in his _New Facts_ (1835), 44:

‘The Theater is situate near vnto the Bishopps House, and was in former times a hall or refectorie belonging to the dissolved Monastery. It hath beene vsed as a place for the presentation of playes and enterludes for more then 30 yeares, last by the Children of her Majestie. It hath little or no furniture for a play-house, saving an old tottered curten, some decayed benches, and a few worne out properties and peeces of Arras for hangings to the stage and tire house. The raine hath made its way in and if it bee not repaired, it must soone be plucked downe or it will fall.’

The earliest record, therefore, on which reliance can be placed is the lawsuit of _Androwes v. Slater_ in 1609,[1640] which recites the lease by Robert Lord Buckhurst to Michael Drayton and Thomas Woodford for six years eight months and twenty days from March 1608 of ‘a messuage or mansion howse parcell of the late dissolved monastery called the Whitefriars, in Fleete streete, in the subvrbs of London’, while the articles of agreement between the sharers of the King’s Revels syndicate (cf. ch. xii), of the same date, assign lodgings in the house to Martin Slater, and add

‘The roomes of which howse are thirteene in number, three belowe and tenne above, that is to saie, the greate hall, the kitchin by the yard, and a cellar, with all the roomes from the east ende of the howse to the Master of the revells’ office, as the same are now severed and devided.’[1641]

The precinct of the former priory of the Carmelites or White Friars lay between Fleet Street and the river, to the east of Serjeants’ Inn and to the west of Water Lane, which divided it from Salisbury Court, the old inn of the bishops of Salisbury, which had passed to the Sackvilles in the sixteenth century, and ultimately became known as Dorset House (Stowe, _Survey_, ii. 45). The precinct was a liberty, and its history, from the point of view of local government, had been closely analogous to that of the Blackfriars. Like the Blackfriars, it came under complete civic control in this very year of 1608 (cf. p. 480). The Whitefriars mansion itself the Sackvilles probably acquired from the family of Thomas Lord De La Warr, to whom a grant of priory property was made in 1544 (Dugdale, vi. 1572).

From the King’s Revels the Whitefriars passed to the occupation of the Queen’s Revels (cf. ch. xii) in 1609, and continued in their use both before and after their amalgamation with the Lady Elizabeth’s in March 1613. It is named on the title-pages of _Woman a Weathercock_ (1612) and _The Insatiate Countess_ (1613), and a reference in the prologue to ‘daughters of Whitefriars’ shows that it was also the locality of _Epicoene_ (1609). In February 1613 it was ‘taken up’ by some London apprentices for an invitation performance of Robert Tailor’s _The Hog Hath Lost His Pearl_ (q.v.). From March 1613 the amalgamated companies had Bankside theatres available, first the Swan and afterwards the Hope, but it is clear from the Watermen’s petition (cf. p. 370) that, at any rate before the Hope was built, they mainly used the Whitefriars. Daborne in a letter to Henslowe of 5 June 1613 speaks of the company ‘comming over’, presumably from the Whitefriars to Bankside, and on 9 Dec. 1613 suggests that a play of his would be suitable for Henslowe’s ‘publique howse’, from which it may perhaps be inferred that Henslowe had also an interest in a ‘private’ house at the time (_Henslowe Papers_, 72, 79). Apparently conversion into a public theatre was then contemplated, for on 13 July 1613 the Master of the Revels received a fee of £20 ‘for a license to erect a new play-house in the White-friers, &c.’ (_Var._ iii. 52). But this scheme was stopped by the Privy Council.[1642] On 3 June 1615 Rosseter and others obtained their patent for the Porter’s Hall theatre in Blackfriars (cf. p. 472), which contemplated its use by the Revels, the Prince’s, and the Lady Elizabeth’s, and incidentally recited that the Revels Children had been trained and exercised in the Whitefriars ‘ever since’ 1610. The amalgamation was dissolved in the spring of 1616, and the Lady Elizabeth’s and the Revels probably disappeared from London. If, therefore, the Whitefriars continued in use, it was probably by Prince Charles’s men, who would have been left homeless by the demolition of Porter’s Hall early in 1617. That it did continue in use and that a renewed lease was still held by some of the parties interested in the house in 1608 is indicated by the suit of _Trevell v. Woodford_ before the Court of Requests in 1642, from which it appears, according to Peter Cunningham, that Sir Anthony Ashley, the then landlord of the house, entered the theatre in 1621, and turned out the players, on the pretence that half a year’s rent was due to him. In 1629 the Whitefriars was replaced by the Salisbury Court theatre, built on the site of an old barn just on the other side of Water Lane.

XVIII

THE STRUCTURE AND CONDUCT OF THEATRES

[_Bibliographical Note._--The only Restoration treatises which throw any light on the pre-Restoration theatre are R. Flecknoe, _A Short Discourse of the English Stage_ (1664), and J. Wright, _Historia Histrionica_ (1699), extracts from which are in Appendix I.

Archaeological material was brought together by E. Malone in _Variorum_ iii. 51, and J. P. Collier in _H. E. D. P._ iii. 140.

Modern investigation may be said to begin with the discovery of the Swan drawing in 1888. The principal dissertations up to 1916 are:

K. T. Gaedertz, _Zur Kenntnis der altenglischen Bühne_ (1888); H. B. Wheatley, _On a contemporary Drawing of the interior of the Swan Theatre_, 1596 (1888, _N. S. S. Trans. 1887–92_, 215); W. Archer, _A Sixteenth-Century Play-house_ (1888, _Universal Review_), _The Stage of Shakespeare_ (10 Aug. 1907, _Tribune_), _The Fortune Theatre_, 1600 (12 Oct. 1907, _Tribune_, repr. _Jahrbuch_, xliv. 159), _The Swan Drawing_ (11 Jan. 1908, _Tribune_), _The Elizabethan Stage_ (1908, _Quarterly Review_, ccviii. 442), _The Play-house_ (1916, _Shakespeare’s England_, ii. 283); R. Genée, _Ueber die scenischen Formen Shakespeare’s in ihrem Verhältnisse zur Bühne seiner Zeit_ (1891, _Jahrbuch_, xxvi. 131); E. Kilian, _Die scenischen Formen Shakespeares in ihrer Beziehung zu der Aufführung seiner Dramen auf der modernen Bühne_ (1893, _Jahrbuch_, xxviii. 90), _Shakespeare auf der modernen Bühne_ (1900, _Jahrbuch_, xxxvi. 228); H. Logeman, _Johannes de Witt’s Visit to the Swan Theatre_ (1897, _Anglia_, xix. 117); C. Grabau, _Zur englischen Bühne um 1600_ (1902, _Jahrbuch_, xxxviii. 232); W. J. Lawrence, _Some Characteristics of the Elizabethan-Stuart Stage_ (1902, _E. S._ xxxii. 36), _The Elizabethan Play-house_ (1912, 1913), _Night Performances in the Elizabethan Theatres_ (1915, _E. S._ xlviii. 213), _New Light on the Elizabethan Theatre_ (May 1916, _Fortnightly Review_), _A Forgotten Play-house Custom of Shakespeare’s Day_ (1916, _Book of Homage_, 207), _Horses on the Elizabethan Stage_ (_T. L. S._ 5 June 1919), _He’s for a Jig or ---- _ (_T. L. S._ 3 July 1919); K. Mantzius, _History of Theatrical Art_ (1903–9); E. E. Hale, _The Influence of Theatrical Conditions on Shakespeare_ (1904, _M. P._ i. 171); E. Koeppel, _Die unkritische Behandlung dramaturgischer Angaben in den Shakespeare-Ausgaben_ (1904, _E. S._ xxxiv. 1); W. Bang, _Zur Bühne Shakespeares_ (1904, _Jahrbuch_, xl. 223); W. Keller, _Nochmals zur Bühne Shakespeares_ (1904, _Jahrbuch_, xl. 225); A. H. Tolman, _Shakespeare’s Stage and Modern Adaptations_ (1904, _Views about Hamlet_, 115), _Alternation in the Staging of Shakespeare’s Plays_ (1909, _M. P._ vi. 517); C. Brodmeier, _Die Shakespeare-Bühne nach den alten Bühnenanweisungen_ (1904); R. Prölss, _Von den ältesten Drucken der Dramen Shakespeares_ (1905); P. Monkemeyer, _Prolegomena zu einer Darstellung der englischen Volksbühne_ (1905); G. P. Baker, _Hamlet on an Elizabethan Stage_ (1905, _Jahrbuch_, xli. 296), _Elizabethan Stage Theories_ (3 Nov. 1905, _The Times Literary Supplement_); C. H. Kaulfuss-Diesch, _Die Inszenierung des deutschen Dramas an der Wende des 16 und 17 Jahrhunderts_ (1905); G. F. Reynolds, _Some Principles of Elizabethan Staging_ (1905, _M. P._ i. 581, ii. 69), _Trees on the Stage of Shakespeare_ (1907, _M. P._ v. 153), _What we know of the Elizabethan Stage_ (1911, _M. P._ ix. 47), _William Percy and his Plays_ (1914, _M. P._ xii. 109); J. Corbin, _Shakespeare and the Plastic Stage_ (1906, _Atlantic Monthly_, xcvii. 369), _Shakespeare his Own Stage Manager_ (1911, _Century_, lxxxiii. 260); R. Bridges, _On the Influence of the Audience_ (1907, _Stratford Town Shakespeare_, x. 321); E. K. Chambers, _On the Stage of the Globe_ (1907, _Stratford Town Shakespeare_, x. 351); C. C. Stopes, _Elizabethan Stage Scenery_ (June 1907, _Fortnightly Review_); R. Wegener, _Die Bühneneinrichtung des Shakespeareschen Theaters_ (1907); W. H. Godfrey, _An Elizabethan Play-house_ (1908, _Architectural Review_, xxiii. 239; cf. xxxi. 53); C. W. Wallace, _The Children of the Chapel at Blackfriars_ (1908); F. Schelling, _The Elizabethan Play-house_ (1908, _Proc. of Philadelphia Num. and Antiq. Soc._); A. A. Helmholtz-Phelan, _The Staging of Court Dramas before 1595_ (1909, _M. L. A._ xxiv. 185); V. E. Albright, _The Shaksperian Stage_ (1909), _Percy’s Plays as Proof of the Elizabethan Stage_ (1913, _M. P._ xi. 237); A. R. Skemp, _Some Characteristics of the English Stage before the Restoration_ (1909, _Jahrbuch_, xlv. 101); W. Creizenach, _Bühnenwasen und Schauspielkunst_ (1909, _Gesch. des neueren Dramas_, iv. 401); B. Neuendorff, _Die englische Volksbühne im Zeitalter Shakespeares nach den Bühnenanweisungen_ (1910); H. H. Child, _The Elizabethan Theatre_ (1910, _C. H._ vi. 241); H. Conrad, _Bemerkungen zu Lawrence’ Title and Locality Boards_ (1910, _Jahrbuch_, xlvi. 106); C. R. Baskervill, _The Custom of Sitting on the Elizabethan Stage_ (1911, _M. P._ viii. 581); J. Q. Adams, _The Four Pictorial Representations of the Elizabethan Stage_ (April 1911, _J. G. P._); F. A. Foster, _Dumb Show in Elizabethan Drama before 1620_ (1911, _E. S._ xliv. 8); A. Forestier, _The Fortune Theatre Reconstructed_ (12 Aug. 1911, _Illustrated London News_); M. B. Evans, _An Early Type of Stage_ (1912, _M. P._ ix. 421); T. S. Graves, _A Note on the Swan Theatre_ (1912, _M. P._ ix. 431), _Night Scenes in the Elizabethan Theatres_ (1913, _E. S._ xlvii. 63), _The Court and the London Theaters during the Reign of Elizabeth_ (1913), _The Origin of the Custom of Sitting upon the Stage_ (1914, _J. E. G. P._ xiii. 104), _The Act Time in Elizabethan Theatres_ (1915, _Univ. of Carolina, Studies in Philology_, xii. 3), _The Ass as Actor_ (1916, _S. Atlantic Quarterly_, xv. 175); G. H. Cowling, _Music on the Shakespearian Stage_ (1913); H. Bell, _Contributions to the History of the English Play-house_ (1913, _Architectural Record_, 262, 359); W. G. Keith, _The Designs for the first Movable Scenery on the English Stage_ (1914, _Burlington Magazine_, xxv. 29, 85); W. Poel, _Shakespeare in the Theatre_ (1915), _Some Notes on Shakespeare’s Stage and Plays_ (1916); J. Le G. Brereton, _De Witt at the Swan_ (1916, _Book of Homage_, 204); A. H. Thorndike, _Shakespeare’s Theater_ (1916); T. H. Dickinson, _Some Principles of Shakespeare Staging_ (1916, _Wisconsin Shakespeare Studies_, 125). More recent papers are noted in the _Bulletin_ of the English Association. R. C. Rhodes’ _The Stagery of Shakespeare_ (1922) deserves consideration.

It remains to give some account of the iconographical material available. Of four representations of the interiors of play-houses, the only one of early date (_c._ 1596) is (_a_) Arend van Buchell’s copy of a drawing by Johannes de Witt of the Swan, published in 1888 by Gaedertz and in more accurate facsimile by Wheatley (_vide supra_). The other three are Caroline. (_b_) A small engraving in a compartment of the title-page of W. Alabaster, _Roxana_ (1632), may be taken as representing a type of academic stage, as the play was at Trinity, Cambridge, _c._ 1592. (_c_) A very similar engraving in the title-page of N. Richards, _Messallina_ (1640), if it represents a specific stage at all, is less likely to represent the second Fortune, as suggested by Skemp in his edition of the play, or the Red Bull, as suggested by Albright, 45, than Salisbury Court, where it is clear from Murray, i. 279, that most of the career of the Revels company, by whom it was produced, was spent. (_d_) An engraved frontispiece to Francis Kirkman’s editions (1672, 1673) of _The Wits, or Sport upon Sport_ (originally published by Marsh, 1662) has been shown by Albright, 40, to have been erroneously regarded as a representation of the Red Bull, to which there is an incidental reference in the preface to