Chapter XX: Introduction: The Public Theatres (2)

I turn now to the maps of the Bankside, which, had they been datable, and drawn with cartographical precision, ought not only to have furnished valuable evidence as to the duration of the theatres, but also to have indicated accurately the position of each amongst the streets and lanes of the district. Neither condition is, however, fulfilled. Even where the date of an engraving is known, the date of the survey on which it was based can, as a rule, be only approximately determined. And the constant intrusion of pictorial elements, which gives the maps the character of perspective views rather than of plans, is naturally emphasized on the Bankside, which has to serve as a foreground to the design. The main topographical features which have to be borne in mind are simple, and can easily be related to those in John Rocque’s map of 1746, as interpreted by Strype’s _Survey_ of 1720, or in a modern Ordnance map. The whole region concerned lies roughly between the southern approaches to London and Blackfriars Bridges. It underwent a good deal of development during one period, especially in the area of the Clink, a liberty lying between Southwark on the east and another liberty of Paris Garden on the west, and affording a convenient suburban resort outside the jurisdiction of the City. Stowe’s account of the neighbourhood in 1598 is perhaps a little misleading. He describes no more than the Bankside proper, ‘a continuall building of tenements’ on the riverside, extending about half a mile west of London Bridge. Here he places, from west to east, the bear gardens, the former stews, the prison of the Clink, Winchester House, and the church of St. Mary Overie in Southwark.[1067] This agrees pretty well with the maps of Agas (_c._ 1561) and Norden (1593), except that there was already a group of houses falling outside Stowe’s purview, which stood on the river near Paris Garden Stairs and practically continued the Bankside westwards. But there was also, which Stowe does not mention, a marshy _hinterland_ to the Bankside, of ponds and gardens, among which Agas, and still more Norden, show a good many scattered houses. By the end of the century there was a fairly definite north to south street known as Deadman’s Place, which debouched from the east end of the Bankside, and from which in its turn struck out one called Maid or Maiden Lane, which went in an irregular line westwards over the marshes, and was finally joined by two divergent ways, Love Lane and Gravel (afterwards Holland) Lane, to the Paris Garden group of houses. Thus was formed a rough parallelogram, half a mile long, and from 200 to 350 feet deep, within or near which all the theatrical sites are placed by the maps. In Norden’s map of 1593, both the Bear House and the Play House, which must be the Rose, stand considerably to the west of Deadman’s Place. The Bear House is the most westerly of the two, and is about halfway between the Bankside houses on the north and Maid Lane on the south. The Rose is a good deal nearer Maid Lane. In the Delaram views (1603–20) there are three flagged, but unnamed, structures. One which stands well back from the river and, after allowing for the view-point, appears slightly the most easterly of the three, is cylindrical; the upper half is alone windowed, and has a smaller diameter than the lower half. It is placed amongst trees and meadows. There is nothing which obviously indicates Maid Lane.[1068] The two other buildings stand much nearer the river’s edge, amongst houses; they are angled, probably octagonal, and not cylindrical. The ‘Hondius’ views repeat the cylindrical building and the most westerly of the two angled buildings much in the same relative position; the intermediate one has disappeared. It seems obvious that the cylindrical building must be the Globe, and the other two the Bear Garden, afterwards the Hope, to the west, and the Rose, left out of the ‘Hondius’ group, because it disappeared in 1605, in the centre. The Delaram and ‘Hondius’ views do not extend far enough west to include the Swan. It is shown by Visscher in 1616, and named. So are the Bear Garden and the Globe, both of which appear as angled buildings, octagonal or hexagonal, about equidistant from the Bankside houses, and north of Maid Lane, the angle of which next Deadman’s Place is shown.[1069] As the change from a cylindrical to an angled representation of the Globe coincides with the rebuilding of the house in 1614, we may perhaps infer that the structural form is not a mere cartographic convention.[1070] It is rather singular that in the Merian maps (_circa_ 1638) there are four houses again, including the Swan, well to the west. This, with two of the three houses in the eastern group, is named by the engraver. A third unnamed house stands between the Globe on the east and the Bear Garden on the west, which is approximately where the Rose used to stand. It is distinctly nearer the river than the other two, but all three are north of Maid Lane, from which the Bear Garden is slightly more remote than the Globe.[1071] If the Rose had actually a second term of existence, it was probably only a brief one.[1072] The fullest of the Ryther maps (_c._ 1636–45) has two angled buildings, one to the west, rather nearer to Bankside than to Maid Lane; the other to the east, and south of Maid Lane, standing in an angle between that and a track running from north-west to south-east. There are no names, but obviously the eastern house is the Globe, and the western the Hope, and indeed the dogs can be made out. The track joining Maid Lane may be Globe Alley. The Hollar view of 1647 shows two cylindrical, not angled, buildings. One lettered ‘The Globe’ is on the extreme brink of the river; the other, to the east and south of it, is lettered ‘Beere bayting’. Faithorne and Newcourt, in 1658, give no theatres proper, but only a ring marked ‘Beare garden’. Finally, Leeke and Hollar about 1666 give a single unnamed roundish theatre, south of Maid Lane. Presumably it is the Globe, but copied from a survey of earlier date, as the Globe had been pulled down for tenements in 1644.

On the whole, the maps are disappointing guides. It seems more probable than has quite been recognized, that the singular two-storied structure shown by Hondius and Delaram really represents the earlier, the Shakespearian, Globe. And the representation of a fourth house by Merian, even if he did not know its name, gives support to the view that the Rose may have had some kind of existence at a later date than the Sewers records indicate. But as regards the alinement, the distance from the river, and the relation to Maid Lane, of the three houses in the Clink, it is clear that no consistent story is told. The general impression one gets is that the Hope stood farthest to the west, then the Rose, and then the Globe; and that the Rose stood nearest to the river, then the Hope, and then the Globe. Nor is this inconsistent with documentary evidence, which in particular indicates that the parcel of land, on which the latest of the Bear Gardens was built, was contiguous on the west to that known as ‘the little Rose’.[1073] Bear Garden and Rose Alley, running side by side from the Bankside into Maid Lane or Park Street, are traceable in eighteenth-century maps and in the modern Ordnance map.[1074] Did one judge by the maps alone, one would probably, in spite of the dissenting testimony of ‘Ryther’ and of Leeke and Hollar, come to the conclusion that the Globe stood to the north of Maid Lane. The balance of other evidence points unmistakably in the other direction.[1075]

B. THE PUBLIC THEATRES

i. The Red Lion Inn.
ii. The Bull Inn.
iii. The Bell Inn.
iv. The Bel Savage Inn.
v. The Cross Keys Inn.
vi. The Theatre.
vii. The Curtain.
viii. Newington Butts.
ix. The Rose.
x. The Swan.
xi. The Globe.
xii. The Fortune.
xiii. The Boar’s Head.
xiv. The Red Bull.
xv. The Hope.
xvi. Porter’s Hall.

i. THE RED LION INN

The following record appears in the court books of the Carpenters’ Company:[1076]

Courte holden the xv^{th} daie of Julie 1567, Annoque Regni
Reginae Eliz. nono by M^r William Ruddoke, M^r Richard More,
Henrye Whreste & Richard Smarte wardeins, & M^r Bradshawe.

Memorandum that at courte holden the daie & yeare abovesayd
that, whear certaine varyaunce, discord & debate was betwene
Wyllyam Sylvester carpenter on thone partie & John Brayne
grocer on thother partie, yt is agreed, concluded & fullie
determyned by the saide parties, by the assent & consent of them
bothe, with the advise of the M^r & wardeins abovesayd that
Willyam Buttermore, John Lyffe, Willyam Snellinge & Richard
Kyrbye, Carpenters, shall with expedicon goe & peruse suche
defaultes as are & by them shalbe found of in & aboute suche
skaffoldes, as he the said Willyam hathe mad at the house called
the Red Lyon in the parishe of Stebinyhuthe, & the said Willyam
Sillvester shall repaire & amend the same with their advize
substancyallie, as they shall thinke good. And that the said
John Brayne, on Satterdaie next ensuenge the date above written,
shall paye to the sayd Willyam Sylvester the some of eight
poundes, tenne shillinges, lawfull money of England, & that
after the playe, which is called the storye of Sampson, be once
plaied at the place aforesaid the said John shall deliver to
the said Willyam such bondes as are now in his custodie for the
performaunce of the bargaine. In witnesse whereof both parties
hereunto hathe sett their handes.

by me John Brayne grocer.
[Sylvester’s mark.]

This is the only notice of the Red Lion playing-inn which has been preserved, but John Brayne, grocer, is doubtless the same who financed his brother-in-law, James Burbadge, in the far more important enterprise of the Theatre in 1576. Stebunheth or Stepney was a parish in Middlesex, lying to the east of the City, beyond Whitechapel, and, although near enough to be in a sense a suburb, was outside the civic jurisdiction.

ii. THE BULL INN

The first notice of the Bull is on 7 June 1575 when the playing of a ‘prize’ there is recorded in the register of the School of Defence. It appears to have been the most popular of all localities for this purpose and there are fourteen similar notices of its use in the register, ending with one on 3 July 1590.[1077] Florio refers to it as a place for plays in 1578.[1078] Stephen Gosson in his _Schoole of Abuse_ (1579) exempts from his ordinary condemnation of plays _The Jew_ and _Ptolemy_ ‘shown at the Bull’.[1079] On 1 July 1582 the Earl of Warwick asked permission from the Lord Mayor for his servant John David to play his provost prizes at ‘the Bull in Bishopsgatestrete or some other conuenient place to be assigned within the liberties of London’. This was refused, much to Warwick’s annoyance, on the ground that an inn was a place ‘somewhat to close for infection’, and David appointed to play ‘in an open place of the Leaden hall’.[1080] The Bull, with the Bell, was assigned by a civic order of 28 November 1583 to the Queen’s men for their first winter season. Tarlton and the Queen’s men are said in the _Jests_ to have played ‘oftentimes’ at ‘the Bull in Bishops-gate-street’, and here their play of _The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth_, with Tarlton in the parts of the judge and the clown and Knell in that of Henry, was given.[1081] This must, of course, have been between 1583 and Tarlton’s death in 1588. In 1592 the translator of _The Spaniard’s Monarchie_ disclaims any ‘title fetched from the Bull within Bishopsgate, as a figge for a Spaniard’. I do not know whether any old play underlying the Admiral’s (q.v.) _Spanish Fig_ of 1601–2 can be referred to. The house was still in use during 1594, for in April or May of that year Anthony Bacon settled in Bishopsgate, to the vexation of his mother, ‘on account of its neighbourhood to the Bull Inn, where plays and interludes were continually acted, and would, she imagined, corrupt his servants’.[1082] Richard Flecknoe mentions the Bull in Bishopsgate Street, with the Cross-Keys, as one of the inns turned into theatres at the beginning of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, as was ‘at this day to be seen’ in 1664.[1083] The site was at No. 91 on the west of Bishopsgate Street, and is shown in Hatton’s map of 1708, and the Ordnance Survey maps of 1848–51 and 1875.

iii. THE BELL INN

This inn existed in 1560, for on 12 June of that year ‘the wyff of the Bell in Gracyous-strett’ was carted as a bawd and whore.[1084] Plays must have been used there in 1576–7, in the Revels Account for which year an item of 10_d._ is included ‘ffor the cariadge of the partes of y^e well counterfeit from the Bell in Gracious strete to St. Iohns to be performed for the play of Cutwell’.[1085] With the Bull, it was assigned to the Queen’s men by a civic order of 28 November 1583 for their first winter season. _Tarlton’s Jests_ also mention Tarlton and ‘his fellowes’, probably the Queen’s men, as performing at the Bell ‘by’ the Cross Keys which was also in Gracious Street, and this must have been before Tarlton’s death in 1588.[1086] Both houses may be included in Rawlidge’s reference to play-houses in Gracious street and elsewhere ‘put down’ by the City in Elizabeth’s time. I suppose that the site is that of Bell Yard at No. 12 on the west of Gracechurch Street.[1087]

iv. THE BEL SAVAGE INN

The Bel Savage is named as an early London play-house in the 1596 edition of Lambarde’s _Perambulation of Kent_. This inn, of which the name is still preserved on Ludgate Hill, where it stood until 1873 (Harben, 63), must be distinguished from another in Gracechurch Street once kept by Tarlton, which in his time was known as the Saba.[1088] The origin of the name is obscure; a deed of 1452 refers to an ‘inn ... called Savages Inn, otherwise called the Bell on the Hoop, in the parishe of St. Bride in Fleet Street’ (_L. T. R._ ii. 71). Probably therefore the notion of the Belle Sauvage is a later perversion. Gascoigne, in the prologue to his _Glass of Government_ (1575), repudiates the ‘worthie jests’ and ‘vain delights’ of ‘Bellsavage fair’.[1089] Gosson, in 1579, excepts from his general condemnation of plays ‘the two prose books, played at the Belsavage, where you shall find never a word without wit, never a line without pith, never a letter placed in vain’.[1090] A play-house ‘on Ludgate Hill’ is included by Rawlidge in his list of those ‘put down’ in Elizabeth’s time. Probably the Queen’s men were acting at the Bel Savage in 1588, for after the death of Tarlton in that year was published ‘a sorowfull newe sonnette, intituled Tarltons Recantacion uppon this theame gyven him by a gentleman at the Belsavage without Ludgate (nowe or els never) beinge the laste theame he songe’.[1091] Prynne’s reference to _Dr. Faustus_ (q.v.) at the Bel Savage suggests that at some time the Admiral’s also played there. It was also occasionally used for the playing of ‘prizes’; the earliest recorded date in the Register of the School of Defence being in 1575–7 and the latest on 31 January 1589.[1092]

v. THE CROSS KEYS INN

This inn may have been the play-house, or one of the play-houses, ‘in Gracious Street’ said by Rawlidge to have been ‘put down’ under Elizabeth. The first notice of it dates from 23 June 1579, on which day James Burbadge was arrested at the suit of John Hynde for £5 1_s._ 1_d._, ‘as he came down Gracious Street towards the Cross Keys there to a play’. The house is described as the dwelling-house of Richard Ibotson, citizen and brewer of London.[1093] It was in use as a place of popular amusement during the life of Tarlton, who died in 1588, for one of the Jests relates how he came from the Bell, where he was playing to ‘the Crosse-Keyes in Gracious streete’ to see Banks’s performing horse there.[1094] A company can first be definitely located at it in 1589, on 5 November of which year Lord Strange’s men, as reported by Lord Mayor Hart to Burghley, disobeyed an admonition to forbear playing, and ‘went to the Crosse Keys and played that afternoon’. In 1594 Strange’s men were absorbed in Lord Hunsdon’s, and on 8 October 1594 Hunsdon wrote to the Lord Mayor to obtain toleration for ‘my nowe companie of players’ who had been accustomed ‘to plaie this winter time within the citye at the Crosse Kayes in Gracious street’.[1095] How long Shakespeare’s fellows continued to use the Cross Keys as a winter house is unknown; presumably it ceased to be available in 1596. The adaptation of the inn as a theatre was still visible at the Restoration, and is assigned by Richard Flecknoe to ‘about the beginning of Queen Elizabeth’s reign’. The site is shown in Ogilby and Morgan’s map of 1677 and the Ordnance Survey map of 1848–51: it is on the west of Gracechurch Street.

vi. THE THEATRE

[_Bibliographical Note._--Material is available in the records
of four litigations: (a) _Peckham v. Allen_ (Wards and Liveries,
1589) as to the title to the site; (b) _Burbadge v. Ames et al._
(Coram Rege, 1596–9) and _Earl of Rutland v. Allen and Burbadge_
(Exchequer, 1599–1602) as to the title to a neighbouring
plot; (c) _Burbadge v. Brayne_ (Chancery, 1588–95). _Brayne_
(afterwards _Miles_) _v. Burbadge_ (Chancery, 1590–5), and
_Miles v. Burbadge_ (Requests, 1597), as to the profits of the
house; (d) _Allen v. Street_ (Coram Rege, 1600), _Burbadge v.
Allen_ (Requests, 1600), _Allen v. Burbadge_ (Queen’s Bench,
1601–2), and _Allen v. Burbadge et al._ (Star Chamber, 1601–2),
as to the removal of the fabric. A few documents from these,
some of which he supposed to relate to the Blackfriars, were
printed by Collier in _Memoirs of the Actors_ (1846 and _H. E.
D. P._ iii. 257) and in _Original History of the Theatre in
Shoreditch_ (1849, _Sh. Soc. Papers_, iv. 63). A large number
were used by Halliwell-Phillipps for his excursus on _The
Theatre and Curtain_ (_Outlines_, i. 345), and in C. C. Stopes,
_Burbage and Shakespeare’s Stage_ (1913), where abstracts of
(a) and (b) may be consulted. The full texts of (c) and (d) are
printed in C. W. Wallace, _The First London Theatre, Materials
for a History_ (1913, _Nebraska University Studies_, xiii. 1).
The exact locality of the site has been carefully investigated
by W. W. Braines in _Holywell Priory and the Site of the
Theatre, Shoreditch_ (1915, _Indication of Houses of Historical
Interest in London_, xliii), and again in _The Site of the
Theatre, Shoreditch_ (1917, _L. T. R._ xi. 1).]

The following statement as to the beginnings of theatrical enterprise in London is made by Cuthbert Burbadge and his family in the so-called _Sharers Papers_ of 1635:[1096]

‘The father of us, Cutbert and Richard Burbage, was the first
builder of playehowses, and was himselfe in his younger yeeres
a player. The Theater hee built with many hundred poundes taken
up at interest. The players that lived in those first times had
onely the profitts arising from the dores, but now the players
receave all the commings in at the dores to themselves and halfe
the galleries from the houskepers. Hee built this house upon
leased ground, by which meanes the landlord and hee had a great
suite in law, and, by his death, the like troubles fell on us,
his sonnes; wee then bethought us of altering from thence, and
at like expence built the Globe.’

The accuracy of this is fully borne out by the records of the various legal proceedings in connexion with the Theatre, which a painful investigation has exhumed, and the topographical indications furnished by the evidence in some of these have made it possible to locate with some precision the site of London’s first regular play-house.

The Theatre stood in the Liberty of Halliwell or Holywell, part of the Middlesex parish of St. Leonard’s, Shoreditch, immediately outside the Bishopsgate entrance to the City.[1097] The name of the Liberty was derived from an ancient holy well, which has now disappeared, and its status from the fact that it had been the property of a priory of Benedictine nuns. The buildings of the priory lay between Shoreditch High Street, leading north from Bishopsgate, on the east and the open Finsbury fields on the west. Its southern gate was in a lane leading from the High Street to the Fields, then and still known as Holywell Lane or Street, on the south of which lay the Prioress’s pasture called the Curtain. Part of this south end of the liberty, lying on both sides of Holywell Lane, had been leased in 1537 and 1538 to the Earls of Rutland, who continued to hold it from the Crown after the dissolution in 1539, and obtained a renewed lease in 1584.[1098] The rest of the property, including the main conventual buildings, was sold in 1544 to one Henry Webb, whose daughter Susan and her husband Sir George Peckham sold it in 1555 to Christopher Bumsted, and he in the same year to Christopher Allen and his son Giles. The alienation of 1555 was challenged as illegal by Susan Peckham’s heirs in 1582, and ultimately, but not until about thirty years later, they appear to have made good their claim.[1099] In the meantime Giles Allen had leased a part of the property, which became the site of the Theatre, to James Burbadge on 13 April 1576.[1100] This was bounded to the north by the wall of Allen’s own garden, probably corresponding to the main cloister of the convent, on the east or south-east by the Earl of Rutland’s holding, and on the west by a ditch dividing it from the open Finsbury fields. Within the ditch and divided from it by a strip of void ground, was the old brick wall of the precinct. On the extreme south was a bit of void ground lying between an Oat Barn occupied by Rutland and another Great Barn included in the lease. The Oat Barn and the void ground were in fact debatable property claimed both by Allen and Rutland. North of the Great Barn, and immediately to the east of the precinct wall was more void and garden ground; farther to the east the ‘inner court yarde’ of the convent. This held tenements backing upon Allen’s garden to the north, and others, including a mill-house, backing on the garden ground to the west. In this yard was a well, probably the eponymous ‘Holywell’, which fed a horsepond by Rutland’s stable on the south-east, and then drained away through the debatable ground to the Finsbury ditch.[1101] Since Burbadge’s barn is known to have been shored up to the Theatre, it is evident that this must have been constructed in the void and garden ground between the tenements and the precinct wall, and as there was no right of way through Rutland’s holding from Holywell Lane, an entrance was made through the wall direct from Finsbury fields. The Theatre itself, indeed, was sometimes loosely spoken of as ‘in the fields’.[1102] Working from later title-deeds of the locality, Mr. Braines has successfully located the precise site of the building in the angle now formed by Curtain Road, which occupies the strip of void ground between the precinct wall and Finsbury ditch, and New Inn Yard, which occupies a strip of the ‘debateable ground’ and a strip also of the site of the Great Barn. The site is now part of the premises of the Curtain Road Elementary School.[1103]

Burbadge’s lease was for a term of twenty-one years from Lady Day 1576. He was to pay a fine of £20 and an annual rent of £14. He covenanted to spend £200 within the first ten years in improving the existing buildings, and in return Allen covenanted to make a new lease for twenty-one years at any time within the first ten years, and also to allow the tenant at any time within the term of either lease ‘to take down such building as should within the sayd tenne yeeres be erected on the sayd voyde growndes for a theater or playinge place’. It was also agreed that Allen and his wife and family ‘vpon lawfull request therfore made’ should be entitled ‘to enter or come into the premisses and their in some one of the vpper romes to have such convenient place to sett or stande to se such playes as shalbe ther played freely without any thinge therefore payeinge soe that the sayd Gyles hys wyfe and familie doe com and take ther places before they shalbe taken vpp by any others’. Burbadge, a joiner as well as a player, had probably the technical qualifications for his enterprise. But he was a man of small means, not worth above 100 marks, and had no credit.[1104] He found a partner in his brother-in-law, John Brayne, a well-to-do grocer of Bucklersbury, who had already been connected with a play-house speculation at the Red Lion inn. The association proved a calamitous one, and its history can only be traced through the dubious _ex parte_ statements of later litigation. Burbadge, in an unfortunately mutilated document, appears to have alleged that Brayne acquired an interest by means of a promise, which he afterwards evaded, to leave it to his sister’s children.[1105] Robert Miles, of the George Inn, Whitechapel, a friend of Brayne, who supported and ultimately inherited the case of his widow, told a different story.[1106] He had heard Burbadge ‘earnestlie insynuate’ Brayne to join in the transaction, as one which ‘wold grow to ther contynual great profitt and commodytie’. Brayne was ‘verye loth to deale in the matter’, and complained later to Miles that it was ‘his vtter vndoing’, and that he would never have touched it, but for the ‘swete and contynuall’ persuasions of Burbadge. His brother-in-law had assured him that the cost of erecting the play-house would not exceed £200, and after it had already cost £500, urged that ‘it was no matter’, and that the profits ‘wold shortlie quyte the cost vnto them bothe’. Obviously Brayne was out for profits, and had to take his risks. But if the account of Miles is to be trusted, he had also definite grievances against his partner. Burbadge’s small contribution to the outlay was partly made in material, for which he overcharged at the rate of sixpence for a groat’s worth. When funds ran short, Brayne and his wife worked as labourers on the structure, while Burbadge, if he set his hand to a job, took the regular rate of wages for it. And there is some corroboration of a more serious charge of ‘indyrect dealing’, after the house was opened, about the ‘collecting of the money for the gallories’.[1107] Miles alleged that during a space of two years Burbadge used a secret key made by one Braye, a smith in Shoreditch, to filch from ‘the commen box where the money gathered at the said playes was putt in’, thus cheating ‘his fellowes the players’ as well as Brayne. He would also ‘thrust some of the money devident betwene him and his said ffellowes in his bosome or other where about his bodye’. The Theatre was in use by 1 August 1577, as it is mentioned by name in the Privy Council inhibition of that date.[1108] But it was opened before the work was completed, and the last stages were paid for out of the profits.[1109] Moreover, in addition to what Brayne and Burbadge could find, money had to be raised on mortgage, with the result that Brayne never got full security for his interest in the undertaking. He was not a party to the original lease, thinking that if a joint lease were entered into, the survivor would take all.[1110] When a draft assurance of a moiety of the profits to him was prepared on 9 August 1577, it could not be executed because the lease was at pawn, and ultimately, on 22 May 1578, Burbadge gave him a bond of £400 to assure in due course.[1111] An assurance was, however, never made. The friction between the partners led to violent disputes. On one occasion, after high words in a scrivener’s shop, ‘Burbage did there strike him with his fist and so they went together by the eares in somuch that this deponent could herdly part them’.[1112] On 12 July 1578 they submitted their differences to arbitrators, who decided that, with the exception of 10_s._ weekly for Brayne’s housekeeping and 8s. for Burbadge’s out of the profits of ‘such playes as should be playd there vpon Sundaies’, the first charge upon the rents and profits of the property should be the repayment of debts due upon the theatre. Thereafter Brayne should take them ‘till he shuld be answered suche somes of money which he had lade out for and vpon the same Theatre more then the said Burbage had done’. And when this claim too was discharged, the rents and profits should ‘go in devydent equallye betwene them’. Should it be necessary to raise money on mortgage, it should be a joint mortgage, and its redemption would then come in as the first claim on the rents and profits. Burbadge gave Brayne a further bond of £200 for the keeping of this award.[1113] On 26 September 1579 a mortgage was in fact entered into for a loan of £125 from John Hyde, grocer, to be repaid in a year. The amount, however, was not forthcoming, and although Hyde made an arrangement to take £5 a week out of the profits, he only got it for four or five weeks. In June 1582 he arrested Burbadge and got £20 out of him. Shortly afterwards he claimed forfeiture of the lease, and as Burbadge warned him that Brayne ‘wold catch what he cold’, appointed one of his own servants with Burbadge ‘to gather vp v^{li} wekely during the tyme of playes’. In this way he got back another £20 or £30. There was, however, still at least £30 outstanding when Brayne died in August 1586.[1114] His widow Margaret claimed a moiety of the interest under the lease as his heir. At first, we hear, Burbadge allowed her ‘half of the profittes of the gallaries’, but only so long as she could lay out money ‘to the necessary vse of the said playe howsse’, and when she had so spent £30, he said that he must take all the profits until the debts were paid, made her gather as a servant, and finally thrust her out altogether.[1115] Meanwhile Hyde was getting impatient for his money. He had promised Mrs. Brayne that, if he were satisfied, he would reassure the lease to her and Burbadge jointly, but not to either party separately. But now he said that he must convey it to whichever would pay him first, and being approached through Walter Cope, the master of Burbadge’s son Cuthbert, he did in fact, on some promise that Mrs. Brayne should not be wronged, take his £30 and make over the lease to Cuthbert Burbadge on 7 June 1589.[1116] Henceforward Cuthbert, and not his father, was the ostensible tenant of the property. This transaction stimulated Mrs. Brayne to assert her claims. About a year before the Burbadges had brought an action against her in Chancery, apparently in the hope of enforcing the alleged promise of Brayne to leave his interest to his sister’s children; and she now retorted with a counteraction against James and Cuthbert, in which she claimed to have an assignment of a moiety of the lease.[1117] Her chief witness was the Robert Miles on whose statements this narrative has already drawn. He was not of unimpeachable reputation. His long association with Brayne had ended in a quarrel. Brayne had ‘charged Miles with his deathe, by certaine stripes geven him by Miles’. The widow had accused him before the coroner and procured his indictment as ‘a comon barreter’. Afterwards they had become friends, and he was now maintaining Mrs. Brayne in her suit.[1118] Much of his evidence, however, received corroboration from his son Ralph, from William Nicoll, a notary who had prepared the deeds connected with the partnership, and from Edward Collins, who had acquired Brayne’s grocery business in Bucklersbury. Burbadge, on the other hand, relied largely on one Henry Bett, who had had an opportunity of perusing Mrs. Brayne’s papers, and had then transferred his services to the other side. We cannot perhaps assume that all the evidence in the cross-suits is preserved. So far as what we have goes, there seems to have been no attempt on Burbadge’s part to defend himself against the charge of indirect dealing during the early years of partnership. Nor were the main facts as to the history of the lease much in dispute. The chief issue was as to Mrs. Brayne’s equitable claim to an interest in it, and this of course turned largely on the state of the account between Brayne and Burbadge at the death of the former. Miles asserted that the expenditure on the building of the Theatre in cash and credit had been practically all Brayne’s, that he had started as a rich man, but had had to sell his lease and stock in Bucklersbury and pawn his own wardrobe and his wife’s to get the work finished, that he was ruined, and that Mrs. Brayne was now ‘vtterlye vndone’ by the suit, and owed 500 marks to her friends.[1119] On the other side it was claimed that Brayne’s wealth, variously reputed at from £500 to £1,000, had been exaggerated, that he was already involved when he took the Theatre in hand, and that his downfall was largely due to unfortunate investments outside the partnership, especially in a soap-making business carried on with Miles at the George, where in fact Burbadge had incurred losses in helping him.[1120] Bett, moreover, said that, while Brayne ‘would never plainlie declare’ what his profits on the Theatre had been, ‘yt seemed by his taulke, that he had gayned and receyved a grete deale of monye, more than he had disbursed’.[1121] The actual figures produced in the course of the case, which are sufficient to enable us to arrive at a fair estimate of the main position, do not quite bear out this suggestion. Towards the original outlay Burbadge seems to have found about £50; Brayne as much and £239 more, which he claimed as due to him from the partnership. In addition there were outside debts outstanding at the time of his death to the amount of at least £220. Something, moreover, had already been spent out of takings before 1586 in payments on Hyde’s mortgage. So that we may perhaps reasonably accept the total cost of the building as being somewhere about the 1,000 marks (£666) at which common repute estimated it.[1122] A certain amount of building material, worth perhaps 100 marks, was still in hand. All that Brayne could be shown to have received as against his considerable outlay was a sum of £135 1_s._, for which his receipt was produced. What Burbadge had received it is difficult to say. A comparison of various estimates suggests that after Brayne’s death it may have been between £100 and £200 a year.[1123] On the other hand, he had paid off the debt of £220 which Brayne had left outstanding. And throughout he had been responsible, without aid from Brayne, for certain outgoings independent of the structure of the Theatre, for which he was entitled to claim credit. He had paid £230 in rent and laid out at least £220 in putting the tenements in order, as well as at least £30 early in 1592 on the repair of the Theatre itself.[1124]

The fortunes of the case in Chancery were various. In 1590 the Court seemed inclined to grant a sequestration of half the profits; but instead made an order that the arbitrament of 1578 should be observed.[1125] On the strength of this Mrs. Brayne and Miles came to the Theatre on more than one occasion, and claimed to appoint collectors, including one Nicholas Bishop, who was asked to stand ‘at the door that goeth vppe to the gallaries of the said Theater to take and receyve for the vse of the said Margarett half the money that shuld be gyven to come vppe into the said gallaries at that door’. They were, however, refused access, and on 16 November 1590 there was a row royal, of which independent witness was borne by John Alleyn, of the Admiral’s men, who were then playing at the Theatre. James Burbadge, ‘looking out at a wyndoe vpon them’, joined his wife in reviling them as a murdering knave and whore, and expressed his contempt for the order of Chancery; Cuthbert, who came home in the middle of the fray, backed him up; while Richard Burbadge, the youngest son, snatched up a broom-staff, and as he afterwards boasted, paid Robert Miles his moiety with a beating. He also threatened Nicholas Bishop, ‘scornfully and disdainfullye playing with this deponentes nose’. James said that at their next coming his sons should provide pistols charged with powder and hempseed to shoot them in the legs.[1126] Both Cuthbert and James were summoned on 28 November for contempt before the court, which instead of dealing with this charge proceeded to take the whole case into further consideration.[1127] This was something of a triumph for Burbadge, who continued to resist the order, and repeated with oaths that twenty contempts and as many injunctions would not force him to give up his property. This was heard by John Alleyn in the Theatre yard about May 1591, and about eight days later ‘in the Attyring housse or place where the players make them ready’, on the occasion of a dispute with the Admiral’s men about some of ‘the dyvydent money between him and them’ which he had detained, Burbadge was equally irreverent before Alleyn and James Tunstall about the Lord Admiral himself, saying ‘by a great othe, that he cared not for iij of the best lordes of them all’.[1128] Margaret Brayne died in 1593, leaving her estate to Miles, who thus became a principal in the suit.[1129] And on 28 May 1595 the court came to the decision that it could not entertain the case, until Miles had endeavoured to obtain relief at common law, by suing on the two bonds which Burbadge had given to Brayne in 1578.[1130] He does not seem to have thought it worth while to do this, probably because he saw very little chance of recovering money from James Burbadge, while Cuthbert, who now held the lease, was not a party to the bonds.[1131]

It is the personality of Burbadge rather than the conduct of the Theatre that these details illumine. But we may gather that the building was constructed mainly of timber with some ironwork, that it had a tiring-house and galleries, one at least of which was divided into upper rooms, where spectators could sit as well as stand, and that money was taken by appointed gatherers, placed in locked boxes, and subsequently shared out amongst those entitled to it.[1132] From other sources it appears that 1_d._ was charged for admission to the building and 1_d._ or 2_d._ more for a place in the galleries.[1133] Apparently the players took the entrance fee and the owners of the house the whole or an agreed proportion of the gallery money. In the winter of 1585 an interesting arrangement was entered into between Burbadge and Brayne on the one hand and Henry Lanman, owner of the neighbouring Curtain, on the other, by which during a period of seven years the Curtain was taken ‘as an Esore’ to the Theatre, and the profits of both houses pooled and equally divided between the two parties. This arrangement was still operative in 1592.[1134] Kiechel tells us that the number of galleries was three, and De Witt that the shape was that of an ‘amphitheatrum’.[1135] It is impossible to trace with any certainty the successive occupation of the Theatre by various companies of players or to reconstruct the list of plays produced upon the boards. Its occupants were Burbadge’s ‘fellows’ at the time of his frauds of 1576–8, and may reasonably be identified with Leicester’s, of whom he was certainly one in 1574.[1136] Stephen Gosson tells us in 1579 that amongst plays then ‘vsually brought in to the Theater’, were _The Blacksmith’s Daughter_ and his own _Catiline’s Conspiracies_, and in 1582 assigns to the same house Lodge’s, if it was Lodge’s, _Play of Plays and Pastimes_ given on the last 23 February, the play of _The Fabii_ and possibly the history of _Caesar and Pompey_.[1137] Presumably _The Fabii_ is _The Four Sons of Fabius_, presented by Warwick’s men at Court on 1 January 1580. Warwick’s men had therefore probably replaced Leicester’s at the Theatre, and it was the same men, then in the service of the Earl of Oxford, who were concerned in a riot at the Theatre on 10 April 1580.[1138] In 1582 came the controversy between Edmund Peckham and Giles Allen about the freehold of the Theatre site, as a result of which Burbadge was ‘disturbed and trobled in his possession’, and ‘the players for sooke the said Theater to his great losse’.[1139] So there was probably another change at this time. And in 1583 there was a complete reshuffling of all the London companies on the formation of the Queen’s men. Professor Wallace, who is primarily considering that part of the evidence which he has himself discovered, says that the Queen’s did not act at the Theatre.[1140] But most certainly they did. It is true that, when an inhibition against the Theatre and Curtain was obtained on 14 June 1584, the owner of the Theatre, ‘a stubburne fellow’, described himself as Lord Hunsdon’s man. Nevertheless the only companies named as concerned are the Queen’s and Arundel’s, and Burbadge may not himself have been then acting.[1141] And as to the presence of the Queen’s in the Theatre at some date there is no doubt. Tarlton is not traceable in any other company than the Queen’s, and it was at the Theatre that Tarlton made jests of Richard Harvey’s _Astrological Discourse upon the Conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter_, published in 1583.[1142] The Queen’s certainly did not confine themselves to the Theatre; but that they were there again in 1589 may be inferred from a mock testament of Martin Marprelate in _Martins Month’s Mind_, in which he is made to admit that he learned his twittle tattles ... at the Theater of Lanam and his fellows’. A marginal note in the same pamphlet indicates that it was at the Theatre that the ‘Maygame’ representing the ‘launcing and worming’ of Martin was staged, and there is other evidence that Laneham, then one of the Queen’s men, was one of the players who took a part in the ribald controversy.[1143] Gabriel Harvey’s scoff at Lyly as ‘the Foolemaster of the Theatre’ may perhaps indicate his authorship of plays for the house. In 1590–1 it is clear that the Admiral’s men, probably already associated with Strange’s, were at the Theatre, and their quarrel with Burbadge doubtless led them to cross the river and join Henslowe at the Rose. After the reconstitution of the companies in 1594, James Burbadge’s son Richard became a leading member of the Chamberlain’s men, and it is probable that, when this company left the Rose about the middle of June, it was to the Theatre that they went. Here _Hamlet_, which certainly belonged to them, was being acted in 1596.[1144] It must be added that the Theatre was not strictly reserved for the purposes of the legitimate drama. It was built for ‘activities’, amongst other things, according to Stowe, and prizes of the School of Defence were played at it between 1578 and 1585.[1145] On 22 February 1582, there took place at the Theatre ‘a scurvie play set oot al by one virgin, which there proved a fyemarten without voice, so that we stayed not the matter’.[1146]

It was a natural consequence of the success of Burbadge’s new departure that the Theatre and its immediate successor, the Curtain, had to bear the brunt of the Puritan denunciations of the stage. These incidentally bore witness to the costly elaborateness of the new accommodation provided for the players.[1147] Apart from the moral corruption upon which the Puritans laid most stress, there is some evidence that the position of the Theatre, with a great space of open ground before it, made it a natural focus for the disorderly elements of society. As early as 5 October 1577, just after the resumption of plays for the autumn, the Mayor and Recorder Fleetwood were listening to ‘a brabell betwene John Wotton and the Leuetenuntes sonne of the one parte, and certain ffreholders of Shordyche, for a matter at the Theater’. There was serious trouble in the course of 1584. Fleetwood wrote to Burghley how on 8 June, ‘very nere the Theatre or Curten, at the tyme of the playes, there laye a prentice sleping upon the grasse and one Challes _alias_ Grostock dyd turne upon the too upon the belly of the same prentice; whereupon the apprentice start up, and after wordes they fell to playne bloues’; and how on 10 June, ‘one Browne, a serving man in a blew coat, a shifting fellowe, having a perrelous witt of his owne, entending a spoile if he cold have browght it to passe, did at Theatre doore querell with certen poore boyes, handicraft prentises, and strooke some of theym; and lastlie he with his sword wondend and maymed one of the boyes upon the left hand; whereupon there assembled nere a ml. people’.[1148] Unscrupulous characters might find congenial companions in the throng. Somewhere in 1594 a diamond, which had gone astray from the loot of a Spanish vessel, was shown in Finsbury Fields by a mariner to certain goldsmiths, who said that they had met him by chance at a play in the Theatre at Shoreditch.[1149] But James Burbadge had obtained for himself a tactical advantage by building outside the jurisdiction of the City and within that, less organized or more easy-going, of the Middlesex magistrates. The Corporation were powerless, except in so far as, directly by persuasion, or indirectly by invoking the Privy Council, they could stir the county bench to action. They lost no opportunity, which brawls or plague afforded, of attempting this.[1150] An exceptionally troublous year was 1580. It began with an indictment of John Brayne and James Burbadge ‘yeomen’ of Shoreditch, at the Middlesex sessions, for bringing unlawful assemblies together on 21 February and other days ‘_ad audienda et spectanda quaedam colloquia sive interluda vocata_ playes or interludes’ by them and others ‘_exercitata et practicata_’ at the Theatre in Holywell, with the result of affrays and tumults leading to a breach of the peace.[1151] On 6 April was the great earthquake, which threw down chimneys in Shoreditch, and according to one account ‘shaked not only the scenical Theatre, but the great stage and theatre of the whole land’.[1152] Four days later was the riot between Lord Oxford’s men and the Inns of Court, and the two events gave the Lord Mayor an excellent opportunity of pointing out to the Council that the players of plays which were used at the Theatre were ‘a very superfluous sort of men’ and of securing a suspension of performances until after Michaelmas. The riot of 8 June 1584 similarly led to the inhibition by the Council and Fleetwood already noticed, although it is clear that this was not so permanent as the City probably hoped, when the authority for ‘the suppressing and pulling downe of the Theatre and Curten’ reached them. Matters came to a crisis again in 1597 with the production of _The Isle of Dogs_ on the Bankside, and an appeal of the City on 28 July was answered on the same day by mandates of the Council, of which one was addressed to the Middlesex justices, and directed them to send for the owners of the Theatre and Curtain, and enjoin them to ‘plucke downe quite the stages, gallories and roomes that are made for people to stand in, and so to deface the same as they maie not be ymploied agayne to suche use’.[1153]