Lord Chamberlain. Like the other servants of the household, the performers enrolled into this company were sworn into office, and each of them was allowed four yards of bastard scarlet for a cloak, and a quarter of a yard of velvet for the cape, every second year.*

The theatre in Blackfriars was situated near the present Apothecaries' Hall, in the neighbourhood' of which there is yet Playhouse Yard, not far from which the theatre probably stood. It was, as has been mentioned, a private house; but what were the distinguishing marks of a private playhouse, it is not easy to ascertain. We know only that it was smaller than those which were called publick theatres; and that in the private theatres plays were usually presented by candle-light."

"These are to signify unto your lordship his majesties pleasure, that you cause to be delivered unto his majesties players whose names follow, viz. John Hemmings, John Lowen, Joseph Taylor, Richard Robinson, John Shank, Robert Benfield, Richard Sharp, Eliard Swanson, Thomas Pollard, Anthony Smith, Thomas Hobbes, William Pen, George Vernon, and James Horne, to each of them the several allowance of foure yardes of bastard scarlet for a cloake, and a quarter of a yard of crimson velvet for the capes, it being the usual allowance graunted unto them by his majesty every second yeare, and due at Easter last past. For the doing whereof theis shall be your warrant. May 6th, 1629." MS. in the Lord Chamberlain's Office.

Wright, in his Hist. Histrion. informs us, that the theatre in Blackfriars, the Cockpit, and that in Salisbury Court, were exactly alike both in form and size. The smallness of the latter is ascertained by these lines in an epilogue to Tottenham Court, a comedy by Nabbes, which was acted there:

"When others' fill'd rooms with neglect disdain ye,

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My little house with thanks shall entertain ye.'

"All the city looked like a private play-house, when the windows are clapt downe, as if some nocturnal and dismal tragedy were presently to be acted." Decker's Seven Deadly Sinnes of London, 1606. See also Historia Histrionica.

In this theatre, which was a very ancient one, the children of the Revels occasionally performed.7

It is said in Camden's Annals of the reign of King James the First, that the theatre in Blackfriars fell down in the year 1623, and that above eighty persons were killed by the accident; but he was

7 Many pieces were performed by them in this theatre before 1580. Sometimes they performed entire pieces; at others, they represented such young characters as are found in many of our poet's plays. Thus we find Nat. Field, John Underwood, and William Östler, among the children of the Revels, who represented several of Ben Jonson's comedies at the Blackfriars in the earlier part of King James's reign, and also in the list of the actors of our author's plays prefixed to the first folio, published in 1623. They had then become men.

Lily's Campaspe was acted at the theatre in Blackfriars in 1584, and The Case is Altered, by Ben Jonson, was printed in 1609, as acted by the children of Black-friers. Some of the children of the Revels also acted occasionally at the theatre in Whitefriars; for we find A Woman's a Weathercock performed by them at that theatre in 1612. Probably a certain number of these children were appropriated to each of these theatres, and instructed by the elder performers in their art; by which means this young troop became a promptuary of actors. In a manuscript in the Inner Temple, No. 515, Vol. VII. entitled "A booke conteyning several particulars with relation to the king's servants, petitions, warrants, bills, &c. and supposed to be a copy of some part of the Lord Chamberlain of the Houshold's book in or about the year 1622," I find "A warrant to the signet-office (dated July 8th, 1622,) for a privie seale for his majesties licensing of Robert Lee, Richard Perkins, Ellis Woorth, Thomas Basse, John Blaney, John Cumber, and William Robbins, late comedians of Queen Anne deceased, to bring up children in the qualitie and exercise of playing comedies, histories, interludes, morals, pastorals, stage-plaies, and such like, as well for the sollace and pleasure of his majestie, as for the honest recreation of such as shall desire to see them; to be called by the name of The Children of the Revels;-and to be drawne in such a manner and forme as hath been used in other lycenses of that kinde." These very persons, we have seen, were the company of the Revels in 1622, and were then become men.

misinformed." The room which gave way was in a private house, and appropriated to the service of religion.

I am unable to ascertain at what time the Globe theatre was built. Hentzner has alluded to it as existing in 1598, though he does not expressly mention it. I believe it was not built long before the year 1596. It was situated on the Bankside, (the

9

"1623. Ex occasu domûs scenicæ apud Black-friers Londini, 81 personæ spectabiles necantur." Camdeni Annales ab anno 1603 ad annum 1623, 4to. 1691, p. 82. That this writer was misinformed, appears from an old tract, printed in the same year in which the accident happened, entitled, A Word of Comfort, or a Discourse concerning the late Lamentable Accident of the Fall of a Room at a Catholick sermon in the Black-friers, London, whereby about four-score persons were oppressed, 4to. 1623.

See also verses prefixed to a play called The Queen, published by Alexander Goughe, (probably the son of Robert Goughe, one of the actors in Shakspeare's Company) in 1653:

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we dare not say

that Blackfriers we heare, which in this "Fell, when it was a church, not when a stage; "Or that the puritans that once dwelt there,

age

"Prayed and thriv'd, though the play-house were so

near."

Camden had a paralytick stroke on the 18th of August, 1623, and died on the 9th of November following. The above-mentioned accident happened on the 24th of October; which accounts for his inaccuracy. The room which fell, was an upper room in Hunsdon-House, in which the French Ambassador then dwelt. See Stowe's Chron. p. 1035, edit. 1631.

"Non longe ab uno horum theatrorum, quæ omnia lignea sunt, ad Thamesin navis est regia, quæ duo egregia habet conclavia," &c. Itin. p. 132. By navis regia he means the royal barge called the Gally foist. See the South View of London, as

it appeared in 1599.

See "The Suit of the Watermen against the Players," in the Works of Taylor the Water Poet, p. 171.

southern side of the river Thames,) nearly opposite to Friday Street, Cheapside. It was an hexagonal wooden building, partly open to the weather, and partly thatched. When Hentzner wrote, all the other theatres as well as this were composed of wood.

In the long Antwerp View of London in the Pepysian Library at Cambridge, is a representation of the Globe theatre, from which a drawing was made by the Rev. Mr. Henley, and transmitted to Mr. Steevens. From that drawing this cut was made.

The Globe was a publick theatre, and of considerable size, and there they always acted by daylight. On the roof of this and the other publick theatres a pole was erected, to which a flag was affixed. These flags were probably displayed only during the hours of exhibition; and it should seem from one of the old comedies that they were taken down in Lent, in which time, during the early part of King James's reign, plays were not allowed to be represented, though at a subsequent period this prohibition was dispensed with."

The Globe, we learn from Wright's Historia Histrionica, was nearly of the same size as the Fortune, which has been already described.

• Historia Histrionica, 8vo. 1699, p. 7.

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So, in The Curtain-Drawer of the World, 1612: "Each play-house advanceth his flagge in the aire, whither quickly at the waving thereof are summioned whole troops of men, women, and children."-Again, in A mad World, my Masters, a comedy by Middleton, 1608: -the hair about the hat is as good as a flag upon the pole, at a common play-house, to waft company." See a South View of the City of London as it appeared in 1599, in which are representations of the Globe and Swan theatres. From the words, "a common play-house," in the passage last quoted, we may be led to suppose that flags were not displayed on the roof of Blackfriars, and the other private playhouses.

This custom perhaps took its rise from a misconception of a line in Ovid:

"Tunc neque marmoreo pendebant vela theatro,―.” which Heywood, in a tract published in 1612, thus translates : "In those days from the marble house did waive

"No sail, no silken flag, or ensign brave."

"From the roof (says the same author,) describing a Roman amphitheatre,) grew a loover or turret of exceeding altitude, from which an ensign of silk waved continually;-pendebant vela theatro "The misinterpretation might, however, have arisen from the English custom.

Tis Lent in your cheeks;-the flag is down." A mad World, my Masters, a comedy by Middleton, 1608.