Lord Chamberlain. Like the other fervants of the houfchold, the performers enrolled into this company were fworn into office, and each of them was allowed four yards of baftard scarlet for a cloak, and a quarter of a yard of velvet for the cape, every fecond year.4

The theatre in Blackfriars was fituated near the prefent Apothecaries' Hall, in the neighbourhood of which there is yet Playhoufe Yard, not far from which the theatre probably ftood. It was, as has been mentioned, a private houfe; but what were the diftinguishing marks of a private playhouse, it is not eafy to afcertain. We know only that it was smaller 5 than those which were called publick theatres; and that in the private theatres plays were ufually prefented by candle-light."

4 "These are to fignify unto your lordship his majefties pleafure, that you caufe to be delivered unto his majesties players whofe names follow, viz. John Hemmings, John Lowen, Jofeph Taylor, Richard Robinson, John Shank, Robert Benfield, Richard Sharp, Eliard Swanfon, Thomas Pollard, Anthony Smith, Thomas Hobbes, William Pen, George Vernon, and James Horne, to each of them the several allowance of foure yardes of baftard fcarlet for a cloake, and a quarter of a yard of crimson velvet for the capes, it being the ufual allowance graunted unto them by his majefty every fecond yeare, and due at Eafter laft paft. For the doing whereof theis fhall be your warrant. May 6th, 1629." MS. in the Lord Chamberlain's Office.

5 Wright, in his Hift. Hiftrion. informs us, that the theatre in Blackfriars, the Cockpit, and that in Salisbury Court, were exactly alike both in form and fize. The fmallnefs of the latter is afcertained by thefe lines in an epilogue to Tottenham Court, a comedy by Nabbes, which was acted there :

ye."

"When others' fill'd rooms with neglect disdain ye, My little houfe with thanks fhall entertain "All the city looked like a private play-house, when the windows are clapt downe, as if fome nocturnal and dismal tragedy were prefently to be acted." Decker's Seven Deadly Sinnes of London, 1606. See alfo Hiftoria Hiftrionica.

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

It is faid 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 perfons 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 fuch young characters as are found in many of our poet's plays. Thus we find Nat. Field, John Underwood, and William Oftler, among the children of the Revels, who reprefented feveral of Ben Jonfon's comedies at the Blackfriars in the earlier part of King James's reign, and alfo in the lift of the actors of our author's plays prefixed to the first folio, published in 1623. They had then become men.

Lily's Campafpe was acted at the theatre in Blackfriars in 1584, and The Cafe is Altered, by Ben Jonson, was printed in 1609, as acted by the children of Black-friers. Some of the children of the Revels alfo acted occafionally 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 inftructed by the elder performers in their art; by which means this young troop became a promptuary of actors. In a manufcript in the Inner Temple, No. 515, Vol. VII. entitled "A booke conteyning feveral particulars with relation to the king's fervants, petitions, warrants, bills, &c. and fuppofed to be a copy of fome part of the Lord Chamberlain of the Houfhold's book in or about the year 1622," I find "A warrant to the fignet-office (dated July 8th, 1622,) for a privie feale for his majefties licensing of Robert Lee, Richard Perkins, Ellis Woorth, Thomas Baffe, John Blany, John Cumber, and William Robbins, late comedians of Queen Anne deceased, to bring up children in the qualitie and exercise of playing comedies, hiftories, interludes, morals, paftorals, ftage-plaies, and fuch like, as well for the follace and pleasure of his majestie, as for the honeft recreation of fuch as fhall defire to fee them; to be called by the name of The Children of the Revels;-and to be drawne in fuch a man ner and forme as hath been used in other lycenfes of that kinde." These very perfons, we have feen, were the company of the Revels in 1622, and were then become men.

misinformed.8

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

I am unable to afcertain at what time the Globe theatre was built. Hentzner has alluded to it as exifting in 1598, though he does not exprefsly mention it. I believe it was not built long before the year 1596. It was fituated on the Bankfide, (the

81623. Ex occafu domûs fcenicæ apud Black-friers Londini, 81 perfonæ fpectabiles 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 fame year in which the accident happened, entitled, A Word of Comfort, or a Difcourfe concerning the late Lamentable Accident of the Fall of a Room at a Catholick fermon in the Black-friers, London, whereby about four-fcore perfons were oppressed, 4to. 1623.

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

66

66

we dare not fay

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

Prayed and thriv'd, though the play-house were fo
near."

Camden had a paralytick ftroke on the 18th of Auguft, 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 Hunfdon-Houfe, in which the French Ambaffador then dwelt. See Stowe's Chron. p. 1035, edit. 1631.

9"Non longe ab uno horum theatrorum, quæ omnia lignea funt, ad Thamefin navis eft regia, quæ duo egregia habet conclavia," &c. Itin. p. 132. By navis regia he means the royal barge called the Gallyfoift. See the South View of London, as it appeared in 1599.

1

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

fouthern fide of the river Thames,) nearly oppofite to Friday Street, Cheapfide. 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 compofed of wood.

2

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

The Globe was a publick theatre, and of confiderable fize,3 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.5 Thefe flags were probably difplayed only during the hours of exhibition; and it fhould feem 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 reprefented, though at a fubfequent period this prohibition was difpenfed with.7

3 The Globe, we learn from Wright's Hiftoria Hifirionica, was nearly of the fame fize as the Fortune, which has been already defcribed.

4 Hiftoria Hiftrionica, 8vo. 1699, p. 7.

5 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 fummoned whole troops of men, women, and children."-Again, in A mad World, my Mafters, 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 paffage laft quoted, we may be led to fuppofe that flags were not difplayed on the roof of Blackfriars, and the other private playhouses.

This cuftom perhaps took its rife from a mifconception 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 fail, no filken flag, or enfign brave.”

"From the roof (fays the fame author,) defcribing a Roman amphitheatre,) grew a loover or turret of exceeding altitude, from which an enfign of filk waved continually ;-pendebant vela theatro."-The misinterpretation might, however, have arifen from the English cuftom.

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