FOOTNOTES:
[42] See Art. XXV.
[43] Q.R.M. 924.17. Tower Records, 2 and 3 Ph. and Mary. P.R.O.
[44] See “Henry Seventh’s Almshouse,” “Athenæum,” 30th December 1905.
[45] Aud. Pat. Books, 4 Eliz., vol. ix, 85b.
[46] Ibid., 4 Edw. VI, vol. iii, f. 40.
[47] See Letter-Books, v, f. 292-294.
[48] See “George Gascoigne’s brief rehearsal of as much as was presented before her Majestie at Kenilworth during her last abode there, July, 1575,” printed 26th March 1576.
[49] State Papers Dom. Series. Eliz., clxiii, 88.
[50] The edition of 1557, in the Library of Trinity College, Oxford.
XVII
BURBAGE’S “THEATRE”
To few pioneers is it given to initiate, and also to develope into completeness, any great new form of national art. Chaucer was not our first poet, Shakespeare was not our first dramatist. Our first architect, our first musician, our first painter, would be hard to find. But we know where to look for our “first builder of playhouses.”
A remarkable man he must have been, strong of physique, intellect and courage, strenuous, many-sided, imaginative, far-seeing, irrepressible. A special strain of genius must have prepared him to face difficulties thrown in his way during the development of his great Idea.
In all our discussions about the Shakespeare Memorial and the National Theatre, it would be well to remember what one man did towards that end 330 years ago.
James Burbage, the joiner by apprenticeship, the player by inspiration, the manager by sheer superiority, formed the best company of players of his day, and persuaded the greatest Earl of the kingdom to secure him the first Royal Patent to players, a patent which raised them from being “vagabonds” into artists. With a strategic skill worthy of a great commander, he circumvented the fettering edicts of the Common Council by carrying his company outside their jurisdiction, and, in seeming to obey the regulations against playing in inn-yards or in open spaces, reared for himself an edifice in which he could foster and develope the national drama, an edifice which he had the foresight to name “The Theatre.” The special and particular name he chose has become the generic name or patronymic of all its descendants. Within the wooden walls of his citadel, protected by doorkeepers, he had an opportunity, not only of earning money, but of educating the people, superintending at the same time a school of actors and a school of dramatists. To him came the honour of rearing a son whom he trained to be the greatest tragedian of his day; to him came the proud satisfaction of finding and training the provincial player who helped him to make his name; to him came the appreciative insight into the powers of this “fellow,” which led him to encourage Shakespeare to make use of his opportunities of patching and improving old plays until he could stand alone; to him came the crowning glory of seeing his man become the greatest dramatist of his time. And all this was done in about twenty years! What actor-manager has ever done like unto him? And all that he did was achieved under the stress and strain of active opposition from many quarters; he was constantly being harassed by regulation, legislation, and litigation with rivals, relatives, and landlords, eager to share in the profits of his phenomenal financial success (which, however, through his heavy expenses must have been much less than they supposed it to be). He was a pioneer, but he had more than his fair share of fighting to do. The Curtain “rose like an exhalation” in his wake, and left no records in its train. His very popularity made his path more thorny.
It may be well to collect what little is known of him. Halliwell-Phillips, that industrious writer, discovered many points, but his reticence, or at least haziness, about references has prevented his successors from following him to his originals. He is generally correct in his transcripts, but not always so; his inferences are sometimes erroneous; he did not cover the whole possible field, so there are many fresh references to be brought forward, not, perhaps, of prime importance, but still important enough to help to complete “the idea of the life” of James Burbage.
We do not know when or where he was born or educated, what was the occupation of his father, or when he joined the Earl of Leicester’s servants. We do know that he was bred a joiner, and must have been a member of the company, as he is frequently described as a “joiner,” in his legal actions, even after one would have thought another description of him would have been more suitable. But any citizen then, even in the lesser companies, was reckoned more respectable than a “player.” Think of his times. On 12th February 1563 Edward, Bishop of London, wrote to advise Sir William Cecil to inhibit all players, at least for a year, it would be well if it could be for ever. They spread the plague and profaned Holy things; “the Histriones, the common players,” are “an idle sort of people which have been infamous in all good commonwealths.” In 1572 Queen Elizabeth enacted the famous statute[51] that “Rogues, Vagabonds ... fencers, Bearwards, Common Players, and Minstrels not belonging to any baron of the Realm shall be judged Vagabonds,” and made liable to be whipped and sent to some respectable service. To satisfy the Queen’s private tastes, however, and their own, many barons helped the better class of players by enrolling them as their “servants,” and thus securing them some ill-defined privileges. But the City strongly disapproved of plays and players. On 2nd March 1573-4 the Lord Mayor declined to license a place in the City, even for the servants of the Earl of Sussex; on the 22nd the Privy Council asked the Lord Mayor what cause made him thus restrain plays. Dissatisfied with his reply, the Earl of Leicester, determined that his servants should not be put to such an indignity, secured the first Royal Patent under the Privy Seal for them, which introduced James Burbage into the history of his country. As it gave him, on paper, a large liberty, and raised his craft to the level of an art, often as it has been printed, it is important to start with it in any history of the stage. One forgets sometimes. On 7th May 1574 the Royal Patent warned all officials to permit
to James Burbage, John Perkyn, John Laneham, William Johnson, Robert Wylson and others, servants to our trustie and well-beloved Cousin and Councillor, the Earl of Leicester, to use, exercise and occupie the art and facultie of playing Comedies, Tragedies, Interludes, Stage Plaies, and such other, like as they have already used and studied or hereafter shall use and study, as well as for the recreacion of our loving subjects as for our solace and pleasure when we shall think good to see them ... together with their musick ... as well within our City of London and the Liberties of the same, as also within the liberties and freedoms of any other cytyes, towns, boroughes, &c., whatsoever, throughout our realm of England; willing and commanding you and every of you, as ye tender our pleasure, to permit and suffer them therein without any your letts, hindrance or molestation, any act, statute, proclamation or commandment heretofore made, or hereafter to be made to the contrary notwithstanding. Provided that the same ... be allowed by our Master of the Revells, and that they be not published or shewen in the time of Common Prayer, or in the time of great and common plague in our said City of London.
Nothing could have been more explicit, or more exasperating to the Corporation of London, than this permission to contravene their mandates.[52] The Corporation’s counterblast was the famous Order of 6th December 1574. They threatened fine and imprisonment to any who “played without a licence from the City each time,” and without giving half the proceeds to the poor. They did not “tender the Queen’s pleasure” in respect to the players.[53]
At the close of 1574, on St. Stephen’s Day, the Earl of Leicester’s servants played before the Queen at Court, and opened the year by playing on New Year’s Day, 1574-5.
Other noblemen hastened to request Royal Patents for their servants. The battle between the Privy Council and the Common Council raged all the more hotly since the players had been “patented,” and the climax came when the Lord Mayor expelled all players from the City, under an undated “Order for the relief of the Poor” printed by Singleton.
Leicester’s servants played before the Queen on Innocent’s Day 1575, and again on the Sunday before Shrovetide. For the first time they were fully described in the warrants for payment granted by the Privy Council[54] and in the declared accounts of the Pipe Office[55] as “Burbage and his company, servants to the Earl of Leicester.” But even Leicester’s servants, with a Privy Seal Patent from the Queen, could not very well live all the year round on Christmas gifts. They must either go on tour, act in the City or near it, starve, or turn to another trade. Burbage did return awhile to his original trade. He had had a prevision of what was coming, had kept his eyes open, and had laid his plans, and found a “place where to stand.” A few months after the expulsion order, on 13th April 1576, he had signed and sealed an indenture of lease for a parcel of land of the disused monastery of Holywell, stretching from the barn and outhouses of the property of the Earl of Rutland to the brick wall that bounded Finsbury Fields. It belonged to Giles Alleyn, Arm., and his wife Sara, and contained a barn, some old tenements, gardens, fields, and some “voyd ground.” His plans necessitated engineering and financial skill, credit, and money. James Burbage had the first, but he was not rich. He had married, however, some time previous to this, Ellen Braynes, who had “expectations.” Halliwell-Phillips and all his followers say she was the daughter of John Braynes. But he is in error; the language of some of the cases he knew might have taught him better. But a case which he evidently did not know states clearly that John Braynes was the only brother of Ellen Burbage. He was evidently, at the time, a childless husband, as in his lawsuits there is constant reference to the understanding that his sister’s children would inherit all he had, seeing he had none of his own. There was an inn upon Burbage’s leasehold, but players had been forbidden to play in inn-yards. He could not risk playing on his “voyd ground,” as his audience might melt away before they paid the costs, so he resolved to build a playing-house in his fields. John Braynes, fired with the idea of making a speedy fortune, agreed to become a sharer in costs and profits, and each signed a bond to the other. Giles Alleyn signed the lease, knowing quite well it was to be for the players, but he did not mind much, as he himself was going henceforth to live in Essex. He also knew that Burbage was the “servant” of the Earl of Leicester, and it was not safe to disoblige that great noble, even through his servants. Alleyn was used to land-transfers and litigation, and he thought he made a safe bargain. He did not want to give a longer lease than twenty-one years until he saw how playing-houses were likely to do, but he permitted a clause that if, before the end of the first ten years, James Burbage had spent £200 in repairing or rebuilding the old tenements on the property, he could have another lease from that date of twenty-one years (making in all thirty-one years), and he could, at the end, carry away the materials of any building he had erected for himself.[56] Burbage was to pay the legal expenses of drawing up and the engrossing of this second lease. Of course, there was some preliminary “consideration,” but the rent seemed very moderate even for the time, for the extent of land leased at £14 by the year including the tenements inhabited by sub-tenants. Burbage, with Braynes’ help, set to work at once. It is probable he was his own architect, contractor, and master-builder, that he even used his own hands in the work, and pressed those of his “unemployed” company to hasten forward the edifice which promised so soon to help them in return. Wood does not necessitate so many difficulties or delays as stone and brick. It can be fetched from the country prepared, and even partially put together, as can be learned from one of Peter Street’s lawsuits.[57] As the building rose, it became its own advertisement. Finsbury Field was the City-ground for drill and archery, the people’s play-ground. From its boundary crowds watched the rising fabric, eager and impatient as the owners, and more curious. We may be quite sure that Burbage’s building was the main topic of London gossip during 1576. When, protected by walls, doors, and doorkeepers from impecunious prying eyes, it did open on some unrecorded day that year, of course there were disturbances. Everybody wanted to enter the charmed circle at once, to see the plays from which they had been so long debarred, and to understand Burbage’s little game. The humour of the situation tickled the fancy of the people; the taste of the forbidden tree was sweet to their palate; cutpurses saw their chance among the genuine play-lovers, and there was crowding, crushing, struggling for entry, quarrelling for places, shouting, and all signs of a brawl. Free fights ensued, and “The Theatre,” from the very first, through no fault of its owner, became associated with breaches of the peace, which its enemies made the most of. In the following year it came into history by name. On 1st August 1577 the Privy Council, moved by the City, for fear of the plague, wrote to the Middlesex authorities to take order with “such as use to play without the Liberties ... as at the Theatre and such like,” to forbear playing till after Michaelmas.[58] A sermon preached at Paul’s Cross in the time of the plague, 3rd November 1577, by T. W. (printed 1578) refers to “the sumptuous Theatre houses, a constant monument of London’s prodigalitie and folly.”[59] John Northbrook’s “Book against dicing, vaine playes, or enterludes,” entered in Stationers’ Hall, 2nd December 1577, refers to “the Theatre and the Curtain.” The Earl of Leicester’s players however played at Court that Christmas, but again on 17th April 1578 the Privy Council wrote the Middlesex authorities to restrain players till after Michaelmas. John Stockwood, Schoolmaster of Tunbridge, preached a sermon at Paul’s Cross on 24th August of that year, in which the Theatre and Curtain are both referred to by name, and again he refers to “the gorgeous Playing place erected in the fields, as they please to have it called, a Theatre.”[60] On 24th December 1578 the Earl of Leicester’s servants had a licence to play in the City, because they were going to play before the Queen at Christmas. They played on St. Stephen’s Day, but on Shrove Tuesday they were paid in full for coming, though the play, by her Majesty’s command, was supplied by others.[61] This was probably the sign of a tiff with Leicester.
Burbage’s promptness, sumptuousness, and success could not be attained without lavish outlay of money, more than he had himself or that his brother-in-law could command. Apparently he found it through John Hyde, grocer, though no record of the transaction has been preserved otherwise than the fact that Hyde held the house in pawn from 17th September 1579 till 7th June 1589, during which time Burbage remained legal and ostensible owner. At the latter date it was restored, but to Cuthbert, not to James Burbage. Against the dangers of debt and public interference he still bravely fought, but even in “The Liberty of Holywell” troubles assailed him. Mr. Cordy Jeaffreson, in editing the Middlesex County Records for James I, found among them a few entries of Elizabeth’s reign, and among these is the record of the presentation at Clerkenwell Sessions of John Braynes of Shoreditch yeoman, and James Burbage of the same, yeoman, 21st February 22 Eliz.,[62] on the charge of
“bringing together unlawful assemblies to hear and to see certain colloquies or interludes called playes or interludes exercised and practised by the same John Braynes and James Burbage, and divers other persons unknown at a certain place called The Theatre at Holywell in the county of Middlesex, by reason of which great affrays, assaults, tumults and quasi-insurrections and divers other misdeeds and enormities ... perpetrated to the danger of the lives of divers good subjects ... against the form of the Statute,” etc.
This shows that Braynes, though not mentioned in the original patent, had become one of Burbage’s players. But it hardly supports Mr. Jeaffreson’s contention that he must have been the chief player and proprietor of The Theatre. Braynes might very well have been placed first as being the elder, and apparently the richer, of the two, and they might have agreed to put Braynes forward as the chief, so as to bear the brunt of the examination, while Burbage was looking after his plays, his house, his rehearsals, and his audience. Braynes was a business man, quite able to face an attorney and a magistrate, but he was second fiddle at The Theatre.
It is curious to remember that the great earthquake took place about six weeks later, 6th April 1580. Enemies read in it a token of God’s wrath against The Theatre. Ballads were written to bid men haste away from the play because of the earthquake.[63] But we have no record of any damage at The Theatre, or to Burbage’s house in Holywell Street, though many chimneys fell in more respectable places.[64]
The Lord Mayor wrote to the Lords of the Council,[65] “Where it happened on Sunday last that some great disorder was committed at the Theatre, I sent for the Undersherive ... and for the players to have appeared before me, the rather because these playes doe make assemblies of citizens and of their families of whom I have charge,” but hearing the Council was considering the matter he “surceased to proceed,” but thought it his duty to remind them “that the players of playes which are used at the Theatre, and other such places ... are a very superfluous sort of men, and of suche facultie as the lawes have disalowed.” An order of the Privy Council was issued to forbid all plays in and about the City till Michaelmas next, 13th May 1580. Five months’ forced “unemployment,” with his rent, his interest running on, his creditors clamouring, his housekeeper asking for food, and his company doubtless worrying him for money. His was the fate of Tantalus, for the golden stream was ever at his lips. The constant interference with the players only increased the eagerness of the populace to see them. Battles with courtiers, preachers, citizens, authors, raged round Burbage’s head. But he played at Court that Christmas as usual. In 1583 the Queen, to keep up with her nobles, resolved to patent a Royal Company of her own, and exercising her prerogative of “taking up,” not only singing boys, but any[66] “men” she needed for her service, she took the pick of the players from all the companies, among them Robert Wilson and Richard Tarleton. This did not really hurt them much, as they remained on friendly terms, and often played with their old companies. The Queen’s players had their first performances at Court, with but few others, during the Christmas of 1583-4.
In 1584 Fleetwood wrote to Lord Burleigh that the Lord Mayor desired to suppress all playhouses, and had sent for the players themselves to come to him, among them the Queen’s players and Lord Arundel’s players. “They all well nighe obeyed the Lordes letters: the chiefest of her Higheness’s players advised me to send for the owner of The Theatre, who was a stubborne fellow, and to bind him: I did so. He sent me word that he was my Lord of Hunsdon’s man, and that he would not comme at me, but he would in the morning ride to his Lord. I sent the Under-Sheriff for him but he would not be bound.”[67] This has been supposed not to refer to Burbage, because he said he was Lord Hunsdon’s man. But there was no one else who could be called owner of The Theatre, no one so resourceful and so daring. He was any Lord’s man, so that it was not the Lord Mayor’s, and, seeing what the Earl of Leicester was about, he was off to Court, to ask his Lord what his Royal Patent meant when a mere Lord Mayor could flout it so. After that his Company became Lord Hunsdon’s (then the Lord Chamberlain) till the Queen’s death. That danger passed.
Before April 1586 Burbage had the proposed new lease of his property drawn up to add ten years after the expiration of the first lease, but Giles Allen refused to sign it. He denied that the £200, as agreed, had really been spent on the repair of the old tenements; he said there were alterations from the old lease, though Burbage explained that the difference only lay in not including a clause and condition for further extension of lease. Alleyn showed a shifty desire to juggle with the 1576 agreement, and, having an exaggerated idea of the net profits realized by Burbage, he wanted to raise the rent from £14 to £24; and while granting the ten years’ extra lease of the soil, he wanted to restrict the further use of The Theatre as a playing place to a term of five more years, after which it might be used for some other purpose by Burbage. It was clear that Burbage was not going to sign a lease at the raised rent without having the use of his theatre during the full term, so the two second leases lay in abeyance, and landlord and tenant spent the remaining eleven years of the first lease suspicious of each other, and watching every turn of events.
In 1586 a new set of troubles arose through the death of John Braynes, who, apparently by the influence of his wife Margaret and the pressure of circumstances, had not remained quite as brotherly as he had formerly been. Through fear of being called on to pay theatre debts, he had made a deed of gift of his goods and chattels to Robert Myles, goldsmith, to one Tomson, and also to John Gardiner. Margaret Braynes, widow, had herself a suit against Robert Myles, and in Easter 1587,[68] “a week is granted him to make answer, or an attachment will be granted.” By this time John Gardiner had died, and his administrator, Robert Gardiner, claimed to be executor of Braynes in his place. The widow, Myles, and Gardiner united to worry Burbage. They refused to consider the notion that Braynes meant his investment in building The Theatre to come eventually to his nephews, or that through his breach of agreement he had forfeited his bond, and they made themselves very harassing.
Halliwell-Phillipps, and all the writers who follow him, say the first action was taken in the Chancery suit of Braynes v. Burbage, 1590. But it began long before that. He had never seen the earlier suit of Burbage v. Braynes,[69] nor followed its various stages through Chancery. I am not able to give the exact date of this first action, as the document is very much injured, but I believe it is 1588. The plaintiffs are James Burbage, Ellen his wife, and Cuthbert, Richard, Alice, and Ellen their children v. Margaret Braynes. This explains how James had taken the land from Giles Alleyn, and how his brother-in-law had agreed to go shares with him in The Theatre and the George Inn. There had been an arbitration between them which had been in favour of Burbage, on 12th July 1578, and Braynes had forfeited a bond of £200 through not obeying the arbitration. Braynes had conveyed his goods and chattels to Myles, to Tomson, and to John Gardiner, and had ceased to pay his share of expenses. But shortly before his death he confessed that his moietie should all remain to Burbage’s children. The defendants claimed the same, only under an old will made before the conveyances and against the arbitration. Robert Myles “enters The Theatre and troubles your orator, and his tenants,” and Robert Gardiner, the administrator of John Gardiner, who died in 1587, “goes about to sue James Burbage in two several bonds,” and “by reason of the multiplicity of their conveyances they joyn together to imprison your said orator, to enforce him to yield to their request.” They will not pay the £200 bond forfeited by Braynes; their action is costly, and leads to his impoverishment. He prays relief, and a subpœna to the defendants to appear personally and answer material facts, and he is willing to submit to justice. Their answer is, of course, that his is an untrue and insufficient bill. I suppose this is the case referred to in the Decree[70] that the defendants have put in an insufficient demurrer. It was referred to Mr. Dr. Carew, and if he thought it insufficient, a subpœna to be awarded against the defendants. Margaret Braynes, Myles, and Gardiner had meanwhile brought a cross-suit against the Burbages; and in that, on 21st May 1590,[71] the court was informed that the defendants put in an insufficient demurrer, and it also is referred to Mr. Dr. Carew for the same purpose. This came up again in the Trinity term,[72] and on 4th November Mrs. Braynes appeals again, through Mr. Scott,[73] for the moietie of The Theatre and other tenements; the defendants have put in an ill demurrer, and take the whole gains and benefits of the premises, albeit she and her husband had been at very great charges in the building of The Theatre, to the sum of £500, and did for a time enjoy the moietie. It is ordered that if the defendants do not show good cause, sequestration of the moietie shall be granted. On 13th November[74] Mr. Serjeant Harrys, for Burbage, prayed consideration of a former order made in his behalf in the suit of Burbage v. Braynes. There had been an arbitrament made on 12th July 1578, in favour of Burbage, and neither of the parties showed why the arbitration should not be performed. Sequestration was stayed. This promised peace; but on 20th January 1590-1[75] Robert Myles made oath that the Burbages had broken an order made in court on 13th November; therefore an attachment was awarded for contempt. On 30th January[76] Cuthbert Burbage made his personal appearance to save his bond to the Sheriff of London, but nothing was done. On 23rd March[77] it was stated in court that the Burbages had been examined upon interrogatories, and these committed to the consideration of Mr. Dr. Cæsar. On 24th April 1591,[78] Burbage continued his case against Mrs. Braynes, she having put in an insufficient demurrer; consideration was referred to Mr. Dr. Carew. On 15th June,[79] as nothing material had been advanced on her side, Burbage asked for a subpœna against her and Myles. On 20th July[80] Margaret Braynes appeared in her own case against Cuthbert and James Burbage; they also appeared, but the Master in Charge could not attend. On 12th October 1591[81] it was decided that no advantage should be given until it was found whether Burbage had committed contempt of court; and on 13th November[82] it was heard again. It had been referred to Mr. Dr. Stanhop and Mr. Dr. Legg, who had heard counsel on both sides, but they could not well proceed to examine the parties before they examined John Hyde of London, grocer, Ralph Myles of London, “sopemaker,” Nicholas Bushop and John Allen upon the contempt pretended. The need of considering these witnesses arose in this way. Burbage, at some date, following his brother-in-law’s lead, had transferred all his property to his sons. Hyde, holding The Theatre for ten years, had released it to Cuthbert. To Robert Myles had been let the George Inn, part of the Holywell property; Myles had let the stables to his son, Ralph Myles, and Nicholas Bushop[83] for a soap manufactory.[84]
One is interested to know the inns at which Shakespeare might have “taken his ease.” Here is one, on the very Theatre ground. Was it in his thought when he wrote, in “King John,”
St. George, who swinged the Dragon, and ere since
Sits on his horseback at mine hostess’ door.
For by this time Burbage had got firm hold of Shakespeare. He was learning all round, even law through the troubles of Burbage, helping all round, becoming a “Johannes Factotum ... a Shakescene able to bumbast out a blank verse as well as the best of you!” Was there a little bit of lively badinage of James Burbage when, in the play suggesting the Earl of Leicester and his Kenilworth festivities, “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” he cast, in the artisan’s play “Snug the Joiner,” for the Lion’s part?
The plague caused a lull in the Chancery proceedings, but they started again. Latterly Margaret Braynes died, but Robert Myles continued versus Burbage and Burbage versus Myles. The next best thing for him to a speedy settlement in his favour was delay. Time told for him. On 4th February 1595-6 James Burbage, “gent.,” purchased from Sir William More for £600 some rooms in the dissolved Monastery of Blackfriars,[85] also out of the jurisdiction of the City authorities. Throughout that year he urged on the alterations of the rooms into a winter theatre, that his brilliant son Richard might not be hindered in his performances by further troubles at The Theatre. By 16th November the inhabitants of the Blackfriars had sent up a petition against the starting of a playhouse there; a copy, undated, is preserved among the State papers.[86] But the date can be found in a later petition and order at the Guildhall, which implies that the first had been successful, at least for a time.[87] James Burbage, therefore, though the inventor and designer of the modern theatre in stone and brick as well as in wood, in the famous theatre afterwards called the private stage of Blackfriars, did not see his son Richard triumph there. Baffled in that, he “laboured with Giles Alleyn to sign the extended lease of Holywell drawn up in 1586, and got his friends also to move him.” Probably among these were the Earls of Southampton and Rutland, whose property bordered his ground.[88] Giles Alleyn was, however, unresponsive. Amid the anxious discussions with his sons concerning their critical future, I feel sure that James planned the manœuvre, which afterwards proved really successful. He thought that if he could but carry that out as he wished, he would be able to fight all his enemies at once, and give his beloved Theatre a new lease of life. But he was not so young as he had been, the strain of his strenuous work had told upon him, and sorrow for losses by death. Just a year after he had bought his Blackfriars property and just before the lease of his Theatre had run, the lease of his life ended; he died suddenly, and was buried in St. Leonard’s, Shoreditch, 2nd February, 1596-7.
O! Brave James Burbage!
“Fortnightly Review,” July 1909.