iii.
[Extracts from John Downes, Roscius Anglicanus, or, an Historical Review of the Stage (1708), reprinted by Joseph Knight (1886). An earlier reprint is in F. G. Waldron, Literary Museum (1792). Downes became prompter to the Duke of York’s men under Sir William Davenant at Lincoln’s Inn Fields in 1662.]
In the Reign of King Charles the First, there were Six Play Houses allow’d in Town: The Black-Fryars Company, His Majesty’s Servants; The Bull in St. John’s-street; another in Salisbury Court; another call’d the Fortune; another at the Globe; and the Sixth at the Cock-Pit in Drury-Lane; all which continu’d Acting till the beginning of the said Civil Wars. The scattered Remnant of several of these Houses, upon King Charles’s Restoration, Fram’d a Company who Acted again at the Bull, and Built them a New House in Gibbon’s Tennis Court in Clare-Market; in which Two Places they continu’d Acting all 1660, 1661, 1662 and part of 1663. In this time they Built them a New Theatre in Drury Lane....
Sir William [Davenant] in order to prepare Plays to Open his Theatre, it being then a Building in Lincoln’s-Inn Fields, His Company Rehearsed the First and Second Part of the Siege of Rhodes; and the Wits at Pothecaries-Hall: And in Spring 1662, Open’d his House with the said Plays, having new Scenes and Decorations, being the first that e’re were Introduc’d in England.
APPENDIX K
ACADEMIC PLAYS
[The academic drama only lies on the fringe of my subject, but I have included notes on extant English plays in chapters xxiii and xxiv, and give below, for the sake of convenience, a list of these, and another of those Latin plays which there is any positive evidence for assigning to the period 1558–1616 and to English authorship. Fuller treatment will be found in G. B. Churchill and W. Keller, Die lateinischen Universitäts-Dramen in der Zeit der Königin Elisabeth (1898, Jahrbuch, xxxiv. 220); G. C. Moore Smith, Notes on Some English University Plays (1908, M. L. R. iii. 141), and Plays performed in Cambridge Colleges before 1583 (1909, Fasciculus J. W. Clark dicatus, 265); L. B. Morgan, The Latin University Drama (1911, Jahrbuch, xlvii. 69); and F. S. Boas, University Plays (1910, C. H. vi. 293, with full bibliography), and University Drama in the Tudor Age (1914). Further material from Cambridge archives is in preparation by G. C. Moore Smith. In addition to the plays given in this list, some are incorporated in the description of The Christmas Prince (cf. ch. xxiv, s.a. 1607–8.]