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.
FOOTNOTES:
[51] 14 Eliz., c. 5.
[52] Lansdowne MS., XX, 10, 11, 12, 13.