The story of the dramatic transportation of “The Theatre” from the north to the south bank of the Thames is well known to every student of Shakespeare’s life. But Halliwell-Phillipps, who did so much to bring forward new facts concerning it, rarely gives his references, and, among the mass of material which must have passed through his hands, he neglected sufficiently to compare and collate different papers. Hence he did not complete the story of “The Theatre.”
James Burbage had died in February 1597, just before the conclusion of the twenty-one years’ lease granted by Giles Alleyn, who had been juggling with his promise to lengthen it by ten years, on the plea that the conditions had not been fulfilled. Burbage’s sons were already in possession (see my paper “Burbage’s Theatre,” “Fortnightly Review,” July 1909). Richard Burbage entered into negotiations with Henry Evans about a lease of the newly altered theatre at Blackfriars. The Privy Council, on 28th July 1597, had issued an order that the Theatre and the Curtain should be pulled down, or at least dismantled, so as to make them unfit for stage-playing. It was a hard saying, for it meant that all the money, energy, and ingenuity which had been put into the realization of Burbage’s great idea would be dissipated without any compensation, while imitations survived. Cuthbert Burbage, evidently hoping that he would find friends at Court to help him to weather the storm, as he had done before, renewed his entreaties to Alleyn to extend the lease. Alleyn temporized, but allowed him to continue on the old terms for the time. Probably he had no better offer on hand. The Lord Chamberlain’s company went on tour in the summer, when all companies were forbidden to act in the City until Allhallows-tide; but they were engaged to play at Court at Christmas as usual. The year 1598 was critical for them; it is uncertain whether they played at their own “Theatre” or not. Guilpin’s “Skialethia,” published that year, says:
But see yonder one
Who, like the unfrequented Theater,
Walkes in dark silence and vast solitude.
Shakespeare’s friend, the Earl of Southampton, had lost favour with the Queen through his marriage with Elizabeth Vernon. On the other hand, Shakespeare himself had been glorified by Francis Meres, Professor of Rhetoric in Oxford; and Richard Burbage had been generally recognized as the greatest genius on the stage. Hesitation ended when Cuthbert Burbage heard privately that his ground landlord meant to pull down his “Theatre,” ostensibly in obedience to the order of the Privy Council, but really that he might confiscate its materials to repay himself for the mortifications and losses that he fancied he had unjustly endured. Cuthbert looked at Southwark over ye sea, where already Henslowe had prospered in the Rose, and Langley in the Swan, and, secretly finding a site to the east of these, removed.
We are accustomed to think of the building as the permanent and fixed item and the players as the transitory and passing element in a whole theatre. But on this occasion the company, like the snail, in its exodus from Middlesex, carried its house on its back. Two contemporary descriptions of the event give different dates. The Star Chamber proceedings, 44 Eliz., A. xii, 35, state that it was on 28th December 1598; the Coram Rege Roll, Trinity Term 42 Eliz., 587, says it was on the 20th of January following. Possibly the wardrobe and the stuff, the portable properties, and the play-books went on the first date to safe storage; and the solid framework on the later date. But I think authority is all in favour of the earlier date. It was a stiff piece of work to take down and carry away the materials in a short time; it would necessitate a little army of housebreakers and transplanters, probably aided by the players themselves. They had more work to do than they bargained for, as they met sturdy opposition from Giles Alleyn’s men, who saw their expected job and pickings thus torn away from them. It is likely that the night would be selected by the phase of the moon and the time of the tide, for it cannot be supposed that Cuthbert would be rash enough to carry his materials in a train of lumbering wagons across London Bridge, paying wheelage and passage dues, under the danger of being stopped to explain at any point. He would be certain to ship them over the water. He was fortunate in the man he employed, Peter Street, an “ordinary servant of the Queen’s Household.” I find, from an earlier lawsuit (Court of Requests, 91/57, January 1597), that Peter Street had a wharf of his own handy near Bridewell Stairs, whence he probably wafted the lot in a little flotilla of boats and barges, at high tide, to the wharf on Bankside, nearest his new site. The night of 28th December 1598, or rather the following dawn, saw a pile of unsightly wreckage lying on the southern bank of the Thames, beyond Giles Alleyn’s control or the Lord Mayor’s jurisdiction. Peter Street did his best; Burbage did his best; the shareholders were eager, and moneylenders ready; and in a very short time a new “Theatre” rose, like the phœnix, from the ashes of the old. Shakespeare by that time knew what was in a name, and as the decree had gone out against “The Theatre,” they changed its name. Was it because they knew “all the world’s a stage” that they called it then “the Globe”? There Shakespeare was free to create, and Burbage to interpret his creations. Londoners on the other side had known of its exodus, and had watched its rising, and again it was its own advertisement. The hopes of the Thames watermen were radiant as it grew.
The litigation which had handicapped the Burbages had ceased with the death of the two principals, Margaret Braynes and James Burbage. But Cuthbert, even before he left Holywell, had been sucked again into the vortex of the law. In Trinity Term 38 Eliz., 1596, while his father was yet alive, Cuthbert had sued in the King’s Bench, Roger Ames, John Powell, and Richard Robinson, because they had on 1st May 1596 trespassed vi et armis on the inner close of Cuthbert Burbage at Holywell, had destroyed grass to the value of 40s., and had kept the close from the 1st of May till the 27th of June in their own custody, the damage in all amounting to £20. One can read between the lines that in May 1596 James Burbage would be away superintending hurried building alterations in his newly purchased property at Blackfriars, and the company would be on tour to earn their livelihood. The case did not come on for hearing until Tuesday in the Octaves of Hilary, which fell on or about this very removal day, 20th January 1598-9 (Coram Rege Rolls, Hilary 41 Eliz., r. 320). No one has hitherto understood the full bearing of this case, through lack of the light shed on it by a later case (Exchequer Bills and Answers, No. 369, and Exchequer Depositions, 44-45 Eliz., No. 18). Thence we find that Cuthbert Burbage was really in this case acting on behalf of Giles Alleyn, and in co-operation with him, against the three defendants. These, Giles Alleyn said, had been put forward by the Earl of Rutland, the neighbouring land-owner, or rather by command of his steward, Thomas Scriven. They had ejected Cuthbert from the inner court, and inclosed it with a mud wall. Cuthbert had brought an action against Ames and the others for loss of profits; Thomas Scriven, without the knowledge of the Earl, who was a minor and a royal ward, and “was beyond the seas,” caused information to be sent to “the Court of Wards and Liveries”[89] against Cuthbert Burbage and Richard Allen, “misnaming him of purpose that he might not answer.” There had been an injunction issued to stay Burbage’s suit against Ames till the facts should be considered in the Court of Wards. This continued for two years, when, the Earl having come of age and sued his livery, the power of that court ceased, Burbage went on with his suit, and Ames, Powell, and Robinson were forced to plead. They denied force and injury, and demanded to be tried by a jury. The real cause at issue was as to the ownership of “the Capital Mansion House of the late dissolved Priory of St. John Baptist in Holywell.” The Earl of Rutland claimed that his father had had a lease of it from the Queen, with many years yet to run, and that “the void ground” was part of the estate. Cuthbert Burbage had wrongfully entered it, and the Earl’s undertenants had justly withstood him. Giles Alleyn answered that it was true “the void ground” did belong to the capital mansion house, but the capital mansion house did not belong to the Earl. His was only a secondary house, which the Earl’s father had enlarged. The real Capital Mansion House had been granted by Henry VIII to Henry Webbe for £136. He settled it on his daughter Susan when she married Sir George Peckham. They sold it to Christopher Bumpstead, mercer, for £533 6s. 8d. in 1556, and in that same year he sold it to Christopher and Giles Alleyn for £600. Giles held it as the survivor, and drew his rents peaceably till 1st May 1596, when Thomas Scriven commanded Ames to enter, and Cuthbert Burbage sued them under Giles Alleyn’s title. Thomas Scriven had had the case repeatedly postponed, to the great trouble and cost to Alleyn.
Cuthbert Burbage had therefore, during this critical time, shared with his landlord the trouble and worry of this suit against “the trespassers,” though apparently Giles Alleyn was responsible for the costs.
In this very Hilary Term, January 1598-9, Cuthbert’s infuriated and unexpectedly-outwitted landlord took the preliminary steps for bringing a suit against him, or rather against his agent, Peter Street, in the Court of the King’s Bench, also for trespass on the same ground! A strange cross-suit indeed! He made his complaint in Easter Term, 41 Eliz. (see Coram Rege Roll, Trinity Term 42 Eliz., No. 587). This is one of four suits, of which Halliwell-Phillips speaks, and quotes largely from three. But as he did not study their relative dates, and the bearing of the one upon the other, and as he had not read the fourth, the later Star Chamber case, he has missed the legal bearing of them all, and is ignorant of the decisions in any of them. It is very easy, and it becomes very interesting to collate them. In the 1602 Star Chamber case Alleyn says he began his suit against Burbage in the Hilary Term following 28th December 1598; but that would be about 20th January 1598-9, the second date given for the transportation of “The Theatre,” and the time of the hearing of the case brought by Burbage and Alleyn versus Ames and others. I think he was in error, because it is stated in Coram Rege Roll, 42 Eliz., 587, that Giles Alleyn had commenced his suit against Peter Street in Easter Term, 1599, but it had been postponed. This was because Cuthbert Burbage appealed to the Court of Requests, 42 Eliz., 87/74 to stay this suit. Burbage in his complaint, dated 26th January 1599-1600, states simply that Giles Alleyn and his wife, Sara, owners of certain garden grounds and tenements near Holywell, in the parish of St. Leonard’s, Shoreditch, on 13th April 1576, granted them to his father James for good consideration, for a term of twenty-one years at £14 a year. The condition was that if he had spent £200 on the repair of the tenements (not the theatre) before the end of the first ten years, he could then sue for a new lease at the same rent for a new term of twenty-one years, making thirty-one years in all. He could, at the end of either term, carry away any building he had put up for himself. James Burbage was to pay the expenses of drawing up the second lease. All these conditions James Burbage had faithfully performed. But Giles Alleyn would not sign that lease when drawn up, substituting another, in which the Burbages were to pay £10 more annual rent, and not use “The Theatre,” as a theatre, for more than five years of the second term. James Burbage would not sign such a lease, nor would Cuthbert; but the latter had stayed on at the old rent, buoyed up by the hopes of having his new lease signed. It was only when he heard that Alleyn was about to take away the Theatre that he did so himself, which he had a perfect right to do. Alleyn was prosecuting his suit against Peter Street with “rigour and extremity”; the heavy damages he claimed would injure him much. Cuthbert prayed, therefore, that the suit in the King’s Bench might be stayed, and Alleyn summoned to answer personally in this Court.