Platter then describes the Cockpit and the baiting. He concludes:
‘With such and many other pastimes besides the English spend their time; in the comedies they learn what is going on in other lands, and this happens without alarm, husband and wife together in a familiar place, since for the most part the English do not much use to travel, but are content ever to learn of foreign matters at home, and ever to take their pastime.’
A year later than Platter, another traveller thus describes a visit to the Bankside:[1046]
‘1600 die Lunae 3 Julii. Audivimus comoediam Anglicam; theatrum ad morem antiquorum Romanorum constructum ex lignis, ita formatum ut omnibus ex partibus spectatores commodatissime singula videre possint. In reditu transivimus pontem magnificis aedificiis ornatum e quibus uni adhuc affixa cernuntur capita quorundam comitum et nobilium, qui laesae Majestatis rei supplicio affecti sunt.’
When Lewis of Anhalt and de Witt wrote, there were four theatres, exclusive of the City inn-yards, which were probably already closed. Platter found two, and sometimes three, performances being given daily. This agrees with the evidence available from other sources. After the scandal of The Isle of Dogs in 1597, the Privy Council decreed a limitation of the London companies to two, the Chamberlain’s men and the Admiral’s. The former played at the Curtain until 1599, when they destroyed the Theatre and built the Globe. The latter played at the Rose until 1600, when they migrated to the newly built Fortune. But it is clear that the ordinance of the Privy Council was not strictly observed. An intruding company was playing in February 1598, either at the Theatre or the Swan. Platter’s three houses in 1599 included the Curtain, together presumably with the Globe and the Rose. When the Council sanctioned the opening of the Fortune in 1600, they understood that the Curtain was to be ‘either ruinated or applied to some other good use’, but it was still the scene of plays in 1601. Finally, in the spring of 1602 Elizabeth ordered the Council to tolerate a third company, that of the Earl of Worcester, Master of the Horse. This was then playing at the Boar’s Head, a short-lived house of which practically nothing is known; in the autumn it moved to the Rose. The Swan possibly went out of use, except for the occasional performances of acrobats and fencers, or of amateurs. On the other hand, Lord Hertford’s men were in London during the winter of 1602–3, in addition to the three privileged companies, and they must have practised somewhere.
To the above must be added, for the closing years of Elizabeth’s reign, the ‘private’ houses; Paul’s reopened in the winter of 1599, the Blackfriars in that of 1600. Of these Platter knows nothing, but Duke Philip Julius of Stettin-Pomerania, in the autumn of 1602, in addition to performances at the Fortune and another theatre, saw also, doubtless at the Blackfriars, the Kinder-comoedia. The following is an extract from the diary of the visit kept by the duke’s secretary, Frederic Gerschow:[1047]
‘13 [September] On the thirteenth a comedy was played, of the taking of Stuhl-Weissenberg, firstly by the Turks, and thereafter back again by the Christians.
14. In the afternoon was played a tragicomedy of Samson and the half tribe of Benjamin.’[1048]
On 16 September the duke and his retinue saw the baiting. On 18 September they visited the Blackfriars, and Gerschow wrote an account of the organization of the Children of the Chapel and of the nature of their performances.[1049]
The Globe and the Fortune continued in regular use, as the houses of the King’s men, and the Prince’s men respectively, during the new reign, and endured to the closing of the theatres in 1642. Each was destroyed by fire and rebuilt; the former in 1613, the latter in 1621. Queen Anne’s men at first used the Boar’s Head and the Curtain, but migrated from the Boar’s Head to the Red Bull, which had been built by 1606. This became their principal house, and they cannot be shown to have used the Curtain after 1609. These were the only companies of men players in London during 1603–8, and the Globe, the Fortune, and the Red Bull are obviously the ‘three houses’ whose rivalry is referred to by Dekker in the following passage from his Raven’s Almanack of 1608:[1050]