It is impossible to say whether ‘Mr. Pope’ was Thomas Pope of the King’s men at the neighbouring Globe, or Morgan Pope, who was formerly interested in the Bear House, or some other Pope; nor is it clear how he was in a position to authorize Henslowe to pull down the theatre. Dr. Greg draws the natural inference from the wording that he may have given his consent as a prospective lessee of the property.[1202] In any case the Rose was not pulled down until two or three years later. The Sewers records show that in January 1604 not Philip but Francis Henslowe was amerced 6s. 8d. for it, which may mean that Lennox’s men were playing there; that on 4 October 1605 Philip Henslowe was amerced, but return was made that it was ‘out of his hands’; that on 14 February 1606 Edward Box, of Bread Street, London, was amerced for it; and that on 25 April 1606 Box was amerced for the site of ‘the late play-house in Maid lane’.[1203]
There is no record of plays at the Rose after 1603.[1204] It is in the Delaram engravings, but not in any later views except those of the Merian group, where it appears, flagged but unnamed, on the river edge.[1205] Nor is it mentioned with the Hope, Globe, and Swan in Holland’s Leaguer (1632). The explanation may perhaps be that the Merian engraver followed some out-of-date authority, such as Delaram, which had got the house farther north than Norden puts it, and as it had long ceased to exist, did not know its name. On the other hand, it is also just conceivable that for a short period the Rose, or some other building at the north end of the Rose site, had a renewed life as a place of public entertainment. Alleyn was paying ‘tithe dwe for the Rose’ in 1622.[1206] And Malone cites Herbert’s ‘office-book’ for a statement that after 1620 the Swan and the Rose were ‘used occasionally for the exhibition of prize-fighters’.[1207]
x. THE SWAN
[Bibliographical Note.—John de Witt’s description and plan are published in K. T. Gaedertz, Zur Kenntnis der altenglischen Bühne (1888), and more exactly by H. B. Wheatley in On a Contemporary Drawing of the Swan Theatre, 1596 (N. S. S. Trans. 1887–92, 215). They are discussed by H. Logemann in Anglia, xix. 117, by W. Archer in The Universal Review for June 1888, by W. Rendle in 7 N. Q. vi. 221, by J. Le G. Brereton, De Witt at the Swan (1916, Sh.-Homage, 204), by myself in a paper on The Stage of the Globe in The Stratford Town Shakespeare, x. 351, and in most recent treatises on Elizabethan staging; cf. chh. xviii, xx. Earlier material is collected by W. Rendle in The Play-houses at Bankside in the Time of Shakespeare (Antiquarian Magazine and Bibliographer, 1885, vii. 207). The facts as to Langley’s purchase and the pleadings and order in the suit of Shawe et al. v. Langley before the Court of Requests in 1597–8 (cited as S. v. L.) are given by C. W. Wallace, The Swan Theatre and the Earl of Pembroke’s Servants (1911, E. S. xliii. 340). T. S. Graves, A Note on the Swan Theatre (M. P. ix. 431), discusses the light thrown on the internal arrangements of the Swan by the accounts of England’s Joy in 1602.]
The Swan stood in the Liberty and Manor of Paris Garden, at the western end of the Bankside. This manor, from which the royal ‘game’ of bear-baiting took its traditional appellation, had come into the hands of the Crown as part of the possessions of the dissolved monastery of Bermondsey. It was granted in 1578 to nominees of Henry, Lord Hunsdon, conveyed by them to the Cure family, and sold for £850 on 24 May 1589 by Thomas Cure the younger to Francis Langley, a citizen and goldsmith of London. Langley, who was brother-in-law to Sir Anthony Ashley, one of the clerks to the Privy Council, held the office of Alnager and Searcher of Cloth, to which he had been appointed by the Corporation on the recommendation of the Privy Council and Sir Francis Walsingham in December 1582.[1208] The site of the theatre can be precisely identified from a plan of the manor dated in 1627, but based on a survey of 1 November 1624.[1209] It was in the north-east corner of the demesne, east of the manor-house, twenty-six poles due south of Paris Garden stairs, and immediately west of a lane leading to a house called Copt Hall. The outline shown is that of a double circle, or perhaps dodecahedron, divided into twelve compartments, with a small porch or tiring-house towards the road. The exact date of building is unknown. On 3 November 1594 the Lord Mayor wrote to Burghley that Langley ‘intendeth to erect a niew stage or Theater (as they call it) for the exercising of playes vpon the Banck side’, and detailed the usual civic objections to the stage as arguments in favour of the suppression of the project.[1210] It is probable that Burghley refused to intervene and that Langley proceeded at once with the erection of the Swan, which may then have been ready for use in 1595. It is impossible, without the Swan, to make up the tale of four ‘spielhäuser’ seen by the Prince of Anhalt in 1596 (360). To 1596 again is assigned, although with probability rather than certainty, the visit of John de Witt, who not only names but also describes and delineates the Swan.[1211] In any case the Swan had already been in use by players before February 1597, when Langley entered into an arrangement for its occupation by Lord Pembroke’s men.[1212] The terms of the lease provided that he should make the house ready and furnish apparel, which he alleged cost him £300, and should get his return for this expenditure out of the company’s moiety of the gallery takings, in addition of course to the other moiety which in accordance with theatrical custom went to him as rent.[1213] The enterprise was rudely interrupted by the production of The Isle of Dogs at the Swan itself, and the restraint of 28 July 1597 which was the result. The leading members of Pembroke’s company joined or rejoined the Admiral’s at the Rose, and became involved in litigation with Langley on account of their breach of covenant.[1214] For a time Langley succeeded in keeping a company together, and the Swan remained open.[1215] It was perhaps the intention of the Privy Council order of 19 February 1598, against an intrusive ‘third company’ which was competing with the Chamberlain’s and the Admiral’s, to close it.[1216] If so, Langley may still for a time have found means of evasion, since on the following 1 May the vestry of St. Saviour’s were viewing new buildings of his, and at the same time negotiating with Henslowe and Meade for money for the poor ‘in regarde of theire playe-houses’.[1217] During the next few years, however, such notices as we get of the Swan, while showing that it was still in existence and available for occasional entertainments, carry no evidence of any use by a regular company. Francis Meres, in his Palladis Tamia of 1598, tells us that it was the scene of a challenge in ‘extemporall’ versifying by Robert Wilson.[1218] It was one of the wooden theatres which were seen by Hentzner in the same year, and no doubt the one near which he describes the royal barge as lying.[1219] On 15 May 1600 the Council sanctioned its use for feats of activity by Peter Bromvill.[1220] On 7 February 1602 it was occupied by fencers, and while two of these, by names Turner and Dun, were playing their prizes upon its stage, Dun was unfortunate enough to receive a mortal wound in the eye.[1221] On 6 November 1602 it was chosen by Richard Vennar for his impudent mystification of England’s Joy. The accounts of this transaction show that it was fitted with ‘hangings, curtains, chairs, and stools’, and capable of scenic effects, such as the appearance of a throne of blessed souls in heaven and of black and damned souls with fireworks from beneath the stage.[1222] Meanwhile Langley had died in 1601 and in January 1602 the Paris Garden estate was sold to Hugh Browker, a protonotary of the Court of Common Pleas, in whose family it remained to 1655.[1223] About 1611 it was once more taken into use for plays. The Roaring Girl (1611), itself a Fortune play, has an allusion to a knight who ‘lost his purse at the last new play i’ the Swan’,[1224] and the accounts of the overseers of Paris Garden contain entries of receipts from ‘the play house’ or ‘the Swan’ in each April from 1611 to 1615.[1225] The last entry is of so small an amount that it probably only covered a fraction of a year, and I think the inference is that the Swan was disused on the opening of the Hope in 1614.[1226] If so, it had probably been taken over by Henslowe for the use of the Lady Elizabeth’s men, who came into existence in 1611, and whose Chaste Maid in Cheapside was published in 1630 as ‘often acted at the Swan on the Bankeside’. The Hope itself was modelled structurally upon the Swan. Its measurements were the same, and it had similar partitions between the rooms and external staircases. Its heavens, however, were to be supported without the help of posts from the stage, since this had to be removable on days of bear-baiting. It is obviously illegitimate to infer from this specification that the stage of the Swan, which was not used for bear-baiting, was also removable. The accounts of the overseers show one more payment from the ‘players’ in 1621, which perhaps supports the statement contained in one of Malone’s notes from Sir Henry Herbert’s office-book, that after 1620 the Swan was ‘used occasionally for the exhibition of prize-fighters’.[1227] The theatre is marked ‘Old Play-house’ in the manor map of 1627. The last notice of it is in Holland’s Leaguer (1632) as a famous amphitheatre, which was ‘now fallen to decay, and like a dying swanne hanging downe her head seemed to sing her own dierge’.[1228]
Many of the maps of the Bankside do not extend far enough west to take in the Swan. It is named and shown as an octagonal or decagonal building by Visscher (1616) and in maps of the Merian group (1638), but not by Hollar (1647).
xi. THE GLOBE
[Bibliographical Note.—The devolution of the Globe shares can be traced in the documents of three lawsuits: (a) Ostler v. Heminges, in the Court of King’s Bench in 1616 (Coram Rege Roll 1454, 13 Jac. I, Hilary Term, m. 692), described by C. W. Wallace in The Times of 2 and 4 Oct. 1909, and in part privately printed by him in Advance Sheets from Shakespeare, the Globe, and Blackfriars (1909), here cited as O. v. H.; (b) Witter v. Heminges and Condell, in the Court of Requests (1619–20), described by C. W. Wallace in The Century of Aug. 1910, and printed by him in Nebraska University Studies, x (1910), 261, here cited as W. v. H.; and (c) the proceedings before the Lord Chamberlain in 1635 known as the Sharers Papers, and printed by Halliwell-Phillipps in Outlines, i. 312. Professor Wallace’s descriptive articles require some corrections from the texts of his documents. Much evidence bearing upon the site of the theatre was collected by W. Rendle in The Bankside, Southwark, and the Globe Play-house (1877), printed by the N. S. S. as an appendix to Harrison, pt. ii (cited as Rendle, Bankside), in Walford’s Antiquarian, viii (1885), 209, and in The Anchor Brewery (1888, Inns of Old Southwark, 56), by G. Hubbard in Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects, 3rd series, xvii. 26, and London and Middlesex Arch. Soc. Trans. n. s. ii (1912), pt. iii, and most fully by W. Martin in Surrey Archaeological Collections, xxiii (1910), 149. Some additional facts, from records of the Sewers Commission for Kent and Surrey in the possession of the London County Council, and from deeds concerning the Brend estate, were published by Dr. Wallace in The Times of 30 April and 1 May 1914, and led to discussion by Dr. Martin, Mr. Hubbard, and others in 11 N. Q. x. 209, 290, 335; xi. 447; xii. 10, 50, 70, 121, 143, 161, 201, 224, 264, 289, 347, and by W. W. Braines in The Site of the Globe Play-house (1921). A paper by the present writer on The Stage of the Globe is in the Stratford Town Shakespeare, x. 351.]
In the building of the Globe use was made of the materials of the old Theatre (q.v.) which, according to Allen v. Burbadge (1602), the Burbadges, with Peter Street and others, pulled down on 28 December 1598, carried ‘all the wood and timber therof unto the Banckside in the parishe of St. Marye Overyes, and there erected a newe playehowse with the sayd timber and woode’.[1229] An earlier account gives the date of the audacious proceeding as 20 January 1599. The formal lease of the new site from the freeholder, Nicholas Brend of West Molesey, was executed on 21 February 1599. No doubt Street, who had assisted in the transfer, was the builder and had finished his job when on 8 January 1600 he contracted with Henslowe and Alleyn to put up the Fortune (q.v.) on the model, with certain modifications, of ‘the late erected plaiehowse on the Banck in the saide parishe of St. Saviours called the Globe’. This contract allowed twenty-eight weeks for the work. Probably the Globe took about the same time, for it is described as ‘de novo edificata’ in the inquisition on the property left by the lessor’s father, Thomas Brend, which is dated on 16 May 1599.[1230] It may not then have been quite finished, but it was doubtless ready for the occupation of the Chamberlain’s men by the beginning of the autumn season of 1599. One of the earliest plays there produced by them was Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar which on 21 September Thomas Platter crossed the water to see ‘in dem streüwinen Dachhaus’.[1231] Whether the Globe or its predecessor the Curtain was the ‘wooden O’ of Henry V, 1, prol. 13, must be more doubtful, as the prologue to Act V of the same play contemplates the triumphant return of Essex from Ireland, and in fact Essex left England on 27 March and returned, not triumphant, on 28 September 1599.[1232] Jonson refers to ‘this faire-fild Globe’ as the scene of his Every Man Out of his Humour, produced in the autumn of 1600.[1233] The Privy Council order of the previous 22 June, which enacts that there shall be one allowed house only ‘in Surrey in that place which is commonlie called the Banckside or there aboutes’, goes on to recite that the Chamberlain’s men had chosen the Globe to be that one. The allowance of the house ‘in Surrey called the Globe’ is confirmed by the Privy Council letter of 27 December 1601. The order of 9 April 1604 authorizes the opening after the plague of ‘the Globe scituate in Maiden Lane on the Banckside in the Countie of Surrey’. This order evidently contemplates that the King’s men will use the house, which was assigned to them by name as ‘theire nowe vsual howse called the Globe within our County of Surrey’ by the terms of the patent of 19 May 1603. The precedent is followed in the later patents of 1619 and 1625, and there is nothing to indicate that any other company than the Chamberlain’s or King’s men ever performed, even temporarily, at the theatre.
The Globe was held by a syndicate, composed mainly of members of the company, on a leasehold tenure. The site, which had been garden ground, was described in the original lease with some minuteness as follows:[1234]