‘totam illam parcellam fundi nuper praeantea inclusam & factam in quatuor separalia gardina nuper in tenuris & occupacionibus Thomae Burt & Isbrand Morris diers & Lactantii Roper Salter civis Londoniae continentem in longitudine ab oriente vsque occidentem ducentos & viginti pedes assisae vel eo circiter iacentem & adiungentem viae sive venellae ibidem ex vno latere & abbuttantem super peciam terrae vocatam the Parke super boream & super gardinum tunc vel nuper in tenura siue occupacione cuiusdam Johannis Cornishe versus occidentem & super aliud gardinum tunc vel nuper in tenura sive occupacione cuiusdam Johannis Knowles versus orientem cum omnibus domibus aedificiis structuris vijs easiamentis commoditatibus & pertinentiis adinde spectantibus vel aliquo modo pertinentibus quae dicta praemissa sunt scituata iacentia & existentia infra parochiam sancti Salvatoris in Southwarke in Comitatu Surria aceciam totam illam parcellam terrae nuper praeantea inclusam & factam in tria separalia gardina vnde duo eorundem nuper in tenura sive occupacione cuiusdam Johannis Robertes carpenter ac aliud nuper in occupacione cuiusdam Thomas Ditcher civis & mercatoris scissoris Londoniae scituatam iacentem & existentem in parochia praedicta in praedicto comitatu Surria continentem in longitudine ab oriente ad occidentem per estimacionem centum quinquaginta & sex pedes assisae vel eo circiter & in latitudine a borea ad austrum centum pedes assisae per estimacionem vel eo circiter iacentem & adiungentem super alio latere viae sive venellae praedictae & abbuttantem super gardinum ibidem tunc vel nuper praeantea in occupacione Willelmi Sellers versus orientem & super vnum aliud gardinum ibidem tunc vel nuper praeantea in tenura Johannis Burgram sadler versus occidentem & super venellam ibidem vocatam Mayden lane versus austrum cum omnibus domibus aedificijs structuris vijs easiamentis commoditatibus & pertinentiis ultimis recitatis praemissis seu alicui parti vel parcellae inde spectantibus seu aliquo modo pertinentibus simul cum libero ingressu egressu & regressu & passagio ... per & trans praedictam viam sive venellam iacentem & existentem inter praemissa praedicta.’
The lease was granted for a term of thirty-one years from Christmas 1598 to Christmas 1629, and conveyed the property in two equal moieties, the one to Cuthbert and Richard Burbadge and the other to William Shakespeare, Augustine Phillips, Thomas Pope, John Heminges, and William Kempe.[1235] With the exception of Cuthbert Burbadge these were all members of the Chamberlain’s company. Each moiety was charged with a ground-rent of £7 5s. There is nothing to show how the funds for building were found. ‘Wee’, said the Burbadges in 1635, ‘at like expence built the Globe, with more summes of money taken up at interest, which lay heavy on us many yeeres; and to ourselves wee joyned those deserveing men, Shakspere, Hemings, Condall, Philips, and others, partners in the profittes of that they call the House, but makeing the leases for twenty-one yeeres hath beene the destruction of ourselves and others, for they dyeing at the expiration of three or four yeeres of their lease, the subsequent yeeres became dissolved to strangers, as by marrying with their widdowes and the like by their children.’[1236] This is, however, not a strictly accurate account of what took place in 1599, for Condell was not one of the original ‘housekeepers’, and the original lease was for thirty-one, not twenty-one, years. In any case, the Burbadges contributed the woodwork of the Theatre.
Between the execution of the lease and the completion of the play-house, Shakespeare and his four fellows assigned their moiety to William Levison and Thomas Savage, who ‘reassigned to euerye of them seuerally a fift parte of the said moitie’, so that after the building each of the five had a ‘ioynt tenancie’ with the other four in a moiety of the ground and galleries, and was also ‘tenant in common’ during the term of the lease.[1237] Professor Wallace explains that ‘the purpose of a joint-tenancy was to prevent the breaking up and scattering of an estate into fractions by keeping the property always in the hands of the members, or the longest survivors, or survivor, of them all, thus not allowing it to descend to heirs’. The legal distinction is no doubt sound, but we shall find that, whatever the intention of the assignment and reassignment may have been, the Globe shares did in fact descend to heirs, and that a good deal of trouble and litigation was thereby caused.[1238]
Shortly after the house was built Kempe, no doubt on his withdrawal from the company, assigned his interest to Shakespeare, Heminges, and Phillips, who by further assignments to and from one Thomas Cressey brought in Pope, with the result that each of the four now held a fourth part of the moiety.[1239] Pope died before 13 February 1604 and left his interest to Mary Clark, alias Wood, and Thomas Bromley. Mary Clark must have married John Edmonds, another legatee under the will, for in 1612 an interest corresponding to Pope’s was held by John and Mary Edmonds and Basil Nicoll.[1240] Nicoll, who was Pope’s executor, was presumably acting as trustee for Thomas Bromley. Edmonds, though an actor, belonged not to the King’s men, but was a Queen’s man by 1618. One-eighth of the house, therefore, was alienated from the company in 1604. A further alienation, which proved particularly troublesome in its results, took place on the death of Phillips in May 1605. The exact facts became a matter of legal dispute. But it appears that Phillips’ interest passed first to his widow Anne as executrix, and, when her marriage in the course of 1606 to the spendthrift John Witter became known, to Heminges, who succeeded her as executor under the terms of the will. In this capacity Heminges leased an interest to the Witters on 14 February 1611 for a term of eighteen years from Christmas 1610.[1241] This interest was not a fourth, but only a sixth of the moiety, since at some date between the death of Phillips and that of Sly on 16 August 1608 the moiety had been redivided to allow of the introduction of Henry Condell and William Sly into the syndicate of housekeepers.[1242] A similar transaction took place on 20 February 1612, when Basil Nicoll and John and Mary Edmonds, then holding one-sixth of the moiety, Shakespeare and Witter, each also holding one-sixth, and Heminges and Condell, holding three-sixths, joined to convey one-seventh of the moiety to William Ostler.[1243] It must, I think, be assumed that Heminges and Condell had together purchased the share left by Sly to his son Robert.
The acquisition of the Blackfriars by the King’s men in 1608 did not, at first at least, detract from the importance of the Globe as the leading London theatre. It is so accepted by foreign visitors in 1610 and again in 1611.[1244]
On 29 June 1613 the house was ‘casually burnt downe and consumed with fier’.[1245] The event was important enough to find a record in Howes’ continuation of Stowe’s Annales:[1246]
‘Upon S. Peters day last, the play-house or Theater, called the Globe, upon the Banckside near London, by negligent discharging of a peal of ordinance, close to the south-side thereof, the thatch took fire, and the wind sodainly disperst the flame round about, and in a very short space the whole building was quite consumed, and no man hurt; the house being filled with people to behold the play, viz. of Henry the Eighth. And the next spring it was new builded in far fairer manner than before.’
Many other contemporary accounts exist. Thus Thomas Lorkin wrote to Sir Thomas Puckering on 30 June:[1247]
‘No longer since than yesterday, while Burbage’s company were acting at the Globe the play of Henry VIII, and there shooting off certain chambers in way of triumph, the fire catched and fastened upon the thatch of the house, and there burned so furiously, as it consumed the whole house, all in less than two hours, the people having enough to do to save themselves.’
On 2 July Sir Henry Wotton wrote to his nephew Sir Edmund Bacon:[1248]