And where so oft in our Fathers dayes
We have seen so many of Shakspears Playes,
So many of Johnsons, Beaumonts & Fletchers.’
[1638] I do not know what value to attach to a print in the Gardiner collection, reproduced by Baker, 44, 78, as representing the theatre. It shows a Renaissance façade, which can have been no part of the mediaeval building. Adams, 197, reproduces a painting of mediaeval fragments found in rebuilding The Times in 1872, small ground-floor rooms divided by entries. But The Times must cover the site of Hunsdon House as well as that of the theatre.
[1639] As an epilogue to this narrative and an example of how popular history is written, I quote D. E. Oliver, The English Stage (1912), 9, ‘Blackfriars House, a deserted monastery on the Thames side, was granted by Edward VI in 1596 to the Court Players for their use as a play-house, but it was not until the accession of Elizabeth that it received official sanction as a recognized place of public entertainment’.
[1640] Jonas, 132, however, quotes from the register of St. Dunstan’s, Whitefriars, with the date 29 Sept. 1607, ‘Gerry out of the play-house in the Friars buried’, which suggests use of the theatre before 1608. The King’s Revels may well have started by 1607. He also quotes, without date, ‘We present one play-house in the same precinct, not fitting these to be now tolerable’.
[1641] I do not know why Adams, 312, identifies the play-house with a cloister shown in Clapham’s plan. Surely it is more likely to have been the hall also shown at the north-west corner.
[1642] P. C. Acts (1613–14), 166. One Sturgis had leased a house and garden from Sir Edward Gorge, and sublet the garden to ‘one Rossetoe Kynman and others, who goe aboute to erecte a p[l]aye house thereupon’.
[1643] M. S. C. i. 91; cf. ch. xvii. The Blackfriars is still the ‘private house’ of the King’s men in the patent of 1619 issued to them after this controversy.
[1644] It is true that, when the prentices took up Whitefriars for The Hog Hath Lost His Pearl in 1613, the admission per bullettini is said to have been ‘for a note of distinction from ordinary comedians’. But the companies had no need to continue any special system of admission after they had the protection of their patents; Dekker (vide p. 523) speaks of gatherers at private houses in 1609. After the Restoration, ‘ballatine, or tickets sealed for all doors and boxes’ were introduced at the Duke’s Theatre in 1660 (R. W. Lowe, Thomas Betterton, 75).