[581] William Camden, Annals, under the date of March 4, 1617. Yet Sir Sidney Lee (A Life of William Shakespeare, p. 60) says, "built about 1610."
[582] Hazlitt's Dodsley, xv, 408.
[583] Fleay and Lawrence are wrong in supposing that the Cockpit was circular.
[584] Alias Christopher Hutchinson. Several actors of the day employed aliases: Nicholas Wilkinson, alias Tooley; Theophilus Bourne, alias Bird; James Dunstan, alias Tunstall, etc. Whether Beeston admitted other persons to a share in the building I cannot learn. In a passage quoted by Malone (Variorum, iii, 121) from the Herbert Manuscript, dated February 20, 1635, there is a reference to "housekeepers," indicating that Beeston had then admitted "sharers" in the proprietorship of the building. And in an order of the Privy Council, May 12, 1637 (The Malone Society's Collections, i, 392), we read: "Command the keepers of the playhouse called the Cockpit in Drury Lane, who either live in it or have relation to it, not to permit plays to be acted there till further order."
[585] Wallace, Three London Theatres, p. 35.
[586] Wallace, ibid., pp. 32, 46. John Smith was delivering silk and other clothes to the Queen Anne's Men at the Red Bull from 1612 until February 23, 1617.
[587] Annals (1631), p. 1026.
[588] The Malone Society's Collections, i, 374. Collier, in The History of English Dramatic Poetry (1879), i, 386, prints a long ballad on the event; but he does not give its source, and its genuineness has been questioned. The following year threats to pull down the Fortune, the Red Bull, and the Cockpit led to the setting of special watches. See The Malone Society's Collections, i, 377.
[589] Greenstreet, Documents, The New Shakspere Society's Transactions (1880-86), p. 504.
[590] Mr. Wallace (Three London Theatres, p. 29) says that the documents he prints make it "as certain as circumstances unsupported by contemporary declaration can make it, that Queen Anne's company occupied the Red Bull continuously from the time of its erection ... till their dissolution, 1619." His documents make it certain only that Queen Anne's Men occupied the Red Bull until February 23, 1617. Other documents prove that they occupied the Cockpit from 1617 until 1619. (Note the letter of the Privy Council quoted above.) The documents printed by Greenstreet show that Queen Anne's Men moved to the Cockpit on June 3, 1617, and continued there.