With characteristic energy and courage he at once set about the task of realizing this dream. He found in the Blackfriars precinct a large building which, he thought, would admirably serve his purpose. This building was none other than the old Frater of the Monastery, a structure one hundred and ten feet long and fifty-two feet wide, with stone walls three feet thick, and a flat roof covered with lead. From the Loseley documents, which M. Feuillerat has placed at the disposal of scholars,[280] we are now able to reconstruct the old Frater building, and to point out exactly that portion which was made into a playhouse.[281]
At the time of the dissolution, the top story consisted of a single large room known as the "Upper Frater," and also as the "Parliament Chamber" from the fact that the English Parliament met here on several occasions; here, also, was held the trial before Cardinals Campeggio and Wolsey for the divorce of the unhappy Queen Catherine and Henry VIII—a scene destined to be reënacted in the same building by Shakespeare and his fellows many years later. In 1550 the room was granted, with various other properties in Blackfriars, to Sir Thomas Cawarden.[282]
PLAN ILLUSTRATING THE SECOND BLACKFRIARS PLAYHOUSE
The Playhouse was made by combining the Hall and the Parlor.
The space below the Parliament Chamber was divided into three units. At the northern end was a "Hall" extending the width of the building. It is mentioned in the Survey[283] of 1548 as "a Hall ... under the said Frater"; and again in the side-note: "Memorandum, my Lorde Warden claimeth the said Hall." Just to the south of the Hall was a "Parlor," or dining-chamber, "where commonly the friars did use to break their fast." It is described in the Survey as being "under the said Frater, of the same length and breadth." The room could not have been of the "same length and breadth" as the great Parliament Chamber, for not only would such dimensions be absurd for an informal dining-room, but, as we are clearly told, the "Infirmary" was also under the Parliament Chamber, and was approximately one-third the size of the latter.[284] Accordingly I have interpreted the phrase, "of the same length and breadth," to mean that the Parlor was square. When the room was sold to Burbage it was said to be fifty-two feet in length from north to south, which is exactly the breadth of the building from east to west. The Parlor, as well as the Hall, was claimed by the Lord Warden; and both were granted to Sir Thomas Cawarden in 1550.
South of the Parlor was the Infirmary, described as being "at the western corner of the Inner Cloister" (of which the Frater building constituted the western side), as being under the Parliament Chamber, and as being approximately one-third the size of the Parliament Chamber. The Infirmary seems to have been structurally distinct from the Hall and Parlor.[285] It was three stories high, consisting of a "room beneath the Fermary," the Infirmary itself, a "room above the same";[286] while the Parliament Chamber, extending itself "over the room above the Fermary," constituted a fourth story. Furthermore, not only was the Infirmary a structural unit distinct from the Hall and the Parlor at the north, but it never belonged to Cawarden or More, and hence was not included in the sale to Burbage. It was granted in 1545 to Lady Mary Kingston,[287] from whom it passed to her son, Sir Henry Jerningham, then to Anthony Kempe, who later sold it to Lord Hunsdon;[288] and at the time the playhouse was built, the Infirmary was still in the occupation of Hunsdon.
At the northern end of the Frater building, and extending westward, was a narrow structure fifty feet in length, sixteen feet in breadth, and three stories in height, regarded as a "part of the frater parcel." The middle story, which was on the same level with the Parliament Chamber, was known as the "Duchy Chamber," possibly because of its use in connection with the sittings of Parliament, or with the meetings of the Privy Council there. The building was granted to Cawarden in 1550.[289]
Upon the death of Cawarden all his Blackfriars holdings passed into the possession of Sir William More. From More, in 1596, James Burbage purchased those sections of the Frater building which had originally been granted to Cawarden[290]—that is, all the Frater building except the Infirmary—for the sum of £600, in modern valuation about $25,000.[291] Evidently he had profited by Farrant's experience with More and by his own experience with Gyles Alleyn, and had determined to risk no more leases, but in the future to be his own landlord, cost what it might.