To the right honorable the Lords and others of Her Majesty's most honorable Privy Council.—Humbly shewing and beseeching your honors, the inhabitants of the precinct of the Blackfriars, London, that whereas one Burbage hath lately bought certain rooms in the same precinct near adjoining unto the dwelling houses of the right honorable the Lord Chamberlaine [Lord Cobham] and the Lord of Hunsdon, which rooms the said Burbage is now altering, and meaneth very shortly to convert and turn the same into a common playhouse, which will grow to be a very great annoyance and trouble, not only to all the noblemen and gentlemen thereabout inhabiting, but also a general inconvenience to all the inhabitants of the same precinct, both by reason of the great resort and gathering together of all manner of vagrant and lewd persons ... as also for that there hath not at any time heretofore been used any common playhouse within the same precinct, but that now all players being banished by the Lord Mayor from playing within the city ... they now think to plant themselves in liberties, etc.[307]
The first person to sign the petition was the Dowager Lady Elizabeth Russell; the second was none other than George Cary, Lord Hunsdon, at the time the patron of Burbage's company of actors.[308] It is not surprising, therefore, that as a result of this petition the Lords of the Privy Council (of which Lord Cobham was a conspicuous member) issued an order in which they "forbad the use of the said house for plays."[309] This order wrecked the plans of Burbage quite as effectively as did the stubbornness of Gyles Alleyn.
Possibly the mental distress Burbage suffered at the hands of the Privy Council and of Gyles Alleyn affected his health; at least he did not long survive this last sling of fortune. In February, 1597, just before the expiration of the Alleyn lease, he died, leaving the Theatre to his son Cuthbert, the bookseller, Blackfriars to his actor-son, Richard, the star of Shakespeare's troupe, and his troubles to both. With good reason Cuthbert declared many years later that the ultimate success of London theatres had "been purchased by the infinite cost and pains of the family of Burbages."
When later in 1597 the Lord Chamberlain's Players were forced to leave Cuthbert's Theatre, Richard Burbage was not able to establish them in his comfortable Blackfriars house; instead, they first went to the old Curtain in Shoreditch, and then, under the leadership of the Burbage sons, erected for themselves a brand-new home on the Bankside, called "The Globe."
The order of the Privy Council had summarily forbidden the use of Blackfriars as a "public" playhouse. Its proprietor, however, Richard Burbage, might take advantage of the precedent established in the days of Farrant, and let the building for use as a "private" theatre.[310] Exactly when he was first able to lease the building as a "private" house we do not know, for the history of the building between 1597 (when it was completed) and 1600 (when it was certainly occupied by the Children of the Chapel) is very indistinct. We have no definite evidence to connect the Chapel Children, or, indeed, any specific troupe, with Blackfriars during these years. Yet prior to 1600 the building seems to have been used for acting. Richard Burbage himself seems to say so. In leasing the building to Evans, in 1600, he says that he considered "with himself that" Evans could not pay the rent "except the said Evans could erect and keep a company of playing-boys or others to play plays and interludes in the said playhouse in such sort as before time had been there used."[311] Now, unless this refers to Farrant's management of the Chapel Boys in Blackfriars—nearly a quarter of a century earlier—it means that before 1600 some actors, presumably "playing-boys," had used Burbage's theatre. Moreover, there seems to be evidence to show that the troupe thus vaguely referred to was under the management of Evans; for, in referring to his lease of Blackfriars in 1600, Evans describes the playhouse as "then or late in the tenure or occupation of your said oratour."[312] What these vague references mean we cannot now with our limited knowledge determine. But there is not sufficient evidence to warrant the usual assumption that Evans and Giles had opened the Blackfriars with the Children of the Chapel in 1597.[313]
The known history of Blackfriars as a regular theatre may be said to begin in the autumn of 1600. On September 2 of that year, Henry Evans signed a lease of the playhouse for a period of twenty-one years, at an annual rental of £40. This interesting step on the part of Evans calls for a word of explanation as to his plans.
The Children of the Chapel Royal, who had attained such glory at Blackfriars during the Farrant-Hunnis-Evans-Oxford-Lyly régime, had thereafter sunk into dramatic insignificance. Since 1584, when Lyly was forced to give up his playhouse, they had not presented a play at Court. Probably they did not entirely cease to act, for they can be vaguely traced in the provinces during a part of this period; but their dramatic glory was almost wholly eclipsed. Evans, who had managed the Boys under Hunnis, Oxford, and Lyly, hoped now to reëstablish the Children of the Chapel at Blackfriars as they had been in his younger days. Like James Burbage, he was a man of ideas. His plan was to interest in his undertaking the Master of the Chapel, Nathaniel Giles, who had succeeded to the office at the death of Hunnis in 1597, and then to make practical use of the patent granted to the Masters of the Children to take up boys for Her Majesty's service. Such a patent, in the normal course of events, had been granted to Giles, as it had been to his predecessors. It read in part as follows:
Elizabeth, by the grace of God, &c., to all mayors, sheriffs, bailiffs, constables, and all other our officers, greeting. For that it is meet that our Chapel Royal should be furnished with well-singing children from time to time, we have, and by these presents do authorize our well-beloved servant, Nathaniel Giles, Master of our Children of our said Chapel, or his deputy, being by his bill subscribed and sealed, so authorized, and having this our present commission with him, to take such and so many children as he, or his sufficient deputy, shall think meet, in all cathedral, collegiate, parish churches, chapels, or any other place or places, as well within liberty as without, within this our realm of England, whatsoever they be.[314]
In such a commission Evans saw wonderful possibilities. He reasoned that since the Queen had forced upon the Chapel Children the twofold service of singing at royal worship and of acting plays for royal entertainment, this twofold service should be met by a twofold organization, the one part designed mainly to furnish sacred music, the other designed mainly to furnish plays. Such a dual organization, it seemed to him, was now more or less necessary, since the number of boy choristers in the Chapel Royal was limited to twelve, whereas the acting of plays demanded at least twice as many. Once the principle that the Chapel Royal should supply the Queen with plays was granted, the commission could be used to furnish the necessary actors; and the old fiction, established by Farrant and Hunnis, of using a "private" playhouse as a means of exercising or training the boys for Court service, would enable the promoters to give public performances and thus handsomely reimburse themselves for their trouble.
Such was Evans's scheme, based upon his former experience with the Children at Farrant's Blackfriars, and suggested, perhaps, by the existence of Burbage's Blackfriars now forbidden to the "common" players. He presented his scheme to Giles, the Master of the Children; and Giles, no doubt, presented it at Court; for he would hardly dare thus abuse the Queen's commission, or thus make a public spectacle of the royal choristers, without in some way first consulting Her Majesty, and securing at least her tacit consent. That Giles and Evans did secure royal permission to put their scheme into operation is certain, although the exact nature of this permission is not clear. Later, for misdemeanors on the part of the management, the Star Chamber ordered "that all assurances made to the said Evans concerning the said house, or plays, or interludes, should be utterly void, and to be delivered up to be cancelled."[315]