Come, listen to my story,
To see Death with his rakering brand,
Mongst such an auditorye,
Regarding neither Cardinal’s might,
Nor yet the rugged face of Henry the eighth.”
A sonnet upon the pitiful Burning of the Globe playhouse in London. Anonymous about 1613.
“If I should have set down the several terms and damages done this year by fire, in the very many and sundry places of this Kingdom, it would contain many a sheet of paper, as is evident by the incessante collections throughout the Churches of this realm for such as have been spoyled by fire. Also upon S. Peter’s day last, the playhouse or Theatre called the Globe, upon the Bankside neare London, by negligent discharging of a peal of ordinance close to the south side, the Thatch thereof took fire and the wind sudainly 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 8. And the next spring it was new builded in a far finer manner than before.”
The Annals or General Chronicle of England, begun first by Master John Stow and afterwards continued and augmented with matters foreign and domestique, ancient and modern, unto the end of the present year, 1614, by Edmund Howe, Gentleman, London.
Howe evidently made a slip when he wrote ‘upon S. Peter’s Day last,’ that date would refer to the year 1614. Howe admits that he continued the chronicle up to the end of that year, 1614. The fire took place in 1613.