FINIS CORONAT OPUS.
No bounds, but heaven, shall bound his empery,
Whose azured gates, enchased with his name,
Shall make the Morning haste her grey uprise
To feed her eyes with his engraven fame.
—Dido, i.
Methinks ’tis pride enough to be his son.
See how the morning opes her golden gates,
And takes her farewell of the glorious sun.
—Third Part of Henry VI, ii, 1.
In 1597 the Privy Council commanded that the playhouses in Finbury Fields be leveled to their foundations, but the command had not been executed. It is one thing to decree, it is another to enforce. The indignant spirit of reform that prevailed upon the administrative body appeared to have exhausted its power with the procurance of the mandate, for even on the Sabbath, the annunciatory trumpets before the Curtain and Theater continued to proclaim the daily stage performance.
The last trumpet for the day had blown before the Curtain on a winter afternoon in 1598, and a packed audience already filled its pit and galleries, when a solitary foot traveler, leaving the Shore-ditch highway, entered the narrow lane leading toward the fields. The air was cold and frosty, and that may have caused the traveler to keep the cape of his cloak raised high around his face. At any rate, on such a day, there was nothing in the fact that the low-drawn hat and high-raised cape left visible only a pair of eyes, to raise suspicion that the man desired to avoid identification.
A heavy snow had fallen during the previous night, but a wide, firmly-beaten path led over it across the fields. As he noted this condition of the way, he calculated that several thousand people had preceded him. Was it to hear Alleyn at the Theater, or Burbage at the Curtain? He thought that it was to hear Burbage, and possibly his knowledge of what that great actor was to perform forced this conclusion. The play of Hamlet had already been performed at White Hall before the Queen, but this was to be its first presentation before the public. The praise bestowed upon it by the titled few who had assembled in the banqueting house at the palace had reached the public ear, and its effect was here demonstrated. It was the prospect of seeing this play that led this man across the fields which he had not entered for several years.
If he had been at all interested in his surroundings, he would have noticed that in the short space of time which had elapsed since the last day he had passed through the break in the field wall, many changes had taken place. The ruins of the old church of Holywell (demolished in the reign of Henry VIII) had been removed, or appropriated for the walls of dwellings arising above the ancient foundations. Much solid ground had been made where the sedge had sprung from shallow marsh water, and houses here and there dotted the white expanse. An assembly house for the worship of Brownists stood within the brick boundary wall of the fields. Although a low structure, it covered a large area and appeared a menace against the playhouses. These theaters, of height equivalent to three stories, were resplendent with lively-colored fronts and painted windows. A single red flag fluttered above the top of each. There had been no changes in their exteriors since the observer last saw them. Hundreds of horses, many richly caparisoned, and others bearing rude saddles only, stood in groups before both houses, while shivering boys and men held them. Only a few of the dismounted riders were standing at the entrances of the theaters.
The late comer passed around one of these groups, and at the entrance of the Curtain presented a letter to the doorkeeper, who, without betraying his inability to read, passed it into a square window, within which was a room with cheerful fire and a man who broke open the letter and read it, saying:
“It is the man for whom a box has been reserved.”