Shakespearean Playhouses | Page 5

to write their separate histories. Below, however, I have recorded in chronological order the more important references to them which have come under my observation.
1557. On September 5 the Privy Council instructed the Lord Mayor of London "that some of his officers do forthwith repair to the Boar's Head without Aldgate, where, the Lords are informed, a lewd play called A Sackful of News shall be played this day," to arrest the players, and send their playbook to the Council.[7]
[Footnote 7: Dasent, Acts of the Privy Council, VI, 168.]
1573. During this year there were various fencing contests held at the Bull in Bishopsgate.[8]
[Footnote 8: W. Rendle, The Inns of Old Southwark, p. 235.]
1577. In February the Office of the Revels made a payment of 10d. "ffor the cariadge of the parts of ye well counterfeit from the Bell in gracious strete to St. Johns, to be performed for the play of Cutwell."[9]
[Footnote 9: A. Feuillerat, Documents Relating to the Office of the Revels in the Time of Queen Elizabeth, p. 277.]
1579. On June 23 James Burbage was arrested for the sum of ��5 13d. "as he came down Gracious Street towards the Cross Keys there to a play." The name of the proprietor of this inn-playhouse is preserved in one of the interrogatories connected with the case: "Item. Whether did you, John Hynde, about xiii years past, in anno 1579, the xxiii of June, about two of the clock in the afternoon, send the sheriff's officer unto the Cross Keys in Gratious Street, being then the dwelling house of Richard Ibotson, citizen and brewer of London," etc.[10] Nothing more, I believe, is known of this person.
[Footnote 10: Burbage v. Brayne, printed in C.W. Wallace, The First London Theatre, pp. 82, 90. Whether Burbage was going to the Cross Keys as a spectator or as an actor is not indicated; but the presumption is that he was then playing at the inn, although he was proprietor of the Theatre.]
1579. Stephen Gosson, in The Schoole of Abuse, writes favorably of "the two prose books played at the Bell Savage, where you shall find never a word without wit, never a line without pith, never a letter placed in vain; the Jew and Ptolome, shown at the Bull ... neither with amorous gesture wounding the eye, nor with slovenly talk hurting the ears of the chast hearers."[11]
[Footnote 11: Arber's English Reprints, p. 40.]
1582. On July 1 the Earl of Warwick wrote to the Lord Mayor requesting the city authorities to "give license to my servant, John David, this bearer, to play his profest prizes in his science and profession of defence at the Bull in Bishopsgate, or some other convenient place to be assigned within the liberties of London." The Lord Mayor refused to allow David to give his fencing contest "in an inn, which was somewhat too close for infection, and appointed him to play in an open place of the Leaden Hall," which, it may be added, was near the Bull.[12]
[Footnote 12: See The Malone Society's Collections, I, 55-57.]
1583. William Rendle, in The Inns of Old Southwark, p. 235, states that in this year "Tarleton, Wilson, and others note the stay of the plague, and ask leave to play at the Bull in Bishopsgate, or the Bell in Gracechurch Street," citing as his authority merely "City MS." The Privy Council on November 26, 1583, addressed to the Lord Mayor a letter requesting "that Her Majesty's Players [i.e., Tarleton, Wilson, etc.] may be suffered to play within the liberties as heretofore they have done."[13] And on November 28 the Lord Mayor issued to them a license to play "at the sign of the Bull in Bishopsgate Street, and the sign of the Bell in Gracious Street, and nowhere else within this City."[14]
[Footnote 13: See The Remembrancia, in The Malone Society's Collections, I, 66.]
[Footnote 14: C.W. Wallace, The First London Theatre, p. 11.]
1587. "James Cranydge played his master's prize the 21 of November, 1587, at the Bellsavage without Ludgate, at iiij sundry kinds of weapons.... There played with him nine masters."[15]
[Footnote 15: MS. Sloane, 2530, f. 6-7, quoted by J.O. Halliwell in his edition of Tarlton's Jests, p. xi. The Bell Savage seems to have been especially patronized by fencers. George Silver, in his Paradoxe of Defence (1599), tells how he and his brother once challenged two Italian fencers to a contest "to be played at the Bell Savage upon the scaffold, when he that went in his fight faster back than he ought, should be in danger to break his neck off the scaffold."]
Before 1588. In Tarlton's Jests[16] we find a number of references to that famous actor's pleasantries in the London inns used by the Queen's Players. It is impossible to date these exactly, but Tarleton became a member of the