Shakespearean Playhouses Part 23

[Footnote 416: Halliwell-Phillipps, _Outlines_, I, 316. This evidence seems to me unimpeachable. I should add, however, that Mr. Wallace considers the estimate "excessive," and says that he has "other contemporary doc.u.ments showing the cost was far less than 1400." (The London _Times_, October 2, 1909.)]

[Footnote 417: Wallace, _Shakespeare and his London a.s.sociates_, p.

61. There is, I think, no truth in the statement made by the inaccurate annotator of the Phillipps copy of Stow's _Annals_, that the Globe was built "at the great charge of King James and many n.o.blemen and others." (See _The Academy_, October 28, 1882, p. 314.) The Witter-Heminges doc.u.ments sufficiently disprove that. We may well believe, however, that the King and his n.o.blemen were interested in the new building, and encouraged the actors in many ways.]

[Footnote 418: Wallace, _Shakespeare and his London a.s.sociates_, p.

70.]

The New Globe, like its predecessor, was built of timber,[419] and on the same site--indeed the carpenters made use of the old foundation, which seems not to have been seriously injured. In a "return" of 1634, preserved at St. Saviour's, we read: "The Globe playhouse, near Maid Lane, built by the company of players, with a dwelling house thereto adjoining, built with timber, about 20 years past, upon an old foundation."[420] In spite of the use made of the old foundation, the new structure was unquestionably larger than the First Globe; Marmion, in the Prologue to _Holland's Leaguer_, acted at Salisbury Court in 1634, speaks of "the vastness of the Globe," and Shirley, in the Prologue to _Rosania_, applies the adjective "vast" to the building.

Moreover, the builders had "the wit," as Jonson tells us, "to cover it with tiles." John Taylor, the Water-Poet, writes:

For where before it had a thatched hide, Now to a stately theatre is turn'd.

[Footnote 419: I see no reason to accept Mr. Wallace's suggestion (_The Children of the Chapel at Blackfriars_, p. 34, note 7) that "it seems questionable, but not unlikely, that the timber framework was brick-veneered and plastered over." Mr. Wallace mistakenly accepts Wilkinson's view of the second Fortune as genuine.]

[Footnote 420: Rendle, _Bankside_, p. xvii.]

The Second Globe is represented, but unsatisfactorily, in Hollar's _View of London_, dated 1647 (opposite page 260). It should be noted that the artist was in banishment from 1643 (at which time the Globe was still standing) until 1652, and hence, in drawing certain buildings, especially those not reproduced in earlier views of London, he may have had to rely upon his memory. This would explain the general vagueness of his representation of the Globe.

The construction was not hurried, for the players had Blackfriars as a home. Under normal conditions they did not move from the city to the Bankside until some time in May; and shortly after that date, in the early summer of 1614, the New Globe was ready for them. John Chamberlain writes to Mrs. Alice Carleton on June 30, 1614:

I have not seen your sister Williams since I came to town, though I have been there twice. The first time she was at a neighbor's house at cards, and the next she was gone to the New Globe to a play. Indeed, I hear much speech of this new playhouse, which is said to be the fairest that ever was in England.[421]

[Footnote 421: Birch, _The Court and Times of James the First_, I, 329; quoted by Wallace, _The Children of the Chapel at Blackfriars_, p. 35.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE SECOND GLOBE

From Hollar's _View of London_ (1647).]

With this New Globe Shakespeare had little to do, for his career as a playwright had been run, and probably he had already retired from acting. Time, indeed, was beginning to thin out the little band of friends who had initiated and made famous the Globe organization.

Thomas Pope had died in 1603, Augustine Phillips in 1605, William Slye in 1608, and, just a few months after the opening of the new playhouse, William Osteler, who had been admitted to the partnership in 1611. He had begun his career as a child-actor at Blackfriars, had later joined the King's Men, and had married Heminges's daughter Thomasine.

A more serious blow to the company, however, fell in April, 1616, when Shakespeare himself died. To the world he had been "the applause, delight, the wonder" of the stage; but to the members of the Globe Company he had been for many years a "friend and fellow." Only Burbage and Heminges (described in 1614 as "old Heminges"), now remained of the original venturers. And Burbage pa.s.sed away on March 13, 1619:

He's gone! and with him what a world are dead Which he reviv'd--to be revived so No more. Young Hamlet, old Hieronimo, Kind Lear, the grieved Moor, and more beside That lived in him have now for ever died![422]

[Footnote 422: From a folio MS. in the Huth Library, printed by J.P.

Collier in _The History of English Dramatic Poetry_ (1879), I, 411, and by various others.]

Many elegies in a similar vein were written celebrating his wonderful powers as an actor; yet the tribute that perhaps affects us most deals with him merely as a man. The Earl of Pembroke, writing to the Amba.s.sador to Germany, gives the court news about the mighty ones of the kingdom: "My Lord of Lenox made a great supper to the French Amba.s.sador this night here, and even now all the company are at a play; which I, being tender-hearted, could not endure to see so soon after the loss of my old acquaintance Burbage."[423]

[Footnote 423: Printed by Mrs. Stopes, _Burbage and Shakespeare's Stage_, p. 117, with many other interesting references to the great actor.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE TRADITIONAL SITE OF THE GLOBE

From Wilkinson's _Theatrum Ill.u.s.trata_ (1825). This site is still advocated by some scholars. Compare page 245.]

In 1623 Heminges and Condell, with great "care and paine," collected and published the plays of Shakespeare, "onely to keep the memory of so worthy a Friend and Fellow alive"; and shortly after, they too died, Condell in 1627 and Heminges in 1630.

After the pa.s.sing of this group of men, whose names are so familiar to us, the history of the playhouse seems less important, and may be chronicled briefly.

When young Matthew Brend came of age he recovered possession of the Globe property by a decree of the Court of Wards. Apparently he accepted the lease executed by his uncle and guardian, Bodley, by which the actors were to remain in possession of the Globe until December 25, 1635; but in 1633 he sought to cancel the lease he himself had executed as a minor, by which the actors were to remain in possession until 1644. His purpose in thus seeking to gain possession of the Globe was to lease it to other actors at a material increase in his profits.[424] Naturally the owners of the Globe were alarmed, and they brought suit in the Court of Requests. In 1635, one of the sharers, John Shanks, declares that he "is without any hope to renew"

the lease; and he refers thus to the suit against Brend: "When your suppliant purchased his parts [in 1634] he had no certainty thereof more than for one year in the Globe, and there was a chargeable suit then pending in the Court of Requests between Sir Mathew Brend, Knight, and the lessees of the Globe and their a.s.signs, for the adding of nine years to their lease in consideration that their predecessors had formerly been at the charge of 1400 in building of the said house."[425] The lessees ultimately won their contention, and thus secured the right to occupy the Globe until December 25, 1644--a term which, as it happened, was quite long enough, for the Puritans closed all playhouses in 1642.

[Footnote 424: Wallace, "Shakespeare and the Globe," in the London _Times_, April 30 and May 1, 1914.]

[Footnote 425: The Pet.i.tion of the Young Actors, printed by Halliwell-Phillipps, _Outlines_, I, 312. Mrs. Stopes, in _Burbage and Shakespeare's Stage_, p. 129, refers to a record of the suit mentioned by Shanks, dated February 6, 1634.]

What disposition, if any, the sharers made of the Globe between 1642 and 1644 we do not know. But before the lease expired, it seems, Brend demolished the playhouse and erected tenements on its site. In the ma.n.u.script notes to the Phillipps copy of Stow's _Annals_, we find the statement that the Globe was "pulled down to the ground by Sir Mathew Brend, on Monday the 15 of April, 1644, to make tenements in the room of it";[426] and the statement is verified by a mortgage, executed in 1706, between Elizabeth, the surviving daughter and heir of Thomas Brend, and one William James, citizen of London. The mortgage concerns "all those messuages or tenements ... most of which ... were erected and built where the late playhouse called the Globe stood, and upon the ground thereunto belonging."[427]

[Footnote 426: Printed in _The Academy_, October 28, 1882, p. 314.

Should we read the date as 1644/5?]

[Footnote 427: William Martin, _The Site of the Globe_, p. 171.]

After this the history of the property becomes obscure. Mrs. Thrale (later Mrs. Piozzi), the friend of Samuel Johnson, whose residence was near by in Deadman's Place, thought that she saw certain "remains of the Globe" discovered by workmen in the employ of her husband:[428]

"For a long time, then,--or I thought it such,--my fate was bound up with the old Globe Theatre, upon the Bankside, Southwark; the alley it had occupied having been purchased and [the tenements] thrown down by Mr. Thrale to make an opening before the windows of our dwelling-house. When it lay desolate in a black heap of rubbish, my mother one day in a joke called it the Ruins of Palmyra; and after that they had laid it down in a gra.s.s-plot Palmyra was the name it went by.... But there were really curious remains of the old Globe Playhouse, which though hexagonal in form without, was round within."

In spite of serious difficulties in this narrative it is possible that the workmen, in digging the ground preparatory to laying out the garden, uncovered the foundation of the Globe, which, it will be recalled, was formed of piles driven deep into the soil, and so well made that it resisted the fire of 1613.[429]

[Footnote 428: Printed in _The Builder_, March 26, 1910, from the Conway MSS. in Mrs. Thrale's handwriting.]

[Footnote 429: For later discoveries of supposed Globe relics, all very doubtful, see the London _Times_, October 8, 1909; George Hubbard, _The Site of the Globe Theatre_; and William Martin, _The Site of the Globe_, p. 201.]

At the present time the site of the Globe is covered by the extensive brewery of Messrs. Barclay, Perkins, and Company. Upon one of the walls of the brewery, on the south side of Park Street, which was formerly Maiden Lane, has been placed a bronze memorial tablet[430]

showing in relief the Bankside, with what is intended to be the Globe Playhouse conspicuously displayed in the foreground. This is a circular building designed after the circular playhouse in the Speed-Hondius _View of London_, and represents, as I have tried to show, not the Globe, but the Rose. At the left side of the tablet is a bust of the poet modeled after the Droeshout portrait. At the right is the simple inscription:

HERE STOOD THE GLOBE PLAYHOUSE OF SHAKESPEARE

[Footnote 430: The tablet was designed by Dr. William Martin and executed by Professor Lanteri. For photographs of it and of the place in which it is erected, see _The London Ill.u.s.trated News_, October 9, 1909, Cx.x.xV, 500.]

Yet it is very doubtful whether the Globe really stood there. Mr.

Wallace has produced good evidence to show that the building was on the north side of Park Street near the river; and in the course of the present study I have found that site generally confirmed.

CHAPTER XIII

THE FORTUNE

The erection of the Globe on the Bankside within a few hundred yards of the Rose was hardly gratifying to the Admiral's Men. Not only did it put them in close compet.i.tion with the excellent Burbage-Shakespeare organization, but it caused their playhouse (now nearly a quarter of a century old, and said to be in a state of "dangerous decay") to suffer in comparison with the new and far handsomer Globe, "the glory of the Bank." Accordingly, before the Globe had been in operation much more than half a year, Henslowe and Alleyn decided to move to another section of London, and to erect there a playhouse that should surpa.s.s the Globe both in size and in magnificence. To the authorities, however, they gave as reasons for abandoning the Rose, first, "the dangerous decay" of the building, and secondly, "for that the same standeth very noisome for resort of people in the winter time."

The new playhouse was undertaken by Henslowe and Alleyn jointly, although the exact arrangement between them is not now clear. Alleyn seems to have advanced the money and to have held the t.i.tles of ownership; but on April 4, 1601, he leased to Henslowe a moiety (or one-half interest) in the playhouse and other properties connected with it for a period of twenty-four years at an annual rental of 8--a sum far below the real value of the moiety.[431]

[Footnote 431: Greg, _Henslowe Papers_, p. 25; Wallace, _Three London Theatres_, p. 53. Later, Alleyn rented to the actors the playhouse alone for 200 per annum. In the doc.u.ment, Alleyn _v._ William Henslowe, published by Mr. Wallace in _Three London Theatres_, p. 52, it is revealed that this annual rental of 8 was canceled by Alleyn's rental of a house from Henslowe on the Bankside; hence no actual payments by Henslowe appear in the Henslowe-Alleyn papers.]

Whatever the details of the arrangement between the two partners, the main outlines of their procedure are clear. On December 22, 1599, Alleyn purchased for 240 a thirty-three-year lease[432] of a plot of ground situated to the north of the city, in the Parish of St. Giles without Cripplegate. This plot of ground, we are told, stood "very tolerable, near unto the Fields, and so far distant and remote from any person or place of account as that none can be annoyed thereby";[433] and yet, as the Earl of Nottingham wrote, it was "very convenient for the ease of people."[434]