by the Paul's boys, is not traceable in the Chamber accounts, and one for the Duke of Savoy's ambassador in 1613. All plays at the Jacobean court was given by professional companies; if the lawyers came to court, it was not in a play, but a mask.
Whether the revels were kept at Westminster, Hampton Court, Greenwich, Richmond, or Windsor, sufficient accommodation could be afforded for a play in the great hall, which thus for a brief space resumed its ancient glories as the state apartment of the sovereign. At the first three of those palaces, there is definite evidence of the use of the hall. But Whitehall, at least, was spacious enough to offer other alternatives. The banqueting-house might be available, if it was not occupied by the preparations for a mask. And performances were sometimes given in the 'great chamber', which at Whitehall was distinct from both the presence chamber and the 'guard' or 'watching' chamber which served as an ante-room to the presence.[1] It seems also that provision could be made, perhaps only on the less public and crowded occasions when the King was not present, for a stage in the octagonal cockpit, which stood on the edge of St. James's Park, in the western extension of the palace.[2] As a courtesy to a royal visitor, a play was given in 1565 at the Savoy, where the Lady Cecilia of Sweden was housed, and in 1614 Anne's pastoral of Hymen's Triumph took place in 'a little square paved court' at Somerset House.
- ↑ Cf. also M. N. D. iii. 1. 57; Isle of Gulls, iii (ed. Bullen, p. 67), 'in the great Chamber at the Reuels'. The Elizabethan Chamber Accounts rarely show the room; in 1597-8 the hall at Hampton Court, in 1600-1 the hall and in 1601-2 the great chamber at Whitehall. I have examined only a few Jacobean ones on this point; the hall, great chamber, and banqueting-house, at Whitehall, were all used in 1604-5; the hall, banqueting-house, and cockpit in 1610-11; the banqueting-house twice in April 1612-13.
- ↑ Cf. App. B, s.a. 1608-12. On the Cockpit cf. Stowe, Survey, ii. 102, 374; Sheppard, Whitehall, 66; W. J. Lawrence in E. S. xxxv. 279; L. T. R. i. 38; ii. 23; vii. 49, 61; Adams, 384. I am not quite clear where the original pit stood. Stowe puts on the right hand as you go down Whitehall 'diuers fayre Tennis courtes, bowling allies, and a Cocke-pit, al built by King Henry the eight'. Wyngaerde and Agas show various buildings here, of which one in Agas is of pit shape. Faithorne's map of Westminster (1658), which is said to represent the locality at a much earlier date, shows, just south of the tilt-yard, a quadrangle divided off from the road by a low boundary wall, with buildings all round it and an angled building in the midst. This must I think be the Cockpit, and some of the buildings round it the lodgings which also bore that name and were occupied by the Princess Elizabeth before her marriage (Birch, Charles I, ii. 213) and by Lady Somerset in 1615 (Rutland MSS. i. 448). Here presumably provision for Cockpit was made for James in 1604 (cf. p. 53), and Henry and Elizabeth saw plays in 1608-13 (App. B). But I doubt whether this is the Cockpit shown in Fisher's Restoration plan of Whitehall and in an engraving, probably from a seventeenth-
