- beth's reign, the 'private' houses; Paul's reopened in the
winter of 1599, the Blackfriars in that of 1600. Of these Platter knows nothing, but Duke Philip Julius of Stettin-Pomerania, in the autumn of 1602, in addition to performances at the Fortune and another theatre, saw also, doubtless at the Blackfriars, the Kinder-comoedia. The following is an extract from the diary of the visit kept by the duke's secretary, Frederic Gerschow:[1]
'13 [September] On the thirteenth a comedy was played, of the
taking of Stuhl-Weissenberg, firstly by the Turks, and thereafter back
again by the Christians.
14. In the afternoon was played a tragicomedy of Samson and the half tribe of Benjamin.'[2]
On 16 September the duke and his retinue saw the baiting.
On 18 September they visited the Blackfriars, and Gerschow
wrote an account of the organization of the Children of the
Chapel and of the nature of their performances.[3]
The Globe and the Fortune continued in regular use, as the houses of the King's men, and the Prince's men respectively, during the new reign, and endured to the closing of the theatres in 1642. Each was destroyed by fire and rebuilt; the former in 1613, the latter in 1621. Queen Anne's men at first used the Boar's Head and the Curtain, but migrated from the Boar's Head to the Red Bull, which had been built by 1606. This became their principal house, and they cannot be shown to have used the Curtain after 1609. These were the only companies of men players in London during 1603-8, and the Globe, the Fortune, and the Red Bull are obviously the 'three houses' whose rivalry is referred to by Dekker in the following passage from his Raven's Almanack of 1608:[4]
'Another ciuill warre doe I finde wil fal betweene players, who albeit
at the beginning of this fatall yeare, they salute one another like
sworne brothers, yet before the middle of it, shall they wish one anothers
throate cut for two pence. The contention of the two houses, (the
- ↑ G. von Bülow in 2 R. Hist. Soc. Trans. (1892), vi. 6, 10, from MS. penes Count von der Osten of Plathe, Pomerania; cf. Wallace, Blackfriars, 105, who identifies the Samson play, rightly, with that of the Admiral's men at the Fortune (cf. p. 180), and that at the Blackfriars, wrongly I think, with Chapman's The Widow's Tears. He assumes that the theatre visited on 13 Sept, was the Globe, but it might have been the Rose.
- ↑ '13. Den 13 ward eine comedia agirt, wie Stuhl-Weissenburg erstlich von den Türken, hernacher von den Christen wiederum erobert. . . . 14. Auf den Nachmittag ward eine tragica comoedia von Samsone und dem halben Stamm Benjamin agirt. Als wir zu dem Theatro gingen. . .'.
- ↑ Cf. ch. xii (Chapel).
- ↑ Grosart, Dekker, iv. 210 (S. R. July 1608, printed 1609). The 'two houses' are, of course, those of York and Lancaster. Note the final puns.
