gods bee thanked) was appeased long agoe, but a deadly warre betweene the three houses will I feare burst out like thunder and lightning. For it is thought that Flag will be aduanced (as it were in mortall defiance against Flag), numbers of people will also bee mustred and fall to one side or other, the drums and trumpets must be sounded, partes will then (euen by the chiefest players) bee taken: words will passe to and fro: speeches cannot so bee put vp, handes will walke, an alarum be giuen, fortune must fauour some, or els they are neuer able to stand: the whole world must sticke to others, or else al the water in the theames wil not serue to carrie those away that will bee put to flight, and a third faction must fight like wilde Buls against Lyons, or else it will be in vaine to march vp into the field.'
There were, however, more than three London companies
about 1608. M. de la Boderie tells us how one fell into
disgrace during that year, and how four others subscribed
to buy off the consequent inhibition of plays.[1] The reconciliation
is simple. Dekker has in mind only the 'public' and not
the 'private' houses. Of these Paul's was closed in 1606;
it was made worth its Master's while not to reopen it. The
Blackfriars was used by the successive boy companies,
known generically as the Queen's Revels, until 1608 or
1609, when it passed to the King's men, who thereafter
maintained it as a winter house, to supplement the Globe.
The Queen's Revels then moved to the Whitefriars, a private
house built at some time before 1608, and occupied in that
year by the ephemeral company of the King's Revels.
An increase in the number of adult companies now made fresh demands upon theatrical house-room. It is presumably the Duke of York's men who were described at Leicester in 1608 as 'the Princes players of the White Chapple, London'. The description suggests that they used the Boar's Head, but if so, nothing more is heard of it, and it is conceivable that they soon succeeded to the Curtain. The Lady Elizabeth's, who came into existence in 1611, are traceable at the Swan, which Henslowe may have taken over to succeed the Rose, disused, if not pulled down, by 1606. The following lines are in John Heath's Two Centuries of Epigrammes (1610), but may of course, especially as the Red Bull is not named,
- ↑ Cf. ch. x. Fynes Moryson says in his Itinerary, iii. 2. 2 (c. 1605-17), 'The Theaters at London in England for Stage-plaies are more remarkeable for the number, and for the capacity, than for the building,' and in the continuation (c. 1609-26, C. Hughes, Shakespeare's Europe, 476), 'The Citty of London alone hath foure or fiue Companyes of players with their peculiar Theaters capable of many thousands, wherein they all play euery day in the weeke but Sunday. . . . As there be, in my opinion, more Playes in London than in all the partes of the worlde I haue seene, so doe these players or Comedians excell all other in the worlde.'
