had stood many yeares, was pulled downe to the ground on Munday the 6 day of August 1655, and tennements built in the rome.
'The play house in Salsbury Court, in Fleetstreete, was pulled downe by a company of souldiers, set on by the sectuaries of these sad times, on Saturday the 24 day of March 1649.
'The Phenix in Druery Lane, was pulled downe also this day, being Saterday the 24 day of March 1649, by the same souldiers.
'The Fortune Playhouse betweene White Crosse streete and Golding Lane was burnd downe to the ground in the yeare 1618. And built againe with brick worke on the outside in the yeare 1622. And now pulled downe on the inside by the souldiers this 1649.
'The Hope, on the Banks side in Southwarke, commonly called the Beare Garden, a Play House for Stage Playes on Mundayes, Wedensdayes, Fridayes, and Saterdayes, and for the baiting of the Beares on Tuesdayes and Thursdayes, the stage being made to take vp and downe when they please. It was built in the year 1610, and now pulled downe to make tennementes, by Thomas Walker, a peticoate maker in Cannon Streete, on Tuesday the 25 day of March 1656. Seuen of M^r. Godfries beares, by the command of Thomas Pride, then hie Sheriefe of Surry, were then shot to death, on Saterday the 9 day of February 1655, by a company of souldiers.'
Downes and Wright do not mention the Hope, as they were
not discussing baiting. On the other hand, the annalist
says nothing of the fate of the Red Bull, which in fact appears
to have escaped destruction, to have been occasionally used
for 'drolls' during the Commonwealth, and to have served
once more, with the Cockpit and Salisbury Court, the demolition
of which was probably limited to the interior fittings, for
the first entertainments of the Restoration. The building
of Vere Street in 1660, Lincoln's Inn Fields in 1661, and Drury
Lane in 1663 made them obsolete.[1]
These records leave ambiguous the fate of the Curtain and the Swan. The Curtain is traceable in occasional use up to about 1627, and is figured as a roundish building in the 'Ryther' maps, which are probably of a decade later.[2] It cannot, therefore, have vanished long before the civil wars, and was the most long-lived of all the theatres. It may, of course, have been rebuilt, later than its original foundation in 1576, but as to this there is no evidence. The 'Ryther' maps also show the Fortune. No other maps give any of the theatres on the north of the river. Of the Bankside houses, the Swan is shown by a decagonal ground-plan, with the inscription 'Old Play house', in the Paris Garden Manor survey of 1627.[3] And it is described as still existing side by side with
