London'. This was refused, much to Warwick's annoyance, on the ground that an inn was a place 'somewhat to close for infection', and David appointed to play 'in an open place of the Leaden hall'.[1] The Bull, with the Bell, was assigned by a civic order of 28 November 1583 to the Queen's men for their first winter season. Tarlton and the Queen's men are said in the Jests to have played 'oftentimes' at 'the Bull in Bishops-gate-street', and here their play of The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth, with Tarlton in the parts of the judge and the clown and Knell in that of Henry, was given.[2] This must, of course, have been between 1583 and Tarlton's death in 1588. In 1592 the translator of The Spaniard's Monarchie disclaims any 'title fetched from the Bull within Bishopsgate, as a figge for a Spaniard'. I do not know whether any old play underlying the Admiral's (q.v.) Spanish Fig of 1601-2 can be referred to. The house was still in use during 1594, for in April or May of that year Anthony Bacon settled in Bishopsgate, to the vexation of his mother, 'on account of its neighbourhood to the Bull-inn, where plays and interludes were continually acted, and would, she imagined, corrupt his servants'.[3] Richard Flecknoe mentions the Bull in Bishopsgate Street, with the Cross-Keys, as one of the inns turned into theatres at the beginning of Queen Elizabeth's reign, as was 'at this day to be seen' in 1664.[4] The site was at No. 91 on the west of Bishopsgate Street, and is shown in Hatton's map of 1708, and the Ordnance Survey maps of 1848-51 and 1875.
iii. THE BELL INN
This inn existed in 1560, for on 12 June of that year 'the wyff of the Bell in Gracyous-strett' was carted as a bawd and whore.[5] Plays must have been used there in 1576-7, in the Revels Account for which year an item of 10d. is included 'ffor the cariadge of the partes of y^e well counterfeit from the Bell in Gracious strete to St. Iohns to be performed for the play of Cutwell'.[6] With the Bull, it was assigned to the
- ↑ App. D, Nos. lx-lxii.
- ↑ Tarlton, 13, 24.
- ↑ Birch, Elizabeth, i. 173, from Lambeth MS.; Spedding, viii. 314.
- ↑ Cf. App. I.
- ↑ Machyn, 238.
- ↑ Feuillerat, Eliz. 277. The play may have only been rehearsed, so that the identification of it by Fleay, 36, with The Irish Knight shown at Court by Warwick's men on 18 Feb. 1577 is untenable, and with it vanishes all ground for the assignment of the inn by Fleay, 40, to Rich's men in 1568-70, Lane's in 1571-3, Warwick's in 1575-80, and Hunsdon's in 1582-3.
