the Register of the School of Defence being in 1575-7 and the latest on 31 January 1589.[1]
v. THE CROSS KEYS INN
This inn may have been the play-house, or one of the play-houses, 'in Gracious Street' said by Rawlidge to have been 'put down' under Elizabeth. The first notice of it dates from 23 June 1579, on which day James Burbadge was arrested at the suit of John Hynde for £5 1s. 1d., 'as he came down Gracious Street towards the Cross Keys there to a play'. The house is described as the dwelling-house of Richard Ibotson, citizen and brewer of London.[2] It was in use as a place of popular amusement during the life of Tarlton, who died in 1588, for one of the Jests relates how he came from the Bell, where he was playing to 'the Crosse-Keyes in Gracious streete' to see Banks's performing horse there.[3] A company can first be definitely located at it in 1589, on 5 November of which year Lord Strange's men, as reported by Lord Mayor Hart to Burghley, disobeyed an admonition to forbear playing, and 'went to the Crosse Keys and played that afternoon'. In 1594 Strange's men were absorbed in Lord Hunsdon's, and on 8 October 1594 Hunsdon wrote to the Lord Mayor to obtain toleration for 'my nowe companie of players' who had been accustomed 'to plaie this winter time within the citye at the Crosse Kayes in Gracious street'.[4] How long Shakespeare's fellows continued to use the Cross Keys as a winter house is unknown; presumably it ceased to be available in 1596. The adaptation of the inn as a theatre was still visible at the Restoration, and is assigned by Richard Flecknoe to 'about the beginning of Queen Elizabeth's reign'. The site is shown in Ogilby and Morgan's map of 1677 and the Ordnance Survey map of 1848-51: it is on the west of Gracechurch Street.
vi. THE THEATRE
[Bibliographical Note.—Material is available in the records of four
litigations: (a) Peckham v. Allen (Wards and Liveries, 1589) as to the
title to the site; (b) Burbadge v. Ames et al. (Coram Rege, 1596-9) and Earl
of Rutland v. Allen and Burbadge (Exchequer, 1599-1602) as to the title
to a neighbouring plot; (c) Burbadge v. Brayne (Chancery, 1588-95).
- ↑ Sloane MS. 2530, ff. 7, 10, 11, 14; cf. the quotation from G. Silver, Paradoxe of Defence (1599), in Adams, 13.
- ↑ Wallace, N. U. S. xiii. 82, 89.
- ↑ Tarlton, 23.
- ↑ App. D, No. ci. Fleay, 89, has no other material than these notices and an unjustifiable assumption of identity between the two companies for assigning the house to Leicester's (1586-8) and Strange's (1589-91).
