the Theatre; but that they were there again in 1589 may be inferred from a mock testament of Martin Marprelate in Martins Month's Mind, in which he is made to admit that he learned his twittle tattles . . . at the Theater of Lanam and his fellows'. A marginal note in the same pamphlet indicates that it was at the Theatre that the 'Maygame' representing the 'launcing and worming' of Martin was staged, and there is other evidence that Laneham, then one of the Queen's men, was one of the players who took a part in the ribald controversy.[1] Gabriel Harvey's scoff at Lyly as 'the Foole-*master of the Theatre' may perhaps indicate his authorship of plays for the house. In 1590-1 it is clear that the Admiral's men, probably already associated with Strange's, were at the Theatre, and their quarrel with Burbadge doubtless led them to cross the river and join Henslowe at the Rose. After the reconstitution of the companies in 1594, James Burbadge's son Richard became a leading member of the Chamberlain's men, and it is probable that, when this company left the Rose about the middle of June, it was to the Theatre that they went. Here Hamlet, which certainly belonged to them, was being acted in 1596.[2] It must be added that the Theatre was not strictly reserved for the purposes of the legitimate drama. It was built for 'activities', amongst other things, according to Stowe, and prizes of the School of Defence were played at it between 1578 and 1585.[3] On 22 February 1582, there took place at the Theatre 'a scurvie play set oot al by one virgin, which there proved a fyemarten without voice, so that we stayed not the matter'.[4]
It was a natural consequence of the success of Burbadge's new departure that the Theatre and its immediate successor, the Curtain, had to bear the brunt of the Puritan denunciations of the stage. These incidentally bore witness to the costly elaborateness of the new accommodation provided for the players.[5] Apart from the moral corruption*
- ↑ Cf. App. C, No. xl.
- ↑ Lodge, Wits Miserie (1596), 'pale as the visard of the ghost which cried so miserably at the Theator, like an oister wife, Hamlet, revenge'. In T. M., Black Book (1604), is a mention of 'one of my divells in D^r Faustus, when the olde Theatre crackt and frighted the audience'. This was presumably before 1592, as Dr. Faustus seems to have been continuously in Henslowe's hands from the beginning of that year. Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 363, quotes an allusion of Barnaby Rich in 1606 (Faultes Faults, and Nothing Else but Faultes, 7) to 'Gravets part at the Theatre', but this must not be pressed as a reference to the long-destroyed house.
- ↑ Sloane MS. 2530, ff. 6, 11, 12, 46; cf. App. D, Nos. lxii, lxviii.
- ↑ Cf. ch. xi, p. 371.
- ↑ T. W., Sermon at Paul's Cross (3 Nov. 1577), 'Beholde the sumptuous
