upon which the Puritans laid most stress, there is some evidence that the position of the Theatre, with a great space of open ground before it, made it a natural focus for the disorderly elements of society. As early as 5 October 1577, just after the resumption of plays for the autumn, the Mayor and Recorder Fleetwood were listening to 'a brabell betwene John Wotton and the Leuetenuntes sonne of the one parte, and certain ffreholders of Shordyche, for a matter at the Theater'. There was serious trouble in the course of 1584. Fleetwood wrote to Burghley how on 8 June, 'very nere the Theatre or Curten, at the tyme of the playes, there laye a prentice sleping upon the grasse and one Challes alias Grostock dyd turne upon the too upon the belly of the same prentice; whereupon the apprentice start up, and after wordes they fell to playne bloues'; and how on 10 June, 'one Browne, a serving man in a blew coat, a shifting fellowe, having a perrelous witt of his owne, entending a spoile if he cold have browght it to passe, did at Theatre doore querell with certen poore boyes, handicraft prentises, and strooke some of theym; and lastlie he with his sword wondend and maymed one of the boyes upon the left hand; whereupon there assembled nere a ml. people'.[1] Unscrupulous characters might find congenial companions in the throng. Somewhere in 1594 a diamond, which had gone astray from the loot of a Spanish vessel, was shown in Finsbury Fields by a mariner
- [Footnote: Theatre houses'; Northbrooke (S. R. 2 Dec. 1577), 85, 'places . . . builded
for such Playes and Enterludes, as the Theatre and Curtaine is'; Stockwood, Sermon at Paul's Cross (24 Aug. 1578), 'the Theatre, the Curtayne, and other places of Playes in the Citie . . . the gorgeous Playing place erected in the fieldes . . . as they please to have it called, a Theatre'; News from the North (1579), 'the Theaters, Curtines . . . and such places where the time is so shamefully mispent'; T. Twyne, Physic for Fortune (1579), i. xxx, 42, 'the Curteine or Theater; which two places are well knowen to be enimies to good manners: for looke who goeth thyther evyl, returneth worse'; Stubbes (S. R. 1 March 1583), i. 144, 'flockyng and runnyng to Theaters and Curtens . . . Venus pallaces'; Field (1583), 'the distruction bothe of bodye and soule that many are brought unto by frequenting the Theater, the Curtin and such like'; Rankins (1587), f. 4, 'the Theater and Curtine may aptlie be termed for their abhomination, the chappell adulterinum'; Harrison, Chronologie (1588), i. liv, 'It is an evident token of a wicked time when plaiers wexe so riche that they can build suche houses'.]
- ↑ App. D, Nos. XXXV, lxxiv. It appears to have been thought a good example to frequenters of the Theatre that the locality should occasionally be used for a public execution. Stowe, Annales (1615), 749, 750, records the hanging of W. Gunter, a priest from beyond the seas, 'at the Theater' on 28 Aug. 1588, and of W. Hartley, another priest, 'nigh the Theator, on 1 Oct. 1588; cf. Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 351, from True Report of the Inditement of Weldon, Hartley, and Sutton, who Suffred for High Treason (1588).
