[Bibliographical Note.—John de Witt's description and plan are published in K. T. Gaedertz, Zur Kenntnis der altenglischen Bühne (1888), and more exactly by H. B. Wheatley in On a Contemporary Drawing of the Swan Theatre, 1596 (N. S. S. Trans. 1887-92, 215). They are discussed by H. Logemann in Anglia, xix. 117, by W. Archer in The Universal Review for June 1888, by W. Rendle in 7 N. Q. vi. 221, by J. Le G. Brereton, De Witt at the Swan (1916, Sh.-Homage, 204), by myself in a paper on The Stage of the Globe in The Stratford Town Shakespeare, x. 351, and in most recent treatises on Elizabethan staging; cf. chh. xviii, xx. Earlier material is collected by W. Rendle in The Playhouses at Bankside in the Time of Shakespeare (Antiquarian Magazine and Bibliographer, 1885, vii. 207). The facts as to Langley's purchase and the pleadings and order in the suit of Shawe et al. v. Langley before the Court of Requests in 1597-8 (cited as S. v. L.) are given by C. W. Wallace, The Swan Theatre and the Earl of Pembroke's Servants (1911, E. S. xliii. 340). T. S. Graves, A Note on the Swan Theatre (M. P. ix. 431), discusses the light thrown on the internal arrangements of the Swan by the accounts of England's Joy in 1602.]
The Swan stood in the Liberty and Manor of Paris Garden,
at the western end of the Bankside. This manor, from which
the royal 'game' of bear-baiting took its traditional appellation,
had come into the hands of the Crown as part of the
possessions of the dissolved monastery of Bermondsey. It
was granted in 1578 to nominees of Henry, Lord Hunsdon,
conveyed by them to the Cure family, and sold for £850 on
24 May 1589 by Thomas Cure the younger to Francis Langley,
a citizen and goldsmith of London. Langley, who was
brother-in-law to Sir Anthony Ashley, one of the clerks to
the Privy Council, held the office of Alnager and Searcher of
Cloth, to which he had been appointed by the Corporation
on the recommendation of the Privy Council and Sir Francis
Walsingham in December 1582.[1] The site of the theatre can
be precisely identified from a plan of the manor dated in 1627,
but based on a survey of 1 November 1624.[2] It was in the
north-east corner of the demesne, east of the manor-house,
twenty-six poles due south of Paris Garden stairs, and immediately
west of a lane leading to a house called Copt Hall.
The outline shown is that of a double circle, or perhaps dodecahedron,
divided into twelve compartments, with a small porch
or tiring-house towards the road. The exact date of building
is unknown. On 3 November 1594 the Lord Mayor wrote to
- ↑ E. S. xliii. 341; Index to Remembrancia, 277. It appears from Hatfield MSS. vi. 182, 184, that in May 1596 Langley was concerned in some negotiations about a missing diamond claimed by the Crown; cf. p. 396.
- ↑ Printed from a contemporary copy in the Guildhall by W. Rendle in Appendix to Part II of Harrison's Description of England (N. S. S., 1878) and Adams, 162. The original is held by the steward of the manor.
