and most fully by W. Martin in Surrey Archaeological Collections, xxiii (1910), 149. Some additional facts, from records of the Sewers Commission for Kent and Surrey in the possession of the London County Council, and from deeds concerning the Brend estate, were published by Dr. Wallace in The Times of 30 April and 1 May 1914, and led to discussion by Dr. Martin, Mr. Hubbard, and others in 11 N. Q. x. 209, 290, 335; xi. 447; xii. 10, 50, 70, 121, 143, 161, 201, 224, 264, 289, 347, and by W. W. Braines in The Site of the Globe Playhouse (1921). A paper by the present writer on The Stage of the Globe is in the Stratford Town Shakespeare, x. 351.]
In the building of the Globe use was made of the materials
of the old Theatre (q.v.) which, according to Allen v. Burbadge
(1602), the Burbadges, with Peter Street and others, pulled
down on 28 December 1598, carried 'all the wood and timber
therof unto the Banckside in the parishe of St. Marye Overyes,
and there erected a newe playehowse with the sayd timber and
woode'.[1] An earlier account gives the date of the audacious
proceeding as 20 January 1599. The formal lease of the new
site from the freeholder, Nicholas Brend of West Molesey,
was executed on 21 February 1599. No doubt Street, who
had assisted in the transfer, was the builder and had finished
his job when on 8 January 1600 he contracted with Henslowe
and Alleyn to put up the Fortune (q.v.) on the model, with
certain modifications, of 'the late erected plaiehowse on the
Banck in the saide parishe of St. Saviours called the Globe'.
This contract allowed twenty-eight weeks for the work.
Probably the Globe took about the same time, for it is described
as 'de novo edificata' in the inquisition on the property left
by the lessor's father, Thomas Brend, which is dated on
16 May 1599.[2] It may not then have been quite finished, but
it was doubtless ready for the occupation of the Chamberlain's
men by the beginning of the autumn season of 1599. One of
the earliest plays there produced by them was Shakespeare's
Julius Caesar which on 21 September Thomas Platter crossed
the water to see 'in dem streüwinen Dachhaus'.[3] Whether
the Globe or its predecessor the Curtain was the 'wooden O'
of Henry V, 1, prol. 13, must be more doubtful, as the prologue
to Act V of the same play contemplates the triumphant return
of Essex from Ireland, and in fact Essex left England on
27 March and returned, not triumphant, on 28 September
1599.[4] Jonson refers to 'this faire-fild Globe' as the scene of
- ↑ N. U. S. xiii. 279; cf. p. 399.
- ↑ Wallace, in The Times (1914), 'Ac de et in vna domo de novo edificata cum gardino eidem pertinenti in parochia S^{ci} Salvatoris praedicta in comitatu Surria praedicta in occupacione Willielmi Shakespeare et aliorum'.
- ↑ Cf. p. 364.
- ↑ A rather fantastic argument of Ordish, 85, for the Curtain on the ground of the martial character of the neighbourhood is answered by Murray, i. 99.
