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During the last years of their lives Heminges and Condell, following out the policy of absorption which has already been illustrated, appear to have acquired in one way or another the whole of the shares formerly held by Shakespeare, by Basil Nicoll and John Edmonds as successors of Sly, and by Underwood. This fact emerges from the records known as the Sharers Papers, which start with a petition from Robert Benfield, Eliard Swanston, and Thomas Pollard, then important members of the King's company, to the Lord Chamberlain in 1635, to be admitted to shares as 'housekeepers' in the profits of the Globe and the Blackfriars.^[1] The allegations show that the Globe had been 'formerly' divided into sixteen shares, of which eight were held by Cuthbert Burbadge and Richard Burbadge's widow Winifred, now Mrs. Robinson, in her own right and that of her son William, four by Mrs. Condell, and four by William Heminges. Afterwards Joseph Taylor and John Lowin were allowed to acquire shares, and later still the remaining Heminges interest was 'surreptitiously' purchased by John Shank. At the date of the petition, therefore, the Burbadges held seven shares, Mrs. Condell two, Shank three, and Taylor and Lowin two each. The case furnishes valuable information as to the organization of the theatre, and as to the division of outgoing and profits between the housekeepers and the actors as such. It is pretty evident that by 1635 the Globe took a secondary place to the Blackfriars in the economy of the King's men.^[2] Shank admitted that he had bought a two years' term of one Globe share in 1633 and a one year's term of two more in 1634, together with interests in the Blackfriars, and seems to have thought that the £506 which he gave was full value for the purchases.^[3] The Burbadges protested against being called upon to part with any part of their property to 'men soe soone shott up' and not having the 'antiquity and desert', which had customarily been looked for in housekeepers. In support of their plea they recalled the early services of their father in the building of theatres and the claims of their family to profit by 'the great desert of Richard Burbadge for his quality of playing'. They suggested that 'makeing the leases for twenty-one yeeres' to their fellows, whose widows

1. Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 312.
2. Cf. ch. xi. There was a much rougher type of audience at the Globe; cf. Shirley, Prologue at the Globe, to his Comedy called 'The Doubtful Heir', which should have been presented at the Blackfriars, quoted in Variorum, iii. 69.
3. Cf. ch. xvii (Blackfriars).