Globe Alley.[1] Dr. Martin suggests that the property transferred by the Casons in 1727 is to be identified with that described in a deed executed by the same persons in 1706, of which a copy is also to be found amongst the brewery title-deeds, as consisting of tenements built 'where the late playhouse called the Globe stood and upon the ground thereunto belonging'. If this were so, he would of course have proved his point. The deed of 1706 seems to have been a family settlement covering various fragments of Brend property in Southwark, which had only just been brought together in the hands of Elizabeth Cason. The Globe site had been settled by Sir Matthew Brend in 1624 upon his wife Frances as a jointure. She died in 1673, and it then passed as a jointure to Judith, wife of Sir Matthew's son Thomas and mother of Elizabeth, under a deed of 1655 in which the reference to 'the late playhouse called the Globe', repeated in that of 1706, first occurs. Judith Brend had died in 1706.
As a matter of fact, it is almost impossible to reconcile the Southwark tradition that the Globe stood on the south of Maiden Lane, either in Mr. Rendle's or in Dr. Martin's interpretation of it, with more than one bit of evidence which we owe to the research of Professor Wallace. The first of these is the lease of 1599 itself, as recited in the pleadings of Ostler v. Heminges. This states quite clearly that the leased plot abutted on a piece of land called the Park 'super boream' and on Maiden Lane 'versus austrum', and it is difficult to take very seriously either the Latinity which makes 'versus austrum' mean that the leased plot was on the south, or the suggestion that the draughtsman was working carelessly from a plan which had the south instead of the north of the plot at the top of the sheet, and got the points of his compass wrong.[2] I daresay that such things do sometimes happen in conveyancer's offices, but it is hardly legitimate to call them in aid as a canon of interpretation. No doubt it is tempting to identify the piece of land called the Park with the Bishop of Winchester's park, which lay at a reasonable distance to the south and not to the north of Maiden Lane, but after all this must once have extended nearly up to the Bankside, since Maiden Lane itself is known to have been cut out of it, and it is not at all improbable that some littleheayter', just south of Globe Alley (Martin, 184)]
- ↑ Martin, 171. One cannot lay much stress upon hearsay locations of the site by employees of the brewery (Martin, 183), or the discovery of underground staging still farther south than Dr. Martin's site on a spot which in 1599 must have been well within Winchester Park (Martin, 201), or of a stone inscribed '[T
- ↑ Martin, 164.
