to the entry in the Stationers' Register on 29 June 1607, was played at the Curtain, and according to its title-page of 1607 by the Queen's men. But there is no reason why it should not also have been played at the Red Bull, since both houses are specified as occupied by the Queen's men in their patent of 15 April 1609. In their earlier draft patent of about 1603-4, the Boar's Head and Curtain are named, and in a Privy Council letter of 9 April 1604 the Curtain only. Presumably, therefore, the Red Bull was taken into use by the Queen's men, of whom Swynnerton was one, as soon as it was built at some date between 1604 and 1606. The Red Bull is one of the three houses whose contention is predicted in Dekker's Raven's Almanack of 1608, and Dekker refers to it again in his Work for Armourers, written during the plague of 1609, when the bear garden was open and the theatres closed. He says, 'The pide Bul heere keepes a tossing and a roaring, when the Red Bull dares not stir'.[1] Its existence caused trouble from time to time to the Middlesex justices. At the end of May 1610, William Tedcastle, yeoman, and John Fryne, Edward Brian, Edward Purfett, and Thomas Williams, felt-makers, were called upon to give recognisances to answer for a 'notable outrage at the playhouse called the Red Bull'; and on 3 March 1614 Alexander Fulsis was bailed out on a charge of picking Robert Sweet's pocket of a purse and £3 at this theatre.[2] Further references to it are to be found in Wither's Abuses Stript and Whipt (1613), in Tomkis's Albumazar (1615), and in Gayton's Pleasant Notes on Don Quixot (1654).[3]
An entry in Alleyn's Diary for 1617 has been supposed to indicate that he had an interest in the Red Bull. To me it only suggests that he sold the actors there a play.[4]
- ↑ Dekker, Works, iv. 97; cf. p. 367.
- ↑ Jeaffreson, ii. 64, 86.
- ↑ Wither, Abuses Stript and Whipt (1613), i. 1,
'His poetry is such as he can cull
From plays he heard at Curtain or at Bull';Albumazar, II. i. 16, 'Then will I confound her with compliments drawn from the plays I see at the Fortune and Red Bull, where I learn all the words I speak and understand not'; Gayton, 24, 'I have heard that the poets of the Fortune and Red Bull had always a mouth-measure for their actors (who were terrible tear-throats) and made their lines proportionable to their compass, which were sesquipedales, a foot and a half'.
- ↑ Collier, Memoirs of Alleyn, 107; D. N. B. s.v. Alleyn. The Diary (Young, ii. 51) runs: 'Oct. 1, 1617. I came to London in the coach and went to the red Bull. 2^d. Oct. 3. I went to the red bull and for the younger brother but 3. 6. 4, water 4^d.' The Younger Brother was entered in the Stationers' Register in 1653, but is not extant.
