his adventure. After all, he was prevented from establishing his theatre in 1596. Play-houses had just been suppressed in the City, and a number of the more important inhabitants of the Blackfriars disliked the idea of one being opened in their select residential precinct, where no common play-house had yet been seen. Farrant's theatre, nominally intended for the private practice of the Chapel boys, was presumably regarded as not falling within the category of common play-houses. A petition was sent to the Privy Council, amongst the signatories to which were Burbadge's neighbour, Sir George Carey, now Lord Hunsdon, Elizabeth Lady Russell, who lived a little farther up Water Lane, and Richard Field, the printer of Shakespeare's poems.[1] The extant copy of the petition is not dated, but later references assign it to November 1596, and inform us that as a result the Privy Council forbade the use of the house.[2] On James Burbadge's death in February 1597 the Blackfriars property passed to his son Richard.[3] It is not known what use he made of it before 1600, but in that year the resumption of plays by the Chapel children under Nathaniel Giles gave him an opportunity of following Farrant's example, and letting the theatre for what were practically public performances 'vnder the name of a private howse'.[4] With Giles were associated one James Robinson and Henry Evans, who had already been concerned in the enterprise of John Lyly and the Earl of Oxford; and it was to Evans that, on 2 September 1600, Burbadge leased 'the great hall or roome, with the roomes over the same, scituate
- ↑ For text and discussion of bona fides cf. App. D, No. cvii. Collier, having already assigned the document to 1576 (cf. p. 496), uses it again for 1596 (H. E. D. P. i. 287). With it, in his first edition (i. 297), he printed a reply, now in S. P. D. Eliz. cclx. 117, by Pope, Richard Burbadge, Heminges, Phillips, Shakespeare, Kempe, Sly, and Tooley, on behalf of the players, which is palaeographically a forgery (Ingleby, 289) and could not be genuine in substance, since it refers to the Globe, which did not exist in 1596.
- ↑ Cf. p. 511. Wallace, ii. 53, thinks this an error or invention of the City in 1619, because the Privy Council registers 'giving all the official acts of that body, record no such order'. But the Privy Council registers notoriously do not record all the official acts of that body (cf. ch. ii). The petitioners of 1619 are not likely to have invented the 'petition and indorsemente' of 1596 to which they appealed.
- ↑ In the Sharers Papers of 1635 (Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 317) Cuthbert and the other Burbadges then living say 'now for the Blackfriers, that is our inheritance; our father purchased it at extreame rates, and made it into a playhouse with great charge and troble'. Further, Cuthbert was associated with Richard in buying subsidiary property in 1601, 1610, 1612, and 1614 (cf. p. 505). But the leases of 1600 and 1608 were by Richard alone, and under one of these Cuthbert became his tenant.
- ↑ Cf. p. 511.
