whole, the balance of probability appears to be strongly in favour of the upper frater.
Professor Wallace's account of the matter is categorical. 'The south section', he says, 'underwent a thorough transformation. The two stories were converted into the auditorium called "the great Hall or Room". . . . The roof was changed, and rooms, probably of the usual dormer sort, were built above the Great Hall.'[1] I do not know whether there is any evidence for this theory, which disregards a good many structural difficulties, in those parts of his recently discovered documents which Professor Wallace has not published; there is certainly none in those which he has. If not, I do not think we must assume that Burbadge undertook expensive building operations, when he had all the facilities for planning an admirable auditorium without them. Professor Wallace seems to have been led into his conjecture by an assumed necessity for providing space for three tiers of galleries. There is no such necessity, and in fact no evidence for more than one tier, although I dare say that the upper frater taken by itself was high enough for two. Professor Wallace cites a reference to 'porticibus anglice galleryes', and points out that 'galleryes' is a plural. This is so, but the 'galleryes' were not necessarily superimposed; if one ran along the east side of the hall and the other along the west, they would still constitute a plural. Professor Wallace takes the step from his plural to three with the aid of Cockledemoy's address to 'my very fine Heliconian gallants, and you, my worshipful friends in the middle region'.[2] Obviously the 'middle region' is not bound to be the middle one of three galleries; it may just as well be the space between the stage and the galleries.
It is beyond the scope of this inquiry to trace the detailed fortunes of the Blackfriars during its later years. By Caroline times it took place of the Globe as the principal and most profitable house of the King's men.[3] In 1653, when like the rest of the theatres it was closed, Richard Flecknoe recalled its origin and wrote its epitaph.[4] It was pulled down on
- ↑ Wallace, ii. 40.
- ↑ Marston, The Dutch Courtesan, v. iii. 162.
- ↑ Cf. p. 425.
- ↑ R. Flecknoe, Miscellania (1653), 141, 'From thence passing on to the
Black-fryers, and seeing never a Play-bil on the Gate, no Coaches on
the place, nor Doorkeeper at the Play-house door, with his Boxe like
a Churchwarden, desiring you to remember the poor Players, I cannot
but say for Epilogue to all the Playes were ever acted there:
Poor House that in dayes of our Grand-sires,
Belongst unto the Mendiant Fryers:
And where so oft in our Fathers dayes
We have seen so many of Shakspears Playes,
So many of Johnsons, Beaumonts & Fletchers.'
