6 August 1655.[1] This site was used for tenements, which in course of time were replaced by The Times office which now occupies the site.[2]
ii. THE WHITEFRIARS
[Bibliographical Note.—The relevant dissertations are P. Cunningham,
The Whitefriars, the Salisbury Court, and the Duke's Theatres (1849,
Sh. Soc. Papers, iv. 89), J. Greenstreet, The Whitefriars Theatre in the
Time of Shakspere (1888, N. S. S. Trans. 269), with text of the Bill and
Answer in the Chancery suit of Androwes v. Slater (1609), and A. W.
Clapham, The Topography of the Carmelite Priory of London (1910, Brit.
Arch. Assoc. Journal, n. s. xvi. 15), with seventeenth-century plan of
the precinct, reproduced by Adams, 312.]
The only suggestion of a sixteenth-century play-house in
the Whitefriars is to be found in the statement of Richard
Rawlidge in 1628 that one was suppressed there at a date
under Elizabeth which he does not specify, but which may
most plausibly be put at 1596 (cf. p. 359). It is not improbable
that Rawlidge wrote 'Whitefriars' when he should have
written 'Blackfriars', but Malone (Var. iii. 46, 52) accepted
the statement and assigned the suppression to 1580. I do
not suppose that Collier had any other basis than this for the
'more then 30 yeares' of the following description which he
alleged to be an extract from 'an original survey of some
part of the precinct, made in March 1616' in his possession,
and printed in his New Facts (1835), 44:
'The Theater is situate near vnto the Bishopps House, and was in
former times a hall or refectorie belonging to the dissolved Monastery.
It hath beene vsed as a place for the presentation of playes and enterludes
for more then 30 yeares, last by the Children of her Majestie.
It hath little or no furniture for a playhouse, saving an old tottered
curten, some decayed benches, and a few worne out properties and
peeces of Arras for hangings to the stage and tire house. The raine
hath made its way in and if it bee not repaired, it must soone be
plucked downe or it will fall.'
- ↑ I do not know what value to attach to a print in the Gardiner collection, reproduced by Baker, 44, 78, as representing the theatre. It shows a Renaissance façade, which can have been no part of the mediaeval building. Adams, 197, reproduces a painting of mediaeval fragments found in rebuilding The Times in 1872, small ground-floor rooms divided by entries. But The Times must cover the site of Hunsdon House as well as that of the theatre.
- ↑ As an epilogue to this narrative and an example of how popular history is written, I quote D. E. Oliver, The English Stage (1912), 9, 'Blackfriars House, a deserted monastery on the Thames side, was granted by Edward VI in 1596 to the Court Players for their use as a playhouse, but it was not until the accession of Elizabeth that it received official sanction as a recognized place of public entertainment'.
