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by some London apprentices for an invitation performance of Robert Tailor's The Hog Hath Lost His Pearl (q.v.). From March 1613 the amalgamated companies had Bankside theatres available, first the Swan and afterwards the Hope, but it is clear from the Watermen's petition (cf. p. 370) that, at any rate before the Hope was built, they mainly used the Whitefriars. Daborne in a letter to Henslowe of 5 June 1613 speaks of the company 'comming over', presumably from the Whitefriars to Bankside, and on 9 Dec. 1613 suggests that a play of his would be suitable for Henslowe's 'publique howse', from which it may perhaps be inferred that Henslowe had also an interest in a 'private' house at the time (Henslowe Papers, 72, 79). Apparently conversion into a public theatre was then contemplated, for on 13 July 1613 the Master of the Revels received a fee of £20 'for a license to erect a new play-house in the White-friers, &c.' (Var. iii. 52). But this scheme was stopped by the Privy Council.[1] On 3 June 1615 Rosseter and others obtained their patent for the Porter's Hall theatre in Blackfriars (cf. p. 472), which contemplated its use by the Revels, the Prince's, and the Lady Elizabeth's, and incidentally recited that the Revels Children had been trained and exercised in the Whitefriars 'ever since' 1610. The amalgamation was dissolved in the spring of 1616, and the Lady Elizabeth's and the Revels probably disappeared from London. If, therefore, the Whitefriars continued in use, it was probably by Prince Charles's men, who would have been left homeless by the demolition of Porter's Hall early in 1617. That it did continue in use and that a renewed lease was still held by some of the parties interested in the house in 1608 is indicated by the suit of Trevell v. Woodford before the Court of Requests in 1642, from which it appears, according to Peter Cunningham, that Sir Anthony Ashley, the then landlord of the house, entered the theatre in 1621, and turned out the players, on the pretence that half a year's rent was due to him. In 1629 the Whitefriars was replaced by the Salisbury Court theatre, built on the site of an old barn just on the other side of Water Lane.aye house thereupon'.]

  1. P. C. Acts (1613-14), 166. One Sturgis had leased a house and garden from Sir Edward Gorge, and sublet the garden to 'one Rossetoe Kynman and others, who goe aboute to erecte a p[l