1609, and probably passed still further into the background after the introduction of roofed public houses in the Caroline age.[1] The title-pages generally describe the Blackfriars, the Cockpit, and Salisbury Court as 'private' houses right up to the closing of the theatres, but the term, in so far as it connotes anything different from 'public', seems to have lost what little meaning it ever had.[2]
De Witt, about 1596, describes the Theatre, Curtain, Rose, and Swan as 'amphiteatra', and Hentzner in 1598 adds that they were all 'lignea'.[3] The Globe and the Hope were built later on the same structural model. The Fortune was also of wood, but square. Of the shape and material of the Red Bull we know nothing. Prologues and epilogues often refer to the internal appearance of the auditorium as presenting a 'round', 'ring', 'circuit', 'circumference', or 'O'.[4] If we can rely upon the draughtsmanship of the London maps, the external outline was rather that of a polygon. This evidence must not be pressed too far, for there is probably an element of cartographic symbolism to be reckoned with. The same house may appear in one map as a hexagon, in another as an octagon or decagon, and the late Hollar group differs from its predecessors in using a completely circular form. But there is confirmation in the Paris Garden manor map of 1627, which shows the ground-plan of the Swan decagonal, and in the statement of Mrs. Thrale that the ruins of the Globe still visible in the eighteenth century were hexagonal without and round within. This was of course the later Globe built in 1613, and there is some reason for thinking that the earlier Globe may have been of rather
- ↑ Lawrence (Fortnightly, May 1916) has shown that the rebuilt Fortune of 1623 and Red Bull of c. 1632 were probably roofed, and Wright's description confuses the two phases of these houses.
- ↑ Chapman's Byron (1625) is said to have been acted 'at the Blacke-*Friers and other publique Stages', Heywood's English Traveller (1633), A Maidenhead Well Lost (1634), and Love's Mistress (1636) to have been 'publikely acted' at the Cockpit, and Shirley's Martyred Soldier (1638) to have been acted 'at the Private House in Drury Lane and at other publicke Theaters'. This is exceptional terminology, but shows the obsolescence of the distinction.
- ↑ Cf. ch. xvi, introd.
- ↑ Old Fortunatus (Rose, 1599), prol. 81, 'this small circumference'; Warning for Fair Women (? Curtain, 1599), prol. 83, 88, 'all this fair circuit . . . this round'; Hen. V (Curtain or Globe, 1599), prol. 11, 'this cockpit . . . this wooden O'; E. M. O. (Globe, 1599), prol. 199, epil. 4406, 'this thronged round . . . this faire-fild Globe'; Sejanus (Globe, 1603), comm. v, 'the Globe's fair ring'; Three English Brothers (Curtain or Red Bull, 1607), epil., 'this round circumference'; Merry Devil of Edmonton (Globe, 1608), prol. 5, 'this round'. On the other hand, Whore of Babylon (Fortune, 1607), prol. 1, 'The charmes of Silence through this Square be throwne'.
