ix. THE ROSE

[_Bibliographical Note._--All the more important documents are printed or calendared from the _Dulwich MSS._ with a valuable commentary in Greg, _Henslowe’s Diary_ and _Henslowe Papers_, and in Collier, _Memoirs of Alleyn_ and _Henslowe’s Diary_.]

The Rose owed its name to the fact that it stood in what had been, as recently as 1547–8, a rose garden.[1187] On 3 December 1552 Thomasyn, widow of Ralph Symonds, fishmonger, granted to trustees, for her own use during life and thereafter to the charitable uses of the parish of St. Mildred, Bread Street, her ‘messuage or tennement then called the little rose with twoe gardens’ formerly in St. Margaret’s and then in St. Saviour’s, Southwark. St. Mildred’s still has a plan of the estate, which extended to about three roods.[1188] A ‘tenement called the Rose’ is referred to in a recital of a lease of Henry VIII’s reign as the eastern boundary of other tenements, by name the Barge, the Bell, and the Cock, which lay ‘vppon the banke called Stewes’ in St. Margaret’s, afterwards St. Saviour’s, parish, between the highway next the Thames on the north and Maiden Lane on the south.[1189] It is located by Mr. Rendle just to the east of the still existing Rose Alley. The site therefore lay in the Liberty of the Clink midway between those afterwards occupied by the Globe on the east and the Hope on the west. On 20 November 1574 the parish let the property for thirty-one years at £7 annually to William Griffin, vintner. Griffin assigned it on 11 December 1579 to Robert Withens, vintner, and Withens on 24 March 1585 to Henslowe.[1190] There was as yet no theatre. The first mention of one as in contemplation is in an agreement of 10 January 1587 between Henslowe and one John Cholmley, citizen and grocer of London, for partnership during the next eight years and three months, should both parties live so long, in a garden plot ninety-four feet square on the Bankside in the parish of St. Saviour’s, Southwark, and ‘a playe howse now in framinge and shortly to be ereckted and sett vppe vpone the same’. Under this Henslowe undertook to have ‘the saide play house with all furniture thervnto belonginge’ set up ‘with as muche expedicion as maye be’ by John Grigges, carpenter, to pay all rents due on the premisses, and to repair the bridges and wharves belonging to them before the following Michaelmas. Cholmley undertook to bear his share of any further cost of maintaining the premises, and also to pay Henslowe the sum of £816 in quarterly instalments. In consideration of this, he was to take half of all such profits as ‘shall arysse grow be colectted gathered or become due for the saide parcell of grounde and playe howse when and after yt shalbe ereckted and sett vpe by reason of any playe or playes, that shalbe showen or played there or otherwysse howsoever’. The partners are jointly to appoint ‘players to vse exersyse & playe in the saide playe howse’, and collect sums themselves or by deputy of all persons coming to the performances ‘excepte yt please any of the saide partyes to suffer theire frendes to go in for nothinge’. Cholmley is also to have the sole right of selling food or drink on the premises and a small house already in his tenure on the south of the plot close to Maiden Lane, ‘to keepe victualinge in’ or for any other purpose, and with a right of ingress from Thames side by Rose Alley.[1191] The deed does not name the property, but it cannot be doubted that it refers to a part of the Little Rose. Presumably the theatre was to be built on a garden at the back of the holding, and the existing tenement on Bankside was not to be interfered with. Henslowe had ‘Rosse rentes’ of a residential character in 1602 or 1603.[1192] Norden’s map (1593) puts the Rose farther from the river than the Bear Garden. The Delaram and Merian drawings, on the other hand, put it very near the river, and these, although of less authority than Norden, are followed in Mr. Rendle’s plan. Probably Norden’s Bear Garden was an older one than that which afterwards became the Hope.[1193] The provision as to the wharfs and bridges seems to indicate an intention to open the Rose at Michaelmas 1587, and I see no reason to doubt that it was in fact ready for occupation by about that date. On 29 October the Privy Council called the attention of the Surrey justices to complaints from Southwark of breaches of the rule against plays on Sunday, ‘especiallie within the Libertie of the Clincke and in the parish of St. Saviour’s in Southwarke’. There may, of course, have been plays at inns in the Clink, but it is more natural to take the protest as one against the newly opened Rose. No other regular theatre existed in the Clink at this time. That the Rose was built by 1588 appears from a record of the Sewer Commission for Surrey.[1194] It is not in Smith’s plan of 1588, but this may easily not have been quite up to date.

The next that is heard of the Rose is probably in 1592.[1195] In March and April of that year Henslowe, who had recently taken his famous ‘diary’ into use as a financial memorandum book, noted in it some building expenditure, and a little later set out ‘a note of suche carges as I haue layd owt a bowte my playe howsse in the yeare of our lord 1592’.[1196] Henslowe is not known to have owned Newington Butts, or any other theatre except the Rose, and it is reasonable to assume that this is what he meant by ‘my playe howsse’. The work probably began in or before January, as an entry halfway through the list is dated on 6 February. It entailed the purchase of a barge and a certain amount of breaking up and paling and wharfing. Henslowe appears to have done the work himself and not by contract. He bought a mast, turned balusters, boards and laths, in part from the carpenter Grigges who is named in the agreement with Cholmley, and in part from a ‘timber man’ called Lee. He bought bolts, hinges, and nails from the ironmonger at the Fryingpan in Southwark and from one Brader. He bought lime, sand, chalk, and bricks. He paid wages to carpenters, workmen, and labourers, and employed painters and a thatcher. The exact nature and extent of the work are not specified, but it included the painting of the stage, the ceiling of ‘my lords rome’, and ‘the rome ouer the tyerhowsse’, and the ‘makeinge the penthowsse shed at the tyeringe howsse doore’. It has sometimes been supposed that the Rose never got built in 1587, and that these are the accounts, or part of them, for the original construction. This seems to me most unlikely. The total expense, with the exception of a small number of items lost by the mutilation of a page, only amounted to about £108. This could not cover more than repairs. On the other hand, these were clearly substantial repairs, and the fact that they were needed suggests that the building cannot have been a very new one. The lapse of five years since 1587 would, however, be consistent with the necessity for them. Almost simultaneously with the earliest dated entries in the building account, begins on 19 February 1592 the record of performances by Lord Strange’s men, which continues to the following 22 June. If these were at the Rose, the paint on the stage can hardly have been dry in time for them, unless, as Dr. Greg suggests, the payments made in March and April were for work done a little earlier. That it was at the Rose that Strange’s men played seems indicated by the Privy Council order, reciting the restraint of this company ‘from playinge at the Rose on the Banckside’, which it is difficult to assign to any year but 1591 or 1592.[1197] It is a little curious that nothing more is heard of John Cholmley, and I think the natural inference is that he was dead and that the partnership had thereby, in accordance with the terms of the agreement, been automatically dissolved.[1198]

The assumption, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, that until he acquired a share in the Fortune Henslowe had no proprietary interest in any other theatre must explain the assignment to the Rose of all the playing recorded in the diary between 1592 and the autumn of 1600, with the exception of the few performances definitely stated to have been at Newington Butts. The further conjecture must, I think, be accepted that the season begun by the Admiral’s and Chamberlain’s men at Newington Butts in the summer of 1594 was transferred, so far as the Admiral’s men were concerned, to the Rose after 15 June. If so, the Rose housed Strange’s men again from 29 December 1592 to 1 February 1593, Sussex’s from 26 December 1593 to 6 February 1594, the Queen’s and Sussex’s together from 1 to 9 April 1594, and the Admiral’s from 14 to 16 May 1594, and then regularly from the following June until their transference to the Fortune in 1600. The only actual mentions of the theatre by name in the diary during this period are in the agreements of 1597 between Henslowe and the players Jones and Borne, in which Henslowe specifies ‘the Rosse’ as ‘my howsse’ in which they are to play. It was no doubt in use when Guilpin’s _Skialetheia_ (S. R. 8 September 1598) was written.[1199] In the Lenten interval of 1595 Henslowe made ‘A nott of what I haue layd owt abowt my playhowsse ffor payntynge & doinge it abowt with ealme bordes & other repracyones’. The expenditure reached a total of £108 19_s._, which was much about the same as that of 1592, and was supplemented in the following June by a further £7 2_s._ for carpenters’ work, including ‘mackinge the throne in the heuenes’.[1200] The accounts of 1592 and 1595 suggest that the building was of wood and plaster on a brick foundation, and this is consistent with Hentzner’s statement of 1598. Part of it, at least, was thatched. If the maps can be trusted, it was octagonal. In 1600 Henslowe had to find new occupants for the Rose. He records that Pembroke’s men began to play there on 28 October, but only enters two unprofitable performances. Possibly the Privy Council, who had decreed in the previous July a limitation of houses to one on each side of the river, interfered. But this limitation was certainly not permanent. There is a receipt for a play bought for Worcester’s men ‘at the Rose’, and they probably used the house during the term of their account with Henslowe between August 1602 and May 1603. Subsequently they moved to the Curtain and Boar’s Head. Henslowe’s lease of the site was due to expire at the end of 1605, and this explains to some extent the following entry in the diary:

‘The 25 of June 1603 I talked with M^r. Pope at the scryveners shope wher he lisse consernynge the tackynge of the leace a new of the littell Roosse & he showed me a wrytynge betwext the pareshe & hime seallfe which was to paye twenty pownd a yeare rent & to bestowe a hundred marckes vpon billdinge which I sayd I wold rather pulle downe the playehowse then I wold do so & he beade me do & sayd he gaue me leaue & wold beare me owt for yt wasse in him to do yt.’[1201]

It is impossible to say whether ‘Mr. Pope’ was Thomas Pope of the King’s men at the neighbouring Globe, or Morgan Pope, who was formerly interested in the Bear House, or some other Pope; nor is it clear how he was in a position to authorize Henslowe to pull down the theatre. Dr. Greg draws the natural inference from the wording that he may have given his consent as a prospective lessee of the property.[1202] In any case the Rose was not pulled down until two or three years later. The Sewers records show that in January 1604 not Philip but Francis Henslowe was amerced 6_s._ 8_d._ for it, which may mean that Lennox’s men were playing there; that on 4 October 1605 Philip Henslowe was amerced, but return was made that it was ‘out of his hands’; that on 14 February 1606 Edward Box, of Bread Street, London, was amerced for it; and that on 25 April 1606 Box was amerced for the site of ‘the late play-house in Maid lane’.[1203]

There is no record of plays at the Rose after 1603.[1204] It is in the Delaram engravings, but not in any later views except those of the Merian group, where it appears, flagged but unnamed, on the river edge.[1205] Nor is it mentioned with the Hope, Globe, and Swan in _Holland’s Leaguer_ (1632). The explanation may perhaps be that the Merian engraver followed some out-of-date authority, such as Delaram, which had got the house farther north than Norden puts it, and as it had long ceased to exist, did not know its name. On the other hand, it is also just conceivable that for a short period the Rose, or some other building at the north end of the Rose site, had a renewed life as a place of public entertainment. Alleyn was paying ‘tithe dwe for the Rose’ in 1622.[1206] And Malone cites Herbert’s ‘office-book’ for a statement that after 1620 the Swan and the Rose were ‘used occasionally for the exhibition of prize-fighters’.[1207]