xi. THE GLOBE

[_Bibliographical Note._--The devolution of the Globe shares can be traced in the documents of three lawsuits: (_a_) _Ostler v. Heminges_, in the Court of King’s Bench in 1616 (_Coram Rege Roll_ 1454, 13 Jac. I, Hilary Term, m. 692), described by C. W. Wallace in _The Times_ of 2 and 4 Oct. 1909, and in part privately printed by him in _Advance Sheets from Shakespeare, the Globe, and Blackfriars_ (1909), here cited as _O. v. H._; (_b_) _Witter v. Heminges and Condell_, in the Court of Requests (1619–20), described by C. W. Wallace in _The Century_ of Aug. 1910, and printed by him in _Nebraska University Studies_, x (1910), 261, here cited as _W. v. H._; and (_c_) the proceedings before the Lord Chamberlain in 1635 known as the _Sharers Papers_, and printed by Halliwell-Phillipps in _Outlines_, i. 312. Professor Wallace’s descriptive articles require some corrections from the texts of his documents. Much evidence bearing upon the site of the theatre was collected by W. Rendle in _The Bankside, Southwark, and the Globe Play-house_ (1877), printed by the N. S. S. as an appendix to Harrison, pt. ii (cited as Rendle, _Bankside_), in _Walford’s Antiquarian_, viii (1885), 209, and in _The Anchor Brewery_ (1888, _Inns of Old Southwark_, 56), by G. Hubbard in _Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects_, 3rd series, xvii. 26, and _London and Middlesex Arch. Soc. Trans._ n. s. ii (1912), pt. iii, and most fully by W. Martin in _Surrey Archaeological Collections_, xxiii (1910), 149. Some additional facts, from records of the Sewers Commission for Kent and Surrey in the possession of the London County Council, and from deeds concerning the Brend estate, were published by Dr. Wallace in _The Times_ of 30 April and 1 May 1914, and led to discussion by Dr. Martin, Mr. Hubbard, and others in _11 N. Q._ x. 209, 290, 335; xi. 447; xii. 10, 50, 70, 121, 143, 161, 201, 224, 264, 289, 347, and by W. W. Braines in _The Site of the Globe Play-house_ (1921). A paper by the present writer on _The Stage of the Globe_ is in the _Stratford Town Shakespeare_, x. 351.]

In the building of the Globe use was made of the materials of the old Theatre (q.v.) which, according to _Allen v. Burbadge_ (1602), the Burbadges, with Peter Street and others, pulled down on 28 December 1598, carried ‘all the wood and timber therof unto the Banckside in the parishe of St. Marye Overyes, and there erected a newe playehowse with the sayd timber and woode’.[1229] An earlier account gives the date of the audacious proceeding as 20 January 1599. The formal lease of the new site from the freeholder, Nicholas Brend of West Molesey, was executed on 21 February 1599. No doubt Street, who had assisted in the transfer, was the builder and had finished his job when on 8 January 1600 he contracted with Henslowe and Alleyn to put up the Fortune (q.v.) on the model, with certain modifications, of ‘the late erected plaiehowse on the Banck in the saide parishe of St. Saviours called the Globe’. This contract allowed twenty-eight weeks for the work. Probably the Globe took about the same time, for it is described as ‘de novo edificata’ in the inquisition on the property left by the lessor’s father, Thomas Brend, which is dated on 16 May 1599.[1230] It may not then have been quite finished, but it was doubtless ready for the occupation of the Chamberlain’s men by the beginning of the autumn season of 1599. One of the earliest plays there produced by them was Shakespeare’s _Julius Caesar_ which on 21 September Thomas Platter crossed the water to see ‘in dem streüwinen Dachhaus’.[1231] Whether the Globe or its predecessor the Curtain was the ‘wooden O’ of _Henry V_, 1, prol. 13, must be more doubtful, as the prologue to Act V of the same play contemplates the triumphant return of Essex from Ireland, and in fact Essex left England on 27 March and returned, not triumphant, on 28 September 1599.[1232] Jonson refers to ‘this faire-fild Globe’ as the scene of his _Every Man Out of his Humour_, produced in the autumn of 1600.[1233] The Privy Council order of the previous 22 June, which enacts that there shall be one allowed house only ‘in Surrey in that place which is commonlie called the Banckside or there aboutes’, goes on to recite that the Chamberlain’s men had chosen the Globe to be that one. The allowance of the house ‘in Surrey called the Globe’ is confirmed by the Privy Council letter of 27 December 1601. The order of 9 April 1604 authorizes the opening after the plague of ‘the Globe scituate in Maiden Lane on the Banckside in the Countie of Surrey’. This order evidently contemplates that the King’s men will use the house, which was assigned to them by name as ‘theire nowe vsual howse called the Globe within our County of Surrey’ by the terms of the patent of 19 May 1603. The precedent is followed in the later patents of 1619 and 1625, and there is nothing to indicate that any other company than the Chamberlain’s or King’s men ever performed, even temporarily, at the theatre.

The Globe was held by a syndicate, composed mainly of members of the company, on a leasehold tenure. The site, which had been garden ground, was described in the original lease with some minuteness as follows:[1234]

‘totam illam parcellam fundi nuper praeantea inclusam & factam in quatuor separalia gardina nuper in tenuris & occupacionibus Thomae Burt & Isbrand Morris diers & Lactantii Roper Salter civis Londoniae continentem in longitudine ab oriente vsque occidentem ducentos & viginti pedes assisae vel eo circiter iacentem & adiungentem viae sive venellae ibidem ex vno latere & abbuttantem super peciam terrae vocatam the Parke super boream & super gardinum tunc vel nuper in tenura siue occupacione cuiusdam Johannis Cornishe versus occidentem & super aliud gardinum tunc vel nuper in tenura sive occupacione cuiusdam Johannis Knowles versus orientem cum omnibus domibus aedificiis structuris vijs easiamentis commoditatibus & pertinentiis adinde spectantibus vel aliquo modo pertinentibus quae dicta praemissa sunt scituata iacentia & existentia infra parochiam sancti Salvatoris in Southwarke in Comitatu Surria aceciam totam illam parcellam terrae nuper praeantea inclusam & factam in tria separalia gardina vnde duo eorundem nuper in tenura sive occupacione cuiusdam Johannis Robertes carpenter ac aliud nuper in occupacione cuiusdam Thomas Ditcher civis & mercatoris scissoris Londoniae scituatam iacentem & existentem in parochia praedicta in praedicto comitatu Surria continentem in longitudine ab oriente ad occidentem per estimacionem centum quinquaginta & sex pedes assisae vel eo circiter & in latitudine a borea ad austrum centum pedes assisae per estimacionem vel eo circiter iacentem & adiungentem super alio latere viae sive venellae praedictae & abbuttantem super gardinum ibidem tunc vel nuper praeantea in occupacione Willelmi Sellers versus orientem & super vnum aliud gardinum ibidem tunc vel nuper praeantea in tenura Johannis Burgram sadler versus occidentem & super venellam ibidem vocatam Mayden lane versus austrum cum omnibus domibus aedificijs structuris vijs easiamentis commoditatibus & pertinentiis ultimis recitatis praemissis seu alicui parti vel parcellae inde spectantibus seu aliquo modo pertinentibus simul cum libero ingressu egressu & regressu & passagio ... per & trans praedictam viam sive venellam iacentem & existentem inter praemissa praedicta.’

The lease was granted for a term of thirty-one years from Christmas 1598 to Christmas 1629, and conveyed the property in two equal moieties, the one to Cuthbert and Richard Burbadge and the other to William Shakespeare, Augustine Phillips, Thomas Pope, John Heminges, and William Kempe.[1235] With the exception of Cuthbert Burbadge these were all members of the Chamberlain’s company. Each moiety was charged with a ground-rent of £7 5_s._ There is nothing to show how the funds for building were found. ‘Wee’, said the Burbadges in 1635, ‘at like expence built the Globe, with more summes of money taken up at interest, which lay heavy on us many yeeres; and to ourselves wee joyned those deserveing men, Shakspere, Hemings, Condall, Philips, and others, partners in the profittes of that they call the House, but makeing the leases for twenty-one yeeres hath beene the destruction of ourselves and others, for they dyeing at the expiration of three or four yeeres of their lease, the subsequent yeeres became dissolved to strangers, as by marrying with their widdowes and the like by their children.’[1236] This is, however, not a strictly accurate account of what took place in 1599, for Condell was not one of the original ‘housekeepers’, and the original lease was for thirty-one, not twenty-one, years. In any case, the Burbadges contributed the woodwork of the Theatre.

Between the execution of the lease and the completion of the play-house, Shakespeare and his four fellows assigned their moiety to William Levison and Thomas Savage, who ‘reassigned to euerye of them seuerally a fift parte of the said moitie’, so that after the building each of the five had a ‘ioynt tenancie’ with the other four in a moiety of the ground and galleries, and was also ‘tenant in common’ during the term of the lease.[1237] Professor Wallace explains that ‘the purpose of a joint-tenancy was to prevent the breaking up and scattering of an estate into fractions by keeping the property always in the hands of the members, or the longest survivors, or survivor, of them all, thus not allowing it to descend to heirs’. The legal distinction is no doubt sound, but we shall find that, whatever the intention of the assignment and reassignment may have been, the Globe shares did in fact descend to heirs, and that a good deal of trouble and litigation was thereby caused.[1238]

Shortly after the house was built Kempe, no doubt on his withdrawal from the company, assigned his interest to Shakespeare, Heminges, and Phillips, who by further assignments to and from one Thomas Cressey brought in Pope, with the result that each of the four now held a fourth part of the moiety.[1239] Pope died before 13 February 1604 and left his interest to Mary Clark, _alias_ Wood, and Thomas Bromley. Mary Clark must have married John Edmonds, another legatee under the will, for in 1612 an interest corresponding to Pope’s was held by John and Mary Edmonds and Basil Nicoll.[1240] Nicoll, who was Pope’s executor, was presumably acting as trustee for Thomas Bromley. Edmonds, though an actor, belonged not to the King’s men, but was a Queen’s man by 1618. One-eighth of the house, therefore, was alienated from the company in 1604. A further alienation, which proved particularly troublesome in its results, took place on the death of Phillips in May 1605. The exact facts became a matter of legal dispute. But it appears that Phillips’ interest passed first to his widow Anne as executrix, and, when her marriage in the course of 1606 to the spendthrift John Witter became known, to Heminges, who succeeded her as executor under the terms of the will. In this capacity Heminges leased an interest to the Witters on 14 February 1611 for a term of eighteen years from Christmas 1610.[1241] This interest was not a fourth, but only a sixth of the moiety, since at some date between the death of Phillips and that of Sly on 16 August 1608 the moiety had been redivided to allow of the introduction of Henry Condell and William Sly into the syndicate of housekeepers.[1242] A similar transaction took place on 20 February 1612, when Basil Nicoll and John and Mary Edmonds, then holding one-sixth of the moiety, Shakespeare and Witter, each also holding one-sixth, and Heminges and Condell, holding three-sixths, joined to convey one-seventh of the moiety to William Ostler.[1243] It must, I think, be assumed that Heminges and Condell had together purchased the share left by Sly to his son Robert.

The acquisition of the Blackfriars by the King’s men in 1608 did not, at first at least, detract from the importance of the Globe as the leading London theatre. It is so accepted by foreign visitors in 1610 and again in 1611.[1244]

On 29 June 1613 the house was ‘casually burnt downe and consumed with fier’.[1245] The event was important enough to find a record in Howes’ continuation of Stowe’s _Annales_:[1246]

‘Upon S. Peters day last, the play-house or Theater, called the Globe, upon the Banckside near London, by negligent discharging of a peal of ordinance, close to the south-side thereof, the thatch took fire, and the wind sodainly disperst the flame round about, and in a very short space the whole building was quite consumed, and no man hurt; the house being filled with people to behold the play, viz. of Henry the Eighth. And the next spring it was new builded in far fairer manner than before.’

Many other contemporary accounts exist. Thus Thomas Lorkin wrote to Sir Thomas Puckering on 30 June:[1247]

‘No longer since than yesterday, while Burbage’s company were acting at the Globe the play of Henry VIII, and there shooting off certain chambers in way of triumph, the fire catched and fastened upon the thatch of the house, and there burned so furiously, as it consumed the whole house, all in less than two hours, the people having enough to do to save themselves.’

On 2 July Sir Henry Wotton wrote to his nephew Sir Edmund Bacon:[1248]

‘Now, to let matters of state sleep, I will entertain you at the present with what has happened this week at the Bank’s side. The King’s players had a new play, called _All is True_, representing some principal pieces of the reign of Henry VIII, which was set forth with many extraordinary circumstances of pomp and majesty, even to the matting of the stage; the Knights of the Order with their Georges and garters, the Guards with their embroidered coats, and the like: sufficient in truth within a while to make greatness very familiar, if not ridiculous. Now, King Henry making a masque at the Cardinal Wolsey’s house, and certain chambers being shot off at his entry, some of the paper, or other stuff, wherewith one of them was stopped, did light on the thatch, where being thought at first but an idle smoke, and their eyes more attentive to the show, it kindled inwardly, and ran round like a train, consuming within less than an hour the whole house to the very grounds. This was the fatal period of that virtuous fabric, wherein yet nothing did perish but wood and straw, and a few forsaken cloaks; only one man had his breeches set on fire, that would perhaps have broiled him, if he had not by the benefit of a provident wit put it out with bottle ale.’

On 8 July John Chamberlain wrote to Sir Ralph Winwood:[1249]

‘The burning of the Globe, or play-house, on the Bankside, on St. Peter’s day, cannot escape you; which fell out by a peal of chambers (that I know not upon what occasion were to be used in the play), the tamplin or stopple of one of them lighting in the thatch that covered the house, burn’d it down to the ground in less than two hours, with a dwelling-house adjoining, and it was a great marvaile and fair grace of God, that the people had so little harm, having but two narrow doors to get out.’

Nor was poetic chronicles of the disaster lacking. On the day after the fire took place, two ballads about it were entered in the Stationers’ Register.[1250] Neither is known in print, but the use of the word ‘doleful’ suggests that one of them, of which the author was William Parrat, is probably identical with the following set of verses, preserved in manuscript:[1251]

_A Sonnett upon the pittiful burneing of the Globe playhowse in London._

Now sitt the downe, Melpomene, Wrapt in a sea-cole robe, And tell the dolefull tragedie, That late was playd at Globe; For noe man that can singe and saye [But ?] was scard on St. Peters daye. Oh sorrow, pittifull sorrow, and yett all this is true.

All yow that please to understand, Come listen to my storye, To see Death with his rakeing brand Mongst such an auditorye; Regarding neither Cardinalls might, Nor yett the rugged face of Henry the Eight. Oh sorrow, &c.

This fearfull fire beganne above, A wonder strange and true, And to the stage-howse did remove, As round as taylors clewe; And burnt downe both beame and snagg, And did not spare the silken flagg. Oh sorrow, &c.

Out runne the knightes, out runne the lordes, And there was great adoe; Some lost their hattes, and some their swordes; Then out runne Burbidge too; The reprobates, though druncke on Munday, Prayd for the Foole and Henry Condye. Oh sorrow, &c.

The perrywigges and drumme-heades frye, Like to a butter firkin; A wofull burneing did betide To many a good buffe jerkin. Then with swolne eyes, like druncken Flemminges, Distressed stood old stuttering Heminges. Oh sorrow, &c.

No shower his raine did there downe force In all that Sunn-shine weather, To save that great renowned howse; Nor thou, O ale-howse, neither. Had itt begunne belowe, sans doubte, Their wives for feare had pissed itt out. Oh sorrow, &c.

Bee warned, yow stage-strutters all, Least yow againe be catched, And such a burneing doe befall, As to them whose howse was thatched; Forbeare your whoreing, breeding biles, And laye up that expence for tiles. Oh sorrow, &c.

Goe drawe yow a petition, And doe yow not abhorr itt, And gett, with low submission, A licence to begg for itt In churches, sans churchwardens checkes, In Surrey and in Midlesex. Oh sorrow, pittifull sorrow, and yett all this is true.

John Taylor, the water-poet, has his epigram on the theme:[1252]

As gold is better that’s in fier try’d, So is the Bankside _Globe_, that late was burn’d; For where before it had a thatched hide, Now to a stately theator ’tis turn’d: Which is an emblem, that great things are won By those that dare through greatest dangers run.

Ben Jonson, in his _Execration upon Vulcan_, writes as if he had been an eye-witness:[1253]

Well fare the wise men yet, on the Bank side, My friends the watermen! they could provide Against thy fury, when to serve their needs, They made a Vulcan of a sheaf of reeds, Whom they durst handle in their holiday coats, And safely trust to dress, not burn their boats. But O those reeds! thy mere disdain of them Made thee beget that cruel stratagem, Which some are pleased to style but thy mad prank, Against the Globe, the glory of the Bank: Which, though it were the fort of the whole parish, Flanked with a ditch, and forced out of a marish, I saw with two poor chambers taken in, And razed; ere thought could urge this might have been! See the World’s ruins! nothing but the piles Left, and wit since to cover it with tiles. The Brethren they straight nosed it out for news, ’Twas verily some relict of the Stews; And this a sparkle of that fire let loose, That was raked up in the Winchestrian goose, Bred on the Bank in time of Popery, When Venus there maintained the mystery. But others fell with that conceit by the ears, And cried it was a threatning to the bears, And that accursed ground, the Paris-garden: ‘Nay,’ sighed a sister, ‘Venus’ nun, Kate Arden, Kindled the fire!’ But then, did one return, No fool would his own harvest spoil or burn! If that were so, thou rather wouldst advance The place that was thy wife’s inheritance. ‘Oh no,’ cried all, ‘Fortune, for being a whore, Scaped not his justice any jot the more: He burnt that idol of the Revels too. Nay, let Whitehall with revels have to do, Though but in dances, it shall know his power; There was a judgement shewn too in an hour.’

The Puritans did in fact draw such morals as Jonson satirized. Prynne, for example, finds the hand of God in ‘the sudden feareful burning, even to the ground, both of the Globe and Fortune play-houses, no man perceiving how these fires came’.[1254]

The Globe was at once rebuilt. It was open again by 30 June 1614, when John Chamberlain wrote to Alice Carleton that he had called upon her sister Williams, and found her ‘gone to the new Globe, to a play. Indeed’, he says, ‘I hear much speech of this new play-house, which is said to be the fairest that ever was in England, so that if I live but seven years longer, I may chance to take a journey to see it’.[1255] The manuscript continuator of Stowe, describing the end of the theatre, says that the rebuilding was ‘at the great charge of King Iames, and many Noble men and others’.[1256] The lawsuit documents contain no indication that any part of the burden fell upon any one but the ‘housekeepers’, who being bound under their lease to ‘mainteyne and repaire’ the house, resolved to ‘reedifie the same’. The first estimate of cost seems to have been about £700 to £800, for a levy of ‘50^{li} or 60^{li}’ was called upon each seventh share of the moiety.[1257] Witter was unable to meet this demand, and as he was also behindhand with his share of the ground-rent and other payments, Heminges resumed possession of the seventh and gave half of it ‘gratis’ to Henry Condell. By this time it had been ascertained that the re-edifying would be ‘a verie greate charge’, and Heminges claims that the re-edifying of Witter’s ‘parte’ had in fact cost himself and Condell ‘about the somme of cxx^{li}’.[1258] This would mean a total cost of about £1,680.[1259] Heminges appears to have taken a sub-lease at 20_s._ a year from his partners of two small parcels of the land in 1615, and to have built on them a house, probably a taphouse, as a private enterprise.[1260]

Ostler died in December 1614, and Heminges took possession of his interest and drew the profits until October 1615, when his daughter Thomasina, Ostler’s widow, brought an action against him for them, the result of which is unknown.[1261] Shakespeare died in April 1616, and his interest, if not previously alienated, would have passed under his will, with other ‘leases’ to John and Susanna Hall.[1262] At some time earlier than April 1619, probably when he joined the company about 1616, Field was admitted to be a housekeeper, and the moiety was then divided into eighths instead of sevenths.[1263] In April 1619 Witter brought an action against Heminges and Condell in the Court of Requests, to recover the interest which he had forfeited at the time of the rebuilding. He estimated the present annual value of the seventh, which he had held, at £30 to £40, and in the course of the proceedings expressed his willingness either to pay a rent of £13 6_s._ 8_d._ for the half of that seventh which Heminges had not passed over to Condell, or, alternatively, to take the profits of the houses on the site, other than the theatre, and in return for those to become responsible for the whole of the ground-rents due under the principal leases. The defence consisted in a denial of Witter’s claim to benefit under the will of Augustine Phillips, and an assertion that, after Heminges had allowed him to draw considerable sums in respect of the share, he had deserted his wife, at whose death Heminges ‘out of charitie was at the charges of the buryeing of her’. The depositions of the witnesses, who included Thomas Woodford and one James Knasborough, are unfortunately missing. Ultimately Witter failed to proceed with his case, and on 29 November 1620 the Court gave judgement for the defendants.

In October 1624 died John Underwood and left a share in the Globe in trust for his children to Condell and others as his executors. It must be supposed that he had succeeded to Field’s eighth, when the latter left the King’s men in 1619. Condell himself died in December 1627 and left his interest to his son William until he should have made £300 out of it, and thereafter to his widow. Heminges died in October 1630, and his interest passed to his son William as his executor. During the last years of their lives Heminges and Condell, following out the policy of absorption which has already been illustrated, appear to have acquired in one way or another the whole of the shares formerly held by Shakespeare, by Basil Nicoll and John Edmonds as successors of Sly, and by Underwood. This fact emerges from the records known as the _Sharers Papers_, which start with a petition from Robert Benfield, Eliard Swanston, and Thomas Pollard, then important members of the King’s company, to the Lord Chamberlain in 1635, to be admitted to shares as ‘housekeepers’ in the profits of the Globe and the Blackfriars.[1264] The allegations show that the Globe had been ‘formerly’ divided into sixteen shares, of which eight were held by Cuthbert Burbadge and Richard Burbadge’s widow Winifred, now Mrs. Robinson, in her own right and that of her son William, four by Mrs. Condell, and four by William Heminges. Afterwards Joseph Taylor and John Lowin were allowed to acquire shares, and later still the remaining Heminges interest was ‘surreptitiously’ purchased by John Shank. At the date of the petition, therefore, the Burbadges held seven shares, Mrs. Condell two, Shank three, and Taylor and Lowin two each. The case furnishes valuable information as to the organization of the theatre, and as to the division of outgoing and profits between the housekeepers and the actors as such. It is pretty evident that by 1635 the Globe took a secondary place to the Blackfriars in the economy of the King’s men.[1265] Shank admitted that he had bought a two years’ term of one Globe share in 1633 and a one year’s term of two more in 1634, together with interests in the Blackfriars, and seems to have thought that the £506 which he gave was full value for the purchases.[1266] The Burbadges protested against being called upon to part with any part of their property to ‘men soe soone shott up’ and not having the ‘antiquity and desert’, which had customarily been looked for in housekeepers. In support of their plea they recalled the early services of their father in the building of theatres and the claims of their family to profit by ‘the great desert of Richard Burbadge for his quality of playing’. They suggested that ‘makeing the leases for twenty-one yeeres’ to their fellows, whose widows or children subsequently alienated the profits from the company, had been their ‘destruction’. The Lord Chamberlain, however, directed that the Burbadges should transfer two shares and Shank one to the three petitioners, ‘at the usual and accustomed rates, and according to the proportion of the time and benefit they are to injoy’. This the order states, in the case of the Globe, as five years. Probably there is an error here. The terms bought by Shank were to expire in 1635, but at the time of the petition a suit was pending in the Court of Requests for the confirmation of a ‘lease paroll’ from Sir Matthew Brend for a further nine years from 25 March 1635. The original lease of 1599 from Nicholas Brend was for thirty-one years and would have expired in 1629. But on 26 October 1613, when the rebuilding of the theatre was in hand, a fresh lease extending the term to 1635 had been granted by Sir John Bodley as trustee for Nicholas’s son Matthew, who was then a minor. Not content with this, the syndicate had procured a promise of a further extension to 1644 from young Matthew himself, which he now repudiated.[1267] I think that Bodley must have taken the opportunity in 1613 to raise the ground-rent from £14 10_s._ to £20. A draft for a return of new and divided houses, made for the Earl Marshal in 1634, has the following entry:

‘The Globe play-house nere Maid lane built by the company of players, with the dwelling-house thereto adjoyninge, built with timber, about 20 yeares past, upon an old foundation, worth 14^{li} to 20^{li} per ann., and one house there adjoyning built about the same tyme with timber, in the possession of W^m Millet, gent., worth per ann. 4^{li} [_In margin_, Play-house & house, S^r Mathew Brend’s inheritance].’

A corrected return of 1637 runs:

‘The Globe play-house nere Maide lane built by the Company of Players with timber about 20 yeares past uppon an old foundacion, worth 20^{li} per ann. beinge the inheritance of S^r Mathew Brand, K^{nt}.’[1268]

The petitioners in the _Sharers Papers_ declare that up to Lady Day 1635 the rent for the Globe and Blackfriars together was not above £65. The original rent of the Blackfriars was £40, but this also may have been put up on the expiration of the first lease in 1629. The Court of Requests finally confirmed the extension of the lease to 1644, apparently at a still further increased rent of £55, as Shank states the combined rent of the two houses as £100. The Globe was ‘pulled downe to the ground, by Sir Matthew Brand, on Munday the 15 of April 1644, to make tenements in the room of it’; that is to say, immediately upon the expiration of the nine years’ term from Lady Day 1635 contemplated in the _Sharers Papers_.[1269]

The precise locality of the Globe has been matter of controversy. The various contemporary documents already quoted place it beyond doubt in Surrey, and ‘on the Bankside’, a term which must certainly be taken to cover, not merely the row of houses looking directly upon the river, but also the whole of the western part of Southwark lying behind and south of these. With somewhat greater minuteness, the parish of St. Mary Overies is specified in the lawsuit of _Allen v. Burbadge_, and the parish of St. Saviour’s in the Fortune contract. There is no inconsistency here. The two ancient parishes of St. Mary Magdalen and St. Margaret on the Hill were amalgamated under the name of St. Saviour’s at the Reformation.[1270] I do not know that the ancient boundaries are upon record. The Rose stood in what had been St. Margaret’s, and one would therefore expect to find the Globe nearer than the Rose to the old priory church of St. Mary’s. In the Privy Council order of 1604 the situation is described as ‘in Maiden lane’, and in the return to the Earl Marshal of 1637 as ‘nere Maide lane’. But, apart from the difference between ‘in’ and ‘nere’, Maiden Lane is a fairly long thoroughfare, and so far as these indications are concerned, the Globe may have been either to the north or the south of it. Local tradition, as elaborated by Southwark antiquaries, has been inclined to put it to the south, within the area occupied by what was formerly Thrale’s and is now Barclay and Perkins’s Anchor Brewery, of which Maiden Lane, now Park Street, forms the northern boundary. The main reason for this is the inclusion within the brewery of the course of a passage known as Globe Alley, which ran west from Deadman’s Place in a parallel line to Maiden Lane for about 360 feet and then turned northwards for another 100 feet until it debouched into the Lane. So far as measurements go, Globe Alley might be the _venella_ of the 1599 lease. The name first appears in the St. Saviour’s token book for 1614, where it is applied to houses formerly described as Brand’s Rents, and from 1613 onwards as Sir John Bodley’s Rents.[1271] Land south of Maiden Lane certainly formed part of the Brend estate, and a plot of it conveyed by Sir Matthew Brend to one Hilary Memprise in 1626 was bounded on the south by a sewer dividing it from the Bishop of Winchester’s park, and on the north by ‘the alley or way leading to the Gloabe Play-house commonly called Gloabe Alley’.[1272] A century later, property acquired for the brewery in 1732 is similarly described as ‘fronting a certain alley or passage called Globe Alley, in antient times leading from Deadman’s Place to the Globe Play-house’.[1273]

It was certainly a belief in the Thrale family that the site of the theatre itself had passed into their hands. Mrs. Piozzi, Johnson’s friend, who married Henry Thrale in 1763, left the following autobiographical note of her residence in Southwark between that date and her husband’s death in 1781:

‘For a long time, then--or I thought it such--my fate was bound up with the old Globe Theatre, upon the Bankside, Southwark; the alley it had occupied having been purchased and thrown down by M^r Thrale to make an opening before the windows of our dwelling-house. When it lay desolate in a black heap of rubbish, my Mother, one day, in a joke, called it the Ruins of Palmyra; and after that they laid it down in a grass-plot. Palmyra was the name it went by, I suppose, among the clerks and servants of the brewhouse.... But there were really curious remains of the old Globe Play-house, which though hexagonal in form without, was round within.’[1274]

Dr. Martin seems to think that the lady’s recollection was confused and that the garden called Palmyra stood on the east of Deadman’s Place opposite to Globe Alley. But, according to Concanen and Morgan it was ‘on the opposite side of the street’ to the brewery.[1275] However this may be, there are other notices which show that, however complete the demolition of 1644, the theatre or part of it was still regarded by tradition as standing a hundred years later amongst the tenements by which it was replaced.[1276] In 1787 the brewery was purchased by Barclay and Perkins, and the conveyance recites amongst other property a plot of ground between Globe Alley and a common sewer, from which had been cleared in 1767 some ‘ruinous and decayed’ tenements formerly occupied in 1715 by John Knowles and others.[1277] This is probably the clearance referred to by Mrs. Piozzi. Under Acts of 1786 and 1812 Globe Alley was closed, and it is now covered over within the brewery precinct. Horwood’s map of 1799 shows the eastern end already obliterated. The western end is called Globe Walk, and to the north of it is Globe Court, perhaps representing the space cleared in 1767.

On the assumption that the theatre stood in Globe Alley, there has been divergence of opinion as to the precise part of the Alley in which it stood. Mr. Rendle fixed on a spot on the north side, about 80 or 100 feet from the Deadman’s Place end.[1278] To this he was guided, partly by a further local tradition, according to which the site was occupied successively by a meeting-house and a windmill, and partly by an argument derived from the entries in the St. Saviour’s token-book for 1621.[1279] Here, under the heading ‘Sir John Bodley’s Rentes’ are recorded in succession about ten names. Then comes a new heading, differently written, ‘Gloab Alley’, then two more names, then in the margin of the page the word ‘Gloabe’. This Mr. Rendle took to mean that the Globe was about twelve houses from the east end of the alley. If this is an indication of the site of the Globe at all, which is a mere conjecture, I should myself draw the inference that it stood, not twelve, but two houses from the end of the alley, and that a part, if not the whole, of Bodley’s Rents was outside the alley. And why should the enumerator be supposed to have worked from the east, rather than from the north end of the alley? Dr. Martin, in fact, turns Mr. Rendle’s argument round in this way, and uses the token-book to support a theory which places the theatre south of Globe Alley, just at the angle where it turns to the north, and 360 feet, instead of Mr. Rendle’s 80 or 100 feet, west of Deadman’s Place.[1280] Here it appears to be located in a borough history of 1795;[1281] and is certainly located in more than one early nineteenth-century plan.[1282] Dr. Martin has attempted to obtain confirmation of this siting from an investigation of the brewery title-deeds. From 1727 onwards the history of the angle site is clear. In that year it was transferred, subject to a mortgage, by Timothy Cason and his wife Elizabeth, heiress of the Brend estate, to certain parishioners of St. Saviour’s. Upon it was built the parish workhouse referred to by Concanen and Morgan. This stood just at the outer south-west angle of Globe Alley, which Dr. Martin conceives to have been occupied by the theatre. In 1774 a new workhouse was built, and the site of the old one bought by the Thrales. It was conveyed with the rest of the brewery to Barclay and Perkins in 1787, and was then described as the ground ‘on which lately stood all that great shop or workhouse formerly used for a meeting-house’. Dr. Martin thinks that this forgotten meeting-house may have been confused in local tradition with that further to the east along Globe Alley.[1283] Dr. Martin suggests that the property transferred by the Casons in 1727 is to be identified with that described in a deed executed by the same persons in 1706, of which a copy is also to be found amongst the brewery title-deeds, as consisting of tenements built ‘where the late play-house called the Globe stood and upon the ground thereunto belonging’. If this were so, he would of course have proved his point. The deed of 1706 seems to have been a family settlement covering various fragments of Brend property in Southwark, which had only just been brought together in the hands of Elizabeth Cason. The Globe site had been settled by Sir Matthew Brend in 1624 upon his wife Frances as a jointure. She died in 1673, and it then passed as a jointure to Judith, wife of Sir Matthew’s son Thomas and mother of Elizabeth, under a deed of 1655 in which the reference to ‘the late play-house called the Globe’, repeated in that of 1706, first occurs. Judith Brend had died in 1706.

As a matter of fact, it is almost impossible to reconcile the Southwark tradition that the Globe stood on the south of Maiden Lane, either in Mr. Rendle’s or in Dr. Martin’s interpretation of it, with more than one bit of evidence which we owe to the research of Professor Wallace. The first of these is the lease of 1599 itself, as recited in the pleadings of _Ostler v. Heminges_. This states quite clearly that the leased plot abutted on a piece of land called the Park ‘super boream’ and on Maiden Lane ‘versus austrum’, and it is difficult to take very seriously either the Latinity which makes ‘versus austrum’ mean that the leased plot was on the south, or the suggestion that the draughtsman was working carelessly from a plan which had the south instead of the north of the plot at the top of the sheet, and got the points of his compass wrong.[1284] I daresay that such things do sometimes happen in conveyancer’s offices, but it is hardly legitimate to call them in aid as a canon of interpretation. No doubt it is tempting to identify the piece of land called the Park with the Bishop of Winchester’s park, which lay at a reasonable distance to the south and not to the north of Maiden Lane, but after all this must once have extended nearly up to the Bankside, since Maiden Lane itself is known to have been cut out of it, and it is not at all improbable that some little strip of land retained the name.[1285] It can only have been a very little one. The lease describes the Globe site as consisting of two plots lying apparently on opposite sides of a way or alley (_venella_) by which access was obtainable to them. One of these, that next the Park, had been the gardens of Thomas Burt, Isbrand Morris, and Lactantius Roper. It was 220 feet in length and lay between the garden of John Knowles on the east and John Cornish on the west. The southern plot, bounded by Maiden Lane on the south, had similarly been the gardens of John Roberts and Thomas Ditcher. This was only 156 feet long and 100 feet deep, and lay between the gardens of William Sellers to the east and John Burgram to the west. Now the whole space between Maiden Lane and the Thames is only from 200 to 350 feet at various points, so that there could not have been room for much of a ‘park’ between the Globe site and the Bankside houses.

The evidence of the lease is confirmed in various ways by the records of presentments made by the Commissioners of Sewers for Kent and Surrey against negligent occupiers in this marshy neighbourhood. The most important entry is one of 14 February 1606:

‘It is ordered that Burbidge and Heminges and others, the owners of the Play-house called the Globe in Maid-Lane shall before the xx^{th} day of Aprill next pull vp and take cleane out of the Sewar the props or postes which stand vnder their bridge on the north side of Mayd-lane vpon paine to forfeit xx^s.’

This is endorsed ‘done’, but another order of the same day requiring the same men to ‘well and sufficientlye pyle boorde and fill vp viij poles more or lesse of theire wharfe against theire said Play-house’ needed a repetition on 25 April before it received attention.[1286] Earlier records, before the Globe came into existence, relate to some of the garden-holders named in the lease. A plot of John Bingham or Burgram abutted on a Maiden Lane sewer in 1596, and this is probably identical with the ‘common sewer leading from Sellors gardin to the beare garden’, which William Sellers and others were ordered to cleanse on 5 December 1595. Certainly the bear garden was to the north and not the south of Maiden Lane. There was also a sewer bordering upon the park, and on this Jasper Morris and Thomas Burt had encroached in 1593.[1287]

The old maps, as usual, do not give much help when it comes to a pinch, although the balance of their authority, for what it is worth, seems to me to be in favour of a northern site.[1288] Mr. Hubbard, calculating from Visscher’s map, would put the Globe on the site of the present Central Wharf, 15 feet south of the Bankside houses and 136 feet west of Bank End, and therefore not very near Maiden Lane at all.[1289] I do not think that he sufficiently recognizes the imperfections of the maps from a surveyor’s point of view. I doubt whether more is to be got out of them than that the Globe stood more to the east and probably more to the south than either the Hope or the Rose.[1290]

The foregoing paragraphs show the state of the controversy when the body of this chapter was written. Since then Mr. Braines has taken up the investigation where it was left by Dr. Martin, with the help of the brewery title-deeds and many other documents bearing on the distribution of tenements in Maiden Lane and Globe Alley over more than a century. It now seems clear that, in view of the known history of properties north of Maiden Lane, there is no room for the Globe plot there, that this plot did pass from the Casons to the workhouse and ultimately the brewery, and that it did lie at Dr. Martin’s angle site, being indeed precisely located on the map by Concanen and Morgan’s description of 1795. We must therefore assume that the points of the compass were, as Dr. Martin conjectured, inverted in the lease of 1599, east with west and north with south, and that the Globe company maintained a bridge over the sewer on the opposite side of Maiden Lane to the theatre, for the convenience of visitors coming down Horseshoe Alley from the river. The _venella_ of 1599 must have been a westward extension of Globe Alley, afterwards disused.

Some notion of the structural character of the Globe may be gleaned from the builder’s contract for the Fortune in 1600.[1291] The Globe was then the last new thing in theatres, and in entering into his agreement for the Fortune with Peter Street, the builder of both houses, Henslowe was careful to specify that the Globe should be taken as the model, alike as regards the arrangement of the galleries and staircases, the contrivances and fashioning of the stage, and all other minor points not particularly indicated. The only alterations of design set out in the agreement were that the scantlings or standard measurements of the timber should be rather stouter than those of the Globe, and that the main posts of the stage and auditorium should be shaped square and carved with figures of satyrs. It is probable, however, that a more important difference is passed without notice. The Fortune was rectangular; the Globe was almost certainly round. The reference to a circular house in _Henry V_ and _A Warning for Fair Women_, both plays of about 1599, may indeed belong to the Curtain rather than the Globe, but there are similar references in _E. M. O._ (1599) and in _The Merry Devil of Edmonton_ (1608), which are certainly Globe plays, and there seems no reason to doubt that the Globe is represented by the cylindrical buildings, windowless below, windowed and of narrower diameter above, which are shown in the maps of the Hondius group and in the background of Delaram’s portrait of James I.[1292] A few details are furnished by the various narratives of the fire of 1613. The roof was thatched, whence arose the accident. The walls were of timber, for nothing was burnt but wood and straw. The building was ‘flanked with a ditch, and forced out of a marish’. It had a stage-house ‘round as taylors clewe’, and carried a silken flag. There were two narrow doors, and hard by stood an alehouse. The new Globe built after the fire was tiled for greater safety. In other respects there was probably no great change. The building is described in 1634 as of timber, upon an old foundation. The maps, if they can be trusted, figure it as polygonal, rather than strictly round. No doubt it was round inside; an ‘amphytheator’, it is called in _Holland’s Leaguer_. The _Sharers Papers_ of 1635 mention the tiring-house door, at which money was taken. James Wright tells us that it was a summer house, large and partly open to the weather, and that the acting was always by daylight. Malone conjectured that the name ‘Globe’ was taken from the sign, ‘which was a figure of Hercules supporting the Globe, under which was written _Totus mundus agit histrionem_’.[1293] I do not know where he got this information.