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’. 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. 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’. 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. Jonson refers to ‘this faire-fild Globe’ as the scene of his Every Man Out of his Humour, produced in the autumn of 1600. 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:

‘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. 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 5s. 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.’ 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. 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.

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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.

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

‘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:

‘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:

‘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:

‘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. 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: