Shakespearean Playhouses. Joseph Quincy Adams

      THE SITE OF THE CURTAIN PLAYHOUSE

      From An Actual Survey of the Parish of St. Leonard in Shoreditch taken in the year 1745 by Peter Chasserau, Surveyor. The key to the map gives "93" as Curtain Court, probably the site of the old playhouse, "87" as New Inn Yard, and "94" as Holywell Court, both interesting in connection with Burbage's Theatre. (Redrawn from the original for this volume.)

       From this statement it is evident that Henry Lanman was the sole proprietor of the Curtain as far back as 1585, and the presumption is that his proprietorship was of still earlier date. This presumption is strengthened by the fact that in a sale of the Curtain estate early in 1582, he is specifically mentioned as having a tenure of an "edifice or building" erected in the Curtain Close, that is, that section of the estate next to the Field, on which the playhouse was built.[121] Since Lanman is not mentioned as having any other property on the estate, the "edifice or building" referred to was probably the playhouse. The document gives no indication as to how long he had held possession of the "edifice," but the date of sale, March, 1582, carries us back to within four years of the erection of the Curtain, and it seems reasonable to suppose, though of course we cannot be sure, that Lanman had been proprietor of the building from the very beginning.[122]

      Certain records of the sale of the Curtain estate shortly before and shortly after the erection of the playhouse are preserved, but these throw very little light upon the playhouse itself. We learn that on February 20, 1567, Lord Mountjoy and his wife sold the estate to Maurice Longe, clothworker, and his son William Longe, for the sum of £60; and that on August 23, 1571, Maurice Longe and his wife sold it to the then Lord Mayor, Sir William Allyn, for the sum of £200. In both documents the property is described in the same words: "All that house, tenement or lodge commonly called the Curtain, and all that parcel of ground and close, walled and enclosed with a brick wall on the west and north parts, called also the Curtain Close." The lodge here referred to, generally known as "Curtain House," was on, or very near, Holywell Lane;[123] the playhouse, as already stated, was erected in the close near the Field.[124]

      How long Sir William Allyn held the property, or why it reverted to the Longe family, we do not know. But on March 18, 1582, we find William Longe, the son of "Maurice Longe, citizen and clothworker, of London, deceased," selling the same property, described in the same words, to one "Thomas Harberte, citizen and girdler, of London." In the meantime, of course, the playhouse had been erected, but no clear or direct mention of the building is made in the deed of sale. Possibly it was included in the conventionally worded phrase: "and all and singular other messuages, tenements, edifices, and buildings, with all and singular their appurtenances, erected and builded upon the said close called the Curtain."[125] Among the persons named as holding tenures of the above-mentioned "edifices and buildings" in the close was Henry Lanman. It seems not improbable, therefore, that the Curtain, like the Theatre, was erected on leased ground.

      It is impossible to give a connected history of the Curtain. Most of the references to it that we now possess are invectives in early puritanical writings, or bare mention, along with other playhouses, in letters or ordinances of the Privy Council and the Lord Mayor. Such references as these do not much help us in determining what companies successively occupied the building, or what varying fortunes marked its ownership and management. Yet a few scattered facts have sifted down to us, and these I have arranged in chronological order.

      On the afternoon of April 6, 1580, an earthquake, especially severe in Holywell, shook the building during the performance of a play, and greatly frightened the audience. Munday says merely: "at the playhouses the people came running forth, surprised with great astonishment";[126] but Stubbes, the Puritan, who saw in the event a "fearful judgment of God," writes with fervor: "The like judgment almost did the Lord show unto them a little before, being assembled at their theatres to see their bawdy interludes and other trumperies practised, for He caused the earth mightily to shake and quaver, as though all would have fallen down; whereat the people, sore amazed, some leapt down from the top of the turrets, pinnacles, and towers where they stood, to the ground, whereof some had their legs broke, some their arms, some their backs, some hurt one where, some another, and many score crushed and bruised."[127]

      The disturbance at the Theatre and the Curtain in 1584, when one Challes "did turn upon the toe upon the belly of" an apprentice "sleeping upon the grass" in the Field near by, has been mentioned in the preceding chapter. If the interpretation of the facts there given is correct, Lord Arundel's Players were then occupying the Curtain.

      In the winter of 1585 Lanman entered into his seven years' agreement with Burbage and Brayne by which the Theatre and the Curtain were placed under one management, and the profits shared "in divident between them." This agreement was faithfully kept by both parties, but there is no evidence that after the expiration of the seven years, in the winter of 1592, the affiliation was continued. What effect the arrangement had upon the companies of players occupying the two theatres we cannot now determine. To this period, however, I would assign the appearance of the Queen's Men at the Curtain.[128]

      On July 28, 1597, as a result of the performance of Thomas Nashe's The Isle of Dogs, by Pembroke's Men at the Swan,[129] the Privy Council ordered the plucking down of "the Curtain and the Theatre."[130] The order, however, was not carried out, and in October plays were allowed again as before.

      At this time the Lord Chamberlain's men were at the Curtain, having recently moved thither in consequence of the difficulties Cuthbert Burbage was having with Gyles Alleyn over the Theatre property. During the stay of the Chamberlain's Company, which numbered among its members William Shakespeare, Richard Burbage, William Kempe (who had succeeded Tarleton in popular favor as a clown), John Heminges, Thomas Pope, and Augustine Phillips, the playhouse probably attained its greatest distinction. Both Shakespeare and Jonson wrote plays for the troupe; Romeo and Juliet, we are told, "won Curtain plaudities," as no doubt did many other of Shakespeare's early masterpieces; and Jonson's Every Man in His Humour created such enthusiasm here on its first performance as to make its author famous.[131]

      In the summer of 1599 the Chamberlain's Men moved into their splendid new home, the Globe, on the Bankside, and the Curtain thus abandoned fell on hard times. Perhaps it was let occasionally to traveling troupes; in Jeaffreson's Middlesex County Records, under the date of March 11, 1600, is a notice of the arrest of one William Haukins "charged with a purse taken at a play at the Curtain." But shortly after, in April, 1600, when Henslowe and Alleyn began to erect their splendid new Fortune Playhouse, they were able to give the impression to Tilney, the Master of the Revels, and to the Privy Council, that the Curtain was to be torn down. Thus in the Council's warrant for the building of the Fortune, dated April 8, 1600, we read that "another house is [to be] pulled down instead of it";[132] and when the Puritans later made vigorous protests against the erection of the Fortune, the Council defended itself by stating that "their Lordships have been informed by Edmund Tilney, Esquire, Her Majesty's servant, and Master of the Revels, that the house now in hand to be built by the said Edward Alleyn is not intended to increase the number of the playhouses, but to be instead of another, namely the Curtain, which is either to be ruined and plucked down, or to be put to some other good use."[133]

      All this talk of the Curtain's being plucked down or devoted to other uses suggests a contemplated change in the ownership or management of the building. We do not know when Lanman died (in 1592 he described himself as fifty-four years of age),[134] but we do know that at some date prior to 1603 the Curtain had passed into the hands of a syndicate. When this syndicate was organized, or who constituted its members, we cannot say. Thomas Pope, in his will, dated July 22, 1603, mentions his share "of, in, and to all that playhouse, with the appurtenances, called the Curtain";[135] and John Underwood, in his will, dated October 4, 1624, mentions his "part or share … in the said playhouses called the Blackfriars, the Globe on the Bankside, and the Curtain."[136] It may be significant that both Pope and Underwood were sharers also in the Globe. Since, however, further information is wanting, it is useless to speculate. We can only say that at some time after the period of Lanman's sole proprietorship,