THE builder of the Red Bull Playhouse[484] was "one Aaron Holland, yeoman," of whom we know little more than that he "was utterly unlearned and illiterate, not being able to read."[485] He had leased "for many years" from Anne Beddingfield, "wife and administratrix of the goods and chattles of Christopher Beddingfield, deceased," a small plot of land, known by the name of "The Red Bull." This plot of land, which contained one house, was situated "at the upper end of St. John's Street" in the Parish of St. James, Clerkenwell, the exact location being marked by "Red Bull Yard" in Ogilby and Morgan's Map of London, printed in 1677. The property was not much more distant from the heart of the city than the Fortune property, and since it could be easily reached through St. John's Gate, it was quite as well situated for dramatic purposes as was the Fortune.

THE SITE OF THE RED BULL PLAYHOUSE

The site is indicated by Red Bull Yard. (From Ogilby and Morgan's Map of London, 1677.)

[Enlarge]

In or before 1605[486] Holland erected on this plot of ground "a playhouse for acting and setting forth plays, comedies, and tragedies." We may suspect that he did this at the instigation of the Earl of Worcester's Men, who had just been taken under the patronage of the Queen, and had been selected by the Privy Council as one of three companies to be "allowed." The warrant of the Privy Council, April 9, 1604, orders the Lord Mayor to "permit and suffer the three companies of players to the King, Queen, and Prince publickly to exercise their plays in their several and usual houses for that purpose, and no other, viz. the Globe, situate in Maiden Lane on the Bankside in the county of Surrey, the Fortune in Golding Lane, and the Curtain, in Holywell."[487] Among these three companies, as Dekker tells us, there was much rivalry.[488] No doubt the Queen's Men, forced to occupy the old Curtain Playhouse, suffered by comparison with the King's Men at the handsome Globe, and the Prince's Men at the new and magnificent Fortune; and this, I suspect, furnished the immediate cause for the erection of the Red Bull. In a draft of a license to the Queen's Men, made late in 1603 or early in 1604, the fact is disclosed that the actors, of whom Thomas Greene was the leader, were contemplating a new playhouse. The company was licensed to use any "playhouse not used by others, by the said Thomas Greene elected, or by him hereafter to be built."[489] Whether or no Greene and his fellows had some understanding with Holland, we cannot say. But in 1605 we find Holland disposing of one share in the new playhouse to Thomas Swynnerton, a member of Queen Anne's Troupe; and he may at the same time have disposed of other shares to other members, for his transaction with Swynnerton comes to our notice only through a subsequent lawsuit. The words used in the documents connected with the suit clearly suggest that the playhouse was completed at the time of the purchase. From the fact that Holland granted "a seventh part of the said playhouse and galleries, with a gatherer's place thereto belonging or appertaining, unto the said Thomas Swynnerton for diverse years,"[490] it appears that the ownership of the playhouse had been divided into seven shares, some of which, according to custom, may have been subdivided into half-shares.

The name of the playhouse, as in the case of the Rose and the Curtain, was taken from the name of the estate on which it was erected. Of the building we have no pictorial representation; the picture in Kirkman's The Wits (1672), so often reproduced by scholars as "The Interior of the Red Bull," has nothing whatever to do with that building. The Kirkman picture shows a small enclosed room, with a narrow stage illuminated by chandeliers and footlights; the Red Bull, on the contrary, was a large, open-air building, with its stage illuminated by the sun. It is thus described in Wright's Historia Histrionica (1699): "The Globe, Fortune, and Bull were large houses, and lay partly open to the weather."[491] Before its door was displayed a sign on which was painted a red bull; hence the playhouse is sometimes referred to simply as "at the sign of the Red Bull."

The building, as I have indicated, seems to have been completed in or before 1605; but exactly when the Queen's Men moved thither from the Curtain is not clear. The patent issued to the company on April 15, 1609, gives them license to play "within their now usual houses, called the Red Bull in Clerkenwell, and the Curtain in Holywell."[492] Since they would hardly make use of two big public playhouses at the same time, we might suspect that they were then arranging for the transfer. Moreover, Heath, in his Epigrams, printed in 1610 but probably written a year or two earlier, refers to the three important public playhouses of the day as the Globe, the Fortune, and the Curtain. Yet, that the Queen's Men were playing regularly at the Red Bull in 1609 is clear from Dekker's Raven's Almanack,[493] and they may have been playing there at intervals after 1605.

Dekker, in the pamphlet just mentioned, predicted "a deadly war" between the Globe, the Fortune, and the Red Bull. And he had good reasons for believing that the Queen's Men could successfully compete with the two other companies, for it numbered among its players some of the best actors of the day. The leader of the troupe was Thomas Greene, now chiefly known for the amusing comedy named, after him, Greene's Tu Quoque, but then known to all Londoners as the cleverest comedian since Tarleton and Kempe:

The chief playwright for the troupe was the learned and industrious Thomas Heywood, who, like Shakespeare, was also an actor and full sharer in his company. Charles Lamb, who was an ardent admirer of Heywood's plays, enthusiastically styled him "a prose Shakespeare"; and Wordsworth, with hardly less enthusiasm, declared him to have been "a great man."

In 1612 Thomas Greene died, and the leadership of the troupe was taken over by Christopher Beeston, a man well known in the theatrical life of the time. Late in February, 1617, Beeston transferred the Queen's Men to his new playhouse in Drury Lane, the Cockpit; in little more than a week the sacking of the Cockpit drove them back to their old quarters, where they remained until the following June. But even after this they seem not to have abandoned the Red Bull entirely.

Edward Alleyn, in his Account Book, writes: "Oct. 1, 1617, I came to London in the coach and went to the Red Bull"; and again under the date of October 3: "I went to the Red Bull, and received for The Younger Brother but £3 6s. 4d."[495] What these two passages mean it is hard to say, for they constitute the only references to the Red Bull in all the Alleyn papers; but they do not necessarily imply, as some have thought, that Alleyn was part owner of the playhouse; possibly he was merely selling to the Red Bull Company the manuscript of an old play.[496]

At the death of Queen Anne, March 2, 1619, the company was deprived of its "service," and after attending her funeral on May 13, was dissolved. Christopher Beeston joined Prince Charles's Men, and established that troupe at the Cockpit;[497] the other leading members of Queen Anne's Men seem to have continued at the Red Bull under the simple title "The Red Bull Company."

In April, 1622, a feltmaker's apprentice named John Gill,[498] while seated on the Red Bull stage, was accidentally injured by a sword in the hands of one of the actors, Richard Baxter. A few days later Gill called upon his fellow-apprentices to help him secure damages. In the forenoon he sent the following letter, now somewhat defaced by time, to Baxter:

Baxter turned the letter over to the authorities of Middlesex (hence its preservation), who took steps to guard the playhouse and actors. The only result was that prentices "to the number of one hundred persons on the said day riotously assembled at Clerkenwell, to the terror and disquiet of persons dwelling there."

On July 8, 1622, the Red Bull Company secured a license "to bring up children in the quality and exercise of playing comedies, histories, interludes, morals, pastorals, stage-plays and such like ... to be called by the name of the Children of the Revels."[500] The Children of the Revels occupied the Red Bull until the summer of the following year, 1623, when they were dissolved. The last reference to them is in the Herbert Manuscript under the date of May 10, 1623.[501]

In August, 1623, we find the Red Bull occupied by Prince Charles's Men,[502] who, after the dissolution of the Revels Company, had moved thither from the less desirable Curtain.

Two years later, in 1625, Prince Charles became King, and took under his patronage his father's troupe, the King's Men. Some of the members of the Prince Charles Troupe were transferred to the King's Men, and the rest constituted a nucleus about which a new company was organized, known simply as "The Red Bull Company."

About this time, it seems, the playhouse was rebuilt and enlarged. The Fortune had been destroyed by fire in 1621, and had just been rebuilt in a larger and handsomer form. In 1625 one W.C., in London's Lamentation for her Sins, writes: "Yet even then, Oh Lord, were the theatres magnified and enlarged."[503] This doubtless refers to the rebuilding of the Fortune and the Red Bull. Prynne specifically states in his Histriomastix (1633) that the Fortune and Red Bull had been "lately reedified [and] enlarged." But nothing further is known of the "re-edification and enlargement" of the Red Bull.

After its enlargement the playhouse seems to have acquired a reputation for noise and vulgarity. Carew, in 1630, speaks of it as a place where "noise prevails" and a "drowth of wit," and yet as always crowded with people while the better playhouses stood empty. In The Careless Shepherdess, acted at Salisbury Court, we read:

In 1638, a writer of verses prefixed to Randolph's Poems speaks of the "base plots" acted with great applause at the Red Bull.[505] James Wright informs us, in his Historia Histrionica, that the Red Bull and the Fortune were "mostly frequented by citizens and the meaner sort of people."[506] And Edmund Gayton, in his Pleasant Notes, wittily remarks: "I have heard that the poets of the Fortune and Red Bull had always a mouth-measure for their actors (who were terrible tear-throats) and made their lines proportionable to their compass, which were sesquipedales, a foot and a half."[507] Probably the ill repute of the large public playhouses at this time was chiefly due to the rise of private playhouses in the city.

In 1635 the Red Bull Company moved to the Fortune, and Prince Charles's Men occupied the Red Bull.

Five years later, at Easter, 1640, Prince Charles's Men moved back to the Fortune, and the Red Bull Company returned to its old home. In a prologue written to celebrate the event,[508] the members of the company declared:

Here, gentlemen, our anchor's fix't.

This proved true, for the company remained at the Red Bull until Parliament passed the ordinance of 1642 closing the playhouses and forbidding all dramatic performances. The ordinance, which was to hold good during the continuance of the civil war, was renewed in 1647, with January 1, 1648, set as the date of its expiration. Through some oversight a new ordinance was not immediately passed, and the actors were prompt to take advantage of the fact. They threw open the playhouses, and the Londoners flocked in great crowds to hear plays again. At the Red Bull, so we learn from the newspaper called Perfect Occurrences, was given a performance of Beaumont and Fletcher's Wit Without Money.

But on February 9, 1648, Parliament made up for its oversight by passing an exceptionally severe ordinance against dramatic exhibitions, directing that actors be publicly flogged, and that each spectator be fined the sum of five shillings.

During the dark years that followed, the Red Bull, in spite of this ordinance, was occasionally used by venturous actors. James Wright, in his Historia Histrionica, tells us that upon the outbreak of the war the various London actors had gone "into the King's army, and, like good men and true, served their old master, though in a different, yet more honourable capacity. Robinson was killed at the taking of a place (I think Basing House) by Harrison.... Mohun was a captain.... Hart was cornet of the same troop, and Shatterel quartermaster. Allen, of the Cockpit, was a major.... The rest either lost or exposed their lives for their king."[509] He concludes the narrative by saying that when the wars were over, those actors who were left alive gathered to London, "and for a subsistence endeavoured to revive their old trade privately." They organized themselves into a company in 1648 and attempted "to act some plays with as much caution and privacy as could be at the Cockpit"; but after three or four days they were stopped by soldiers. Thereafter, on special occasions "they used to bribe the officer who commanded the guard at Whitehall, and were thereupon connived at to act for a few days at the Red Bull, but were sometimes, notwithstanding, disturbed by soldiers."[510] To such clandestine performances Kirkman refers in his Preface to The Wits, or Sport upon Sport (1672): "I have seen the Red Bull Playhouse, which was a large one, so full that as many went back for want of room as had entered; and as meanly as you may now think of these drolls, they were then acted by the best comedians then and now in being." Not, however, without occasional trouble. In Whitelocke's Memorials, p. 435, we read: "20 Dec., 1649. Some stage-players in St. John's Street were apprehended by troopers, their clothes taken away, and themselves carried to prison"; again, in The Perfect Account, December 27-January 3, 1654-1655: "Dec. 30, 1654.—This day the players at the Red Bull, being gotten into all their borrowed gallantry and ready to act, were by some of the soldiery despoiled of all their bravery; but the soldiery carried themselves very civilly towards the audience."[511] In the Weekly Intelligencer, September 11-18, 1655, we find recorded still another sad experience for the actors: "Friday, September 11, 1655.—This day proved tragicall to the players at the Red Bull; their acting being against the Act of Parliament, the soldiers secured the persons of some of them who were upon the stage, and in the tiring-house they seized also upon their clothes in which they acted, a great part whereof was very rich."[512]

On this occasion, however, the soldiers, instead of carrying themselves "very civilly" towards the audience, undertook to exact from each of the spectators the fine of five shillings. The ordinance of Parliament, passed February 9, 1648, read: "And it is hereby further ordered and ordained, that every person or persons which shall be present and a spectator at such stage-play or interlude, hereby prohibited, shall for every time he shall be present, forfeit and pay the sum of five shillings to the use of the poor of the parish."[513] But the spectators did not submit to this fine without a struggle. Jeremiah Banks wrote to Williamson on September 16, 1655: "At the playhouse this week many were put to rout by the soldiers and had broken crowns; the corporal would have been entrapped had he not been vigilant."[514] And in the Weekly Intelligencer, September 11-18, we read: "It never fared worse with the spectators than at this present, for those who had monies paid their five shillings apiece; those who had none, to satisfy their forfeits, did leave their cloaks behind them. The Tragedy of the spectators was the Comedy of the soldiers. There was abundance of the female sex, who, not able to pay five shillings, did leave some gage or other behind them, insomuch that although the next day after the Fair was expected to be a new fair of hoods, of aprons, and of scarfs; all which, their poverty being made known, and after some check for their trespass, were civilly again restored to the owners."[515]

At the period of the Restoration the Red Bull was among the first playhouses to reopen. John Downes, in his Roscius Anglicanus, writes: "The scattered remnant of several of these houses, upon King Charles' Restoration, framed a company, who acted again at the Bull."[516] Apparently the company was brought together by the famous old Elizabethan actor, Anthony Turner. From the Middlesex County Records (iii, 279) we learn that at first the players were interrupted by the authorities:

Later, it seems, they secured a license from the authorities, and thenceforth acted without interruption. Samuel Pepys made plans "to go to the Red Bull Playhouse" with Mrs. Pierce and her husband on August 3, 1660, but was prevented by business. An account of his visit there on March 23, 1661, is thus given in his Diary:

The actors, however, did not remain long at the Red Bull. They built for themselves a new theatre in Drury Lane, whither they moved on April 8, 1663;[517] and after this the old playhouse was deserted. In Davenant's The Play-House to Be Let (1663), i, i, we read: