- mas at a rent of £40.[1] According to Burbadge's own account
of the matter, Evans 'intended then presentlye to erect or sett vp a companye of boyes . . . in the same', and knowing that the payment of the rent depended upon the possibility of maintaining a company 'to playe playes and interludes in the said Playhowse in such sort as before tyme had bene there vsed', he thought it desirable to take collateral security in the form of a bond for £400 from Evans and his son-in-law Alexander Hawkins.[2] Long after, the Blackfriars Sharers Papers of 1635 describe the lease as being to 'one Evans that first sett vp the boyes commonly called the Queenes Majesties Children of the Chapell'.[3] I find nothing in this language to bear out the contention of Professor Wallace that Evans's occupation of the Blackfriars extended back long before the date of his lease, and that, as already suggested by Mr. Fleay, the Chapel plays began again, not in 1600, but in 1597.[4] Burbadge speaks clearly of the setting up of the company as still an intention when the lease was drawn, and the reference to earlier plays in the house may either be to some use of it unknown to us between 1596 and 1600, or perhaps more probably to the performances by Evans and others before the time of James Burbadge's reconstruction. Mr. Fleay's suggestion rested, so far as I can judge, upon the evidence for the existence of Jonson's Case is Altered as early as January 1599 and its publication as 'acted by the children of the Blacke-friers'. But this publication was not until 1609 and represents a revision made not long before that date; and as will be seen the company did not use the name Children of the Blackfriars until about 1606. There is no reason to suppose that they were the original producers of the play. A confirmatory indication for 1600 as the date of the revival may be found in the appearance of the Chapel at Court, for the first time since 1584, on 6 January and 22 February 1601. On both occasions Nathaniel Giles was payee. The performance of 6 January, described by the Treasurer of the Chamber as 'a showe with musycke and speciall songes' was probably Jonson's Cynthia's Revels,
- ↑ E. v. K. 211; K. v. P. 224, 230, 233 (misdated 44 Eliz. for 42 Eliz.), 239. These are only short recitals in the lawsuits. Apparently the fragmentary descriptions of the theatre in Wallace, ii. 39, 40, 41, 43, 49, are from a fuller Latin text of the terms of the lease, possibly recited in a common-law suit, which he has not printed in full.
- ↑ K. v. P. 230, 234.
- ↑ Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 317.
- ↑ Fleay, 124, 153; Wallace, ii. 56; cf. M. L. R. iv. 156. An initial date for the enterprise in 1600 fits in exactly with the seven years during which there had been plays at the house where K. B. P. was produced and the ten years' training of Keysar's company up to 1610 (cf. p. 57).
