2 Charles William Wallace 
was bu" 2d April 13, 1576, expired April 13, 1597. In Febru- 
ary, 15y,, two months before the expiry, James Burbage, the 
lessee, died, and the troubles engendered in the course of years 
between him and others concerning it, now fell upon his widow 
and administratrix, Ellen Burbage, and their sons Cuthbert and 
Richard. 
The historical background of the conditions in which the Bur- 
bages found themselves in 1597-98 ranges from roseate hope to 
gray reality. They had in these twenty-one years lived through 
the most remarkable development of theatres, companies, and 
dramatic methods of all time,t and had been near the heart of 
all changes. Already theatres had come and theatres had gone. 
Their own, so distinctive in its soleness at first as to be called 
“The Theatre,” was the first to rise. It was begun with high 
hope, and was maintained through the years under grave diffi- 
culties. The first Blackfriars theatre, which opened under Rich- 
ard Farrant only a few months after the Theatre, came to an end 
in 1584, in a series of bitter litigations. Its complete history, 
based upon approximately a hundred documents found by the 
present writer, is related for the first time in The Evolution of 
the English Drama up to Shakespeare, above referred to.2 An 
old playhouse built at Newington Butts in Southwark at some 
unknown date, presum:.bly in these early days of development, 
was in 1599 only a memory, as shown by a contemporary record 
to be published later. Meanwhile, some of the old inns of London 
were either prohibited by the City authorities from further use 
1See Wallace, The Evolution of the English Drama up to Shakespeare 
(Berlin, 1912), passim. 
2TIt is greatly to be regretted that a Frenchman, A. Feuillerat, using 
information derived from me, and finding seven of these hundred Black- 
friars documents, .iastened to publish them in fragmentary anticipation of 
my complete work, and afterwards, through the public press and influence 
upon reviewers of my book, attempted to enlist public opinion by misrepre- 
sentation of the facts. Research is beset with many difficulties, but this 
is one of the things that time will set right. One needs only to lay his 
fragments by the side of the complete history to find the truth. A state- 
ment of the facts may be seen in The Athenaeum, January 4, 1913, con- 
tinued from November 23. 
