The First London Theatre 31 
1601, sttied Cuthbert in the Queen’s Bench on the same matter 
under the subterfuge of breach of agreement. This, too, could 
not but fail. 
Allen had a further grudge to square, because Willtam Smith, 
of Waltham Cross, who had testified in favor of the Burbages 
in the Requests suit, was, as he claimed, the real prosecutor 
against him, and had furnished Burbage all the money for carry- 
ing on the litigation. Still determined on his course of annoyance 
and possible ruin to the new Globe and the Burbage-Shakespeare 
company there, Allen next brought suit in the Star Chamber, 
still on the same matter, but under the shifted charges of riot, 
perjury, etc. That it likewise failed is sufficiently indicated by 
Sir Francis Bacon’s opinion upon it, referred to in the demurrer 
of Hudson and Osborne, June 12, 1602. His charge that Cuth- 
bert and Richard Burbage had threatened to stab some of his 
witnesses for testifying in the Requests suit and that by such 
intimidation he lost that suit, may be taken to be as devoid of 
fact as his charges of riot, perjury, suborning of witnesses, and 
forgery of a court record prove to be. The final decree in Star 
Chamber is lost. This ended Allen’s litigation, and finally closed 
the long and turbulent history of the first London theatre.’ 
Just prior to its demolition, the Theatre was not only a bone of 
contention between lessor and lessee, but was also under ban of 
the Queen, according to the well-known order of the Privy 
Council, 28 July, 1597, requiring that it and the Curtain should 
“be plucked down.” It is noteworthy that this order, unexecuted 
by the City authorities, to whom it was directed, is the last known 
notice concerning the Theatre in connection with plays there. 
The Theatre was closed but not yet torn down when Skialetheia 
7 Several other suits involving Giles Allen, the Earl of Rutland, Cuth- 
bert Burbage, Francis Langley, and others, in the Court of Exchequer, 
Court of Wards, Star Chamber, étc., relate inter alia to certain property 
held by Cuthbert in 1597 and later, but they have no bearing upon the 
Theatre, besides mere location, as presented for example in the depositions 
of Mary Hobblethwait, Leonard Jackson, John Rowse, etc., extracts from 
which may be seen in Halliwell-Phillips, Outlines, I, 352-53. Those of 
any importance on the subject will find their due place in the final 
presentation. 
31 
