times in those dayes), 
‘twice or thrice 
after. 
INTRODUCTION 11 
At what time the other public companies fell in line with this 
_ progress of the stage is not known. 
It may not have been long 
Certain it is that by the time of the Restoration music was 
regarded by the stage monopoly of D’Avenant and Killigrew as 
an elaborate essential—But that has a history of its own. 
‘Both public and private theatres opened with three bugle-blasts, 
blown some minutes apart.* 
This was not, as sometimes under- 
stood,” any part of the music, but an announcement of “ready,’— 
like the modern signal bell of the German theatre calling the 
audience in from the refreshment rooms when an act is ready to 
begin ;—a signal reduced in American theatres to the winking 
of the lights. 
So much in a general and introductory way on the historical 
(1633) by the members of the four 
Inns of Court, with the elaborate 
music in charge of Whitelocke) 
gives incidentally a word on the 
fame of Blackfriars music thus :— 
“IT was so conversant with the 
musitians, and so willing to gaine 
their favour, especially at this time, 
that I composed an Aier myselfe, 
with the assistance of Mr. Ives, and 
called it Whitelocke’s Coranto: 
which being cried up, was first 
played publiquely, by the Blacke- 
fryar’s Musicke, who were then es- 
teemed the best of common mu- 
sitians in London. Whenever I 
came to that house (as I did some- 
though not 
often, to see a play, the musitians 
would presently play Whitelocke’s 
Coranio, and it was so often called 
for, that they would have it played 
in an aiternoon. 
.. It grew to that request, that 
all the common musitians in this 
towne ard all over the kingdome, 
gott the composition of it, and 
played it publiquely in all places, 
for above thirtie years after.”—Dr. 
Charles Burney, A General History 
of Music (1789), III, 377, from 
Whitelocke’s MS. then owned by 
Dr. C. Morton of the British Mu- 
relation and function of the Children of the Chapel Roval as 
_choristers, their occasional function of play-acting at Court, the 
seum. The last part of this docu- 
ment containing the payment to the 
musicians, preparation of the mu- 
sic, and the above passage, is 
omitted from Whitelocke’s Memo- 
rials of English Affairs &c. (1709'; 
1853"), J,- 62, which modernizes 
spellings, and gives the general air 
of unfaithful editing. 
The excellence of the music at 
the private theatres of Blackfriars, 
Cockpit, and Salisbury Court is spe- 
cially mentioned in the well-known 
little tract of which the only extant 
copy of the original edition is in 
the British Museum, entitled, The 
Actors’ Remonstrance (1643), 6-7. 
Reprinted in The British Stage 
(1822), VI; The English Drama 
and Stage (ed. W. C. Hazlitt, The 
Roxburghe Library, 1869); and 
Hindley’s Miscellanea Antiqua An- 
glicana (1871), III. 
*A large number of instances 
might be cited. But for examples, 
see Inductions to Cynthia’s Revels 
and Poetaster at Blackfriars; and 
Dekker’s Address to the Reader in 
Satiromastix,—first played at the 
Globe, later at Paul’s. 
*See for example Nathan Drake, 
Shakespeare and his Times (1817), 
58 aes by 
125 
