18 CHILDREN OF THE CHAPEL AT BLACKFRIARS 
against his procedure.t The opposition however went for noth-. 
ing. The work of reconstruction was completed and the ancient — 
Priory received, under permission of Elizabeth, the new baptism 
of the drama by which it became in its time the most famous, and 
historically as the model of the modern theatre-building, the most 
important structure in English stage-history.® 
The long prevalent erroneous belief that Shakespeare was con- 
nected with the Blackfriars from the time of this new birth 
roused a century of antiquarian interest in the ancient monastery 
to which it once belonged. As a result, its monastic history has 
been stated again and again, while the erroneous notions con- 
cerning it as a theatre permeate the thousands of critical and 
commentarial writings of the past hundred years touching the 
| 
d 
] 
Elizabethan-Jacobean drama and stage. 
Blackfriars for the first twelve years after Burbage’s purchase ~ 
date of the original document. But 
the date is referred to as Novem- 
ber, 1596, in An Order for the sup- 
pression of Blackfriars theatre by 
the Corporation of the City of Lon- 
don, the original entry of which I 
have examined in the City archives 
of London at the Guild-hall, Rep- 
ertory 34, fol. 38b, under date “xxi° 
die Januarij 1618” [—1619]. Fre- 
quently printed; e. g., in Halliwell- 
Phillips, op. cit., I, 311. 
*For Mr. J. P. Collier’s misdat- 
ing of this petition as 1576 (History 
of English Dramatic Poetry and 
Annals of the Stage, 1831°; 1879’, 
I, 218sgq.), to support a certain 
. theory, his assuming another peti- 
tion in 1596 (I, 287 sqq.) and his 
forging of a counter-petition thereto 
concerning Shakespeare and his fel- 
low-actors (I, 288) in further sup- 
port of his theory, his consequent 
placing of Shakespeare’s company 
and the children-actors in competi- 
tion in the Blackfriars theatre where 
they “shared a divided kingdom,’— 
the children acting there in summer 
and the Shakespeare company in 
winter (I, 360)—, as scholars are 
still repeating even in this present 
year; and for the long train of con- 
nected and consequent errors that 
The truth concerning 
permeate the many works of refer- 
ence, both cyclopaedic and special, 
in this field, occurring in even some 
of the most important of recent lit- 
erary-historical dissertations done 
for the doctorate, see Historical 
Preface, vol. I, of my complete 
work. 
>See infra, 53, 152, 153-547, 1617. 
*The lItalian-French influences 
manifested under the D’Avenant- 
Killigrew theatrical monopoly of 
London at the beginning of the Res- 
toration period were mainly scenic, 
operatic, and otherwise spectacular 
rather than structural. Agreeable 
with this conclusion, reached inde- 
pendently, see the latest scientific 
research in the field of French in- 
fluences in England :—L. Charlanne, 
L’Influence Francaise en Angleterre 
au xvu° Siecle, Le Théétre et la 
Critique (Thése de l’Université de 
Paris, 1906), chap. III, “L’influence 
francaise au théatre,”’ 58-85. 
The new theatre-buildings of 
D’Avenant and Killigrew do not 
seem to have differed widely in form 
and main features from the Salis- 
bury Court, the Cockpit (Phoenix), 
and their model, the Blackfriars. 
The architecture of the original 
“public” theatre, of course,—repre- 
132 
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