accommodate three thousand spectators. 
BLACKFRIARS THEATRE BUILDING 31 
Also the painted pil- 
‘lars were to him so good an imitation of marble as to deceive the 
sharpest eye.” 
All this would argue great cost in building. But De Witt’s 
statements are unfortunate in not being wholly true. 
The Swan 
was built of wood,* and was later (1613) duplicated in every 
particular by the Hope, the contract for which has come down to 
us.* 
The inner walls were plastered. The outer walls too were 
plastered or roughly stuccoed or “cemented” but not in such man- 
ner as to leave the heavy cross-timbers of the framework artis- 
tically exposed,® as has been surmised.® 
statement is not true. The Swan 
was built of wood. See infra, 31°- 
4 
ie 
1Cf. infra, 50°. 
*For De Witt’s full description 
and a very free-hand sketch of the 
Swan therefrom by Van Buchell, 
generously reproduced in most of 
the later works on the English 
drama and stage, see Dr. K. Th. 
Gaedertz, Zur Kenntnis der Alit- 
englischen Biihne (1888), where De 
Witt’s Latin document and the 
Swan sketch, both done from pleas- 
ing recollection, were first pub- 
lished. Original MS. and drawing 
in the Utrecht library, where Dr. 
Gaedertz discovered them. 
*Paul Hentzner, a German so- 
journer in England in 1598, not 
more than two years after De 
Witt’s visit, declares in his ex- 
haustively minute and _ generally 
veritable observations on London 
that the [public] theatres of that 
period were “all built of wood.” 
The contract for the Hope, modeled 
on the Swan, specified wood for the 
entire frame-work, and _ indicates 
plaster for finishing. Cf. infra, 32°. 
“See contract, u. s., 30°. So nearly 
is the Hope to be like the Swan that 
Henslowe and Meade have not felt 
it necessary to make specifications 
in detail, even of the size. Gilbert 
Katherens, the carpenter, is to find 
out all such details from the Swan, 
—“And to builde the same of suche 
large compasse, forme, wideness, 
The plaster or cement 
and height, as the plaie house called 
the Swan in the libertie of Paris 
Garden in the saide parishe of St. 
Saviours now is.” Furthermore, 
“And the saide playe house or game 
place to be made in all thinges and 
in suche forme and fashion as the 
said playhouse called the Swan.” 
°A style of construction still pre- 
served in occasional old buildings 
of London, as inns,—e. g., in Hol- 
born street,—in Stratford-on-Avon, 
Shrewsbury, Chester, and most 
other old towns of England. Also 
seen in especially good examples in 
ancient bauer or peasant houses and 
inns of southern Germany. A style 
imitated on more conventional lines 
quite widely this present year in 
American residence buildings in 
outward effect, but not in real con- 
struction. Although numerous 
buildings contemporary with the 
early theatre show in the engrav- 
ings this style of architecture, none 
of the many pictures of early the- 
atres do. For a convenient collec-’ 
tion showing both, see Sir Walter 
Besant, London in the Time of the 
Tudors (1904), passim, or Halli- 
well-Phillips, op. cit., passim. For 
later views, cf. Philip Norman, 
London Vanished and Vanishing 
(1905. Illus. with 75 colored plates 
from paintings by the author). 
*So at least I understand Prof. 
G. P.. Baker, op. cit., 73, in the ex- 
pression “a cross-timbered con- 
struction.” 
145 
