BLACKFRIARS THEATRE BUILDING 35 
former public theatres.t ‘The managers seem to have taken some- 
what into account the demands of the better class of society that 
in late Elizabeth had abandoned the public theatres and followed 
after royalty in the enjoyment of superior accommodations and 
aristocratic exclusiveness at the Blackfriars.” 
The Blackfriars Priory House cost Burbage at purchase 6001. 
The extensive remodeling® necessary to convert the building into 
_ a theatre cannot, upon conservative estimates, have cost less than 
200 /., and most likely exceeded that amount. 
The completed Blackfriars, then, had in 1597 a cash value of 
at least 800 J. 
Upon all known evidences, some of which have been adduced 
in this comparative view of the theatres, the Blackfriars, then, at 
a value of 800/., was the most expensive theatre building ever 
established in London prior to the new Globe in 1614. 
Still a further comparison is serviceable. 
Since the publication of Wright’s Historia Histrionica,* all pri- 
vate theatres have been generaily classed together under the word 
“small,” giving rise to absurdly talse notions. The Blackfriars 
was large enough for the Burbage-Shakespeare company to take 
it for their own use after the termination of the Children of the 
Queen’s Revels there in 1608.° Here they were able to assemble 
such audiences as to enable the company to get more by tIooo/. 
for their Blackfriars performances in a single winter than they 
were used to get at the Globe.® 
dows, like those of the upper win- 
dows of the Fortune facade. 
An original drawing of the Globe 
in the Crace collection (Brit. Mus., 
Pennant’s London) the antiquity of 
which is forged, likewise shows the 
arches of brick. On the whole it 
seems questionable but not unlikely 
that the timber framework was 
brick-veneered and plastered over, 
after the old and still present cus- 
tom, as in the case of the Fortune. 
*“T have not seen your sister 
Williams since I came to town, 
though I have been there twice. 
The first time she was at a neigh- 
bor’s house at cards, and the next 
she was gone to the New Globe, 
to a play. Indeed, I hear much 
This was due mainly of course 
speech of this new playhouse, which 
is said to be the fairest that ever 
was in England.”—John Chamber- 
lain, Esq., to Mrs. Alice Carleton, 
30 June, 1614, in [Thomas Birch], 
The Court and Times of James I 
(1848), I, 329. Cf. also supra, 34°. 
°Cf. infra, 51, 95-97, 105ff., 126- 
29, 148-62, 173ff. 
°Cf. infra, 39-43. 
‘James Wright, infra, 367, 48°. 
*See under “Children of the 
Queen’s Revels at Blackfriars” in 
forthcoming work, vol. I. 
°“This replyant [Kirkham] sayth, 
and the same will averr and proue 
to this honorable Courte, that dur- 
inge such time as the said defend- 
ants Hemings and Burbidge and 
149 
