138 CHILDREN OF THE CHAPEL AT BLACKFRIARS 
(in the Latin sense), or place of the four rooms for gentlemen.* 
There was an aisle six feet wide between these chief auditors and — 
the stage.2 The sketch of the Swan shows a similar arrangement, 
and the Hope was modeled after the Swan.* 
Physical conditions thus indicate the stages of at least four* 
public theatres were open to the chief auditors at right and leit. 
An audience of gallants on the stage at either side, then, would 
have cut off the view from the gentlemen’s rooms. This is the 
condition the Tire-man refers to in the Induction to The Malcon- 
tent when he tells Sly, “Sir, the gentlemen will be angry if you 
sit here.’’> | 
These negative conditions and the absence of unquestionable 
affirmative testimony seem sufficient to conclude with some certi- 
tude that the Globe, Fortune, Swan, and Hope, at least, did not 
foster the Blackfriars custom. The Rose, a small theatre, went 
out of the reckoning about 1603-4,° and the conditions at the Red 
Bull are uncertain. There remains the Curtain alone as an un- 
known quantity. 
Against these considerations of physical conditions, there are 
two bits of evidence so stated as to imply that the practice may 
have been general in public theatres. Both are in satires ;—not 
reliable repositories of fact. The one from Middleton,’ in its 
drive at the would-be gallant posing before the public, seems the 
more convincing of the two. The notorious gull or fine fop, lover 
/of display and perennial subject of the laugher’s scorn,® is like- 
John Taylor, the Water-poet, 
Works (1630), 172, The Water- 
* See Contract, u. s., 29°. 
* Supra, 45, and plat, 50-51. 
eS upra, 3H, 42%. 
*The Red Bull picture seems to 
indicate a fifth. But as it does not 
show the gentlemen’s rooms, but 
does show people in the aisles at 
right and left, I omit it. If the 
Red Bull had gentlemen’s rooms, 
then it should be included in the 
list. 
°Supra, 134°. 
*No plays are heard of here at 
a later date. See also Henslowe’s 
talk with Thomas Pope, June 25, 
1603, on pulling down “the littell 
Roosse” in Henslowe’s Diary (ed. 
W. W. Greg, 1904), I, 178. 
But it was not pulled down., 
men’s Suit, indicates it existed in 
1613, though closed. And _ Sir 
Henry Herbert’s Office-book shows 
that after 1620 it was occasionally 
used for prize-fighters. See Ma- 
lone, op. cit., III, 56. 
*“But turning my legacy to you- 
ward, Barnaby Burning-glass, arch 
tobacco-taker of England, in ordi- 
naries, upon stages both public and 
private,’ &c—The Devil’s Last 
Will and Testament, in The Black 
Book (1604), Middleton’s Works 
(ed. Bullen, 1885-86), VIII, 43. 
*Out of the scores of satires and 
jests on this sort of person, partly 
real and partly imaginary but gen- 
252 
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