CHAPTER XIll 
RELATIONS OF BLACKFRIARS TO OTHER THEATRES, POETS, 
AND PLAYERS 
Tue Blackfriars Boys, led by the young Roscii Pavy, Field, 
Underwood, and Ostler, with their novel entertainments of mu- 
sic, Singing, masque, and drama under special favoring influences 
and select auditorial privileges, found that following that made 
theirs recognized as the foremost theatre of London. They be- 
came as a result the objects of imitation and envy. 
This much we have evidence of. But the detailed relations 
cannot now be fully worked out, even so far as the scattered re- 
mains of evidence are available. It will never be possible to get 
at the full particulars, for the probable evidences have perished. 
I mean contemporary plays containing satires and local hits. 
Some of this sort we know to have been suppressed. We know 
also that it was then as now the custom to introduce local drives 
not connected with the play. The new evidence offered later in 
connection with the Byron tragedies by Chapman would be suffi- 
cient in itself to prove this.1_ But the field cannot here be entered 
upon. 
Henslowe’s Diary shows that approximately two-thirds of the 
plays written by the numerous poets employed by him, for prac- 
tically every public theatre but the Globe, have perished. Nearly 
three times as many dramatists wrote for Henslowe as for Black- 
friars, Globe, and Paul’s combined.2, The number of dramas is 
*See complete work, vol. I. Percy’s plays were acted here. 
*The known dramatists for 1597- (d) Fortune, Curtain, Rose, and 
1603, in chronology of their first possibly Swan, Bear Garden, 
appearance at their respective the- and Newington Butts, for 
atres, are :— Henslowe. In chronology of 
(a) Blackfriars——Jonson, Chapman, first mention in MHenslowe’s 
arston. Diary.—Dekker, Chettle, Juby, 
(b) Globe——Shakespeare, Jonson, Day, Haughton, Drayton, Hath- 
Dekker, W. S. away, Rankins, Porter, Nash, 
({c) Paul’s—Marston, Middleton. Jonson, Munday, Lee, Wilson, 
It is not known that any of Chapman, Slater, Heywood, 
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