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The Cockpit or Phoenix Playhouse

Location

The Cockpit, also known as the Phoenix, was an indoor commercial playhouse planned and built by the theatre entrepreneur and actor Christopher Beeston. The title pages of plays performed at the Cockpit usually refer to its location in Drury Lane, but G. E. Bentley offers a more precise description: Beeston’s property lay between Drury Lane and Great Wild Street, north-west of Princes’ Street in the parish of St Giles in the Fields (Bentley vi 49). Herbert Berry adds that the playhouse was three-eights of a mile west of the western boundary of the City of London at Temple Bar (Berry 624), and Frances Teague notes that it was on the east side of Drury Lane and that [t]he site was long preserved by the name of Cockpit Alley, afterwards Pitt Court (Teague 243). Bentley notes that the playhouse was nearer to Whitehall and St. James’s Palace than any other London playhouse, and was within walking distance of the Inns of Court (vi 49). He also observes that, like the Blackfriars and the Globe, the Cockpit was not far from brothels. Indoor playhouses, which were more expensive than their suburban amphitheatre equivalents, apparently benefited from the patronage of many lawyers, making the location suitable for the Cockpit. However, the Inns of Court initially provided an obstacle for Beeston when, in October 1616, the benchers of Lincoln’s Inn raised objections over the planned proximity of the theatre to their property (Berry 627). Ultimately, Beeston succeeded in opening his theatre and members of the Inns of Court are likely to have made up a sizeable part of the audience.

Construction

In 1616, Beeston, at the time a player with Queen Anne’s Men at the Red Bull, took a sublease on a property owned by John Best, a Grocer. That property consisted of several buildings, one of which was used for cock-fighting. Beeston converted the cockpit into a playhouse, a process that was repeated in the next decade when a cockpit at Whitehall was converted into a playhouse for use at court (known as the Cockpit-in-Court). Although the construction of new structures within the city was prohibited at this time, renovation was permissible. Nonetheless, Beeston came into some difficulties: in September 1616, his bricklayer, John Shepherd, was jailed for working on a new foundation, and later that month Beeston was found to have made a tenement Gap in transcription. Reason: Editorial omission for reasons of length or relevance. Use only in quotations in born-digital documents.[…] distant from his howse rather than making an addition to his owne dwelling howse (Bentley ii 365-6). Despite this, and despite the aforementioned objections of Lincoln’s Inn benchers, the Cockpit was opened in late winter 1616.

Appearance

The Cockpit may be the large building with gardens in the rear that is slightly to the right and above the street name Drury Lane. Image of Extract from Map by Hollar, c. 1658 courtesy of BHO.
The Cockpit may be the large building with gardens in the rear that is slightly to the right and above the street name Drury Lane. Image of Extract from Map by Hollar, c. 1658 courtesy of BHO.
There are few facts available to reveal what the playhouse may have looked like at any stage of its development, but there are a number of illustrations that some scholars have conjectured are representations of the Cockpit. One such illustration is taken from the Great Map (c.1658) by Wenceslas Hollar (Plate 3, p. 3). Berry observes that [t]he building is in the right place, and the buildings and grounds around it match those mentioned in a series of deeds and in a lawsuit of 1647 partly about the playhouse (624). If Berry is correct that the map depicts the Phoenix, then it seems that the theatre was a square building with three pitched roofs. Other illustrations have come under sustained scrutiny. John Orrell suggested that drawings now housed at Worcester College, Oxford, represent plans for Beeston’s theatre, attributing the designs to Inigo Jones and dating them to 1616 (Orrell 39-77). However, this idea is largely discounted by scholars. Teague concludes: the drawings, splendid as they are, probably tell us nothing about the appearance of the Phoenix (244).

Companies

Initially, the Queen Anne’s Men played at the Cockpit, moving from the Red Bull Playhouse. The company lost its royal patronage in 1619 when the Queen died, so Beeston replaced them with Prince Charles’s Men who performed there until 1622, whereupon they returned to the Curtain. They were succeeded by the Lady Elizabeth’s Men, a company that ostensibly differed from an older troupe of the same name, famous for provincial touring. This company was prosperous but its success was apparently curtailed by the plague of 1625, which forced the theatres to close. When they reopened, after eight months, much had changed: Charles had succeeded James, and the theatrical world looked very different. Beeston sought to reorganize his business by bringing in a newly formed company under the patronage of the new Queen. The Queen Henrietta’s Men stayed at the Cockpit until 1637, far longer than any other company. Eventually, they disbanded and re-formed at a rival theatre, Salisbury Court, but Beeston quickly formed a new troupe to take their place. This company is usually known as Beeston’s Boys and was comprised mostly of youths supplemented by adult actors. The company continued after Beeston’s death in 1638, until 1642, when Parliament closed all of the theatres.

Theatre History

1616 Shrove Tuesday Riots

The Cockpit suffered a considerable setback shortly after opening. On Shrove Tuesday, 4 March 1616,1 apprentices rioted and did extensive damage to the theatre (Berry 628-29). The rioting is often understood to have been motivated by theatrical concerns. Beeston had taken his company, the Queen Anne’s Men, from the Red Bull Playhouse to the newly built Cockpit. It has been argued that the Red Bull patrons were angered by the company (and its repertory of plays) moving away from their neighbourhood to a more expensive and exclusive venue. Mark Bayer has suggested that the Clerkenwell community were loyal to the Red Bull and felt out of place in other social contexts (Theatre, Community 178). Furthermore, Beeston, who was suspected of unscrupulous financial and legal dealings regarding the Red Bull lease, began to fall out of favour with the local community and was even personally attacked (Theatre, Community 205). Eleanor Collins, however, has questioned the idea that the riots were related to the repertory. She observes that Shrove Tuesday was accumulating a general reputation for riots, that rioting seems unlikely to have been limited to apprentices (as theatre historians have assumed), that other buildings were also damaged, and that disturbances were not limited to Drury Lane (132-40). Whether directly related to the theatre or not, the riots did not ultimately prevent the playhouse from becoming successful. When it reopened three months later, it acquired the additional name of the Phoenix, since it had risen from the ashes of the old theatre.2

Questions of Theatrical Taste

The transfer of the Red Bull repertory to the more expensive Cockpit playhouse raises important questions about theatrical tastes. The Red Bull had a reputation for drama that attended to citizen concerns and made extensive use of elaborate special effects. Sometimes these plays and the playhouse audience were denigrated as unsophisticated. The Cockpit proprietors, by contrast, were keen to establish their playhouse as urbane and elite. Collins suggests that the transfer of bombastic plays such as Thomas Heywood’s The Rape of Lucrece from the Red Bull should alert us to continuities between ostensibly disparate playing spaces and audiences (143). Perhaps distinctions between indoor and outdoor playhouses were less extreme than is usually imagined. Bayer takes the argument in a different direction: he acknowledges that the same plays were performed, apparently successfully, at both venues, but suggests that they appealed to stratified audiences in different ways. For example, he argues that Thomas Dekker’s Match Me in London, first performed at the Red Bull, may have appeared to its original audience as an ultimately uplifting tale of working-class heroism, whereas a Cockpit audience may have been more inclined to have been amused at the sentimentality of the ending (The Curious Case 67). On the other hand, Bayer claims that Philip Massinger’s A New Way to Pay Old Debts was successful at both venues because it encouraged disparate audiences to unite in condemnation of the usurer Sir Giles Overreach (Theatre, Community 195). Some evidence does support the notions that the Cockpit audience may have mocked the Red Bull and that sharp distinctions between audience responses at the two theatres existed. John Webster’s The White Devil, which was first performed at the Red Bull evidently to no great applause, was printed in 1612 with a preface that described the auditors as ignorant asses (sig. A2r). The play was later revived at the Phoenix to a seemingly more appreciative and sophisticated audience. Similarly, Francis Beaumont’s The Knight of the Burning Pestle, a play that pokes fun at the citizen values of typical Red Bull fare, was a theatrical failure at the Blackfriars, where it was first performed by the Children of the Queen’s Revels. When it was printed, the audience was said to have failed to understand the play’s priuy marke of Ironie (Beaumont sig. A2r). In the 1630s, however, it was revived, apparently successfully, at the Phoenix, which is perhaps an indication of this playhouse’s attempt to configure itself as sophisticated and elite, while distancing itself from the Red Bull.
It would be a mistake, however, to push this argument too far. Although the Red Bull and the Cockpit were rival venues and did not operate in partnership like the Blackfriars and Globe playhouses after 1609 when the King’s Men occupied the former, the crossover between the two theatres is striking (Collins 144). Perhaps the Phoenix audience enjoyed Beaumont’s jokes about the Red Bull, but, unlike the Blackfriars’s regulars, they also frequently watched Red Bull staples. In addition to the plays already listed, for example, A Fair Quarrel by Thomas Middleton and William Rowley was initially played at the Red Bull and revived at the Phoenix. Also, Thomas Heywood, the playwright most commonly associated with the Red Bull, had several of his plays performed at the Cockpit, including his two-part history, If You Know Not Me You Know Nobody (Gurr, Shakespearean Stage 292). Indeed, the Phoenix also housed plays generally associated with the Fortune, another outdoor theatre that, like the Red Bull, had a reputation as a plebeian playhouse. Christopher Marlowe’s Elizabethan classic, The Jew of Malta, first performed at the Rose, but also popular at the Fortune, was revived at the Cockpit in the early 1630s. Henry Chettle’s bloody revenge play The Tragedy of Hoffman, a hit in late-Elizabethan London at the Fortune, was revived in the Caroline period at the Phoenix. The Honest Whore plays, the first written by Middleton and Dekker, and the second by Dekker alone, were initially played at the Fortune in the early Jacobean period, but later revived at the Cockpit around 1635 (Gurr, Shakespearean Stage 292).

Elizabethan Nostalgia

These performances were part of a wider project of Elizabethan revival. Martin Butler observes that the Phoenix kept a high proportion of old plays in its repertoire in the 1630s (183). Indeed, the drama of Caroline England was broadly nostalgic in nature, often alluding to, or drawing upon, the established classics of the earlier theatre. John Ford, one of the most successful playwrights of the period, wrote a number of plays for the Cockpit that reimagined earlier plays in exciting new ways. ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore (1631), now firmly recognized as one of the richest jewels of Renaissance drama, reworked Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet by placing incestuous love at its centre. Perkin Warbeck (1633) gestured back towards the Elizabethan history play, but imparted its own brilliant spin on the genre. On the one hand, then, the playhouse seemed unusually prepared to revisit and celebrate older, seemingly outdated plays, including the Elizabethan Robin Hood play, George a Greene. On the other, it appeared at the forefront of dramatic invention by employing bright new talent. Ultimately, the Cockpit developed a prestigious reputation and became the principal rival of the Blackfriars, the major playhouse of the time. Although nostalgic revival was part of its appeal, the Phoenix also successfully marketed itself as an exclusive, courtly, avant-garde theatre. Ford was only one of a number of highly regarded playwrights who helped forge this reputation. Middleton and Rowley’s masterpiece, The Changeling (1622) premiered at the Phoenix. Massinger, who later went on to become the lead dramatist with the King’s Men, wrote several plays for the Cockpit, including The Renegado (1623) and The Bondman (>1623). Finally, Ben Jonson, at one time a Blackfriars regular, wrote his last fully completed play, A Tale of a Tub (1633), for the Phoenix.

Royal Connections

The Phoenix enjoyed particular success when Queen Henrietta’s Men became the resident company in the mid-1620s. Queen Henrietta Maria was an avid theatre lover and a regular performer in court masques, so it is perhaps little surprise that her company received so many court performances. As Gurr notes, by 1629 and 1630, they were playing at court almost as regularly as the King’s Men (Gurr, Shakespearian 418). During this time, they continued to perform Elizabethan hits, but they also produced a series of plays on courtly themes. The Queen had a strong interest in Arcadianism, as demonstrated by Walter Montague’s masque The Shepherd’s Paradise, which was performed as part of the Christmas revels at Somerset House in 1633. This led the commercial company she patronized to commission similarly themed plays for performance at the Phoenix and at court. Thomas Heywood’s Love’s Mistress (1634), which was subtitled The Queen’s Masque, was performed at the Cockpit, and also three times before the King and Queen at court. Joseph Rutter’s The Shepherd’s Holiday (1633) was likewise played at Whitehall as well as at the Phoenix. In staging these plays, the Cockpit was competing with the Blackfriars, where The King’s Men revived John Fletcher’s The Faithful Shepherdess for a Somerset House performance in 1634. Both theatres were offering their audiences a taste of a supposedly exclusive court culture. These court connections could in turn prove lucrative to a playwright wishing for social and professional advancement. Although several of Heywood’s Red Bull plays were performed at the Cockpit and he also wrote The Captives (1623), The English Traveller (1624), and A Maidenhead Well Lost (1633) for the playhouse, Love’s Mistress represented his attempt at a more upmarket form of drama. Heywood would not have had this opportunity had he not been working for Queen Henrietta’s Men at the Cockpit. The case of James Shirley, effectively employed as the company’s resident writer, is also illustrative of the Phoenix’s reputation. Shirley was commissioned to write The Triumph of Peace, a masque that was performed at the Inns of Court before the King and Queen, and he was later admitted membership of Gray’s Inn as a Valet of the Chamber of Queen Henrietta Maria in January 1634. Ultimately, he did not go on to become poet laureate, as he had hoped, but his writing for the Cockpit unquestionably afforded him a prominent position within Caroline literary culture.

Reputation

The Phoenix, then, developed a prestigious reputation and became the principal rival of the Blackfriars. Indeed, in the 1630s, the Phoenix appeared on title pages even more frequently than the Blackfriars did. The growing status of the Phoenix apparently motivated its rivals to express criticism. The fact that the playhouse shared plays, players, and playwrights with the Red Bull gave ammunition to its critics. Thus, the Cockpit was regularly denigrated as an unsophisticated theatre with a plebeian clientele. In the early 1630s, William Davenant, a frequent contributor to the Blackfriars repertory, became involved in the promulgation of anti-Cockpit sentiment. His play, The Just Italian, which was printed in 1630, contained a dedicatory poem written by Thomas Carew that criticised the adulterate stage (sig. A4v) of the Cockpit and the Red Bull. Davenant was responding to the fact that his own play had been poorly received at the Blackfriars, while Shirley’s The Grateful Servant was popular at the Cockpit. Similar propaganda configured the Phoenix audience as a rabble, and the Blackfriars playwrights as guardians of literary taste, wit, and judgement. Massinger, by now the principal dramatist of the King’s Men, evidently retained affection for the Cockpit (where some of his plays were still performed), and responded to the attacks by mocking the proclivities of the critics. Shirley, as the main focus of criticism, also replied aggressively. The war of words did not seem to deter theatre goers. The rivalry might even have enhanced interest in the theatre, as the 1630s were profitable years.

Beeston’s Boys

Queen Henrietta’s Men eventually disbanded and reformed at another rival playhouse, Salisbury Court, but Beeston quickly assembled a new company to fill their place. Beeston’s Boys, as the company became known, reprised the tradition of boy players that had emerged in Elizabethan and Jacobean London. Their repertory is unusually well documented because of an order issued by the Lord Chamberlain on 10 August 1639 that listed 45 plays in Beeston’s possession (Gurr, Shakespearian 424-25; see EMLoT Record 1573). The edict reveals that some plays, like Beaumont and Fletcher’s Cupid’s Revenge and Beaumont’s The Knight of the Burning Pestle, that had been written for the boy companies decades earlier, were performed by Beeston’s Boys. Cockpit classics like The Changeling and ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore also remained in the repertory, along with Shirley staples like The Traitor, The Coronation, and The Example. Other established hits performed by the boys included The Renegado, which had previously been performed at the Phoenix by both the Lady Elizabeth’s Men and Queen Henrietta’s Men. Plays like A New Way to Pay Old Debts and The Rape of Lucrece, that were associated with both the Cockpit and the Red Bull, were also performed. Among the texts listed by the Lord Chamberlain, the one known only as The World is perhaps the most interesting. This may be a lost play (indeed, it is listed as such on the Lost Plays Database) but it could refer to The World Tossed at Tennis, a masque, written by Middleton and Rowley and performed at an outdoor theatre, the Swan, in 1620. The masque, which alluded to contemporary political events, is highly unusual in being performed outside of a court setting. It is fascinating to think that it may have been revived, again, outside of the court, almost twenty years after it was written.

The Later Years

Christopher Beeston died in 1638 and, though this ended a distinguished career in the London theatre industry, his company continued to perform at the Phoenix. Initially, it was led by his son, William, who inherited the business, but he soon ran into difficulties. William was imprisoned in 1640 when Beeston’s Boys staged a Richard Brome play (perhaps The Court Beggar, which satirized Davenant and other courtier poets) without a license from Henry Herbert, the Master of the Revels. Ironically, Davenant, once a vocal critic of the playhouse, took on the management of Beeston’s Boys once William was imprisoned. Davenant, who had been appointed poet laureate (at Shirley’s expense) was a high profile literary figure and would, in time, become a successful theatre proprietor, but his first stint as company manager did not last long. In 1641, he too was imprisoned, having become involved in the Army Plot (Gurr, Shakespearian 157). William Beeston, now out of Marshalsea prison, regained control of the company, and they continued to perform at the Cockpit until 1642 when all the theatres were officially closed.
Title page of The Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru (1658). Image courtesy of LUNA at the Folger Shakespeare Library.
Title page of The Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru (1658). Image courtesy of LUNA at the Folger Shakespeare Library.
Even during the years of theatre closure, the Phoenix was, illicitly, in use. Indeed, the playhouse was raided and damaged by the authorities on more than one occasion in an attempt to stop illegal performances (Gurr and Orrell 146). In a text printed in 1699, James Wright recalls how, after the Civil Wars, but before the theatres were reopened, some actors banded together surreptitiously to perform Fletcher, Massinger, and Field’s Rollo, Duke of Normandy, or The Bloody Brother at the Cockpit (Wright sig. B4v-C1r). Operas, however, were apparently legal: in 1658 Davenant staged a revival of his The Siege of Rhodes (1656) at the theatre, and this was followed by The Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru (1658) and Sir Francis Drake (1658-9). In 1660, the Phoenix officially reopened to stage plays. In October of that year, Samuel Pepys saw revivals of Shakespeare’s Othello (The Moore of Venice), John Fletcher’s Wit Without Money and The Tamer Tamed (Teague 259; see The Diary of Samuel Pepys 11 October 1660, 16 October 1660, and 30 October 1660). However, the Phoenix, the first theatre built in London’s West End, was ultimately unable to compete with the newer, nearby Drury Lane Theatre that opened in 1663, and it soon closed.

Repertory

Performance Dates3 Title Author Production Date4 Source
1623, 1639 The Bondman (The Noble Bondman) Philip Massinger 1624 DEEP 718
1626, 1639 The Wedding James Shirley 1629 DEEP 742
1629, 1639 The Grateful Servant (The Faithful Servant) James Shirley 1630 DEEP 750
1624, 1630, and 1639 The Renegado, or The Gentleman of Venice Philip Massinger 1630 DEEP 752
1612, 1630 The White Devil (Vittoria Corombona) John Webster 1631 DEEP 584
1630 Hoffman, or A Revenge for a Father Henry Chettle 1631 DEEP 761
16215 Match Me in London Thomas Dekker 1631 DEEP 764
1625, 1631, and 1639 The School of Compliment (Love Tricks) James Shirley 1631 DEEP 765
1632, 1639 The Maid of Honor Philip Massinger 1632 DEEP 805
1639 All’s Lost by Lust William Rowley 1633 DEEP 807
1625, 1633, and 1639 A New Way to Pay Old Debts Philip Massinger 1633 DEEP 811
1632 The Jew of Malta Christopher Marlowe 1633 DEEP 812
1628 The Witty Fair One James Shirley 1633 DEEP 814
1631, 1639 Love’s Sacrifice John Ford 1633 DEEP 815
1633 The Bird in a Cage (The Beauties) James Shirley 1633 DEEP 816
1627 The English Traveller Thomas Heywood 1633 DEEP 821
1630, 1639 ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore John Ford 1633 DEEP 823
1632 Perkin Warbeck John Ford 1634 DEEP 833
1625-1634 A Maidenhead Well Lost Thomas Heywood 1634 DEEP 836
16356 The Knight of the Burning Pestle Francis Beaumont 1635 DEEP 605
1634 Love’s Mistress, or The Queen’s Masque (Cupid and Psyche, or Cupid’s Mistress) Thomas Heywood 1636 DEEP 849
1627, 1639 The Great Duke of Florence Philip Massinger 1636 DEEP 853
1635 Hannibal and Scipio Thomas Nabbes 1637 DEEP 863
1632 Hyde Park James Shirley 1637 DEEP 870
1635, 1639 The Lady of Pleasure James Shirley 1637 DEEP 871
1633, 1639 The Young Admiral James Shirley 1637 DEEP 872
1634, 1639 The Example James Shirley 1637 DEEP 874
1633 The Gamester James Shirley 1637 DEEP 876
1637 1 The Cid (The Valiant Cid) Joseph Rutter 1637 DEEP 878
1623, 1639 The Bondman (The Noble Bondman) Philip Massinger 1638 DEEP 719
16357 The Fancies Chaste and Noble John Ford 1638 DEEP 883
1627-1635 The Martyred Soldier Henry Shirley 1638 DEEP 884
1636 The Duke’s Mistress James Shirley 1638 DEEP 890
16358 The Seven Champions of Christendom John Kirke 1638 DEEP 909
1632 The Ball James Shirley 1639 DEEP 911
1635 Chabot, Admiral of France George Chapman, James Shirley 1639 DEEP 912
1638 The Lady’s Trial John Ford 1639 DEEP 918
1637-1638 Argalus and Parthenia Henry Glapthorne 1639 DEEP 920
1626, 1639 The Maid’s Revenge James Shirley 1639 DEEP 930
1614 Wit without Money John Fletcher 1639 DEEP 932
1635 The Coronation James Shirley 1640 DEEP 945
1631, 1639 Love’s Cruelty James Shirley 1640 DEEP 946
16339 The Night Walker, or The Little Thief James Shirley, John Fletcher 1640 DEEP 947
1634 The Opportunity James Shirley 1640 DEEP 948
1638 The Bride Thomas Nabbes 1640 DEEP 951
1631 The Humorous Courtier (The Duke) James Shirley 1640 DEEP 952
164010 The Arcadia James Shirley 1640 DEEP 966
1637-1640 The Ladies’ Privilege (The Lady’s Privilege) Henry Glapthorne 1640 DEEP 976
163611 Wit in a Constable Henry Glapthorne 1640 DEEP 977
1636 The Hollander Henry Glapthorne 1640 DEEP 980
1632-1635 The Prisoners Thomas Killigrew 1640 DEEP 5108.01
1634-1636 The Antiquary Shackerley Marmion 1641 DEEP 987
1635-1636 Claracilla (Claricilla) Thomas Killigrew 1641 DEEP 5108.02
1641 A Jovial Crew, or The Merry Beggars Richard Brome 1652 DEEP 1062
1622, 1639 The Changeling Thomas Middleton, William Rowley 1653 DEEP 1068
1623, 1639 The Spanish Gypsy Thomas Dekker, John Ford, Thomas Middleton, William Rowley 1653 DEEP 1077
1639-1640 The Court Beggar Richard Brome 1653 DEEP 5153.03
1638 The Cunning Lovers Alexander Brome12 1654 DEEP 1098
1615-161713 The Poor Man’s Comfort Robert Daborne 1655 DEEP 1104
1628-163414 King John and Matilda Robert Davenport 1655 DEEP 1113
1638-163915 The Sun’s Darling Thomas Dekker, John Ford 1656 DEEP 1125
1621 The Witch of Edmonton Thomas Dekker, William Rowley, John Ford 1658 DEEP 1151
165816 The Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru William Davenant 1658 DEEP 1154
165617 1 The Siege of Rhodes William Davenant 1659 DEEP 1121
1658-165918 1 Sir Francis Drake William Davenant 1659 DEEP 1170

Additional Notes by MoEML Team

See also the description of the Cockpit/Phoenix and interactive walking map at Shakespearean London Theatres (ShaLT). See the Venue Record at Early Modern London Theatres (EMLoT), which includes a list of variant names as they appear in the sources and links to primary and secondary records in their database.

Notes

  1. We see different dates for this event in secondary sources, depending on how the source treats historical dates. MoEML retains the Julian calendar in use in early modern England, which means that we locate this event in late 1616; see our rationale for doing so in our project. Other sources will correct the date to 1617, as it would have been had the New Year begun on 1 January. (JJ)
  2. EMLoT lists all the primary sources documenting this event. See in particular their record of Privy Council’s letter of 5 March 1616 to Lord Mayor George Bolles. (JJ)
  3. Unless specified, performance dates are taken from Gurr. According to Gurr, the dates given for many plays are conjectural. (JT)
  4. Production dates taken from DEEP. (JT)
  5. This date of performance comes from DEEP. Gurr gives the performance date as 1621? and the performance location as the Red Bull. According to the title page of the 1631 printing, the play hath beene often Presented; First, at the Bull in St. IOHNS-street; And lately, at the Priuate-House in DRVRY-Lane, called the PHŒNIX; DEEP claims that the play was re-licensed for stage, Aug 21, 1623. (JT)
  6. This date of performance comes from conjectural information from DEEP. For more information about Beaumont’s play, see the section on Questions of Theatrical Taste. (JT)
  7. Performance date from DEEP; it is not listed in Gurr. (JT)
  8. Performance date from DEEP; it is not listed in Gurr. (JT)
  9. Performance date from DEEP; it is not listed in Gurr. (JT)
  10. Performance date from DEEP; it is not listed in Gurr. (JT)
  11. [R]evised 1639 (Gurr 298). (JT)
  12. DEEP lists the author with a (?). (JT)
  13. Performance date from DEEP. (JT)
  14. Perhaps also performed in 1640, according to Gurr. (JT)
  15. Performance date from DEEP; it is not listed in Gurr. (JT)
  16. Performance date from DEEP; it is not listed in Gurr. (JT)
  17. Performance date from DEEP; it is not listed in Gurr. (JT)
  18. Performance date from DEEP; it is not listed in Gurr. (JT)

References