Part 23 (1/2)

[Footnote 416: Halliwell-Phillipps, _Outlines_, I, 316. This evidence seems to me unimpeachable. I should add, however, that Mr. Wallace considers the estimate ”excessive,” and says that he has ”other contemporary doc.u.ments showing the cost was far less than 1400.” (The London _Times_, October 2, 1909.)]

[Footnote 417: Wallace, _Shakespeare and his London a.s.sociates_, p.

61. There is, I think, no truth in the statement made by the inaccurate annotator of the Phillipps copy of Stow's _Annals_, that the Globe was built ”at the great charge of King James and many n.o.blemen and others.” (See _The Academy_, October 28, 1882, p. 314.) The Witter-Heminges doc.u.ments sufficiently disprove that. We may well believe, however, that the King and his n.o.blemen were interested in the new building, and encouraged the actors in many ways.]

[Footnote 418: Wallace, _Shakespeare and his London a.s.sociates_, p.

70.]

The New Globe, like its predecessor, was built of timber,[419] and on the same site--indeed the carpenters made use of the old foundation, which seems not to have been seriously injured. In a ”return” of 1634, preserved at St. Saviour's, we read: ”The Globe playhouse, near Maid Lane, built by the company of players, with a dwelling house thereto adjoining, built with timber, about 20 years past, upon an old foundation.”[420] In spite of the use made of the old foundation, the new structure was unquestionably larger than the First Globe; Marmion, in the Prologue to _Holland's Leaguer_, acted at Salisbury Court in 1634, speaks of ”the vastness of the Globe,” and s.h.i.+rley, in the Prologue to _Rosania_, applies the adjective ”vast” to the building.

Moreover, the builders had ”the wit,” as Jonson tells us, ”to cover it with tiles.” John Taylor, the Water-Poet, writes:

For where before it had a thatched hide, Now to a stately theatre is turn'd.

[Footnote 419: I see no reason to accept Mr. Wallace's suggestion (_The Children of the Chapel at Blackfriars_, p. 34, note 7) that ”it seems questionable, but not unlikely, that the timber framework was brick-veneered and plastered over.” Mr. Wallace mistakenly accepts Wilkinson's view of the second Fortune as genuine.]

[Footnote 420: Rendle, _Bankside_, p. xvii.]

The Second Globe is represented, but unsatisfactorily, in Hollar's _View of London_, dated 1647 (opposite page 260). It should be noted that the artist was in banishment from 1643 (at which time the Globe was still standing) until 1652, and hence, in drawing certain buildings, especially those not reproduced in earlier views of London, he may have had to rely upon his memory. This would explain the general vagueness of his representation of the Globe.

The construction was not hurried, for the players had Blackfriars as a home. Under normal conditions they did not move from the city to the Bankside until some time in May; and shortly after that date, in the early summer of 1614, the New Globe was ready for them. John Chamberlain writes to Mrs. Alice Carleton on June 30, 1614:

I have not seen your sister Williams since I came to town, though I have been there twice. The first time she was at a neighbor's house at cards, and the next she was gone to the New Globe to a play. Indeed, I hear much speech of this new playhouse, which is said to be the fairest that ever was in England.[421]

[Footnote 421: Birch, _The Court and Times of James the First_, I, 329; quoted by Wallace, _The Children of the Chapel at Blackfriars_, p. 35.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE SECOND GLOBE

From Hollar's _View of London_ (1647).]

With this New Globe Shakespeare had little to do, for his career as a playwright had been run, and probably he had already retired from acting. Time, indeed, was beginning to thin out the little band of friends who had initiated and made famous the Globe organization.

Thomas Pope had died in 1603, Augustine Phillips in 1605, William Slye in 1608, and, just a few months after the opening of the new playhouse, William Osteler, who had been admitted to the partners.h.i.+p in 1611. He had begun his career as a child-actor at Blackfriars, had later joined the King's Men, and had married Heminges's daughter Thomasine.

A more serious blow to the company, however, fell in April, 1616, when Shakespeare himself died. To the world he had been ”the applause, delight, the wonder” of the stage; but to the members of the Globe Company he had been for many years a ”friend and fellow.” Only Burbage and Heminges (described in 1614 as ”old Heminges”), now remained of the original venturers. And Burbage pa.s.sed away on March 13, 1619:

He's gone! and with him what a world are dead Which he reviv'd--to be revived so No more. Young Hamlet, old Hieronimo, Kind Lear, the grieved Moor, and more beside That lived in him have now for ever died![422]

[Footnote 422: From a folio MS. in the Huth Library, printed by J.P.

Collier in _The History of English Dramatic Poetry_ (1879), I, 411, and by various others.]

Many elegies in a similar vein were written celebrating his wonderful powers as an actor; yet the tribute that perhaps affects us most deals with him merely as a man. The Earl of Pembroke, writing to the Amba.s.sador to Germany, gives the court news about the mighty ones of the kingdom: ”My Lord of Lenox made a great supper to the French Amba.s.sador this night here, and even now all the company are at a play; which I, being tender-hearted, could not endure to see so soon after the loss of my old acquaintance Burbage.”[423]

[Footnote 423: Printed by Mrs. Stopes, _Burbage and Shakespeare's Stage_, p. 117, with many other interesting references to the great actor.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE TRADITIONAL SITE OF THE GLOBE

From Wilkinson's _Theatrum Ill.u.s.trata_ (1825). This site is still advocated by some scholars. Compare page 245.]

In 1623 Heminges and Condell, with great ”care and paine,” collected and published the plays of Shakespeare, ”onely to keep the memory of so worthy a Friend and Fellow alive”; and shortly after, they too died, Condell in 1627 and Heminges in 1630.