ain, like the Theatre, was erected on leased ground.

[Footnote 125: Tomlins, _op. cit._, p. 31.]

It is impossible to give a connected history of the Curtain. Most of
the references to it that we now possess are invectives in early
puritanical writings, or bare mention, along with other playhouses, in
letters or ordinances of the Privy Council and the Lord Mayor. Such
references as these do not much help us in determining what companies
successively occupied the building, or what varying fortunes marked
its ownership and management. Yet a few scattered facts have sifted
down to us, and these I have arranged in chronological order.

On the afternoon of April 6, 1580, an earthquake, especially severe in
Holywell, shook the building during the performance of a play, and
greatly frightened the audience. Munday says merely: "at the
playhouses the people came running forth, surprised with great
astonishment";[126] but Stubbes, the Puritan, who saw in the event a
"fearful judgment of God," writes with fervor: "The like judgment
almost did the Lord show unto them a little before, being assembled at
their theatres to see their bawdy interludes and other trumperies
practised, for He caused the earth mightily to shake and quaver, as
though all would have fallen down; whereat the people, sore amazed,
some leapt down from the top of the turrets, pinnacles, and towers
where they stood, to the ground, whereof some had their legs broke,
some their arms, some their backs, some hurt one where, some another,
and many score crushed and bruised."[127]

[Footnote 126: _View of Sundry Examples_, 1580.]

[Footnote 127: _The Anatomy of Abuses_, ed. F.J. Furnivall, New
Shakspere Society, p. 180. For other descriptions of this earthquake
see Halliwell-Phillipps, _Outlines_, I, 369.]

The disturbance at the Theatre and the Curtain in 1584, when one
Challes "did turn upon the toe upon the belly of" an apprentice
"sleeping upon the grass" in the Field near by, has been mentioned in
the preceding chapter. If the interpretation of the facts there given
is correct, Lord Arundel's Players were then occupying the Curtain.

In the winter of 1585 Lanman entered into his seven years' agreement
with Burbage and Brayne by which the Theatre and the Curtain were
placed under one management, and the profits shared "in divident
between them." This agreement was faithfully kept by both parties, but
there is no evidence that after the expiration of the seve