n years, in
the winter of 1592, the affiliation was continued. What effect the
arrangement had upon the companies of players occupying the two
theatres we cannot now determine. To this period, however, I would
assign the appearance of the Queen's Men at the Curtain.[128]

[Footnote 128: _Tarlton's Jests_, ed. by J.O. Halliwell for the
Shakespeare Society (1844), p. 16. For a discussion see the preceding
chapter on the Theatre, p. 72.]

On July 28, 1597, as a result of the performance of Thomas Nashe's
_The Isle of Dogs_, by Pembroke's Men at the Swan,[129] the Privy
Council ordered the plucking down of "the Curtain and the
Theatre."[130] The order, however, was not carried out, and in October
plays were allowed again as before.

[Footnote 129: For details see the chapter on the Swan.]

[Footnote 130: Dasent, _Acts of the Privy Council_, XXVII, 313.]

At this time the Lord Chamberlain's men were at the Curtain, having
recently moved thither in consequence of the difficulties Cuthbert
Burbage was having with Gyles Alleyn over the Theatre property. During
the stay of the Chamberlain's Company, which numbered among its
members William Shakespeare, Richard Burbage, William Kempe (who had
succeeded Tarleton in popular favor as a clown), John Heminges, Thomas
Pope, and Augustine Phillips, the playhouse probably attained its
greatest distinction. Both Shakespeare and Jonson wrote plays for the
troupe; _Romeo and Juliet_, we are told, "won Curtain plaudities," as
no doubt did many other of Shakespeare's early masterpieces; and
Jonson's _Every Man in His Humour_ created such enthusiasm here on its
first performance as to make its author famous.[131]

[Footnote 131: Marston, _The Scourge of Villainy_ (1598); Bullen, _The
Works of John Marston_, III, 372.]

In the summer of 1599 the Chamberlain's Men moved into their splendid
new home, the Globe, on the Bankside, and the Curtain thus abandoned
fell on hard times. Perhaps it was let occasionally to traveling
troupes; in Jeaffreson's _Middlesex County Records_, under the date of
March 11, 1600, is a notice of the arrest of one William Haukins
"charged with a purse taken at a play at the Curtain." But shortly
after, in April, 1600, when Henslowe and Alleyn began to erect their
splendid new Fortune Playhouse, they were able to give the impression
to Tilney, the Master of the Revels, and to the Privy Council, that
the Curtain was to be torn down. Thus in the Council's warrant fo