utts in that
part of Surrey without the jurisdiction of the said Lord
Mayor, contrary to their Lordship's order; their Lordships
require the Justices not only to inquire who they be that
disobey their commandment in that behalf, and not only to
forbid them expressly for playing in any of these remote
places near unto the city until Michaelmas, but to have
regard that within the precinct of Surrey none be permitted
to play; if any do, to commit them and to advertise them,
&c.[199]

[Footnote 199: Dasent, _Acts of the Privy Council_, XII, 15.]

The next passage clearly refers to "the theatre" at Newington Butts.
On May 11, 1586, the Privy Council dispatched a letter to the Lord
Mayor, which the clerk thus summarized:

A letter to the Lord Mayor: his Lordship is desired,
according to his request made to their Lordships by his
letters of the vii th of this present, to give order for the
restraining of plays and interludes within and about the
city of London, for the avoiding of infection feared to grow
and increase this time of summer by the common assemblies of
people at those places; and that their Lordships have taken
the like order for the prohibiting of the use of plays at
the theatre, and the other places about Newington, out of
his charge.[200]

[Footnote 200: _Ibid._, XIV, 102.]

Chalmers[201] thought the word "theatre" was used of the Newington
Playhouse, and for this he was taken to task by Collier,[202] who
says: "He confounds it with the playhouse emphatically called 'the
Theatre' in Shoreditch; and on consulting the Register, we find that
no such playhouse as the Newington Theatre is there spoken of." But
Chalmers was right; for if we consult the "Registers" we find the
following letter, dispatched to the Justices of Surrey on the very
same day that the letter just quoted was sent to the Lord Mayor:

A letter to the Justices of Surrey, that according to such
direction as hath been given by their Lordships to the Lord
Mayor to restrain and inhibit the use of plays and
interludes in public places in and about the City of London,
in respect of the heat of the year now drawing on, for the
avoiding of the infection like to grow and increase by the
ordinary assemblies of the people to those places, they are
also required in like sort to take order that the plays and
ass