TO

LANE COOPER

IN GRATITUDE AND ESTEEM

PREFACE

The method of dramatic representation in the time of Shakespeare has
long received close study. Among those who have more recently devoted
their energies to the subject may be mentioned W.J. Lawrence, T.S.
Graves, G.F. Reynolds, V.E. Albright, A.H. Thorndike, and B.
Neuendorff, each of whom has embodied the results of his
investigations in one or more noteworthy volumes. But the history of
the playhouses themselves, a topic equally important, has not hitherto
been attempted. If we omit the brief notices of the theatres in Edmond
Malone's _The Plays and Poems of William Shakespeare_ (1790) and John
Payne Collier's _The History of English Dramatic Poetry_ (1831), the
sole book dealing even in part with the topic is T.F. Ordish's _The
Early London Theatres in the Fields_. This book, however, though good
for its time, was written a quarter of a century ago, before most of
the documents relating to early theatrical history were discovered,
and it discusses only six playhouses. The present volume takes
advantage of all the materials made available by the industry of later
scholars, and records the history of seventeen regular, and five
temporary or projected, theatres. The book is throughout the result of
a first-hand examination of original sources, and represents an
independent interpretation of the historical evidences. As a
consequence of this, as well as of a comparison (now for the first
time possible) of the detailed records of the several playhouses, many
conclusions long held by scholars have been set aside. I have made no
systematic attempt to point out the cases in which I depart from
previously accepted opinions, for the scholar will discover them for
himself; but I believe I have never thus departed without being aware
of it, and without having carefully weighed the entire evidence.
Sometimes the evidence has been too voluminous or complex for detailed
presentation; in these instances I have had to content myself with
reference by footnotes to the more significant documents bearing on
the point.

In a task involving so many details I cannot hope to have escaped
errors--errors due not only to oversight, but also to the limitations
of my knowledge or to mistaken interpretation. For such I can offer no
excuse, though I may request from my readers the same degree of
tolerance which I have tried to show other laborers in the field. In
reproducing