ing over. The order to pluck down all the public playhouses was
not taken seriously by the officers of the law, and Henslowe actually
secured permission to reopen the Rose on October 11. The inhibition
itself expired on November 1, but the Swan was singled out for further
punishment. The Privy Council ordered that henceforth license should
be granted to two companies only: namely, the Admiral's at the Rose,
and the Chamberlain's at the Curtain. This meant, of course, the
closing of the Swan.

In spite of this order, however, the members of Pembroke's Company
remaining after the chief actors had joined Henslowe, taking on
recruits and organizing themselves into a company, began to act at the
Swan without a license. For some time they continued unmolested, but
at last the two licensed companies called the attention of the Privy
Council to the fact, and on February 19, 1598, the Council issued the
following order to the Master of the Revels and the Justices of both
Middlesex and Surrey:

Whereas license hath been granted unto two companies of
stage players retayned unto us, the Lord Admiral and Lord
Chamberlain ... and whereas there is also a third company
who of late (as we are informed) have by way of intrusion
used likewise to play ... we have therefore thought good to
require you upon receipt hereof to take order that the
aforesaid third company may be suppressed, and none suffered
hereafter to play but those two formerly named, belonging to
us, the Lord Admiral and Lord Chamberlain.[264]

[Footnote 264: Dasent, _Acts of the Privy Council_, XXVIII, 327.]

Thus, after February 19, 1598, the Swan stood empty, so far as plays
were concerned, and we hear very little of it during the next few
years. Indeed, it never again assumed an important part in the history
of the drama.

In the summer of 1598[265] it was used by Robert Wilson for a contest
in extempore versification. Francis Meres, in his _Palladis Tamia_,
writes: "And so is now our witty Wilson, who for learning and
extemporall wit in this faculty is without compare or compeere, as, to
his great and eternal commendations, he manifested in his challenge at
the Swan on the Bankside."

[Footnote 265: After the order of February 19, when the "intruding
company" was driven out, and before September 7 when Meres's _Palladis
Tamia_ was entered in the Stationers' Registers.]

On May 15, 1600, Peter Bromvill was licensed t