361] The method of distributing the profits between
the sharers (known as "housekeepers") and the actors (known as the
"company") was to be the same as that practiced at the Globe.[362]

[Footnote 360: Twenty-one years was a very common term for a lease to
run; but in this case, no doubt, it was intended that the lease of
Blackfriars should last as long as the lease of the Globe, which then
had exactly twenty-one years to run.]

[Footnote 361: Shortly after this agreement had been made William Slye
died, and his executrix delivered up his share to Richard Burbage "to
be cancelled and made void." See the Heminges-Osteler documents
printed by Mr. Wallace in the London _Times_, October 4, 1909. In 1611
Burbage let William Osteler have this share.]

[Footnote 362: The method is clearly explained in the documents of
1635 printed by Halliwell-Phillipps, in _Outlines_, I, 312.]

Soon after this organization was completed, the King's Men moved from
the Globe to the Blackfriars. They did not, of course, intend to
abandon the Globe. Their plan was to use the Blackfriars as a "winter
home," and the Globe as a "summer house."[363] Malone observed from
the Herbert Manuscript that "the King's Company usually began to play
at the Globe in the month of May";[364] although he failed to state at
what time in the autumn they usually moved to the Blackfriars, the
evidence points to the first of November.

[Footnote 363: See Wright, _Historia Histrionica_, Hazlitt's Dodsley,
XV, 406.]

[Footnote 364: Malone, _Variorum_, III, 71.]

Such a plan had many advantages. For one thing, it would prevent the
pecuniary losses often caused by a severe winter. In the _Poetaster_
(1601), Jonson makes Histrio, representing the Globe Players, say: "O,
it will get us a huge deal of money, and we have need on't, for this
winter has made us all poorer than so many starved snakes; nobody
comes at us."[365] This could not be said of the King's Men after they
moved to the Blackfriars. Edward Kirkham, a man experienced in
theatrical finances, offered to prove to the court in 1612 that the
King's Men "got, and as yet doth, more in one winter in the said great
hall by a thousand pounds than they were used to get on the
Bankside."[366]

[Footnote 365: Act III, scene iv. Cf. also Webster's Preface to _The
White Devil_, acted at the Red Bull about 1610.]

[Footnote 366: Fleay, _A Chronicle History of the London Stage_, p.
248.]

Kirkham's testimony as to