te entertainment of herself and her specially invited guests,
and the performance was at night. In a bill presented by the King's
Men for plays acted before the members of the royal family during the
year 1636 occurs the entry: "The 5th of May, at the Blackfryers, for
the Queene and the Prince Elector ... _Alfonso_." Again, in a similar
bill for the year 1638 (see the bill on page 404) is the entry: "At
the Blackfryers, the 23 of Aprill, for the Queene ... _The
Unfortunate Lovers_." The fact that the actors did not record the loss
of their "day" at their house, and made their charge accordingly,
shows that the plays were given at night and did not interfere with
the usual afternoon performances before the public.

[Footnote 376: _The Earl of Strafforde's Letters_ (Dublin, 1740), I,
511.]

[Footnote 377: The Herbert MS., Malone, _Variorum_, III, 167.]

The King's Men continued to occupy the Blackfriars as their winter
home until the closing of the theatres in 1642. Thereafter the
building must have stood empty for a number of years. In 1653 Sir
Aston Cokaine, in a poem prefixed to Richard Brome's _Plays_, looked
forward prophetically to the happy day when

Black, and White Friars too, shall flourish again.

But the prophecy was not to be fulfilled; for although Whitefriars
(i.e., Salisbury Court) did flourish as a Restoration playhouse, the
more famous Blackfriars had ceased to exist before acting was allowed
again. The manuscript note in the Phillipps copy of Stow's _Annals_
(1631) informs us that "the Blackfriars players' playhouse in
Blackfriars, London, which had stood many years, was pulled down to
the ground on Monday the 6 day of August, 1655, and tenements built in
the room."[378]

[Footnote 378: See _The Academy_, 1882, XXII, 314. Exactly the same
fate had overtaken the Globe ten years earlier.]

CHAPTER XII

THE GLOBE

As related more fully in the chapter on "The Theatre," when Cuthbert
and Richard Burbage discovered that Gyles Alleyn not only refused to
renew the lease for the land on which their playhouse stood, but was
actually planning to seize the building and devote it to his private
uses, they took immediate steps to thwart him. And in doing so they
evolved a new and admirable scheme of theatrical management. They
planned to bring together into a syndicate or stock-company some of
the best actors of the day, and allow these actors to share in the
ownership of the building. Hither