or other
stuff wherewith one of them was stopped, did light on the
thatch, where being thought at first but an idle smoke, and
their eyes more attentive to the show, it kindled inwardly,
and ran round like a train, consuming within less than an
hour the whole house to the very ground. This was the fatal
period of that virtuous fabrick; wherein yet nothing did
perish but wood and straw, and a few forsaken cloaks; only
one man had his breeches set on fire, that would perhaps
have broiled him, if he had not, by the benefit of a
provident wit, put it out with bottle ale.[405]

[Footnote 405: _Reliquiae Wottonianae_ (ed. 1672), p. 425.]

John Chamberlain, writing to Sir Ralph Winwood, July 8, 1613, refers
to the accident thus:

The burning of the Globe or playhouse on the Bankside on St.
Peter's Day cannot escape you; which fell out by a peal of
chambers (that I know not upon what occasion were to be used
in the play), the tampin or stopple of one of them lighting
in the thatch that cover'd the house, burn'd it down to the
ground in less than two hours, with a dwelling house
adjoining; and it was a great marvel and fair grace of God
that the people had so little harm, having but two narrow
doors to get out.[406]

[Footnote 406: Ralph Winwood, _Memorials of Affairs of State_ (ed.
1725), III, 469.]

[Illustration: THE FIRST GLOBE

From Visscher's _View of London_, published in 1616, but representing
the city as it was several years earlier.]

The Reverend Thomas Lorkin writes from London to Sir Thomas Puckering
under the date of June 30, 1613:

No longer since than yesterday, while Burbage's company were
acting at the Globe the play of _Henry VIII_, and there
shooting off certain chambers in way of triumph, the fire
catched and fastened upon the thatch of the house, and there
burned so furiously, as it consumed the whole house, all in
less than two hours, the people having enough to do to save
themselves.[407]

[Footnote 407: Printed in Birch, _The Court and Times of James the
First_ (1849), I, 251.]

A contemporary ballad[408] gives a vivid and amusing account of the
disaster:

_A Sonnet upon the Pitiful Burning of the Globe
Playhouse in London_

Now sit thee down, Melpomene,
Wrapt in a sea-coal robe,
And tell the dolefull tragedy
That late was pla