ion for a most violent attack on actors and
theatres in general, and on the Fortune in particular. With this
attack the city authorities, for reasons of their own, heartily
sympathized, but they had no jurisdiction over the Parish of St.
Giles, or over the other localities in which playhouses were situated.
Since the Privy Council had specially authorized the erection of the
Fortune, the Lord Mayor shifted the attack to that body, and himself
dispatched an urgent request to the Lords for reformation. In response
to all this agitation the Lords of the Privy Council on June 22, 1600,
issued the following order:

Whereas divers complaints have heretofore been made unto the
Lords and other of Her Majesty's Privy Council of the
manifold abuses and disorders that have grown and do
continue by occasion of many houses erected and employed in
and about London for common stage-plays; and now very lately
by reason of some complaint exhibited by sundry persons
against the building of the like house in or near Golding
Lane ... the Lords and the rest of Her Majesty's Privy
Council with one and full consent have ordered in manner and
form as follows. First, that there shall be about the city
two houses, and no more, allowed to serve for the use of the
common stage-plays; of the which houses, one [the Globe]
shall be in Surrey, in that place which is commonly called
the Bankside or thereabouts, and the other [the Fortune] in
Middlesex. Secondly, ... it is likewise ordered that the two
several companies of players assigned unto the two houses
allowed may play each of them in their several houses twice
a week and no oftener; and especially that they shall
refrain to play on the Sabbath day ... and that they shall
forbear altogether in the time of Lent.

The first part of this order, limiting the playhouses and companies to
two, was merely a repetition of the order of 1598.[439] It meant that
the Lords of the Privy Council formally licensed the Admiral's and the
Lord Chamberlain's Companies to play in London (of course the Lords
might, when they saw fit, license other companies for specific
periods). The second part of the order, limiting the number of
performances, was more serious, for no troupe could afford to act only
twice a week. The order if carried out would mean the ruin of the
Fortune and the Globe Companies. But it was not car