491: Hazlitt's Dodsley, XV, 408. If the Kirkham picture
represents the interior of any playhouse, it more likely represents
the Cockpit, which was standing at the time of the Restoration.]

The building, as I have indicated, seems to have been completed in or
before 1605; but exactly when the Queen's Men moved thither from the
Curtain is not clear. The patent issued to the company on April 15,
1609, gives them license to play "within their now usual houses,
called the Red Bull in Clerkenwell, and the Curtain in Holywell."[492]
Since they would hardly make use of two big public playhouses at the
same time, we might suspect that they were then arranging for the
transfer. Moreover, Heath, in his _Epigrams_, printed in 1610 but
probably written a year or two earlier, refers to the three important
public playhouses of the day as the Globe, the Fortune, and the
Curtain. Yet, that the Queen's Men were playing regularly at the Red
Bull in 1609 is clear from Dekker's _Raven's Almanack_,[493] and they
may have been playing there at intervals after 1605.

[Footnote 492: The Malone Society's _Collections_, I, 270.]

[Footnote 493: Dekker's _Works_ (ed. Grosart), IV, 210-11. I cannot
understand why Murray (_English Dramatic Companies_, I, 152-53) and
others say that Dekker refers to the Fortune, the Globe, and the
Curtain. His puns are clear: "_Fortune_ must favour some ... the
_whole world_ must stick to others ... and a third faction must fight
like _Bulls_."]

Dekker, in the pamphlet just mentioned, predicted "a deadly war"
between the Globe, the Fortune, and the Red Bull. And he had good
reasons for believing that the Queen's Men could successfully compete
with the two other companies, for it numbered among its players some
of the best actors of the day. The leader of the troupe was Thomas
Greene, now chiefly known for the amusing comedy named, after him,
_Greene's Tu Quoque_, but then known to all Londoners as the cleverest
comedian since Tarleton and Kempe:

_Scat._ Yes, faith, brother, if it please you; let's go see
a play at the Globe.

_But._ I care not; any whither, so the clown have a part;
for, i' faith, I am nobody without a fool.

_Gera._ Why, then, we'll go to the Red Bull; they say
Green's a good clown.[494]

[Footnote 494: _Greene's Tu Quoque_, Hazlitt's Dodsley, XI, 240. In
May, 1610, there was "a notable outrage at the Playhouse called the
Red Bull"; see _Middlesex County R