ecords_, II, 64-65.]

The chief playwright for the troupe was the learned and industrious
Thomas Heywood, who, like Shakespeare, was also an actor and full
sharer in his company. Charles Lamb, who was an ardent admirer of
Heywood's plays, enthusiastically styled him "a prose Shakespeare";
and Wordsworth, with hardly less enthusiasm, declared him to have been
"a great man."

In 1612 Thomas Greene died, and the leadership of the troupe was taken
over by Christopher Beeston, a man well known in the theatrical life
of the time. Late in February, 1617, Beeston transferred the Queen's
Men to his new playhouse in Drury Lane, the Cockpit; in little more
than a week the sacking of the Cockpit drove them back to their old
quarters, where they remained until the following June. But even after
this they seem not to have abandoned the Red Bull entirely.

Edward Alleyn, in his _Account Book_, writes: "Oct. 1, 1617, I came to
London in the coach and went to the Red Bull"; and again under the
date of October 3: "I went to the Red Bull, and received for _The
Younger Brother_ but L3 6_s._ 4_d._"[495] What these two passages mean
it is hard to say, for they constitute the only references to the Red
Bull in all the Alleyn papers; but they do not necessarily imply, as
some have thought, that Alleyn was part owner of the playhouse;
possibly he was merely selling to the Red Bull Company the manuscript
of an old play.[496]

[Footnote 495: Malone, _Variorum_, III, 223; Young, _The History of
Dulwich College_, II, 51; Warner, _Catalogue_, p. 165; Collier,
_Memoirs of Edward Alleyn_, p. 107.]

[Footnote 496: The play is not otherwise known; a play with this
title, however, was entered on the Stationers' Register in 1653.]

At the death of Queen Anne, March 2, 1619, the company was deprived of
its "service," and after attending her funeral on May 13, was
dissolved. Christopher Beeston joined Prince Charles's Men, and
established that troupe at the Cockpit;[497] the other leading members
of Queen Anne's Men seem to have continued at the Red Bull under the
simple title "The Red Bull Company."

[Footnote 497: For details of this change, and of the quarrels that
followed, see the chapter on the Cockpit.]

In April, 1622, a feltmaker's apprentice named John Gill,[498] while
seated on the Red Bull stage, was accidentally injured by a sword in
the hands of one of the actors, Richard Baxter. A few days later Gill
called upon his fellow-apprentic